Break the Gank Box -- Evil Suggestions Needed

I was getting hyped about this game and seriously considering dropping the cash for a beta key, but now I am reconsidering ... and open world PvP is the reason.
Steven has said that he doesn't intend for Ashes to be a gank box and that he believes the corruption system will deter that.
As a pacifist MMORPG player, I timidly disagree.
But instead of whining into my herbal tea, I would like to ask the PvPers to offer up their evil plans.
How will you get around the corruption system to gank as many innocent noobs as possible?
Suicide to clear the corruption? Alts just for ganking? Is there a way to cash shop it away?
My intention is to provide insight into how the chaotic evil players will twist the corruption system to their own nefarious ends so that maybe the devs can tweak the system before release to make it more enjoyable for peaceful players.

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George_Black

False Prophet wrote: »

Like someone already mentioned, PKing is only economically viable in zones with rare resources. I can't think of anything I could do to cheese the system but I can say that the bounty hunters don't really bother me. If corrupt players do drop equipment on death then i'll just wear a spare set I don't really need.

Getting gear wont be as easy as you are used to from the recent mmos you played.

ThexBlackxKnight

Dygz wrote: »

In my experience, that's not really a viable solution from the PvEer perspective.
PvPer's tend to think it's the perfect solution, though.

Good thing since Ashes is a open world "pvp" game , its not too concern about the "pve'ers" perspective about wanting restrict pvp in the game. Plenty of other mmorpgs that cater to those players.

Paranoyd

Gimlog wrote: »

@Paranoyd "The other 9 simply stand guard, debuff, block retreats, etc "
This sentence show that you didn't understand the system...

If you have to block , it means that the victim fight back and you will be flagged purple and will not suffer any penalties for the kill.

If you debuff the victim or buff your Allie , you are participating in the battle so you'll get corruption for the kill...

And I hope that a group of 10 , murdering 10 others player , that each of them get as much corruption as if they did murder 10 player by them self ,to demotivate group murders.

I've been playing these style games for a hell of a lot longer than I'd like to admit... there's always a way to exploit the system as a not-so-innocent bystander. In UO, you could virtually trip a person by standing in front of them, which lagged them back, directly into the line of your buddy's attack. In Asheron's Call, you could pull every single mob in a dungeon over to a group of newbs and watch them get wiped in a few seconds. In MUDs I played in the 90's you could bait low level players into attacking a charmed companion and therefore, initiating an attack against you which made them fair game in a ruleset that restricted PK.

Given enough players in a closed system, bound by computer code, these cracks will always surface.

Dygz

ThexBlackxKnight wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

In my experience, that's not really a viable solution from the PvEer perspective.
PvPer's tend to think it's the perfect solution, though.

Good thing since Ashes is a open world "pvp" game , its not too concern about the "pve'ers" perspective about wanting restrict pvp in the game. Plenty of other mmorpgs that cater to those players.

Ashes is an open world PvX game. Corruption is intended to restrict non-consensual PvP quite a bit.
And the battlegrounds PvP combat has PvE objectives.
Ashes caters to both PvP and PvE.

We aren't now quite as naive as we were when UO launched.
But UO was a gank box. And the devs were OK with that.

ThexBlackxKnight

Dygz wrote: »

ThexBlackxKnight wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

In my experience, that's not really a viable solution from the PvEer perspective.
PvPer's tend to think it's the perfect solution, though.

Good thing since Ashes is a open world "pvp" game , its not too concern about the "pve'ers" perspective about wanting restrict pvp in the game. Plenty of other mmorpgs that cater to those players.

Ashes is an open world PvX game. Corruption is intended to restrict non-consensual PvP quite a bit.
And the battlegrounds PvP combat has PvE objectives.
Ashes caters to both PvP and PvE.

We aren't now quite as naive as we were when UO launched.
But UO was a gank box. And the devs were OK with that.

The corruption system is a olive branch but pve players coming into the game will need to understand that they can be attack at anytime , corruption not going to prevent that from happening. Grouping with others for protection is a good strategy and is promotes community.

