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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.
Comments
If a combatant player, or their summon, kills a non-combatant player, including any of their controlled entities, such as their battle pet, mount, or summon, the player's character will be flagged as corrupted.[9][10][2]
If the green didn't fight back and decided to just run away - good for me, I'm not corrupted but I still got the spot. Either that green won't come back cause he's not a fighter or if he comes back - I just flag up first against him and still put him in an unfavorable position (in case he cared about who struck first).
This is why I think that returning mats to a green would be fine (that is, again, if the red is even killed), because the disruption has already happened. And the scale of that disruption could vary from "the green just got here and hasn't killed a single mob or gathered a single item" to "he's been farming this spot for hours now and has a shitton of resources on him". But at that point it'll be on the green to decide if he wants to risk his loot or not.
But no matter what he decides, my main goal with attacking him was to remove him from the premises.
And all the PKers who kill others purely for their resources or just for fun should be properly hunted, just as a robber or a murderer would be irl. And the BH would be different from a random green, because the BH is paid by the government to find and kill the Red, while the random green would just be a vigilante of sorts whose reward would be purely the Red's loot rather than something bigger.
Again, why would a bounty hunter leave their own dungeon/group just to kill a red because a green didn't fight the red?
I'm not convinced at all that a green needs to be the Lord of all situations in a pvx game. That is penalising both the red pvp players and the bounty hunter pvp players in a pvx game where the pve player is the oddball.
If the green is a fighter, he'll just fight back when the attacker strikes him. If the green wants to punish the red on their own - they're always free to do that and I will always hope that all greens will.
But for literal thousands of players who don't care about pvp, but who will still play the game, farm shit and sell it to pvpers, and support nodes and whateverthefuckelse - why wouldn't you want to keep those players in the game for longer?
And again, my suggestion is to reduce corruption gain values so that more people feel safer about attempting PKs, so I'm in no way protecting or deifying the greens. I just want to counterbalance all those more common deaths and it just so happens that the game already has a system that's meant to hunt the PKers. So I see no reason why that system shouldn't be a bit deeper and more interconnected with other systems rather than just being a dumbass "anti-pk" content.
Literally anyone can do anti-pk content, as you have just pointed out. Any green player is so damn buffed against Reds that it's crazy and has already garnered some complaints. I want Ashes to have a system that would instead shift the burden of killing the Red from greens to BHs. And I just fucking remembered, THIS WOULD HELP THE REDS EVEN MORE! If the greens attack reds less frequently, the reds won't fall down a corruption spiral and instead will just participate in normal pvp against a BH.
So PKers have a better life, greens have a better life and BHs garner good rep with the greens, have good pvp against reds and get a fucking reward on top of that. I cannot understand why you consider this a bad system. Literally everyone gets something good out of it, and if anything the greens get the short end of the stick in this deal.
In my mind I see large scale fights against corrupted groups as a bounty hunter. I don't plan to travel all over the map to kill lone corrupted players unless it is those who target low level players - those who would die even if they fought back.
I don't classify a dungeon or a grind spot to be a high priority bounty hunter foray because dungeons will be mostly group efforts and the best farm spots will also see more collaboration than conflict due to the node system.
It is difficult to illustrate the most adept bounty hunter practices until we have tested the systems but a sweeping change of resources being magically returned to green players should not happen for the same reasons.
Then it might be easier to kill the red as a green than as a BH.
Making the corruption over protective would eliminate risk and impact caravans too.
Killing a player does not mean griefing.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Definition:Griefing
When we think about 'what is griefing?' Griefing isn't necessarily the realization of risk. Risk is a healthy thing. Risk makes us value reward. Without risk we would not pursue certain achievements, because anybody could achieve them. Risk makes us have a sense of thrill, or have some sense of anxiety; and those are all emotional responses that get elicited when risk is present. So, risk isn't a bad thing. We like risk, not just in PvP but in PvE as well: when you can't always predict the environment or encounter you are part of, risk is something like 'Ah, I've never seen this boss do that before.' or these adds came at an ill-placed time, there's a trap here that I didn't experience before. There's a lot of elements that risk introduces that keep gameplay less stale; that keep it more dynamic; that introduce environments where the unexpected can occur. That is a good thing. Now the question is, when risk becomes something that doesn't stop other players from impacting your gameplay in a negative and harassing and repetitive manner. The motivation to do that action is less about their personal advancement and more about impacting your gameplay, because when they elicit the response of anger or rage from the player, they feel a sense of accomplishment. That in my opinion is what griefing is. It is outside of the expectation of the gameplay behavior that is communicated in the design philosophy.[1] – Steven Sharif
Not sure why people are dancing around your question. But yes based on the raw quotes we have from Steven, that's what it means. As soon as you go red, you can no longer use your full class kit to defend yourself against most of the people you may find yourself fighting against, because they will be green.
Some D list youtuber made a clickbait, highly misinformed video a few months ago about Ashes. Steven panicked and announced changes in that youtuber's comments section. That was the change. Just imagine what's going to happen when youtubers like Asmongold start making critical videos lol.
This would be such a braindead change, to not allow reds to use their own CC skills, simply because they're red. It's so braindead that it can't help but leave the door open to the chance that that's not exactly what Steven meant. But as of right now, that's the info we have.
I feel like since it is confirmed that even 'forced mana reduction/drain' effects don't affect Green Players, it's unlikely that Steven doesn't mean exactly what is said.
It didn't seem like an 'off the cuff answer' when it was given, to me, but that might be my bias since it was my question.
