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
The biggest problem is: How does a Green Player flag Purple against a Red? If the Green Player fights back, they stay Green, and if they die, they lose the bigger portion of goodies, even though they fought back.
No, the difference is you think that continuing to kill greens trying to satisfy revenge is not a criminal activity.
I think it is, and deserves punishment.
Ok now I think I am at the point where I can explain to you why greens have a business there.
If you don't have the incentive to run, you will continue to attract more people to your area. This indirectly means that you have now created a situation in which wherever you go, you can 'bully' people who are doing PvE into taking their hunting grounds, not because YOU are that meaningful of an opponent, but because of all the people who you will attract to the area, probably kill you, and then start taking all the mobs of the PvEr because they are toughest in town and clear mobs faster. They don't even need to kill greens to have this 'bully effect'.
What this means in the bigger scope of things is that Reds now actually have reasons to team up with other reds to congregate in the same hunting grounds to lower the population in the area. And as a fellow red they have incentive to help you kill bounty hunters. So you get these pseudo war zones as the default meta for efficency in PvE. If you create an incentive for the Red to run by 'threat of being attacked by the PvEr's this prevents this scenario from happening while increasing the difficulty challenge for the bounty hunters (because chasing a red is more involved time wise than targeting a stationary one.)
Perhaps it could work differently against the same green that I initially killed and became corrupted for, and he came back for revenge, but others? Nah, that's pure self-defense, certainly not a criminal activity, just like defending against bounty hunters and combatants isn't. Consentual PvP is not a crime in AoC, killing a green that doesn't defend themselves is.
Yeah sure, I can see your point here.
It's true the game could make it more forgiving but I'd prefer the game give greens extra space so they can learn to be comfortable PvP in their own time.
As a Red, you do not have the lawful right to defend yourself against a Green without breaking more laws.
That right ended when you became Red. The only lawful thing to do is run away, die to clear your corruption, or hide in a hole until the timer runs out. Welcome to the criminal class.
I 100% get what you are saying as you get stuck on a tread mill of gaining corruption if player density is high and they can easily find you around the areas you move to which effectively prevents you from playing the game unless you simply die to greens and risk losing more xp and gear.
Effectively it makes killing someone for loot pointless and the only time you will flag to kill someone is out of spite since most of the time you won't really gain anything from it.
I can understand why there is harsh penalties but in truth they are very very much up there and will need to be tested to gauge how fair it is and if it completely stops people from using the corrupted system together. As much as some people that want pve and never want to be ganked by someone this is a PvX game the devs will most likely dial it slightly in order to allow for more friction.
Any smart person hunting a red though will have one person be a BH and the rest being a swarm of greens so the corrupted will always be found and never be able to fight back unless they want to risk extreme corruption gain. Lowering all their stats and moving the dial to highly drop their equipped gear.
The issue with it being such an extreme system is there is no buffer one kill and you are the same as any other red. Though this may be what they want overall and they expect to have pvp more focused on node decs, and guild decs to fill that level of void of pvp. That way they can ensure things aren't going overboard but I don't know all their design plans with how they will paly out in game.
Either way its hard to judge without actually playing it with the systems working as intended, i can stick to my belief they want pvp in the game and it will be there is a very good amount. Some pvers might be surprised just like the ocean content but we will see.
This system works. It's less punishing than some others, but I didn't see enough of a flaw to consider it invalid. From what I understood, corruption isn't supposed to stop ganking, or even make gankers lives miserable, only to stop ganking sprees.
If a guy went red and killed someone (for a grudge, money, whatever), they'd go grind it off. To all the greens in the area, the Red would just effectively 'act like a Purple' unless they were trying to gank more people. The system would discourage 'ganking more people' because it'd increase the time required to burn it off, and therefore the risk of eating those rough corrupted death penalties.
The system for diminishing stats as you got really red seemed to go along with this.
