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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.
A Proposed System to Fix the Easily Avoided Corruption System of Preventing Risk-Free Theft
Goalid
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
In my mind, there are two purposes of the corruption system. First, is to discourage the griefing of low level players. This seems to be done somewhat well by the corruption system, a player killing a much lower leveled player will gain a significant amount of corruption, given what Steven has said in the past. But there are still potential ways to circumvent the corruption system that should be discussed.
But the second, is "Risk vs Reward". In the "Key Features" section of the AoC official website's front page, it labels a key feature of Ashes to be risk vs reward. That means, there are going to be risks in the world that you can take in order to get a large reward. Presumably, one of those would be the risk of gaining corruption in order to steal rare mats.
There is a place for non-consensual PvP in MMORPG's. If a guild has a rare mineral vein pop up within its node or its ZOI, there may be no reason to use a caravan to transport those mats to itself. This means the large bulk of natural, rare resources of that node will be transported by a mule, which will have approximately 10 times the amount of bag space that a player has. And depending on if rarer mats can stack in your inventory or not, and by judging the way the Alpha One handles dragon ingots the intention is that they can't, then having a mule filled with rare mats should be an excellent example of potentially gaining corruption in order to steal.
Which leads to how easy the currently planned system of corruption, as laid out by the wiki, is avoided. Upon a player's death, loot can be picked up by any player. Their own party member, the person who killed them, or a random. But corruption only goes onto the player who actually PKed the player. Lets now say that I want another guild to do the annoying task of building a gathering machine, or having someone mine the vein. And lets say this gatherer doesn't have any friends with them or paid bodyguards to help defend him against open world PvP for these mats. Then all that needs to happen, is that I give all my good gear to a friend, and have them lower another player's hp, and get the finishing blow myself. That way, I gain the corruption, and then my friend can pick up the mats, and trade them.
Corrupted players are supposed to not be able to trade while corrupt, so clearly the devs intention is that a corrupted player will have to work off that corruption, taking a risk, before benefitting from stolen mats. Currently, the only plan the devs have to combat my example is that you can't see another player's health bar directly. It will only give you a players percentage of total hp, not their actual hp number. In my opinion, that is not enough, and my example will be commonplace to steal rare mats without facing the intended consequences. And potentially, the toon landing the killing blow can be a low leveld alt. Oh, and if the gatherer tries to fight back against the low leveled toon, then they're flagged and can be immediately PK'd by the friend without consequence, also avoiding the corruption system. There needs to at least be proposed ideas to combat this before corruption is tested, to have alternate systems prepared.
I think I have thought of such a system regarding dropped loot from non-consensual PKing. Let's say that a gatherer gets ganked, and the zerg is attempting to steal rare mats from the victim and their mule. If a player is murdered in non-consensual PvP, the loot they dropped will become "blood stained" or "corruption stained." If "blood stained" mats are in a player's inventory, it will automatically flag that player for combat, and if that player is killed, all "blood stained" mats will drop and become lootable. Mats cease to be "blood stained" when one of the four following situations occur:
1) The mats are processed.
2) The victim, their guild, or their party regain these mats.
3) A random player picks up the mats and donates them to the local node government / their node government.
4) A bounty hunter picks up the mats and donates a portion of them to their military node.
Depending on if there are other rewards than dropped loot for bounty hunting, (4) can be changed to donating all of the loot to their military node's coffers.
The great benefit of this system is that it forces player to PvP if they're in the middle of stealing resources. It truly makes non-consensual PvP between similar leveled players for rare mats "risk vs reward". This also prevents the circumvention of the corruption system as it is currently proposed. I think it's at least worthwhile to discuss. In fact, if this system were to be implemented, the "non-immersive" portion of corruption penalties (murderers somehow not being able to trade items after killing someone) would go away. And there are a couple ways this could be tweaked. Maybe a bounty hunter has an ability that lets them smell the blood on the mats, displaying the thief on their map, so the thieves can be tracked down by bounty hunters just as a corrupted player would be. Maybe picking up blood stained mats adds a little bit of corruption score to your character. In my opinion, this system has plenty more options than the currently, again easily circumvented, proposed corruption system; when it comes to stealing mats at least.
