Over the last week there have been a ton of videos and posts about PvP in ashes and how its going to be awful/kill the game etc. Responses have been around how to fix it. Steven’s response was its fine as is. I agree with him. Its great. The game is NOT OUT YET, so we haven’t played it, but as it has been described it has all of the elements to address quite a few concerns about open world PvP.
If you are concerned or in the camp of “
they should do a PvE only server” or “
They should totally change the flagging system” you should (re)read
the wiki here. Click the links to dive in deeper, it will help understand the current thinking and elevate some concerns.
If the wiki is TLDR, then here is an overview, some examples of how I read that the current system will behave and some thoughts on how they could tweak the existing system to dial down (or up
) certain detrimental behaviors common to MMO PvP systems.
Flagging system is described in
detail here. Green = non PvP, Purple = normal PvP, Red = penalized PvP
You start out flagged “Green”. You can stay green forever technically, as long as you avoid certain areas and events. Think of green as the “base state” for PvP. If you move into a PvP area or event, then you will change to purple.
If you are green, and initiate a targeted attack on a purple or a green, then you get flagged purple. Purple is the “normal” PvP flag. There is a discrepancy between the wiki and recent comments around what happens when a green attacks a red. The wiki says you stay green, but recent comments have said that you will turn purple ( as an incentive, because you will drop less stuff and incur less death penalty… ). We will have to wait for clarification here.
If you are flagged purple, then you can initiate combat with other purples all day long with no penalty. You can also attack red’s without penalty. Now if you attack a green, then you get flagged red and incur a penalty.
Right here, this is why the current corruption system is fine. The system has a mechanism to penalize bad behavior automatically. The remaining questions are around wether the level of the penalty will be sufficient to deter “bad” behavior. They don’t have to change the mechanics, just balance the penalty.
Here is an example of the current system as described:
I am a lvl 50 (current max level) assassin. I am bored so I decide to go and kill some carebear greens harvesting mats. I find a lvl 10 minding their own business and I one hit them. Dopamine rush initiated. Loser green. I got some sweet Lumber drop. More dopamine.
But now I noticed I have 8% less hit points and mana. Ok, no big deal. Oh and do 8% less damage. For how long? Until I get about 8% of my level back? Oof, ok that is a couple of hours of work. But so much fun killing the green, lets do it again. Oh, now its 16% less damage, hit points and mana and I need to work twice as long that sucks.. but so much fun.
But wait, what is that on my mini map? A bounty hunter is tracking me? And I am down 16%? Ok should I run? Nah I got this… wait no I didn’t, I am dead. I just dropped that wood I got AND my stealth mask. Ok that sucks… I am going to go grind and reduce my corruption a bit before I go start killing greens again.
Example over.
So now you just need to tweak the penalties to get the desired response. Want to reduce it more? Double the penalty. Want to prevent level disparity? 2% additional penalty per level difference. Want to prevent spawn camping? Triple the penalty if you kill the same player within a fixed period of time. Do you think a lvl 50 player is going to spawn camp a lvl 10 player very long? Want to increase “good” green engagement? No skill and stat damping for attacking a green at the same or higher level, though you still stay flagged red.
Other things you could do to increase the penalty based on corruption level:
* Slow travel speed by X%.
* Decrease Defense especially against stun and snare.
* “Delevel” for a time period ( not just reduce hit points, but drop effective level and skills are unavailable for say 20 mins, can’t use certain weapons )
* Respawn at “Corruption Poles”: A small number of fixed locations where only corrupted players can respawn.
Depending on how hard you tweak it, you can completely stop people killing greens.
But Intrepid won’t … because if they do, then Bounty Hunters will have no one to hunt. So yes, there will be people who are out there killing greens because the dopamine reward will be worth the risk. By Design. The challenge will be balancing the corruption with players rage quitting.
Spawn Camping:
The most frustrating form of grieving is spawn camping or being repeatedly killed by the same person. The current system will discourage that. However if you really want to discourage it, add in an increasing percent chance that the corrupted player will delevel to have the level of the person they just killed for a period of time and that will really reduce it. Kill me once, fine. Kill me twice within 15 mins? 10% chance on the third kill that you are half my level to me…increasing by 20% for every kill after that. Have that penalty on top of the normal corruption penalties and it won’t be worth it.
Grief Trains and NPC buffing:
Another thing that came up was the issue of players using trains to grief. Though they haven’t specifically called it out, they have said that summons also count for corruption flagging. A possible solution here is that when you pull a mob, it flags the mob as a summons for PvP until it is killed or reset. So if you pull a mob and train it on a group of green players then it you get the corruption. If you want to further reduce the occurrence, then have the NPC “summon” flag trigger corruption even if the player killed is purple.
Asmongold brought up some great examples of passive grieving through debuff and taunt strategies. Again though, by flagging those mobs as your summons you will still get the corruption and incur the penalties.
Guild area locking:
Another point that was brought up is Guild locking of areas. Guilds may try and lock down areas, killing anyone that comes in. Now if that area is flagged for PvP automatically… say like the ocean, then yes, that is part of the game. Its going to be all out guild vs guild.
If its not auto flagged PvP, then “green spamming” would be a detriment. A raid of all greens goes in and the guild kills them all going corrupted. The greens don’t attack back, die and return and repeat until the lock down guild is penalized enough to push them out.
So all in all, The system as currently described will work, just needs some balance.
I do think that this could be the first open world PVP that really appeals to the masses. There will be people that try and stay green all the way to 50. And I hope there is some achievement for doing so. There will be people who will try and stay flagged corrupted all the way to 50 and I hope there are achievements for that as well. If its balanced correctly, I think it will be great.