From there, all that would be required to achieve the goal of "discouraging ganking sprees while keeping ganking as a normal part of the game", would be to tune those sliders. (How much stuff you drop, and how long corruption lasts per kill.)
I was surprised to see Reds aren't allowed to defend themselves against Greens, to the point of wondering if it was a mistake on the chart, because it's a major change to the system that discourages ganking harder, and in a differently way, than I thought the system had intended. It does bring a "having to live as an outlaw" style gameplay, that I can totally see as intended, though.
You can't really argue with "if there's a ton of greens in the area when you gank someone, you should be ready to get hurt". I just found the "you should be ready to earn a ton more corruption" a bit surprising. It shifts the risk-reward balance significantly. It makes sense for serial gankers, maybe even for thieves, but it comes down pretty hard on the "I hate this guy in particular" crowd. I'll have to think more about the implications.
Agreed, Green should flag purple when fighting against red otherwise you take away the choice to reduce the Death Penalty from the green, which is a bad design.
It might be the intent of the system as they might want pvp focused more on guilds and nodes over ow ganking. Its not really like risk and reward but more purely a punishment thing.
If you are going to go corrupted you have to know the area you are going to do it in and the target. Is it far away from town (how long does it take me to work off corruption), Are you in a party with a group and some rare stuff drop you and your friends want and kill off the randoms and work off your corruption in the dungeon safely, Do you really hate someone and want to flag knowing you will lose more than them.
I think its more darker intimate moments you will see people use it mostly and out of anger and emotion. Perhaps more at the start of the game and less later on if it is a sure thing you most likely will die upon being corrupted.
Not to mention when you kill someone and go red is it equal value where one death will make you green again or it is multiple of losing 4* the xp and potential loot drops. How does that work over a period of time from corruption stacking from pk value. Will it be if you have done a certain amount of pk killing over your time on the game or the week suddenly you need to die 5* before you are green again and lose more than you could ever gain while never being able to defend yourself or you are just screwing your character and all your progress at that point.
Such things effectively like i said making it pointless to flag up unless it is for a very personal motivation where you know you are most likely going to lose more if you defend yourself.
So like i said before as well, their pvp to make it PvX will most likely be focused on nodes and guild wars and you won't see much flagging with corruption. Me playing BDO i saw reds once awhile but it was not common in the slightest, granted you had much more of a buffer on BDO and people were more prone to guild dec than use karma to go red.
I don't think they should flag purple TBH, but i feel they should have the choice which would be easy. You can hit red as normal without flagging and you can chose to flag and hit the red to go purple.
I feel the red should be able to defend themselves though, but without beign aware of their design goal plan for OW pvp and the percent they expect from corrupted players, node wars, and guild wars it is hard to judge if red should b left to die or not.
You have to take into consideration the percent you want of PvP (this is just an example not really meant to be a guess)
Corrupted system pvp - 10%
Guild wars pvp - 55%
Nodes PvP - 35%
So having a rough estimate on the amount of pvp you expect balanced between the different sources you will want to have stronger systems in play to push for it and also reduce types of pvp content. So if there was a goal to have the total corrupted pvp be very small you want want to make it not worth it to really partake in it so players aren't actively using it as a means to gain some progression or free kills. Then in turn relying more so on the other systems for their pvp.
edit*
You also can have a percent for how often you expect the average pvp experience to be with other content (though different classes of players would have their own numbers as a adventure wouldn't be the same as someone more focused on crafting and a pve experience).
So if you expect pvp to happen around 40% of the time you would have pve content at 40%-50% and with amount of corrupted pvp being a even smaller value.
They have the choice to do that built in already. They can just flag as bounty hunter instead. No need to remove this part of the game design to solve this specific problem as far as I can tell.
Indeed, we discussed this Non-Combatant vs Corrupted and Combatant (which includes Bounty Hunters) vs Corrupted earlier quite a bit, where it's more beneficial to go against Corrupted as a Non-Combatant. This system is not thought through well enough at the moment.