Dygz

Grouping with others for protection is a PvPer thing. Just promotes more PvP.
PvEers tend not to be into that and just won't play. Which is fine.
PvEers will either like it or they won't.
And, if they don't, then we see if there's a sufficient number of players to sustain the game for more than 3 years.
It's not really that big of a deal.

Vhaeyne

Dygz wrote: »

Grouping with others for protection is a PvPer thing. Just promotes more PvP.
PvEers tend not to be into that and just won't play. Which is fine.
PvEers will either like it or they won't.
And, if they don't, then we see if there's a sufficient number of players to sustain the game for more than 3 years.
It's not really that big of a deal.

I actually agree with all of this.
What do you think a sufficient number of players to sustain the game for more than three years is?
I have a number range in mind myself.

Dygz

I really don't know.
Some of that will be how many servers/worlds they have running.
At this point it's how much Steven is able to support financially.
No telling what that will be at launch.

PvPers think this issue is about who wins and loses the battle. More PvP works great as a solution for them.
PvEers really don't want there to be a PvP battle around them in the first place. Which is why they tend to prefer for there to be PvE servers.

George_Black

You got it all wrong. They set out to make AoC knowing it wont please carebears. They know their numbers. You dont.
How many times do they have to say that the game they make isnt for everyone? They dont count on ppl running around picking flowers and buying cosmetics like in eso and ff14. Get on with the program.

ThexBlackxKnight

Plus is had a very sucessful kickstarter with open world pvp advertised.. There is a demand for this kind of game, might not draw in the biggest numbers but it can draw enough to do well.

Dygz

I don't have it wrong. You have it wrong.
Neither of us know the numbers.
The game they are making is a PvX game.
They have said that the game is made for just crafters as well as for PvPers.

There is a demand for a PvX game. That much is true.
There is a huge demand for an open-world PvP-centric game - but there's never enough support for such game to last long...hence why New World became a PvX game rather than remaining a PvP-centric game.

George_Black

Dygz wrote: »

I don't have it wrong. You have it wrong.
Neither of us know the numbers.
The game they are making is a PvX game.
They have said that the game is made for just crafters as well as for PvPers.

There is a demand for a PvX game. That much is true.
There is a huge demand for an open-world PvP-centric game - but there's never enough support for such game to last long...hence why New World became a PvX game rather than remaining a PvP-centric game.

Nope..

Vhaeyne

Dygz wrote: »

I really don't know.
Some of that will be how many servers/worlds they have running.
At this point it's how much Steven is able to support financially.
No telling what that will be at launch.

PvPers think this issue is about who wins and loses the battle. More PvP works great as a solution for them.
PvEers really don't want there to be a PvP battle around them in the first place. Which is why they tend to prefer for there to be PvE servers.

I was only expecting 10-20 servers with half a million to a million players worldwide. Which should be plenty if intrepid plays its cards right.

I don't think the game works with PvE servers. It goes against the whole design of the game. I think even if they did spool up PvE servers the type of person who only wants to do PvE is going to be happier in FFXIV, WOW,ESO, or GW2. I feel like all accomplishments lose value in Open World PvE only.

I am hoping that Ashes teaches these PvE only players that PvX is something worth playing.

tautau

There are a lot of parallels between AoC and L2, and other similarities with AA.

Both those games ruined themselves by P2W and making themselves easier, as well as other flaws.

But if AoC is able to recreate the many of the successes of L2 and AA while also avoiding their failures (which is my hope), then we may well see a game that is sustainable over the long term. Yes, there will be an early surge of players and a decrease after a year or two, but I will predict that the levelled off player base will remain relatively healthy.

Dygz

Vhaeyne wrote: »

I am hoping that Ashes teaches these PvE only players that PvX is something worth playing.

If it's truly PvX...

Azherae

I'm actually really interested in how that would happen.

How does one convince a PvE player that PvX is worth playing? I come from fighting games, where the characters are (for the most part, recently) equal, and all that's needed is practice and knowledge. But those games have 'matchmaking'. People of similar skill (or at least winrates) get matched against each other so they can feel something other than 'crushing misery at constantly being stomped on'.

