Gank them until the End of all time.
Gank them until the Ancients themselves are impressed by your Corruption.
Gank them until the People who created them are convinced they are wasting their Money and Ressources by keeping the very Computers running the Bots are "playing" Ashes of Creation with.
Muahahahahahahahah !!
Or maybe just tell/ask your Mayor to declare "War" on the Node they are part of -> main Importance they are not part of your own Node - so that Players/Citizens of your Node can kill them repeatedly and ENDLESSLY without ever even getting corrupted for it.
* maniacal Villain Laugh once more *
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✗ Not looking for a guild atm
Ganking is fine.. corpse camping someone - is not fine and should exponentially increase corruption.
The game is still relatively tame compared to full loot systems, mostly because it has to be in order for gear to have any real meaning unless they added in Asherons Call drop system which is based off of value.
Also, people with pvp rank should be incredibly low when accruing corruption, assassinations are a valid tactic and are always apart of a greater stratagem.
NCPs have to learn that they will be ganked from time to time and let it roll off their shoulders.
Just like PvErs and PvPers need to learn to work in unison, not constantly be against each other, it's not the way to be successful in this sort of environment.
What does everyone else think? How many people need to be corrupted for the game to make sense? Or more importantly, how often? Is it okay if Bounty Hunting is a rare activity?
This won't be something anyone could answer until launch or even several months after to see if the server population is stable enough to keep PvPers. From my experience in Archage, it had a healthy community of PvP with hundreds of active pirates and non pirate gankers along with an enemy faction. It all depends on where you want to farm or location of the node/resources and the risk the ganker wants to take.
If Bounty Hunting is rare it will be because it is boring or the risk to gank is too high. If the reward is high and respawn for the ganker is close by with minimal loss then it will happen all day every day, I suspect this will be high value end game zones and near major shipping lane/crossroad or harbors.
If it is a zone or two away or has minimal value in resources and takes 15-20 minutes to run back then ganking will only happen occasionally (a few times a day). Then you have the wandering gankers, they could stick to 1 zone all day or travel around several, ganking in one spot moving to the next like you would mining nodes and only see them every hour or two.
Infamous PvPers 99% of the server knows and hates will also be a thing keeping it alive.
Pretty much it's going to depend on the zone and it will happen enough as long as the player population stays high enough to support it.
I enjoy how it was set up in Arch Age. Moving caravans or ships full of goods through non pvp zones and turning it in didn't get much money but was completely safe. If you went through a pvp zone or turned in way out in the middle of the ocean you got alot better rewards. That way there was always people for me to come steal there goods or big fish they fished up without getting penalties.
I enjoy how it was set up in Arch Age. Moving caravans or ships full of goods through non pvp zones and turning it in didn't get much money but was completely safe. If you went through a pvp zone or turned in way out in the middle of the ocean you got alot better rewards. That way there was always people for me to come steal there goods or big fish they fished up without getting penalties.
Caravans have next to nothing to do with the frequency of people going corrupt.
Has anyone else noticed the tendency for users with animal icons to swoop in and comment on the OP without acknowledging any of the discussion that has been going on so far?
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akabearMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Following on from earlier comment.
Might not the "appropriate amount of green ganking" be the community's response to self-regulating to maintain appropriate levels of behavior?
And everything else dependant on one's self or guilds' actions/diplomatic approach and positioning in the world!
Might not the "appropriate amount of green ganking" be the community's response to self-regulating to maintain appropriate levels of behavior?
And everything else dependant on one's self or guilds' actions/diplomatic approach and positioning in the world!
That depends on the corruption system. If the penalties are severe enough to make enforcement a deterrent, then the community can decide how much they are going to enforce. If the penalties are lax then there is a lot less than the community can do.
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HinotoriMember, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
All pvp is good pvp tbh.
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akabearMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Might not the "appropriate amount of green ganking" be the community's response to self-regulating to maintain appropriate levels of behavior?
And everything else dependant on one's self or guilds' actions/diplomatic approach and positioning in the world!
That depends on the corruption system. If the penalties are severe enough to make enforcement a deterrent, then the community can decide how much they are going to enforce. If the penalties are lax then there is a lot less than the community can do.
That`s the point, if the killing a green is not too severe, then instead of having game systems regulate server-acceptable ranges of player behavior the player community can.
I, for one, would much rather have reasonable capacity and accept reasonable consequence to kill that annoying bot that is always in my favorite spot than wait several days or weeks for the player initiated report to be actioned on.
I'll be testing corruption a lot for alpha 2. But the tldr answer is enough to supply relevancy to the bounty system, to causing conflicts between players, guilds, nodes etc , and to OWPvP in general. Corruption is meant as a deterrent griefing, not a prevention of ganking.
