Benefits for corrupt players

The current Corruption and Flagging system kills the vibe. Of course, no one wants to be PKed right after leaving a Node, but at the moment, there is literally no reason to PK. There is no Risk vs. Reward, it's just death.

Corrupt players can only remove corruption by dying or by slowly leveling for x amount of time. Plenty of bounty hunters might try to kill you and the consequences for dying are massive. Not only that, but combat becomes more and more difficult the more corrupt you are. Just a 10% decrease in stats would cripple me in PVP, so why would I ever become corrupt?

The only benefit is that non-combat players suffer twice the death penalty as combat players, so if you kill one of these players, you might get slightly more resources. This is not at all worth it. It would be cool if Corrupted players could receive some tangible benefits, rather than just having a ban on PKing in disguise.

My idea is, if the NPC reputation system is expanded to have evil NPCs be more favorable to Corrupted players, they might be able to exchange rare resources and items. The more PKs under your belt, the better the items. If you already have killed five players, let's assume you suffer a 5% decrease in stats and are a very tempting target for bounty hunters. If your goal is to get 10 PKs so you can trade for some really good items or resources, then the risks and benefits would balance each other.

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Comments

Lirezh

There are always a lot of crying kids when it comes to PVE players being killed or worse .. losing XP/items after death but even despite their tears .. the actual danger of getting killed usually makes the world more interesting.

Corruption, as it is currently explained, is not balanced.
It's like: You risk your gear, you risk getting bounty hunters on you, you risk whatever else and you gain absolutely nothing.

If corruption leads to losing items you have worked months for, that's a dead end. They can just switch of open world PVP as no one will do that. It's like betting on RED in Roulette when the entire disk is black.

The bounty hunter risk is already enough penalty.

Dygz

And some of us will find some fun in RPing a Corrupt Zombie.
That’s what alts are for.

Schmuky

Lirezh wrote: »

There are always a lot of crying kids when it comes to PVE players being killed or worse .. losing XP/items after death but even despite their tears .. the actual danger of getting killed usually makes the world more interesting.

Corruption, as it is currently explained, is not balanced.
It's like: You risk your gear, you risk getting bounty hunters on you, you risk whatever else and you gain absolutely nothing.

If corruption leads to losing items you have worked months for, that's a dead end. They can just switch of open world PVP as no one will do that. It's like betting on RED in Roulette when the entire disk is black.

The bounty hunter risk is already enough penalty.

The danger of getting killed does make the world more interesting. True
The rest of the argument is bullshit. Let me tell you why.

Corruption is there for the times were one player want pvp, the other dosent. So you decide you want to disrupt someone's experience. So objectively, you are in the wrong. You should get punished. No if or buts.
As i said above, there are 7 ( 7!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) in-game systems for PvP. Wanna feel like a PvP god? How about you go do that? 7 systems.

Corruption is called anti-grief. Because thats what it does, it counters grifers. And griefers should lose xp, should lose their items and should lose their power. Because they are disruptive to other players experience.

Schmuky

Dygz wrote: »

And some of us will find some fun in RPing a Corrupt Zombie.
That’s what alts are for.

Also true. People will still do it, for the fun of it. But it shouldn't encourage Pking. Hell, I am sure, that there will be people actively becoming corrupt to draw bounty hunters to them and gank them. The system will be used, just not for normal PvP

Dygz

Yeah. I plan to play a Corrupt Zombie but use friends to help me stay Corrupt rather than grief strangers.

Schmuky

Dygz wrote: »

Yeah. I plan to play a Corrupt Zombie but use friends to help me stay Corrupt rather than grief strangers.

I mean..i guess if people don't fully understand how the system works or they just react you will be a zombie corrupt, you will be spreading corruption as people attack you:)))

Dygz

It’s all about the alts.
I’m sure there will be many people for whom a Corrupt Zombie is kill on sight.

akabear

There appears a lot of focus on pk`ing at an individual level; at a group/game politics level, pk`ing can be used more strategically than consensual pvp. Again some L2 examples of what the system can bring

As stated just a few posts ago, pk`ing might be a way to

provoke a war or end one, create reason to make or
used to break divide an alliance,
move guilds allegiances to different localities
get guilds to back off from certain raids
swing guilds decision to fight for or against a castle siege
even to get pay outs to back off
to silence communication between x & y

tautau

I certainly hope we won't be plagued by botting and gold selling like L2 was. But if we are, PKing bots (by various means) would be another one. An arguably honorable one.

Sathrago

tautau wrote: »

I certainly hope we won't be plagued by botting and gold selling like L2 was. But if we are, PKing bots (by various means) would be another one. An arguably honorable one.

Wait that's actually pretty sweet and not something I considered. We can help police bots. I WANT A BADGE WITH A BROKEN TOASTER ON IT!

George_Black

Fathym wrote: »

George Black wrote: »

What griefing..... it's a game. For nearly 20 years never once has I felt harassed

The definition of griefing is spending your time in game with the sole purpose of making the play experience of others worse. If they leave the last hit loop hole I can guarantee there will be hoards of players (especially stealth classes) sitting at grind spot waiting for players to aggro mobs so that they can pop out and beat the hell out of them and then letting the mobs kill them. All for the sole purpose of ruining that player’s day. preventing this type gameplay is literally what the corruption system is for.

You cant see a players HP. If they do this, they risk landing the killing blow, gaining corruption. If they pull it off, good on them.
For years I had treasure hunters leading a train of mobs on me. They would use a skill called fake death and the mobs would attack me and I would die.

So I went on the offense. If I saw a treasure hunter with a train of mobs heading towards me I would use a stun and get them killed by the mobs and pick up their items.

