Idea for death penalty when low lvl players are ganked

There have been a number of threads discussing the problem with death penalty when a low level player has been ganked. The problem is, the deterrent for high levels ganking low levels is increased corruption; however, the ganker only receives increased corruption if the the low level does not fight back; and, not fighting back causes the low level to take double the death penalty compared to if the low level did fight back.

A related question is, why does a low level ganked player that did not choose to fight and has no chance of winning due to level difference have to suffer the full death penalty?

I have a solution to improve the experience of being a low level ganked player for both problems. I think that death penalty from PVP should be done on a sliding scale starting from when a low level player has little or no chance winning, which would reduce death penalty by a percentage up to little or no death penalty applied.

For example,
If a low level player is killed by an attacker that is 10-15 levels higher, the death penalty for the low level will be reduced by a few percentage points. If a level 1 is killed by a level 50, then the death penalty will be reduced by 90-100%. All the levels in between will decrease death penalty proportionately.

The numbers are just an example for clarity and can be adjusted as needed. The important point is, I think death penalty (including dropped resources) should reduce for a ganked player when that player has no possibility of winning due to level difference; and, the death penalty reduction should be greater as the ganked player level decreases.

The only exploit that I can think of for this is to use low level players as mules to protect resources if the gatherer(s) end up getting attacked.

What does everyone think about this?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Biccus

Vhaeyne wrote: »

Edit: I may have misread your meaning. I thought you were saying you would expect the world to have 50k worth of people that you need to know, but only 10-15k could be online at a time. Still not sure.

So it was in response to blackknight saying reputation carries less weight with a 10k population. I’m assuming it counts for more if the population was actually 50k.

Vhaeyne

ThexBlackxKnight wrote: »

Vhaeyne wrote: »

10k divided by 118 nodes. Granted it will not be an even distribution of 85 people per node. It would likely be a few hundred to a thousand per large node and hundreds for smaller nodes in that zone of influence.

You will still know the names of all the big guilds on your server and any guilds in your nodes zone of influence. Reputation will carry weight for sure.

Maybe but guilds will kill any member of enemy guild no matter the level , its happens in every open world pvp mmo I have played. Most guilds will not be concerned about having a sense of honor , they will care a lot more about winning .

Also the world is not static , the game is ever changing and its being designed that long lasting alliances cant happen. Pve raid spots will be changing , new areas will be contested, any aggreements you may have had with guilds before will go the out the window when a node is destroyed and those players maybe be your enemy later on which makes it really hard to enforce this don't attack low level honor pledge between guilds.

I don't think I will personally have a problem keeping track of a few thousand people on my server when I am there 6 to 8 hours a day. I also don't think guilds will have an issue when they start creating lists of people who are a problem and why.

I forgot about this from the wiki too:
Death penalties do not apply to objective-based events (such as caravans, guild wars, and node sieges).

Seems like we have little to worry about in the way of guild wars.

Vhaeyne

Biccus wrote: »

Vhaeyne wrote: »

Edit: I may have misread your meaning. I thought you were saying you would expect the world to have 50k worth of people that you need to know, but only 10-15k could be online at a time. Still not sure.

So it was in response to blackknight saying reputation carries less weight with a 10k population. I’m assuming it counts for more if the population was actually 50k.

Both ways the population is not piss everyone off and random que your way to new people to piss off.

ThexBlackxKnight

Vhaeyne wrote: »

I don't think I will personally have a problem keeping track of a few thousand people on my server when I am there 6 to 8 hours a day. I also don't think guilds will have an issue when they start creating lists of people who are a problem and why.

You assuming most guilds will care that much in a open world pvp game. Most pvp players are a-holes because its fun to them to be one.

Vhaeyne

ThexBlackxKnight wrote: »

Vhaeyne wrote: »

I don't think I will personally have a problem keeping track of a few thousand people on my server when I am there 6 to 8 hours a day. I also don't think guilds will have an issue when they start creating lists of people who are a problem and why.

You assuming most guilds will care that much in a open world pvp game. Most pvp players are a-holes because its fun to them to be one.