That being said, corruption also has to be enough of a deterrent to hinder players from excessive ganking/camping.
Off the top of my head I would make every 3 corrupted kills increase your difficulty to perform in the game exponentially. So initially you wouldn't be drowning from the effects, but as you continue, each tier would be significantly more noticeable than the last. Maybe having the 3rd tier being an outright necessity to reduce corruption in order to be functional. So 3, youd be feelin a slight effect, 6 would be a very noticeable stat decrease, and 9+ corruption kills youd be sweating to take on a fight.
All of this doesnt factor in level differences contributing more corruption and what not which would obviously be a factor as well.
A better use of a Bounty Hunter system would be for Nodes to have a method of hiring them to harass someone they are at war with. You would have to figure out how the Bounty Hunters themselves get flagged after they "accept the contract". There could be a contract UI that could even specify specific targets or specific goals. The node doing the hiring would have to be at war with the target already and it should open up the Bounty Hunters to hostile action but it could be acceptable if it's profitable enough.
I'm sort of lumping this in with what you would call privateers, pirates or mercenaries but I think specific contract goals could serve the bounty hunter fantasy.
For me green ganking should be something that is not worth in most cases. But for example if you kill a green that has been farming mats for 2 hours - then you get big reward from killing him. Or to prevent other player or group of players steal some boss or secure farming location without some randomz stealing your mats.
there will be barely anyone corrupted in this game, there's nearly no point of ganking, except if you hate the other guy and you are all set for washing off the corruption and maybe even getting killed by a friend who will return your gear if you drop anything
The carebear's wet dream is hunting "evil" people who killed farmers who play like bots, this will not be a thing in AoC, there will be barely any corrupted at all and the corrupted will be ready to wash the corruption asap and in a controlled manner
PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
there will be barely anyone corrupted in this game, there's nearly no point of ganking, except if you hate the other guy and you are all set for washing off the corruption and maybe even getting killed by a friend who will return your gear if you drop anything
The carebear's wet dream is hunting "evil" people who killed farmers who play like bots, this will not be a thing in AoC, there will be barely any corrupted at all and the corrupted will be ready to wash the corruption asap and in a controlled manner
And meanwhile you will see other posts and youtube videos how AOC will be "Gang Fest"
I think they need to apply a bit of RNG on the ganking penalties so that you’re always guessing on whether to press your luck or not. Knowing you can kill X number of players before feeling the pain seems rather boring to me. I can see some wanting to go on a ganking spree and beating the odds on the number of kills sounds like more fun to me.
I've been pushing for a change in the BH system for years now, but we have literally 0 info about the system, so I'm not even sure if it's still in the game. I really want it to be something more than just "you can hunt a PKer"
As for how many PKs should be happening. Imo <=1% of concurrents should be PKers (i.e. ~100 PKers across the entire map). This would then mean that around 2-3% would be victims. Absolute majority of those victims would come from places with valuable resources/mobs/bosses, so it'd be meaningful PKing.
But, as Crow said, those PKers should only be able to do only a few kills at most, because after those they'll get hit with corruption-based stat dampening and shouldn't be able to kill more. Those few kills would create the 2-3% victims I mentioned, and would also give the PKers a PK count of ~3.
Anything over this PK count should drastically increase the chance of dropping gear and should also give enough corruption to completely disable the PKer's combat ability. In other words, repeat killers wouldn't be able to do more than a single kill within a certain timeframe (balanced during A2).
PK count reduction methods should be expensive as fuck, in terms of both time and resources/money. So anyone who wants to PK more often would have to spend their time reducing their PK count and earning money for that action, which in turn reduces their time PKing others. I'd personally also tie those methods to serving the nodes of the victims.
I personally believe that this kind of system would keep the risk of getting ganked fairly high. Would keep the ability to PK someone when you really need to viable. Would bring node XP to the nodes of the victims. And, depending on how well the Guild/Node war declarations are balanced, would keep the unavoidable owPKing to a relatively low number.
If people see 3% victims as "a murderbox" - I don't really know what to tell them
gotta remember you only get corrupted if the other player doesnt fight back, you cant CC greens so theres no sudden your stunned and insta ganked due to being CC locked.
yea you can get quickly killed if massively lower lvl than the person or if its a group but 75% of people are gonna fight back if its a 1v1 either because they enjoy pvp to an extent or they dont wanna get a full xp debt / lose partial parts of whatever they are farming. since you get more xp debt as green than purple alot will fight back as well.
alot of the major pvp people that run solo or small groups will just not finish you off if you arent fighting back, with HP bars using a segment system its pretty easy to just stop at 25%, no reason to get corrupted unless you know that person has some rare materials or something good.
