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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
With the currently envisioned corruption system, how hard would it be for a Non-PvPer to avoid PvP?
daxiongmao87
Member
Is the corruption system designed to allow for more peaceful players to thrive? Or just to temper the more extreme / unfair acts of PvP like griefing and low level ganking?
I have a friend who's interest in a lot of the RP and artisan (potat -game) aspects of the game, but does not like PvP at all. I assume everyone will experience some PvP, but to what extent do you think this system will assist players to avoid PvP, if at all?
I have a friend who's interest in a lot of the RP and artisan (potat -game) aspects of the game, but does not like PvP at all. I assume everyone will experience some PvP, but to what extent do you think this system will assist players to avoid PvP, if at all?
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A lot of the pvp will probably happen around the higher value areas of the map, places with juicy mob spawns. If you avoid those or are smart about when you go there, you should be able to avoid a lot of pvp. With the size of the map, it might be possible for people to find quiet areas of the map to play in that don't have as many players running about.
The Corruption mechanic is hoped to relieve most people from the worst griefers. You will probably encounter some idiots different thinking players here and there, but that happens in every game.
However (the light in the room turns darker suddenly), at some point your no-PvP friend will need to use a caravan to sell or buy materials. And the moment that juicy loot filled caravan hits the dirt road, you may be attacked. But at least that PvP (which the system fully allows as non-corruption style of pvp) is expected and planned for PvP. And a good RPer who excels in a trade or service I have no doubt will make a great many friends. Some of the strongest PvPers in the land may come to them for their armor and a simple request to these legends of PvP to do you a favor this coming Saturday and help you get a caravan to town will no doubt be accepted with a smile.
I wonder if I could do the pvp-risky things on behalf of my friend. Like getting the resources they need via caravan.
Woo!
You can engage in behaviors that are lower-risk and so it will rarely happen. But you won’t be able to avoid it forever. Just as you will someday stub your toe or slip on a slick floor in real life, someday in the game you will run across someone who will want to attack you for some reason despite the consequences. It will be uncommon though, you aren’t forced into PvP as a constant playstyle as you might in a game like Eve Online.
Depending on market conditions you may be able to make profit on processing crafting or other things such as taverns. Where you can contract the gathering and transporting aspect out. The profit might not be high but hopefully it is there.
This hits the nail on the head. Years upon years of Lineage 2, that employs the exact same system have proven this. Lack of fast travel as well as bounty hunters make the risk even higher for Corrupted players.
Meeting players that go corrupt is nothing you will encounter on a daily basis.
Corruption has no real consequences, however. Oh, sure, while you have it there is an impact (although not in PvE), and if you're corrupted and a player kills you there are those penalties, but the trick there is to ensure that the player who kills you while you are corrupted is a friend. You go slaughter people, then let your buddy kill you. Don't forget to strip naked to minimize the durability loss. Too much corruption? Repeat. Now you ganked a bunch of people, got loot from them, which has now been handed off to your buddy, and all you're left with is some XP debt to repay. You're max level; what did you need XP for anyway? You'll get it back doing whatever you were going to do.
But that even assumes you end up corrupted. If the person you attack fights back while you are a combatant (and not yet corrupted) then they become a combatant too. When you win the fight (and you picked a fight you would win), you won't be corrupted. And fight back they will, because it will reduce the penalties they suffer by half. So players are incentivized to deprive their attackers of the harsher penalty of corruption by fighting back to minimize their own losses.
And remember: the incentive for the griefer to attack in the first place is not to get at some of your resources, it is to make you upset. That is a playstyle that wins not by amassing wealth but by generating human misery. The XP debt they inflict on their victims is likely more valuable than the resources they steal, and the debt of their own they have to repay is just the grinding they have to do to access the content they want.
It will most likely take a little while before this becomes an issue, but it will, eventually. The corruption system might discourage the most extreme cases, but having played a healer on PvP servers in other games, I have my doubts that I would be able to walk anywhere without being griefed.
If there was mandatory corruption for attacking a non-combatant, or non-combatants lost less than combatants on death, then corruption would be a factor. As it stands, victims are encouraged to minimize the corruption of their attacker. That is where the corruption system ultimately breaks down as a deterrence. It doesn't matter how effective it is numerically if nobody wants their attacker to gain corruption in the first place.
