Just like with many public policies, the only way to get people to do the right thing is to fine the hell out of people for doing things that are harmful to the public. I would argue that openly allowing low-level players to be ganked is harmful to all of Verra as it permanently removes potential residents from the world.
I agree with everything that you’ve said so far so I have to ask about my concern about the tagging.
I have the scenario in my head where a higher level is just throwing weak hits or CC at a lower level and in the attempt to get away they try to CC the attacker and mount up away.
From what I understand throwing the CC to try and escape would flag them as a combatant. Allowing the attacker to freely kill and avoid corruption.
For reference the attacker is combatant and defender is non combatant.
Also the example doesn’t just relate to high levels, it could just be much better geared characters employing the same tactic.
Maybe this is just everyday life in an open world PvP MMO, I’m just woefully unfamiliar with the experiences of one.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
You can flag and get half the penalty if you want, but...also...
We need to actually play and see how well Corruption works as a deterrent before trying to overhaul the current design.
. These things can be mitigated by joining a guild that is focused on leveling while leveling, not investing in citizenship when you can't afford to take the risks, and not playing a cave dweller that everyone hates.
Risk vs Reward.
As far I know you cant prevent guilds from declaring war on yours even you if avoid being citizens of node. Guild wars will have objectives for victory and it would be good strategy to pull away high level defenders from those objectives by going after low level members.
What sane guild would risk their reputation going to war with a leveling guild? It is like telling the whole server "We are gankers, please come kill us". They would find themselves in more wars than they could handle.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
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ThexBlackxKnightMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
What sane guild would risk their reputation going to war with a leveling guild? It is like telling the whole server "We are gankers, please come kill us". They would find themselves in more wars than they could handle.
Reputation carries less weight with a server cap of ten thousand players , and guild wars are legal wars, why would their reputation be hurt by that , everyone in a guild war is fair game.
Just like with many public policies, the only way to get people to do the right thing is to fine the hell out of people for doing things that are harmful to the public. I would argue that openly allowing low-level players to be ganked is harmful to all of Verra as it permanently removes potential residents from the world.
I agree with everything that you’ve said so far so I have to ask about my concern about the tagging.
I have the scenario in my head where a higher level is just throwing weak hits or CC at a lower level and in the attempt to get away they try to CC the attacker and mount up away.
From what I understand throwing the CC to try and escape would flag them as a combatant. Allowing the attacker to freely kill and avoid corruption.
For reference the attacker is combatant and defender is non combatant.
Also the example doesn’t just relate to high levels, it could just be much better geared characters employing the same tactic.
Maybe this is just everyday life in an open world PvP MMO, I’m just woefully unfamiliar with the experiences of one.
There will eventually be diminishing returns on CC. CC also tends to have a higher CD in most MMORPGs, so it would be stupid for someone to walk around flagged as combatant with part of their tool kit on CD just to mess with a low-level player.
I can't imagine players will have enough CC to just freely use it without a good reason. I mean if I see you CC someone and turn purple. I at least know you don't have your CC now, which makes the person doing the CCing a more gankable target.
What sane guild would risk their reputation going to war with a leveling guild? It is like telling the whole server "We are gankers, please come kill us". They would find themselves in more wars than they could handle.
Reputation carries less weight with a server cap of ten thousand players , and guild wars are legal wars, why would their reputation be hurt by that , everyone in a guild war is fair game.
10k divided by 118 nodes. Granted it will not be an even distribution of 85 people per node. It would likely be a few hundred to a thousand per large node and hundreds for smaller nodes in that zone of influence.
You will still know the names of all the big guilds on your server and any guilds in your nodes zone of influence. Reputation will carry weight for sure.
Wasn’t the 10k concurrent players, with the servers only having 10-15k player cap at launch? Going up to 50k. (Iirc)
Edit: About my other concern. Maybe it’s just me but I don’t expect, in a game where you lose a (potentially) large chunk of gatherables on death to default to “sit there and let it happen”
Wasn’t the 10k concurrent players, with the servers only having 10-15k player cap at launch? Going up to 50k. (Iirc)
If a player logs on once every two weeks are they worth knowing?
