Preventing players from gaming the Corruption System

Currently as it stands there isn't much in the way of preventing corrupted players from cheating the intended repercussions of the system, I have a few ideas that I think might be a good solution to this but this is more so an open discussion.

Right now I can think of 3 major issues:
1) Players can easily take their important equipment and crafting reagents and store them in a safe place and wait for bounty hunters to kill them so the whole point of the corruption system would boil down to an eye for an eye, rather than an eye for your gear (if that makes sense).

2) Having familiar faces kill you over and over to remove the corruption rating, this would mean that people are free to grief and kill as many players as they'd like with few repercussions and this is especially going to be a problem when exp isn't a factor at max level.

3) Group PvP and directly trading stolen goods to players who are marked as a non-combatant to minimise loss in case of death.

To start off I think corruption levels shouldn't be lowered per death, it should be a timer that adds exponentially longer increments of time depending on how far corrupted you are to demotivate players from doubling down on being fully corrupt and ontop of this, the node of influence where the PK happened should not allow players from entering zones which might be deemed safe such as town or cities or if they do then they should be captured or killed by guards and have the same consequences as if they had died from a player except the items they lose should be thrown into the void or be forcefully committed to the node's reliquary and not be rewarded to any player specifically. If a player is killed by a node, only then should the corruption time lessen because there's no way the player could've gamed their item loss.

Once a player becomes corrupted, their inventory should be locked out from transferring to a location where they would not drop on death. This still means they can swap out their gear but P2P trading and depositing into banks / caravans or chests would not be an option. This doesn't totally negate people gaming their item drops as they could be killed repeatedly to have all of their gear drop by a friend but they'd be totally defenceless during this period where they have no gear on, their gear would take heavy damage on repeated deaths, their PvE progression would be stunted because they wouldn't be able to fight against mobs and this would all be ontop of the already hefty death penalties in the game.

Finally to combat some of these heftier penalties, I think removing scaling combat dampening as corruption duration got longer would be a good idea. The incentive not to be an absolute bandit is already there in this case but if you do choose to go down that path then you'll have to seriously hide but at least you'll be able to protect yourself in the process as I'm not personally a fan of dampening in games.

I know some of these ideas definitely won't be for everyone and there are certainly some flaws but what do you think? Do you have any ideas that could prevent the player-base cheating the system and making Corruption redundant?

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JamesSunderland

On all 3 issues you are assuming the Corrupted player will always have the necessary time to "cheat" the system, which seems pretty unreasonable. and i'm saying this as someone who experienced this system on Lineage 2 for more than a decade.

Namil

JamesSunderland wrote: »

On all 3 issues you are assuming the Corrupted player will always have the necessary time to "cheat" the system, which seems pretty unreasonable. and i'm saying this as someone who experienced this system on Lineage 2 for more than a decade.

You might be right but could you expand on what you mean by having the necessary time?

JamesSunderland

1° The necessary time to go from the killing spot to the safe spot to store your items.
2° The necessary time for the PK and/or his friends to go to a "hidden spot" to remove corruption.
3° The necessary time to unequip and trade all your items with your non-corrupted friend.
Assuming no non-combatent player is around you to kill you on the spot, Definitely the Fastest and safest way, but in this case its no longer an individual, but a group action.

Marzzo

I agree. The corruption system needs a rework. Well written post.

Xrael

Neurath wrote: »

I don't get how I see so many people saying people will exploit the corruption system...How would they exploit the corruption system? The only way I can see an exploit is if someone blocks access to a door, there is a fight and someone gets turned corrupted. I don't see any other way it can be exploited.

Edit: Corrupted Players have a chance to kill Bounty Hunters, it would not be in a corrupted's interest to leave their gear behind, because if they left their gear behind they'd stand no chance at all.

