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
In terms of PvE, the point to better gear is that it enables you to take on harder content. The fact that it makes lower content easier is a byproduct (originally unintentional but unavoidable) of this design.
People that look at the gear as the reward for PvP are immature in regards to their view of how MMO's work. The gear is the key to the reward, the next piece of content is the actual reward.
They do, and those designated areas even move around the game world.
Even so, the system is fine, if you're corrupted and encounter a hostile green and you want to avoid more corruption your options are - run away or take the death. Eventually you will find the time/space to clear your corruption. I can't imagine it's that hard to clear your name of one "unintentional" or "forced" PK...as if those things exist...
From what I understand about the corruption system you won't be losing items on death unless you are heavily corrupted, which requires murdering many people consecutively...and if you are heavily corrupted then you deserve to be killed. and camped.
You know, you could remove that and balance it with more deathpenalty or statdampening or sth else.
But you argue that killing ppl is bad, and therefor it would make everything that happens to corrupted being ok. Its like saying if a corrupted dies he should go back to lvl one and your arguments are still solid...
And we try to find a way to allow killing a green for reason with negatives that are somewhat reasonable and not stupid. Btw, that is the idea behind the whole corruption system, while simultaneously disabling griefing-
I mean, if that is the system a game has, and a player plays that game and then kills someone gains corruption and is then killed, that is what should happen.
They knew that a risk of corruption in that game was the potential to delevel, and they still went out and gained some.
It's fair, because they knew.
It's fair because they knew right. But why not tweak a bit and ppl still know. Only what they knew is something else.
I dont get how you can agree with having world pvp at all while simultaneously saying that no matter how extreme the downsides of corruption are you dont care. Then I'd ask myself the question why you are here talking about something you literally dont care about.
I'm not saying I want a penalty like that - not at all. But if there is an option to do a thing, and the consequences of it (or potential consequences) are known, then a person that does that thing and faces those consequences has nothing to complain about.
you know that this whole thread is about changing the consequences right? In what way does adding if they know its okay no matter what it is add anything to discussion on the consequences and how you could change or improve them?
But, there is a difference between earning a little corruption here and there with strategic PKing, where it may matter, and corrupt players having killed often and indiscriminately. In no way is anyone saying a corrupt player should suffer so greatly as to be beggared forever. But there are mechanisms for corruption to be liquidated and a Red to revert to being Green.
But this is a real world analogy for how the system should work, because killing people is bad: a mugger assaults your spouse, steals their backpack and runs.
The mugger becomes a red player, the spouse is a green player, and the pack is the resource incentive.
Now, if the mugger decided to mug with few people around, they will probably escape. But your spouse will have a description, and in a sense the neighbourhood may be more aware of that person. (Now, because this is a hypothetical analogy we aren’t arguing about socio-political reasons for dangerous neighbourhoods or other political issues therein).
However, if the mugger chose a real bad place and time to assault a person, a few people might step in to inhibit the mugger’s escape or stop the mugger entirely, and maybe retrieve the backpack (at least cause it to become worth less than it was at first).
In this case, you argument that inhibiting the Red player is not valid is flawed because this analogy allows the mugger to continue to choose to use force (up-to deadly force) without recourse.
Which doesn’t make sense. If the mugger goes: goddamnit, I screwed up here’s the bag (and die to a Green), they accept the consequence of their choice (for whatever reason). But, if they fight back and harm others from stepping in they absolutely escalate and continue to deserve greater recrimination. And, this player has chosen intentionally not to leave and work off the corruption, ignoring a powerful mechanism that, essentially, protects the PK-er.
This is the idea. If that Red player chooses to continue to escalate at every situation, they deserve to continue to gather further inhibitive effects (statdamp, performance reduction, gear drops, etc...).
Within a game world, you don’t have the same consequences as a mugger may incur in the real world, so you can continue to gain corruption (and, for a while, those consequences are relatively mild). But the game world allows you to repay that corruption over time in ways that don’t inhibit freedom too much, because consequences in-game are mild. And this allows for wide-spread and healthy PKing for strategic reasons, but not for griefing often and regularly.
I 100% agree, but why does this reason that greens should be allowed to attack red without flagging?