The idea is that you will know a lot of the people who spend time in the game when you do.
Edit: I may have misread your meaning. I thought you were saying you would expect the world to have 50k worth of people that you need to know, but only 10-15k could be online at a time. Still not sure.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
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ThexBlackxKnightMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
10k divided by 118 nodes. Granted it will not be an even distribution of 85 people per node. It would likely be a few hundred to a thousand per large node and hundreds for smaller nodes in that zone of influence.
You will still know the names of all the big guilds on your server and any guilds in your nodes zone of influence. Reputation will carry weight for sure.
Maybe but guilds will kill any member of enemy guild no matter the level , its happens in every open world pvp mmo I have played. Most guilds will not be concerned about having a sense of honor , they will care a lot more about winning .
Also the world is not static , the game is ever changing and its being designed that long lasting alliances cant happen. Pve raid spots will be changing , new areas will be contested, any aggreements you may have had with guilds before will go the out the window when a node is destroyed and those players maybe be your enemy later on which makes it really hard to enforce this don't attack low level honor pledge between guilds.
Edit: I may have misread your meaning. I thought you were saying you would expect the world to have 50k worth of people that you need to know, but only 10-15k could be online at a time. Still not sure.
So it was in response to blackknight saying reputation carries less weight with a 10k population. I’m assuming it counts for more if the population was actually 50k.
10k divided by 118 nodes. Granted it will not be an even distribution of 85 people per node. It would likely be a few hundred to a thousand per large node and hundreds for smaller nodes in that zone of influence.
You will still know the names of all the big guilds on your server and any guilds in your nodes zone of influence. Reputation will carry weight for sure.
Maybe but guilds will kill any member of enemy guild no matter the level , its happens in every open world pvp mmo I have played. Most guilds will not be concerned about having a sense of honor , they will care a lot more about winning .
Also the world is not static , the game is ever changing and its being designed that long lasting alliances cant happen. Pve raid spots will be changing , new areas will be contested, any aggreements you may have had with guilds before will go the out the window when a node is destroyed and those players maybe be your enemy later on which makes it really hard to enforce this don't attack low level honor pledge between guilds.
I don't think I will personally have a problem keeping track of a few thousand people on my server when I am there 6 to 8 hours a day. I also don't think guilds will have an issue when they start creating lists of people who are a problem and why.
I forgot about this from the wiki too:
Death penalties do not apply to objective-based events (such as caravans, guild wars, and node sieges).
Seems like we have little to worry about in the way of guild wars.
Edit: I may have misread your meaning. I thought you were saying you would expect the world to have 50k worth of people that you need to know, but only 10-15k could be online at a time. Still not sure.
So it was in response to blackknight saying reputation carries less weight with a 10k population. I’m assuming it counts for more if the population was actually 50k.
Both ways the population is not piss everyone off and random que your way to new people to piss off.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
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ThexBlackxKnightMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I don't think I will personally have a problem keeping track of a few thousand people on my server when I am there 6 to 8 hours a day. I also don't think guilds will have an issue when they start creating lists of people who are a problem and why.
You assuming most guilds will care that much in a open world pvp game. Most pvp players are a-holes because its fun to them to be one.
I don't think I will personally have a problem keeping track of a few thousand people on my server when I am there 6 to 8 hours a day. I also don't think guilds will have an issue when they start creating lists of people who are a problem and why.
You assuming most guilds will care that much in a open world pvp game. Most pvp players are a-holes because its fun to them to be one.
IDK, I have played a number of full-loot games. You might get the occasional "Welcome to Darkfall", but it was never bad to the point that no one could progress. Many of the niche full loot PvP games have a player base that understands not to push new players too far. You show new players that the kitchen is hot, but you never outright melt them, by spawn camping them until they never log back in.
In fact, in many of these games I have seen gankers give players friendly advice on how not to get ganked after ganking them or even accept them into their guilds. That is in full loot.
