Corruption system in relation to auto-flagging in open sea

This is not a post about if auto-flagging is good or not, or about preference between the two.
It is about the corruption system and the logic inconsistency of applying this system.
(for transparency, I would prefer the complete removal of this system, but what irks me more is the logic inconsistency)

The corruption system was presented as a tool that complies with the risk-vs-reward philosophy.

E.g. an attacker risks becoming corrupted if he kills a player that doesn't fight back and the defender risks losing much more loot if he doesn't fight back.
Both sides are risking in order to get rewarded.

In the open-sea, as Steven mentioned in the stream, the rewards will be grater and the risk needs to be higher.
Is the corruption system unable to handle that?
If the reward is more valuable, wouldn't that make the attacker more willing to become corrupted and the defender more willing to fight back to minimize his loses?

Why is now the corruption system presented as an obstacle to the risk-vs-reward philosophy for open-sea content?

In the open-sea now, with the auto-flagging, what is the risk for the attackers? E.g. if let's say 3 ships that are co-operating spot 1 ship, why wouldn't they attack? Where is the risk?
How are the bounty hunters affected by this change? Would they be able to hunt corrupted players in the open-sea?
Contrary to what Steven said, this change is actually going against the risk-vs-reward philosophy. If you outnumber the enemy, there is no risk in attacking.

You cannot treat the corruption system as a helpful tool for land content and as an obstacle for open-sea content.. those things cannot be true at the same time, just because the ground changes!

When you need to add exceptions to a system, in order to make the content fun, then maybe that system is not good enough.
If it is good enough, use it everywhere.. if it is not, remove it from everywhere!

The approach Intrepid is taking makes no sense.

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Dolyem

George_Black wrote: »

And the air of yours azhrae... I wish you'd stop RPing as somebody whose "data" contributes to anything other than passing your time, with you as the host.

Moving on: "Steven has to answer for his decisions" led by Dygz and muddled by azhrae.

While we agree on many things, you're not contributing anything worthwhile to this discussion.

XiraelAcaron

Dolyem wrote: »

XiraelAcaron wrote: »

But actually that may be a valid tactic and may encourage other pirates to hunt and kill this green ship...it would also go currupt of course...but as all are so happy to tell me risk-vs-rewards.

They'd have to face down the corrupt ship as well, it's basically as simple as keeping spare ships in tow to clean out the winner of the fight. But if all ships are marked for pvp, the ones that are "unmanned" could be a hindrance.

When I think about it, then this is also already possible on land. Red player kills green players and lets another geen player that follows him loot them. Nothing different.

Condemort

In international waters anything goes!!!! This is not a single player game, it is a MMORPG. If you want to cross the ocean hire bodyguards, go with your friends, join a marine caravan and offer to protect it as payment.
I think that the fact that the ocean is PvP, will make the world more dynamic, alliances between guilds, betrayals...

Mag7spy

XiraelAcaron wrote: »

Dolyem wrote: »

XiraelAcaron wrote: »

Dolyem wrote: »

XiraelAcaron wrote: »

Dolyem wrote: »

[ I ask you, if you assume that this will cause a loss of interest in some part of the population and that

XiraelAcaron wrote: »

Dolyem wrote: »

XiraelAcaron wrote: »

Dolyem wrote: »

XiraelAcaron wrote: »

For technical problems technical solutions can be found. They should be discussed. If this was the reason for the change this solution sounds lazy to me.

I'd assume that they implemented it, and once they tested perhaps made a judgement call saying that having to flag for this content was bad gameplay

Then they should tell us that. And I already have a first idea of the top of my head of how you can make corruption work with ships. We can discuss it if you like, but it would turn this discussion in a totally different direction.

Go for it, it's more info for devs

OK, its simple. But please remember its a first shot. I did not think about every last aspect. The main ocean content is done by ships, yes? Then why not have ship owners have a ship corruption status that applies to every ship that is summoned by them and is independent from the players corruption state (or from the other occupants). So you summon a ship and the ship gets corruption (or however you want to call it. Lorewise it is of course total crap) and reduces corruption if it does normal naval gameplay or is sunk. Basically the same as on land, only for ships. You still have auto-flagging zones around caravans/merchant ships/world bosses etc. As a drawback fot going back, red ships cannot go to harbors to be repaired or improved until purple.
Of course, if the reason was to increase the risk on the ocean that will not help. You have to think about something other there.

Interesting take, how would that negatively affect the players on the ship then? And if it got too corrupted, wouldn't it be as simple as making another?

It would not affect the players on the ship. I have no problem with that. If they leave the ship they go back to their normal corruption state. I have no problem with distinguishing the two states. What happend on the ocean stays on the ocean.
The owners ship corruption status would apply to all ships that they summon. You could use another players ship next time, but summoning is only possible at harbors so that is very inconvenient. Also at some point you have a whole lot of red ships that you have to get to purple somehow. Also they would only be able to be sold in a purple state.

