An idea regarding Religions and Corruption

Hello, my name is Cas and this is my first forum post so do be gentle.

I will preface this post with a small bit of supportive information.
- First we have no knowledge of the ranks within a religion, at least of the wiki, so I am going to be making some assumptions in this regards.
- Second I have seen that a religions quest has been removed from the corruption removal process, so I'd like to say I am not trying to step on any toes with this post.

Onto my idea. During work today I was conversing about Ashes, mainly about how he wants to be an assassin type of character. He likes the idea of going around and killing whomever, getting their drops, selling them, and saving to buy better gear as his form of item progression. Which, in all fairness, is a valid kind of gameplay in Ashes seeing as it is viable outside the corruption mechanic.
Jokingly I said "It would be cool if I could roleplay a priest and pardon people of their sins." and the idea just stuck in my head all day. A few problems popped up immediately namely "Having too many corruption cleansers", "The cleanses being too powerful", "The cleanses stacking, thus making it possible to have a guild of a few mercs and a bunch of religious priests permanently being purple or green flagged. despite being a murderous group" So, I slowly refined the idea in my head over the course of the day and this is what I came up with.

1.) The highest ranking figure of a religion will be able to once a day, provided they have the "tributes/sacrifices" to complete the ceremony, Perform a ceremony on 1 player to completely cleanse a player of their corruption.
a.) The "tribute/sacrifice" should have a suitable "price" attributed to it based on the severity of corruption. an example being a rare, but not too hard to find, flower to cleanse an accidental red flag. BUT a fully debuffed player would cost a lot of actually rare materials, either costing a lot of time or money to procure, in order to cleanse.
b.)The religious figure would need a personal cost, maybe in the form of prayer points, equal to the sacrifice in order to perform the ceremony.
c.) The cooldown should scale according to the next rounded up level cleanse. Example. if a player is 60% of the way to a full debuff, it should cost 75% of the 24 hour cooldown. making the cooldown 18 hours instead of the full 24.
(This keeps a limit on full cleanses across a server, and provides guilds a reason to train and pour resources into a top tier priest.)

2.) The next tier down should have a cap placed on their cleanses to 50%, so that they are still desirable for a guild to keep a few should they be able to afford the tributes.
a.)the cooldown should also be equal to or greater to 24 hours for the higher tier cleanse. However the developers feel they need to balance having a more accessible tier of priest. We don't want cleanses to be a dime a dozen, as that breaks the corruption system.

3.) The next lower tier should only be able to cleanse themselves, and to a much more restricted degree.
a.) I believe it to be the duty of a priest, let alone a high tiered one, to provide for and help those in need. As such, I would heal those who need it, even if they were red flagged and in combat In order to prevent senseless death.. (I'm not religious by any means, this is just how I think a priest in a fantasy setting should act)
B.) I know this will be abused by those who would love to PK and not suffer much in the way of inconvenience. which is why it is reserved for a high tiered position in the religion, and limited to a severe degree. Maybe it can be a certain amount, no more and no less (excluding going past zero), and only once a day.

This is just a simple idea, and I look forward to any discussion regarding this thread. and maybe with a bunch of community refinement, we can get it implemented in a way that isn't game breaking. The corruption system is brilliant, but I do think that and devout followers of a religion, we should have some cleansing power.

-Cas

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Comments

daveywavey

Interesting idea, but I think you hit the nail on the head with the "Having too many corruption cleansers".

It's worth dropping it into this stream's Q&A though as a suggestion/question.

CasForelda

the problem is i have to work during the Q&A T.T

daveywavey

CasForelda wrote: »

the problem is i have to work during the Q&A T.T

Watch it afterwards!

maouw

Welcome to the forums!

imo, I don't like the idea of encouraging people to go corrupt - it's supposed to be a difficult punishment.
On the otherhand, this would make religious nodes really interesting because they would become the haven of all corrupt players - and the military nodes (bounty hunters) would have every excuse to raze down a religious node.

CasForelda

While I don't think it encourages people to PK (go corrupt), I can see your reasoning behind the statement. "The primary means to remove corruption is through death. Multiple deaths may be necessary to remove all corruption" - AoC wiki. Having an avenue to use some kind of offering to pay for a cleanse is no more convenient than stashing your stuff and killing yourself a few times. Either you lose a monetary cost or a time cost.

Though I do agree that a religious node would be like a haven to red flagged players by virtue of trying to cleanse the masses of "sin". The wars that will start, be it within as a crusade to rid the node of sinners, on outside to defend/destroy the node would definitely be a spectacle.

Noaani

I can see the idea working reasonably well, but with a few minor adjustments.

