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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.
Comments
Green 1 attacks Green 2 = becomes Purple 1
Purple 1 harasses Green 2 = becomes Red 1
My original post changed the middle tree. The interaction Purples are allowed to have. Didn't change green's.
If the goal is to not force PvE'ers into PvP, that definitely is the same. The other side of the coin is to allow PvP'ers into PvP. That function necessarily doesn't change, but a lot of people are saying that it still gets affected.
If both parties want to compete for their shared objective, I believe that doesn't change from what we've discussed. They still get to fight: Green gets hit by Purple, Green says hell no, you don't get to share this shit with me, heals up, they both turn purple and fight.
What definitely does change is the combat interaction and the advantages. Purple has to be wary of how they interact with Green because Green has full control to start the full PvP encounter now. I essentially added a limiter to how many interactions Purple can have with Green. It was arbitrarily set to 1 which was a big problem with how everyone saw it. Not necessarily my point, but it does heighten the same combat interaction outcome.
I made the assumption that you were just looking at it from the perspective where greens, purples and reds all existed, without taking in to account how each state originates.
Honestly, that changes my reaction to your suggestion from being logistically impossible, to being asinine.
In Ashes, PvP is a fact of life. People that are not OK with that should not be playing the game (this is coming from the biggest PvE fanatic on these forums - just ask anyone). If you play Ashes, you WILL be forced in to PvP when you would rather do other things - that is what the game is literally about.
Your suggestion cuts down one of the fundamentals of PvP - which is that of first strike. If you get the jump on your opponent, you are more likely to win. With your suggestion, you kind of have to attack once and wait for them to respond - it essentially turns open world PvP in to dueling.
Hard no.
Lol, PvP is a fact of life is a funny statement. Yes this game is meant to incorporate both the PvP and PvE world. Steven definitely wants player friction even for a PvE player, because even a PvE player isn't against that. They're against games that end just up being gankboxes. Something Steven said he wanted to avoid.
The current system doesn't allow you to kill green players without gaining corruption. It becomes a duel in either system.
The game RIGHT NOW, doesn't want you to kill greens without consequences. That hasn't changed.
If it is harassment you are trying to avoid, then by all means, talk about harassment. However, you are talking about someone PvE'ing being attacked by another player. That isn't harassment, that is gameplay.
A player should need to die in order to inflict corruption on to another player. That is the doorway to when it is appropriate for corruption to be inflicted. Any action in which the player does not die is not significant enough to warrant corruption - which is a much more severe penalty than a simple PvP death.
It's fine to believe the current system offers better outcomes. We should be discussing why that's the case.
Also, just to be clear, I'm not trying to change the game philosophy. I'm theorizing how its implementation may be improved. I'm trying to use this forum as a means to exercise my understanding of the concepts. No one is demanding something should be changed or accusing something not being good enough. Everyone on the internet is just so hot and bothered, it gets distracting.
For reference:
"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."
- Steven Sharif
The corruption system absolutely plays to make that an unlikely scenario as it stands now.
Exactly what scenario is it you see happening - that is griefing and not just gameplay - that needs to be avoided?
The key thing to keep in mind is that no corruption should be handed out to any player unless another player has died. That is the threshold for when corruption is viable to hand out.
In the absence of player death, there is no activity that warrants corruption.
Both players here have options for what they can do, there is no need to alter a system for anything.
If the situation does get to the point where it is out of control, all Intrepid need to do is make it so that you gain corruption if you are the last player to attack someone, and they die within a specific amount of time (8 - 10 seconds).
This is a significantly better solution to your perceived problem here, should it turn out to be a problem. It also doesn't interfere with players initiating actual PvP.
might be a blurred line, but idk if the intention of the game would want PvP'ers to dictate so many actions of PvE'er can do. I just think it'd be weird for a PvP'er to constantly interrupt and take shit because they can. But that may not even be the case in testing.
You made a solution that fits in my overall point. Your solution was a condition triggered before death, which is exactly what my solution changed. And of course there will be holes in that too. With that specific variable set, I could be a green, go to a strong mob and purposely die, to let the purple player gain corruption.
We're just theory crafting here.
