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Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
My take on Corruption and how I would implement it
Jiggaboots
Member, Alpha Two
Good evening fellow gamers
There's been a lot of buzz surrounding the proposed anti-griefing mechanic entitled "Corruption." Based on the initial description of the mechanic, I'm concerned that it may be too aggressive, and cross into the realm of anti-pvp. I've played a lot of MMOs, most relevant to this discussion being 10 years of EVE Online, Archeage, including many of the fresh starts, and BDO, off and on since launch.
I believe that at its core, the greatest driver of persistent, player narrative-driven content, is conflict. This takes a number of forms, and while it isn't exclusive to players engaging in combat with other players, that is generally the first to spring to mind, is the most divisive amongst the MMO community.
I am of the mind that the Corruption mechanic, as it is currently described, puts too much of a damper on organic PvP interactions, and fails as an anti-griefing mechanic.
PKing isn't the only way to grief in MMOs. Mob training, grind spot disruption, and tag stealing are all ways in which players can negatively impact the play of others without directly engaging them in combat. Often, the simplest solution to these activities is to kill the offending player in order to regain control of the area.
In BDO, there exist players that abuse the game's version of Corruption, called karma, by going to another player's grinding/gathering area, and become a nuisance by killing mobs or gathering nodes in the other player's rotation. If the original player retaliates by killing the intruding player, they receive a penalty to their karma. The intruding player can then return to the spot and continue being a nuisance until the original player either kills them so many times that they end up in a negative karma state, which causes them to be attacked by city guards and puts their gear at risk of downgrading, or until the original player leaves, thus turning control over to the nuisance player. This is called karmabombing, and it is clear abuse of a system nearly the same as is planned for AoC. It doesn't reward player skill, only persistence and willingness to engage in bad-faith behavior.
Players should not face harsh mechanics-based punishment for engaging in fair open world PvP. The Corruption mechanic should be split into two separate, but intertwined mechanics, which I will call the Bounty and Corruption system:
Bounty:
Corruption:
My reasoning for splitting the two mechanics is that it allows the Bounty system to be largely player-driven, while the Corruption system remains mechanics-driven. This should result in more organic small-scale PvP content, which can be a driver for larger conflict. Tired of Guild A killing your gatherers? Declare war on them so you can kill them with impunity and collect their bounties, without accruing your own!
In my model for the Bounty system, it would reward players capable of consistently winning profitable engagements, while avoiding or defeating attempts at retribution. It would result in a net loss for unskilled players or those who attack others without reason. It would also allow players to more easily defend their grinding/gathering spots over the short term against nuisance players, without being punished with PvP debuffs or the chance of dropping gear pieces.
Corruption remains largely the same as is currently proposed, but simply would not apply to fights within a certain level range, and it should serve its purpose as an anti-griefing tool as well as the current planned iteration.
Player agency could be further granted over these mechanics by allowing node owners to, for example, permit/disallow players of certain Bounty totals into their towns. Were this to be implemented, I would caution against allowing high bounty holders into the largest of cities, as I believe the system should still impose some limiting factors on players that decide to go into the bandit lifestyle whole-hog.
The manner in which the PvP loot is handled could be another balancing lever. Loot gained from PvP could be marked as "stolen", which could cause it to be dropped in its entirety on death, could be subject to greater market fees when sold on the auction house, or banned from it entirely, requiring direct player trade in order to sell it, presumably at a lower cost than normal goods of the same kind.
Looking back on this, I realize I wrote a bit of a novella on the subject, so here is a TL;DR:
Explicit, "gamey" punishment for "fair" pvp bad
Player-driven conflict good
Make OWPvP Great Again
One aspect of griefing protection that I don't have a clean answer for is one that was brought up in the now-infamous Lucky Ghost video, regarding top guilds locking down the best dungeons/grind spots and using certain PvEvP mechanics to grief weaker groups attempting to do the content. If we were to look at this as a problem, which I'm not necessarily inclined to do so, what would be your suggestions to combat it, without negatively impacting organic open-world play?
There's been a lot of buzz surrounding the proposed anti-griefing mechanic entitled "Corruption." Based on the initial description of the mechanic, I'm concerned that it may be too aggressive, and cross into the realm of anti-pvp. I've played a lot of MMOs, most relevant to this discussion being 10 years of EVE Online, Archeage, including many of the fresh starts, and BDO, off and on since launch.
I believe that at its core, the greatest driver of persistent, player narrative-driven content, is conflict. This takes a number of forms, and while it isn't exclusive to players engaging in combat with other players, that is generally the first to spring to mind, is the most divisive amongst the MMO community.
