Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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
It would guarantee the game becomes a "don't attack if you don't want corruption" game.
I'm unsure why you would consider someone getting unwanted corruption via one method is a gameplay moment, while players getting unwanted corruption in another way seems to be something you want to see avoided at all costs.
Also, your suggestion would just lead to less PvP. People will be less willing to fight an unknown target. The more information they have, the more they can decide if they want to attack or not.
To me it's about the strength of that attack. In an unknown situation it's safer to do a "challenging" weak attack just to see if the target flags back up. In a known situation it's way easier to immediately pop off and try to remove your target immediately (either by them leaving or by bringing them low enough that the mob finished them off).
This kinda relates to the point above. Flagging on someone who's already engaged in combat is unfair to the victim, because they're most likely at non-100% hp. So flagging on someone who's not engaged in combat should be, potentially, more unfair towards the attacker. Though the amount of situations where the random chilling dude is somehow at nearly 0 hp will be so damn miniscule that I wouldn't even consider it all that much of an unfairness.
But the chance should still be there, so that people can still bait someone.
Could be. I'm definitely biased here for L2, because L2 didn't give you shit (outside of gear visuals) so you just had to decide if you flag up or not. And people did. And that first strike would usually tell both sides about the power matchup, so the victim would have a choice of "he hit me for just a bit, so if I CC him I could probably win" or "holy fuck, that was a ton of dmg even on his weak atk, I'd better just leave in hopes of finding another spot".
In other words, I simply see more potential for system abuse if the hp is visible, while in my experience invisible hp doesn't stop owpvp completely.
Honor is something that you hold yourself too and it's up to society to enforce it.
It's just like valor you either have it or you do not.
There's no real metric or measuring standard for it.
Most players won't be willing to give up their surprise advantage from a first attack by using a weak attack to perform information gathering, thus leaving the other player with first CC advantage when that CC could well be devistating.
Most players simply won't consider that a viable exchange. But your suggestion doesn't give the attacker in this situation any disadvantage that they wouldn't also have if they were attacking someone that wasn't fighting.
With your suggestion, you have no idea how many HP your target has if they are in combat, but also no idea how much they have if they are not in combat. If you were to make an assuption, you would assume that they would have less HP in combat, however.
You say people attacking those fighting PvE encounters should be at a disadvantage, but you have not stated any such disadvantage (or if you have, I missed it).
In the situation where you attack someone already engaged in pve, I'd assume, your goal is that pve and the removal of your target as an obstacle to it. So that target being at lower hp makes you think twice about gaining corruption, because they're probably at lower hp.
This is why I said that flagging with a weaker attack here is more beneficial, because even if the victim CCs you back - they're still at some lower hp value, so you'd be at roughly equal strength by the time you get out of the CC (depending on a ton of variables obviously, but I hope you get my point).
But if the hp is known (even if just estimated) - it's waaay easier to know how hard you wanna hit that person with your first strike.
My ultimate goal is to push people towards "challenging" hits rather than huge ones. Knowing hp values makes it way easier to use huge hits, because you're not afraid to accidentally kill your target.
I admit that this goal is most likely naïve and that people's mentality will probably be drastically different from L2's players, but I just think that seeing hp values will make the life of system abusers waaaay easier, which will then lead to disdain for the entire pvp system, which will in turn lead to drastic changes.
And as you pointed out, there's gonna be a shitton of class builds. So hitting a cleric/rogue for a 100 might remove 10% of his hp, while hitting a cleric/tank for a 100 might only remove 3%. W/o seeing the hp values the attacker wouldn't know which build it is, so the victim would have the advantage of choice. And imo in a game with that advantage, there's more chances of people willingly fighting back, which creates a better owpvp environment.
And when it comes to attackers, there's gonna be those who don't care about corruption (so they're not even influenced either way), those who do big hits w/o thinking (who'll learn the error of their ways as soon as they accidentally gain corruption that way), those who do challenging hits and the situations evolves from there, and those who don't even attack cause they're afraid.
To me that's a good layout of owpvp design. The victims are more likely to respond, while the attackers are pushed towards certain less-abusive actions. Obviously extreme cases will always happen, but I feel like their amount won't be as big as in the current system.
This only works from the perspective of someone that is already willing to take that first step.
Most players simply wont.
The notion of it becoming normal for a player to a tap another to see if that player is up for a fight simply isn't going to work. It can't. It is taking what gamers have taken for granted for decades and asking them to specifically not do that. If players have the advantage of a surprise/first attack, everything they know tells them to make that hit count.
