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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.
Corruption And Bounty Abusing
Julixim
Member, Alpha Two
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
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
0
Comments
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Does this work? If you're in it for the LOLs, and are just trying to minimize the consequences of corruption?
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.
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..
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.
Obviously there's way more variables in play, but I'd definitely keep "respawn-return" timers in my head whenever I'm farming smth. 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.
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.
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.
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.
Good point actually. I like it.