Preventing players from gaming the Corruption System

Currently as it stands there isn't much in the way of preventing corrupted players from cheating the intended repercussions of the system, I have a few ideas that I think might be a good solution to this but this is more so an open discussion.

Right now I can think of 3 major issues:
1) Players can easily take their important equipment and crafting reagents and store them in a safe place and wait for bounty hunters to kill them so the whole point of the corruption system would boil down to an eye for an eye, rather than an eye for your gear (if that makes sense).

2) Having familiar faces kill you over and over to remove the corruption rating, this would mean that people are free to grief and kill as many players as they'd like with few repercussions and this is especially going to be a problem when exp isn't a factor at max level.

3) Group PvP and directly trading stolen goods to players who are marked as a non-combatant to minimise loss in case of death.

To start off I think corruption levels shouldn't be lowered per death, it should be a timer that adds exponentially longer increments of time depending on how far corrupted you are to demotivate players from doubling down on being fully corrupt and ontop of this, the node of influence where the PK happened should not allow players from entering zones which might be deemed safe such as town or cities or if they do then they should be captured or killed by guards and have the same consequences as if they had died from a player except the items they lose should be thrown into the void or be forcefully committed to the node's reliquary and not be rewarded to any player specifically. If a player is killed by a node, only then should the corruption time lessen because there's no way the player could've gamed their item loss.

Once a player becomes corrupted, their inventory should be locked out from transferring to a location where they would not drop on death. This still means they can swap out their gear but P2P trading and depositing into banks / caravans or chests would not be an option. This doesn't totally negate people gaming their item drops as they could be killed repeatedly to have all of their gear drop by a friend but they'd be totally defenceless during this period where they have no gear on, their gear would take heavy damage on repeated deaths, their PvE progression would be stunted because they wouldn't be able to fight against mobs and this would all be ontop of the already hefty death penalties in the game.

Finally to combat some of these heftier penalties, I think removing scaling combat dampening as corruption duration got longer would be a good idea. The incentive not to be an absolute bandit is already there in this case but if you do choose to go down that path then you'll have to seriously hide but at least you'll be able to protect yourself in the process as I'm not personally a fan of dampening in games.

I know some of these ideas definitely won't be for everyone and there are certainly some flaws but what do you think? Do you have any ideas that could prevent the player-base cheating the system and making Corruption redundant?

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Noaani

Namil wrote: »

Can't remember when I actually ever directed this at Intrepid.

Check the quote from the first of my posts on this page - it's actually quoted twice.

That is specifically what I was referring to when I said Intrepid have nothing at all to say past outlining the corruption system basics.

If you're exhausted, that's fine. But that doesn't give you a special right to act like a warm glow shines out of your asses because you don't want to talk about a specific subject anymore

Of the people that were involved in the original discussions, I am the only one that is still willing to actually and actively participate in discussions like this still.

That is why I said this...

noaani wrote: »

Now, if you are able to come up with any other potential exploits that you can see in the corruption system, I'd be happy to reply to you with a very easy work around to it.

If I was not happy to participate in this discussion, I wouldn't have outright said that I will participate in the discussion.

Namil wrote: »

Even better, if you have spoken about this in detail and have covered these exploits and thought of work-arounds then why don't you literally just share that information and your ideas instead of talking to someone who genuinely just wanted an active conversation about this system like they've done something wrong.

I *literally* said that is what I will do.

I posted exactly this in relation to the potential exploits you had in the OP right here.

noaani wrote: »

I believe corrupt players are unable to trade with others.

There is also the probability that corrupt players won't be able to unequip items.

These two things should completely negate the above ways to "game" the system.

And then later on I said that if you have any more potential exploits, I am happy to do the same again.

Covid19

hazardnumberseven wrote: »

Covid19 wrote: »

Is anyone else worried about how much 'corrupted' players get cut off the game, I keep seeing that corrupted players shouldn't be able to do this or that. Like from what ive heard at a point it becomes close to impossible to win a fight due to some sort of de buffs or something that's applied when they're toxic enough, and every day I seem to come on its another thing they cant do, now ive got no actual proof of whats been put in place but ive heard at some point they cant put or take off armor, they cant trade, they cant damage thats all i can be assed to write but it seems like at a point they've just got to take an L and die a few times to actually have any sort of chance again at doing what I guess they like doing

Yes, I'm worried.
Waiting to learn more, and especially to see the system in action first though.

One thing that alleviates my concern is that I don't think corruption will be nearly as common as people think, because you only get it if they don't fight back, and if they don't fight back the victim stands to lose twice as much (harsher penalties) than if they did fight back. This gives a strong incentive for people to engage in the conflict rather than just ignore it.