Alot of the pvp will go in a order of someone attacking and constantly poking someone until they fight back and turn purple and if they dont fight back then they will just stop and move on. yea theres gonna be a % of people that just finish you off for the fun of it though
i imagine for the first couple of weeks Full release theres gonna be more lvling than ganking anyway, itll be the bigger groups fighting each other over spots and then a gank or two to remove people from a hunting ground people are trying control and farm.
Also with everyone being purple in the open seas thats where alot of pvp will happen as well since you get reduced death penalties there as well.
And then we come to this point.
You don't just get corrupted for attacking and PKing people. You only get corrupted if they don't fight back???
What's the point then? Most people will look to fight back to some extent (depending on balance, which I will cover in the last part), meaning you can go and PK around to your heart's content, without gaining corruption. It's a big no-no for me.
An idea would be to introduce corruption that stacks just by attacking other non-combatant players, regardless if they fight back or not.
But then how do we do actual OW group PvP in this game? How do you balance this around group v group PvP, whether it's PvP for dungeons, open-world bosses, or something else? You just kill a few people, and suddenly you can't use your character, have a high chance to drop gear, etc. Which just makes it not worth to do it, even if the rewards might be good.
Caravans become a PvP zone, but will it be the same for Dungeons, world bosses, and other events where there might be competition? If that's the case, then yeah, corruption can work by just letting it stack if you just attack people, regardless if you kill them or not, or if they fight back or not. The fact that contested areas become PvP zones should more than make up for it, and allow for free PvP without worrying about corruption (isn't this something PvPers would actually prefer, idk let me know).
People can still choose to flag up, even if it's not for something valuable, but there are consequences. With PvP zones, there are no consequences, you fight it out, and a better group wins.
This situation is one of the contradictions that Ashes have that I have talked about in the past (over a year ago, to be fair).
The game needs to have a low amount of open PvP kills in relation to what many PvP players want just in order for the game to function, but the game also needs enough open world PvP kills without retaliation in order for the Bounty Hunter progression to be valid.
I straight up do not see the scope available for a guild to be based around being bounty hunters. I can be a thing a guild also does, but trying to be a specific bounty hunter guild is a surefire way to end up spending a whole lot of time trying to find a fight.
With the death penalty Ashes is set to have, if it has the same rate of open world PvP as even Archeage (was fairly low), the game will soon be abandond by anyone wanting either progression or economic activity to be the main aspect of their game, leaving only those wanting PvP as the main aspect (Ashes will not attract people wanting anything else as their main activity).
On top of that, because of the design of the game, they need to make sure there is still enough open world PvP to keep those wanting it happy and in the game. So, they need enough PvP to keep PvP'ers happy, enough of that PvP to be against greens to keep bounty hunters happy, but not so much PvP as to drive those wanting economic gameplay to any other games.
I'm not at all saying this is impossible - but I am saying two things.
First, Intrepid have a very tough balancing act to make this work - and failing at it will probably make the game fail.
Second, I doubt even they currently know where the balance point for this is - so we have no real hope of knowing either.
And finally, we come to this.
I totally agree with Noaani here, that this appears to be almost impossible (or rather, very-very tricky to make and actually balance).
From my understanding, it appears to me that PKing will in most cases not result in any punishment, as in most cases you will only turn combatant (as people WILL fight back). Now that's an assumption on my part, which would depend on one main thing, but would lead to the same outcome:
How punishing is it to die as a non-combatant (what you drop, how much of it, etc.)?
If the risk of dropping stuff is high, and if there is a higher chance to lose valuable stuff, then players will fight back, just to prevent that loss of items. This in turn means that there won't be as many people going corrupt, because most fights will end up being combatant (attacker) vs combatant (that fights back).
Looking at it from PKers point of view, if they have a chance to obtain items from another person, they will look to PK them. If the amount of items, or just the type of items they can gain is low/not worth it, then people will probably be less incentivized to PK or finish off non-combatants, and the same non-combatants will be less incentivized to fight back, as they don't mind losing some not-that-valuable items if the other player turns corrupted.
In either case, the corruption system is...well...useless?
The first 2 scenarios are assuming what you lose is what other person gets.
Scenario 1: The rewards (loot drops) you get from killing non-combatants are high/valuable.
There will be less corruption, as people will look to fight back, in order not to lose stuff.
Let's say that 1 in 8 people you meet will be looking to PK you. In most cases, you will look to fight back, just to prevent loss of items, meaning very low number of PKers will actually go corrupted.
