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
Also helps with an edge case of a group isolating kills to a single throw-away toon, and benefitting as a group.
Agreed.
Agreeing on the principle, not sure how it can be implemented or if it's even worth it.
What if you have a roving band of X un-grouped players? Do you give a base % of the killer's corruption to everyone who's done 1 point of damage? A % of corruption base on the % of damage done? What's a buff to the killer worth in corruption? What is a heal? What about blocking an escape route?
Over-complicating the system will not solve everything. Many angles are impossible to cover and people wanting to avoid the corruption system at all cost will exploit the limitations.
I'm not really understanding the need for buffs and heals when killing non combatants - I mean... they're not fighting back after all.
Forcing corruption on all parties involved in the damage of a non-combatant is ridiculous, it's also exploitable based on any sort of duration applied to this. The point you raise above related to multiple individuals or groups attacking would open up exploitable situations where someone attacks a non-combatant and stops only to have a 3rd party decide for everyone that they're going to share in corruption. Which then opens up multiple people from different group(s) or individuals to higher death penalties and material loss when they did not decide to kill the non combatant.
There is no need for additional corruption penalties soon people are going to just suggest all pvp should be instanced to avoid unfair fights lol.
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
Sure, in principle, anyone taking part on a kill played a role, but trying to quantify how much corruption everyone should receive gets ridiculous pretty fast. No matter how you divide the blame it can't include every possible ways someone might have influence the "fight". I, clumsily, tried to illustrate how difficult it would be to even try to do so. And people would still find ways to play a role and still evade the punishment. We're saying the same thing but I made a mess at making my point
As for the non-combatants not fighting back... that's not guarantied. They could fight back and unless you are already corrupted they would become combatant and not give any corruption anyway. So buffs are still relevant but it would be silly to give corruption to someone who gave a buff to someone who passed by a few minutes before. There would be not limit.
Do I make more sense now ? hihi
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
"If you spread the penalty" Do you mean divide it equally, or each member is given the same penalty?
Dividing it equally diminishes the punishment, so that's not good for a deterrent.
Each attacking member being given the same penalty... well, that's culpability, isn't it?
Think of a felony murder murder charge in the US: if you are a party to a felony crime, and someone is killed or dies because of the actions of any member of your group, you can all be charged with that murder.
"All you really are doing by ganging up on them is increasing your chance of victory and possibly decreasing the likely hood of them fighting back."
Its not 'strategy' when you're attacking someone 10 levels under you, its griefing, and that's what corruption is meant to stop.
So you're saying that in the US it's still felony murder even if the victim fights back????
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
Judge: Guilty! You're sentenced to death.
Defendant: But my victim fought back!!
Judge: Oh! So the victim was flagged and is no longer a victim. Case dismissed! To the Tavern!
Jury: Yay!
I think corruption could be spread across a group, but you'd have to take proximity into account. If I'm halfway across the continent, I shouldn't get corruption for what my group is doing.
I don't think corruption should be spread for an ungrouped bunch of players.
If we are talking a time frame of 5 seconds or so (you gain an amount of corruption if someone dies within 5 seconds of you attacking them), then you would need to have almost killed them, or attacked them while they were already being attacked, in order to gain corruption - based on a 30 - 60 seconds TTK.
What this would prevent is players running around and almost killing others, but stopping just short (an action would should be discouraged anyway).
It won't stop anyone from attacking a player in order to attempt to have them flag to a combatant, as there is no risk of that player dying in that 5 second period (barring a conveniently positioned large group of stealth players). All it will mean is players would need to stop such attacks sooner if the player being attacked didn't flag up, and the attacker was not keen on corruption.
One other mechanic I'd like to see tested in beta is that if you have corruption, you can not be in a group. If you are in a group and gain corruption, you are no longer in said group.
I like this at first blush. It's a devastating hinderance, but it's worth thinking through.
To me, the main thing it would mean is that all group and raid content that is intended to be fought over would need to be in a battleground, so that corruption doesn't apply. This is something I kind of expect to happen anyway.
From there, it kind of reinforces the notion that any PvP that is over anything real (in game) is handled by a system other than the corruption system - there is very little worth fighting over as a solo player.
Like you, I'm not sure of it as an idea, but I do think it is an idea worth looking in to.
Ohh good we're getting there already same page...
LOL
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
I never said anything at all about instanced PvP. I personally think it is completely out of place in Ashes.
Personally I think the entire world should flag players as combatant once they walk out of a city, if this is essentially what you mean in "contested" areas then I'm on board with it.
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
Can't/won't happen.
This literally kills all the incentive to contest a farming spot from another group.
You can't pressure them out if they know, that you can't properly farm it themselves if they kill you.
In a game that is designed around scarce resources, the contest around these resources is integral to the gane's design. The contest is also something that Steven has talked about fondly on multiple occassions in the past and the inability to group up once you have pushed someone out is a literal death sentence to it.