I've complained about PvP Rails before. It seems the rails have expanded. I believe the change has been made to counter the no corruption on the ocean backlash from said players. There must be give and take but the situation seems rather comical. Some also expect Bounty Hunters to return lost resources too.
Yeah I tend to take Steven at face value. If I was forced to bet one way or the other, I'd bet that that's what he meant. It's just that this is a somewhat nuanced issue.
There is merit imo to not allowing greens to be CC'd in general, particularly when it comes from other greens (who then become purple). If they can be CC'd, then it certainly opens the door to people trolling/griefing with it. Although in 25 years of playing mmos, including open world pvp mmos, this issue is just not something I've seen become a big problem in any game I can remember, even in games without protection against it.
But I see the merit of that change, to stop potential griefing. I support it, mostly, I do have some issues with it though. But it has to be mentioned, prior to this change, that in order for someone to CC someone, they had to go purple, combatant. They're a free a kill at that point for anyone. HELL EVEN A RED CAN COME ALONG AND CC THEM LOL. We found a use case for Red cc's. It's not like they can just sit there and CC someone repeatedly without putting themselves at risk. Anyone, literally anyone can come along and kill them while they're flagged up purple being a meganerd repeatedly CCing someone.
This change also affects pvp in general, even between people who intend to pvp each other. Unless I'm missing something...two greens intend to fight, one has to attack the other first. Whoever attacks first loses CC initative. He turns purple first, thus allowing the guy who's still green to CC him first. Now this is only corruption/flagging system pvp, which seems like an increasingly small slice of the total pvp in the game. And we don't know how much it will matter in the context of Ashes' combat system, because we don't know much about the combat of this highly anticipated upcoming mmo. In some games getting the first CC off is make or break, in others, not a big deal. But it definitely changes the character of corruption system open world pvp.
All of that said, I moderately support the change. I just don't think it should apply to reds. Stat dampening makes sense to me, a decline in red character's power with each successive kill. Makes sense. But you kill one person and you can't use CC's anymore against the vast majority of people you may fight? Part of me just has to believe Steven didn't mean something that stunningly stupid.
We are fast approaching, if not already there, the point of just scrapping the corruption system. Why create something no one is going to use? Maybe switch it up from being a spiritual successor to Lineage II and be a spiritual successor of Throne and Liberty. Go with a zone based pvp system or whatever they're doing. I am of course not actually in favor of this, but that seems to be where we're heading.
And that segues into my first post in this thread. The lack of confidence. The open sea change, if it was going to be made, should have been announced months if not years ago. It's been 5-6 YEARS. With people donating money all along. People deserve clarity on the systems of this game. Not 100% pinpoint clarity, things are subject to change of course. But the open sea change is a big one. Same with other systems. You either have a corruption system that is useable to some reasonable extent or you have a disfunctional token system no one will use. People donated money on the idea of the corruption system, but not one that's so insanely harsh that only mega chad top tier no life or otherwise zergy guilds can use.
It's all good, not a huge deal. It's your first game Intrepid, brand new studio. We get it. But you need to start providing more clarity, more leadership and confidence in your designs, as opposed to being easily swayable by D list youtubers and making huge changes like the open sea change years later than you should have. I personally like and agree with the open sea change. But for the people who don't like it, if that change was going to be made, it should have been made years ago.
Oh yeah I think we talked about that when we first talked about this months ago. I didn't play Lineage 2 so I don't have firsthand knowledge. If it worked there then maybe I'm overreacting about it here. It could still have different implications in Ashes compared to Lineage, different combat system, different ttk, completely different game. But if Steven is plucking it from Lineage, I have a bit more confidence in it.
But just to be clear, did ANY cc's work against greens?
Here's a video of top losses on the classic servers. (you can autotranslate CCs)
They mainly show war-based kills or even a full scam at the end, but the same principle applied to people stun-locking "greens" until they died to mobs. Ttk is supposed to be long, so I doubt that a single CC would decide the fight, but even if it did - the first attacker could make their biggest attack first, so the green then has the ability to CC the purple and retaliate. Seems quite fair to me. Reds are the scourge of the earth in Ashes. They have no rights and should be hunted and killed. But I agree that sending them on a downward corruption spiral could be very bad (especially in cases of casual PKing), which is why I want the BH system to be the main source of PKer deaths and I think there's a way to force that onto people through particular designs. I do hope they manage to balance the system well enough to satisfy as many people as possible (on all sides, not just the super pvers).
I'm actually not entirely opposed to Nikr's idea. Even if it was a forced return of goods to greens, I'd personally be like ok whatever, kinda weird but ok that's cool.
But why force it. I'm not even sure if his idea includes forcing it. But I'd be more in favor of it being optional, to keep the human element in and the automation out. This is how friendships/alliances form, when someone opts to return something. And how enemies and wars are created, when they opt not to and the would be returnee knows it.
There's a lot of talk about a green minding their own business and suffering a random attack. The instigators just don't care about a bounty hunters time, effort and predetermined activities.
There might be too many bounty hunters or there might be too few. The fact remains it's competitive, collaborative and critical for bounty hunters to share loot between the hunters. Its just not viable to expect the bounty hunters to foot the bills.
If 50% of BH succeed to kill the PK and bring back the resources, then the green will always have reason to flee (also helped by no CC) to keep all the resources.
If 75% of BH succeed, then clearly no benefit to fight. Every undecided green will flee.
This would work against the corruption mechanic which tries to encourage the combat, by reducing the quantity of resources lost.
If the BH success rate is lower than 50%, then is the proposed mechanic of giving the lost resources back impactful enough?