But wait! Steven went even further. He understood one of the biggest problems with L2's system. It was the one-off PK maniacs who'd run around almost naked, but due to very short ttk and to the PKer's genocidal tendencies - all the newbies and weak players would suffer, with barely any repercussion for the PKer. And to stop that Steven implemented the stat dampening mechanic, where a player can't go killing dozens of people if they want to. Hell, they'll probably won't be able to kill more than one lowbie, because the amount of corruption on them would be too big. Steven also decided to go for a much longer ttk, which also helps with that.
And all of that was done in the context of "people can attack people as much as they want, but they shouldn't kill each other as much as they want". You want to push someone away from a location? Attack them till the leave. That is an intended mechanic under this system. If your target knows that they're strong, they won't let you attack them more than once. But if it's a weak target, they'll leave even before you manage to bring them to low health.
PvErs are not the be-all and end-all of this game. But in order to balance out the scales of power, there's the corruption system that stops PvPers from becoming be-all and end-all. But you can still attack other people. Under your system, you can't.
You attack a Non-Combatant and become a Combatant. The Non-Combatant ignores the attack and does not fight back.
How do you know that your attack will negate the ability to Gather?
Alacrite's suggestion is only applicable to "attack harassment" of green players. In the current system we can hit other players as much as we like, up until we kill them. Alacrite considers that harassment so they suggest giving people corruption on some successive hit instead of on death of your target.
For some reason, a Combatant has to wait to become a Non-Combatant before attacking a Non-Combatant.
Because if a Combatant attacks a Non-Combatant, they become Corrupt.
I think you should just wait to see how well the dev version of Corruption works.
Then offer suggestions for how to tweak it, if it actually needs tweaking.
I'm pretty sure the devs already are aware of your expected "abuse" tactic since Steven says Corruption is similar to L2 Karma - but Corruption penalties are a bit harsher than Karma.
Well first, my system's base design change is adding a condition that triggers corruption before death. That's the main point. The variable I said was arbitrary. I thought I was going to have a more casual open discussion with this post (which is why it was so casually titled) but people are super obsessed with the one/two attack condition. Which I'll take fault for, because I should be more better in my communication.
I actually didn't know THAT was the amount of control PvP is supposed to have over the environment. Still haven't found a quote to confirm it, but I'll trust that you're right just because you're a L2 guy much like Steven.
If PvP'ers really can just bully people out of everything and that's the intention, that's fine. I do find that kind of crazy (doesn't change my interest in the game cuz i'm a PvPer) because I feel like you can reach the same level of reward of killing the player without actually killing them. Definitely dependent on the personality and stats of the target, but I feel like that becomes the case. And if you can reap the same reward without killing, I do think that should be alarming for how the system functions as a whole
I can totally understand the disagreement with the current system, but saying "but idk if the intention of the game would want PvP'ers to dictate so many actions of PvE'er can do. I just think it'd be weird for a PvP'er to constantly interrupt and take shit because they can" is a bit presumptuous imo, when the mechanic in question has a long history instead of something completely new and made up on the spot.
u should stop obsessing over that one variable. the single attack factor has really distracted the conversation at this point. You should understand the purpose of my system by now if you're this deep into it.
Also, no where in my post was i like "OMG THIS NEEDS TO CHANGE. I SEE A BIG FLAW HERE AND ITS GAME BREAKING". You people are seriously just projecting with all this misreading my tones completely.
I feel like I'm going crazy here. This was not a proposed change. I thought of this 5 seconds before posting it. It's completely casual. I'm not a decision maker nor am I trying to be one here.
I'm not saying that you're doing the same thing, but the overall attitude towards suggested changes, to systems that people haven't even tested properly, usually gets pretty bad.
On top of that, I'm super overprotective of the PvP system in Ashes because I'm a Lineage 2 simp and with it being one of Steven's inspirations (for exactly its pvp system) I get way more defensive when it comes to suggesting changes to that system. And I do that because I know for sure that the system works just fine, that people don't just die left and right and that Steven has already added the main change to it that prevents genocides.
Yeah that makes a lot of sense. Pretty reasonable. I'm not new to the game, but new to the forums as my passion for other games have died down. I also hate the know-it-alls who think they know better than the devs because they sweat 6 hours at the game while being terrible at it.
Never at any moment did I think the system was bad. I've never designed a system like this, I have no right to shit on it. I'm excited for the game and have faith in its success just as much as anyone. I just happen to want friends to play other mmos who complete fear the gankbox potential, which I believe is a bias that was bred into them by bad systems.
