I'm playing archeage unchanged on the fresh start server and after 2 months many guilds quit and most of my neighbors are gone. When there's no crime balance you have a world of murderous players. Typically these types of players will quickly gear up and go after easy targets, and mostly kill them for no other reason than to laugh about it. I find it humorous they cry about any realism that would occur for their actions in game. I hope all future games will bring a realist crime punishment system into action. How can you expect to do whatever you want without any consequences? My advice for you types, go play those dying games or ones just for mindless killing. Your play style is cancer for MMOs and only make up a very small percentage of the player base.
As an analyst, it comes down to crime balance and law structure for continuous healthy player growth.
The easiest and only way to solve the problem is not allow open world/non-consensual pvp. There is no other option, or the same thing will happen on most if not all of AoC servers. Some may take longer than others but eventually they will a succumb.
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NelsonRebelMember, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I think that steven already mentioned about the "Dark Gods" and the origins of corruption as well as thieves guild system, and caravans as incentives for playing as "The Bad Guy" that open up paths the more you progress in the game, and the more the game world is built and being progressed.
On top of that there is also the entire node system itself that already creates a friction of good and bad depending on what side of the fence you are on for a nodes progression and benifits.
Corruption is a PK deterent for griefing (and rightfully so) for un-flagged players. So as long as you are not griefing unflagged players you should be able to delve further into the religion of the dark gods that corrupted the world in the story and rp that with killing or stealing from other players.
We do know that there WILL also be evil
choices for quest and they will affect your world building.
I'm not sure if thats exactly what you were trying to ask
To the developers credit here, I've heard a lot of good things in regards to some of those subjects from the AMA and other stuff I've listened to, so, hopefully they deliver on the ambition As far as suggestions for the pvp system, I think until I actually got a chance to play, it'd be difficult to give meaningful feedback. Either way, hopefully everyone has a productive dialogue .
We are just looking for a good conversation about things we would like to see and not be told that it doesn't fit the game's intent over and over. Just some ideas about ways to be bad that are not promoting griefing or unfair pk'ing on any kind. I think some good things have come up if you actually read through.
I don't think it's that it doesn't fit, but I feel it's like Intrepid is saying:
"we're making the best car ever!"
and then people suggest
"but why don't you make a truck, it's bigger"
I do get that it's selfish to want more, but this forum is being actively looked through for suggestions and feedback so that what this is.
people seems to be forgetting that that bounty hunters are being implemented into the game.
Everyone keeps telling that corruption should not be rewarded and only be punished..
bounty hunters get rewarded... so should corrupted players in a mild form..
Example:
A corrupted player should get some reward by killing a bounty hunter imo..
if none goes corrupted, the bounty system will not work.
It is worth bringing up and even if you have an elected corruption where you become corrupted through a quest killing npcs and NEVER HARM AN INNCENT person then were is the harm in at the least discussing it? lol
I've seen Steven say that the game will be able to track a great many things and provides for things like leader boards and achievement titles. The examples given on wiki is a title like server first for a world boss. But it would be a great add for the game to have hundreds of titles for the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Example titles that your character can get stuck with and/or be proud to have (a title can be a bad thing too!)
Specifically kills that are Corruption causing, lawful kills would not count! - Cowardly or Pathetic = Kill ## people who are a level 80% below yours in a week (i set a time limit such a week because if it's a never ending running tally then most any 10 year veteran would have this title eventually, but if you do this many in 1 week then clearly you are a douche bag worthy of this title, and the title is stuck above your head for all to see even when your shopping in town, all will know your shame! You can't toggle the title off!) - Dishonorable = Kill ## people who are a level 40% below yours in a week - Annoying = Kill ## Merchant/Vendor NPCs in a week
The above would be title most would hate having shown above their name, but tough, you earned it and now you dont have the option to turn off the title, for a set time or until maybe you do a quest to clean yourself you will walk around as "Drago the Pathetic" and everyone will know you got that title by ganking noobs. - Malicious = Kill ## of player mounts (horses, turtles, stuffington, etc) in a week - Outcast = Join and leave ## of Nodes or Guilds in a month
Some title are more elite, and require both a hgh level of karma as well as high fame, i.e. it's easy to be "bad" but to be "evil" means killing a whole nation. Or it's easy to get the title "Kind" but to be "Angelic" means saving a world from a demon lord. - Glorious = During the life of your character be a general for ### successful node sieges - Dread Lord = During the life of your character complete ### religious based quests that were defined as "evil" types of quests, kill this NPC, kill this religious leader, complete a quest to find and destroy a mythic ruby that held in it the power and love of the goddess of nature... etc, it would be a long list with high requirements. - Wicked = Destroy ### of relgious artifacts that are catagorized as "good" religions - Angelic = During the life of your character complete ### religious based quests that the devs have defined as good. - Dark or Demon Lord = As a monster during a Monster Coin Event kill ### people
And of course we need lots of good titles: - Kind = Complete ## bulletin board tasks in a week that involves saving animals - Upstanding = Donate ### gold/embers to a religion or node construction project in a week - Industrious = Complete ## construction projects at your node and Freehold - Distinguished Lord = Complete a large number of multiple different types of Node objectives, donating to religions, providing mats in constructon projects, complete merchant quests, voting (more people vote when there's rewards for doing it, real life proves that!) - Renaissance man or lady = Master multiple trade skills - Socialite = Talk to ### different NPCs in multiple different Nodes
Man this is fun, I could go on for hours making up titles and requirements.
