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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.
Wolves and Sheep dogs - Getting away with murder in the corruption system
Morgalf
Member, Alpha Two
Okay, I wanted to get some opinions on the PvP system. It is clear that many of us are here for this very important reason. I was curious what type of strategies everyone is cooking up, how Ashes can get around them, and everything in between.
I love world PvP. I love killing players that are minding their own business (wolves), I love defending people getting attacked by people like me (sheep dogs), I love grouping up and taking down a town, and I love defending a town that is under attack. However, I am well aware of how badly players can be abused. I have grown out of PK'ing relentlessly over the years. If I do, everyone gets one. However, I know the wolves are still out there... I hope I am not judged too hard by this! In order to catch the wolf, you need to think like the wolf! Overall, the goal is consider the sneaky tactics to snuff out the toxic players (like younger me) and foster a healthy (high risk) environment long term.
Here is my favorite strategy: I will have two accounts. If I want to kill a player and take their goods, I will happily get flagged. Then, I will run around the corner to my other character so that he can kill my wolf and reduce my corruption/take the drops. This way, I can bypass the repercussions by being the avenger as well, but I do not lose the goods from the kill or items that my character loses due to corruption. I can't think of a way that they could correct this issue. It mimics the natural game mechanics...
Another strategy: I can get the character to max level, create a bunch of cheap gear, and go on a rampage. As I lose the gear through death, I will continue to put on the new stuff. This allows me to collect stolen goods at the cost of some cheap equipment. Maybe I can even use the stolen goods to create or purchase new cheap gear in a never-ending cycle of death. I think they only way that Ashes can get around this is the perma-corruption. Where when you do so many bad deeds your character is eventually permanently handicapped. I think this is pretty severe though. Maybe a long term corruption debuff would be less severe, but under those circumstances, I would just create multiple characters designed to be killers. A stable of assassins or something. As the corruption goes down on the characters, I can just switch between them. They could correct that by only allowing corruption to subside while in game or even while working in a prison camp.
Let me know your strategies unless you're one of the baddies that want to get away with it and drive away our player population.
I love world PvP. I love killing players that are minding their own business (wolves), I love defending people getting attacked by people like me (sheep dogs), I love grouping up and taking down a town, and I love defending a town that is under attack. However, I am well aware of how badly players can be abused. I have grown out of PK'ing relentlessly over the years. If I do, everyone gets one. However, I know the wolves are still out there... I hope I am not judged too hard by this! In order to catch the wolf, you need to think like the wolf! Overall, the goal is consider the sneaky tactics to snuff out the toxic players (like younger me) and foster a healthy (high risk) environment long term.
Here is my favorite strategy: I will have two accounts. If I want to kill a player and take their goods, I will happily get flagged. Then, I will run around the corner to my other character so that he can kill my wolf and reduce my corruption/take the drops. This way, I can bypass the repercussions by being the avenger as well, but I do not lose the goods from the kill or items that my character loses due to corruption. I can't think of a way that they could correct this issue. It mimics the natural game mechanics...
Another strategy: I can get the character to max level, create a bunch of cheap gear, and go on a rampage. As I lose the gear through death, I will continue to put on the new stuff. This allows me to collect stolen goods at the cost of some cheap equipment. Maybe I can even use the stolen goods to create or purchase new cheap gear in a never-ending cycle of death. I think they only way that Ashes can get around this is the perma-corruption. Where when you do so many bad deeds your character is eventually permanently handicapped. I think this is pretty severe though. Maybe a long term corruption debuff would be less severe, but under those circumstances, I would just create multiple characters designed to be killers. A stable of assassins or something. As the corruption goes down on the characters, I can just switch between them. They could correct that by only allowing corruption to subside while in game or even while working in a prison camp.
Let me know your strategies unless you're one of the baddies that want to get away with it and drive away our player population.
"The gods do not fear death. They greet death as an old friend. When your time comes to return to the ashes, move forward knowing death is merely one of many paths to a new adventure."
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Comments
Since the current proposed (by Intrepid) system is that only the player who lands the last hit gets Corrupted, and since we know that the target won't be fighting back, other players can damage that target but then focus their combat on any other people in the area who flag up to stop us, while the Enforcer hunts the main target.
