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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.
Corrupted Player Killer (PK) and penalties : Could you please expand on that?
Myosotys
Member
Hey,
I would like to understand if the devs' goal is to reduce to nothing the wild PvP PK or if it should be an integral part of the game?
Seeing the penalties, it seems that there is strictly no interest in becoming a PK.
But to be sure to understand several things:
- Does a corrupted player have a chance to fight despite the penalties or are the penalties so heavy that it becomes impossible to PvP?
- Are the penalties cumulative after each "non-combatant" you kill?
- As an indication, how much time do you have to spend on XP to get rid of the corruption?
- Will the quest to reduce corruption be a one-time quest to suffer less corruption forever? Or is it a quest to be redone indefinitely each time you want to remove your corruption?
Now I ask myself the following question: Wouldn't it be better if this quest made the character irreversibly corrupted with a set of penalties that don't affect the player's stats (corrupted more easily visible in the Open World, loss of access to certain secure areas for example).
But touching the statistics is a punishment that can cut the desire to play. This is more like an IRL punishment than an IG punishment.
You will say to me: "So don't PK" but in this case I wonder why to offer the possibility of PK. I don't want to question the mechanics for the moment but first try to understand precisely how they work.
I would like to understand if the devs' goal is to reduce to nothing the wild PvP PK or if it should be an integral part of the game?
Seeing the penalties, it seems that there is strictly no interest in becoming a PK.
But to be sure to understand several things:
- Does a corrupted player have a chance to fight despite the penalties or are the penalties so heavy that it becomes impossible to PvP?
- Are the penalties cumulative after each "non-combatant" you kill?
- As an indication, how much time do you have to spend on XP to get rid of the corruption?
- Will the quest to reduce corruption be a one-time quest to suffer less corruption forever? Or is it a quest to be redone indefinitely each time you want to remove your corruption?
Now I ask myself the following question: Wouldn't it be better if this quest made the character irreversibly corrupted with a set of penalties that don't affect the player's stats (corrupted more easily visible in the Open World, loss of access to certain secure areas for example).
But touching the statistics is a punishment that can cut the desire to play. This is more like an IRL punishment than an IG punishment.
You will say to me: "So don't PK" but in this case I wonder why to offer the possibility of PK. I don't want to question the mechanics for the moment but first try to understand precisely how they work.
2
Comments
It’s an increased ineffectiveness as your corruption increases. If you kill 5 greens you’re going to be less effective than killing none, if you kill 20 greens, you’re not going to be able to stand toe-to-toe with an equivalent level/geared purple.
Yes.
Not sure, this is one of the main things we need to pound in A2 testing
I don’t know.
No. Corruption is a force toward oblivion, if you push to be fully corrupted it will result in your complete disintegration.
Well, if your ‘desire to play’ is based on being a murderhobo (which I tend to think you’re in this bucket), then yes. That’s exactly the intended outcome corruption has been designed to produce.
We don’t quite know ‘precisely how they work.’ That’s what we need to test - like A LOT - and it will be necessary for players across the murderhobo-carebear spectrum to pound that rock if we want corruption to be just right.
Re: ‘don’t PK’ - there are plenty of reasons to kill a green, from taking relatively more dropped resources, laying claim to mats, or whatever. What they are trying to curb is mass murder and griefing a single player.
They aren’t eliminating your choices to do these things, but they are adding consequences and thus risk to your choices. Just like life.
You want more money - you can keep your head down and climb the ladder in a profession, or you can rob banks, the law and consequences add risk, but you still have the choice.
So it is clearly an IRL punishment and not a rule of the game. This is exactly what I wanted to know, it is almost like a ban )
Is it any more of an url punishment (stat dampening from corruption) than attacking a player that doesnt want to fight you?
I mean, you are effectively forcing a punishment on to them, it is only fair that you gain a punishment yourself for doing so.
It you want PvP, go to areas and activities where people have already opted in. Sieges, the ocean, caravans etc. There is no shortage.
Yes, it’s curbing behavior, but it’s not like a ban. A ban is for unacceptable behavior. Being a murderhobo is still within the EULA, but that behavior has risks and consequences.
Robbing banks is illegal and will get you banned from society.
Adultery is legal but it has consequences for risky behavior.
That's a good point. Attacking a player who doesn't want to fight, killing him and then making him lose gear or ressources is an IRL punishment too.
The big difference is that the punishment is done by another player and not by an external decision.
That's why I opened this topic by asking myself about the degree of interventionism of the computer on the players' characters.