Oh we should even have polls in our node for titles to give to our node Mayor, the titles could be ones pre-picked by the devs to avoid non RP friendly titles. But perhaps once a month the Mayor has a poll automatically generated at the town hall that asks citizens to vote on what title the mayor has earned and it would range from (Infamous or Dastardly to Upstanding and Illustrious) thus if a Castle Monarch or Node Mayor leaves taxes at a very high rate for months and the citizens don't feel the taxes are just then they may vote him the title of "Wretched" or "Greedy" Or if the Mayor sets up a horrible caravan trade with another node to trade 1 diamond for 1 egg, either because he's that stupid or he was talked into doing it to make the female ruler of that node happy with him, then his citizens (just before voting him out for good) give him the title of "weak minded / feeble minded"
I think I have read enough of this thread to get some idea of what you maybe are trying to say.
You want there to be OTHER ways to earn Corruption and through those means perhaps an unknown underground faction may become available where you can gain access to titles, Cosmetics to adorn your character and possibly cosmetic spell/abilities that would separate you from the masses as someone who is/has been corrupted for some length of time.
These things would not exclusively require you to PK. Perhaps there would be missions like Assassinating a Mayor or Guild Leader of a Castle or high level cleric of a religion, which would be reasonable expectations as they would be legitimate issues to deal with and make those roles a little more interesting. Yes it's a PK, but if you accept the responsibility of the role you accept the danger, much like running a caravan.
You would still get corruption, but as a mission type, you would also earn corruption points you would not get just killing random players for corruption, so the motivation for random PKing is further decreased.
Of course this would have to be a secret in the game until a player earned enough corruption and survived long enough to unlock some hidden dungeon or some such to unlock the Corrupted "religion" and build it up from there.
You could then apply the points you earn from the other means of earning corruption to buy cosmetics and level up within the ranks. You wouldn't gain access to any new skills, but maybe your spells/abilities have a more corrupted look to them.
Additional to the idea: I don't think metropolis can form in the underground nodes. So maybe there could a chance for a node to form a black market type town where corrupted wouldn't be auto attacked by guards.
You mean you actually read everything and put together the concept vs just spewing out the same stuff over and over. Why... you are an actual person contributing to the forum in a productive way! Thank you sir and to answer yes, well kinda. I like your idea and I could add onto it but work has me overloaded this week so sadly I can't be as active in this at the moment.
I'm playing archeage unchanged on the fresh start server and after 2 months many guilds quit and most of my neighbors are gone. When there's no crime balance you have a world of murderous players. Typically these types of players will quickly gear up and go after easy targets, and mostly kill them for no other reason than to laugh about it. I find it humorous they cry about any realism that would occur for their actions in game. I hope all future games will bring a realist crime punishment system into action. How can you expect to do whatever you want without any consequences? My advice for you types, go play those dying games or ones just for mindless killing. Your play style is cancer for MMOs and only make up a very small percentage of the player base.
As an analyst, it comes down to crime balance and law structure for continuous healthy player growth.
I am sorry your game went to crap but many cames like DAoC and Ultima never suffered like that and as stated above so many times, there could be other ways to obtain corruption outside of pking and griefing and someone even mentioned how detailed this game will be at collecting data so they can determine how you get corruption and separate it from killing someone unwillingly or lower level and treat you differently. So you can be a good bad guy and never inconvenience a single person that would make you pk or griefer. You could keep severe punishments for those players who do pk and grief.
@SSRogue I went through most of this thread, and it seems to mostly be people telling you the options to be a bad character, and you not understanding or saying, "not like that, I mean bad character!" They don't want to encourage corruption, it's *only* a punishment. This means they will not give you a black cowl or an evil title for getting corrupted a bunch. Even if it's just the one little reward, everyone would be encouraged to do it at least the one time for the reward. So they won't be putting it in. You can do it spareingly if you think someone got some rare material and you want to take it from them or something, but in the long run it will be more and more punishing to you.
You can attack caravans and towns and freeholds to be a bad guy. There will be social/religious ladders to climb, like thieves guilds, and you can pick the bad guy versions of those to follow. Just because it's a religion doesn't mean they don't worship demons and sacrifice animals or something. You can choose to try to assassinate captains and vendors to assist a siege instead of fighting honorably at the walls, and could be the lynchpin to successfully winning the siege, in a "bad" way. You can constantly declare war on guilds and hinder them as much as you want. You can try to post up in a rare material zone and gank people that are likely to fight back to keep their farming spot. I don't know what else you're looking for.
I think I have read enough of this thread to get some idea of what you maybe are trying to say.
You want there to be OTHER ways to earn Corruption and through those means perhaps an unknown underground faction may become available where you can gain access to titles, Cosmetics to adorn your character and possibly cosmetic spell/abilities that would separate you from the masses as someone who is/has been corrupted for some length of time.
These things would not exclusively require you to PK. Perhaps there would be missions like Assassinating a Mayor or Guild Leader of a Castle or high level cleric of a religion, which would be reasonable expectations as they would be legitimate issues to deal with and make those roles a little more interesting. Yes it's a PK, but if you accept the responsibility of the role you accept the danger, much like running a caravan.
You would still get corruption, but as a mission type, you would also earn corruption points you would not get just killing random players for corruption, so the motivation for random PKing is further decreased.
Of course this would have to be a secret in the game until a player earned enough corruption and survived long enough to unlock some hidden dungeon or some such to unlock the Corrupted "religion" and build it up from there.
