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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.
How to properly balance the corruption system
Imnotkio
Member, Alpha Two
With all the corruption mechanic discussion and PVP/griefing debacle, I decided to chime in. I've played a total of 4 different MMOs with open-world PVP with a system similar to the corruption system. Some of them worked wonderfully to curb griefing and some of them were either not enough or too punishing encouraging reverse griefing (karma bombing).
Balance
To me, the balance between the game being too heavy on pvp or too heavy on pve depends not only on the level of corruption penalties but also on the death penalties.
If corruption penalties and death penalties are unbalanced, players will resort to griefing. The type of grief depends on the balance. if corruption penalties are too high and death penalties too low (like it is now), the griefing will be mob training, karma bombing, corruption baiting, etc. On the flip side, corruption will not be enough and regular griefing will occur.
Once corruption and death penalties are balanced, you then start thinking about how much pvp you want in your game. Do you want to attack people on sight or do you want players to only attack when they really hate the other player? In my experience, low corruption penalties and low death penalties generate a heavy pvp game, what some ppl would call a gankbox. High corruption and death penalties mean ppl will only engage in PVP if they have a personal stake in the matter.
Once you have a good balance between death and corruption penalties, it's just a matter of increasing and decreasing those together to fine-tune how much pvp you want in the game.
But balance is only responsible for fine-tuning the amount of PVP in a regular scenario. You still need a bunch of other expansions to the system to avoid people exploiting the system.
Necessary fixes
Some of these are already mentioned to be in the works but I'll add them anyway:
1. Combatant status last too little. If you flag combatant, it should have a longer period before you go back to green. I would suggest, from my previous experience with this type of system, 5~10 minutes if you haven't killed a person and 15~20 minutes if you killed someone.
2. Looting a corpse is an action of aggression. It should flag you combatant
4. Red players should be able to fight back. Right now the situation is once you go red, you either die to a friend or try and clean the corruption. But cleaning the corruption is almost impossible, as you are constantly being attacked by other players. This leaves you in a situation where you either fight back and get more corrupt or just accept death. It's a snowball situation that makes corruption penalties way harsher than death penalties and breaks the balance.
5. Corruption increased on a high level on low-level player action. I know this is intended and I'm not sure if it's implemented yet, but since gear right now is almost all your power and you get new gear tiers every 10 levels, you should get corruption increase once you start killing players 5~8+ levels under you.
6. Affiliated players should not be able to kill each other (guildmates, alliance members). Also, add a cooldown period when you leave a guild before you can join another. This should help with the players killing friends to clean the corruption (even though it doesn't stop it completely)
7. Corruption penalties should be shared. If 8 players attacked and killed 1 player, all 8 should get corruption. The responsible for the killing blow should get a bigger value of corruption and the others should get a reduced but still significant corruption value. It should not be divided as it dilutes the corruption. It should be a fixed value independent of how many ppl participated in the kill. This also helps against ppl leaving players with low HP and letting a mob finish off the player.
8. More flagging options. Example from Tibia:
We should have at least 3 pvp flags: Offensive, defensive, pacific. In offensive, you would hit everyone including greens. On the defensive you would only hit purple and red players, making so you can pvp against consenting players without the risk of going corrupt from accidentally hitting greens. Pacific would be hit no one. A UI element displays the 3 flag options and the one you have selected at the moment should be highlighted.
I think it is important to notice that these types of decisions are made on a case-by-case basis. Therefore, using menu settings to decide these things is NOT the way to go, as it is not a binary static decision. It needs to be UI elements that you can easily swap between either by clicking on them or by keybinding.
The mistake of trying to fix everything pvp related with corruption
In the past weekends after A2 started, corruption has been getting more punishing, as the reports of spawn ganking and new player ganking from pre-A2 tests were going rampant. This is a mistake as the new player experience is a completely different thing from the rest of the game. Tuning corruption based on this early experience will make the rest of the game suffer for it. You can always create alts to annoy players in the starting portals and when you get corrupted delete that alt and make another one.
CORRUPTION SHOULD NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR FIXING NEW PLAYER EXPERIENCE ISSUES
On top of that, I don't see why the new player experience needs to involve pvp right from the gate. Give the players a grace period to settle into the world, learn their buttons, and do the tutorial before they are in danger of player interactions. I would suggest a grace period of something like 3 levels or 5 hours (if the player hits level 3, or 5 hours have passed, he is now pvp enabled).
Additionally, other issues like spawn camping need to be addressed. Dying while respawning when your loading screen hasn't even finished yet is bad, regardless if the killer gets corrupted or not. This should not be a thing. Implement safe zones around the respawn shrines so you can at least finish loading the game before dying.
Last but not least, the character should persist in the world until you are out of combat and also while you are purple. You shouldn't be able to alt+f4 in the middle of combat and your char disappears. You shouldn't also be able to alt+f4 while purple and wait the timer out before logging in again.