The restriction on who can do this, and how often they can do it need to be preserved. However, rather than a material cost associated with it, I'd prefer to see the corruption simply shift to a different, willing character.

As long as that character has no corruption themself, and is the same level or higher than the character with corruption, this seems to me to be a perfectly fine idea.

As far as I am concerned, all this is doing is transferring a penalty from one player to another, which is perfectly valid as long as it can't be done often, imo.

The need for this character to be of the same level and also have no corruption themselves means players can't create corruption dump alts. You may be able to dump corruption on the same character many days in a row, but only if that character is working off that corruption in the mean time.

What I think this could do is see guilds take a more active interest in religion, ensuring that they have access to someone that is able to perform this transfer of corruption.

Maezriel

I like the idea and would even be fine w/ it being a raw gold cost.

I don't think Metros will be so common that this would inherently break the Corruption mechanic and instead could add a bit more depth to it. I would even be ok (following a bit of testing of course) w/ instead of a once per day use by a "priest" a long CD for the corrupted so they can't be cleansed repeatedly...could even apply it to the account to ensure they're not just swapping through multiple alts.

CasForelda

@Noaani Maybe have a role within a religion that takes on the corruption as a pre-requisite for an augment. So long as they wish to have this augment, they must have taken on some other players corruption, and be actively working on cleansing themselves. Though this necessitates the augment/s in question be worth the potentially severe corruption debuffs.

@Maezriel A raw gold cost would be fine as the tribute. Though I do have to disagree with the trading CD's with the afflicted player. The Priest cool down is necessary to prevent rendering the corruption system meaningless. There has to be some sort of timer on the cleanser in order to ensure that the highest of priests aren't just used as a cleansing bot.

Maezriel

@CasForelda I think that would depend on the gold/materials cost. If it's high enough then only the richest players/guilds would even be able to afford it anyways and I don't really see too many situations where a guild would want to front that cost anyways.

It could even be a stacking cost that grows throughout the Node so if X amount of people are cleansed the material cost for future cleansings rise a certain amount until a specific reset time has passed.

CasForelda

@Maezriel The way i see the religious rankings working is that the highest levels will only be achievable with a guilds help, or a very long time grinding and gathering requisite material offerings. It only makes sense that it is a lot of work to achieve. the rank is meaningless if it is just a questline. Meaning that even if the tribute increases in price, the end result would still just be a cleansing bot. One that cost a literal tone to create.

The cooldown does more than just limit the total cleanses/day the server has, it makes the role more meaningful in the long run. I love healing, and think that RPing an archbishop (whatever they call it) just wouldn't be fun if at the end of the day i just cast a skill on a few dozen players a day (while the cost is low) mindlessly accumulating money (of which most should rightfully go to the temple).

Though your view is a valid one.

Maezriel

CasForelda wrote: »

I love healing, and think that RPing an archbishop (whatever they call it) just wouldn't be fun if at the end of the day i just cast a skill on a few dozen players a day (while the cost is low) mindlessly accumulating money (of which most should rightfully go to the temple).

I still don't think it would be frequent enough where you'd end up feeling like a bot and there could still be a ritual or ceremony involved in the process. As for the gold, honestly I figured it would all go into the Node.

Noaani

CasForelda wrote: »

Maybe have a role within a religion that takes on the corruption as a pre-requisite for an augment. So long as they wish to have this augment, they must have taken on some other players corruption, and be actively working on cleansing themselves. Though this necessitates the augment/s in question be worth the potentially severe corruption debuffs.

I'm not sure about this, I wouldn't want to turn gaining corruption in to someone that people want to do for any reason.

To me, transferring the punishment from one player to another is fine, as that means the punishment is still being served, it's just by a different player.

The reason I like this is because it keeps the exchange simple. Intrepid have a number of variables they can alter with corruption in order to make it more or less frequently acquired by players. They can alter the amount of corruption you get for killing players, how much more you get for killing equal level players, how much you need to get before you start dropping items, how much more likely you are to drop items with more than that amount of corruption, how much of a stat penalty you have for each point of corruption, how much corruption is worked off with experience, and how much corruption is removed when killed.

Each of these variables add up to how much of a penalty corruption is. A simple exchange of corruption from one player to another means these variables are all left as the developers set them, so if the developers suddenly want to make it harder to work off the same amount of corruption and so decrease the last two variables above, any player you kill will still generate the same amount of corruption, but that corruption will take longer to work off.

If the developers add a material or gold cost to removing corruption via this method, that means the value of it either needs to be altered every time the developers want to alter any aspect of corruption, or the value of removing corruption via this method would fluctuate in relative value to working off corruption the existing ways.