You could then apply the points you earn from the other means of earning corruption to buy cosmetics and level up within the ranks. You wouldn't gain access to any new skills, but maybe your spells/abilities have a more corrupted look to them.
Additional to the idea: I don't think metropolis can form in the underground nodes. So maybe there could a chance for a node to form a black market type town where corrupted wouldn't be auto attacked by guards.
You mean you actually read everything and put together the concept vs just spewing out the same stuff over and over. Why... you are an actual person contributing to the forum in a productive way! Thank you sir and to answer yes, well kinda. I like your idea and I could add onto it but work has me overloaded this week so sadly I can't be as active in this at the moment.
They won't do this with Corruption, that would just be the bad themed faction and you would earn reputation with them in these "other ways that aren't PKing" that you've described. Why does it need to be Corruption?
They wouldnt put it in as a secret because they don't want people to get corrupted much, it's a punishment in the literal sense! It's like a literal timeout that can grow into basically a permaban until it wears off, enforced within the game! If someone got some arbitrary secret level of Corruption and was rewarded, then it would encourage everyone else to do it suddenly. They don't want to encourage it, it's for actual bad people, not people playing bad characters. I understand it could be more than that with these ideas, but they have other systems separated out for roleplaying bad.
Corruption is like jail, meant to be a deterrent and punishment. You don't expect anything useful to come from jail. Why would you expect them for corruption?
The secret to being a good guy is avoiding the death that usually comes with corruption. You won each time when you have gotten away Scot-free with murder (even more so if you managed to take a couple of valuable resources off the person you have murdered).
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NelsonRebelMember, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
people seems to be forgetting that that bounty hunters are being implemented into the game.
Everyone keeps telling that corruption should not be rewarded and only be punished..
bounty hunters get rewarded... so should corrupted players in a mild form..
Example:
A corrupted player should get some reward by killing a bounty hunter imo..
if none goes corrupted, the bounty system will not work.
It is worth bringing up and even if you have an elected corruption where you become corrupted through a quest killing npcs and NEVER HARM AN INNCENT person then were is the harm in at the least discussing it? lol
Its not that theres a harm in discussing it, the problem is what it (feels) like you're alluding to.
Even though you mentioned that you dont want to just include player killing griefing. The whole point of corruption is to ensure there is a sufficient deterent to widespread and unabashed player killing and griefing. There are evil ways to play via the dark god religions, war on nodes, guild factions, caravans and killing another player flagged is fair game.
The bounty system and the reduced damage on corrupted players is just an obvious stacking deterent against creative players from skirting the corruption weakness to continue their grief streaks.
I mean if you check the wiki and the discord there are plenty of spots where steven says there will be options to play and influence the actual world with evil events via meaningful choices and open world events and quests.
So until we see the dark gods religon stuff, and more with the evil options it just feels like you're asking for a benifit to corruption when corruption is just the anti-grief measure AoC has put in with stacking levels of bounties to make sure the corrupted player isnt just using something that allows them to bypass the downsides of corruption and continue their mayhem on other players.
Thats all that "I think" many players are trying to say. That we know steven has already mentioned there will be avenues for bad guy play, we just dont know exactly what they'll be. The monster coins are an excellent example the other gentlemen brought up.
And there will be titles and achievments for war efforts and stuff but we wont see those until we hit around beta phase.
I don’t understand some people in this thread. It seems like PK is being automatically associated with griefing, but to me those are very different things.
I also don’t get why some people seem to think Steven does not want PKing when if that were true he would just stop anyone from killing anyone outside of sanctioned pvp events.
Seems like he wants to stop griefing, while allowing moody players to kill someone sometimes if they feel upset or betrayed by them.
I FULLY support anti griefing mechanics, and the corruption system seems like a great way to dissuade griefing. However random open world pvp is not griefing to me, and the corruption system in place also dissuades doing that.
This game is supposedly all about risk vs reward, but there is only one reward, that I’m aware of, for PKing. That would be a percentage of a players gatherables. So assuming that stays the same, why would anyone interested in PKing ever fight anyone except unprepared gatherers? In other words the current reward PROMOTES griefing low risk kills, and causing someone to waste time gathering only to be targeted and lose some of those mats plus the other death penalties.
I think the corruption system should instead reward PKers for attacking high risk targets, whether that is some form of battle points, or anti honor points that form some sort of “evil” rank, or the reward is not getting gatherables, but instead consumables or a potential for inventory(not equipped gear) items to drop. Unless this game is different in some fundamental way, most high level raiders won’t be carrying many gatherables around at any given time, but might have plenty of consumables for dungeons/raids.
Since they have pvp ranks or ladders(right?), it would seem easy enough to tie corruption to pvp rank. So if you are just a douche griefer killing low level players and non pvpers all the time, you will gain no benefit, and get nothing but punishments. However if you choose targets at or above your “evil” rank, which would reflect the opposite of a pvp rank, you will instead grow your rank while possibly getting some sort of monetary reward.
Then pair your “evil” rank to some sort of underground or dark association in the game so that you have new quests or ties to for a little RP fun.
Also because I hate griefing, I think the corruption system should punish you severely for killing a low level player, like instant full corruption. I know it’s going to already do that, I just hope the increased corruption is massive in that situation. Force players who want to ambush players in the world to only target actual challenging players, which is IMO not griefing in any way. Also to stop corpse camping just make it so you gain no further reward for killing the same player more than once in a period of time and start losing rank and gaining loads of corruption if you kill the same target again within a reasonable period of time.
