Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Id probably be all right with having to just run away if there was a time limit on the corruption. But the way it is set up, you either have to die or kill mobs to grind off the corruption. This leaves a hell of alot of room for griefing. The big ones are, like I said earlier, when competing over mobs spawns or rare materials. The way the system is set up, if I am competing with another group over a mob spawn location and try to pvp them for it, they can just refuse to attack back and then just keep re spawning and attack my group repeatedly while we gain more and more corruption or we just have to run away from the spawn location and loose to the other group anyways. The discourages consensual pvp entirely.
Personally this sort of resource based soft friction pvp is actually really fun and I feel like it would be a shame to loose it from the corruption system.
The problem with abusive behaviour is that it exists in black-and-white.
You have no idea if any other greens “will” do anything. They “may” attack, they “may” not. They may be really into going to this node over there to do this quest that sounds fun, or to meet a friend, or because there’s a cool waterfall. They may not want to mess with a red player at all. And there will be more than enough virtual distance that they may not want to run down this valley, cross a river, just to pk a pk-er out of spite when they’re busy doing the fun thing.
For instance, if you bait a dog into biting you than isn’t receiving the bite enough punishment? Most dogs are euthanized for someone else’s poor behaviour. All it balances is that the person being an ass gains penalties for doing so. But it means the dog is represented, in this instance, and the ass has plenty of options and time to revert to work off their choices.
Maybe it’s funny (within the fantasy world) to do it for a lark, sometimes, but to do it constantly and without retribution is reprehensible and it negatively effects everyone’s gaming experience.
By providing wide-spread open world content that includes PvP, you balance out the people that just want to run around the world and kill people for no better reason than amusement at the expense of the other player.
Again totally depends on the design. How long does it take to get back to the spot? If it takes 10minutes to run back you would have cleared the corruption by then and when they die the 2nd or 3rd time they ain't coming back. Or they might bring more people and they you bring more people and suddenly you have massive PvP.
Also there's a way to initiate a clan war right? that way you can fight against another clan ignoring the corruption system.
You can also harass them to a point they either leave or fight back without actually going corrupt or they won't be able to farm efficiently. This is same as in the other thread. People arguing about system they have never experienced. Just ludicrous when there's persons that have used system like this for years. Sure it ain't perfect and that's why this is a good idea to maybe alter it but god damn "kills PvP" give me a break.
In UO, when they opened a 'Mirror World' without World PvP everyone left the old servers and all moved to the 'Mirror World'. I stated earlier that it causes burn out, the corruption system can be used to grief in both directions in its current state, and, if you refuse to fight at all then prepare for better geared groups to steal all the loot thanks to the tag system.
Though, UO was a PvP Game and Ashes is a PvX Game. It can open a whole can of worms and burnout especially with the mish-mash of other systems Ashes has implemented.
Though IS have stated they won't open PvE Servers or PvP servers, so perhaps Ashes players will simply leave the game...
Yes of course there are ways to design around this. But why design around it when you can just fix the corruption system and let corrupted people defend themselves? I just don't see the downside to letting corrupted players fight back and I see a lot more upside in allowing it.
Also yes I was probably over exaggerating a bit
They won't allow the fix because those same people who will turn you corrupted to begin with want lopsided combat as much as possible and will only not fight if the odds are against them. They would prefer a situation where they win even if they die because you have been corrupted further and forced into further frustrations. In fact, some of them would even goad a corrupted player, then allow the corrupted player to kill them again just for shits and giggles.
There is downsides to it. Go to a leveling spot and PK their healer. if they attack your party back just kill rest of them. They had no chance as you took their main support away before they had chance and if you as tank did the killing then you ain't dieing that fast or at all since you still have your healer alive. This would mean the one who initiates more than likely wins the battle. At the moment healers can wait to flag till the latest moment in order to avoid situation like this.
Or you want to PK 3 guys that are lower level than you.
current system:
You kill 1 because they are unaware. The other 2 turn to you and you fight them so turns in to PvP. Or they just try to run away. If you weren't going to kill all 3 of them to begin with you should not have attacked so you are not running away.
Flagging when killing PK:
You kill 1 because they are unaware and the other 2 just stand still because they are not sure about their chances. They just let you kill them or run away so that they don't accidentally flag.