There are "In game" solutions to escape from a fight:
- Spells of entanglement (besides, if they are planned, will they be considered as an attack?)
- Sanctuary spell (for example 2 minutes without being able to receive damage but without being able to inflict it either).
- Temple recall spell
etc...
I'm just trying to understand the balance that will satisfy the 100% PvP pplayer (who wants to kill everything that moves) and the PvE player (who hate PvP) in an inclusive way. Those who fall between the two will certainly have their place.
Now when you choose to go red (it'll probably be difficult to accidentally go red), you should have good reason to putting yourself at risk.
I have played MMOs where PKing was so punishing that nobody ever did it, that was annoying.
I have also played MMOs where PKing had little to no punishment, those games usually turn into KoS simulators which is fine by me but a lot of people dislike.
Basically what Intrepid wants to achieve with the corruption system is to allow players to kill each other with added consequence/risk to doing it to prevent griefing, etc.
Does the corruption system work? I have a feeling it doesn't, but I won't ask for any changes before testing it myself. And I hope there are no more changes to it before Alpha 2.
I see what you did there. 🤗. Noaani’s point was from the Green’s perspective.
The only way you can lose gear is if you’re red, so your point above is from the red’s perspective, not the green’s. If you’re red, attacked (without wanting it), killed, and lose gear - that IS the punishment from the original thing you did to make you red.
IMO Reds are never victims.
Gaining corruption - and thus all penalties associated with it - are your own choice.
You cant blame the result of your choice on "external decisions".
If you have corruption, you risk losing gear. If you dont want to risk losing gear, dont gain corruption. Corruption can never be forced on to you, so corruption and its penalties are always your own fault.
Yes, I understand and I agree. The PK is punishing himselves by the fact he knows in advance that he will get punished by the rules of the game and not by another player. but I'm playing devil's advocate.
I just find that it limits the interraction between players. I think it would be potentially more fun if the person killed by a corrupted person is able to report the player's location to his guild for 2 hours (or less or more whatever) for example.
Or post a "wanted" sign in a city with the killer's location.
A Role Play penalty.
I'm not sure if I can make myself understood.
with a time to kill around 30 second, you would have enough time to see if the green fight back. if after 3 skills he just... ignore you and let you finish him, you can simpy stop... and lets be honest, killing a prey that don't try to defend itself is not interesting.
So, if the green remains mostly passiv, you get red but you remain the only able to decide this.
Else you are lvl 50 with big stuff, and one shotting a lvl 10. . . again i see no problem...
And if you kill one, the corruption is low, your character doesnt suddenly become trash. the more you get corruption the more it is from your own choice.
Why not forbidding simply to hit green ? because... there are many reason to take the risk to become red even with the risks,
It is a freedom offered, with a cost.
Its not. while there are some benefits in killing another player, even if they dont attack back,there are really no benefits to becoming corrupted, however the system isnt made to completely reduce pvping in the ow to 0. ill explain you why in a bit.
yes. the stat dampening only affects pvp, not pve. you can still cleanse your corruption at full strength in pve, and fight other players in pve. just because you are a bit weaker, doesnt mean you cant win. also, if you are fighting bounty hunters, you dont lose stats while you fight them and you dont get more corruption if you kill them.
yes. basically, the more corruption you have, the higher the stat loss in pvp. if you killed lower levels, you would gain more corruption than if you killed someone your level. and the more corruption you have, the higher your stats penalties.
we dont know for sure until alpha 2 and after it gets adjusted, but in l2 it would take about 1-2 mins or a couple of pulls to get rid of your karma(corruption) if you killed someone the same level as you and you were fighting mobs the same level as you. i suspect it will be very similar in ashes.
the quest is mostly to reduce your pk count. every time you kill a green player, your pk count goes up by 1, i believe you start dropping gear after 3, and the higher it is, the more corruption you will gain every time you gain corruption. so you want to do the quest in order to keep your pk count low in case you need to kill someone every now and then.
the system is perfect as it is. right now all it needs is some fine tunin in terms how much corruption you get per player, or lose per monster.
long story short, the stat dampening is a great solution for people who will go to low level areas with a high level alt and start killing lowbies for no reason, thats their idea of fun. after several kills, they wont be able to continue doing this since a lowbie will be able to kill them. also, since they will be in a low level area, it will be basically impossible for them to get rid of corruption by killing monsters or by dying (they get more corruption the lower the level of the player they kill) so basically they will have to delete that character if they want to use it again or spend several days dying and resurrecting over and over. hopefully intrepid wont let people delete corrupted characters
another reason is to prevent people for clearing out an area with a strong character, so that they can come back with a weak alt to farm, or people trying to take revenge with a high level character if you killed their low level alt on your low level char. it basically makes fights a bit more fair.