I am of the mind that the Corruption mechanic, as it is currently described, puts too much of a damper on organic PvP interactions, and fails as an anti-griefing mechanic.
PKing isn't the only way to grief in MMOs. Mob training, grind spot disruption, and tag stealing are all ways in which players can negatively impact the play of others without directly engaging them in combat. Often, the simplest solution to these activities is to kill the offending player in order to regain control of the area.
In BDO, there exist players that abuse the game's version of Corruption, called karma, by going to another player's grinding/gathering area, and become a nuisance by killing mobs or gathering nodes in the other player's rotation. If the original player retaliates by killing the intruding player, they receive a penalty to their karma. The intruding player can then return to the spot and continue being a nuisance until the original player either kills them so many times that they end up in a negative karma state, which causes them to be attacked by city guards and puts their gear at risk of downgrading, or until the original player leaves, thus turning control over to the nuisance player. This is called karmabombing, and it is clear abuse of a system nearly the same as is planned for AoC. It doesn't reward player skill, only persistence and willingness to engage in bad-faith behavior.
Players should not face harsh mechanics-based punishment for engaging in fair open world PvP. The Corruption mechanic should be split into two separate, but intertwined mechanics, which I will call the Bounty and Corruption system:
Bounty:
- Gained on every aggressive PvP kill outside of mechanically sanctioned PvP, such as node/guild wars, sieges, etc.
- Is worth a flat amount, plus an amount based on the value of the loot dropped by the slain defender
- Is paid out to anyone who kills the player with the bounty
- Bounty payout is an amount less than the value of the repair costs of the slain player, to prevent abuse by "selling" bounty to friends
- Dying while having a bounty increases gear degradation
- Once a player crosses a certain bounty threshold, they can be tracked by bounty hunters, similar to the current corruption system
- A player is able to pay off his own bounty at a premium
Corruption:
- Gained on "unfair" aggressive PvP kills, such as ganking low-level players, but not on kills of players at or near the aggressor's level
- Is gained in increasing amounts depending on level difference and time between "unfair" kills
- Results in scaling PvP damage debuffs
- After a certain threshold, PvP flags the character so that attacking and killing them does not result in bounty or corruption for the aggressor
- Is reduced on death
- Can be reduced by grinding/quests/similar ingame mechanics
My reasoning for splitting the two mechanics is that it allows the Bounty system to be largely player-driven, while the Corruption system remains mechanics-driven. This should result in more organic small-scale PvP content, which can be a driver for larger conflict. Tired of Guild A killing your gatherers? Declare war on them so you can kill them with impunity and collect their bounties, without accruing your own!
In my model for the Bounty system, it would reward players capable of consistently winning profitable engagements, while avoiding or defeating attempts at retribution. It would result in a net loss for unskilled players or those who attack others without reason. It would also allow players to more easily defend their grinding/gathering spots over the short term against nuisance players, without being punished with PvP debuffs or the chance of dropping gear pieces.
Corruption remains largely the same as is currently proposed, but simply would not apply to fights within a certain level range, and it should serve its purpose as an anti-griefing tool as well as the current planned iteration.
Player agency could be further granted over these mechanics by allowing node owners to, for example, permit/disallow players of certain Bounty totals into their towns. Were this to be implemented, I would caution against allowing high bounty holders into the largest of cities, as I believe the system should still impose some limiting factors on players that decide to go into the bandit lifestyle whole-hog.
The manner in which the PvP loot is handled could be another balancing lever. Loot gained from PvP could be marked as "stolen", which could cause it to be dropped in its entirety on death, could be subject to greater market fees when sold on the auction house, or banned from it entirely, requiring direct player trade in order to sell it, presumably at a lower cost than normal goods of the same kind.
Looking back on this, I realize I wrote a bit of a novella on the subject, so here is a TL;DR:
Explicit, "gamey" punishment for "fair" pvp bad
Player-driven conflict good
Make OWPvP Great Again
One aspect of griefing protection that I don't have a clean answer for is one that was brought up in the now-infamous Lucky Ghost video, regarding top guilds locking down the best dungeons/grind spots and using certain PvEvP mechanics to grief weaker groups attempting to do the content. If we were to look at this as a problem, which I'm not necessarily inclined to do so, what would be your suggestions to combat it, without negatively impacting organic open-world play?