So let's make some assumptions: 12 out of 100 players you run into are looking to PK you. From those 12 PKers, maybe 1-2 will turn corrupted. So for every 1000 players, you have 10-20 corrupted players, probably generous, and even smaller number than that.
This maybe encourages PvP or rather it encourages fighting back, but you won't see that many corrupted players. In my opinion, this is not a great outcome, as the corruption system is clearly being underutilized, since players will mostly look to fight back to avoid the penalty of dying. You will rarely see players go corrupted, and other systems like Bounty Hunting, etc, are just there, but not being utilized that often.
Scenario 2: The rewards you get from killing non-combatants is low.
The incentive to fight back will be lower, and so will be the incentive to finish off non-combatants. Overall, this should keep the number of corrupted players, pretty much the same - low.
So in this case, we also have a small number of players actually going corrupt, but also potentially less incentive to attack other people in general (unless the reward isn't just coming from the loot dropped by players, but from other things like controlling an area and what not - in which case, this doesn't seem too bad compared to other options, but the issue remains - very low number of corrupted players).
Now we move onto hypothetical scenarios, where what you lose and what PKers gets is not the same.
Scenario 4: The reward you get from finishing off a non-combatant is high, but the actual amount/value of stuff the non-combatant loses upon death is low.
Example: I PK a non-combatant, I get 10 iron, the non-combatant only loses 1 iron.
People wouldn't mind dying without fighting back as much, while PKers will be more incentivized to actually kill those players for loot.
This is a better solution overall, but it can easily be tuned in a way that makes it worse. If the reward is too high, then PKing will just be way more common than it should be, and it will be a gank fest, which is again, BAD.
Players can chose to fight back if they wish to, if they don't, then they don't lose too much, other than the fact that they lose time, being messed with if they don't want to be.
Scenario 5: The reward you get from finishing off a non-combatant is low, but the actual amount/value of lost stuff is high for the non-combatant.
This scenario again just encourages people to fight back, and we see even less players going corrupted. Simple.
If anything, this encourages griefing. The reward for PKers doesn't come from obtaining loot, but from making other people lose stuff.
This is the worst option, and I feel like these people are the worst. I don't want to deal with this.
So what's the actual solution? Increasing/decreasing rewards has different outcomes, all of which are not great for different reasons.
Well, back to my reply to the previous quote above:
Introduce corruption that stacks just by attacking other non-combatant players, regardless if they fight back or not. It should scale with how much damage you do to them, if you just hit them with one basic ability, you shouldn't get too much corruption. If you end up killing them, you gain more.
To make PvP viable, at the same time you also make dungeons, areas around world bosses, and other POIs into Static PvP zones (just like with the caravans). There, you can freely PvP against other groups, and you don't have to worry about accumulating corruption.
Maybe I'm missing some details here, or I misunderstood how it will actually work.
Please do reply back to correct me if I'm wrong, if there's a certain situation/outcome I missed, to offer a different perspective, or just to add something I missed, rather than attacking me because I have a different opinion from yours.
Please do reply back to correct me if I'm wrong, if there's a certain situation/outcome I missed, to offer a different perspective, or just to add something I missed, rather than attacking me because I have a different opinion from yours.
The only thing you missed is that a ton of people are simply not pvpers. Quite a few are pvp-averse. And when corruption is properly punishing, it's way more beneficial to a pvp-averse person to give their attacker corruption than flag up just to lose slightly less stuff.
Yes, obviously some people will fight back and that's great, because that's the entire point of purpleness decreasing death penalties. That would simply mean that the system is working as intended.
But A TON of people will not fight back. Even more will not fight back if it's well-known that corruption kicks your ass quite hard (as it does, from what's been said by Steven), because the victim would know that only a fraction of a fraction of attackers would be willing to go all the way.
And this is why I said that I'd expect/prefer ~1% of the concurrent players would go corrupt (if even that tbh). These would be the people who are either sure in their overwhelming power to avoid punishment (i.e. grind some mobs w/o dying to BHs and other players) or those who simply do not care about the penalty at all (I call these "career PKers").
And imo the corruption should be balanced in a way where your first kill (that is, you had a 0 PK count previously) gives you a fairly low amount of corruption, where the only ones who might be fast enough to kill you are other people in the vicinity, if the victim shouts about you being a PKer in chat.
Anything at 2-4 PK count should not only give enough time for the victim to come back to the same place and try to take revenge, but also give enough time for almost any BH on the continent to get to your place (~50min on mount if you are at the southern most point and the BH is at the northernmost point).