Also does anyone know if graveyard/respawn point camping has any protections? Right now with the corruption system it would seem highly likely that a coordinated PK group would kill a gatherer at a known high value farming spot, then have a few guys camping the respawn points nearby and just chain kill the person not only causing that player a ton of grief, but losing lots of his mats, while corruption would stay low as multiple players would kill the player instead of just one, spreading the corruption around instead of one guy getting hit with all the cumulative penalties.
Here is a Video I did in reaction/response to this thread on my Twitch channel. It's about 30 min long. I think I have some good ideas to flesh out the Corruption System while also making it more of a dis-incentive to kill random players just for kicks.
AtamaMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited August 2020
I think about corruption like staying up late.
If you are an adult you can stay up until all odd hours of the night and nobody is going to gripe about you going to bed (unless maybe you’re married but let’s set that aside). You can do what you want.
But there are consequences. If you have to get up early for work the next day you’re going to be tired. You can call in sick but people only have so many sick days to use and you might want to save them for when you are actually sick. Depending on where you work you might have other worries, like finding another person to cover you or dealing with work that piles up in your absence. It’s not something you should make a habit of or it will definitely affect your career and maybe other aspects of your life. Maybe you are just careful to stay up before a weekend day or holiday.
What you probably can’t do is just tell your employer that you need to take a nap in the morning or to just bear with you because you’re tired. There will be consequences and you need to deal with them, and a wise person will weigh them before making a decision.
Intrepid is like this with corruption. They aren’t going to be a nanny scolding you for it. You aren’t going to get in trouble with them. It’s not like they hope you will never ever kill a player non-consensually, because if that was the case then they’d just prevent you from even targeting a green player. They do hope that it isn’t done lightly, it’s not common, and if you engage in it then you have consequences.
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NelsonRebelMember, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
This is in part where my question/suggestion of a Darktide server comes into play. Everyone jumps quickly to the corruption system as the "answer" but it's only an answer for the initial griefing. Once you get into competitive play and have grown out of the starter areas, an aggressive guild or player stands so much to lose and little to gain by engaging in active pvp content on a smaller scale like you mentioned... Say some guy builds his house right next to you and you really don't like him.. Or a guild holds territory and random people begin to invade your property to overthrow you... So you can kill them, or war their guild, but you are really at the game's corruption mechanic's mercy in most of it.
You're probably thinking, um, that's a good thing. Consider alts, and "good guy" griefers. They have no consequence. They don't lose anything, and there is no risk for them to start following you around harvesting in front of you, kill-stealing mobs from your players, etc. So what do you do? You retaliate and amass some corruption points, eventually this can demoralize your player-base for a more evil or chaotic oriented guild.
I'm sure there is someone out there that has the time to develop a proper argument, the points I brought up are probably not the best examples, but I'm at work and just wanted to put in a small bit of feedback on this, because I LOVE this game's potential. EVEN with corruption, but having a server without would really cater to those darktide style players that want a no-holds-barred server to live in, where those friendships are, like you said, invaluable. Where your reputation is really going to make a mark in the world and on different guilds/alliances. Where the threat of danger IS real.
Bear in mind, we have not seen this corruption system in action. It may not be that bad if it takes an hour or so to wipe off a few kills. It's not like I'm going to be killing an entire city in an afternoon, but if I do, I can spend a day or two clearing the slate, sure. If I'm essentially perma marked by these actions, it does actually discourages non-consensual pvp and opens the door to all sorts of carebear griefing.
NOW, I want you tall to know that I actually like the BH system idea in concept. I don't mind being killed by people for being bad... Couple that with stat losses, however and it's a bit harsh. I'm already being hunted down and now i'm weaker to boot.
But I'll digress, Part of me really wants to love the implementation of these systems, they have been long needed, but the other part of me just wants an old-school pvp server where the community is responsible for defining who's good and who's bad.
@noaani not private, but option servers... Asheron's Call, Everquest, Neocron, Dark Age of Camelot, and i'm sure there are more that I'm leaving out. All AAA titles with optional servers... Wait, didn't WoW even have different server types at one point?
I missed the private part, and yes, no AAA title has allowed private servers to my knowledge.
I'm a green player in a guild. We want to harass another guild. I harvest their trees CONSTANTLY or lets say i'm strong enough to steal kills from them, repeatedly. They have to sacrifice corruption to stop me and I just go right back to it. Eventually they cannot stop me and I have put a serious hurt on them.
I don't know for sure if the game will function this way, but any system can and will be abused on both sides.
Also, back to the OP's point. Some players really love that red flag, being known as a bad-azz that you should run from. Well in this game, you'll be a bad azz with a stick vs a carebear with a howitzer. I don't see the fear factor there.
I'm in no way saying that i disapprove of the design choice, I actually think it's pretty cool and unique to this game. In a way, I appreciate it. I think it does, however take away any enjoyment from the criminal characters and takes it beyond harsh to just immoral. Like taking every person ever accused of a crime and sticking a bomb implant in their head.
You could say it's just not.. realistic. Having a big red name and bounty hunters I can dig. That adds an element of danger. The weakening element, I think is taking it a bit far. There's no even play field now. Not only do you risk having the Mounties after you, en-mass to complete a quest, but you're handcuffed and chained to boot, with a orange outfit.
I'm a green player in a guild. We want to harass another guild. I harvest their trees CONSTANTLY or lets say i'm strong enough to steal kills from them, repeatedly. They have to sacrifice corruption to stop me and I just go right back to it. Eventually they cannot stop me and I have put a serious hurt on them.