At that point I'd have 1 player designated as a corrupt ship and have another player follow without engaging as the designated green ship. Problem arises? Abandon ship and hop on the green one, sail away without dying unless the other already damaged ship decides to engage. I try to think up exploits for everything so don't take it as me saying you're wrong, this is just how I would avoid it

I am not sure what the scenario is. Do you want to avoid attacks and use the designated green ship as a get-away or do you want to use the red one to PK and the green one is for what? What is the goal in the latter secenario?

In the first scenario, you can do that. You still loose the red ship you abondon. Its a high price to avoid a player death. I would think the ship death would be a higher priority to avoid.

Use the red ship to kill other ships, once you're about to lose you disengage and go to the green ship as not to die and lose materials to the enemy.

You loose the ship thats a hard punishment. Regarding the loot you supposedly collected with the green ship from all the previous kills, that is indeed a problem I have to think about. Maybe apply looting rights rules. Either the green ship at least fires one shot and is then purple, or it cannot loot. If only the red ship can loot, then all the mats go down with the ship since I assume you cannot transfer crago on the open sea.

You can have the normal corruption system out at sea but there would be much less friction of people fighting over anything as it isn't feasible. If the boats are one per person perhaps it could be more fair, but if boats are generally manned by multiple people (we all don't' know much about navel combat) you would have a huge incentive from attacking them.

I feel you would have a reason to not attack that goes beyond the normal corruption system where killing the boat and there for the members on the boat would be a huge spike to your corruption in a large way since you are going towards the mass griefing that the corruption system is meant to prevent. This means u kill a boat with a bunch of people on it and you are suddenly having a high chance to start dropping loot. Not to mention people can corruption bomb you with a bunch of low levels in order to highly deter attacks or ensure people are extremely deep red.

Though as I said before i don't believe it is as large as getting corruption to work but more so having a different kind of content people can enjoy with risk related to that kind of content. If it is planned for a different kind of experience and to be a different kind of content it is more types of things for players to be able to enjoy for fun. It is no different then corruption not applying to battleground type of content that will be in AoC as well.

This is a PvX game, if you are coming in thinking you can do PvE and never be interrupted (most of the time) while you do such from pvp you did not do your research.

Dolyem

mcstackerson wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

mcstackerson wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

mcstackerson wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

"Please explain if you are still of the opinion that the reason for the change is technical."

Sorry, i don't think it's purely technical, just thought it might have played a role. I also think it was made because the kind of content that was planned for the sea and to support the pirate playstyle.

Please clarify if you expect Coastal content to not include things like meaningful/complex PvE encounters, in contrast to the Open Sea where it might be necessary to change the flagging system due to such encounters.

I'd expect coastal pve enounters to work the same as the ones on land and not involve ships but that is purely my guess. On the ocean, I expect ships to play a larger role in pve encounters like the kraken/leviathon from Archeage but i'm not going to go as far as say the change is necessary.

I think the difference between the zones and reason for the change is more that the land has a large variety of content but the sea will probably be focused on high level content.

Please clarify if you perceive that this high level content will be rewarding enough to be a meaningful impact on the power balance on the server.

I hope not. I think it should at least some of the best stuff but wouldn't want it to be so significant that you couldn't compete against players with it.

Agreed. I believe there should be some BiS content and top tier materials but definitely not all. The Mainland should be the core of the ganeplay, while the ocean should have mostly quantity over quality in regards to resources. Ith a few unique things to the zone that gives incentives for competition

Dolyem

XiraelAcaron wrote: »

Dolyem wrote: »

XiraelAcaron wrote: »

But actually that may be a valid tactic and may encourage other pirates to hunt and kill this green ship...it would also go currupt of course...but as all are so happy to tell me risk-vs-rewards.

They'd have to face down the corrupt ship as well, it's basically as simple as keeping spare ships in tow to clean out the winner of the fight. But if all ships are marked for pvp, the ones that are "unmanned" could be a hindrance.

When I think about it, then this is also already possible on land. Red player kills green players and lets another geen player that follows him loot them. Nothing different.

I believe looting a corrupted kill grants corruption. I could be wrong

Dygz

mcstackerson wrote: »

Maybe a slight change but in your quote steven was focused on the fact that the zones in archeage turn on and off pvp. Ashes wont have zones like that and even if he knew of this change then, I think he would still be right in saying the two are not similar.

He was saying that Ashes won't have zones with different PvP mechanics.
And, yes, that includes your interpretation as well.
Again...Steven stated that different PvP mechanics for the Open Seas was a change made a couple of months ago.
And, as JustVine stated, he knew the context of the question from my previous question about EvE and my response when he mentioned the different sectors.