And it's like that. Once you are Red, you can keep killing to defend yourself for more corruption, ergo, more "red". Unless who you are killing is a purple. In that scenario the purple doesn't add more corruption. characters not flagged get to kill you without penalties. They are the heroes of the situation. Becoming a PK carries big penalties, and there's no way around it. It's intended to be that way.
To continue with the analogy, in a healthy society it is expected that people would try and stop the mugger (and, additionally, that the mugger wouldn’t go all out when caught, but rather lean towards responsibility at the end and give up). This benefits everyone and society as a whole: people are safer, local businesses worry less, parents don’t need to carry weapons to get their children to school and back (because justifications via fear often far exceed the practical and the realistic). The real world has many reasons why people don’t try and help in modern society (wealth, fear of injury, callousness, cowardice, etc...)
In effect, the game world doesn’t have any of those consequences or justifications. Because everyone will simply respawn and everyone will, eventually, swap out gear for better stuff gained via adventuring or crafting, so the cost of repair is often negligible (at least until end-gameish).
However, the expectation that people step in to help is the justification for why a Green doesn’t need to flag to attack a Red. It is expected that they would help the society by self-policing against griefers, and thus don’t require the flag while the Red continues to choose to dig a deeper pit, rather than giving up when caught. You can PK for a while without becoming inhibited, unlike the mugger who succeeds either by choosing a better time/place or by the inactivity of other people, thus it enforces a stricter position on griefing, because the mugger (in the game) is monitored by the game itself.
An idea for game design might be that a Green still doesn’t require flagging to attack a Red, but if they kill a Red that/those Green(s) should gain corruption but at a slower rate.
This means that Bounty Hunters would become more important, in the sense of policing Reds, but also in the sense of in-game legitimacy to the fictional status quo. It also means that griefing the griefer (sic: trolls) would incur penalties for engaging in indiscriminate retribution, rather than occasional self-policing; and, it blurs the ethical position between Greens and Reds, while also complicating the choice to PK on both sides. Therefore facilitating an easement on open world PvP.
Saying that the red player "deserves it" is not always right either. There are many reasons that a decent player might have killed a green. Maybe they were a bot, or the green was stealing loot/resources. Or maybe they were just standing in a doorway blocking your way in/out, generally just being a green dick. So now you're red and you don't want the red death penalty but green players are chasing you down before you can lose your wanted level. It's a no win situation.
The red player is free to run away when they’re attacked and pressured off an area.
They’re free to not PK a green in the first place. Your hypothetical scenario has no valid reason for doing so.
A group of greens probably isn’t going to run at you like red players, not to mention the red player gets more from green kills than purple kills so they can weigh in if they want to fight and take the corruption.
Ashes is a game of choices and consequences. Everything that comes from being corrupted is a direct consequence of PKing a green. There’s no good reason to lessen those consequences. So far it’s all boiled down to “I don’t like big penalties for being a murderhobo”
Simple.
There are two factors that determine if the consequences are appropriate.
The first is the effect it has on how often people in game attack and kill each other and gain corruption. As we've established, Intrepid have all sorts of parameters they can alter with the current system to affect that, and only they know how much they want it to happen - as such, there is nothing to discuss here.
The second factor that determines if the consequences are appropriate, is how fair they are. My argument here is that as long as players know these consequences beforehand, they can't claim them to be unfair.
U.S. East
I think this would end up taking an order of magnitude longer to get those materials. By the time you factor in how long it will take to work off that experience debt, which based on new information from Steven in this thread, is something you would want to do before taking on any real PvE content.
I don't think players going after the hardest content in the game should be rewarded in any way for griefing newer players.
U.S. East
I think your argument here is flawed. Just because you know what the consequence is ahead of time does not mean the repercussion is fair. I think, there’s something between being informed (as @King Fool is) and the mechanism being a little chunky (at the moment, still largely in a conceptual format).
If you know what the repercussion is and you feel it is unfair, I don’t think you can complain effectively about the outcome should you chose to act therein. But that still means there’s a valid question about game balance. I think the idea is amazing, and I applaud the creators for implementing stringent controls to PKers who camp and mess up a person’s day for no better reason than to be an ass.
I feel like seeing how unbalanced (or balanced) the practical outcome of the corruption system is will happen soon through Alpha-2 and Beta. But, it does seem a little frustrating to PK (once or twice, rather than habitually) and severely stun your progress on all fronts. Getting PKed should totally be part of the risk of going into the world, PvE only blows hard. But maybe there’s space to fine-tune the implementation in this regard, and preserve the consequences.
