'Alt Bait' tactic

Here is how it works. You create an alt, one that you aren't going to get emotionally attached to, and give him/her starter gear and a couple levels. Park your main or (if you have one) your Red-hunting PvP assassin, in a secluded spot where jerks and PKers frequently hang out. Take your lowly alt and gather resources until the jerk comes by and starts a fight, don't fight back, die. The Jerk turns red. Your main or assassin swoops on the red, killing him and picking up the dropped gear. Repeat in various spots to both discourage PKing and to equip your alts. If your assassin is doing Bounty Hunter quests, all the better.

Note that:
- For someone to fall victim to the tactic, they have to voluntarily start a fight, so we could allege that they deserve what happens to them.
- Your alt may eventually have to be discarded and replaced with a new one if they accrue too much experience debt.
- I am assuming that we will get several character slots, perhaps five or seven, so we can use one slot for disposable alts.
- While this would work with single account (using your main as the killer), it would work much better with two accounts, which is legal. The dead alt can lie on the ground whining and complaining, thus distracting the red as the assassin closes in on them. Also, with two accounts, your main is not implicated and you can attack the red more quickly without logging out and in.

I am interested in hearing your feedback. For those who want to PK, you probably don't like this, but if you choose that path you choose this risk also. What improvements can be made? Clearly there are variations, such as having guild mates get the kill, but then you have to share the spoils. This is just the outline of the plan, how can it be made better? Thanks.

For those who care about such things, do you have ethical problems with this?

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Comments

Azherae

I have a single specific problem with this, but Ashes is treated as an 'alls-fair' game as of now so I'm not sure if it matters.

Doing this in specific ways allows a specific type of player to 'lock down' a Gathering spot in a misleading way. The problem I have isn't with the deception, it's with the types of escalation that follow from that deception. In short, it can make the game unpleasant in ways that I think are negative.

It 'breaks' one of the simpler rules of immersion that comes up all the time in open world PvP MMOs. "I don't see anyone around so taking this action can be done via in-game risk assessment."

Your ingame risk assessment means nothing if the person doing this has their Bounty Hunting alt positioned at the 'entrance to the area, cave, or dungeon'. It might result in less PK, which I view as bad, actually.

I offer no solutions and don't care if Intrepid makes any effort to solve it, just noting that I find the outcome somewhat disagreeable relative to gameplay and in specific cases also my immersion. Technically you could do this with a friend's alt and it would literally be better.

Friend is on one of their Artisan characters, in their Freehold, processing or whatever, they brought their Bounty Hunter out to where you said you were going to gather, earlier. You go gather while your friend does processing. If you then draw the ire of some other character by 'swiping' their resource nodes and get killed for it, you'll know what's happening fast enough for the friend to swoop in and kill the red.

Easy enough that I'll just consider it a meta tactic that NEEDS to be used. No point in someone 'just escorting' when it doesn't benefit them timewise. Easier path to PvP, easier path to 'making people scared of ganking you' even when that friend is not online.

Even if just to set up a fear of a lower level character in a certain area type, it's an obvious adaptation, I feel.

Atama

This seems extremely far-fetched. Here is what I expect would happen...

You create your alt, put him out as bait, and wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. And get bored and quit.

I think it's a fantasy that isn't going to work. I don't think there will be enough rampant PK for this to be viable.

Now, if there was a particular spot where some known corrupted individuals were known to jump on newbies, then I expect that the bait might work. But that would be an exceptional circumstance, and you're not really exploiting anything.

Generally though, this seems like trying to catch fish in a swimming pool.

Jahlon

This is easily solved by not allowing you to delete characters that have corruption or negative exp.

Noaani

Honestly, this is kind of what I plan on doing.

Perhaps I am out harvesting on a low level alt, maybe I am using a mule to transport materials around, who knows?

I definitely won't just set up a trap like this with nothing else to do, but I absolutely will be things like this.

As to the suggestion that it allows players to lock down a harvesting area, I can't see how. You can't lock down a harvesting area without risking corruption gain, making the scenario in the OP invalid.