IDK, I have played a number of full-loot games. You might get the occasional "Welcome to Darkfall", but it was never bad to the point that no one could progress. Many of the niche full loot PvP games have a player base that understands not to push new players too far. You show new players that the kitchen is hot, but you never outright melt them, by spawn camping them until they never log back in.

In fact, in many of these games I have seen gankers give players friendly advice on how not to get ganked after ganking them or even accept them into their guilds. That is in full loot.

Things are going to be much more forgiving with the corruption system

I think PvPers just have a negative stereotype against them. I made friends in full loot games. If it was going to be doom and gloom in any environment that would be it. So, I am not at all worried about the safety of low-level characters in Ashes with all the reasons not to waste time with them PvPers have.

ThexBlackxKnight

Vhaeyne wrote: »

ThexBlackxKnight wrote: »

Vhaeyne wrote: »

I don't think I will personally have a problem keeping track of a few thousand people on my server when I am there 6 to 8 hours a day. I also don't think guilds will have an issue when they start creating lists of people who are a problem and why.

You assuming most guilds will care that much in a open world pvp game. Most pvp players are a-holes because its fun to them to be one.

IDK, I have played a number of full-loot games. You might get the occasional "Welcome to Darkfall", but it was never bad to the point that no one could progress. Many of the niche full loot PvP games have a player base that understands not to push new players too far. You show new players that the kitchen is hot, but you never outright melt them, by spawn camping them until they never log back in.

In fact, in many of these games I have seen gankers give players friendly advice on how not to get ganked after ganking them or even accept them into their guilds. That is in full loot.

Things are going to be much more forgiving with the corruption system

I think PvPers just have a negative stereotype against them. I made friends in full loot games. If it was going to be doom and gloom in any environment that would be it. So, I am not at all worried about the safety of low-level characters in Ashes with all the reasons not to waste time with them PvPers have.

I can see why games like that will be that way , in a world where pve content doesnt change you can get a more settled in aggrements with players. Ashes being is design to cause endless conflict , everyone will be butting heads over new loot spots because the pve content is changing.

Also a lot of Archeage players back the kickstarter , dont know if you played that game but it extremely toxic and now we have a lot wow pvp players eyeing the game thanks to Asmongold and I don't know if I need to tell how toxic those guys are. Those two playerbase combinations is going to something.

Vhaeyne

ThexBlackxKnight wrote: »

I can see why games like that will be that way , in a world where pve content doesnt change you can get a more settled in aggrements with players. Ashes being is design to cause endless conflict , everyone will be butting heads over new loot spots because the pve content is changing.

While we can't conclude exactly what the reality of Ashes world PvP will be like based on other games. I think it is safe to assume that since Ashes is trying hard to funnel players into meaningful PvP events. There should not be many reasons to engage in meaningless PvP.

Yes, there will be turf wars, but ideally those turf wars will be fought be the people who are the level of that content. Since nodes, level up you should not see that many low-level characters in high-level nodes where they can barely kill anything or gather anything. They should be in low to mid-level nodes doing stuff around their level.

ThexBlackxKnight wrote: »

Also a lot of Archeage players back the kickstarter , dont know if you played that game but it extremely toxic and now we have a lot wow pvp players eyeing the game thanks to Asmongold and I don't know if I need to tell how toxic those guys are. Those two playerbase combinations is going to something.

Toxicity is inevitable to some degree, but at least in Ashes there is a price to acting on it. Any time you are spending being red for no reason is time you are not spending progressing or maintaining your power. This is also part of the reason why maintenance of gear is so high. It both fuels the economy and makes people think twice about damaging their gear.

Shit is not going to be fun when you can't wear your raid gear to the raid because you took it out ganking and now need raid mats to repair your raid gear...

I think when these two player bases combine we are going to see the wheat separated from the chaff. I may be too optimistic on this, but I don't think very many people are going to want to stick with a game that punishes you for ganking to the degree that Ashes does. Assuming they just came here to gank. They will crawl back to WOW Classic in the time before War Mode put them in a situation where the only people they can fight are people that want to kick their asses anyway. I also bet that most gankers play with Warmode off because what ganker wants wants a fair fight?

ThexBlackxKnight

@Vhaeyne Just avoid Asmongold's server.