Some potential objections and answers:
Q1) This further discourages PvP.
A1) Actually, it encourages it since players who pick up bloodstained mats will be flagged for PvP. What it DOES prevent is zerging a gatherer and getting away with it without any risk, the worst kind of non-consensual PvP.
Q2) Can't a patron guild of a military node also abuse this system by having their bounty hunters pick up the mats and purify them?
A2) To the extent they can send rare mats into their coffers yes, but those rare mats won't be able to be used for gear. AND, it will hurt that guild's reputation on the server if this is discovered, maybe other players can then work to take mayorship over the military node, and oust that guild's bounty hunters. At least that provides a system to prevent the zerg and hurt their guild more than the currently proposed system.
Q3) Will the game be able to track who was PK'd on those mats, in order for the purification to work? That's a lot of mat tracking for the game potentially.
A3) I'm not a programmer so I don't know. This would be the worst case scenario for my proposed system, BUT even then it has merits over the current system. You could just remove the victim purification part, and allow players with blood stained mats to be automatically flagged, and purified by donating the mats to the local node. And that will encourage PvP still, and provide further risks to a zerg stealing mats.
As a final note, the corruption system will be tested in Alpha Two surely, but we as a community should at least have discussions about it. That way we have solutions to potential problems that pop up during testing.
But the second, is "Risk vs Reward". In the "Key Features" section of the AoC official website's front page, it labels a key feature of Ashes to be risk vs reward. That means, there are going to be risks in the world that you can take in order to get a large reward. Presumably, one of those would be the risk of gaining corruption in order to steal rare mats.
There is a place for non-consensual PvP in MMORPG's. If a guild has a rare mineral vein pop up within its node or its ZOI, there may be no reason to use a caravan to transport those mats to itself. This means the large bulk of natural, rare resources of that node will be transported by a mule, which will have approximately 10 times the amount of bag space that a player has. And depending on if rarer mats can stack in your inventory or not, and by judging the way the Alpha One handles dragon ingots the intention is that they can't, then having a mule filled with rare mats should be an excellent example of potentially gaining corruption in order to steal.
Which leads to how easy the currently planned system of corruption, as laid out by the wiki, is avoided. Upon a player's death, loot can be picked up by any player. Their own party member, the person who killed them, or a random. But corruption only goes onto the player who actually PKed the player. Lets now say that I want another guild to do the annoying task of building a gathering machine, or having someone mine the vein. And lets say this gatherer doesn't have any friends with them or paid bodyguards to help defend him against open world PvP for these mats. Then all that needs to happen, is that I give all my good gear to a friend, and have them lower another player's hp, and get the finishing blow myself. That way, I gain the corruption, and then my friend can pick up the mats, and trade them.
Corrupted players are supposed to not be able to trade while corrupt, so clearly the devs intention is that a corrupted player will have to work off that corruption, taking a risk, before benefitting from stolen mats. Currently, the only plan the devs have to combat my example is that you can't see another player's health bar directly. It will only give you a players percentage of total hp, not their actual hp number. In my opinion, that is not enough, and my example will be commonplace to steal rare mats without facing the intended consequences. And potentially, the toon landing the killing blow can be a low leveld alt. Oh, and if the gatherer tries to fight back against the low leveled toon, then they're flagged and can be immediately PK'd by the friend without consequence, also avoiding the corruption system. There needs to at least be proposed ideas to combat this before corruption is tested, to have alternate systems prepared.
