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
You’re disagreeing with a known function of the corruption system…? Players who go corrupt generally will do so for a reason, players that do it to troll are who are actually punished by corruption because they aren’t doing so as a strategic choice that benefits them, they’re doing it specifically because it bothers other players.
The scenario you mentioned is a troll, so yes obviously it works as intended when they get little if any benefit. (Edit: Or they’re just godawful stupid at risk assessment and target selection)
The scenarios where going or furthering corruption is reasonable are places like outside a mine, at the exterior door from a dungeon, in a dungeon to gank a healer mid-raid on a rival guild. Players stand to gain here, either through materials or through significant tactical advantage. Corruption is not punishing those players beyond the benefits they’ve gained, especially if played out intelligently after they flagged corrupt.
Corrupted players, by design, will receive more materials than a Combatant player through PvP kills specifically because Non-Combatants cannot flag on them to reduce drop percentages. That’s not opinion, that’s literally how it works.
A corrupted player punching up when they’re not skilled enough for it, or picking targets poorly, is unrelated to the actual system of Corruption. Those are issue they’ll retain and be punished for no matter what their flag state is.
But, the equation doesn't interest me at all. It's not what I am commenting about.
It's just a discussion.
No. That may be what you specifically come away with - but you've already demonstrated that you have problems properly conveying what people actually stated. Which is precisely why it's so important to include the original quote - so that everyone can review the full context:
In that Aggelos video, Steven states very clearly:
"If you gain Corruption - which is killing a Non-Combatant - a player who is not fighting back basically - if you gain Corruption, you world has changed. It is not going to be a very beneficial place to be in."
Doesn't matter whether someone labels the action that causes a person to become Corrupt as griefing or PKing. Corruption is Corruption.
I don't know how you are able to rationally translate "not a very beneficial place to be in" to "profitable playstyle".
We can pair that quote with the one from the previous video:
"The flagging system really discourages griefing, in the sense of PKing players. So... In Lineage 2...
Lineage 2 had a very similar system called Karma...Karma didn't have some of these components to them, but...you rarely saw in Lineage 2 people going red, I mean it happened, but it wasn't all the time, it wasn't super-prevalent, you didn't go out of town each day and worry about getting PKed. So, in that sese, we put a little bit more safety nets here to discourage griefing and encourage consensual PvP."
When Steven answers a question about griefing, he reframes the discusssion by defining griefing as PKing players.
He doesn't say, "In Lineage 2 you rarely saw people griefing."
When he discusses the rarity of people going red in Lineage two, he does not distinguish between "going red" from griefing or "going red" from "PKing that... is not griefing"(???).
If anything, you should come away from Steven's answer thinking he's just talking about PKing.
The proper paraphrase of Steven's quote is "The flagging system really discourages PKing players."
Of course, he doesn't say "rarely for profit".
For profit is your obsession.
What Steven said is that in Lineage 2 people rarely went red (for any reason) and that there is an even greater safety net for Non-Combatants in Ashes than there is in Lineage 2 due to the extra debilitating components added to the Corruption mechanic.
I would like for you to include the quote where Steven uses the word worth. I did not hear him use the word worth. I did not hear Steven state, "It will be worth going corrupt for rare materials"
We could paraphrase what he said as, "Sometimes a player may decide the rewards are worth the consequences of going Corrupt." But that's not the same thing as going Corrupt being a profitable playstyle.
Sometimes, it might be "worth the consequences" to go Corrupt in order to steal rare materials. That is not the same thing as it being a profitable playstyle.
I don't know why you apply "irrationally" to the concept of coveting a lootable material.
There may be rare occasions when someone wants a rare item because it will provide them with a useful enchantment or ability. Could be useful for a quest or task.
But, the devs are balancing the mechanic so that it doesn't work as a profitable playstyle. And they will be working to eradicate any loopholes that allow it to be a profitable playstyle.
[QUESTION] So, what's the gain there of even taking the risk to grieve somebody - the materials?
STEVEN: There are a couple of reasons why this mechanic to allow PKing to exist is important.
1: As we know in non-faction-based games, you make enemies and you make friends. Sometimes, your hatred for your enemies is so great that you just want to kill them whenever you see them regardless of the consequences. It doesn't even matter to me that I might potentially lose my gear... providing that freedom, as log as you're aware of the cost-benefit ratio is important to player agency.
