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For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
[Discussion] Corruption: A punishment absolvable by grind
apocrisy
Member, Alpha Two
A thread to discuss means of absolving corruption.
Getting rid of it through grind from a gameplay perspective incentivizes players to be exposed to areas with risky mobs and where they may collude with other players but it feels a bit more gamey and to a certain degree there's also loot awarded that a person cleansed of corruption would receive in the process. Granted they get blight so it's not 100%, but there are other maybe more thematical means of tackling this "moral" question.
Idea 1:
Corruption should slightly reduce players movement speed and make them go on a pilgrimage to get rid of it, they are to travel either on foot or ground mount a specific distance that needs to be at least "X" distance further away from the spot where they turned corrupt. While on this pilgrimage they are displayed to players on the world map within a radius of the distance remaining for the corrupted players pilgrimage debuff to be cleansed (the end of the pilgrimage) and globally to bounty hunters (https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Bounty_hunters)
Idea 2:
"Community Service" - Corrupt Players would need to engage in extensive gathering to absolve their corrupted status, the gatherables need to be handed in to a parole officer medieval equivalent.
Idea 3:
Meditation - Corrupt players have designated crop circles or symbols across maps at which they must stand within them to clear away their corruption by "meditating". The meditation lasts 5-10 minutes but a player doesn't need to sit or be afk, just be located inside the circle. These circles are of course landmarked on the map so the people that suffered at the hand of the corrupted can still attempt to enact their own judgment. In retrospect this might make camping such spots a freebie activity for bounty hunters or anyone interested in corruption free loot, and would reward larger group corrupted individuals as they'd have an easier time defending.
Idea 4:
Something involving the religion node type, a sort of polytheistic interpretation of afterlife - maybe upon corruption the gates to valhalla spawn on the place where the person turned corrupt, they are thrown into the instance and now the corrupted and anyone who steps through the portal can fight it out in PVX, against gods/valkiries/creatures of the afterlife while vigilantes can still chase the red player or team to this "afterlife battlefield" - a trial by combat similar to what currently is implemented but with a twist: non corrupted players do not lose XP or items if dying here, but are sent out and can't re enter the place.
Getting rid of it through grind from a gameplay perspective incentivizes players to be exposed to areas with risky mobs and where they may collude with other players but it feels a bit more gamey and to a certain degree there's also loot awarded that a person cleansed of corruption would receive in the process. Granted they get blight so it's not 100%, but there are other maybe more thematical means of tackling this "moral" question.
Idea 1:
Corruption should slightly reduce players movement speed and make them go on a pilgrimage to get rid of it, they are to travel either on foot or ground mount a specific distance that needs to be at least "X" distance further away from the spot where they turned corrupt. While on this pilgrimage they are displayed to players on the world map within a radius of the distance remaining for the corrupted players pilgrimage debuff to be cleansed (the end of the pilgrimage) and globally to bounty hunters (https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Bounty_hunters)
Idea 2:
"Community Service" - Corrupt Players would need to engage in extensive gathering to absolve their corrupted status, the gatherables need to be handed in to a parole officer medieval equivalent.
Idea 3:
Meditation - Corrupt players have designated crop circles or symbols across maps at which they must stand within them to clear away their corruption by "meditating". The meditation lasts 5-10 minutes but a player doesn't need to sit or be afk, just be located inside the circle. These circles are of course landmarked on the map so the people that suffered at the hand of the corrupted can still attempt to enact their own judgment. In retrospect this might make camping such spots a freebie activity for bounty hunters or anyone interested in corruption free loot, and would reward larger group corrupted individuals as they'd have an easier time defending.
Idea 4:
Something involving the religion node type, a sort of polytheistic interpretation of afterlife - maybe upon corruption the gates to valhalla spawn on the place where the person turned corrupt, they are thrown into the instance and now the corrupted and anyone who steps through the portal can fight it out in PVX, against gods/valkiries/creatures of the afterlife while vigilantes can still chase the red player or team to this "afterlife battlefield" - a trial by combat similar to what currently is implemented but with a twist: non corrupted players do not lose XP or items if dying here, but are sent out and can't re enter the place.
1
Comments
Idea 2: There is already a "community service" quest planned for religious nodes to reduce your "kill count" that modifies your corruption gained on future kills. Right now it is a permanent count till that mechanic is added (as a way to deter those that are acting out because they don't care about their progression)
Idea 3: AFK the corruption away through inaction has never been a thing and won't be. You either grind it off through exp gaining activities or get killed (probably multiple times based on corruption level)
Idea 4: Creates a separate instanced mechanic as a "reward" to those that go corrupt. They have plans for how religions and religious nodes will interact with the corruption system, but it will not be giving them anything special beyond a task. Just like a "wall of shame" or other things that point out their status, there are always those that will engage in bad behavior (and going corrupt is considered bad behavior, that is why it is penalized so heavily) just to be able to say "Look, look! I got on the wall!"
Corruption is all stick, no carrot and should stay that way. There are something like 13 different "sanctioned" pvp systems in Ashes currently or planned.
The reason we have a punishment to it is to prevent players from killing randomly, so the point is to balance it between two ends: 1: punishment too light so people murder too often and 2: punishment too heavy so no one is willing to solve other problems with murder.
Someone training mobs to your group to try and kill you? You have the option to murder them and return to grinding to work off being red (not a great idea in a busy spot). This is why the system is built to be more punishing the more previous kills you have, so isolated incidents can be solved with a lesser punishment and those who solve every issue with murder are nudged more and more against that behavior.
If you have to go on a world wide tour every time you have to kill someone it generally means it will never be "worth it" to solve another problem, only if you enjoy killing.
These systems could be interesting for reducing your overall PK counter, which again needs to be time consuming enough that people who rarely have to resort to PKing can use it to keep the punishment low without allowing mass murderers to easily reset their counter.
Important to remember PKing is a tool that is intended to be used, any "solution" to PKing can't be so severe as to prohibit players from using it to resolve in game problems.
For each non-combatant you kill, you get a stack of corruption that lasts 24 game hours. Having a friend kill you or grinding won't remove the corruption. The only way to reduce it is to wait it out in game time.
If corrupted, any player in stealth (ranger / rogue / etc.) will still show up on the mini-map, and bounty hunters can still track you, but you could still be invisible or hard to see on screen.
So, this would in effect cause the corrupted player to deal with people hunting them for 24 hours game time at a minimum and doesn't matter how many times they are killed within that period, they stay corrupted until the time runs out.
To balance some of that, the most equipment a corrupted player should lose in this case is 1 item for each death since they could be killed multiple times before their time runs out.
The 24 hours idea could be changed to 16 or 8 depending on how it worked out.
I'm sure some would think this is too harsh, but I'd think this would curb but not completely stop attacking non-combatants.