Ok good to know that atleast one player has the same concern I do, also sorry if I burn anyones eyes rn im too lazy to format.

phdmonster

Namil wrote: »

phdmonster wrote: »

It is important to note that YOU DO NOT DELEVEL. Essencially you get locked experience and that reduces your combat efficiency.

But what about end game, when the players are max level? How is experience even going to be a factor when people aren't even getting exp anymore? Unless they move onto a new bar which represents something in the place of experience debt from corruption.

Sorry for the late reply. Had to get some sleep time in.

Experience debt doesn't come from corruptio, it comes for dying.

Experience debt is relevant even on max level because the more exp debt you accummulate by dying the weaker your character becomes. It's not just locking out experience so you can't progress with your leveling, you also get a debuf that makes you weaker/less effective in combat.

And here comes the a tradeoff players will have to decide on. If someone attacks you they become a combatant, if you do not attack back and get killed you get a certain amount of EXP DEBT. If, however you do respond and hit back, you become a combatant too, in which case if you die you only get 50% of the EXP debt.
The difference being that in 1 case your attacker will become red in the first scenario and get corruption and suffer no corruption in the second one. The positive for you is that you get less exp debt in the event that you die.

Anranir

Not being able to unequip gear or trade items is a good failsafe but doesn't remove the option of a freindly player just killing said player, looting the item and trading it back to them.

You could make the loot dropped from a coorrupted player to limit that though.

Noaani

Anranir wrote: »

Not being able to unequip gear or trade items is a good failsafe but doesn't remove the option of a freindly player just killing said player, looting the item and trading it back to them.

You could make the loot dropped from a coorrupted player to limit that though.

No, but this only really works with a small amount of corruption, enough to zero out after one kill.

This is because players killed with corruption respawning somewhat randomly, meaning there is no way to be even remotely sure you will get back to a friendly player before being killed again.

In terms of small amounts of corruption, it is the other penalties associated with corruption are more of a deterrent. The thing there is, with small amounts of corruption, you don't drop gear - chances are the gear dropping potential kicks in about the same level of corruption as needing multiple deaths to zero out the corruption you have.

So, really, we are only talking about people killing one person, and then having their friend kill them to zero off the corruption.

The first thing there is that this player will still respawn in a random location. Not a big deal, but a factor.

The second thing is that the player was still actually killed - and there are actual penalties for death in Ashes.

The next thing is that those death penalties apply four times as much if you are killed while corrupted.

What this means is that if I kill you and gain corruption, then a friend comes and kills me to zero out my corruption, I get four times the penalties that I inflicted on you.

These penalties are not that light, either. The first is gear durability - if you lose 2% by me killing you, I lose 8% when my friend kills me.

Then there is experience debt. The thing with experience debt is that it lowers all your stats and skills. This is similar to how corruption lowers your stats, except corruption only applies it's stat loss in PvP combat, whereas stat loss from experience debt is applied across the board.

If me killing you gives you experience debt that will take you 25 equal level mobs to work off, that means I need to kill 100 equal level mobs to work off the experience debt that I gained.

This is a real deterrent. No one that is just trying to farm people for salt will carry on if they know they are getting 4 times the penalties they are inflicting.

Lafi

Has anybody considering the holes exist for a reason? To prevent players relying entirely on a system and giving some player responsibility.

If you hear of griefing and people abusing this system as mentioned and do nothing, then you're responsible for the threads on forum after live release of people saying x or y about corrupt players etc.

Why does the system have to hold your hand THAT much in a PvX title.

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Noaani

Keith wrote: »

SHHHHHH people don't like you talking about issues with griefers. According to the forums it's a big no no BTW I totally agree with everything you said and may it be said, there will be no shortage of griefers ruining the experience of players wanting to try the game and being the deciding factor for why they quit.

Each of the three things on the post you almost quoted have been put somewhat to rest.

It is likely that you won't be able to trade if you are corrupt - thus the gear you gain corruption in is the gear you stand to lose. This one thing gets rid of the first and third issue in the nearly quoted post (not that the third one would ever be an issue).

For the second one, there are some reasonable death penalties in this game in general, and dying while corrupt means they apply at 4 times the rate. If a player gains corruption to the point where a friend needs to kill them over and over again in order to zero out that corruption, that character that just had all of those deaths would have days of work before they are able to function in equal level content again due to experience debt and its associated stat reduction. They will also have a far greater repair bill than all the players they killed combined. And that is even assuming the friend was able to find the corrupt player after respawning in a random location - which is what happens when you are killed while corrupt.