I don't know that the random respawn is a particularly big deal either. It is only a concern if you have corruption (and since other people don't want you to get corruption that seems like the less common situation) at the point where you determine you are ready to die. If the random is random-anywhere-in-the-world, I expect this will become a fast travel exploit. If it is random-in-the-general-area, then it just slows down organized corruption cleansing, but what is to stop you from stripping naked and letting anyone kill you? Since you're ready for it you'll have nothing to take damage or lose, so it just comes back to this being part of the grinding for people that want to grief. It actually seems to me that the best thing you can do to someone who is corrupted is to let them kill you without fighting back. Eventually they will have so much corruption they won't be able to PvP meaningfully at all--but this requires everybody to get on board and not kill them ever; it really isn't a viable plan as it requires 100% community support.
The only place where I can even conceive of corruption discouraging a PKer is in the case of very large level disparities, and that's fine , we do need deterrents there, but what it doesn't discourage is anything else. A max level healer can still get ganked. Given how much they stand to lose on death, of course they will fight back, not because they have a chance to survive, but because that cuts their penalty in half. But fighting back also prevents their attacker from gaining corruption, so corruption doesn't factor into the deterrence here at all.
So the people who want to do this don't have to hunt down purples; anyone they decide to fight will be purple, out of self-interest.
1. Avoid nodes owned by hardcore pvp guilds. Should be pretty obvious but nodes owned by a pvp guild will have many players who like to pvp and they'll have plenty of backup should they go corrupted.
2. Look to join a large pve guild that owns a node or try to join a allied guild. A node owned by a large pve guild will have mostly friendly players.
3. Be conscious of where your grinding. If you start grinding mobs in a area that's a popular grind spot or where another group is already grinding your more likely to find yourself in a pvp situation. I dont know exactly how Ashes open world dungeons will work exactly but based on previous games I've played there's going to be 1 room that will be the best rotation and 3-4 other rooms that while still good are are slightly less xp and items then the top room, pick one of those other rooms and you'll be less likely to have someone kill you for your spot.
4. Don't be a troll in chat. I'm not much of a pvper myself but if I come across someone I know I can take who's constantly posting garbage in chat I'll probably kill them just because
Oh there will be cases of people who don't flag, even though there is a harsher penalty. I will happily take a higher penalty myself if it causes a griefer to get corruption, especially if I am out minding my own business.
Lyriss L'Enescor - Empyrean Cleric of Gray Sentinels
The dungeons and raids are 80% open world which means there's a good chance you'll be PK'd there regardless of if you're a non-combatant.
The Node system is massively PvP based with Node Sieges.
Guilds will be largely PvP centred with Guild Wars being a thing as well as Castle Sieges (although you can just join a guild that doesn't want to do this).
If you want to help transport materials and gatherables to another Node via Caravans, you have to fight or attempt to avoid PvPers.
If you're a gatherer and go around gathering, expect people to try and PK you in order to reach the gathering point first and get it before you, even if they do earn corruption, or for them to kill you when you do gather so they can get a portion of the loot.
I know people love to tout Ashes as a "PvX" game (Steven included) and while this is true, the entire game is based and built around PvP, you cannot avoid it.
In response to the OP's original question, I think Atama sums it up.
To add to it a bit.......you can probably avoid PvP altogether but in doing so you will be cutting yourself off from the vast majority of AoC's content. That means no venturing out to gather, explore, experience a siege, traveling with a caravan, and much much more! Similar to being a shut-in who avoids the outside world but also never gets to experience sunshine, driving, eating at a restaurant, walking in the woods, etc. Yes, it's MUCH safer but very limited and boring.
PvP will be a very natural part of the game, but at the same time there will be plenty of people or guilds that go after corrupted players specifically. I wouldn't doubt that a person could just ask for help in chat and people would help out. A lot of the systems are great for community building, and for as many griefers there are, you'll likely have more people on the other side of the coin, taking them on.
It directly contradicts your assertion that all you need to do is get a friend to repeatedly kill you to remove corruption. That’s not going to work if they need to ride halfway across the map to find you after killing you the first time. Did you forget the post I quoted from you?
Your arguments have been made hundreds of times over the years I’ve been on the board. You’re not saying anything new. None of your concerns mean much until we see the system in play.
I am absorbing as much AoC info as I can get my greedy little hands on. That being said, I am pretty new around here so please forgive my ignorance if I ask something that is well known.
Does the Corruption penalty only happen on killing a player or is it based off of attacks against a player?
If it only results from death, I can envision some rascals sneaking up on people fighting some tough mobs and doing some well timed hits or CCs that result in the players getting killed by the mobs.
Simply for the lulz.
I mean that will probably happen anyway, but certainly more often if there is no penalty.
I am fine with this scenario, I love that stuff. I just don't want to lie to my friends about the possibility.
Thanks for any help on clarification!
Edit: The Wiki makes it sound like it only cares about death. So you can hit and CC anyone as much as you want. Hilarious. Makes me wonder about if you're in a group and someone in your group kills a non-combatant. Do you also get Corruption? Interesting stuff!