I experience your tone as neutral - until you resort to all caps.
It's just a discussion. No reason to feel defensive.
I don't understand the purpose of your system.
The dev system seems workable. In theory. I'm waiting to test it.
Your system does not seem workable, so I'm trying to understand how it could possibly work.
Since I don't believe your system is workable and you haven't really been able to tweak it very well - I said we should just test the dev design and then try to tweak that, if necessary.
I think this was a pretty good topic to posit.
In L2 you had no factions. But you did have clans (guilds). And every player was free to join or leave any of the clans on the server at any time (that is if the clan accepts them of course). And then you'd have guild wars which would in fact be a pvp ffa for either side (if both sides accepted the war declaration). But if a player felt like their gameplay has now become worse because of said war, they could either complain to their guild leader or just leave the guild and, with it, the war.
If the guild leader received enough complains about their members getting destroyed in the open world, any good leader would just exit the war and now the ex-enemies would have to go red if they wanted to kill that guild's members. Leaving the war would bring it's own social consequences, but that's a discussion for another day.
Some guild leaders would just create a sub-guild that wouldn't participate in the war (btw any guild could have wars with pretty much any and all guilds on the server) and just move all the displeased people to it. And once those people felt strong enough to come back to pvp - they'd join the main stack.
And Steven decided to go for a similar setup, except from my understanding of guild wars in Ashes it won't even be a pvp ffa, so even here it's more casual-friendly than L2. And that is exactly why I have a very strong belief in his vision. W/o gimping the pvp system completely, he still managed to implement the changes that are very beneficial to the casual players who'd suffer the most from said pvp system. And until proven completely otherwise, I decided to believe that his changes are enough for most people to enjoy the game.
I'll gladly be proven wrong once the proper testing begins, but if I am, I myself will probably not play the game if it turns to a no-owpvp mmo. And I'm fine with that outcome too.
It's a fair point, @NiKr . There are countless threads (and drama) over the past years involving the corruption system as it's documented (none of us have actually played it yet) - and that's driven the conversation to basically stiffen into more pointed responses, including my own.
For what it's worth @Alacrite, I could have given you more benefit than doubt in my initial reaction.
lol yeah sorry. I wasn't trying to yell at you at least. Just frustrated saying the same stuff to several different people. live and learn, i'll post stuff better.
my purpose was to cover any holes the corruption may have had. Not trying to change the game philosophy or what any specific system is intending to do. In my head, corruption punishes griefers. There's a lore and other elements to it as well I know. So I thought, what if griefers did the griefing without killing you.
I think what this discussion would bubble down to is, if there are ways for people to reap the rewards of "corruptive behavior" without obtaining corruption, how do we patch those? This is gonna be only TRULY found out in testing. I was just reading the wiki on the flagging system and had a thought I wanted to share and learn from, basically.
that said, if there are issues. it'll be interesting to see how the devs tackle it.
I think one of my frustrations on PvP-optional servers was the lazy RP of "You're a Dwarf! Dwarves killed my parents. Now all Dwarves are KoS!"
Especially frustrating when there is a friendly Dwarf in enemy territory and others run by and kill the Dwarf - but you can't do anything to protect the friendly Dwarf due to Faction restrictions.
Without Factions, how do we know that the people Gathering aren't doing so to help our Node?
Seems as though we can expect at least a bit of RP/discussion to ensure that you're not attacking an ally, rather than simple-minded KoS.
oh wth. I haven't read about the guilds yet. That's nuts. There's so much that hasn't been revealed yet, it's actually insane. love this idea tho.
And absolutely, factions probably did ruin a lot of the pvp perception. I'm definitely very excited to see how the organic nature of factions will turn out. Defending my guildies/friends is a fun scenario that I hope to play out. Establishing territory, and finding out which other guilds/nodes are allies or enemies.
I do hope they manage to hold people's attention. Every MMO will have a dip after the momentum. How big that dip is, idk. I think that's why I theorize on how people may get the wrong first impression of the game.
Not even a worry. Its the internet and everyone is on something. I bite back pretty easily and from there, it's fair game. I'd probably do the same to some newcomer talking about changes to a core system of a game I've been following for years. Wasn't even a big deal. I still would've played ur games, and just kept this memory as a funny bit.