Game design going against that instinct isn;t going to appeal to many people at all.
The notion of wanting would-be attackers to think more before attacking, and those being attacked having more of a reason to fight back is a good notion. However, trying to achieve that by going directly opposed to the instincts gamers have built up over decades (and arguably, humans have built up throughout evolution) isn't a good way to go about it.
If you want attackers to think twice before attacking someone that is fighting a PvE encounter, quite honestly making it so that player has a chance of gaining corruption if that mob kills the player is as good a solution as you could get. I'm still not advocating for it, but it is by far the best mechanic to achieve this outcome, if that is the outcome you are after.
Additionally, if you take the general stance that "Any corruption gain is achieved willingly. The situation surrounding that gain just changes" (I do not), then there isn't even a downside to this.
It is probably worth noting that being able to see HP amounts in Archeage didn't cause the kinds of things you seem to be concerned about.
If Ashes finds a balance that achieves my goal - I'll be all for it.
I do not remember the meta players.
I do not remember the guy with the most gold.
I do not remember the dude with the rarest mount.
I do not remember the best guild that was on my server, in fact I never knew them.
I do not even SEE the players who sit on the mounts that I am checking out.
I never even knew who scored the highest on some kind of bs PvP tournament hosted by the publishers.
I do not remember the players who all thought themself better than others for whatever reasons.
I do not remember anyone who possessed a "legendary" if they didn't cross MY path.
I do not remember using social media ever to find any of these things out in the first place.
I remember the friendly players that went out of their way to help me for whatever reason.
I remember the roleplayers with their events that entertained or impressed.
I remember the times in which I helped other players for free and it made them happy.
I remember the players I was in the same guild with and did epic sh°° together with.
I remember the times when I wiped my raidgroup because I was stupid and they just shrugged it off.
I remember the time when I was the last player standing and killed the boss that killed 39 other people.
I remember when the Nr.1 notorious PK'er on my server hunted me down when he was maxlevel and I wasn't.
I remember the time when I got my revenge when I hunted him down with a raid dedicated to kill him.
I remember the moments in which I got stuff for free in comparison to how expensive they still were just a few years/expansions ago.
If Ashes will have serverwide notices about stuff I don't care about, I will deactive them.
And if I cannot do that they will automatically become background scripture in my mind anyway.
Whatever "bigshot" like stations some people claim doesn't matter to me if I don't know them.
That may sound like "a Peasant doesn't really care who sits on the throne as long as the land isn't invaded" but honestly the want to try and establish something official is so overrated.
What I also remember are the few times when I saw people who though they are big stuff.
And they smugly tried to rationalize why this is the case.
Cringe moments like this also stick with me.
People trying to make others realize that they are of a higher class in some way.
Always makes me remember
" If a King must mention ever so often that they are a King, it means they are not a King at all. "
sure, i could always jus tnot attack anyone but hwo are we going to pvp then? those attacks are basically warning shots, or to see if the other person wants to pvp. so now i supposed to stand next to them and type "hey wanna pvp for the spot?"
also its basically the only tool we have vs pve griefers =x so now thats gonna be gone too?
also, some people might attack others accidentally, im sure it will happen as these things always happen, now that person is fked with corruption xD
i meant outside pvp events -_-
Ashes just didnt have the issue. At least not in a way that was an issue. It just wasnt a problem, so there was no need for a solution.
The closest thing to an impact that it had was that you would be somewhat more aware of your surroundings if you were farming mobs. If there were potential rivals near by, you would always have an eye on them (something tab target games allow for much better than any action game I have played). But this is something you should be doing in a game with open world PvP anyways.
Since we have to assume Intrepid arent stupid, we need to assume they would implement a system in a somewhat competent manner.
A competent implementstion of a system like this would be that you only gain corruption if the mob that kills the player is one that is in combat with a player at the time you attack said player. If you attack and they then pull more mobs and those mobs kill them, that is on them, not you.
The above really shouldn't need to be said. While I appreciate we wouldn't know details of any given system, we should be imagining the best version of a potential system before exclaiming it wouldn't work.
Based on this, if you attack a player when they are almost finished with a pull, that is a safe way to signal you want to fight. On the other hand, if you attack at the start of a pull, you may find yourself needing to take on what ever mobs this player has in order to avoid corruption. Anti-griefing players literally always have the exact same toolbox as griefers. Taking something away from anti-griefers by definition also takes it away from griefers. You cant attack other players accidently in Ashes in the types of fights we are talking about.