The world around players is driven and influenced by PvErs. In order for the pvpers to do more than small petty battles they essentially require the pvers to drive the engine that is the node system to open up the more interesting features in AoC
Its part of what drew me to AoC since I am BIG on story line and quests and lore. Its almost as important to me as the combat honestly. But I also enjoy pvp, so seeing a unique design like AoC is trying to have the two compliment and drive one another along with player driven politics and other things just is a extremely appealing thing.
Corruption absolutely has real consequences. While you are corrupted, you receive 4x the death penalties, which includes experience debt and durability loss. Per the wiki, the experience debt includes skill/stat dampening (different than the PvP-only dampening corruption itself has), lower health/mana, lower gear proficiency, and less loot drops from monsters.
Even if you have your friend be the one the kill you, so you don't really lose your equipment, each death is essentially 4x what you'd have to make up for with a non-corrupted death. That means lots of XP debt, lots of durability loss, and way higher repair costs.
Corruption also has a historical component. While you can reduce your PK counter through a quest, the more you PK without doing so means the faster you get corrupted, which means the more your friend needs to kill you, which means the more XP debt you have to work off.
That's also assuming you don't accrue more corruption than can be cleared in a single death. Friend kills you once > you spawn randomly > someone else kills you because why not try it? > possible gear loss.
I'm not personally huge on PvP. I'll do it on occasion, but I would totally not flag myself if I didn't have much that would drop, and I didn't think I could win. Based on my experience playing BDO, people not flagging for PvP happens more than one might think.
The random respawn is "in the vicinity of their death" according to the wiki, so it probably won't be a fast travel exploit.
As far as stripping naked, unless you store that gear in a warehouse so that you aren't carrying it, it won't matter. Gear has a chance to drop whether it is equipped or not. And if you run into a city when you're corrupted to use the bank, I would be willing to bet quite a number of people would attempt to kill you before you could store all your stuff. You could, I suppose strip and give everything to your friend before they kill you.
As for the last part, because of the way the game is designed, your character will likely have a reputation. If you get known as a ganker, I find it quite possible that a significant number of people wouldn't bother trying to fight back and actively kill you. Particularly if you're running around naked, since you probably wouldn't be able to do much to hurt them, and they know they wouldn't get anything to drop if they killed you.
Corruption might not be a massive deterrent, and it may not be super common, but I don't think it's going to be as risk-less as you think.
@ZoddTheImmortal the corruption only occurs if you deal the killing blow, so you can try to only half kill someone and then walk away and see if a mob kills them, but since AoC does not let us see other people's exact health bars, you are risking it if you think your hit will only mostly kill them but not fully kill them. And nothing I have seen said by the devs has pointed towards the whole group sharing the corruption, it seems only you the killer gets the corruption.
The only people who probably won't fight back are the ones who have no recources to loose, but even then they'll get a higher exp penalty than someone who fights back.
It's just hard to make the game enjoyable for pvp and pve players alike because one side will always be on the short end. Mainly because there are too many trolls out there who actually have nothing better to do than to annoy the hell out of you. It's almost always the community itself that ruins everything
The way I understood it, the game isn't being designed with PvE or PvP players in mind, it's being designed for people who fall into both boats. When you try to appease everyone, you appease no one, so this game will hopefully stick to it's niche and be great for it's target audience instead of being mediocre for everyone.
You will have some servers that are hardcore, with KoS occurring continuously. Corruption will mean nothing here. It will be impossible for a any pve oriented player to exist or even function on this flavor of server. My guess this will about 20% of servers. The players here will be the hardcore canker who care nothing about other players feelings or play style they just want to kill people.
Then you will have the pvx servers which will probably be around 70% of servers. This is where most of the people excited about the game will be drawn to. These servers will have open world/non-consensual pvp most of it will be for a reason and fit into the IS vision of what they want the game to be. A 100% pve play will find it difficult to function here. But, a pve player who is willing to take on the risk v reward and participate in meaningful pvp will find a home and thrive on these servers.
And last you will have a few server that end up being more pve centered. Open world/non-consensual pvp will be rare here. Meaningful pvp will happen but it will be on a much smaller scale and for a specific reason. The problem will occur on these servers when the people from the first group get bored of killing people that don't care and shed no tears. This is not why they play, they survive on those precious tears and will show up on these types of servers either individually to raise havoc for a few hours gathering their supply of tears then head back home. Or they will show up in force and attempt to destroy those nasty carebears and suck all life out of the server before they go back home. They will play the long game initially showing up to create a character, level it, gear it and keep it in their pocket until they drop the hammer.
There will be a handful of other servers that are a mix of the above types