I don't know for sure if the game will function this way, but any system can and will be abused on both sides.
If your guild wants to harass another guild, you declare war on them, now you can try to killsteal and ninja gather in their home region and kill their members without any corruption coming into play. This works the other way around too, if they choose to retaliate against your guild. They can also: siege your home node, attack your castle if you have one, raid all of your caravans on sight, beat your raid groups away from dungeons.
You as one person can moderately annoy a handful of people. A guild can destroy another guild if they’re dedicated, and they will never have to deal with corruption if they do it right.
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AtamaMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I'm a green player in a guild. We want to harass another guild. I harvest their trees CONSTANTLY or lets say i'm strong enough to steal kills from them, repeatedly. They have to sacrifice corruption to stop me and I just go right back to it. Eventually they cannot stop me and I have put a serious hurt on them.
I don't know for sure if the game will function this way, but any system can and will be abused on both sides.
Guilds don’t have trees so your example doesn’t make any sense.
Most objections I’ve seen to corruption on this board amount to someone taking “my” resources or attacking “my” enemies that you are farming. The issue is that they aren’t yours.
@Caeryl Carebear guilds don't play like that. They'll make alts or have a detachment to harass you that you can't declare war on. I've seen this in Life is Feudal. You can't war dec individuals. And you're going to take a hit every time you kill them...
But in my thoughts I came up with an idea... Guild/node corruption. Based on it's populus. A metric of just how evil the area is, safe-havens for villians where guards won't attack and the BH system doesn't work if the zone is corrupt enough. Food for thought. I can think of ways this could be exploited, however. But it's a cool thought.
I hope that you can kos individuals. I'll be pleased.
It's not guilds that i'm concerned about. I enjoy guild war-ing. Oh, i'm not talking sieges, but that's a part of it. I'm talking attrition, long-game, constant aggression. That's my favorite part of games. It's those little pesky individuals that are hard to squish with these type rules. That includes alts, which are prominent in games like Life is Feudal for example.
Also, back to the OP's point. Some players really love that red flag, being known as a bad-azz that you should run from. Well in this game, you'll be a bad azz with a stick vs a carebear with a howitzer. I don't see the fear factor there.
.....
I hope that you can kos individuals. I'll be pleased.
@Flagg On that topic of KOS list (meaning people you can kill without gaining corruption) I hope to get a question up to Steven asking if he can expand upon the Node "Enemey of the State" Kill List. It's great for Nodes but we need KOS lists at the Guild Level, at the Family level, and even the personal level. So while a Node Mayor maintains a KOS list with a max list size of 100 (that you get no corruption when you kill said person) a Guild leader maintains a KOS list with max list size of maybe 20. A family unit gets the KOS list feature and it can have 5 names on it. And every single player has a personal KOS list of 1 or 2. To avoid working the system, I would say names cannot be replaced on the list for a cool down period of 2 months. So if you have a personal KOS list and it has only 2 max slots for names, then if you get pissed and put 2 names right away, you're now stuck with them for 2 months.
As for Corruption mechanics being too harsh, I just don't know about that yet, the devs can tweak that during beta so we just have to wait and see just how harsh we're talking here. Steven has thrown out the number of 20 kills being an amount that basically makes you worthless and that 1 or 2 kills won't hurt you much. But that's all the detail we have.
Plus it just was a way of life as a "Red" PK type of player. If you drink too much Sunday night... well monday morning has the price to pay for doing that but you get through the hangover and party again the next day. Same with PKing, we don't know the details yet but it sounds like you and the boyz can have yourselves a night of random PKing, really rip up the town. Each of you builds up about 5 kills worth of corruption. At that point your group of evil dudes is nerfed bad enough that your fights are getting too hard so you call it a night. The next day you spend grinding mobs to clear off the corruption. We don't know how long of a grind that is at this point, it might only take 4 hours. I mean big deal. So you do the hard work that is required living the PK life and grind that shit off and then the next night the broskies are calling up saying time to raid the country side again and you're like yep! good to go, im back to zero corruption. Meanwhile OneEyed Tim, your group cleric didn't handle his shit, he didn't spend some time grinding mobs so he still has lots of corruption and he just has to say "Sorry I can't tonight guys, mob grinding for me sadly."
@Logan True. Totally true. We don't know yet. A lot depends on mechanics we don't understand fully and have only had a glimpse of. They could potentially strike a balance. I hope they do, but I feel like on a normal server, the restrictions are absolutely perfect for this current "entitled" age of gamers.
A server where corruption has no weakness would be more acceptable to players like me. Or perhaps 1/20th the corruption gain... I just don't know the magic compromise. I personally like corruption. in my mind's eye, i could see a physical change to a character that radiates a dark aura with glowing eyes. I wouldn't want to clear that out every day... it's almost a badge of honor for a pker.
But I digress, even if they don't change it a bit, I'll find a way to fit in. I'll miss the flavor of being the villain, perhaps, but will make due. It's still a beautiful and amazing game in concept.
It's funny though, everyone loves almost everything this game boasts the only real controversy is the corruption system, my wife has come to call the game Age of Corruption.
@Flagg If you are corrupted and a Bounty Hunter comes at you, you do not suffer any corruption penalties vs the Bounty Hunter, you are at full strength. It is only against non-flagged bounty hunters that you would suffer Corruption penalties to stats/abilities.