there are times where you will want to kill someone, for example a pve griefer, then you can weight risk vs reward. is it worth going red to kill this guy? can i cleanse my corruption fast in this area? is my pk count low enough so that i wont drop gear even if i die while corrupted? etc etc. the system will allow you to get a couple of kills here and there without suffering too much xD
Btw, the system doesn't automatically punish you. The players do. Those increased penalties will only apply if you die, and I'd hope that you don't just die to mobs so, most likely, your death would only come at the hands of other players.
That's exactly what the system is supposed to do. Kind of. More on that later.
You have these two competing philosophies. Risk vs Reward/competition over resources versus not wanting the game to be an endless slaughterfest. How do you reconcile these two philosophies?
It's hard, considering the most likely time that a player wants to remain a non combatant and not engage in pvp is exactly the same moment their inventory is filled with resources, or about to be filled with resources. So how do you let that player be killed without turning the game into a slaughterfest? You put limits on it.
The system limits it by risk of gear loss for corrupted players. But there are players who are extremely good. Extremely intelligent. There are players who are so good that they make millions of dollars a year playing video games. These types of players don't die as often. In the context of an mmo, they get rich in game to the point that even losing gear doesn't matter to them. The risk of gear loss is effective for most people though, but Intrepid wants a bit more control over the situation.
Enter stat dampening. This is Intrepid's hard limiter. This gives them very precise control over how often people kill each other, by making it get to a point where a corrupted player has killed so many people that his character is too weak to kill any more. Now that corrupted player has to clear his corruption and work off the xp debt. This is a time sink and thus limits the killing.
The "more on that later" part. You said you think it limits the interaction between players. The beauty of the system is that it does and doesn't. It limits corpse/spawn camping and griefing/bullying. But it doesn't limit pvp. There will be massive battles between combatants fighting over resources. Dozens, if not hundreds of purple players just going at it. This is all dependent on non combatants in fact being able to be killed. The moment it becomes too risky/punishing to even kill one non combatant, the whole system fails and collapses on itself. Everyone will just remain non combatant, pvp dies.
The system works, it's been proven in other games. And the system Intrepid is using is even a bit harsher than some previous versions of it. Defend it. There is a subset of players whose sole goal is to see this system destroyed. I understand your concerns, but this isn't a full loot/full pvp game. The system we have here though is going to create very exciting, very compelling and MEANINGFUL pvp. And it will need defending, people will seek to destroy it. Get your ass in the breach.
Sadly I have a feeling that the system will be destroyed, or at least fundamentally changed, if it hasn't already been
You're partially correct, @BaSkA13.
Just in the last couple of months we've found out two (2) game mechanics tilting the game in favor of PK players:
(a) sea and naval warfare are open PvP zones (no corruption), and
(b) open PvP zones after a successfully destroyed node ... equal to a number of days corresponding to the node level.
Bottom line, the OP is whining and worried about being "punished by the game" ... but shouldn't be. There will be plenty of PK opportunities.
My definition of it being destroyed would be it being either too lenient or too harsh on the corrupted. I'm guessing you're talking about the open sea change. I don't view that as destroying the corruption system that governs the rest of the game. We probably look at this differently though. I'm talking almost exclusively about open world pvp being destroyed when I talk about the corruption system. A well balanced corruption system is required for healthy OW pvp imo, and more specifically the meaningful, risk/reward OW pvp Intrepid has pitched.
Not trying to be dismissive of the sea change either though. If the open sea is lawless, and then they were to make world bosses and entire dungeons lawless too...yeah at a certain point it would begin to be like, ok what's the point of the corruption system again? I get your point, the less that the corruption system applies to, in a sense the less it matters overall.
But the open sea change, I know you disagree heh, but I view it as almost neccessary because of the way naval combat tends to work, and other reasons. And there's a difference between a corruption free ocean zone versus a corruption free land zone. Many of the bad effects of unrestricted pvp are mitigated by it being the ocean, as opposed to land, imo. I know others disagree though.
Or was faulty from the beginning.
While the corruption system seems ok for it's purpose, Steven inspired himself from more games including Eve Online and tries to force caravans behave like spaceships in that game.
But there you are forced to pass from a "node" to another through portals which are being observed and defended by the "citizens" of those nodes.