(but...maybe we have to agree to disagree?? lol....OOOOOO)

CROW3

Dolyem wrote: »

Use the red ship to kill other ships, once you're about to lose you disengage and go to the green ship as not to die and lose materials to the enemy.

Why not just use trivial matrices to connect the abstract corruption value of a ship (A) to it's crew (players 1-12)? When any one crew member leaves A, they receive a portion of the incurred Corruption of the ship, this means what the team does impacts the outcome for every member of that team. So, when you jump from Ship A (Red) to Ship B (Green) you incur more corruption than if Ship A was destroyed and you jump onto Ship B. There are some details to be worked out at the edges, but that's how I'd approach it.

That also means that Ship objects would be treated as players in open waters with the consistent corruption rules applied.

That's how I'd solve the 'how do we implement corruption in naval battles' problem.

I have other thoughts on the more philosophical 'what/who is the governing authority to make corruption consistent' problem.

Dolyem

Mag7spy wrote: »

Not to mention people can corruption bomb you with a bunch of low levels in order to highly deter attacks or ensure people are extremely deep red.

This is actually a good point. You could bait people by loading up some level 1's and then kill the corrupted attackers.

Mag7spy

Dolyem wrote: »

XiraelAcaron wrote: »

Dolyem wrote: »

XiraelAcaron wrote: »

But actually that may be a valid tactic and may encourage other pirates to hunt and kill this green ship...it would also go currupt of course...but as all are so happy to tell me risk-vs-rewards.

They'd have to face down the corrupt ship as well, it's basically as simple as keeping spare ships in tow to clean out the winner of the fight. But if all ships are marked for pvp, the ones that are "unmanned" could be a hindrance.

When I think about it, then this is also already possible on land. Red player kills green players and lets another geen player that follows him loot them. Nothing different.

I believe looting a corrupted kill grants corruption. I could be wrong

I never thought of this, i never heard you get corrupted by looting a green player.

XiraelAcaron

Dolyem wrote: »

XiraelAcaron wrote: »

Dolyem wrote: »

XiraelAcaron wrote: »

But actually that may be a valid tactic and may encourage other pirates to hunt and kill this green ship...it would also go currupt of course...but as all are so happy to tell me risk-vs-rewards.

They'd have to face down the corrupt ship as well, it's basically as simple as keeping spare ships in tow to clean out the winner of the fight. But if all ships are marked for pvp, the ones that are "unmanned" could be a hindrance.

When I think about it, then this is also already possible on land. Red player kills green players and lets another geen player that follows him loot them. Nothing different.

I believe looting a corrupted kill grants corruption. I could be wrong

I do not believe so. But they cannot trade with anyone. So they cannot take the loot from their kills and trade it to someone else. The other party has to loot it themselves.

Dolyem

CROW3 wrote: »

Dolyem wrote: »

Use the red ship to kill other ships, once you're about to lose you disengage and go to the green ship as not to die and lose materials to the enemy.

Why not just use trivial matrices to connect the abstract corruption value of a ship (A) to it's crew (players 1-12)? When any one crew member leaves A, they receive a portion of the incurred Corruption of the ship, this means what the team does impacts the outcome for every member of that team. So, when you jump from Ship A (Red) to Ship B (Green) you incur more corruption than if Ship A was destroyed and you jump onto Ship B. There are some details to be worked out at the edges, but that's how I'd approach it.

That also means that Ship objects would be treated as players in open waters with the consistent corruption rules applied.

That's how I'd solve the 'how do we implement corruption in naval battles' problem.

I have other thoughts on the more philosophical 'what/who is the governing authority to make corruption consistent' problem.

Could bait players into inviting you to give them corruption so friends can kill them freely if they don't pay attention

Sathrago

Dolyem wrote: »

Use the red ship to kill other ships, once you're about to lose you disengage and go to the green ship as not to die and lose materials to the enemy.

Mag7spy

Their current design direction for open sea sounds a lot more fun either way, if you like it you can do it, if you don't then just stick to the main gameplay loop of the game most players will be doing. I know im bias since im more for PvP and such, but having more types of content besides just pve type content is a good thing.

CROW3

Dolyem wrote: »

Could bait players into inviting you to give them corruption so friends can kill them freely if they don't pay attention

Yeah - there are a number of non-happy path + edge cases that would need to be ironed out. The high-level takeaway is that it's feasible. However, if there's just a mandate of deep water is auto-flag, it doesn't really matter.

Of course, if that's the case - I'd argue that same philosophy to be applied to the terrestrial wilds outside a settled node's ZOI. It would be a very dangerous world, with a very tangible benefit for non-PvP oriented folks to advance a node (since the corruption system's influence would expand with the node ZOI).