2: There are very rare unique spawns of gatherable goods in the world and you may see a person who is Gathering it. And you may want to kill them to get a portion of the gatherable goods that they got.
And...I guess there is a third reason...
3: Some Hunting Grounds are prime Hunting Grounds. It may take you an hour to get inside this open-world dungeon and get down into the heart of this dungeon that has the best grinding room for your group and you spent the hour to get yourself down there and another group shows up 30 minutes later or there's already a group there and you're like, "Oh, fuck these guys!"
All of that is about allowing infrequent opportunities for people to go Corrupt.
None of it supports Corruption as a profitable playstyle.
The dev goal of the Corruption mechanic is to discourage PKing to the extent that we rarely see people going red, while allowing infrequent opportunities when people choose to PK because they don't care about the consequences at that moment. Regardless of profit.
I don't understand why you think that Corrupted would only be fighting/killing Non-Combatants. Combatants can attack Corrupted and Corrupted can attack Combatants.
So you really interpret that quote as saying "You won't be able to make a playstyle through stealing resources in the open world." The quote was,
"You're not going to see griefing in the game very often; and that's because our flagging system. The corruption mechanics are based around disincentivizing a griefer or PKer but still offering the opportunity, should the occasion arise, where the benefits outweigh the risk, you have the ability to do so. If you gain corruption, which is killing a non-combatant - a player who is not fighting back basically - if you gain that corruption, your world has changed. It is not going to be a very beneficial place to be and you have the potential of losing your gear. Your combat efficacy decreases based on the amount of corruption you accrue. It is a comfortable balance between player agency and grief and basically removing player agency for other players."
Again Dygz, look at that underlined section. There will be opportunities to go corrupt at a benefit. All you need to do is find out where resources are, evade bounty hunters, and you're benefitting from that system even while going corrupt.
All the quote is saying, is that you wouldn't walk out of town in Lineage 2 "every day" and expect to be PKed. He didn't say in that quote "And if you went to the most valuable hunting grounds, it would be rare to find players willing to go corrupt to keep that hunting ground to themselves." We aren't arguing about whether there's going to be seas of red players that you always have to be wary of, you're saying that there's no opportunity to make a playstyle out of going corrupt, and nothing you are quoting supports that belief. Lineage 2 also didn't have a Star Wars Galaxies type gathering system, so there are more opportunities to beneficially go corrupt in Ashes of Creation than there were in Lineage 2.
Your refusal to see the value in a cost-benefit analysis isn't something to be proud of. The fact is that it's the entire point of the decision to go corrupt, it's not an obsession, it's literally the entire way to think about corruption as a game system.
And increased incentives because of the Star Wars Galaxies-like gathering system which will have extremely rare and valuable materials on the server. And he wasn't saying people rarely went red "for any reason", he quickly clarified his statement saying it wasn't "super prevalent" and that you wouldn't expect to die just by going out of town. In the same Aggelos video, Steven goes on to talk about how he and some other party fought over a hunting ground in Lineage 2. That means they both valued the hunting ground, is it really your opinion that the fighting would have stopped if one side had refused to fight back?
No, that's literally all it means for it to be a profitable playstyle. I want rare mats to sell or use to improve my gear, so I kill someone and risk the corruption penalties for the mats. If I can do that, then it's profitable.
No evidence as to why they're making it unprofitable, you just seem to really want that to be true. If a player views the benefit of stealing a rare item more than the costs of corruption, then it's "profitable" to them. Or "worth it".
How is going to a prime hunting ground an infrequent opportunity? Literally nothing in there indicates that these circumstances have to be so rare a player couldn't attempt to make a playstyle out of it. Underlining the "Sometimes" in reference to just wanting to kill another player because you hate them, doesn't mean it's going to be rare to fight over rare resources or hunting grounds. The dev goal's are to put a cost to corruption, not an insurmountable cost for every reason to go corrupt. You may really want this to be a game where you can PvE and only once in a year have to worry about open world PvP, but it's not that kind of game if you're going after the most valuable resources on the server. If you're not going after the most valuable resources, more than likely it won't be beneficial to kill a player to go corrupt.
I bet more people will be willing to PK for a laugh, not even out of grudge, than PK to farm mats.
Progress
Exploration
Crafting/economy
Pvp
PvE
instead of the same old ez overland, optional player to player interractions and optional raiding/pvping.
Dont try to poke holes everywhere.