I think I have thought of such a system regarding dropped loot from non-consensual PKing. Let's say that a gatherer gets ganked, and the zerg is attempting to steal rare mats from the victim and their mule. If a player is murdered in non-consensual PvP, the loot they dropped will become "blood stained" or "corruption stained." If "blood stained" mats are in a player's inventory, it will automatically flag that player for combat, and if that player is killed, all "blood stained" mats will drop and become lootable. Mats cease to be "blood stained" when one of the four following situations occur:
1) The mats are processed.
2) The victim, their guild, or their party regain these mats.
3) A random player picks up the mats and donates them to the local node government / their node government.
4) A bounty hunter picks up the mats and donates a portion of them to their military node.
Depending on if there are other rewards than dropped loot for bounty hunting, (4) can be changed to donating all of the loot to their military node's coffers.
The great benefit of this system is that it forces player to PvP if they're in the middle of stealing resources. It truly makes non-consensual PvP between similar leveled players for rare mats "risk vs reward". This also prevents the circumvention of the corruption system as it is currently proposed. I think it's at least worthwhile to discuss. In fact, if this system were to be implemented, the "non-immersive" portion of corruption penalties (murderers somehow not being able to trade items after killing someone) would go away. And there are a couple ways this could be tweaked. Maybe a bounty hunter has an ability that lets them smell the blood on the mats, displaying the thief on their map, so the thieves can be tracked down by bounty hunters just as a corrupted player would be. Maybe picking up blood stained mats adds a little bit of corruption score to your character. In my opinion, this system has plenty more options than the currently, again easily circumvented, proposed corruption system; when it comes to stealing mats at least.
Some potential objections and answers:
Q1) This further discourages PvP.
A1) Actually, it encourages it since players who pick up bloodstained mats will be flagged for PvP. What it DOES prevent is zerging a gatherer and getting away with it without any risk, the worst kind of non-consensual PvP.
Q2) Can't a patron guild of a military node also abuse this system by having their bounty hunters pick up the mats and purify them?
A2) To the extent they can send rare mats into their coffers yes, but those rare mats won't be able to be used for gear. AND, it will hurt that guild's reputation on the server if this is discovered, maybe other players can then work to take mayorship over the military node, and oust that guild's bounty hunters. At least that provides a system to prevent the zerg and hurt their guild more than the currently proposed system.
Q3) Will the game be able to track who was PK'd on those mats, in order for the purification to work? That's a lot of mat tracking for the game potentially.
A3) I'm not a programmer so I don't know. This would be the worst case scenario for my proposed system, BUT even then it has merits over the current system. You could just remove the victim purification part, and allow players with blood stained mats to be automatically flagged, and purified by donating the mats to the local node. And that will encourage PvP still, and provide further risks to a zerg stealing mats.
As a final note, the corruption system will be tested in Alpha Two surely, but we as a community should at least have discussions about it. That way we have solutions to potential problems that pop up during testing.
1
Comments
If you and your friend want to kill a player for materials, as long as at least one of you gets the opportunity to pick up materials and one of you gets corruption, it is working as intended.
Exploration
Character progression
Economy and crafting/gathering
Real social interaction in the open world of a community game (friendships, anymosities)
2) There is no such thing as non consensual PvP. This in an mmorpg (PvX)
3) The corruption system has been working fine since 2003. By going red you dont sign a contract to get punished 100% of the time. Some times you will save your ass others you get hit the dirt
4) If you think that people will risk losing their hard-earned gear, which took weeks of group effort and thousands of mats, just so that they can steal 100 iron ore from you, put those fears to rest. They wont risk PKing you just for that.
If they put that on the front page of the website, so it's the first thing new players see when they are checking out Ashes. They might avoid many misconceptions about the game.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
1) And part of that corruption system is going to be dealing with players killing gatherers for mats, and if it's worth it or not.
2) If a player doesn't flag up for pvp we can call it "non-consensual," one person doesn't want to fight. That's why you're being penalized for it with the corruption system.
3) I'm not talking about not getting punished 100% of the time, I'm saying it's extremely easy to avoid corruption penalties, therefore potentially avoiding punishment 90% of the time.