It just has a highly probable nasty side-effect of the vast majority of the PvE player segment walking away from the project.

XiraelAcaron

CROW3 wrote: »

Dolyem wrote: »

Use the red ship to kill other ships, once you're about to lose you disengage and go to the green ship as not to die and lose materials to the enemy.

Why not just use trivial matrices to connect the abstract corruption value of a ship (A) to it's crew (players 1-12)? When any one crew member leaves A, they receive a portion of the incurred Corruption of the ship, this means what the team does impacts the outcome for every member of that team. So, when you jump from Ship A (Red) to Ship B (Green) you incur more corruption than if Ship A was destroyed and you jump onto Ship B. There are some details to be worked out at the edges, but that's how I'd approach it.

That also means that Ship objects would be treated as players in open waters with the consistent corruption rules applied.

That's how I'd solve the 'how do we implement corruption in naval battles' problem.

I have other thoughts on the more philosophical 'what/who is the governing authority to make corruption consistent' problem.

I do not think this is necessary. I would totally decouple individual players from ships. Its similar for groups on land. They also do not share corruption as far as we know. We actually do not really tie ships to owners, since players can simply have several alts to PvP and corruption is not shared on account level. So actually simply equate ships to players and almost all should be fine. Only the nputs and rules that determin how much corruption is incurred would need to be adapted to the ocean gameplay.

Regarding governing authority. Its the same as on land. The nodes do this by not letting ships near a port when corrupted. You can call corruption for ships something like infamy. The more ships are killed by the 'Black Pearl' the more infamous it becomes.

JustVine

Dolyem wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Not to mention people can corruption bomb you with a bunch of low levels in order to highly deter attacks or ensure people are extremely deep red.

This is actually a good point. You could bait people by loading up some level 1's and then kill the corrupted attackers.

I mean... I'm not sure I quite see how corruption bombing is easier at sea than on land. If anything I think it'd be harder to corruption bomb at sea because you get thrown to shore on death which is probably going to be further away in most cases than on a land respawn point.

There is a finite amount of greens you can throw at a person with out a ton of logistics as a result... And that's provided your opponent doesn't kill everyone in the encounter who could give you coordinates. Once you do, it's a lot harder to find people at sea so the Red is free to just go grind pirates and other mobs to rinse the corruption off. Feel free to point out to me what scenarios you are thinking of.

On land corruption bombing is definitely going to be a challenge and a lot easier to find the opponent via bounty hunting and return to the fray due to the difference in respawn distance and population density. IS needs to solve this problem anyway.

XiraelAcaron

Also if you want to make the sea more dangerous, one could use the dials of the corruption calculation to slow down accrual or increase shedding of corruption. However I would not try to solely use PvP meachanics to make the open sea more dangerous, I would also add more PvP thread like suddenly appearinh swarms of enemies etc.

Fantmx

Dolyem wrote: »

Fantmx wrote: »

Dolyem wrote: »

Fantmx wrote: »

Dolyem wrote: »

Fantmx wrote: »

Dolyem wrote: »

Here you go again with the "THE CORRUPTION SYSTEM HAS FAILED!". It is literally just a different zone with different rules. It still maintains a focus on PVP and PVE. It's just more PVP to add more risk.

If we can have zones with different rules for free for all pvp, why can't we have zones with different rules for no pvp at all?

Because that isn't PVX

How so? How is it not as much a part of pvx as ffa pvp?

No PvP is just PVE.
Autoflagged PVP in a PVE zone with PVE incentives is PVX

I understand that if what I was saying is make an entire server pve. But that's not what I'm asking about. How does having mostly middle ground with corruption with two areas for the opposite poles of ffa pvp and no pvp not still leave Ashes as a whole a pvx game? Why does either side have to have all or nothing? Ashes should be about balance if it is going to succeed in bringing these two very different populations together.

I'm still playing either way.

Because all aspects should be PvX. I understand what you're saying, but the polar opposite to your PVE zone would be a zone exclusively for PVP, not a PVE area that autoflags PVP. Am I explaining this well enough?

Last question. If the area is not meant to be an area primarily for PVP, then why is there the need to remove corruption in the first place?

BaSkA_9x2

Vaknar wrote: »

I merged two threads on the same topic: (Auto-flagging in open sea) together!

I was quite surprised when I saw they were merged and I disagree with your (or whoever's) decision to merge them. Those two topics had different goals, therefore I wish they still were two different topics. I, for example, deliberately wanted to read and focus on the discussions in one of the topics and not the other.

In the future, if one topic is about "how caravans work and how do you like them?" and another topic is about "why caravans work the way they do and do you think it makes sense?", I hope that they do not get merged.

Too bad for me, I guess 👍

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