Things are going to be much more forgiving with the corruption system
I think PvPers just have a negative stereotype against them. I made friends in full loot games. If it was going to be doom and gloom in any environment that would be it. So, I am not at all worried about the safety of low-level characters in Ashes with all the reasons not to waste time with them PvPers have.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
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ThexBlackxKnightMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I don't think I will personally have a problem keeping track of a few thousand people on my server when I am there 6 to 8 hours a day. I also don't think guilds will have an issue when they start creating lists of people who are a problem and why.
You assuming most guilds will care that much in a open world pvp game. Most pvp players are a-holes because its fun to them to be one.
IDK, I have played a number of full-loot games. You might get the occasional "Welcome to Darkfall", but it was never bad to the point that no one could progress. Many of the niche full loot PvP games have a player base that understands not to push new players too far. You show new players that the kitchen is hot, but you never outright melt them, by spawn camping them until they never log back in.
In fact, in many of these games I have seen gankers give players friendly advice on how not to get ganked after ganking them or even accept them into their guilds. That is in full loot.
Things are going to be much more forgiving with the corruption system
I think PvPers just have a negative stereotype against them. I made friends in full loot games. If it was going to be doom and gloom in any environment that would be it. So, I am not at all worried about the safety of low-level characters in Ashes with all the reasons not to waste time with them PvPers have.
I can see why games like that will be that way , in a world where pve content doesnt change you can get a more settled in aggrements with players. Ashes being is design to cause endless conflict , everyone will be butting heads over new loot spots because the pve content is changing.
Also a lot of Archeage players back the kickstarter , dont know if you played that game but it extremely toxic and now we have a lot wow pvp players eyeing the game thanks to Asmongold and I don't know if I need to tell how toxic those guys are. Those two playerbase combinations is going to something.
I can see why games like that will be that way , in a world where pve content doesnt change you can get a more settled in aggrements with players. Ashes being is design to cause endless conflict , everyone will be butting heads over new loot spots because the pve content is changing.
While we can't conclude exactly what the reality of Ashes world PvP will be like based on other games. I think it is safe to assume that since Ashes is trying hard to funnel players into meaningful PvP events. There should not be many reasons to engage in meaningless PvP.
Yes, there will be turf wars, but ideally those turf wars will be fought be the people who are the level of that content. Since nodes, level up you should not see that many low-level characters in high-level nodes where they can barely kill anything or gather anything. They should be in low to mid-level nodes doing stuff around their level.
Also a lot of Archeage players back the kickstarter , dont know if you played that game but it extremely toxic and now we have a lot wow pvp players eyeing the game thanks to Asmongold and I don't know if I need to tell how toxic those guys are. Those two playerbase combinations is going to something.
Toxicity is inevitable to some degree, but at least in Ashes there is a price to acting on it. Any time you are spending being red for no reason is time you are not spending progressing or maintaining your power. This is also part of the reason why maintenance of gear is so high. It both fuels the economy and makes people think twice about damaging their gear.
Shit is not going to be fun when you can't wear your raid gear to the raid because you took it out ganking and now need raid mats to repair your raid gear...
I think when these two player bases combine we are going to see the wheat separated from the chaff. I may be too optimistic on this, but I don't think very many people are going to want to stick with a game that punishes you for ganking to the degree that Ashes does. Assuming they just came here to gank. They will crawl back to WOW Classic in the time before War Mode put them in a situation where the only people they can fight are people that want to kick their asses anyway. I also bet that most gankers play with Warmode off because what ganker wants wants a fair fight?
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
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ThexBlackxKnightMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I will, but more because I know that he is going to drive up the que times with a bunch of people that are going to quit after a few weeks to months. Which I would bet will create a dead server eventually.
These WOW-andys are not going to like Ashes for long.
This is usually a self correcting problem.
Some guy comes to a lowbie area at max level and starts killing the nublets.
The nublets cry out in general chat or to their guildmates.