Anything beyond that should grow exponentially and VERY quickly to a point where you'll have to die a ton of times to even just remove the corruption. It should also pretty much disable your character's PKing ability after a single new kill and should drastically increase the chances of your dropping gear.
All the while PK counter decreasement methods are costly as fuck, the more PKs you have under your belt (but even the first one should still take quite a bit of money/resources and time to remove).
And imo the PK count should be account-wide, to keep any career PKer from multiplying their PKing ability by the number of chars we can have on one acc.
And, as I see it, this kind of balancing would lead to the numbers I gave in my initial comment. People will PK here and there for a good reason, the random greens would be less likely to fight back which would keep the PKers coming, while BHs can hunt anyone who's not on their very first kill.
Greens not fighting back also automatically boosts the amount of repeat PKers, because some people will be "forced" to PK another person over and over, if they can't remove them from a location in any other way.
The entire corruption system would have to be completely revamped if you gained corruption on hit rather than on kill, because the current super high penalties are a direct balancing tool for the amount of PKs that would happen in the game. This balancing tool influences a ton of other systems, like gear decay rates, XPing rates, player loot on death, etc.
there will be barely anyone corrupted in this game, there's nearly no point of ganking, except if you hate the other guy and you are all set for washing off the corruption and maybe even getting killed by a friend who will return your gear if you drop anything
The carebear's wet dream is hunting "evil" people who killed farmers who play like bots, this will not be a thing in AoC, there will be barely any corrupted at all and the corrupted will be ready to wash the corruption asap and in a controlled manner
And meanwhile you will see other posts and youtube videos how AOC will be "Gang Fest"
those are clueless people's opinion.
there will be corruption for sure, but that will be minimal, and it will be with a specific purpose in certain situations like defending a farming spot or a boss, other than going red just because.
Please do reply back to correct me if I'm wrong, if there's a certain situation/outcome I missed, to offer a different perspective, or just to add something I missed, rather than attacking me because I have a different opinion from yours.
The only thing you missed is that a ton of people are simply not pvpers. Quite a few are pvp-averse. And when corruption is properly punishing, it's way more beneficial to a pvp-averse person to give their attacker corruption than flag up just to lose slightly less stuff.
Yes, obviously some people will fight back and that's great, because that's the entire point of purpleness decreasing death penalties. That would simply mean that the system is working as intended.
But A TON of people will not fight back. Even more will not fight back if it's well-known that corruption kicks your ass quite hard (as it does, from what's been said by Steven), because the victim would know that only a fraction of a fraction of attackers would be willing to go all the way.
And this is why I said that I'd expect/prefer ~1% of the concurrent players would go corrupt (if even that tbh). These would be the people who are either sure in their overwhelming power to avoid punishment (i.e. grind some mobs w/o dying to BHs and other players) or those who simply do not care about the penalty at all (I call these "career PKers").
And imo the corruption should be balanced in a way where your first kill (that is, you had a 0 PK count previously) gives you a fairly low amount of corruption, where the only ones who might be fast enough to kill you are other people in the vicinity, if the victim shouts about you being a PKer in chat.
Anything at 2-4 PK count should not only give enough time for the victim to come back to the same place and try to take revenge, but also give enough time for almost any BH on the continent to get to your place (~50min on mount if you are at the southern most point and the BH is at the northernmost point).
Anything beyond that should grow exponentially and VERY quickly to a point where you'll have to die a ton of times to even just remove the corruption. It should also pretty much disable your character's PKing ability after a single new kill and should drastically increase the chances of your dropping gear.
All the while PK counter decreasement methods are costly as fuck, the more PKs you have under your belt (but even the first one should still take quite a bit of money/resources and time to remove).
And imo the PK count should be account-wide, to keep any career PKer from multiplying their PKing ability by the number of chars we can have on one acc.
And, as I see it, this kind of balancing would lead to the numbers I gave in my initial comment. People will PK here and there for a good reason, the random greens would be less likely to fight back which would keep the PKers coming, while BHs can hunt anyone who's not on their very first kill.
Greens not fighting back also automatically boosts the amount of repeat PKers, because some people will be "forced" to PK another person over and over, if they can't remove them from a location in any other way.
The entire corruption system would have to be completely revamped if you gained corruption on hit rather than on kill, because the current super high penalties are a direct balancing tool for the amount of PKs that would happen in the game. This balancing tool influences a ton of other systems, like gear decay rates, XPing rates, player loot on death, etc.
It completely makes sense, and it remains to be seen how it actually plays out when the game launches.
Again, in my opinion the need to fight back will be also impacted by stuff I mentioned, and if there's a higher incentive to fight back, people will do it - OR quit the game if they're really PvP averse.