And in that case, I seriously doubt that 3 or more people that follow and protect that Red are seriously thinking "it was worth our time to loot those lousy mats".
Why would somebody PK for mats instead of gathering mats?
PKing is for people that want to take revenge. And they are willing to risk losing their gear for revenge. There is no benefit in PKing other than area control. And that requires organization.
If you want to win, get organized.
Since gear loss will require more than one PvP kill, there is profit to make.
Even if not, if the profit that can be made is worth more than the cost of the expected loss (actual loss/chance of losing), then there is still profit to make.
That said, if you are too scared of making 100 profit just because one time out of 100 you could lose something that would cost you 500 to replace, then have at it, I guess.
On the other hand, I'll take those odds, and perform that action that 100 times, to make that 10,000 profit, and I really won't care about that 500 loss that happened one time in all of that.
The OP never once said or suggested that BEING corrupt will be profitable. This player would want to rid themselves of their corruption as soon as they can.
However, the act of gaining that corruption is beneficial to that player, and Steven has said that he expects players to sometimes consider gaining corruption for profit to be worth it.
If it is something that is worth it, it is something that players can seek out opportunities for.
So, in short, according to Steven, going corrupt for profit is viable, remaining corrupt permanently as a playstyle is not viable.
Too much effort to travel for what might be a failed encounter.. so really limited to top PvP`ers who might be in the vicinity or bored and up for a roam!
With potentially a widely varying time for the BH to reach a corrupt player, there will be a wider buffer of risk to contend with, one that many will be prepared to take on I should think
Perhaps.
perhaps not.
Fact remains, there is scope and scale for people to make money from killing others and taking their stuff.
Taking their stuff is the slowest way of making money from what this game offers.
Have you looked at how the gathering spawns will be based off Star Wars Galaxies?
Sometimes it absolutely could be. But it won't always be.
If you happen to come across someone you know has just spent a good amount of time harvesting and you know you can best them in a fight, and know you have a reasonable means of working off any corruption, attacking them is absolutely the most profitable thing you can do in that moment. If they have a mule out, all the more profit for you (mules are basically just big arrows pointing you out as a valuable target to attack).
That is kind of what the entire premise of the thread is, tbh.
"Well, I have a solution from a while ago. My solution is that the items that you would have dropped had you died while corrupt, become corrupt as well."
In your original post, you don't state the items dropped from the victem that was PKed becomes "blood-stained", but the items dropped from the PK player that looted the victim's items. Therefore it wouldn't deal with a non-corrupted friend/group looting the dead PKed victims body.
Even considering the "blood-stained system" in regards to dropped gear, it still doesn't deal with the loophole of players or a group protecting a corrupted player in his way to a "cleansing shrine".
They should be able to help their corrupted friend but they must have the risk of being corrupted themselves in order to do so, considering risk vs reward what would the risk of a group of non-corrupted players protecting a corrupted player be?
Aren't we all sinners?
Cleansing shrine isn't a thing. You may be able to grind off corruption but for every kill you get, you increase your corruption as well as the amount of corruption you will get from your next kill.
Anyone defending a corrupted player is taking the same risk they would take attacking anyone else. By making themselves a combatant, anyone can kill them without penalty. They would also get corruption for killing any noncombatants who are free to attack the corrupted player.
What social organization do you think those top pvpers in the vicinity are going to take?
Yes, we don't know everything but if you like pvp, i'm not sure why you wouldn't go BH so you can easily hunt down corrupted players who pop up around you.
I know it isn't, but it's part of Goalid's "Solution to loopholes" though "bloodstained system" in his original post that i was refering to.
Nope, it definitely isn't the SAME risk at all.
Dying as a combatant player is far less detrimental than dying as a corrupted player, and they can play around killing non-combatant players by only healing/buffing the corrupted player or CCing the non-combatent enemies, they can even body block the non-combatent skills aiming for the corrupted player, forcing them into combatant state.
Aren't we all sinners?
Many things in the above statement are just a gross misunderstanding of the flagging system as explained repeatedly. The first thing is correct. Dying as combatant is far less detrimental. But the second part does not happen. Combatants cannot heal corrupted players from last info given. While targeting a CC ability on a non combatant would work, and could be seen as a way to "help" someone corrupted. Body blocking to "force flag" on a non combatant by "running through their aoe blast" has already been debunked no less than 3 times in previous answers given by Intrepid. The corruption system will be tested extensively later down the line and tightened up, loopholes closed, and will come to resemble what they want for it to be. Rampant REEE and speculation of "I think it will be this way because I want it to be this way..." does not help.
