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Corruption: What if the stats debuff is linked to the node?
Arya_Yeshe
Member
What if corrupt players were penalized by having their stats debuffed based on the node of their victims?
For example, if a player killed citizens from the Riverlands, regardless of where the killing occurred, the debuff would activate when the player enters the Riverlands region. The player would be marked in red wherever he goes, but there would be no debuffs outside of the Riverlands.
If the player killed people with no citizenship, the kill would be linked to the node where the kill occurred.
This would create a dynamic where assassins move around the continent, with bounty hunters in constant pursuit of their targets.
For example, if a player killed citizens from the Riverlands, regardless of where the killing occurred, the debuff would activate when the player enters the Riverlands region. The player would be marked in red wherever he goes, but there would be no debuffs outside of the Riverlands.
If the player killed people with no citizenship, the kill would be linked to the node where the kill occurred.
This would create a dynamic where assassins move around the continent, with bounty hunters in constant pursuit of their targets.
PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
2
Comments
While there are numerous suggestions on the forum, Steven has yet to make a final decision on the matter.
I propose that bounty hunters be allowed to use Pathfinding to track their target within a node. If the target leaves the node, the bounty hunter would need to inquire about rumors in the Tavern to determine the last known direction of the target.
If players are permitted to establish social organizations, bounty hunters could create a network of intelligence with many members spread across the continent. This would create player-driven content and make it difficult for corrupt players to thrive.
Furthermore, it could enable groups of player killers to intervene in wars taking place in other regions.
Perhaps it would be beneficial to expand the area beyond just the node to encompass the Zone of Influence (ZOI) or even the ZOI of the entire node chain, which includes all vassal nodes.
This would be a logical decision!
However, we still need to generate new concepts to make bounty hunting more captivating, and for that, we require an improved threshold for player killers.
Criminal activity is a rush.
And if a PKer can only feel the impact of stat dampening (I'm assuming you're talking about that PKer already having a few kills under their belt, so their new PK immediately gives them some dampening) within the node of their victim - that PKer might not even visit that node anytime soon (let alone before they go back to green).
I'd imagine that most PKs would happen at the hands of the locals, cause they'd feel more "justified" in killing any foreign player due to that player trying to take away the only piece of good content the local has in their node.
I could maybe see a design of "PKers get less corruption for kills in their own node, while BHs get higher rewards for catching PKers outside of their node" working well for the cat&mouse goal of BHs traversing the lands to catch a PKer. Lower corruption gain would also lure more people towards PKing, which would increase their PK count, which would make them stay corrupted longer and increase the chance of BHs catching up to them.
Though this kind of system would need to have other node tie-ins. Maybe mayors could remove a player's citizenship status if they've been PKing way too much within their node. Or something else along those lines to prevent abuse of the lower gain values being used against the node itself.
As for vagabonds, I could see them getting a buff that speeds up corruption removal in their victim's node vassal system (not just a single node), but which also increases the death penalty by either +1 to the multiplier or some static value. This way any PKing alt (that is if citizenship is per-character rather than account-wide) will have to decide: do I risk higher penalties in this place or do I spend a few minutes running away to another place and spend more time removing the corruption. And if that PKer had a friend who's there to quickly kill them - there'd be a high chance that the victim was local and the PKer would suffer higher penalties.
To clarify, when I refer to "zone," I mean the entire ZOI of the vassal chain.
I didn't mention this before, but I believe that this is the best approach to prevent players from fleeing to other areas to clear their corruption points. If a player doesn't return to the dampened zone, he will remain unable to easily purify his sins, resulting in being red for a long time. This can be quite comical, as the PKer must either return to the zone and face the rebuke or continue on their path and slowly grind the purification.
While it's possible that some players may farm in other areas, it's unlikely that we'll see large groups of red players doing so. This is because the penalties are linked to the zone, meaning that players can only easily clear their corruption points in that specific zone.
There are two situations to consider:
Firstly, if a player only kills citizens from another zone, he will become red and unable to easily clear the corruption points from that zone far away. He will remain red for a long time and suffer the consequences unless he visits the dampened zone and clear the corruption points quickly.
Secondly, if a player kills his own citizens or those without any citizenship, he will become red and immediately dampened in the zone he is in. He can clear the corruption points right away, but he can also run away to another zone and stay red for a long time if he chooses to do so.
There is no way to avoid the consequences in a controlled manner.
One solution could be to make the purification 5-10 times slower if a player tries to clear their points outside of the dampened zone. This could be a fair trade-off and prevent deadlocks.
First of all, corruption-based stat dampening only influences pvp stats, so it would most likely only apply to fights against greens (because there'll probably be no purples around and greens won't flag against the red). I'd imagine that the absolute majority of PKers wouldn't want to fight those greens either way, because that's just digging your own grave X times faster.
Second. Are you agreeing with my "a place removes your corruption faster" suggestion? You just want that place to be the node of the victim rather than the PKer's, right? I could agree with too, cause I dunno where the majority of people will farm stuff so there's a chance that the PKing won't happen in PKer's nodes (as I think rn).
Also, I'd probably lean towards a very slight boost in corruption clearing in the zone (say, you get 1000 for a PK; normal rate for a mob of your lvl is 10 points, boosted rate is 8), cause otherwise we'd definitely see a ton of PKing in foreign lands with a quick cleansing of corruption. That would come off as "other people constantly attacking" rather than as "local people defending their stuff", and I feel like PKing for defense would be more approachable as a concept than an attack-based system. If that makes sense.
I agree that corruption points should be cleansed slower or faster based on the ZOI. In military nodes, there should be an edict for faster cleansing.
I believe that dampening effects should apply based on two criteria: first, the victim's zone, and second, the zone where the kill occurred. Cleansing attempts outside these zones should be much slower, and outside these zones, the PK should suffer no dampening, allowing them to dive deeper into player killing and collecting more enemies and being enemy of the state in many places.
I understand that the character will become utter garbage and not using storages and not being able to trade are overkill against PKs, but some people will take the challenge sometimes.