But what about PKing, when it's groups trying to take control of a POI, world boss, dungeon? You'd think that would always be combatant vs combatant, but you could also have PvE players just farming, and then if a group comes in to take over the spot, they just die without fighting back, while the other group accumulates corruption. They could just go back to the spot, and try to continue farming, and if the other group tries to take them out again, they can again just die without fighting back.
At some point that other group will accumulate too much corruption.
I'm not sure how exactly this is going to work, but like I said, it would be a good idea to have certain areas like these as designated PvP zones.
there is no limit, the open world should never feel safe
There will be alliances of guilds who make it thier duty to safeguard regions and implement a degree of law and order.
Politics/economics could revolve around mutual relations between pvp guilds and non-pvp focused guilds/nodes.
Examples: nodes/guilds in an area peacefully running caravans, doing gathering, fishing, crafting etc can have mutual agreements with pvp oriented guilds to protect against ganking and aggression (or even war).
"Divinity is not just Love, Devotion or Purpose. Divinity is the hammer which we use to crush Corruption."
But what about PKing, when it's groups trying to take control of a POI, world boss, dungeon? You'd think that would always be combatant vs combatant, but you could also have PvE players just farming, and then if a group comes in to take over the spot, they just die without fighting back, while the other group accumulates corruption. They could just go back to the spot, and try to continue farming, and if the other group tries to take them out again, they can again just die without fighting back.
At some point that other group will accumulate too much corruption.
I fully expect those things to only be farmable by guilds. And I really hope (and will be giving Intrepid feedback) that guild wars make this interaction as streamlined and non-corruption as possible.
And even outside of GWs, it should only take one PK to make a group completely fail a boss or even a dungeon run, cause I sure as hell hope that pve is hard enough that removing a group's healer should wipe them. And ideally, it should be enough to simply put pressure on that healer to make their coordination crumble, cause he'll overextend on mana usage or cds.
And even outside of GWs, it should only take one PK to make a group completely fail a boss or even a dungeon run, cause I sure as hell hope that pve is hard enough that removing a group's healer should wipe them. And ideally, it should be enough to simply put pressure on that healer to make their coordination crumble, cause he'll overextend on mana usage or cds.
Here is why I think the BH system is effective enough as is: one red flag and every PvP group in the POI/dungeon is beelining to you. It really will be a risk/reward assessment in popular zones.
Everyone is worried about too much / not enough ganking, but the systems really do serve to make a natural balance. What will probably be tweaked are the death/combat penalties, but I don't expect that to be finalized until beta.
I have read that the corruption system is designed to protect Greens(non-combatants). The bounty hunter system and to an extent the military node is based around people consistently getting corrupted. How many corruption/bounty hunter events need to happen in order for the system to be worth it?
If successful ganks are rare, then the bounty hunter system falls apart. I do a big quest chain to unlock the system and level a military node for the benefits, but have to compete for the rare red with everyone else in the node?
If I was in a bounty hunter guild but people only became corrupted near my node 2-3 times per day, I don't think that would be enough content for the guild to partake in. Maybe a bounty hunter guild more as an RP or icing on the top thing while focusing on other PvP content like Caravans?
If successful ganks are common, Greens will be rare and AoC will get the reputation of a murderfest. However, there will obviously be more content with the Bounty Hunter system. I normally farm to relax but if the success rate of bringing my stuff back drops below a certain percentage, I don't know if I'll do it much.
My theory, I think the corruption system is not designed to protect greens but to increase the Risk (in the Risk vs. Reward) of hunting greens. Corruption will be common, farming will be a high risk activity or in groups for rare materials, and the majority of lower rarity materials will be farmed from freeholds.
What does everyone else think? How many people need to be corrupted for the game to make sense? Or more importantly, how often? Is it okay if Bounty Hunting is a rare activity?
It's a puzzle that no one has been able to answer for me haha. I think there needs to be corrupt players in the game to make this work, and to even make open world gathering have some risk to it. But corruption also has to be punishing enough to where the same people aren't constantly being ganked to the point of quitting the game.
I think corruption needs to be balanced to where a high tier gatherer runs the risk of being killed for their loot. Then I'd let us test that In Alpha 2, see if community solutions can protect the high tier gatherers, and look at emergent gameplay from that.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
You don't just get corrupted for attacking and PKing people. You only get corrupted if they don't fight back???
What's the point then? Most people will look to fight back to some extent (depending on balance, which I will cover in the last part), meaning you can go and PK around to your heart's content, without gaining corruption. It's a big no-no for me.
Uh. What? How can you "PK (Combatants) to your hearts content?"
It's an odd assumption that the initiator of PvP will win most of the time against Greens who flag Purple.