They won't do this with Corruption, that would just be the bad themed faction and you would earn reputation with them in these "other ways that aren't PKing" that you've described. Why does it need to be Corruption?
They wouldnt put it in as a secret because they don't want people to get corrupted much, it's a punishment in the literal sense! It's like a literal timeout that can grow into basically a permaban until it wears off, enforced within the game! If someone got some arbitrary secret level of Corruption and was rewarded, then it would encourage everyone else to do it suddenly. They don't want to encourage it, it's for actual bad people, not people playing bad characters. I understand it could be more than that with these ideas, but they have other systems separated out for roleplaying bad.
So you claim to have read everything and yet you skip over the ideas that have come up? Corruption is a term being used but others have come up in conversation along with ideas to increase the ability to be bad. As stated several times, this is not to promote pk'ing or griefing, it is to be the risk factor when good characters get greedy. Caravan is an in-game example of greedy good guys taking the risks and us bad guys being there as the repercussion. The entire point of this thread is to continue thinking of new ways to be bad and to keep good guys on their toes. Even if it is just a copy and paste of the caravan system just in a boat then it's something I like to think of and discuss. We have had some good ideas with the bounty hunter system tweak, a possible questline that takes good guys to a zone to hunt a particular thing for slightly more reward yet knowing that the zone is open pvp etc. This is for furthering the discussion of ways to be bad that is nothing like griefing or pk'ing unwilling participants.
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The easiest and only way to solve the problem is not allow open world/non-consensual pvp. There is no other option, or the same thing will happen on most if not all of AoC servers. Some may take longer than others but eventually they will a succumb.
On top of that there is also the entire node system itself that already creates a friction of good and bad depending on what side of the fence you are on for a nodes progression and benifits.
Corruption is a PK deterent for griefing (and rightfully so) for un-flagged players. So as long as you are not griefing unflagged players you should be able to delve further into the religion of the dark gods that corrupted the world in the story and rp that with killing or stealing from other players.
We do know that there WILL also be evil
choices for quest and they will affect your world building.
I'm not sure if thats exactly what you were trying to ask
I do get that it's selfish to want more, but this forum is being actively looked through for suggestions and feedback so that what this is.
We gotta just start ignoring people who don't read through the posts and only repeat the same crap over and over.
It is worth bringing up and even if you have an elected corruption where you become corrupted through a quest killing npcs and NEVER HARM AN INNCENT person then were is the harm in at the least discussing it? lol
AMAZING POST!!!!
You mean you actually read everything and put together the concept vs just spewing out the same stuff over and over. Why... you are an actual person contributing to the forum in a productive way! Thank you sir and to answer yes, well kinda. I like your idea and I could add onto it but work has me overloaded this week so sadly I can't be as active in this at the moment.
I am sorry your game went to crap but many cames like DAoC and Ultima never suffered like that and as stated above so many times, there could be other ways to obtain corruption outside of pking and griefing and someone even mentioned how detailed this game will be at collecting data so they can determine how you get corruption and separate it from killing someone unwillingly or lower level and treat you differently. So you can be a good bad guy and never inconvenience a single person that would make you pk or griefer. You could keep severe punishments for those players who do pk and grief.
You can attack caravans and towns and freeholds to be a bad guy. There will be social/religious ladders to climb, like thieves guilds, and you can pick the bad guy versions of those to follow. Just because it's a religion doesn't mean they don't worship demons and sacrifice animals or something. You can choose to try to assassinate captains and vendors to assist a siege instead of fighting honorably at the walls, and could be the lynchpin to successfully winning the siege, in a "bad" way. You can constantly declare war on guilds and hinder them as much as you want. You can try to post up in a rare material zone and gank people that are likely to fight back to keep their farming spot. I don't know what else you're looking for.
They won't do this with Corruption, that would just be the bad themed faction and you would earn reputation with them in these "other ways that aren't PKing" that you've described. Why does it need to be Corruption?
They wouldnt put it in as a secret because they don't want people to get corrupted much, it's a punishment in the literal sense! It's like a literal timeout that can grow into basically a permaban until it wears off, enforced within the game! If someone got some arbitrary secret level of Corruption and was rewarded, then it would encourage everyone else to do it suddenly. They don't want to encourage it, it's for actual bad people, not people playing bad characters. I understand it could be more than that with these ideas, but they have other systems separated out for roleplaying bad.
The secret to being a good guy is avoiding the death that usually comes with corruption. You won each time when you have gotten away Scot-free with murder (even more so if you managed to take a couple of valuable resources off the person you have murdered).
Its not that theres a harm in discussing it, the problem is what it (feels) like you're alluding to.
Even though you mentioned that you dont want to just include player killing griefing. The whole point of corruption is to ensure there is a sufficient deterent to widespread and unabashed player killing and griefing. There are evil ways to play via the dark god religions, war on nodes, guild factions, caravans and killing another player flagged is fair game.
The bounty system and the reduced damage on corrupted players is just an obvious stacking deterent against creative players from skirting the corruption weakness to continue their grief streaks.
I mean if you check the wiki and the discord there are plenty of spots where steven says there will be options to play and influence the actual world with evil events via meaningful choices and open world events and quests.
So until we see the dark gods religon stuff, and more with the evil options it just feels like you're asking for a benifit to corruption when corruption is just the anti-grief measure AoC has put in with stacking levels of bounties to make sure the corrupted player isnt just using something that allows them to bypass the downsides of corruption and continue their mayhem on other players.