I see people are still misrepresenting the severity of Corrupted kills. One or two kills will have very minor debuffs, and the biggest consequence is the big red label you have to work off.
The issue here is PKers don’t understand that they don’t ever HAVE to kill a green, and they especially don’t have to kill anyone that they KNOW will increase their corruption.
It’s fully possible to clear out corruption from a kill or two in a reasonable amount of time.
If you run up on a group of greens gathering and you PK their healer, why in the world should the game reduce the penalties you take for PKing all of them when they retaliate from you essentially murdering someone.
When you start habitually killing green is when the actual penalties start coming in. Significantly dampened stats, increasing risks of losing gear on death, high corruption scores that will take multiple deaths or religious atonement quests to work off the big red label.
Yes, killing people in this game is deemed unethical. I am saying that Steven Sharif has said by his actions and implementation of game systems that such actions are frowned upon, to be discouraged, will be punished. That's the message. And a PK-er going back to level 1, by the way, would be acceptable to many. You don't like that? That's ok.
At its core, what you are doing is asking for a way to do what is forbidden (in the currently proposed system), and have it actually be acceptable. But, as you have seen, the majority of players do not want this. That's why your efforts are frustrated. Produce sound reasoning and logical argumentation. Intrepid will make a final decision and every one of us will have to accept it, like it or not.
@noaani I'm sure you don't need me to explain you. I hope I did not put words in your mouth. Apologies if I did so.
Here is an example of when the corruption system is good.
Level 10 dude running around collecting things and generally having a good time.
Level 50 dude one shots the poor bastard.
Level 50 dude will have incurred a huge amount of corruption for this act.
What did he gain besides the LOLS? Probably not much. So if he then looses gear or whatever no one should cry about it. He knew what he was doing was not going to be worth it.
However on the flip side. Two level 45 happen upon each other. One is a gatherer collecting ore to sell. The other is a player out looking to kill gatherers who are collecting ore. Bandit dude kills loot bag dude.
Loot bag dude didnt fight back. His penalty is a loss of more resources than he would have if he fought back and greater death penalty than if he had fought back. His reward is some (currently uknown) amount of corruption that could in theory stack up and be a real issue to the bandit dude.
The bandit dude got more resources because his target dropped more of what they were carrying. He gained some corruption but we can assume since he was out to be a bandit he already considered the penalty to be acceptable compared to the reward.
Neither player should cry about what happened. Both made their choices. Green dude lost more because he was green. He could have fought back but he did not. Bandit dude could have stopped before loot dude died but he did not. This is a fair PK. This scenario is fine. Chances are bandit dude will do exactly this to other players at least a few more times before having to burn off any penalty.
The greens take a risk when they dont fight back. They take a penalty just like anyone else. Being pacifist has its own penalty. When discussing the corruption system you need to be thinking about the penalty of not becoming purple. You lose more than if you did fight back and are rewarded with some corruption on that player that does not really benefit you directly.
If greens rush down a red player keep in mind that they as it is understood now cant become purple. So the red would take more corruption to kill them but the green still stands to loose more resources on death and a greater death penalty. Both sides are risking something in this scenario.
There is no reason however to think that the devs wont implement any changes as is. greens attacking random reds forcing purple status does not fundamentally change much at all. But as I understand it pking people of your level who stay green isnt going to force you to go red with a single kill. Likely as long as the level difference isnt dramatic you dont have much to worry about unless you take it really far.
@Lazyactor One kill on a green does make you Corrupted.
@Lazyactor One kill on a green does make you Corrupted.[/quote]
Right sure but it is a stacking penalty. One death from one kill on a green likely returns you back to green. The penalty becomes greater the more you go down the rabit hole. Likely it wouldnt take long at all to return back to normal after a single green kill.
edit: which is what you were also saying above now that I think about it.
I can't speak for everyone , naturally, but no, I don't think we did.
As for being an anti-griefing mechanic. Yes, we agree, but any system designed to punish a player for killing another player is by definition an anti-PK, and by necessary extension an anti-PvP system. So, yes, it is worth discussing and debating.
So by extension the extra penalty for dying green is considered what? An anti carebear mechanic?