Some max levels come out from a nearby hub to the defense of the nublets, and the ganker himself gets ganked, then camped.
It's kind of a right of passage in MMORPGs to get ganked IMO, even if it's unpleasant.
At least with the corruption system there's going to be harsher penalties for the lowbie ganking player.
One thing that I just thought of that might be exploitable is running in a group with lowbies, and sending a stealthed "kamikazie" lowbie running into your target's AOE abilities, thus corrupting your target when he accidentally kills them, and allowing the main guys of your group free to kill your target and get his stuff without corrupting themselves. I'm sure things like this will be addressed, but on paper it sounds like the system might have exploits available to creative players.
But to be fair, clever players can exploit anything.
One thing that might mitigate this is the lack of traditional 'starter areas'.
While we will have gates we jump out of, the entire world is a starter area at first. Then, as nodes level up, they generate higher level mobs around the edges of their territory. But there are still very low level mobs right outside the gates of each node. Why does that matter?
The higher level players will be coming and going through the node gates and the lower level players will be hunting near the node gates. This draws low players into areas where the higher players transit on their ways to hunting areas or where they live, in the freeholds around the nodes and in the nodes. So if someone starts ganking noobies, game design will have the odds in favor of higher players being nearby. So the higher players will gank the gankers to get the drops off the reds! It is brilliant, and it avoids having a L2 Talking Island where the jerks know they can safely prey on new players.
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ThexBlackxKnightMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
One thing that might mitigate this is the lack of traditional 'starter areas'.
While we will have gates we jump out of, the entire world is a starter area at first. Then, as nodes level up, they generate higher level mobs around the edges of their territory. But there are still very low level mobs right outside the gates of each node. Why does that matter?
.
I imagine the beginning of the game will look like this.
Pretty simple fix if not already planned for the game.
Pk count affects how much corruption you are rewarded upon a pk. The higher your total pk count, the more corruption you gain on every single kill. Corruption lowers pvp stats, so sooner or later, your character is rendered useless in pvp as long as you are a combatant. This is in game now.
If they do indeed add a quest or some other way to lower your pk count total, it should only be available to characters who reach level cap. This way, low level pk characters will only be valuable for a short time, until they delete them, or level them to level cap. If the quest is lengthy or costly, and only lowers your pk count by 1 total pk.. the time and cost to keep a pk character becomes too much of a burden.
Lineage 2 had a quest, and I remember after doing it one time to lower my pk count... I gave up, and decided to never pk again on that character.
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FuryBladeborneMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
One thing that I just thought of that might be exploitable is running in a group with lowbies, and sending a stealthed "kamikazie" lowbie running into your target's AOE abilities, thus corrupting your target when he accidentally kills them, and allowing the main guys of your group free to kill your target and get his stuff without corrupting themselves. I'm sure things like this will be addressed, but on paper it sounds like the system might have exploits available to creative players.
While it's not impossible, the attacker will have to choose to attack players with the AOE or it won't hit the stealthed lowbie.
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akabearMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Near endgame in L2, I recall doing that pk quest on a regular basis to keep the current accumulated pk count down. From memory the quest took approx. 30-40min to complete and it randomly deleted say 1-10 pks.. so if you went on a spree, you also potentially paid for it in time out both to wear off your karma (xp debt in AoC) and when done, time out doing the sin eater quest (AoC is possibly doing similar)... with the time played back in the day, the time to do this was just considered an overhead to contend with to provide the benefit and choice to pk when and if required. That being said, our clan did not pk randomly, there was usually a pretty solid reason. ie farmer, scammer, botter, clan v clan retribution.. very, very rare to touch or be touched by a random individual as random pk... again, apart from staking territory cant see it happening too much
Comments
I agree with everything that you’ve said so far so I have to ask about my concern about the tagging.
I have the scenario in my head where a higher level is just throwing weak hits or CC at a lower level and in the attempt to get away they try to CC the attacker and mount up away.
From what I understand throwing the CC to try and escape would flag them as a combatant. Allowing the attacker to freely kill and avoid corruption.
