Corruption And Bounty Abusing

Julixim

Dear AoC,
i just wanted to annotate that the entire open world pvp system can only work if bounties are not abusable.
E.g.: 2 Friends -> 1 kills innocents and gets corrupted -> the other kills him and gets the bounty and so on.
Many players (sadly there is always some scum trying to abuse non intended "buggs") will try to find a way to abuse that bounty system by applying tactics as already shown.
How will you provide security and can you promise to figure such players out and ban them instantly?

Otherwise this could lead to very toxic behavior in the entire community (like: if he abuses it, i will abuse it as well)
and pve-players will be scared off and leave the game at worst.

Sincerely

Julixim

Elder

It's my understanding that the rewards for bounty hunting are the potential drops you would receive from hunting corrupted players. This wouldn't be abusable as you'd essentially be pointlessly trading your materials and equipment amongst your friends accounts.

Bounty hunting gives you a pathfinding ability to track corrupted players while flagging you as a combatant towards them. Corrupted players are unable to trade or use warehouses, so there's a consistent risk of losing your equipment and materials when having gained corruption.

From the corrupted players perspective, they won't gain any further corruption or suffer any stat dampening while defending themselves from bounty hunters. Corrupted players are able to reduce their corruption by either grinding XP or dying. Grinding XP will most likely provide the corrupted player with dropped materials, further increasing the potential reward that a bounty hunter might receive from successfully killing them. Dying may not be the favourable option for corrupted players as they'll gain 4x the normal XP debt from death.

PenguinPaladin

I would also like there to be no to little added reward for bounty hunting. Thats why titles, being the reward makes the most sence to me

Nerror

It's going to be possible to game the system no matter what I think. A couple of friends using alts to gank/be ganked, then logging over to a main BH to kill the corrupted alt. Repeat ad nauseum. Sure you can add systems to mitigate that, but unless they are draconian to a point where it might hurt regular gameplay, I am sure they can still be gamed.

So I also agree with @PenguinPaladin that BH rewards should be small. Like a title. Maybe a small cosmetic item, like handcuffs you can hang from the belt.

bloodprophet

Corrupted players will also respawn at a random near by respawn point not necessarily the closest. If they have enough corruption the first death does not clear it all off they could very well be kill by some random player, losing more resources and again respawning at another random place.

tautau

I hope that the Bounty Hunters will gain significant rewards upon killing a corrupted player.

They will likely get dropped mats. They stand a decent chance of getting dropped gear, all of which is good. I also predict (without particular evidence) that the Bounty Hunter profession will have various quests to do in order to advance in profession rank and that these quests will often require a certain number of kills of corrupted players.

Given that being a higher ranked Bounty Hunter is going to be a pretty cool thing, I anticipate that there will be lots of Bounter Hunters looking for corrupt players, so thinking that your 'pals' will be the one who kill you might be a bit optimistic.

Mag7spy

Something i thought of as well, just have your friend kill you and pick up the gear and trade it back to you later once the corruption is gone.

Elder

Mag7spy wrote: »

Something i thought of as well, just have your friend kill you and pick up the gear and trade it back to you later once the corruption is gone.

You'll experience a large XP debt from dying and will most likely have to die multiple times to remove all your corruption.

Mag7spy

Elder wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Something i thought of as well, just have your friend kill you and pick up the gear and trade it back to you later once the corruption is gone.

You'll experience a large XP debt from dying and will most likely have to die multiple times to remove all your corruption.

If you feel you are going to die its better to die to a friend than a random.

Elder

Mag7spy wrote: »

Elder wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Something i thought of as well, just have your friend kill you and pick up the gear and trade it back to you later once the corruption is gone.

You'll experience a large XP debt from dying and will most likely have to die multiple times to remove all your corruption.

If you feel you are going to die its better to die to a friend than a random.

That's true and a decent point.

Dygz

I don't know what the term "innocents" means.
People who don't fight back will remain Non-Combatants.
People who do fight back will become Combatants.
People who kill Non-Combatants will become Corrupted.

Ludullu

I don't think banning people for playing the game in the way the game allows them to is the right choice. Having a friend BH kill you (friend would have to be non-guild/ally/party/family) is not really that big of an abuse, because the death itself is the biggest penalty, rather than a death to a particular type of player.

And I agree with others who suggested having limited rewards for BHing. I'm gonna be a BH and I'd be completely fine if all I got as a reward was just a title or some cosmetic (on top of obvious reward of loot and good reputation).

Balanz

"Snow White" and her 7 Dwarves like to group and gank loners. They attack like a pack of Jackals bringing down a Lion. Only Snow White delivers the killing blows. Afterwards, Snow White is cleansed of corruption by her buddies.

Does this work? If you're in it for the LOLs, and are just trying to minimize the consequences of corruption?