Thats all that "I think" many players are trying to say. That we know steven has already mentioned there will be avenues for bad guy play, we just dont know exactly what they'll be. The monster coins are an excellent example the other gentlemen brought up.
And there will be titles and achievments for war efforts and stuff but we wont see those until we hit around beta phase.
I also don’t get why some people seem to think Steven does not want PKing when if that were true he would just stop anyone from killing anyone outside of sanctioned pvp events.
Seems like he wants to stop griefing, while allowing moody players to kill someone sometimes if they feel upset or betrayed by them.
I FULLY support anti griefing mechanics, and the corruption system seems like a great way to dissuade griefing. However random open world pvp is not griefing to me, and the corruption system in place also dissuades doing that.
This game is supposedly all about risk vs reward, but there is only one reward, that I’m aware of, for PKing. That would be a percentage of a players gatherables. So assuming that stays the same, why would anyone interested in PKing ever fight anyone except unprepared gatherers? In other words the current reward PROMOTES griefing low risk kills, and causing someone to waste time gathering only to be targeted and lose some of those mats plus the other death penalties.
I think the corruption system should instead reward PKers for attacking high risk targets, whether that is some form of battle points, or anti honor points that form some sort of “evil” rank, or the reward is not getting gatherables, but instead consumables or a potential for inventory(not equipped gear) items to drop. Unless this game is different in some fundamental way, most high level raiders won’t be carrying many gatherables around at any given time, but might have plenty of consumables for dungeons/raids.
Since they have pvp ranks or ladders(right?), it would seem easy enough to tie corruption to pvp rank. So if you are just a douche griefer killing low level players and non pvpers all the time, you will gain no benefit, and get nothing but punishments. However if you choose targets at or above your “evil” rank, which would reflect the opposite of a pvp rank, you will instead grow your rank while possibly getting some sort of monetary reward.
Then pair your “evil” rank to some sort of underground or dark association in the game so that you have new quests or ties to for a little RP fun.
Also because I hate griefing, I think the corruption system should punish you severely for killing a low level player, like instant full corruption. I know it’s going to already do that, I just hope the increased corruption is massive in that situation. Force players who want to ambush players in the world to only target actual challenging players, which is IMO not griefing in any way. Also to stop corpse camping just make it so you gain no further reward for killing the same player more than once in a period of time and start losing rank and gaining loads of corruption if you kill the same target again within a reasonable period of time.
Also does anyone know if graveyard/respawn point camping has any protections? Right now with the corruption system it would seem highly likely that a coordinated PK group would kill a gatherer at a known high value farming spot, then have a few guys camping the respawn points nearby and just chain kill the person not only causing that player a ton of grief, but losing lots of his mats, while corruption would stay low as multiple players would kill the player instead of just one, spreading the corruption around instead of one guy getting hit with all the cumulative penalties.
Corruption & Bad Guys
Love a good story and lore.
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If you are an adult you can stay up until all odd hours of the night and nobody is going to gripe about you going to bed (unless maybe you’re married but let’s set that aside). You can do what you want.
But there are consequences. If you have to get up early for work the next day you’re going to be tired. You can call in sick but people only have so many sick days to use and you might want to save them for when you are actually sick. Depending on where you work you might have other worries, like finding another person to cover you or dealing with work that piles up in your absence. It’s not something you should make a habit of or it will definitely affect your career and maybe other aspects of your life. Maybe you are just careful to stay up before a weekend day or holiday.
What you probably can’t do is just tell your employer that you need to take a nap in the morning or to just bear with you because you’re tired. There will be consequences and you need to deal with them, and a wise person will weigh them before making a decision.
Intrepid is like this with corruption. They aren’t going to be a nanny scolding you for it. You aren’t going to get in trouble with them. It’s not like they hope you will never ever kill a player non-consensually, because if that was the case then they’d just prevent you from even targeting a green player. They do hope that it isn’t done lightly, it’s not common, and if you engage in it then you have consequences.
You're probably thinking, um, that's a good thing. Consider alts, and "good guy" griefers. They have no consequence. They don't lose anything, and there is no risk for them to start following you around harvesting in front of you, kill-stealing mobs from your players, etc. So what do you do? You retaliate and amass some corruption points, eventually this can demoralize your player-base for a more evil or chaotic oriented guild.
I'm sure there is someone out there that has the time to develop a proper argument, the points I brought up are probably not the best examples, but I'm at work and just wanted to put in a small bit of feedback on this, because I LOVE this game's potential. EVEN with corruption, but having a server without would really cater to those darktide style players that want a no-holds-barred server to live in, where those friendships are, like you said, invaluable. Where your reputation is really going to make a mark in the world and on different guilds/alliances. Where the threat of danger IS real.
Bear in mind, we have not seen this corruption system in action. It may not be that bad if it takes an hour or so to wipe off a few kills. It's not like I'm going to be killing an entire city in an afternoon, but if I do, I can spend a day or two clearing the slate, sure. If I'm essentially perma marked by these actions, it does actually discourages non-consensual pvp and opens the door to all sorts of carebear griefing.
NOW, I want you tall to know that I actually like the BH system idea in concept. I don't mind being killed by people for being bad... Couple that with stat losses, however and it's a bit harsh. I'm already being hunted down and now i'm weaker to boot.
But I'll digress, Part of me really wants to love the implementation of these systems, they have been long needed, but the other part of me just wants an old-school pvp server where the community is responsible for defining who's good and who's bad.
I missed the private part, and yes, no AAA title has allowed private servers to my knowledge.