In other words, we've only got the most basic obvious strategy for now since so many things aren't set in stone until Alpha-2.
killing someone minding their own business isnt toxic...
anyways, ashes has already taken some steps to improve the corruption system from l2 so less things can be abused.
dual clienting as you described can still be done. get your 2nd character to attack someone. if they dont flag, they die and you clear corruption with your main killing your 2ndary and picking up loot. if they attack back, you come out with your main and kill them. but you can also do that with a friend, no need to dual client.
also, you need to consider that killing your corrupted character once might not get rid of his corruption, and you might have to run around trying to find where it respawned (randomly) to keep killing it. you probably end up wasting more time than the person you killed plus you run the risk of someone else killing it and taking the loot, if it has anything important.
since this counts as 2 characters (even if they are managed by the same person) you are basically in a 2v1 situation. so you are either good enough to win 2v1 or you play with friends and 2v2 or 3v2, etc. or simply accept you lost and move on. dont give it a second thought. cant always win. i dont think intrepid should do anything about tis, since it would basically affect people grouping as well.
regarding your second strategy, that was pretty common in l2. i think something should be done to prevent that, since it basically eliminates the risk of going red (othr than social consequences, which you might already have anyways).
one way to prevent this would be creating a big gap between tiers of gear. if both players are using the same tier of gear, then gear wont provide a significant advantage, however, if one player is using cheap gear against someone using expensive or higher tier gear, the person using cheap gear should have no chance of killing the other person.
another possible solution is dont have cheap gear in the game =D maybe
I guess the only way to avoid that would be party flagging?
Great points. I was hoping a L2 player would be around. So, I heard that Steven said gear will be 50% of the characters abilities. So, maybe that would be an issue with cheap gear.
Another thing that you love to overlook is that the player you attack may have nearby hidden friends (and/or a second account character) who will snap in and kill you before you finish your fight.
In other words, you may loose more often than you win.
Edit: I played a lot of L2 from release.
it isnt about the power gear gives you. it is about the difference between tiers.
for example, lets say at level 30 you do 50 damage with an ability and your level 30 gear gives you 50 damage so now you re doing 100 damage. gear provides you with 50% power.
but lets say at level 50 you do 5,000 damage and gear gives you 5,000 more damage. now you are doing 10,000 but gear still provides you with 50%
however, the difference between level 30 and lvl 50 gear is huge. even if you wear cheap level 30 gear, you wont pk a level 50 with level 50 gear.
we also have to see if there is any skill or class that can do about the same damage regardless of gear equipped
yes, thats a good point. i forgot about that. other people might be trying to do to you the same thing you are trying to do to them xD
- people will complain until penalties become more severe with how the current kill shot gets corruption or system is changed based on forced damage output meter/value which can reduce trolling/griefing
- wasting time picking off random players will be intermittent as the game will reward more for caravan looting
- occasional fighting over bosses between guilds and wars which is volatile can happen
- reputation is important not only within the node but the vassals too
- switching between alts to grief shouldn't be a thing in my opinion. I'm not saying carry over corruption but being flagged as a deserter or griefer should per server and/or region. Just creates issues with game design in my opinion.
- guild war flagging for participants (guilds be flagged combatant-like to each other with war status)
- social dynamic to the game, being immoral can be detrimental to your playstyle
- don't want to get caught robbing caravans from your own alliances
i would like to say 20% of the time cause half of them just run away or sit down and dont even try and the other half fights back :P
There are some solutions possible and probably already part of the anti cheat policy:
This seems to be mainly concerning the balancing of the corruption system. If corruption by death doesn't decrease as much as it does through PvE activities that would make the "cycle of death" highly inefficient. And I think that is what Intrepid will ultimately be balancing the system for: The more "unproductive" PvP people engage in the more they could end up being forced to engage in PvE again. Maybe it would also make sense to at some point make death not reduce corruption at all.
CONCLUSION: I definitely get that people are concerned about the "unproductive PvP" in Ashes, it makes perfect sense to be. What I see as the solution to is active testing and feedback during the Alpha 2 to close as many of the loopholes as possible. And don't forget that with as things are now there is nothing holding Intrepid back to introduce further changes to the corruption system after launch if they deem it necessary. I personally hope that the corruption system will be partly governed by the world event system. If a on a server in a specific region PKs are unusually high (in regars to server average, the corruption gain per kill should increase. Or maybe corruption for players with unusual high PKs will accumulate corruption faster than those who rarely engage in PKs compared to their other other activities in the game. Suffice to say there are a bunch of balancing options and with the Alpha2 data I am optimistic (for now) that we will get a reasonable system.
dual clienting is already allowed. and people shouldnt be banned because they are cleansing corruption on another computer...or a friend is helping them
omg ive never seen a bird not move like that... im glad he got away
Pretty much.