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Comments
Also don’t appreciate you calling members of this community dumb, stupid, unintelligent, mentally deficient, etc. in discord for disagreeing with your proposal. And I certainly am not fond of your racially suggestive username.
If you want unristricted pvp go play eso cyrodiil till you get bored out of how pointless it is.
This isnt a survival game, with limited costumization, gameplay and no economy. It's an mmo.
The corruption system is there to protect not the players but:
Raiding
Exploring
Questing
Character progression and development
Gathering/crafting/economy
You cant have people kill endlessly.
players you killed wont be able to go back to were you where too quick, it will give you time to cleanse corruption. i believe you also dont drop any gear if you die red and have less than 3 pk. mob drop them too
if you get locked out of a dungeon, sucks to suck. ashes isnt a game where everybody is a winner. not everybody gets a trophy (or even a participation trophy). call your guild, friends, node citizens and ask them for help defeating your enemies. why should the solo player be rewarded or prevent organized groups from accessing content? why are they so special? why there has to be a preference? think about it this way, if there is a player killing all the mobs in a room, then that player is preventing other people from progressing. if i can beat him in pvp, or if my party or guild can beat his party, why shouldnt we be able to do it? why can he lock me out of doing content but i cant do the same to him? why im i the bad guy if i want to farm in the same area? what if the guy is farming then goes to town to sell, then when he comes back to the same spot, you are farming it. who is the bad guy now, you or him? why should there be any special treatment? you eeither defend the spot, group with him, or farm somewhere else.
I disagree. If I attack a player on even footing, I shouldn't be punished with "gamey" penalties if I beat them.
If you read my post, you would see that the anti-grief mechanics are still just as powerful where they are relevant, for the purpose of stopping griefing.
He clearly doesn't want to understand there are 10 meaningful PVP activities, 9 of which occur in the open world.
It seems like someone who wants PVP is really caught up in killing people who won't fight back, who wants to avoid fighting real pvpers at Sieges, Wars, Caravans, in the open flagged PVP International Waters, or in post siege locations.
The problem with most of these so-called PVPers is that they are gankers dressed up one way or the other.
You know who I never hear having a problem with the corruption system? The real PVPers.
You're a liar and a hack, and deleted your messages and blocked me on discord after I called you out on it. There is an art to fighting people that don't want to fight, but you're so up your own ass about what "real" pvp is that you can't understand that. You claimed to have knowledge of the mechanics and meta of how this works in EVE online, but only gave me the back half of your character name, so I couldn't search it on zkill. I managed to dig up your character and, lo and behold, you haven't played EVE since 2008, and barely even participated in the game at that point.
https://i.imgur.com/vxVAgp0.png
https://zkillboard.com/character/936436175/
You really don't have a clue about what you're talking about here, and it's plainly obvious to anyone who has ever engaged in asymmetrical PvP for the purpose of content generation.
ganking lowbies is no fun for anyone so its bad.
meaningful PvP = Good, meaningless ganking = bad
Now that being said meaningful pvp is a broad spectrum. preventing world boss kills s o your guild can get it is one of those, preventing people from leveling nodes so you can level yours is another one, some people will complain bout that though.
That being said since the world so large and harder to traverse so you will probaly see clusters of heavy povp area around some node where pvp guild own or what not but rest of the world would probaly be relativly light pvp so it create a rather dynamic world.
In my proposal, corruption still exists in its current form when attacking significantly weaker players. I should've been more specific in my wording, but I didn't want to give hard numbers for a game where we don't know exactly how much more powerful a level 50 character will be versus a level 40. My focus is to increase organic pvp between players within close power levels, or close potential power levels. I don't have any interest in ganking lowbies.
I'm expecting a response along the lines of "but if you're close in level, it's barely any corruption, it will barely take any time at all to grind off", to which I respond: Why have it at all, in that situation?
why are you even trying to change it when we never even seen how it works yet in game as it is thats all i wanna say. We need to know the values before we can realy say anything on it if one kill makes you corrupted to the point of where u drop ur gear well then ur basicly on a pve server if it 100 then it be a gankfest, it depends where these value lies you gotta find a good balance between the 2 values. Not to mention people crying thinking it gonna be a gankfest chances are due to map size most of the map will have little to no pvp happening based on where the pvp focuses guilds end up setting up camp with the node they choose to play out of where most of the pvp will be happening since travel times are rather slow.
Because I think the mechanic is flawed at a core level. Either the corruption at high level owpvp doesn't matter because it's low impact and effortless to grind off, or it has immediate negative impacts and rewards griefing and abuse through other means.