Suggestion: Make corruption penalties unknown and variable

The main question is whether we want corruption to actually deter the player as a form of punishment. If the answer to that is yes, then the currently presented method of all penalties being known before hand is the least effective way to produce good behavior or extinguish bad behavior.

This all comes down to Operant Conditioning and how it works. This is a well known theory of how we process reinforcement and punishment.

By knowing the penalties beforehand the player gets to take a measure of if they will go ahead and take the penalty this time or avoid it. They also get a chance to learn ways to work around the system. This will lead to a slow response rate and a fast extinction rate meaning player behavior is not likely to change over the long term decreasing the effectiveness of the goal of corruption.

Now if we take the approach of an unknown and variable punishment the response rate will be fast and the extinction rate would be slow. The player would not be given the opportunity to weigh whether they can take corruption or not. This would make corruption much more likely to deter negative behavior.

The variability could be in amount of corruption, length of time with corruption, stat change, experience loss and ultimately number and types of items lost if a bounty hunt is successful on the player or any number of other variables.

This would not take a big overhaul to change as the corruption system itself would largely stay the same. I would imagine it would be fairly easy to test in alpha 2 should the original idea not produce results as robust as hoped for.

Just a thought.

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Comments

Ludullu

Doesn't this go directly against risk vs reward design? How can people weigh their rewards if they have no idea what the risks are? And if there's any type of maximum limit on the penalties, people will probably just weigh their actions against that, and when they get hit with softer penalties they'll be doubly "rewarded" for making the risk, which would only push them towards risking more often and in turn create more PKing.

Fantmx

It would be much more of a deterrent against griefing, if that is in fact a goal.

The risk vs reward is still there. The only thing that shifts is the viewpoint of the risk. And I thought people liked risk?

And as the post says, it would be something to test if the original plan is not completely effective as this would be more effective.

Just a thought from our show last night.

Ludullu

Fantmx wrote: »

It would be much more of a deterrent against griefing, if that is in fact a goal.

But how though? Some 3rd party site will have the maximum potential penalty figures out within days, if not hours. And then all the PKers will just consider that penalty as the "normal" one, and with the maximum potential penalty as the base one anything less would seem like a "reward" to those PKers. Which would only encourage them to PK more, because they'd be already ready for the max penalty.

Well, that is, unless the max penalty is the same as lvl50 PKing a lvl1, even if it was just lvl50 killing another lvl50. But at that point we'd just have an insanely harsh system that effectively removes owpvp from the game.

Fantmx

You are thinking of min maxing known values like we do with everything. That is where the unknown part comes in. And when you have 10 or more different variables that could be random you end up with numerous potential outcomes.

Ludullu

Fantmx wrote: »

You are thinking of min maxing known values like we do with everything. That is where the unknown part comes in. And when you have 10 or more different variables that could be random you end up with numerous potential outcomes.

But unless it's absolutely random there will be some factors that's gonna lead to minmaxing. And at the very least people will just figure out a median amount of corruption for any given kill and then consider a bit more than that as the base penalty.

I'm just saying that it's gonna be easier to balance the overall system around a predetermined value rather than have a random number that punishes some way more for the same actions. And, again, if it's not fully random - people will just minmax it and figure it out through testing.

Arya_Yeshe

I'm not super sure about this. I know a ganker who is also a gambling addict in real life, he would love your idea... that would not deter him at all

Just to begin with I think it's ok one shotting 50 level 1s cutting trees, I don't think that's griefing... they can run away and call for help.

Also, all gankers die, camp a crossroad and start killing a few people and you will get killed minutes later, that's just the way it is. I was one shotted many times in many times and that never could stop me from progressing or leveling in any way, it only made me smarter.

George_Black

No. The system worked in L2. Why are you doubting it?

Strevi

Fantmx wrote: »

The main question is whether we want corruption to actually deter the player as a form of punishment.

Fantmx wrote: »

It would be much more of a deterrent against griefing, if that is in fact a goal.

The risk vs reward is still there. The only thing that shifts is the viewpoint of the risk. And I thought people liked risk?

Your statement using "we" and "people" shows that you speak from the perspective of those who actually do not like risk.
I do not see you starting to kill others because you want risk.
Or am I wrong? You like risk? Give me examples of what you see risk and fun in having risk in your activity.

dagirem

Fantmx wrote: »

You are thinking of min maxing known values like we do with everything. That is where the unknown part comes in. And when you have 10 or more different variables that could be random you end up with numerous potential outcomes.

Then i would account for all of 10+ variables every time i would go for pk, and still did it. If i got only 3, i would be happy and could sneak another kill until i got penalties i assumed i would get.

Mastru

Definitely not. I am guessing you are not at all familiar with how the karma/pk system worked in Lineage 2 which is where ashes corruption system draws it's inspiration. I played Lineage 2 for many years and let me tell you ashes system is much more punishing. I don't expect to see many if any PK's beyond the first few month as people realize how brutal the system is.

There will only be a few situations in which it is warranted and beneficial

1a) Full guild parties where you all share the corruption and defend eachother to the death
1b) Only in areas where there are mobs of sufficient quantity and level to grind away the corruption, preferably before the enemy has a chance to return so not right outside a node or near a teleport.

2) In remote areas where there's very valuable gathering materials you want for yourself and there are sufficient mobs for a single person to grind off corruption.

If you expect to be PK'ed willynilly you seriously underestimate the harm you do to yourself by going corrupt without any means of grinding it off. I am not sure if any values are given for how much corruption you lose per death but you do get 4x the death penalty. There are zero circumstances in which killing someone and dying to lose corruption is beneficial, meaning only the dumbest of people will do it, or the ones who REALLY hate you. Therefore it will only happen in very specific instances in particular areas of the map such as dungeons where there are plentiful of mobs. The system heavily punishes people for killing people "for the lulz". If this happens to you then remember they are getting penalized way more than you did, either they leveled a character just do to this and that character will quickly become useless or they are going to die to lose corruption effectively taking at least 4x the penalty you just did.

For people to maintain actual "pk" characters is a massive chore as the questline for clearing pk score in Lineage 2 was a massive XP and timesink, I expect ashes to have a similar system for clearing pk score.

JamesSunderland

I really doubt removing informatiom from things players must make decisions on is a good idea for the players and/or the game itself....

I think "The main question is whether we want corruption to actually deter the player as a form of punishment." while not making it completely unreasonable to the point of maiming owpvp into something meaningless.

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