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A 4th player-combat-flagging-status
Dolyem
Member
I was brainstorming, and from what I can tell, corrupted players will continue to gain corruption even when defending themselves against non-combatants who attack them due to non-combatants not becoming combatants when attacking corrupted players. I see this as a bit extreme, especially if a corrupted player only killed 1 or 2 greens. At this point you just snowball into oblivion just by defending yourself in this circumstance. Corruption is already a massive punishment in and of itself with 4x death penalties and reduction in power
So what am I suggesting? Make a 4th player combat flagging status. Where a non-combatant who engages a corrupted doesn't give more corruption upon being killed, but also isn't flagged fully as a combatant, so someone else who isn't corrupted could still become corrupted from attacking them. Could call it vigilante status or something.
Why? Because the only ones who should grant corruption are the ones who aren't fighting back against you.
The other more simple solution is to make anyone attacking someone a combatant regardless of if the player has corruption or not, but that opens up players to being taken out by a corrupted players friends once they are flagged as combatant, hence my suggestion.
So what am I suggesting? Make a 4th player combat flagging status. Where a non-combatant who engages a corrupted doesn't give more corruption upon being killed, but also isn't flagged fully as a combatant, so someone else who isn't corrupted could still become corrupted from attacking them. Could call it vigilante status or something.
Why? Because the only ones who should grant corruption are the ones who aren't fighting back against you.
The other more simple solution is to make anyone attacking someone a combatant regardless of if the player has corruption or not, but that opens up players to being taken out by a corrupted players friends once they are flagged as combatant, hence my suggestion.
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Comments
I prefer your simpler solution.
(If there is a colour for your 4th status, I vote for orange)
Fair, but it's a pretty obvious flaw in design imo.
I also wouldn't be against making the attacking green against the corrupted player have the 50% drop rate to the corrupted in this 4th flagging state. To me it's just a bit extreme to punish an already punished player for defending themselves. It doesn't even go with the theme of corruption lore at that point.
Yes, that is true. What he is upset about is that anyone who attacks him is going to stay green. Which if he fights back and kills them, he is going to accrue even more corruption. So funnily enough, for those that don't want to be caught in an increasing spiral of exp debt and time sink, they are going to have to do the dreaded thing that got them corrupt in the first place by killing someone who didn't fight back. Just stand there and take it. Working as intended.
"Working as intended" or making PvP not fun? Feels much more like the 2nd one. Nice try carebear
how so? the game wants to deter PK against green players, make it like 1% of what you would get in a month, that's the intention, you may not like the design, but it is not a design flaw at all
so yea, you will be fucked if you go red, so don't do it unless you have a very, very good reason or you have friends willing to help you, like flagging up and CCing the greens so you can run away etc,
now, we could talk about how often would people flag up vs not flagging up, because they expect most engagements to be with both sides flagged, and will balance accordingly, but again, for me its kinda pointless to speculate over a system that we haven't tested and we don't know how player behavior will be like
And I personally want exactly this. A corrupted player should be hunted by everyone who sees them and the corrupted player should either fear everyone around them or know what they're getting themselves into when they PK.
But as I wrote before, I do want a system that would, at least marginally, decrease the number of greens trying to immediately kill the PKer. Imo some tweaks to the BH system could accomplish that. But we haven't heard about that whole system recently, so maybe it's completely gone already.
But with all of that being said, I still think that what I want would only really work if the corruption is balanced in a fairly precise way. But my desired balancing might be against Steven's current plan for corruption. And that plan includes corrupted players suffering as much as possible, so that barely anyone wants to be Red.
And I know that some people might point me to the "Steven wants to prevent griefing and not PKing", but we'll see about that "want" when we come to testing the system and to the overwhelming amount of casual feedback of "whaaa, I keep getting killed even though corruption is overtuned to all hell. I want it even harsher".
Also, PKing is not pvp, so pvpers have nothing to worry about.
The gaining of corruption should indeed be the result from actions that would be defined as griefing. However, defending yourself from attacking players is not griefing. So you shouldn't be penalized with corruption when you are the one being engaged. It doesn't make sense with the lore, and it doesn't make sense to prolong corruption when not doing corrupt actions.
I mean, the amount of time it would take to reduce your corruption alone would be the fear driver for a corrupted player. Making it impossible to reduce your corruption while being hunted because you're defending yourself just feels bad.
Can't CC greens
I don't know a nicer way to put this, but "should indeed be the result from actions that would be defined as griefing" according to who? to you?
Corruption in AoC is a harsh punishment system for those that kill a green player. That's it. It has nothing to do with griefing, I can choose to kill someone over a very rare resource that I need, and take the corruption, that is not griefing...
so there is no design flaw, if you are red, that was your decision, and you will be punished accordingly.
PvP in Ashes is intended to be consensual, through either purple vs purple or events, that's about it. You can either accept that or hang around and realize this game won't be for you, if you have hopes you will be ganking people and getting away with corruption,
also, you can't use the "pve carebear" card on me, as I am a former perma-red BDO player, DAOC, MO1 and MO2, full-loot Ark, Rust, Conan pvp player so...
For this to work though, who attacks who first need to be part of the triggering of the status. A red going after a green isn't defending themselves: they're the offender, again. If the green dare defend themselves, the red would be safe from piling more corruption. How corruption currently works is to prevent players going on a killing spree against people who don't fight back.
Corruption is implemented to deter rampant griefing, not to punish PvP. If you're being punished for defending yourself, that's just punishing PvP. Simple as that. Corruption was gained from killing someone who didn't fight back, you shouldn't gain it from someone fighting you.
