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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.
Current Corruption system is great
MetalDad
Member, Alpha Two
Over the last week there have been a ton of videos and posts about PvP in ashes and how its going to be awful/kill the game etc. Responses have been around how to fix it. Steven’s response was its fine as is. I agree with him. Its great. The game is NOT OUT YET, so we haven’t played it, but as it has been described it has all of the elements to address quite a few concerns about open world PvP.
If you are concerned or in the camp of “they should do a PvE only server” or “They should totally change the flagging system” you should (re)read the wiki here. Click the links to dive in deeper, it will help understand the current thinking and elevate some concerns.
If the wiki is TLDR, then here is an overview, some examples of how I read that the current system will behave and some thoughts on how they could tweak the existing system to dial down (or up
) certain detrimental behaviors common to MMO PvP systems.Flagging system is described in detail here. Green = non PvP, Purple = normal PvP, Red = penalized PvP
You start out flagged “Green”. You can stay green forever technically, as long as you avoid certain areas and events. Think of green as the “base state” for PvP. If you move into a PvP area or event, then you will change to purple.
If you are green, and initiate a targeted attack on a purple or a green, then you get flagged purple. Purple is the “normal” PvP flag. There is a discrepancy between the wiki and recent comments around what happens when a green attacks a red. The wiki says you stay green, but recent comments have said that you will turn purple ( as an incentive, because you will drop less stuff and incur less death penalty… ). We will have to wait for clarification here.
If you are flagged purple, then you can initiate combat with other purples all day long with no penalty. You can also attack red’s without penalty. Now if you attack a green, then you get flagged red and incur a penalty.
Right here, this is why the current corruption system is fine. The system has a mechanism to penalize bad behavior automatically. The remaining questions are around wether the level of the penalty will be sufficient to deter “bad” behavior. They don’t have to change the mechanics, just balance the penalty.
Here is an example of the current system as described:
I am a lvl 50 (current max level) assassin. I am bored so I decide to go and kill some carebear greens harvesting mats. I find a lvl 10 minding their own business and I one hit them. Dopamine rush initiated. Loser green. I got some sweet Lumber drop. More dopamine.
But now I noticed I have 8% less hit points and mana. Ok, no big deal. Oh and do 8% less damage. For how long? Until I get about 8% of my level back? Oof, ok that is a couple of hours of work. But so much fun killing the green, lets do it again. Oh, now its 16% less damage, hit points and mana and I need to work twice as long that sucks.. but so much fun.
But wait, what is that on my mini map? A bounty hunter is tracking me? And I am down 16%? Ok should I run? Nah I got this… wait no I didn’t, I am dead. I just dropped that wood I got AND my stealth mask. Ok that sucks… I am going to go grind and reduce my corruption a bit before I go start killing greens again.
Example over.
So now you just need to tweak the penalties to get the desired response. Want to reduce it more? Double the penalty. Want to prevent level disparity? 2% additional penalty per level difference. Want to prevent spawn camping? Triple the penalty if you kill the same player within a fixed period of time. Do you think a lvl 50 player is going to spawn camp a lvl 10 player very long? Want to increase “good” green engagement? No skill and stat damping for attacking a green at the same or higher level, though you still stay flagged red.
Other things you could do to increase the penalty based on corruption level:
* Slow travel speed by X%.
* Decrease Defense especially against stun and snare.
* “Delevel” for a time period ( not just reduce hit points, but drop effective level and skills are unavailable for say 20 mins, can’t use certain weapons )
* Respawn at “Corruption Poles”: A small number of fixed locations where only corrupted players can respawn.
Depending on how hard you tweak it, you can completely stop people killing greens.
But Intrepid won’t … because if they do, then Bounty Hunters will have no one to hunt. So yes, there will be people who are out there killing greens because the dopamine reward will be worth the risk. By Design. The challenge will be balancing the corruption with players rage quitting.
Spawn Camping:
The most frustrating form of grieving is spawn camping or being repeatedly killed by the same person. The current system will discourage that. However if you really want to discourage it, add in an increasing percent chance that the corrupted player will delevel to have the level of the person they just killed for a period of time and that will really reduce it. Kill me once, fine. Kill me twice within 15 mins? 10% chance on the third kill that you are half my level to me…increasing by 20% for every kill after that. Have that penalty on top of the normal corruption penalties and it won’t be worth it.