That's because ur blinded by your passion to be a bounty hunter. The system is fairly easy to exploit as it stands right now. On average, the no. of pkers will be higher than the no. of bounty hunters. Some will also be of the same level/higher level than the bounty hunter. This means that there is no guarantee that a bounty hunter can help a person who is being constantly griefed by multiple people as he might get killed as well. Even if it was a single high level target targeting low levels, its going to be difficult to find bounty hunters of similar level that might come to take him out because of the no. of pkers on average being greater than the no. of bounty hunters.

Xrael

Namil wrote: »

Currently as it stands there isn't much in the way of preventing corrupted players from cheating the intended repercussions of the system, I have a few ideas that I think might be a good solution to this but this is more so an open discussion.

Right now I can think of 3 major issues:
1) Players can easily take their important equipment and crafting reagents and store them in a safe place and wait for bounty hunters to kill them so the whole point of the corruption system would boil down to an eye for an eye, rather than an eye for your gear (if that makes sense).

2) Having familiar faces kill you over and over to remove the corruption rating, this would mean that people are free to grief and kill as many players as they'd like with few repercussions and this is especially going to be a problem when exp isn't a factor at max level.

3) Group PvP and directly trading stolen goods to players who are marked as a non-combatant to minimise loss in case of death.

To start off I think corruption levels shouldn't be lowered per death, it should be a timer that adds exponentially longer increments of time depending on how far corrupted you are to demotivate players from doubling down on being fully corrupt and ontop of this, the node of influence where the PK happened should not allow players from entering zones which might be deemed safe such as town or cities or if they do then they should be captured or killed by guards and have the same consequences as if they had died from a player except the items they lose should be thrown into the void or be forcefully committed to the node's reliquary and not be rewarded to any player specifically. If a player is killed by a node, only then should the corruption time lessen because there's no way the player could've gamed their item loss.

Once a player becomes corrupted, their inventory should be locked out from transferring to a location where they would not drop on death. This still means they can swap out their gear but P2P trading and depositing into banks / caravans or chests would not be an option. This doesn't totally negate people gaming their item drops as they could be killed repeatedly to have all of their gear drop by a friend but they'd be totally defenceless during this period where they have no gear on, their gear would take heavy damage on repeated deaths, their PvE progression would be stunted because they wouldn't be able to fight against mobs and this would all be ontop of the already hefty death penalties in the game.

Finally to combat some of these heftier penalties, I think removing scaling combat dampening as corruption duration got longer would be a good idea. The incentive not to be an absolute bandit is already there in this case but if you do choose to go down that path then you'll have to seriously hide but at least you'll be able to protect yourself in the process as I'm not personally a fan of dampening in games.

I know some of these ideas definitely won't be for everyone and there are certainly some flaws but what do you think? Do you have any ideas that could prevent the player-base cheating the system and making Corruption redundant?

Another way to abuse this system, is that higher level players can grief low levels by dealing enough dmg to almost kill them but not kill them. The low level player would be forced to use potions, bandages etc. constantly and it would needless to say ruin his experience with the game.

Another thing is that this would affect streamers pretty negatively. They will be forced to hide their server, for the first few levels, as otherwise they will be ghosted and griefed by several hundred low level players. The gear drop mechanic wont affect these players as nobody cares about low level gear and since there will be way too many of them, it will require the streamer to die multiple multiple times before the griefers are completely corrupted.

When i mentioned this initially, all of them instantly stood against me because i was "simping" for streamers in my post. None of them even bothered to consider that what im saying is, there is currently no consistent way to deal with mass griefers that target a single player, or higher level players that grief low levels as the chance of a bounty hunter of their level coming to take them out is unlikely.

HazardNumberSeven

Oh, you guys weren't kidding.

Namil

CaptainChuck wrote: »

Another way to abuse this system, is that higher level players can grief low levels by dealing enough dmg to almost kill them but not kill them. The low level player would be forced to use potions, bandages etc. constantly and it would needless to say ruin his experience with the game.