But of course the usual response is "red bad, don't be red, red need max punishment even for not doing bad things, because they're red, blabla I'm PvE brain and can't comprehend that system is designed in a weird way, but since it punishes red it means it's very good, red bad btw".
They should automatically be flagged as bounty hunters or combatants at least then, because that's precisely what they're doing attacking a corrupted: bounty hunting / engaging in combat.
@JustVine afaik, you can't just flag as an BH without returning to a Node, which helps them very little when a red ganks them
I think you missed a post of mine above that explains why greens have a business in attacking you/why Reds need an incentive to run/disperse from an area.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/comment/362101/#Comment_362101
Maybe that's the part of the system that should change then.
All things being equal, yes - I would agree with you. But things are not equal in the relationship between a Green and a Red.
Also, @Mag7spy
You understand we are explaining Steven's system, right? From what I hear, Steven wasn't exactly a carebear in L2 or Archage.
Greens killing Corrupted helps the murderers.
Killing monsters does not flag people as Combatants and Corrupted are treated like monsters. Monsters don't have rights.
I see some people saying he is wrong and his concerns are not warranted and there should be more punishments or players have to deal with it thinking they will never be a red player themselves.
Less bias more natural, and i have never mentioned Steven's mind set in my post. I can only mention the view some people are giving me that are talking in the thread.
You're however basing it on the Corrupted's lack of incentive to run. This is not the case. The Corrupted is always incentivized to avoid people if their intent is to work off their corruption. The issue is that you shouldn't be forced to run in case you're being attacked and feel you can win. It's just a weird mechanic "I can't fight back even if I'm stronger, gotta run" which doesn't add anything to the game. It's also pretty speculative of how many actually people will be attracted to the area and how it will affect the PvEers in the vicinity, so I don't really have much to say here.
Marking them as Combatants, at least for the Corrupted in question and not necessarily for everybody else around (I believe that's precisely how it works for Bounty Hunters, for non-Corrupted they should appear green), is the easiest solution that works: they desire to engage in PvP therefore they're combatants, and in case of death they only receive combatant level of penalty.
I'd rather work it off in a way that doesn't involve me potentially dropping a gear piece, thank you. And I should be allowed to do so as long as I'm not in anybody's way doing criminal activity.
Also you comparing a player to an NPC, that's the most PvE brain thing ever
Ok well NOW you and I are actually disagreeing on a fundamental design principle: 'Reds shouldn't be incentivized to run!' vs 'PvE get's to disrupted and Reds become incentivized to team up if they are not' which leads to two very different games. I think you and I can agree to disagree on that. The fact that you can't see why it does add something to the game is due to that design philosophy difference so I feel no need for you to justify to me why you think that and vice versa.
GG's as we say in the fighting game community.
It's a citizen's arrest. If you kill someone, and go corrupt and I see you, and as a green wish to stop you and punish you for killing someone, then you killing me, is still going to be under the umbrella of: "you're a criminal who just killed someone".
I've never seen a (fair and just) citizen killed during a citizen's arrest that the murderer didn't get convicted for. There's no: It was self defense.
This is a great analogy - where does it fall apart for you, @hleV ?
EDIT: ya beat me
If we are going to use real world as our baseline you need to figure out they murdered someone to begin with, bring proof and such and give a trial. Else we would have a ton of people that have murdered others killed already which isn't the case.
It can be compared to that. Because even in our world, if you try to stop a criminal, you are accepting the idea that you could get hurt or killed.
The good samaritan getting killed doesn't exonerate the killer just because the now defunct person wasn't a cop.
If you don't want to get attacked by greens for your crime: run away.
After all, they don't flag as combatants if they attack you. Meaning they also incur the risk of losing far more XP and materials if they die to you (non combatants experience increased death penalties). There's a risk for them as well.
If you lose: well tough shit, shouldn't have killed someone non consensually. You can't now complaint about consent. It'd be hypocritical.
If you win: you've now earned a bit more corruption, but also more materials from their death.