Stop feeling victimized and you might have some fun.

Personally I am tired of games being designed for carebears, dumping down content to non challenging, restricted and boring. Deal with it by playing smarter or stick to picking up alchemy ingredients or baking cakes on your freehold.

There are tons of mmos out there. AoC aims to be a good one.

There are no loopholes in the system. It works fine since 2003.

Fathym

Dygz wrote: »

It’s all about the alts.
I’m sure there will be many people for whom a Corrupt Zombie is kill on sight.

While your corrupt zombie sounds interesting and quite fun it did make me think of another major flaw in the corruption system. Have intrepid ever explained if there are any drawbacks to, on a max level character, stripping completely naked and then going full murder hobo in a low level zone. Based on the wiki, there doesn’t seem to be any draw back to this. Just slaughter to your hearts content, lose nothing when you die, and then get a friend to kill you a bunch of time to rid yourself of the corruption once you’ve had your fill.

tautau

I grant you that this could, and probably will happen. But...Remember there is negative experience when you die, and that dampens your abilities. So a max level player could do it for a while, but his/her skills would be steadily dampened until he became ineffective, absent regrinding...without gear since he is red.

Also, if a player is willing to invest thousands of hours to become max level, not many would want to waste this advantage on low level players...they would rather rule a kingdom and fly on dragons!

Another disincentive to do this is the probability that 'max level' will be raised as the game ages and expands. So you don't want to get negative experience on your level 50 when next summer you need to raise him to 76.

akabear

In L2 some of the high level players did just that with their unwanted high level character as well as some gold farming "enforcers". Common early game, rarer later game. And after getting perma red, it really was a point of no return. Some were equipped with expendable gear as the level and possibly skill still made a difference.

Some clans would bring in their perma-red with regular player wing men to pickup gear or to assist if there was a fight back.

But L2 did not have dampening of any kind, so I think once the AoC mechanics are worked out, sadly this will not be so common. I say sad, as nothing brings a group closer than some strongly disliked adversary!

Fathym

akabear wrote: »

In L2 some of the high level players did just that with their unwanted high level character as well as some gold farming "enforcers". Common early game, rarer later game. And after getting perma red, it really was a point of no return. Some were equipped with expendable gear as the level and possibly skill still made a difference.

Some clans would bring in their perma-red with regular player wing men to pickup gear or to assist if there was a fight back.

But L2 did not have dampening of any kind, so I think once the AoC mechanics are worked out, sadly this will not be so common. I say sad, as nothing brings a group closer than some strongly disliked adversary!

What do you mean by perma-red? Based on my understanding, just having a buddy or an alt kill you enough times should pull you out of corruption. Does corruption stack multiplicatively or something?

Sathrago

Fathym wrote: »

akabear wrote: »

In L2 some of the high level players did just that with their unwanted high level character as well as some gold farming "enforcers". Common early game, rarer later game. And after getting perma red, it really was a point of no return. Some were equipped with expendable gear as the level and possibly skill still made a difference.

Some clans would bring in their perma-red with regular player wing men to pickup gear or to assist if there was a fight back.

But L2 did not have dampening of any kind, so I think once the AoC mechanics are worked out, sadly this will not be so common. I say sad, as nothing brings a group closer than some strongly disliked adversary!

What do you mean by perma-red? Based on my understanding, just having a buddy or an alt kill you enough times should pull you out of corruption. Does corruption stack multiplicatively or something?

In L2 it was a different setup. What would happen in ashes to avoid social discrimination you will make an alt that is set up to go corrupted and yes you would need to cleanse them to keep them viable for their job, ruining other guild's farming spots.

akabear

Considering levelling to max level is very quick, I can see many players that make a few expendable characters for the specific purpose of going red.

The average of 45 days if you play roughly 4-6 hours per day, will probably end up 1/2 to 1/3 that once players start dissecting the game especially the adept clans / high end players..

truelyyy

I'm a bit confused. The corruption system is there to stop you from PKing the non-combatants/griefing soo it's meant to be punishing. There will be other players you can kill that are flagged for PvP you can kill without being corrupted. The upside it you get to take their loot, loot drops if a player has a lot of materials on them can be significant.

Dygz

tautau wrote: »

I grant you that this could, and probably will happen. But...Remember there is negative experience when you die, and that dampens your abilities. So a max level player could do it for a while, but his/her skills would be steadily dampened until he became ineffective, absent regrinding...without gear since he is red.

This is irrelevant on a Zombie alt.
In fact, that mirrors being a Zombie.

Also, if a player is willing to invest thousands of hours to become max level, not many would want to waste this advantage on low level players...they would rather rule a kingdom and fly on dragons!

Is it thousands of hours to become max level?
I think it’s hundreds of hours to become max level.
This really depends on how much time the player has free to play.
I am a casual-challenge/hardcore-time player who typically plays more than 40 hours per week. Even if it took 4 months to reach max level, that’s 3 max level characters in one year. One of those could become the Corrupt Zombie alt.

I don’t think Zombies care about advantage, so lack of advantage is not an issue.

With alts, you can rule a kingdom and fly dragons on your main and also be a Corrupt Zombie on your alt.

Another disincentive to do this is the probability that 'max level' will be raised as the game ages and expands. So you don't want to get negative experience on your level 50 when next summer you need to raise him to 76.

If you’re using alts, you may not be interested in raising all of them past the original max level. Depends on what the purpose of the individual alt is. I have some mule alts that stayed under Level 10 for decades.

truelyyy

@akabear it's 3 months not 45 days

. Also having seen the XP debt system in alpha, I don't believe it will be fast for most people.

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