Another thing is that this would affect streamers pretty negatively. They will be forced to hide their server, for the first few levels, as otherwise they will be ghosted and griefed by several hundred low level players. The gear drop mechanic wont affect these players as nobody cares about low level gear and since there will be way too many of them, it will require the streamer to die multiple multiple times before the griefers are completely corrupted.

When i mentioned this initially, all of them instantly stood against me because i was "simping" for streamers in my post. None of them even bothered to consider that what im saying is, there is currently no consistent way to deal with mass griefers that target a single player, or higher level players that grief low levels as the chance of a bounty hunter of their level coming to take them out is unlikely.

I definitely see where you're coming from on the streamer perspective and I think some steps will need to be taken into account for every individual player when they first create a character, it would be damaging to the game's health not to accommodate for people like streamers who undoubtedly would bring a lot of traffic to the game. I think this will be an initial issue but eventually will die off as players spread out and away from eachother and with the nature of the game being very group orientated for the most part it shouldn't be too damaging of an experience to roll around with a group dedicated to protecting them because with every streamer comes those who want to help them succeed and those who want them to fail.

World scale luckily matters aswell so when this spreading out does occur it should mean that players won't be so easily willing to travel half way across the world to another node solely to grief.

I think one easy work around to this issue would be to introduce some sort of grace-period when a new character is made where they can't be attacked for X amount of time, not only for streamers but for every player. Further down the line, repeatedly harassing individual players on your own characters that are more equal in equipment and level will just not be worth it in my opinion but time will tell!

CaptainChuck wrote: »

When i mentioned this initially, all of them instantly stood against me because i was "simping" for streamers in my post. None of them even bothered to consider that what im saying is, there is currently no consistent way to deal with mass griefers that target a single player, or higher level players that grief low levels as the chance of a bounty hunter of their level coming to take them out is unlikely.

Unfortunately I noticed people's resilience to just hear out some of the valid concerns that people have aswell. I can't imagine Intrepid will let players cause mayhem right off the bat in starting zones though luckily, that would be chaos. There should be a point where no matter how much you dislike someone, killing them on your level 38 when they're also 38 will be hurting yourself more than it does them.

HazardNumberSeven

Totally disingenuous. The thread is there for people to go and read and see that.

Namil

hazardnumberseven wrote: »

Totally disingenuous. The thread is there for people to go and read and see that.

What are you referring to?

HazardNumberSeven

Namil wrote: »

hazardnumberseven wrote: »

Totally disingenuous. The thread is there for people to go and read and see that.

What are you referring to?

This.

https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/44758/corruption-system#latest

Namil

hazardnumberseven wrote: »

Namil wrote: »

hazardnumberseven wrote: »

Totally disingenuous. The thread is there for people to go and read and see that.

What are you referring to?

This.

https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/44758/corruption-system#latest

Ah, alright. I hadn't read that up until now, I'm not advocating for preferential treatment or anything that would make any player immune past the starting zone, just to be clear.

Noaani

Namil wrote: »

noaani wrote: »

I believe corrupt players are unable to trade with others.

There is also the probability that corrupt players won't be able to unequip items.

These two things should completely negate the above ways to "game" the system.

Well I hope so, in which case it would be essentially aligning with my post but I couldn't find any information like that anywhere unless someone could link it.

Here's the deal, like it or not.

Intrepid have laid out the initial idea for the corruption system. We've all read it, we all have a basic understanding of it.

Until they are able to see it in action, there is nothing more Intrepid can really add to that, nor anything they should add to that (when you consider they have said they will be monitoring it ducing alpha and beta).

All of this was outlined years ago, and players like myself and @Nagash, @George Black, @Wandering Mist, @unknownsystemerror, as well as many, many others have thrashed out the specifics of the system for years, coming up with as many potential exploits to the system as we can collectively think of. We did this to an exhausting level - which is why any post in regards to corruption absolutely will get a reply similar to that from Nagash in this thread.

The fact that you will get such a reply is no reason to not start a thread like this though - as you were not a part of the initial discussions. However, the fact that you were not a part of the initial dicussions and would like to know some of these things is also no reason for people that were involved in those discussions to not reply in the manner that they have.