Also, what's this "trying to bring RL logic into a video game discussion to discredit someone else's opinion" tactic supposed to be and why do people not realize how dumb it makes them look? Some people here really seem to enjoy going that route whenever they run out of valid points to make
Battlegrounds in Ashes are things like the area around a caravan. We know there are set to be other situations in which a similar mechanic exists, and my speculation is that this will be around encounters designed to be fought over (which ties in nicely to why I think there is also space for some of these encounter to be instanced). Corruption is turned off in these areas.
Assuming there is no corruption in these areas, and there is no corruption when attacking a caravan, or when attacking rival guild members or node citizens in a guild or node war, it is my assertion that there are no other times where group based open world PvP is needing to be encouraged. As such, I am working through the notion that it is perfectly reasonable for players with corruption to be blocked from being in groups.
This notion is assuming that groups will want to farm spots that don't contain boss encounters.
I personally doubt that will be the case. I can see solo players wanting to fight over farming spots, but groups are more likely to want to roam around an entire dungeon (or at least a large portion of one). This roaming will see them come across boss encounters, where the corruption system does not apply.
Personally, I can't think of anything more boring than farming a single spot in a group. If I have a group of friends with me, we absolutely will be looking for something more interesting to do than that.
I thought the same thing, but figured he meant this could be achieved in other ways (e.g. like a battleground radius that suppresses corruption.)
You already know we're lockstep on this. I've been sketching ideas around this for the past week or so, and I keep ending up at the same place: I really don't like the green flag at all. Ultimately, it's Steven's call and I'll adapt to whatever, but green flags over complicate the system. I think you could have purples and reds, and manage corruption slightly differently to mitigate repetitive griefing.
Like I said, worth thinking through and maybe testing.
Steven has literally talked about exactly that in the past and we have already seen (and (some of us) fought against) exactly these type of monsters within Ashes.
Just one non-NDA breaching example is the open world fire dungeon, that solely has group to raid-tuned monsters within them. Which has stated ti be intentional. Open World Dungeons are facilitated to support multiple groups. They are designed around group play
What I am saying is that areas such as this should be battlegrounds - as in, corruption isn't a thing here.
I'm not sure why you would think this.
However, lets go through that list of things you have there, and detail the situations that are most appropriate in Ashes.
Report to Intrepid. Don't take the rules in to your own hands.
Report to Intrepid. Don't take the rules in to your own hands.
Solo PvP. It won't take long for one player to get rid of one kills worth of corruption.
Raids will not be subject to corruption based on what I am talking about.
Learn how to not get trained on.
These players are flagged for combat, by necessity. You won't gain corruption for killing them.
Guild war. Guilds don't have the choice of opting out of these.
You don't claim areas.
Guild war.
Grow up.
These players are flagged for combat, by necessity. You won't gain corruption for killing them.
Guild war. Guilds don't have the choice of opting out of these.
So, it's safe to say, I'm not really seeing your point here.
That's an interesting thought. Open World Dungeons not having the limitation of corruption would certainly have some merits. It those bring certain consequences with it though. I'll have to think about that for a while. Free-PK Zones for certain content certainly could make sense (contested world bosses for example). I'm just not sure if they should be extended over the entirety of the OW-Dungeons or even other spaces and whether running with zones like that for these dungeons would just take away the consequences for behaviour that should be either a last resort or at least come with consequences/risk.
However, with well considered positioning of bosses, this would mean that entire areas of the dungeon are able to be fought over within the vicinity of those bosses.
Also, I don't think we will see players fighting over a portion of a dungeon that doesn't contain a boss.
Vid starts at 0:15
L2 pvp for a corridor inside catacombs. Contesting farming spot.
In many cases (not seen in this video) a person will not fight back, hoping to rez the fallen group members. That person will get PKed, instead of letting them rez their fallen group.
This suggestion, that corruption should be equally/partially spread is dump.
The player that lands the last hit will get the corruption. Anything else would dumpen down the game.
Many times, there are characters that dont belong in the guilds that may not attack, hoping that they wont get PKed by the winning group.
These characters will get PKed to eliminate the rival guilds presence in the area, instead of letting them rez their fallen friends.
Again, the suggestion that corruption should be spread is too punitive, just because somebody imagines that 20 people will attack 1 person to grief and shouldnt be implemented.
Additionally, non guild members tend to want to keep well away.
Intrepid are going well out of their way to keep situations where people have actual reason to fight each other from being subject to corruption. As such, corruption based PvP is essentially restricted to what can accurately be described as petty squabbles.
L2 does not provide players with other systems for PvP, and so comparisons to it can't really be made.
The fact that there are full combatant events means very little to those not participating at that moment, and it is totally irrelevant with the topic of "20 people grief 1 target, they should all gain corruption".
In addition... L2 PvP content:
Bloodsport arena (BR)
Grand Olympiad (nightly arena competition, rewards of the highest nature, no mmo comes close...)
Town arena squares (casual PvP, no flagging, no PK)
Colosseum (GM PvP events)
Siege every 2 weeks at 7 or so castles + some PvP gained guild halls outside of cities
Outpost siege many around the map (decleration every 4h, lasts 1h)
Guild wars (extremelly long duration way beyond the 24h wars you have experienced)
Still plenty of PK going around. Nobody felt grieved or bullied.