MMOs don't offer this. The person most likely to PvP you in any given situation is almost always the equivalent of a much better player at the content type. If you don't spend 'enough time training to be good in PvP', you just always lose, or travel in a group. But do PvP players really lose a 3v1 against less skilled players and internally go "That was my fault, good fight you three guys, I'll train more and come try this 3v1 again sometime."?

Cause people in fighting games don't do that more than 1% of the time and those games are 1v1 practically at all times. The salt is real. I'm not saying the game should make things easier for people who don't want to PvP, they can do that themselves, I'm only asking about what benefit it offers, as an experience, to someone who doesn't want their game time to be focused around training their PvP skills. If Player A trains for 100 hours and Player B can stand up to them after training for 10... isn't that moreso annoying for Player A?

mcstackerson

Azherae wrote: »

I'm actually really interested in how that would happen.

How does one convince a PvE player that PvX is worth playing? I come from fighting games, where the characters are (for the most part, recently) equal, and all that's needed is practice and knowledge. But those games have 'matchmaking'. People of similar skill (or at least winrates) get matched against each other so they can feel something other than 'crushing misery at constantly being stomped on'.

MMOs don't offer this. The person most likely to PvP you in any given situation is almost always the equivalent of a much better player at the content type. If you don't spend 'enough time training to be good in PvP', you just always lose, or travel in a group. But do PvP players really lose a 3v1 against less skilled players and internally go "That was my fault, good fight you three guys, I'll train more and come try this 3v1 again sometime."?

Cause people in fighting games don't do that more than 1% of the time and those games are 1v1 practically at all times. The salt is real. I'm not saying the game should make things easier for people who don't want to PvP, they can do that themselves, I'm only asking about what benefit it offers, as an experience, to someone who doesn't want their game time to be focused around training their PvP skills. If Player A trains for 100 hours and Player B can stand up to them after training for 10... isn't that moreso annoying for Player A?

MMOs don't have the same skill ceilings as fighting games. Someone isn't going to block you and then get you in a combo for half your hp while you can't do anything. Not saying there aren't things to learn, just that you it doesn't have the same requirements as a fighting game.

If you haven't played MMOs, then have you played other games where you were capable of beating someone who had more experience/skill than you?

It's also not like pvp is a completely different game from pve. They use the same combat. The same skills you use in pve, you will be using in pvp.

Azherae

I play BDO.

So um... you're right in a different sense.

It's not half of your HP, it's all of it.

"Don't get CC'ed."

mcstackerson

Azherae wrote: »

I play BDO.

So um... you're right in a different sense.

It's not half of your HP, it's all of it.

"Don't get CC'ed."

Yea, BDO is probably as close to as you will get to a fighting game in an MMO and it's scaling is a little out of control. Even then, would you say it requires the same amount of dedication to be competent in a fight and respond to being attacked?

Azherae

It's worse. I can't afford to get good at BDO because it would take longer for me to get good at that, than fighting games. Some of that is BDO's design as a generality, but a very large amount of it is small things that are unfamiliar, but innate to the design of combat games, that few people think about.

"How many frames of recovery are there when your opponent swings their weapon at you and misses?"

"How much lag do I think this specific opponent has?"

"If they resisted this debuff effect of my attack, which way should I change my combo?" (hit confirming).

My point is that in a fighting game, I don't have to be a specific level of competent unless I'm going to a tournament, where I'd be facing the top 100 in the world. In BDO, with my lower skill and dedicated time, I could 'randomly be attacked by the #5 player on the server' because they're practicing their assassination skills as I ride across a bridge (this sort of thing is semi common for me and possibly many others).

I just shrug it off as 'well I had no chance there, I died before I even saw them', or 'huh, so that's how that combo works' because I'm already dead.

The same thing can happen to a lower ranked player in most fighting games, but not if they're fighting people in standard matchmaking, mostly. If there's no way to 'ensure that the #800,000th ranked player doesn't get stomped on by the #800 rank player', what's the motivation for the first player to see any value in PvP?

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