There will be less corruption, as people will look to fight back, in order not to lose stuff.
Let's say that 1 in 8 people you meet will be looking to PK you. In most cases, you will look to fight back, just to prevent loss of items, meaning very low number of PKers will actually go corrupted.
Depends on how many Resources the target has and what those Resources are. Also depends on whether the target prefers to punish their PKers with Corruption.
So let's make some assumptions: 12 out of 100 players you run into are looking to PK you. From those 12 PKers, maybe 1-2 will turn corrupted. So for every 1000 players, you have 10-20 corrupted players, probably generous, and even smaller number than that.
Really can't make any valid assumptions at this point.
We need to be deep enough into A2 to have Classes and Augments to have a decent idea of how players are likely to react. And, even then, it will really be determined by playstyle demogrpahics for each Realm.
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akabearMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Writing this one again >
How about granting regional (node) mayors the ability to decide PK penalty severity through management sliders which could introduce significant points of differentiation between regions.
This customization would allow mayors to tailor penalties based on local player / community preferences and playstyles, fostering a deeper sense of player engagement and connection to regional governance. By adapting the severity of penalties, regions can develop unique cultures and play environments, enhancing the role-playing aspect of the game and providing a more immersive experience.
Additionally, this dynamic approach would create varied gameplay across different regions, making exploration and regional travel more intriguing for players.
How about granting regional (node) mayors the ability to decide PK penalty severity through management sliders which could introduce significant points of differentiation between regions.
This customization would allow mayors to tailor penalties based on local player / community preferences and playstyles, fostering a deeper sense of player engagement and connection to regional governance. By adapting the severity of penalties, regions can develop unique cultures and play environments, enhancing the role-playing aspect of the game and providing a more immersive experience.
Additionally, this dynamic approach would create varied gameplay across different regions, making exploration and regional travel more intriguing for players.
I would like something similar but only when I forget that we have caravans.
Corruption is supposed to let players explore and gather somewhat less stressed than those who run caravans.
We seen the slow caravans meant for groups but they mentioned also solo caravans which will be faster than a player can walk. Those will be ambushed if they are not careful.
I see no reason to try to gank explorers and farmers except when
- they are acting as spies, observing what other players do
- they gather with good reason from places which some bigger guilds consider their own territory
I mean the game will be boring if big guilds will vote to lock out soloers and small guilds from gathering in a specific area.
Nodes are in competition against one another for greater PvE play, so anything they do to foster ganking is bad. If you turn down pvp punishment enough that it actually affects gameplay that much different than a rival node, it'll just decay back to encampment.
The idea is okay, it just doesn't mesh well with existing systems.
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... ... ... ... ... Bots.
Gank - them - AAALL. !! (lol)
Gank them until the End of all time.
Gank them until the Ancients themselves are impressed by your Corruption.
Gank them until the People who created them are convinced they are wasting their Money and Ressources by keeping the very Computers running the Bots are "playing" Ashes of Creation with.
Or maybe just tell/ask your Mayor to declare "War" on the Node they are part of -> main Importance they are not part of your own Node - so that Players/Citizens of your Node can kill them repeatedly and ENDLESSLY without ever even getting corrupted for it.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✗ Not looking for a guild atm
The game is still relatively tame compared to full loot systems, mostly because it has to be in order for gear to have any real meaning unless they added in Asherons Call drop system which is based off of value.
Also, people with pvp rank should be incredibly low when accruing corruption, assassinations are a valid tactic and are always apart of a greater stratagem.
NCPs have to learn that they will be ganked from time to time and let it roll off their shoulders.
Just like PvErs and PvPers need to learn to work in unison, not constantly be against each other, it's not the way to be successful in this sort of environment.
This won't be something anyone could answer until launch or even several months after to see if the server population is stable enough to keep PvPers. From my experience in Archage, it had a healthy community of PvP with hundreds of active pirates and non pirate gankers along with an enemy faction. It all depends on where you want to farm or location of the node/resources and the risk the ganker wants to take.
If Bounty Hunting is rare it will be because it is boring or the risk to gank is too high. If the reward is high and respawn for the ganker is close by with minimal loss then it will happen all day every day, I suspect this will be high value end game zones and near major shipping lane/crossroad or harbors.
If it is a zone or two away or has minimal value in resources and takes 15-20 minutes to run back then ganking will only happen occasionally (a few times a day). Then you have the wandering gankers, they could stick to 1 zone all day or travel around several, ganking in one spot moving to the next like you would mining nodes and only see them every hour or two.
Infamous PvPers 99% of the server knows and hates will also be a thing keeping it alive.