Flagging when PK killing and they fight back:
You kill 1 and they fight back and still die. creating PvP but PK gets just 1 PK and 2 "PvPs". The guys come back and see you cleared corruption cause you got way too lenient punishment for killing 3 lower level persons that didn't realize that fighting you back would give you less of a punishment for PK so next time they simply wont fight back.
How on earth do you get forced to corruption?
Let’s break this down. A PK-er is killed for Pk-ing, and therefore continues to gain corruption. What we’re saying is that this player has chosen to be a toxic player, engaging in multiple instances of non-ethical PvP rather than ethical instances of PvP.
In return, multiple individual green characters open communication, make a decision to communicate with others, and by organization and communication organize into a group. They then have multiple groups of organized greens (essentially multiple groups of 3-8: party size being a max of 8 and a “wave” requiring more than a pair), engage in baiting, hounding, and killing a corrupt PK-er (as opposed to a PK-er with a minor % of corruption and not having gone into the red).
In this case, the corrupt player has chosen constantly and consistently to engage in non-ethical behaviour to the point that many players have been negatively impacted and have organized to protect themselves within the game. Essentially, they have created a policing guild to protect themselves and others. That is a powerful and ethical use of the social structures of an mmo; and, in no way, does it grief a griefer.
But, in this case, you’ve simply described what I expect will be a rather rare hypothetical in the case of Bounty Hunter guilds going after griefers. It also assumes that any red player doesn’t deserve consequences for red behaviour: which are self-policed by other players, rather than by rules.
This.
if green was attacked by corrupted first, then fighting back should not flag him.
Maybe it should depend also on corruption level. If someone just killed one person who didn't fight back shouldn't get corruption yet? Only on next kill? Where one kill would reset in a week
But we probably have to test it first, to see if corruption will be mostly accidental or on the contrary.
If I want to scare someone off from resource veins or hunting spots how easily will i kill him by accident (since we cannot see current value of someone's HP)
I imaging there will be tons of green trolls annoying ppl. So corruption will be flowing xD
My thought is what if corruption were a %-based scale? My thought is 100 corruption points, and a scale between minor and major corruption based on PKing.
Consent-based PvP
Green: Non-Combatant (NCB)
Purple: Active Combatant (ACB)
Unethical PvP
Yellow: Minor Corruption (1-20)
Orange: Corrupt (21-69)
Red: Major Corruption/Criminal (70-100)
This would apply a base “value” to a PK and ascend the PKer along the scale, say 5 per kill. So, this means that a player must strategically choose up to four PKs before entering the Yellow, on the fifth they become an Orange.
This would allow a greater breadth for those players who want to PK occasionally, for whatever reason they consider valid. Without entering a hypothetical space in which they are not granted time to reduce their corruption back to “acceptable” levels.
This would also allow counter-play against Bounty Hunters. Maybe there will be no bonus or benefit to hunting a Yellow but the level of corruption from Orange and up can also scale the reward for hunting those players. A Bounty Hunter wouldn’t be able to track a Yellow on their map, but as soon as that player changes to Orange off they go.
It also means that a player who is PKed can pursue VENGEANCE but also incur minor penalties. It also means that, in the case of many Greens organizing into a policing guild, there is a fairly large amount of criminality to make that level of organization required.
1. I actually kind of like when there is certain level of tension between groups when leveling in the same area where each group has to be a bit wary of the group getting the jump on them so your first example I dont really care about. I guess that might be personal preference though.
2. I personally think corruption should increase exponentially the greater the level difference between the players. If a player wants to pk lowbies then they can go **** themselves.
3. im not sure what you are trying to get at with this example. As i stated, if you attack a corrupted player you should only be flagged for the corrupted player. no one else
4. I dont get why this is an issue. If they think they can fight back and win then that should be considered consensual pvp at that point. If they don't think they can win then just let the guy kill you and make him suffer the consequences. If the corruption is bad enough then that should be enough of deterrant.
and imaging group of 8 ppl which can get away with 4 kills each
PS. Don't take away jobs for bounty hunters ;(
Fair, the idea could use a little shifting but allows for both things without being a black or white space. Maybe do 1-15 for a Yellow, and increase the cost per kill to 10. That gives you one go.
I don’t want Bounty Hunters to lose playability either, but it allows a little grey zone where a person can operate without fear of reprisal from anyone and everyone, and it means that there’s a value to hunting players with greater corruption rather than a player with one kill. Which enforces player policing further while keeping the penalties consistent for a Red.