In the discussions we had, literally every potential exploit we found was either already accounted for in various systems, or was a very easy fix to make. There were no exploits that had us stumpped at all.

However, you won't hear any of that from Intrepid, as until they have a full testing phase with the corruption system in place, they have nothing more at all that they can say.

The develoeprs have seen all the threads on this in the past, and they would be aware of all the potential exploits that we have found, as well as the easy fixes we were able to come up with for them - but again, until they see it tested out, there is nothing for them to say on the matter.

Due to this, there is no point you saying "I see this exploit here, what do Intrepid have to say about it?", because Intrepid have nothing to say about it until it is tested.

The issue there is you are asking the wrong people. What you should be doing is saying "I can see this potential issue in the corruption system, what do you other posters think?". If we are able to come up with a very easy way to prevent such an exploit, then you probably should assume that experienced developers that care about the game they are developing will also be able to come up with a solution.

The way you are phrasing it - whether you realize it or not - is that you are saying you don't trust Intrepid to be half way decent game developers.

Now, if you are able to come up with any other potential exploits that you can see in the corruption system, I'd be happy to reply to you with a very easy work around to it. It may not be what Intrepid do, but again, until they test the system, they have nothing more to say on the matter.

What you have to do is assume that if we can find an easy solution, they can too.

Namil

@noaani

Here's the thing, I've been following the game since 2017, I followed the Kickstarter. I participated in Alpha 0 and I've been keeping up with probably about 60-70% of all the news regarding the game. You telling me I wasn't around for the 'Initial Discussions' doesn't matter, and it doesn't matter that you have spoken about it. This is a completely open format and everyone is allowed to post their ideas, start discussions and talk about the game however they please and I'll continue to do that. Using this logic, you may aswell stop talking about the systems entirely because as far as tangible gameplay of the systems goes, the amount of this we've had access to hasn't honestly changed that dramatically because non of it is honestly close to completion. Why don't they just shut down the forums until the next Alpha phase initiates in this case.

It's not my fault you are perceiving my thread in a certain way no matter how many times I explained that it wasn't me shitting on the systems or not having faith in Intrepid, instead of trying to read intent over text why don't you sit back and listen? I began the thread to just talk about the system with people who are interested in the game because I, like many others are eager for it.

If you're exhausted, that's fine. But that doesn't give you a special right to act like a warm glow shines out of your asses because you don't want to talk about a specific subject anymore, constructively build on the post, share your knowledge or don't post instead of telling people there's no point in trying to start a discussion.

Even better, if you have spoken about this in detail and have covered these exploits and thought of work-arounds then why don't you literally just share that information and your ideas instead of talking to someone who genuinely just wanted an active conversation about this system like they've done something wrong.

There is definitely a reason to not respond in the manner that some people have, you saying everything you have is as useful as this thread is from your perspective. It's actually pretty off putting to see that some of the people who have been on the forums for a long time are such demoralising purists.

Once more, especially for you, I have full faith in Intrepid, I trust their vision and I believe they will do it right. I believe they will find a solution.

Noaani

Namil wrote: »

@noaani

You telling me I wasn't around for the 'Initial Discussions' doesn't matter, and it doesn't matter that you have spoken about it. This is a completely open format and everyone is allowed to post their ideas, start discussions and talk about the game however they please and I'll continue to do that. Using this logic, you may aswell stop talking about the systems entirely because as far as tangible gameplay of the systems goes, the amount of this we've had access to hasn't honestly changed that dramatically because non of it is honestly close to completion. Why don't they just shut down the forums until the next Alpha phase initiates in this case.

I didn't say anything to the contrary.

In fact, here are a few snippets from what I said above

noaani wrote: »

The fact that you will get such a reply is no reason to not start a thread like this though - as you were not a part of the initial discussions.

...