Mag7spy

They are plenty of great ways to do it to limit having a friend kill you and hold onto the gear or have a easy way of reducing corruption. As Nikr said limit on who can get the reward or even loot it from your body, have it so if a BH is tracking you they have rights to the gear between the ones in the area and there is a set time they have to pick it up. It will reduce people trying to escape the system by lowering the reason to use a loop hole. As then it just becomes free gear for a BH to get the loot of the person with a marker on the map indicating they can pick it up as the person is dead.

Ludullu

Balanz wrote: »

"Snow White" and her 7 Dwarves like to group and gank loners. They attack like a pack of Jackals bringing down a Lion. Only Snow White delivers the killing blows. Afterwards, Snow White is cleansed of corruption by her buddies.

Does this work? If you're in it for the LOLs, and are just trying to minimize the consequences of corruption?

A much better strat would be to go through all 8 people PKing rather than raking up the PK count of a single player. But yes, that would work if all those people are not in a party/raid/guild/ally, cause if they are - they can't attack each other


Or at least that is my current assumption considering flagging rules. There's a chance that getting corruption might immediately throw you out of your party or disregard your guild affiliations, but I'd hope it doesn't cause that would open up the exact abuse that you mentioned.

But even outside of that interaction, the Red player will still suffer penalties and will have to remove their XP debt and repair their gear. So I'd say it's much better/easier to just help that Red player grind off their corruption than kill them.

Also, if there's a group of PKers running around somewhere, you just write about them in chat and anyone who wants some juicy loots will come for them. Have seen this and done so myself countless times in L2, and there you didn't even have the resource loot potential, only a slight chance of some gear.

PenguinPaladin

tautau wrote: »

I hope that the Bounty Hunters will gain significant rewards upon killing a corrupted player.

They will likely get dropped mats. They stand a decent chance of getting dropped gear, all of which is good. I also predict (without particular evidence) that the Bounty Hunter profession will have various quests to do in order to advance in profession rank and that these quests will often require a certain number of kills of corrupted players.

Given that being a higher ranked Bounty Hunter is going to be a pretty cool thing, I anticipate that there will be lots of Bounter Hunters looking for corrupt players, so thinking that your 'pals' will be the one who kill you might be a bit optimistic.

My problem with this is that curruption is simply a form of punishment. For killing players who dont fight back... making a fleshed out bounty hunting system, for souly rewarding players for hunting down reds... that if the curruption system works correctly, should be few and far between... doesnt make a lot of sense.


What bounty hunters should receive IMO. Dropped mats. And maybe a small amount of gold if the node mayor invests some taxes towards rewarding local bounty hunters. And titles.


To say "they stand a decent chance of getting dropped gear" implies people going red alot. Having increased levels of curruption, and just playing red frequently. Which should not be the case if curruption is punishing enough to stop ganking....

"Raising profession rank".... awarding higher teir titles, sure... but why make a system reliant on people being red, when being red is just a punishment....


Saying "thinking your pals wipl be the ones to kill you is optimistic".... i mean, how hard is it to be at a gathering spot, in a party. Watching a green gather stuff. Leaving your party, killing said green, and your party members just killing you afterwards. It doesnt take a bounty hunter to kill a red who intends to be killed by his friends. And why couldnt your party members just be active bounty hunters for this "significant reward" you hope for..

PenguinPaladin

The flagging system lock outs that nikr brought up does help alot with the abuse possibilities. If they do use it for preventing such abuse with the curruption system.

Ludullu

I think PKing equally-lvled people should be somewhat fine for the first ~5-7 kills. It should be grindoffable within 10-15 mins, which would give a narrow window for BHs. Higher PK count would add several minutes for each kill, while PK count decreasing should be a real expensive/long/hard activity so that people have to either go out of their way to keep PKing if they really want to. And if they don't do the quest and still keep PKing, then BHs will definitely get on their ass.

And I feel like Steven somewhat agrees with that kind of balancing and that is why he disconnected the artisan levels from the adventure ones. This way the people who just wanna chill and do some non-combat gameplay - they're free to do so w/o really fearing getting attacked left and right. But those who level up their combat ability should be more prepared to either fight back or properly play around with giving their attacker corruption.

But obviously we'll have to wait and see what kind of balancing they're planning and how that balancing will relate to BHs.

PenguinPaladin

NiKr wrote: »

I think PKing equally-lvled people should be somewhat fine for the first ~5-7 kills. It should be grindoffable within 10-15 mins, which would give a narrow window for BHs. Higher PK count would add several minutes for each kill, while PK count decreasing should be a real expensive/long/hard activity so that people have to either go out of their way to keep PKing if they really want to. And if they don't do the quest and still keep PKing, then BHs will definitely get on their ass.