4) Of course no one cares about iron, what about rare ore from a vein that only exists in a couple places in Verra? Idk if you've seen the intended system of resources, but rare ore and rare mats are going to be highly concentrated in only a couple locations. You'll know which area you'll want to kill players at. And there should be fighting over rare mats / monopolizing them in my opinion, but I want that system to work well.
On the gear point, we don't know how many players you have to kill to drop gear yet, so if it takes 5 to drop gear you'll absolutely kill a mule for rare mats. Besides, that's avoidable too. Just have a low leveled alt attack a person, if they fight back they're flagged and you can zerg them. If they don't, they die and your alt goes red, but you don't care at all since that's your alt's sole purpose.
Maybe, but an additional system is that the corrupted player can't trade their resources. Basically, I think the intent is that you'll be able to get revenge for a player who ambushed you and stole your mats, so you can get your mats back. If someone wants to steal your mats, why shouldn't they be forcibly flagged up and let you try and get your mats back at the very least?
Decide your risk v. reward accordingly. It really isn't that complicated.
But if the person does not fight back and you continue to attack them and you kill them without them having flagged, at that point you gain corruption and corruption is a stat that accrues depending on two things:
One, the number of previous kills you have, pks where people didn't fight back...
And two, the level difference between you and the target that you killed."
"We put a little bit more safety nets here to discourage griefing and encourage consensual pvp."
---Steven
Killing a non-combatant is non-consensual PvP. That is precisely the way it should be discussed.
Non-consensual PvP is punished with Corruption.
Corruption is there because non-consensual PvP takes away player agency. It is not just about deterring the ganking of low-level characters.
People should decide their risk accordingly.
Risk gaining Corruption for forcing non-consensual PvP if you wish.
If I'm a green and attacked, I still have agency. I can decide to attack or not attack. It's definitely interrupting me, it's an inconvenience, I'm frustrated, but I still have agency.
I'd argue that the time and place where informed consent is provided is at the login screen.
Edit: @Dygz - thanks for the quote. I'm going to be a stubborn bastard though and continue to assert that consent is an awkward way to talk about pvp in Ashes.
You can argue that. One can argue anything.
Steven does not agree with you.
I could give a very clear analogy... but then everyone would flip out.
Suffice it to say that if PvP combat were consensual at the login in screen, everyone would be a combatant by default and there would be no penalties for killing non-combatants.
I'm with you, without bringing your analogy up. It's the first one I thought of as well.
However, I don't think it's exactly analogous. I think it's more apt to talk about corruption as a punishment for being murdered in a dangerous environment I'm choosing to enter. Before I log into Ashes I know the following:
- There are no 'safe' spaces, PvP can happen at any time
- If attacked, I can choose not to fight back, which if I'm killed will punish my murderer
- If attacked, I can choose to fight back, and halve my losses if I die (with no corruption to the attacker)
By logging in, I agree that those are the conditions of the world I'm entering. So, that's why the 'non-consensual' thing seems a weird phrasing. Make sense? I'm fine if Steven disagrees, I'm curious if I'm alone in that perspective or if anyone else sees it the same way...But on the flip side, everyone better be ready to just man up. These same people are going to be attacking your caravans, your nodes, without corruption consequences anyway. Or they might just be running around topping off their corruption level for the day right below where they'd start risking gear loss on death. Or they might be running around playing a game of corruption system chicken where they attack people and try to bait them into fighting back, so they avoid getting corruption. We'll see a lot of that. It's going to be fun.
Point being, either way you're going to be dealing with shit on a daily basis. Get with a guild or a node that mans up and defends its territory and has it's people's backs. And maybe you'll only deal with it on a weekly basis.
The reason for corrupt players not being able to trade is so they cant trade away equipment they have on them after gaining corruption in order to avoid item loss as a corruption penalty.
It has nothing to do with the person that originally lost the materials.
Knowing the risk is not the same thing as consent.
(Nothing is ever exactly analogous)