Voidwalkers

Sounds like fair game imo, folks in Eve Online do similar things all~ the time anyway (e.g. a procurer casually hanging out in an asteroid belt in low/null sec ...)

Although given that in Ashes the world's huge, travel time's long, and resource spawns aren't fixed, I'm not sure how efficient baiting's gonna be.

May work near a densely populated node though, but then the reds are also more likely to work in groups, which means you also need a group of friends on standby when baiting, and still it could be a quiet night and you end up with a group of bored friends whom you have to entertain.

Azherae

Voidwalkers wrote: »

Sounds like fair game imo, folks in Eve Online do similar things all~ the time anyway (e.g. a procurer casually hanging out in an asteroid belt in low/null sec ...)

Although given that in Ashes the world's huge, travel time's long, and resource spawns aren't fixed, I'm not sure how efficient baiting's gonna be.

May work near a densely populated node though, but then the reds are also more likely to work in groups, which means you also need a group of friends on standby when baiting, and still it could be a quiet night and you end up with a group of bored friends whom you have to entertain.

Note that as someone who played and gathered in Alpha-1, the world is not necessarily 'huge' in the way that most people think of. There may be changes to this, but if so, they will probably be negative for the gatherer's experience moreso.

It sounds like you're fine with the outcome, even if it causes 'reds to work in groups', but for clarity, this isn't a counter to 'reds', this is a counter to 'needing to care if someone else enters your gathering spot'. It should also be noted that, as of now, if you do this 'right', you don't really care if the other person kills you, only that they attempt to.

Boredom is not that likely. If I'm gathering and my friend is questing or processing or farming, it's just 'PvP matchmaking' at that point, for them, and only load times have any influence on the experience.

JamesSunderland

Certainly a functional strategy enabled by the possibility of having alts, even tho
heavily RNG dependant: As we still don't know how high or low is chance of dropping gear when you are corrupted, or if gear even drops from the corruption gained from a single kill;
and specific situation dependant: As many variables come at play in such interactions,
How strong the PK player is in comparison to your "Red-hunting PvP assassin"?
Maybe he is more skilled than you? Does he have friends?
You may lose a lot of time and resources while trying to play around with that strategy.

As for your questions:
Q: What improvements can be made? How can it be made better?
A: As you stated "Clearly there are variations, such as having guild mates get the kill, but then you have to share the spoils. " There certainly is power in numbers aswell as rewards drawbacks.
This tactic makes more sense Solo or Duo maybe Trio..
Improvements of both gear and skill with the "Red-hunting PvP assassin" will generate a better success rate. Specially if able to 1v2 or 1v3.

Q: Do you have ethical problems with this?
A: None at all.

Noaani

Azherae wrote: »

It sounds like you're fine with the outcome, even if it causes 'reds to work in groups'

He didn't say it would cause reds to be more likely to work in groups, he said that the closer you are to a densely populated area the more likely they are to work in groups.

It should also be noted that, as of now, if you do this 'right', you don't really care if the other person kills you, only that they attempt to.

I'm unsure of your logic here.

In order for this to work, you want the target of your trap to gain corruption. They don't gain corruption by attacking you, only by killing you.

If all they do is attack your alt and not kill it, then you don't really stand to gain anything by attacking and killing them.

I still haven't worked out this logic either

Doing this in specific ways allows a specific type of player to 'lock down' a Gathering spot in a misleading way.

I can't see at all how this would allow you to lock down a harvesting spot.

If I set up this trap with my alt and a friend (or a main), and you come along and just start harvesting peacefully, my trap is pointless as you have not gained any corruption. Sure, I could attack you if I want to keep the spot to myself, but then I gain the corruption, and for all we know, this could be you setting up the same trap to catch me.

Since this trap is only ever sprung if the target of the trap gains corruption, if there is no killing of non-combatants, there is no trap. If you attack and don't kill me, no trap. If you come along and harvest peacefully, no trap.

Not seeing your logic at all here.

George_Black

Whoever has a bait alt while the main is logged out nearby is sadder than players that go red all the time.

What a weird way that people choose to spend their time on..

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