U5urPator

Keith wrote: »

SHHHHHH people don't like you talking about issues with griefers. According to the forums it's a big no no BTW I totally agree with everything you said and may it be said, there will be no shortage of griefers ruining the experience of players wanting to try the game and being the deciding factor for why they quit.

You just like to create drama don't you? If you don't and you genuinely are this jaded, look at the top of the page and read the post of @noaani. And you will see I am not the only one that judges your line of inquiry as problematic.

Also, if you're so worried, i don't mind you not playing the game. In fact, I believe it would be a nicer experience without passive aggressive hyper casuals, that try to bombard everything that isn't their opinion.

HazardNumberSeven

Keith wrote: »

Right now I can think of 3 major issues:
1) Players can easily take their important equipment and crafting reagents and store them in a safe place and wait for bounty hunters to kill them so the whole point of the corruption system would boil down to an eye for an eye, rather than an eye for your gear (if that makes sense).

2) Having familiar faces kill you over and over to remove the corruption rating, this would mean that people are free to grief and kill as many players as they'd like with few repercussions and this is especially going to be a problem when exp isn't a factor at max level.

3) Group PvP and directly trading stolen goods to players who are marked as a non-combatant to minimise loss in case of death.

SHHHHHH people don't like you talking about issues with griefers. According to the forums it's a big no no BTW I totally agree with everything you said and may it be said, there will be no shortage of griefers ruining the experience of players wanting to try the game and being the deciding factor for why they quit.

Those things can't happen, though. The corruption system doesn't work that way.

1. No. They can't. There's talk of not even being able to unequip or trade items while corrupted.
2. Again, they can't do that. There is durability, XP debt and a PvP debuff. Simply killing someone only removes corruption, they still have to repair things (costly) and work off their xp debt to return their character to full strength (this takes a lot of time)
3. Group PvP isn't an issue it's ... a huge part of the game that the game is being built and marketed on. If someone manages to trade stolen goods to players who are unflagged, you can kill them and take some back, either they do not fight back and suffer harsher (x2) penalties because of it or they do fight back and suffer less penalties, but you might get your stuff back and you don't get any penalties yourself.

On top of that, killing a corrupted player means they have to respawn somewhere in the HUGE world, at random. A huge world with no fast travel.

The system isn't perfect yet, obviously because it needs to be tested before it can be changed and tweaked .. the important thing is to look at the intention and design of the system. It's there to stop griefing, not non-consensual PvP (which isn't griefing).. If it's failing in it's role to stop griefing, it will be adjusted. Additionally it has multiple aspects to it for the explicit reason to prevent people from 'gaming' it with their friends and just avoiding punishment. You may find a way to avoid one aspect, like a friend being the one to kill you so that you don't lose gear .. but you're still forced into the more inconvenient aspects of it (XP debt, durability, random respawn).

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phdmonster

Boys.. and girls.. The corruption system will get tested and any ways to 'game' it will be ironed out before the game finally releases.

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Noaani

Keith wrote: »

U5urPator wrote: »

Keith wrote: »

SHHHHHH people don't like you talking about issues with griefers. According to the forums it's a big no no BTW I totally agree with everything you said and may it be said, there will be no shortage of griefers ruining the experience of players wanting to try the game and being the deciding factor for why they quit.

You just like to create drama don't you? If you don't and you genuinely are this jaded, look at the top of the page and read the post of @noaani. And you will see I am not the only one that judges your line of inquiry as problematic.

Also, if you're so worried, i don't mind you not playing the game. In fact, I believe it would be a nicer experience without passive aggressive hyper casuals, that try to bombard everything that isn't their opinion.

What is wrong with concerning myself with the health of AoC. No reason to stifle somebody's take on an issue because you disagree with it.

There is a difference between understanding a thing and having an opinion on that understanding - and not understanding a thing and still having an opinion.

The thing is, no one here is disagreeing with your opinion, we are simply attempting to make sure you have the correct facts so you can form a proper opinion. If you listen to and understand these facts, your opinion will change - not necessarily to be the same as anyone else's, but definitely to something other than what it is now.

Some people though, seem quite content with forming a factless opinion, and then refusing to listen to facts. Not saying that is you, yet, but it is some people over the last few days.

Songcaller

Edit: @CaptainChuck

CaptainChuck wrote: »

That's because ur blinded by your passion to be a bounty hunter. The system is fairly easy to exploit as it stands right now. On average, the no. of pkers will be higher than the no. of bounty hunters. Some will also be of the same level/higher level than the bounty hunter. This means that there is no guarantee that a bounty hunter can help a person who is being constantly griefed by multiple people as he might get killed as well. Even if it was a single high level target targeting low levels, its going to be difficult to find bounty hunters of similar level that might come to take him out because of the no. of pkers on average being greater than the no. of bounty hunters.