Now, if you are able to come up with any other potential exploits that you can see in the corruption system, I'd be happy to reply to you with a very easy work around to it.

So, not only did I not say you shouldn't post a thread like this, I actually SPECIFICALLY said you should, I even said that if you had potential exploits you are worried about, I'll let you know what the solution the previous discussion on this topic here came up with.

You should perhaps take back literally that entire post above this one. There is an edit button right there.

Namil

noaani wrote: »

Due to this, there is no point you saying "I see this exploit here, what do Intrepid have to say about it?", because Intrepid have nothing to say about it until it is tested.

I hope you're joking. This is you directly telling me there wasn't any point in making the thread because the thread is literally entirely based on this topic you're saying there's no point in talking about. You literally contradicted yourself in your post so which one is it.

noaani wrote: »

You should perhaps take back literally that entire post above this one. There is an edit button right there.

Right back at you, actually ridiculous.

Noaani

Namil wrote: »

I hope you're joking. This is you directly telling me there wasn't any point in making the thread because the thread is literally entirely based on this topic you're saying there's no point in talking about. You literally contradicted yourself in your post so which one is it.

It is me telling you there is no point directing this question at Intrepid, I didn't say there is no point talking about it.

More to the point, asking for quotes from Intrepid on this spoic is pointless right now.

Again, I specifically said there is a point in talking about it, between us posters. Intrepid have nothing to add to the discussion until they have tested corruption.

With the exception of one double-negative, this should all be quite obvious.

Covid19

Is anyone else worried about how much 'corrupted' players get cut off the game, I keep seeing that corrupted players shouldn't be able to do this or that. Like from what ive heard at a point it becomes close to impossible to win a fight due to some sort of de buffs or something that's applied when they're toxic enough, and every day I seem to come on its another thing they cant do, now ive got no actual proof of whats been put in place but ive heard at some point they cant put or take off armor, they cant trade, they cant damage thats all i can be assed to write but it seems like at a point they've just got to take an L and die a few times to actually have any sort of chance again at doing what I guess they like doing

Namil

noaani wrote: »

It is me telling you there is no point directing this question at Intrepid, I didn't say there is no point talking about it.

Can't remember when I actually ever directed this at Intrepid. Last time I checked the initial post is directed at the other people browsing and commenting to start an open discussion, yet you seem to have convinced yourself otherwise so I went with it for the sake of simplifying things.

I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you just misspoke but in this case, what is the point of your spiel because you're contradicting yourself once more.

This is me, talking about it. So I'll just leave this here for you to read again:

Namil wrote: »

If you're exhausted, that's fine. But that doesn't give you a special right to act like a warm glow shines out of your asses because you don't want to talk about a specific subject anymore, constructively build on the post, share your knowledge or don't post instead of telling people there's no point in trying to start a discussion.

Even better, if you have spoken about this in detail and have covered these exploits and thought of work-arounds then why don't you literally just share that information and your ideas instead of talking to someone who genuinely just wanted an active conversation about this system like they've done something wrong.

HazardNumberSeven

Covid19 wrote: »

Is anyone else worried about how much 'corrupted' players get cut off the game, I keep seeing that corrupted players shouldn't be able to do this or that. Like from what ive heard at a point it becomes close to impossible to win a fight due to some sort of de buffs or something that's applied when they're toxic enough, and every day I seem to come on its another thing they cant do, now ive got no actual proof of whats been put in place but ive heard at some point they cant put or take off armor, they cant trade, they cant damage thats all i can be assed to write but it seems like at a point they've just got to take an L and die a few times to actually have any sort of chance again at doing what I guess they like doing

Yes, I'm worried.
Waiting to learn more, and especially to see the system in action first though.

One thing that alleviates my concern is that I don't think corruption will be nearly as common as people think, because you only get it if they don't fight back, and if they don't fight back the victim stands to lose twice as much (harsher penalties) than if they did fight back. This gives a strong incentive for people to engage in the conflict rather than just ignore it.

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