Balance
To me, the balance between the game being too heavy on pvp or too heavy on pve depends not only on the level of corruption penalties but also on the death penalties.
If corruption penalties and death penalties are unbalanced, players will resort to griefing. The type of grief depends on the balance. if corruption penalties are too high and death penalties too low (like it is now), the griefing will be mob training, karma bombing, corruption baiting, etc. On the flip side, corruption will not be enough and regular griefing will occur.
Once corruption and death penalties are balanced, you then start thinking about how much pvp you want in your game. Do you want to attack people on sight or do you want players to only attack when they really hate the other player? In my experience, low corruption penalties and low death penalties generate a heavy pvp game, what some ppl would call a gankbox. High corruption and death penalties mean ppl will only engage in PVP if they have a personal stake in the matter.
Once you have a good balance between death and corruption penalties, it's just a matter of increasing and decreasing those together to fine-tune how much pvp you want in the game.
But balance is only responsible for fine-tuning the amount of PVP in a regular scenario. You still need a bunch of other expansions to the system to avoid people exploiting the system.
Necessary fixes
Some of these are already mentioned to be in the works but I'll add them anyway:
1. Combatant status last too little. If you flag combatant, it should have a longer period before you go back to green. I would suggest, from my previous experience with this type of system, 5~10 minutes if you haven't killed a person and 15~20 minutes if you killed someone.
2. Looting a corpse is an action of aggression. It should flag you combatant
4. Red players should be able to fight back. Right now the situation is once you go red, you either die to a friend or try and clean the corruption. But cleaning the corruption is almost impossible, as you are constantly being attacked by other players. This leaves you in a situation where you either fight back and get more corrupt or just accept death. It's a snowball situation that makes corruption penalties way harsher than death penalties and breaks the balance.
5. Corruption increased on a high level on low-level player action. I know this is intended and I'm not sure if it's implemented yet, but since gear right now is almost all your power and you get new gear tiers every 10 levels, you should get corruption increase once you start killing players 5~8+ levels under you.
6. Affiliated players should not be able to kill each other (guildmates, alliance members). Also, add a cooldown period when you leave a guild before you can join another. This should help with the players killing friends to clean the corruption (even though it doesn't stop it completely)
7. Corruption penalties should be shared. If 8 players attacked and killed 1 player, all 8 should get corruption. The responsible for the killing blow should get a bigger value of corruption and the others should get a reduced but still significant corruption value. It should not be divided as it dilutes the corruption. It should be a fixed value independent of how many ppl participated in the kill. This also helps against ppl leaving players with low HP and letting a mob finish off the player.
8. More flagging options. Example from Tibia:
We should have at least 3 pvp flags: Offensive, defensive, pacific. In offensive, you would hit everyone including greens. On the defensive you would only hit purple and red players, making so you can pvp against consenting players without the risk of going corrupt from accidentally hitting greens. Pacific would be hit no one. A UI element displays the 3 flag options and the one you have selected at the moment should be highlighted.
I think it is important to notice that these types of decisions are made on a case-by-case basis. Therefore, using menu settings to decide these things is NOT the way to go, as it is not a binary static decision. It needs to be UI elements that you can easily swap between either by clicking on them or by keybinding.
The mistake of trying to fix everything pvp related with corruption
In the past weekends after A2 started, corruption has been getting more punishing, as the reports of spawn ganking and new player ganking from pre-A2 tests were going rampant. This is a mistake as the new player experience is a completely different thing from the rest of the game. Tuning corruption based on this early experience will make the rest of the game suffer for it. You can always create alts to annoy players in the starting portals and when you get corrupted delete that alt and make another one.
CORRUPTION SHOULD NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR FIXING NEW PLAYER EXPERIENCE ISSUES
On top of that, I don't see why the new player experience needs to involve pvp right from the gate. Give the players a grace period to settle into the world, learn their buttons, and do the tutorial before they are in danger of player interactions. I would suggest a grace period of something like 3 levels or 5 hours (if the player hits level 3, or 5 hours have passed, he is now pvp enabled).
Additionally, other issues like spawn camping need to be addressed. Dying while respawning when your loading screen hasn't even finished yet is bad, regardless if the killer gets corrupted or not. This should not be a thing. Implement safe zones around the respawn shrines so you can at least finish loading the game before dying.
Last but not least, the character should persist in the world until you are out of combat and also while you are purple. You shouldn't be able to alt+f4 in the middle of combat and your char disappears. You shouldn't also be able to alt+f4 while purple and wait the timer out before logging in again.
2
Comments
I think a easy fix is maybe a level restriction on ganking loobies. maybe only non-consensual pvp within 5 levels? and maybe that gets disabled after level 10? spitballin here
I would be worried it could be exploited.
Yes we are high now in a weird place where corruption is too high, but death penalties are not so low either, so we are in between the pve and grief fest on the compass, where people reverse grief a lot.