I'm a green player in a guild. We want to harass another guild. I harvest their trees CONSTANTLY or lets say i'm strong enough to steal kills from them, repeatedly. They have to sacrifice corruption to stop me and I just go right back to it. Eventually they cannot stop me and I have put a serious hurt on them.
I don't know for sure if the game will function this way, but any system can and will be abused on both sides.
I'm in no way saying that i disapprove of the design choice, I actually think it's pretty cool and unique to this game. In a way, I appreciate it. I think it does, however take away any enjoyment from the criminal characters and takes it beyond harsh to just immoral. Like taking every person ever accused of a crime and sticking a bomb implant in their head.
You could say it's just not.. realistic. Having a big red name and bounty hunters I can dig. That adds an element of danger. The weakening element, I think is taking it a bit far. There's no even play field now. Not only do you risk having the Mounties after you, en-mass to complete a quest, but you're handcuffed and chained to boot, with a orange outfit.
If your guild wants to harass another guild, you declare war on them, now you can try to killsteal and ninja gather in their home region and kill their members without any corruption coming into play. This works the other way around too, if they choose to retaliate against your guild. They can also: siege your home node, attack your castle if you have one, raid all of your caravans on sight, beat your raid groups away from dungeons.
You as one person can moderately annoy a handful of people. A guild can destroy another guild if they’re dedicated, and they will never have to deal with corruption if they do it right.
Most objections I’ve seen to corruption on this board amount to someone taking “my” resources or attacking “my” enemies that you are farming. The issue is that they aren’t yours.
But in my thoughts I came up with an idea... Guild/node corruption. Based on it's populus. A metric of just how evil the area is, safe-havens for villians where guards won't attack and the BH system doesn't work if the zone is corrupt enough. Food for thought. I can think of ways this could be exploited, however. But it's a cool thought.
It's not guilds that i'm concerned about. I enjoy guild war-ing. Oh, i'm not talking sieges, but that's a part of it. I'm talking attrition, long-game, constant aggression. That's my favorite part of games. It's those little pesky individuals that are hard to squish with these type rules. That includes alts, which are prominent in games like Life is Feudal for example.
@Flagg On that topic of KOS list (meaning people you can kill without gaining corruption) I hope to get a question up to Steven asking if he can expand upon the Node "Enemey of the State" Kill List. It's great for Nodes but we need KOS lists at the Guild Level, at the Family level, and even the personal level. So while a Node Mayor maintains a KOS list with a max list size of 100 (that you get no corruption when you kill said person) a Guild leader maintains a KOS list with max list size of maybe 20. A family unit gets the KOS list feature and it can have 5 names on it. And every single player has a personal KOS list of 1 or 2. To avoid working the system, I would say names cannot be replaced on the list for a cool down period of 2 months. So if you have a personal KOS list and it has only 2 max slots for names, then if you get pissed and put 2 names right away, you're now stuck with them for 2 months.
As for Corruption mechanics being too harsh, I just don't know about that yet, the devs can tweak that during beta so we just have to wait and see just how harsh we're talking here. Steven has thrown out the number of 20 kills being an amount that basically makes you worthless and that 1 or 2 kills won't hurt you much. But that's all the detail we have.
Plus it just was a way of life as a "Red" PK type of player. If you drink too much Sunday night... well monday morning has the price to pay for doing that but you get through the hangover and party again the next day. Same with PKing, we don't know the details yet but it sounds like you and the boyz can have yourselves a night of random PKing, really rip up the town. Each of you builds up about 5 kills worth of corruption. At that point your group of evil dudes is nerfed bad enough that your fights are getting too hard so you call it a night. The next day you spend grinding mobs to clear off the corruption. We don't know how long of a grind that is at this point, it might only take 4 hours. I mean big deal. So you do the hard work that is required living the PK life and grind that shit off and then the next night the broskies are calling up saying time to raid the country side again and you're like yep! good to go, im back to zero corruption. Meanwhile OneEyed Tim, your group cleric didn't handle his shit, he didn't spend some time grinding mobs so he still has lots of corruption and he just has to say "Sorry I can't tonight guys, mob grinding for me sadly."
A server where corruption has no weakness would be more acceptable to players like me. Or perhaps 1/20th the corruption gain... I just don't know the magic compromise. I personally like corruption. in my mind's eye, i could see a physical change to a character that radiates a dark aura with glowing eyes. I wouldn't want to clear that out every day... it's almost a badge of honor for a pker.
But I digress, even if they don't change it a bit, I'll find a way to fit in. I'll miss the flavor of being the villain, perhaps, but will make due. It's still a beautiful and amazing game in concept.
Love a good story and lore.
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So you claim to have read everything and yet you skip over the ideas that have come up? Corruption is a term being used but others have come up in conversation along with ideas to increase the ability to be bad. As stated several times, this is not to promote pk'ing or griefing, it is to be the risk factor when good characters get greedy. Caravan is an in-game example of greedy good guys taking the risks and us bad guys being there as the repercussion. The entire point of this thread is to continue thinking of new ways to be bad and to keep good guys on their toes. Even if it is just a copy and paste of the caravan system just in a boat then it's something I like to think of and discuss. We have had some good ideas with the bounty hunter system tweak, a possible questline that takes good guys to a zone to hunt a particular thing for slightly more reward yet knowing that the zone is open pvp etc. This is for furthering the discussion of ways to be bad that is nothing like griefing or pk'ing unwilling participants.