Neither of these is particularly good. Either would mean the develoeprs can't adjust the corruption mechanic as much as they probably should (these adjustements may well end up being made on a server by server basis).

As such, simply taking 100 corruption from one character and placing it on a different character completely avoids this situation, as that character that now has the corruption still has to work it off in the exact same way as the player that earned the corruption would have had to have done.

It means that over all, the punishment of corruption stays exactly the same - all that changes is the people that work off that punishment, in a small number of cases.

As to how frequent this should be, the game is set to have a total of seven religions, and to me, each religion should have exactly one person that can perform this task - whom ever the leader of that religion is.

That means it can happen a total of 6 times per day, per server.

Jamation

Welcome to the forums Cas! Happy to have you!

CasForelda wrote: »

- Second I have seen that a religions quest has been removed from the corruption removal process, so I'd like to say I am not trying to step on any toes with this post.

Also, I did not realize this had happened! Thanks for pointing this out!

So I don't know how I feel about a player character being able to cleanse corruption. I almost feel like it should be done by the god/entity themselves. Since the corruption system is supposed to be a semi-form of punishment I don't see a reason why a mortal should be able to pardon them.

However, on a bit of a tangent:
Reading another thread before this one about Good/Evil religions sparked an idea after reading this, what if a corrupted person was able to clear their corruption if they were a "devoted enough follower" of a certain "evil" religion and this could be used on a weekly/monthly respawn limit to really reduce any form of abuse this might cause. And perhaps this evil entity pardons the player of their corruption by sucking it into themselves and once a certain meter has been reached the god/entity/demon (the bad boi) enters our plane of existence and becomes a boss for people to kill (could have higher chance near religious nodes to spawn and it'd be like religion v religion)

Noaani

Jamation wrote: »

CasForelda wrote: »

- Second I have seen that a religions quest has been removed from the corruption removal process, so I'd like to say I am not trying to step on any toes with this post.

Also, I did not realize this had happened! Thanks for pointing this out!

That idea was replaced with the ability to simply work off corruption via gaining experience.

It's one of those things that would have caused a clash in game design if they attempted to implement it. They want all religious buildings to be in nodes so players can control them (including exact placement), they wanted players to get quests from religious buildings in order to reduce corruption, but they also want node guards to attack corrupt players on sight.

There are some obvious conflicts there, so when the developers looked over the system and saw the issue, they came up with a new plan.

Jamation

Noaani wrote: »

That idea was replaced with the ability to simply work off corruption via gaining experience.

Wait not just a normal non religious quest? Just normal EXP grinding? Oh. Ew. Oh...ew

Noaani

Jamation wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

That idea was replaced with the ability to simply work off corruption via gaining experience.

Wait not just a normal non religious quest? Just normal EXP grinding? Oh. Ew. Oh...ew

The idea is that they can't really have quest givers outside of nodes (at least this is how it seems to be to me), and they can't require corrupt players to go inside nodes.

Corruption loss based on experience gain seems to me to be the least bad option, and sometimes that is how decisions have to be made.

Jamation

Noaani wrote: »

The idea is that they can't really have quest givers outside of nodes (at least this is how it seems to be to me), and they can't require corrupt players to go inside nodes.

Corruption loss based on experience gain seems to me to be the least bad option, and sometimes that is how decisions have to be made.

Oh...yeah that actually makes total sense. I forget that the NPC would probably have to give the quest in a civilized setting. Huh.

rikardp98

I actually like the idea of a material cost instead of transferring the corruption to another player. But what one can add is a penalty to the corrupted player even after the cleansing, like a stat reducing for a certain amount of time or that you need to be inside the religious node for an hour, or something similar. That way the corrupted player can still cleanse their sins but also prevent them form going back out and killing non-pvp flagged players directly after.

Jeetoph

I really like his idea. Should be polished but the basis is awesome

For example if material cost is needed it should be non tradable items. Just buying from Marketboard or having your gatherer mates get them for you is a bit too easy. I don't like the gold cost. It would just mean that rich people can do whatever they want and that's just too much realism for a Fantasy game.

daveywavey

Jeetoph wrote: »

I really like his idea. Should be polished but the basis is awesome
For example if material cost is needed it should be non tradable items. Just buying from Marketboard or having your gatherer mates get them for you is a bit too easy. I don't like the gold cost. It would just mean that rich people can do whatever they want and that's just too much realism for a Fantasy game.

There'd be a gold cost, anyway, surely? There are only a few players in the node that can do this for you, they're gonna charge for the privilege!

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