Karma Bombing in Ashes of Creation

Jahlon

A lot of people were concerned about potential Karma Bombing in Ashes of Creation. While a number of the current rulesets prevent it, there may still be some situations where Karma Bombing can happen.

https://youtu.be/QuYsx8OqGIs

What do you think? Do you still have a concern about Karma Bombing?

Lore Dynamic

Another great & informative video Jahlon. The animations were a nice touch as well, to paint a clear picture of the interactions between the Corrupted, Combatant & Non-Combatant player scenarios.

Ever since I first heard of the Corruption system (and how decisions have consequences), I liked the idea very much. But I too was a bit puzzled by the Offensive Actions that "NON"-Combatants can take against Corrupted.

I get that Corrupted are considered 'Badguys' (or 'Monsters') to the system/players, and I don't feel sorry for them. But it still feels odd, that a Green player (Non-Combatant) could then now attack a Red player (Corrupted) with impunity. ZERO consequence.

And I think that's where the idea has me confused. In a game where decisions have consequences and decisions matter: Green players no longer have any consequences for attacking another real person. This feels like it flies in the face of what the Corruption system was trying to accomplish: Consequences for players attacking other players.

Again, while I don't feel sorry for a Corrupted player; but what choice do they have now that they are corrupted?

A.) Kill the Green players attacking them (becoming MORE corrupted)
B.) Run Away (and keep running and running, because ALL the Green players are chasing them)
C.) Stand there and die.

Yes. That's consequence for killing a Non-Combatant.

But, what if not all PK's are made by some bored guy that likes ganking noobs? What if, for some reason, the kill was justified in some way. I think many people assume that all Corrupted players will be hardcore PvP noob-killers. But maybe some average run-of-the-mill player had to lay some smack-down, because another player was being a dick? Harassing's other players. Being rude, obnoxious. Trolling or deliberately following a friend around, killing all the mobs they are trying to gather resources from.

Should that person who laid down the righteous fury of judgement on the troll; then be chased from town and county by every Green player on the horizon? Especially if they don't even WANT to fight those people. They just wanted to get rid of this one annoying little prick...

I dunno. Just a thought.

Liniker

My only problem with this mechanic is that it goes against the game design. A green can kill a red with no risk vs reward

E.g: Guild A and B are competing for a boss, guild B has more mages and will do more damage on the boss, so even if guild A flags, guild B ignores guild A so now guild A has to kill guild B, or they will lose hours of work of getting to that boss; you end up on a scenario where there's a chance someone on guild A will become red, and now the reds have only one option: go away, or die to the greens. They can't defend themselves. (plus: bounty hunters)

If there's a system that gives you no option other than letting someone kill you, with no risks for them, there's a problem there, and if we can think of 1 scenario that this will be a problem, people will find out hundreds of other ways to exploit this ingame.

Solution: Add a "yellow" state where whenever someone attacks a red, they can fight back without getting more corruption! They do this with bounty hunters, why not with greens... makes no sense, there's already way to many penalties to prevent people wanting to make red alts...

Naxriel

If I remember correctly, this is Lineage 2 system with improvements. You have a green, aka no PvP, purple, aka PvP flag, and red aka PK (Player Killer) flag. If you hit a player, you turn on PvP, any willing player can turn the same state on and you fight without consequences, as you both gave consent. What happens in a scenario when you attack a player, turning yourself purple, but then just CC him till a mob kills him? You don't turn red then, do you? With open world PvP games, you'll have to make choices, if someone is willing to fight you over mobs, you respond with 'Fight or Flight', else you give him a chance to abuse the system.

BDO made an attempt at creating a karma system, where each attack cost Karma, and each kill cost a lot of Karma, so Karma bombing was very much real, but everyone was still trying to CC you and let mobs kill you so they don't lose the large amount of Karma. I think this Lineage 2 system works better, as you can PvP to your hearts content if that's what you want to do, as long as your enemy is willing to do the same (Purple). If you wanna force someone into PvP and you kill them while they remained green, that's on you, and you should be punished accordingly.

This is where guilds become a powerful tool, I'm sure a guild can protect you and even declare war on players trying to attack you, even if it's just CC that'll allow you to heal yourself/run. They'd only turn purple, right? Of course you'd have to run away far enough and find a new grind stop where you can recover from your red PK status.

Personally, I think this approach would be much better for open world PvP than an actual value of Karma.
If you attack someone, you give them consent to attack back and have a fair fight. If they didn't consent, you can try to CC them so a mob kills them (form of griefing, I know, but a fight over mobs will be very much like this), or you can kill them yourself and be a red Player Killer.

It all starts with a choice you make.

Tyrantor

It really seems like the whole point in the green vs red flagging is that they don't want people fighting in the hunting grounds unless absolutely necessary otherwise they would just give us a stupid toggle so we could flag for pvp and avoid a lot of this non sense that a corruption system interferes with guilds competing for things. The flip side of this is how many people from the main raid party go red, reduced exp, gear, item drops etc how does this even affect raid/boss loot scenarios as it is we don't even have that information which compounds the situation further imo.

bloodprophet

I agree with you. I don't think it will be a problem. Most of the comments I read being concerned about it are one off situation. This one time, on a back road, under a bridge, in the rain, in an out of the way spot this one thing happened one time.
Only time and testing will tell. I don't think we will see a lot of red players. Not that we won't. Just that it won't be as common as people fear/hope.