For reference the attacker is combatant and defender is non combatant.
Also the example doesn’t just relate to high levels, it could just be much better geared characters employing the same tactic.
Maybe this is just everyday life in an open world PvP MMO, I’m just woefully unfamiliar with the experiences of one.
We need to actually play and see how well Corruption works as a deterrent before trying to overhaul the current design.
What sane guild would risk their reputation going to war with a leveling guild? It is like telling the whole server "We are gankers, please come kill us". They would find themselves in more wars than they could handle.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Reputation carries less weight with a server cap of ten thousand players , and guild wars are legal wars, why would their reputation be hurt by that , everyone in a guild war is fair game.
There will eventually be diminishing returns on CC. CC also tends to have a higher CD in most MMORPGs, so it would be stupid for someone to walk around flagged as combatant with part of their tool kit on CD just to mess with a low-level player.
I can't imagine players will have enough CC to just freely use it without a good reason. I mean if I see you CC someone and turn purple. I at least know you don't have your CC now, which makes the person doing the CCing a more gankable target.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
10k divided by 118 nodes. Granted it will not be an even distribution of 85 people per node. It would likely be a few hundred to a thousand per large node and hundreds for smaller nodes in that zone of influence.
You will still know the names of all the big guilds on your server and any guilds in your nodes zone of influence. Reputation will carry weight for sure.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Edit: About my other concern. Maybe it’s just me but I don’t expect, in a game where you lose a (potentially) large chunk of gatherables on death to default to “sit there and let it happen”
Yes. 50 k registered accounts per server. 10 k concurrent players. The queues will be bad.
If a player logs on once every two weeks are they worth knowing?
The idea is that you will know a lot of the people who spend time in the game when you do.
Edit: I may have misread your meaning. I thought you were saying you would expect the world to have 50k worth of people that you need to know, but only 10-15k could be online at a time. Still not sure.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Maybe but guilds will kill any member of enemy guild no matter the level , its happens in every open world pvp mmo I have played. Most guilds will not be concerned about having a sense of honor , they will care a lot more about winning .
Also the world is not static , the game is ever changing and its being designed that long lasting alliances cant happen. Pve raid spots will be changing , new areas will be contested, any aggreements you may have had with guilds before will go the out the window when a node is destroyed and those players maybe be your enemy later on which makes it really hard to enforce this don't attack low level honor pledge between guilds.
So it was in response to blackknight saying reputation carries less weight with a 10k population. I’m assuming it counts for more if the population was actually 50k.
I don't think I will personally have a problem keeping track of a few thousand people on my server when I am there 6 to 8 hours a day. I also don't think guilds will have an issue when they start creating lists of people who are a problem and why.
I forgot about this from the wiki too:
Death penalties do not apply to objective-based events (such as caravans, guild wars, and node sieges).
Seems like we have little to worry about in the way of guild wars.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Both ways the population is not piss everyone off and random que your way to new people to piss off.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
You assuming most guilds will care that much in a open world pvp game. Most pvp players are a-holes because its fun to them to be one.
IDK, I have played a number of full-loot games. You might get the occasional "Welcome to Darkfall", but it was never bad to the point that no one could progress. Many of the niche full loot PvP games have a player base that understands not to push new players too far. You show new players that the kitchen is hot, but you never outright melt them, by spawn camping them until they never log back in.
In fact, in many of these games I have seen gankers give players friendly advice on how not to get ganked after ganking them or even accept them into their guilds. That is in full loot.
Things are going to be much more forgiving with the corruption system
I think PvPers just have a negative stereotype against them. I made friends in full loot games. If it was going to be doom and gloom in any environment that would be it. So, I am not at all worried about the safety of low-level characters in Ashes with all the reasons not to waste time with them PvPers have.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
I can see why games like that will be that way , in a world where pve content doesnt change you can get a more settled in aggrements with players. Ashes being is design to cause endless conflict , everyone will be butting heads over new loot spots because the pve content is changing.
