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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.
Suggestion: Make corruption penalties unknown and variable
Fantmx
Member, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
The main question is whether we want corruption to actually deter the player as a form of punishment. If the answer to that is yes, then the currently presented method of all penalties being known before hand is the least effective way to produce good behavior or extinguish bad behavior.
This all comes down to Operant Conditioning and how it works. This is a well known theory of how we process reinforcement and punishment.
By knowing the penalties beforehand the player gets to take a measure of if they will go ahead and take the penalty this time or avoid it. They also get a chance to learn ways to work around the system. This will lead to a slow response rate and a fast extinction rate meaning player behavior is not likely to change over the long term decreasing the effectiveness of the goal of corruption.
Now if we take the approach of an unknown and variable punishment the response rate will be fast and the extinction rate would be slow. The player would not be given the opportunity to weigh whether they can take corruption or not. This would make corruption much more likely to deter negative behavior.
The variability could be in amount of corruption, length of time with corruption, stat change, experience loss and ultimately number and types of items lost if a bounty hunt is successful on the player or any number of other variables.
This would not take a big overhaul to change as the corruption system itself would largely stay the same. I would imagine it would be fairly easy to test in alpha 2 should the original idea not produce results as robust as hoped for.
Just a thought.
This all comes down to Operant Conditioning and how it works. This is a well known theory of how we process reinforcement and punishment.
By knowing the penalties beforehand the player gets to take a measure of if they will go ahead and take the penalty this time or avoid it. They also get a chance to learn ways to work around the system. This will lead to a slow response rate and a fast extinction rate meaning player behavior is not likely to change over the long term decreasing the effectiveness of the goal of corruption.
Now if we take the approach of an unknown and variable punishment the response rate will be fast and the extinction rate would be slow. The player would not be given the opportunity to weigh whether they can take corruption or not. This would make corruption much more likely to deter negative behavior.
The variability could be in amount of corruption, length of time with corruption, stat change, experience loss and ultimately number and types of items lost if a bounty hunt is successful on the player or any number of other variables.
This would not take a big overhaul to change as the corruption system itself would largely stay the same. I would imagine it would be fairly easy to test in alpha 2 should the original idea not produce results as robust as hoped for.
Just a thought.
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Comments
The risk vs reward is still there. The only thing that shifts is the viewpoint of the risk. And I thought people liked risk?
And as the post says, it would be something to test if the original plan is not completely effective as this would be more effective.
Just a thought from our show last night.
Well, that is, unless the max penalty is the same as lvl50 PKing a lvl1, even if it was just lvl50 killing another lvl50. But at that point we'd just have an insanely harsh system that effectively removes owpvp from the game.
I'm just saying that it's gonna be easier to balance the overall system around a predetermined value rather than have a random number that punishes some way more for the same actions. And, again, if it's not fully random - people will just minmax it and figure it out through testing.
Just to begin with I think it's ok one shotting 50 level 1s cutting trees, I don't think that's griefing... they can run away and call for help.
Also, all gankers die, camp a crossroad and start killing a few people and you will get killed minutes later, that's just the way it is. I was one shotted many times in many times and that never could stop me from progressing or leveling in any way, it only made me smarter.
Your statement using "we" and "people" shows that you speak from the perspective of those who actually do not like risk.
I do not see you starting to kill others because you want risk.
Or am I wrong? You like risk? Give me examples of what you see risk and fun in having risk in your activity.
Then i would account for all of 10+ variables every time i would go for pk, and still did it. If i got only 3, i would be happy and could sneak another kill until i got penalties i assumed i would get.
There will only be a few situations in which it is warranted and beneficial
1a) Full guild parties where you all share the corruption and defend eachother to the death
1b) Only in areas where there are mobs of sufficient quantity and level to grind away the corruption, preferably before the enemy has a chance to return so not right outside a node or near a teleport.
2) In remote areas where there's very valuable gathering materials you want for yourself and there are sufficient mobs for a single person to grind off corruption.
If you expect to be PK'ed willynilly you seriously underestimate the harm you do to yourself by going corrupt without any means of grinding it off. I am not sure if any values are given for how much corruption you lose per death but you do get 4x the death penalty. There are zero circumstances in which killing someone and dying to lose corruption is beneficial, meaning only the dumbest of people will do it, or the ones who REALLY hate you. Therefore it will only happen in very specific instances in particular areas of the map such as dungeons where there are plentiful of mobs. The system heavily punishes people for killing people "for the lulz". If this happens to you then remember they are getting penalized way more than you did, either they leveled a character just do to this and that character will quickly become useless or they are going to die to lose corruption effectively taking at least 4x the penalty you just did.
For people to maintain actual "pk" characters is a massive chore as the questline for clearing pk score in Lineage 2 was a massive XP and timesink, I expect ashes to have a similar system for clearing pk score.
I think "The main question is whether we want corruption to actually deter the player as a form of punishment." while not making it completely unreasonable to the point of maiming owpvp into something meaningless.
Aren't we all sinners?