Grief Trains and NPC buffing:
Another thing that came up was the issue of players using trains to grief. Though they haven’t specifically called it out, they have said that summons also count for corruption flagging. A possible solution here is that when you pull a mob, it flags the mob as a summons for PvP until it is killed or reset. So if you pull a mob and train it on a group of green players then it you get the corruption. If you want to further reduce the occurrence, then have the NPC “summon” flag trigger corruption even if the player killed is purple.
Asmongold brought up some great examples of passive grieving through debuff and taunt strategies. Again though, by flagging those mobs as your summons you will still get the corruption and incur the penalties.
Guild area locking:
Another point that was brought up is Guild locking of areas. Guilds may try and lock down areas, killing anyone that comes in. Now if that area is flagged for PvP automatically… say like the ocean, then yes, that is part of the game. Its going to be all out guild vs guild.
If its not auto flagged PvP, then “green spamming” would be a detriment. A raid of all greens goes in and the guild kills them all going corrupted. The greens don’t attack back, die and return and repeat until the lock down guild is penalized enough to push them out.
So all in all, The system as currently described will work, just needs some balance.
I do think that this could be the first open world PVP that really appeals to the masses. There will be people that try and stay green all the way to 50. And I hope there is some achievement for doing so. There will be people who will try and stay flagged corrupted all the way to 50 and I hope there are achievements for that as well. If its balanced correctly, I think it will be great.
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Comments
The pve carebears will farm pve relentlessly and level their node, making all nodes around them slave nodes.
Now the slave nodes will pay taxes to their carebears overlords.
Slave nodes are not allowed to declare war against their masters.
The population from the slave node can not gank their masters as a means of assymetrical war... so the Corruption system offers a system for carebear power grabs.
Slave nodes are capped and can not level to the same level as the master node... if you are in a slave node then your node can not level and can not declare war.
Today the only salvation for slaves is that the master node gets deleveled.
There are some benefits from being a vassal, but what if you don't want none of that?
What if you want that the node where you live and your friends live and guildies live should be the node that levels up?
Well... suck to be you, now you are all enslaved by carebears who will farm pve 12 hours a day.
If you gank your masters just a few times then your loot is open to them, they can bring other characters and steal your loot.
The Corruption system monopolizes violence and this creates oppression,
This system should not exist when you are a slave and you want to halt the carebear power grab from the master node.
Gankers are far more than you think, they are also freedom fighters and partisans, they can work in both ways... with or against you.
- Corrupted players may kill bounty hunters without acquiring additional corruption score.[28][29]
- Corrupted player's combat penalties do not apply when battling bounty hunters.[28]
This is truly remarkable, as a ganker in many games I can tell you that a thing called "corrupt baiting" will come up... we will use an alt and corrupt it, then the bountyhunters come, get ambushed and slaughtered. This will be fun! People will do this for fun and for making youtube troll videos.
Is there an executive summary please ?
And this part
Is not linked to your lvl/xp values, it's linked to your corruption values. And considering that leveling 8% at top lvl might take a few hours, I sure as fuck hope that you'd only get this kind of corruption timer if you did in fact kill a lvl10 when you were lvl50. But at that point I'd expect you do lose waaaay more than just 8% of your stats.
Otherwise, yes, the system works, as has been shown in other games with this system. It just needs some balancing to fit it better to the current generation of gamers.
From the wiki:
Corruption penalties occur as the corruption is gained.[12] The higher the corruption score:
The more skill and stat dampening applies (lower health and mana, lower gear proficiency), until the corrupt player ultimately becomes ineffective at combat.[11][2][13][14] This dampening only affects PvP combat.[15]
If you go on a murder spree and you have 10 pks under your belt then you might start feeling a significant dampening to your skill effects against other players. I don't want to give necessarily a number or curve for players to extrapolate prior to us having the ability to actually test these ideas and where those numbers are going to lie; but I would say what is the intent behind that dampening: The intent isn't to limit the fun of the player, the intent is to provide a give-and-take or a risk-versus-reward; and the risk of continuing down the road of accruing corruption is not only the loss of your gear and amplified death effects but also your ability to perform in that activity.[16] – Steven Sharif
The amount of level/skill damping is based off how high your corruption score is. The example is to point out the kind of effect we are talking about. Obviously the numbers are just for example, game is not out. Balancing will determine it.
Yours truly thinks it's fine as-is, for right now, too. Testing will reveal it's true affability, and I'll eagerly be in the Alpha 2 until launch, in order to help test such things.
There's no reason to voice negativity over a system that's yet to even go to testing.