Also a lot of Archeage players back the kickstarter , dont know if you played that game but it extremely toxic and now we have a lot wow pvp players eyeing the game thanks to Asmongold and I don't know if I need to tell how toxic those guys are. Those two playerbase combinations is going to something.
While we can't conclude exactly what the reality of Ashes world PvP will be like based on other games. I think it is safe to assume that since Ashes is trying hard to funnel players into meaningful PvP events. There should not be many reasons to engage in meaningless PvP.
Yes, there will be turf wars, but ideally those turf wars will be fought be the people who are the level of that content. Since nodes, level up you should not see that many low-level characters in high-level nodes where they can barely kill anything or gather anything. They should be in low to mid-level nodes doing stuff around their level.
Toxicity is inevitable to some degree, but at least in Ashes there is a price to acting on it. Any time you are spending being red for no reason is time you are not spending progressing or maintaining your power. This is also part of the reason why maintenance of gear is so high. It both fuels the economy and makes people think twice about damaging their gear.
Shit is not going to be fun when you can't wear your raid gear to the raid because you took it out ganking and now need raid mats to repair your raid gear...
I think when these two player bases combine we are going to see the wheat separated from the chaff. I may be too optimistic on this, but I don't think very many people are going to want to stick with a game that punishes you for ganking to the degree that Ashes does. Assuming they just came here to gank. They will crawl back to WOW Classic in the time before War Mode put them in a situation where the only people they can fight are people that want to kick their asses anyway. I also bet that most gankers play with Warmode off because what ganker wants wants a fair fight?
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
I will, but more because I know that he is going to drive up the que times with a bunch of people that are going to quit after a few weeks to months. Which I would bet will create a dead server eventually.
These WOW-andys are not going to like Ashes for long.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Some guy comes to a lowbie area at max level and starts killing the nublets.
The nublets cry out in general chat or to their guildmates.
Some max levels come out from a nearby hub to the defense of the nublets, and the ganker himself gets ganked, then camped.
It's kind of a right of passage in MMORPGs to get ganked IMO, even if it's unpleasant.
At least with the corruption system there's going to be harsher penalties for the lowbie ganking player.
One thing that I just thought of that might be exploitable is running in a group with lowbies, and sending a stealthed "kamikazie" lowbie running into your target's AOE abilities, thus corrupting your target when he accidentally kills them, and allowing the main guys of your group free to kill your target and get his stuff without corrupting themselves. I'm sure things like this will be addressed, but on paper it sounds like the system might have exploits available to creative players.
But to be fair, clever players can exploit anything.
While we will have gates we jump out of, the entire world is a starter area at first. Then, as nodes level up, they generate higher level mobs around the edges of their territory. But there are still very low level mobs right outside the gates of each node. Why does that matter?
The higher level players will be coming and going through the node gates and the lower level players will be hunting near the node gates. This draws low players into areas where the higher players transit on their ways to hunting areas or where they live, in the freeholds around the nodes and in the nodes. So if someone starts ganking noobies, game design will have the odds in favor of higher players being nearby. So the higher players will gank the gankers to get the drops off the reds! It is brilliant, and it avoids having a L2 Talking Island where the jerks know they can safely prey on new players.
I imagine the beginning of the game will look like this.
Pk count affects how much corruption you are rewarded upon a pk. The higher your total pk count, the more corruption you gain on every single kill. Corruption lowers pvp stats, so sooner or later, your character is rendered useless in pvp as long as you are a combatant. This is in game now.
If they do indeed add a quest or some other way to lower your pk count total, it should only be available to characters who reach level cap. This way, low level pk characters will only be valuable for a short time, until they delete them, or level them to level cap. If the quest is lengthy or costly, and only lowers your pk count by 1 total pk.. the time and cost to keep a pk character becomes too much of a burden.
Lineage 2 had a quest, and I remember after doing it one time to lower my pk count... I gave up, and decided to never pk again on that character.
While it's not impossible, the attacker will have to choose to attack players with the AOE or it won't hit the stealthed lowbie.