Vhaeyne

ThexBlackxKnight wrote: »

@Vhaeyne Just avoid Asmongold's server.

I will, but more because I know that he is going to drive up the que times with a bunch of people that are going to quit after a few weeks to months. Which I would bet will create a dead server eventually.

These WOW-andys are not going to like Ashes for long.

Blackford

This is usually a self correcting problem.
Some guy comes to a lowbie area at max level and starts killing the nublets.
The nublets cry out in general chat or to their guildmates.
Some max levels come out from a nearby hub to the defense of the nublets, and the ganker himself gets ganked, then camped.

It's kind of a right of passage in MMORPGs to get ganked IMO, even if it's unpleasant.
At least with the corruption system there's going to be harsher penalties for the lowbie ganking player.

One thing that I just thought of that might be exploitable is running in a group with lowbies, and sending a stealthed "kamikazie" lowbie running into your target's AOE abilities, thus corrupting your target when he accidentally kills them, and allowing the main guys of your group free to kill your target and get his stuff without corrupting themselves. I'm sure things like this will be addressed, but on paper it sounds like the system might have exploits available to creative players.

But to be fair, clever players can exploit anything.

tautau

One thing that might mitigate this is the lack of traditional 'starter areas'.

While we will have gates we jump out of, the entire world is a starter area at first. Then, as nodes level up, they generate higher level mobs around the edges of their territory. But there are still very low level mobs right outside the gates of each node. Why does that matter?

The higher level players will be coming and going through the node gates and the lower level players will be hunting near the node gates. This draws low players into areas where the higher players transit on their ways to hunting areas or where they live, in the freeholds around the nodes and in the nodes. So if someone starts ganking noobies, game design will have the odds in favor of higher players being nearby. So the higher players will gank the gankers to get the drops off the reds! It is brilliant, and it avoids having a L2 Talking Island where the jerks know they can safely prey on new players.

ThexBlackxKnight

tautau wrote: »

One thing that might mitigate this is the lack of traditional 'starter areas'.

While we will have gates we jump out of, the entire world is a starter area at first. Then, as nodes level up, they generate higher level mobs around the edges of their territory. But there are still very low level mobs right outside the gates of each node. Why does that matter?
.

I imagine the beginning of the game will look like this.

Recluse74

Pretty simple fix if not already planned for the game.

Pk count affects how much corruption you are rewarded upon a pk. The higher your total pk count, the more corruption you gain on every single kill. Corruption lowers pvp stats, so sooner or later, your character is rendered useless in pvp as long as you are a combatant. This is in game now.

If they do indeed add a quest or some other way to lower your pk count total, it should only be available to characters who reach level cap. This way, low level pk characters will only be valuable for a short time, until they delete them, or level them to level cap. If the quest is lengthy or costly, and only lowers your pk count by 1 total pk.. the time and cost to keep a pk character becomes too much of a burden.

Lineage 2 had a quest, and I remember after doing it one time to lower my pk count... I gave up, and decided to never pk again on that character.

FuryBladeborne

Blackford wrote: »

One thing that I just thought of that might be exploitable is running in a group with lowbies, and sending a stealthed "kamikazie" lowbie running into your target's AOE abilities, thus corrupting your target when he accidentally kills them, and allowing the main guys of your group free to kill your target and get his stuff without corrupting themselves. I'm sure things like this will be addressed, but on paper it sounds like the system might have exploits available to creative players.

While it's not impossible, the attacker will have to choose to attack players with the AOE or it won't hit the stealthed lowbie.

akabear

Near endgame in L2, I recall doing that pk quest on a regular basis to keep the current accumulated pk count down. From memory the quest took approx. 30-40min to complete and it randomly deleted say 1-10 pks.. so if you went on a spree, you also potentially paid for it in time out both to wear off your karma (xp debt in AoC) and when done, time out doing the sin eater quest (AoC is possibly doing similar)... with the time played back in the day, the time to do this was just considered an overhead to contend with to provide the benefit and choice to pk when and if required. That being said, our clan did not pk randomly, there was usually a pretty solid reason. ie farmer, scammer, botter, clan v clan retribution.. very, very rare to touch or be touched by a random individual as random pk... again, apart from staking territory cant see it happening too much

Child Item