They didn't want to design a system with hard flagging so instead they're designing it to be more severe penalisations for immoral game play. This way they don't have to deal with the head ache of issues that come to fruition which would require them to govern manually (aka baby sit) with huge amounts of tickets flooding the in-game GM's.
Keep the players in-line without having to create an overly complex system filled with rulesets so players can be guided to play the game as intended through design.
Didn't know about the dual clienting. Whether people should be allowed to bypass the consequences of corruption like that or not is obviously not for me to decide, I just think if that is a simple way to mitigate the effects of corruption it has too many undesired consequences - though the Alpha will have to prove that theory before I insist on it
well, you arent really bypassing the consequences of corruption. you will still get corruption xD, you might just not lose anything too valuable, but other things are still there ;3
also its no different from playing with a friend on his alt
Believe!!!
wat?
“I think incorporating a “players that deal damage within X seconds of a green’s death suffer corruption” would both solve this issue and help prevent large ganking parties from ganking solo players and slowly spreading the corruption across them, since, currently, only the person who kills a green becomes corrupt.“
E.g. when it turns out that neither Node progression nor players time online is severely affected by ganks, then there is less reason to increase the penalties. Intrepid has some sort of parameters according to which their game is "working well" and the more we deviate from that in correlation with corruption generating PvP the harsher the system will most likely become.
I mentioned something like that in the last Months as well. Someone was even so nice to more or less compliment me for thinking about that, while Others seemed to either not think of this Possibility, or kinda just brushing the Topic of.
You can do this - with several Accounts.
OR : with " Friends " who happily assume the Role of the Slayers/Avengers - and control more efficiently to gain and reduce Corruption.
Of Course - this would be definitely some Extra Work to put in. I could imagine, that Sir Steven and his mighty Crew might limit such Activities with Timers.
Like : when You " Murder-hobo'd " (lol) Ten to Twenty People -> your Corruption has weakened You so much, that You can not murder-hobo'ing (
But maybe You can't GET RID of that Corruption, before like Twelve to Twenty-Four Hours have passed.
If you reach certain Corruption Levels "several Times" in just a few Days, who knows ? - > MAYBE your Time to get rid of the Corruption increases even more.
You could surely making being a Playerkiller, a LOOOT more inconvenient for People. At least inconvenient enough through Mechanics, so that they are not able to gank and murder People all the Time, Twenty-Four-Seven, like every Day of the Week.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
Hopefully it will be significant enough to make it troubling to be a Playerkiller as one's absolute main focus in the Game.
Damn i wish we could see a Presentation right now. 😁 😎👍
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
hopefully not
im hoping i can kill 4-6 people before my stats get too low. you can still be a pk as your main focus, just cleanse karma before your next kill
I hope there come special benefits with some kind of "maximum corruption" in your player.
Stuff like
" Achievement unlocked: Rotten to the core "
Enables:
Speak with the corrupted Ancient to recieve a unique quest and corrupted gear.
Haaaah the possibilities.
Hopefully Yes. 😎👍
Nobody ever claimed You shall be unable to kill Four to Six People or so, before Corruption affects you severely.
I am more concerned over the People that want "to Murderhobo" like HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE in the Span of several Hours. Doesn't matter how often the ganked/killed People are the same People.
I am only concerned for those who want to do this for Hours everyday.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
why is that a concern? if the same guy keeps killing you, go somewhere else lol
if you can clear corruption, you should be able to go red again and again and again. you are already taking lots of risks anyways.
lol i dont get u T_T
"There is no incentive to go corrupt... There's zero incentive for a player to go red. It actually gives you negatives for doing that- very significant downsides.[14] – Steven Sharif
The goal of the corruption system is to keep risk alive while significantly curtailing or deterring the ability for players to grief other players.[15][16]
It is my expectation that the system will perform very well in keeping risk alive, but significantly curtailing or deterring the ability for players to grief.[16] – Steven Sharif
If the system works as intended, which it probably will after the tweaking in Alpha-2, then even killing 4-6 people and then attempting to remove corruption to do it again, will not be feasible. Perhaps after that many PKs you will be so ineffective at hunting that it is almost impossible to wash. Perhaps washing corruption by deaths will result in such an experience penalty that it is inefficient to re-level.
Recall that while you are washing your corruption (however you do it), your potential future victims are advancing in level to the point where you may lose the next time you attack them, the route of the PKer may be an inherently failing one.