The main problem I see is the wiki not holding all information (Not that a player made site should be held to such standards). The issues have been repeated so much I've aligned to being a Bounty Hunter.

If you believe Corrupted will be superior to Bounty Hunter tactics, you'd be wrong. Jedi of all grades were much stronger than Bounty Hunters in SWG, yet, Bounty Hunters worked together for the Bounties.

You can't take a static position because the situation isn't static at all. News will spread of grouped griefers, just like the Wild West Posses will form to eradicate the threat.

Until you have tested the corruption system in-game, you can't say it is flawed. You can say you have concerns (I've stated concerns myself) but to demand a change to a system from the outside, when the inside could be acceptable, is mere folly. If the system was exploitable, the system wouldn't be present. The system wasn't exploitable in L2 and the system has been refined in Ashes. The fact we have Bounty Hunters at all is a miracle. The fact that a griefer on rampage loses ALL PvP viability after enough kills will deter massed griefing.

The corrupted players might have a fetish for killing Bounty Hunters, the system makes the combat fair between Bounty Hunters and Corrupted Players (Not like SWG). Yet, the threat turns to the Bounty Hunters, not average joe wandering through the forest.

When a Green Player sees a corrupted player, kill the corrupted player, don't allow the corrupted player to gank you. The corrupted player will not be at optimal levels for PvP. I do not understand the concerns some people have over being ganked. If you are low level and being ganked then Bounty Hunters will assist in such circumstance. If you believe in spreading corruption, you can't then complain corruption is occuring.

Bolobao

I think not having options to fast travel and having to travel a large distance to be considered 'safe' is another thing to consider.

We still don't know what it will be like in the corrupted players point of view. Remember, corruption is part of the lore where its not some 'title' its actually being consumed by corruption which is a force. this could in turn, make it so the gear you have on you becomes corrupted and making it untradeable - which also gives it that debuff which can be dropped on death if that makes sense?

So many possibilities but we just don't know until we have it in our hands to test it. But i agree, this forum is to discus potential issues and foresee things like this and fix them early IF they are an issue or even keep it as a precaution / to be kept in mind once the system is out and we can test it.

I think both sides here need to chill a bit and remember that these discussions are for the best intention for the game and the more ideas, arguments and debates; the more sources the devs have and beta/alpha testers have to refer to when testing specifics.

Srdjan91

@Namil TRUE everything you wrote in you'r first post.
Corruption wont prevent some players to ruin other player gameplay, even if needed for them to re-create new character and to do the same thing.
One more thing, AoC will be so anti streaming/streamer game.
I can already see stream sniping (even with stream delay) and ganking just to ruin their 'life', killing their mount (it might be ok killing mount for first or second time, but after that they'll just leave game or play it only off stream sometimes), and so on...

Songcaller

Srky wrote: »

@Namil TRUE everything you wrote in you'r first post.
Corruption wont prevent some players to ruin other player gameplay, even if needed for them to re-create new character and to do the same thing.
One more thing, AoC will be so anti streaming/streamer game.
I can already see stream sniping (even with stream delay) and ganking just to ruin their 'life', killing their mount (it might be ok killing mount for first or second time, but after that they'll just leave game or play it only off stream sometimes), and so on...

If one streams delicate interactions, then what would one expect? I have no sympathies for streamers. If a streamer is silly enough to stream live action events (Sieges, Raids etc) that will enable some people to cheat, I'd kick the streamer from the raids all together. There is nothing stopping people recording incidents and uploading it later.

If a streamer expects extra protections it is not acceptable. A streamer won't just be at risk. Anyone with the streamer will also be at risk. I appreciate this issue of streamers didn't appear in UO and DAoC. Battle tactics would have been a god damn nightmare.

HazardNumberSeven

Srky wrote: »

@Namil TRUE everything you wrote in you'r first post.
Corruption wont prevent some players to ruin other player gameplay, even if needed for them to re-create new character and to do the same thing.
One more thing, AoC will be so anti streaming/streamer game.
I can already see stream sniping (even with stream delay) and ganking just to ruin their 'life', killing their mount (it might be ok killing mount for first or second time, but after that they'll just leave game or play it only off stream sometimes), and so on...

You didn't even read the information I posted

It's been explained so many times why that is not true. Please stop spreading misinformation.

unknown

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