I also assume that, in the case of a group running around in this way, they would be organized for griefing rather than for the occasional PvP skirmish. More than likely, the average group would rather flag into PvP rather than earn corruption.
I like the idea of different colors base on corruption level to distinct really bad PKrs from, lets call them lazy PKrs. Bigger bounty for red one than for yellow one. But you still can lower your corruption level, so it is not permanent. Is someone who kill 1 person and farm mobs for 30min in order to kill another one without consequences still a lazy PK or cold blooded, sophisticated serial killer?
They've already said that you will maintain a record in game that gives you a higher corruption level depending on how many time you have previously pked. I don't think they have mentioned if your record eventually goes away after a certain amount of time. Id assume that it would clean your record after a week or two.
So does the record equate to current corruption or merely to your overall record? I mean, I guess it means you could go on a killing spree and then log off for a week or two and come back in just to piss some people off for a while. And, eventually, incur some big penalties. I mean, it means that there isn’t a handle on griefing, just a time sink.
You cant log off to remove corruption. The only way to remove it is to grind enough mobs to gain xp out of it or dieing over and over until your corruption is expunged. The more you pk, the more pks on your record and the greater the lvl discrepancy between you and the player you killled, the worse it will be for you. The xp penalty on death also increases dramatically per pk so you could end up with weeks of xp penalties if you are enough of an ***hole.
Also when i said a week i meant a week of ingame playtime. The record reset is just a guess though since they didn't specify how the pk record worked.
This isn't about killing the corrupted if he is corrupted but making him more corrupt because he cant fight back when green attacks him (making this a system you can use to grief rather than a meaningful pvp system). I dont understand why green wouldnt just become purple when he attacks red. I think this is the case because apparently you cant attack players unless you toggle pvp but from what it looks like on the first graph is that green can attack red and stay green which is what confuses me.
Is is why I have been saying, just make it so if a greenie attacks a red, he flags specifically for that red so the red doesn't get further corrupted for just defending himself. Its pretty simple solution to prevent this type of griefing while still being harsh on PK griefers.
So what you're actually asking for is a way to deal with trolls, aka a completely different matter.
Not totally unrelated, the best way to deal with a troll should be to smash him back to the respawn point.
So you just want the whole flagging system to be removed so that no one can actually attack each other in open world. Did I get this right?
Basically, we first have to wait and see HOW people can troll. Is tagging mobs annoying? Puling dangerous stuff to you? We can't say yet. Changing the system that has its legitimate use-cases without seeing it in action first is super premature. Maybe there's any number of tools to disparage trolls that don't involve straight up homicide.
But in this same situation if I get jumped by a red guy, I stay green and suffer a full penalty after death whether I fight back or not. If I attack him I stay green whether I want to or not.
So what I’m wondering is... If I’m already in a fight with another player can I click a button and turn myself purple? (I assume the opposite isn’t true, turning green mid-fight, because that will be abused all over). But can I choose to become purple as a red guy is killing me so I don’t suffer as much? I sure hope so, because otherwise this makes it so much easier for griefers to prey on green players.
Also, if greens can turn purple when fighting a red to mitigate their death penalty, maybe that also lowers the potential for a red person to gain more corruption. Let’s say a green person sees a red and thinks, “I am going to kill that punk FOR JUSTICE!” They then attack him and oops, they bit off more than they can chew and they’re going to die, so they flag purple before it’s too late to halve the penalty and the red ends up with no more corruption in the end.
I think there's two things to consider. If the person is strong enough to overpower you will corrupted, there's a big original power gap, meaning they gain a lot of corruption from killing you.
Secondly, resources from a low level player are worth less than resources from someone who collects from higher level areas. There's less monetary gain.
So, I think this would fall under griefing again, if some corrupted guy runs around killing greens for fun.
The most important part would be though that these things can be tweaked, with how many resources you actually lose, how much corruption is gained from killing you, until a balance can be struck.
@Kubthebeast You go purple when you attack a green or a purple. You go red the first time you kill a green.
If you continue killing greens you gain more corruption. If you only kill purples you do not gain any more corruption, but that corruption only goes away via religious quests or PvP deaths.
The penalties for one PK on a green is minimal, and grows the more corruption you acquire, but one kill absolutely does make you Corrupted.