How can you make the caravans behave the same way on a planet surface where theoretically you can pass the borders at any point and you protect players and their mules with a corruption system?
Surround each node with mountains to prevent them to pass and make the roads near gates unsafe for mules?
He mentioned choke points often but how many they are and where are those placed?
The ocean forced PvP flagging system is meant to be one large choke point too.
Now with that high speed road system we got from the last AMA I have the feeling that Steven played X4 too and warps us along roads if we use them. I have no idea how that can work with the caravans.
This is the risk of trying to make a system too complicated. The devs will have a hard time imagining all the possible scenarios that players can use to bypass the system.
In the end, if the devs get surprised by unexpected mechanisms, they will have to improvise changes in a hurry. As a result, this will further increase the risk of making other mistakes and thus impact the image of the game and the player base.
I hope this will not be the case, but I base this on my sad experience with New World (most of you know the story).
As I understand it, Intrepid's goal is to make an open world PvP game without the toxic effects that can come with it. As Josh summarized it well, too much wild PvP with loots is harmful to the atmosphere of the game (toxicity).
But on the other hand, the lack of wild PvP can be deeply annoying.
For this reason I think it would be better to make PK life a nightmare but in another way (more RP)
Players like this exist, but they are so few and far between that it is almost a non-factor in the broad scheme of the current corruption system. I think this is perfect because it puts a target on the corrupted player's back, rather than limiting their character directly.
This is not a good idea IMO. The reason being that it should be the PLAYERS who have control over how often people kill each other. The more penalties that are artificially imposed by the system, the less agency players have to deal the own punishments. The act of PKing is highly anti-social behavior. It should be regulated from a social perspective.
I'm not sure if the current system will achieve this, but you're absolutely right about what the desire should be.
I think you're right that there are people out there that want the system to fail so they can exploit it. I agree that we should do everything we can to make sure we push towards a system the works, and expose the bad actors.
twitch.tv/riot2g00d
I'm sure you've seen quite a few "career PKers" that were mainly just dicks to lowbies for no real reason. Imo corruption-related stat dampening would fuck them over way more than it would any normal player who PKs once or twice every other week.
Penalties need to be system based. If it isn't system based, there isn't a penalty.
Well it's not my idea. I'm one of the most pro pvp people on this forum. You've put me in the position of having to argue from the carebear perspective lol. I'l be taking a shower after this. With soap too.
You do have at least a form of player agency with stat dampening. Get really good at playing your class, get your guild/group really good at team pvp, calling shots, focus firing, knowing when to push and retreat, and always wear your absolute best gear. Do all of that and you can go further down the corruption rabbit hole and resultant stat dampening before you have to worry about it as much, compared to the average player.
I know that's not really the spirit of what you're talking about. You're talking about the artificial and arbitrary nature of the penalty. You subscribe more to the notion of pvp problems, pvp solutions. So do I.
Taking a look at the list of corruption risks/penalties...
Cant trade or drop any item on your character while corrupted.
Can only deposit items into your freehold, if you even have one, while corrupted.
Chance to drop your weapons/armor/accessories, and probably 100% gatherables drop.
4X death penalties.
Can be attacked by anyone and they don't have to expose themselves as combatant to do so, minimal risk.
Stat dampening.
Bounty hunters who have some form of map/radar hacks to see where you are on the map.
I think that's everything, not 100% sure though. All in all, sounds pretty insane doesn't it. Like a checklist of how to keep the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse at bay. I think the next logical step on that list might be teams of assassins sent to kill you irl. Looking at most of those items, they are indeed arbitrary and artificial. Lore can be used to come up with reasons of why some of them are so, but we know it's ultimately all arbitrary and artificial regardless.
But like NiKr said, it depends on how some of the things on that list are tuned, namely the stat dampening and gear loss chance. How harsh are they with the first kill, and how quickly and harshly do they scale upwards with each subsequent kill. And how long/difficult is it to work off or otherwise get rid of the corruption.
So that's where I'm at. Looking at that list, on it's face it looks ridiculous. But it depends on how some of the things are tuned. There are certain things I personally might remove from the list if it was my choice. I might make gear loss chance more impactful, and stat dampening less impactful. Or vice versa. There's an argument to be made of why we need stat dampening AND gear loss chance. There's an argument to be made for anything. Some dude was arguing the other day that if you kill a gatherer, the gatherer should be able to put a poison pill in his loot that when you kill him and loot it, it instantly kills you and you drop all of your gear. I shit you not. True story. Real person. On this forum.