"Well you shouldn't have become red to begin with because blah blah blah" Corruption shouldn't be taken lightly, this is reflected with losing gear, power decrease, 4x death penalties, no access to cities and services, etc. But prolonging this punishment by defending yourself from players attacking you is stupid. The time corrupted should be reflected in the kills against players who didn't fight back. But if players seek you out for PvP, you don't punish that PvP interaction.
No where in the post have I said I want to get away with ganking? I still want the corruption penalty for the gank, I still think Corruption should take time to remove. But it shouldn't be increased from being engaged by another player.
You may as well make corruption permanent until death if you intend to continue to corrupt players defending themselves.
As for "defending yourself fucks you harder" - just don't defend yourself. Run away and farm mobs. No one is making you kill more greens. If you plan on PKing someone - be ready to lose whatever's on your character. That's part of the deal.
And if your PK was a sudden action - be prepared to run real far and fast. The only ones who can truly hunt you anywhere are BHs. And you can kill however many of those you want.
Running away isn't much of an option when you can't CC the target dude. No matter how you put it, punishing someone for defending themselves feels bad. If the corruption is too harsh, all you have is an opt-in PvP feature with more steps
To me it's no different than if a green player fought back normally against someone ganking them. The only case where you should gain corruption, is when killing someone who isn't fighting back, or capable of fighting back (low levels)
And like I said, the harshness should be balanced in such a way where PKing is still viable from time to time, but rn I doubt it will be. We'll see.
We will indeed see. I am mostly arguing from what corruption has been explained to be. You kill someone who can't fight back or won't fight back, you get corrupted. So naturally if someone engages you, why the hell should you gain even more corruption? It doesn't make sense or feel good as a gameplay design, and it doesn't make sense with the lore of corruption so far. It just feels like an extra kick in the nuts.
Also, this directly prevents the main abuse of the corruption system. If greens "flag" against reds - a red party can then just go on an absolute destruction spree, because everyone will be "flagging" against them. This is exactly what would lead to the very griefing the system is trying to prevent. There'd be no punishment for the PKer.
Where does it say corrupted players are mobs?
And this is actually incorrect. Everyone involved in what you just described is voluntary. The only people corruption protects against would not even be involved because those people aren't engaging in PvP to begin with. Corrupt players will still gain more corruption if they gank players who don't flag, increasing their penalties. But the players fighting back would simply not be the ones increasing corruption, as it is intended. Otherwise, why doesn't killing combatants give just slightly less corruption at all times? Because that would deter PvP, not griefing.
It’s already less risk to attack a red player due to stat dampening, plus you’re able to open up with CC on them, and the reward is potentially much greater. Greens staying greens when attacking is pretty overkill in the deterrent department from my perspective.
I agree with the levels of corruption. I have said it many times on these forums that there should be many variables determining how much corruption you gain, and not have such extreme penalties for killing 1 or 2 same level players who decided not to fight back. Could it ramp up quickly? Sure. Maybe once you hit 3 kills of the same player not fighting back in a certain time frame you get slapped with a massive corruption gain.
Yea, thats why I added the final bit in my OP. It'd be much simpler, but with the 4th status you could prevent corrupted from having their non corrupt friends coming in and stomping the attackers without worry of corruption themselves.
I'm talking about those exact PKers not getting their punishment.
Your suggestion implies that anyone who comes to punish that PKer will become flagged against him and the PK will be able to kill that person freely. This way they'll go unpunished and will be able to keep on griefing.
If that player attacks them, I am implying they be treated as a combatant, because that is what they are. The corrupted player is still being punished from being corrupted. Being weaker, having a higher death penalty, not having access to services, etc, all in correlation to how much corruption they have accrued by killing players who didnt fight them, or were too weak to do so.
The corrupted player should indeed freely be able to defend themselves against anyone that decides to engage them, whether or not they can is affected by their current corruption. Increasing that corruption just because someone decided to attack them and the corrupted succeeded in defending against that attack however, does not line up with what corruption has been described to be. Corruption is a result from killing innocent non-combatant players, so if they decide to fight, they should no longer grant that corruption.
You PK when you are with your group, if you have sense.
If you PK alone, dont expect anything good to come out.
When you are with your group the others can share some of the kills and then you ride away into the sunset. There are no flaws in the system. It worked fine in L2.
In other words, PKers will go completely unpunished, because they can simply go fight some mobs w/o ever being scared that they might gain corruption again while doing it.
To me that's simply too ez of a life for a PKer. There's no feeling of danger or risk in this. And this doesn't even address the issues of literally having a healer with you and easily beating anyone who attacks you. In the current system if you try that - you're getting fucked harder. In your system people will just cleanse their corruption easily, because they can fight anyone who comes to kill them.
What corruption has been described as is a tool against griefing. Going unpunished after said griefing will just empower those griefers. Current system only makes their life harder.
As for the combatant status. You only become that when you attack a green or another combatant. This is why I say that the system treats PKers as mobs. And I'm 80% sure I've heard Steven say that line. But even if I won't find that quote, the current design just represents that in its effect.
As for lore - we don't know shit. Steven could always add whatever he wants to justify how the game works.
Not really supposed to be getting tons of fun from the PvP that has a Risk of Corruption.
Which is why Corruption is harsher than L2 Karma.
If you want tons of meaningless PvP combat fun - you have The Open Seas for (Corruption-free) FFA PvP.