Please, i would like to ask you to point for me where i refered to "running through their aoe blast"
Also you said "Many things in the above statement are just a gross misunderstanding"
Sadly you only pointed a single one through bad interpretation of what i wrote.
Aren't we all sinners?
This. This does not happen.
You might be one of those corrupted players if you're a top PvPer.
And the cleansing shrine thing was a solution I had to a problem of avoiding the costs of corruption to your items, by having a friend kill you to protect your gear from dropping or having someone else pick up the materials of a player you killed.
My only worry with giving the whole group corruption is that now the cost is a crazy amount for one PK. I think although corruption does deal with griefing, there should still be an amount of player driven solutions to problems like a group of 8 protecting a corrupted player. I'd hope bounty hunters could organize to take out groups like that. The blood-stained solution isn't a solution to zerging, I hope the game mechanics we already have are enough to battle zergs.
In the OP, I considered that the corrupted player would be the one to pick up the materials of a player they had slain. In reality, it'll probably go like you and others had stated, which is they'll have their friends pick up the mats of a slain player. Or in your solution of only having the PKer or victim be able to pick up those mats, a corrupted player will still pick up the mats but will have one of his allies kill him to steal the mats. I think there's also an issue of, if the mats are valuable, the victim wouldn't be returning to risk more materials in the first place.
Yea, i probably will be from time to time and others will hunt me down.
You aren't avoiding the cost if you let your friend kill you as you still have to grind back the negative exp. It's hard to tell how much of an issue this is since there is still a cost and effort required to coordinate.
That said, i do like the idea of altering the system so it's harder hide loot with the current system but i don't think it needs to come with corruption and think it should be for all looted items. The way i imagined it was any item(resources, corrupt gear, etc) that is dropped by a player gets flagged as "vulnerable" or whatever. If you have a vulnerable item in your inventory, you are flagged as a combatant and if killed, you drop all vulnerable items in addition to the normal penalty. Items would lose their vulnerable status once they are banked or ran through some simple process at a node or freehold.
The way i see it, this covers any instance where someone is trying to sneak away with someone else items since it will make you attackable in all cases.
Your vulnerable system is what I was trying to describe for my blood-stained system, so there we're in complete agreement.
My only problem with the purification process being at a freehold, is that I think it would be easy to set up a PK spot near your freehold, which you could place anywhere you want really. Whereas the "shrines" are more fixed locations. The node is a good option too, but I was thinking node NPCs would be hostile so the node itself wouldn't be a good spot.
I think loopholes are avoiding costs. So, there are multiple costs to corruption, one of them being the potential to drop gear, and you might fail to keep the mats you stole. So while it is true in the loophole described you'll still have XP debt and item degredation, you're avoiding other costs.
Or is it an intended benefit for playing the game with friends? It's not like doing this is without risk.
And also, even if this were considered a loophole, are the suggestions here really solving things? Or are they just increasing it so you need to be with 20 friends instead of 2 in order to take advantage of this loophole.
I don't believe I've ever heard Steven say, "and a way we intend players to avoid some of the costs of the corruption system is to group up with your friends". So no, I don't think that's intended. I also would challenge that there is much risk in the loopholes. The risk is mostly evaded if you kill a friend or have someone else pick up a slain player's mats.
I don't consider fighting off bounty hunters with a large zerg to be a loophole since bounty hunters can also always team up against zergs. The bounty hunter's potential reward is much larger now as well. The intention is to have bounty hunters fight off large zergs of corrupted players if they form, not for corrupted players to always have a way to save their ill-gotten gains from bounty hunters.
They haven't said it is intended, but they have talked about it as something that they know could happen.
That is the reason why death while corrupt gives 4 times the penalty. It means that sure, you can work around the small chance of an item loss with a low level of corruption, but you then have more work to put in to work off the death penalty than you would if you just worked off the corruption.
On the other hand, if you have a large amount of corruption, being killed by friends then opens you up to being isolated from them while corrupt - this is why there is a random respawn with corrupt deaths.
Basically, what I am saying is that Intrepid have already considered that people could do what has been suggested, and have already shaped the corruption penalties accordingly.