Ultimately, Steven has an idea in his mind of what he wants the open world pvp to look like in Ashes. And he has multiple levers to manipulate to get it where he wants it. You're more of the mind of nixing the stat dampening but elevating the gear loss chance. I think if it was my choice, I'd stick with moderate levels of both, instead of high levels in one.
Holy fk I'm rambling. Your point was that stat dampening is abitrarily and artificially SYSTEM enforced. You'd prefer more emphasis on the player enforced gear loss chance. Honestly can't say I disagree with you philosophically. But I think Steven is envisioning the need for some system enforced penalties because highly skilled players and guilds may be hard to rein in with strictly player enforced penalties. Stat dampening provides that absolute "thou shalt no longer do this" hard cap on pking, until they reset their corruption.
I actually didn't go all carebear and I think I agree with you more than disagree. But I think we're going to get some system based enforcement. Hopefully it scales in a way that doesn't destroy organic open world pvp. That's all I really care about.
Destroyed is a dramatic word, I just used it because you also did
I don't have any love for the corruption system though, all I care about is:
Regarding the removal of corruption from the ocean, even though we know it works from EVE and even Albion, I'm personally not a fan of games that have player segregation due to how dangerous/safe some zones are hardcoded to be instead of organically. I'd much rather if everywhere had the same level of danger/rules for PKing, but that's just my personal preference. Like I've said in the past, the change to the ocean will not affect me, I dislike it for a different reason (stated above) and for the possibilities (creation of highsec zones to counter the addition of a nullsec zone) it creates.
I partly agree with you. Maybe the system was indeed broken from its conception, maybe it didn't work as intended, maybe Caravans would never work because of it. That's the problem, though: maybe. We'll probably never know.
I'm sure Intrepid had their reasons for the changes they have announced and the ones they haven't announced yet, I would just like to hear the real reasons for the changes like "what we had was dogshit, sorry guys, we gotta change it" instead of BS excuses and justifications.
Regarding Caravans specifically, I see what you're saying and I tend to agree, there's virtually no reason to start a Caravan instead of moving your resources on a mule. There's also no reason to help defend a Caravan of random/unknown players, it's best to always try to destroy it, unless it's a known zerg and you don't want to make enemies. That's why I believe they have probably reworked how Caravans work but haven't announced yet. Coming from Silkroad, I liked how Caravans worked in that game: it had many flaws, mostly due to P2W mechanics and bad design, but the idea behind it had potential.
In my opinion, the corruption system isn't that complicated. It likely will need tweaking and balancing and fixing to stop people from bypassing its objectives, but in theory it worked. And if turns out it's dogshit and it needs fundamental changes to it, well so be it, but at least know exactly what needs to be fixed during Alpha 2 so that (most?) people agree with it.
I don't really like using New World as an example simply because 18 months before release it was still a survival game. Not necessarily devs, but the directors/producers/corporate behind New World have no idea how to make a good MMORPG.
Agree with this one. I understand that "PvP MMOs" usually don't have enough of a player base, even though I enjoy them and my current main game is Rust. So, like you said, Intrepid is trying to find the sweet spot between flagged for PvP all the time everywhere and added risk/consequence to "toxic"/harmful PvP. I have a feeling that Ashes will end up having PvP similar to EVE with its different security level zones, but unfortunately for me, I'm personally not a fan of that kind of player/zone segregation.
Also you are still going to get pked by players it just wont be free for all, one day people will realize this is a PvX game just like the pve content that exist there is going to be pvp content. Corruption will not be the main soruce of owpvp int he game, that is going to be like 5%
Maybe this system is not so complicated. But as long as there are grey areas about how it works, it seems difficult to say.
It is certain that PvP groups will organize themselves to PK without being sanctioned.
For example by making a group with a single corrupted player to strike the final blow.
Or simply a green healer with a corrupted
Or even secondary characters to kill your main character in a loop to lower the corruption. In short, there will certainly be plenty of methods that the devs did not anticipate.
The grey areas which you mention, which are indeed still surrounded by questions, are easy to fix/solve, in my opinion. However, regardless of how good or bad a system is in theory, it needs to be thoroughly tested to have the grey areas removed.
Of course it must be tested. But already on the paper I see many wrong things.
I already imagine some green players following you, stealing your ressources/mobs till you get mad and attack them and get corruption.
This system gonna be so vicious and full of exploit.
This doesn't work. If you die as green you get HARSHER penalties for dying. So if you steal resources, you lose more resources and also get higher penalty on XP. Do people forget about this?