And I feel like Steven somewhat agrees with that kind of balancing and that is why he disconnected the artisan levels from the adventure ones. This way the people who just wanna chill and do some non-combat gameplay - they're free to do so w/o really fearing getting attacked left and right. But those who level up their combat ability should be more prepared to either fight back or properly play around with giving their attacker corruption.

But obviously we'll have to wait and see what kind of balancing they're planning and how that balancing will relate to BHs.

I think if curruption is balanced in a way to prevent greifing. And incentives to fight back, like keeping more loot and lower death penalties, then people your level will fight back. Making going red nearly never happen. For people to get to late game in a pvp anytime system, they will obiously start to incorporate with the system... gathering in force, and fighting back to save their own time and effort.

But we will see, how much red players end up existing when it all gets tested.

Ludullu

PenguinPaladin wrote: »

I think if curruption is balanced in a way to prevent greifing. And incentives to fight back, like keeping more loot and lower death penalties, then people your level will fight back. Making going red nearly never happen. For people to get to late game in a pvp anytime system, they will obiously start to incorporate with the system... gathering in force, and fighting back to save their own time and effort.

That's why I mentioned proper play with giving your attacker corruption. If you can respawn and come back to the place where you were killed within the minimum time required for the PKer to grind off his corruption - you might want to give him that corruption and remove him from that place for a while, because he'll have to deal with XP debt or high gear decay.

Obviously there's way more variables in play, but I'd definitely keep "respawn-return" timers in my head whenever I'm farming smth.

Otr wrote: »

Resource gathering still requires to be able to defend against NPCs. Especially near rare resources.
And they'll never defend nodes against corruption.

That's where you just socialize and get friends/guildmates/nodemates with higher adventure lvls to help/protect you. And those same people will be defending the node from corruption events.

If Intrepid didn't account for this kind of interaction, I'd be very interested in hearing their reasoning for disconnecting artisan and adventure levels then. Cause to me it seems like what I described is the intended gameplay.

JustVine

Pursuing reds that don't drop items and gear means you are wasting your time economically speaking. There are a lot more activities that have equal risk for higher reward. So I expect it to be fairly unpopular, which is of course bad. The corruption system is going to be balanced around the bounty hunter system working. I think bounty hunters need a perk for performing this community service and key balance to corruption.

I suggest bounty hunters should have an increased proc chance on the corrupt target's gear dropping depending on their bounty hunter rank as an additional perk. This keeps the 'reward' solely based on the targets in question and creates a real possibility of the Red having to stop their activities for awhile (at least to go gear back up in their freehold.)

I understand your concern relative to bh exploitation. Not only does my suggested perk avoid most of the flaws giving a direct perk would bring, but it also does so without creating more systems that could potentially be exploited.

The biggest 'flaw' in this I can see is:
1. A corrupt person will be more likely to run from bounty hunters.... But that isn't really a problem as far as I see it. They already have lots of incentives to run in the first place, so this isn't going to add much to the chances of that happening. And them running away from bounty hunters is time they aren't spending murdering greens or washing off their corruption via grinding mobs (and therefore make it more likely they will die and be 'maximally' punished for going red.)
2. If friends 'grinding their bh rank together to make loot drops from reds be higher' is seen as a popular strategy, what really happens is there are quickly more bounty hunters with max rank. This means that there are now slightly increased threats to reds on the server who think it is now a slightly more economically viable activity to pursue. Which also means that the sort of people who try to level up bh this way are more at risk over time because now you might have bh's that are capable of yoinking their gear. So it technically acts as a self regulating deterrent that will naturally fizzle out even if there is a big burst of dead greens in the beginning.

Balanz

PenguinPaladin wrote: »

The flagging system lock outs that nikr brought up does help alot with the abuse possibilities. If they do use it for preventing such abuse with the curruption system.

Yes, I was unaware of those.

Now to spend even more time beating my head against the Wiki.

I am still interested in finding out how high level a loner a gang of eight lowbies can take down.

Ludullu

Balanz wrote: »

Yes, I was unaware of those.

Now to spend even more time beating my head against the Wiki.

Keep in mind, they are only talking about flagging rules so far. I'll probably ask a question about this for this upcoming stream to learn more.

I just supposed that it would be logical to apply those flagging rules to PKers too, but that is not a sure thing right now.

Nerror

JustVine wrote: »

2. If friends 'grinding their bh rank together to make loot drops from reds be higher' is seen as a popular strategy, what really happens is there are quickly more bounty hunters with max rank. This means that there are now slightly increased threats to reds on the server who think it is now a slightly more economically viable activity to pursue. Which also means that the sort of people who try to level up bh this way are more at risk over time because now you might have bh's that are capable of yoinking their gear. So it technically acts as a self regulating deterrent that will naturally fizzle out even if there is a big burst of dead greens in the beginning.

Good point actually. I like it.