Pretty much it's going to depend on the zone and it will happen enough as long as the player population stays high enough to support it.
Caravans have next to nothing to do with the frequency of people going corrupt.
Might not the "appropriate amount of green ganking" be the community's response to self-regulating to maintain appropriate levels of behavior?
And everything else dependant on one's self or guilds' actions/diplomatic approach and positioning in the world!
That depends on the corruption system. If the penalties are severe enough to make enforcement a deterrent, then the community can decide how much they are going to enforce. If the penalties are lax then there is a lot less than the community can do.
That`s the point, if the killing a green is not too severe, then instead of having game systems regulate server-acceptable ranges of player behavior the player community can.
I, for one, would much rather have reasonable capacity and accept reasonable consequence to kill that annoying bot that is always in my favorite spot than wait several days or weeks for the player initiated report to be actioned on.
That being said, corruption also has to be enough of a deterrent to hinder players from excessive ganking/camping.
Off the top of my head I would make every 3 corrupted kills increase your difficulty to perform in the game exponentially. So initially you wouldn't be drowning from the effects, but as you continue, each tier would be significantly more noticeable than the last. Maybe having the 3rd tier being an outright necessity to reduce corruption in order to be functional. So 3, youd be feelin a slight effect, 6 would be a very noticeable stat decrease, and 9+ corruption kills youd be sweating to take on a fight.
All of this doesnt factor in level differences contributing more corruption and what not which would obviously be a factor as well.
THAT's the Spirit !!! >;-)
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✗ Not looking for a guild atm
I'm sort of lumping this in with what you would call privateers, pirates or mercenaries but I think specific contract goals could serve the bounty hunter fantasy.
The carebear's wet dream is hunting "evil" people who killed farmers who play like bots, this will not be a thing in AoC, there will be barely any corrupted at all and the corrupted will be ready to wash the corruption asap and in a controlled manner
And meanwhile you will see other posts and youtube videos how AOC will be "Gang Fest"
Agreed.
The issue though is coming from the quote below:
And then we come to this point.
You don't just get corrupted for attacking and PKing people. You only get corrupted if they don't fight back???
What's the point then? Most people will look to fight back to some extent (depending on balance, which I will cover in the last part), meaning you can go and PK around to your heart's content, without gaining corruption. It's a big no-no for me.
An idea would be to introduce corruption that stacks just by attacking other non-combatant players, regardless if they fight back or not.
But then how do we do actual OW group PvP in this game? How do you balance this around group v group PvP, whether it's PvP for dungeons, open-world bosses, or something else? You just kill a few people, and suddenly you can't use your character, have a high chance to drop gear, etc. Which just makes it not worth to do it, even if the rewards might be good.
Caravans become a PvP zone, but will it be the same for Dungeons, world bosses, and other events where there might be competition? If that's the case, then yeah, corruption can work by just letting it stack if you just attack people, regardless if you kill them or not, or if they fight back or not. The fact that contested areas become PvP zones should more than make up for it, and allow for free PvP without worrying about corruption (isn't this something PvPers would actually prefer, idk let me know).
People can still choose to flag up, even if it's not for something valuable, but there are consequences. With PvP zones, there are no consequences, you fight it out, and a better group wins.
And finally, we come to this.
I totally agree with Noaani here, that this appears to be almost impossible (or rather, very-very tricky to make and actually balance).
From my understanding, it appears to me that PKing will in most cases not result in any punishment, as in most cases you will only turn combatant (as people WILL fight back).
Now that's an assumption on my part, which would depend on one main thing, but would lead to the same outcome:
How punishing is it to die as a non-combatant (what you drop, how much of it, etc.)?
If the risk of dropping stuff is high, and if there is a higher chance to lose valuable stuff, then players will fight back, just to prevent that loss of items. This in turn means that there won't be as many people going corrupt, because most fights will end up being combatant (attacker) vs combatant (that fights back).
Looking at it from PKers point of view, if they have a chance to obtain items from another person, they will look to PK them. If the amount of items, or just the type of items they can gain is low/not worth it, then people will probably be less incentivized to PK or finish off non-combatants, and the same non-combatants will be less incentivized to fight back, as they don't mind losing some not-that-valuable items if the other player turns corrupted.
In either case, the corruption system is...well...useless?
The first 2 scenarios are assuming what you lose is what other person gets.
Scenario 1: The rewards (loot drops) you get from killing non-combatants are high/valuable.
There will be less corruption, as people will look to fight back, in order not to lose stuff.
Let's say that 1 in 8 people you meet will be looking to PK you. In most cases, you will look to fight back, just to prevent loss of items, meaning very low number of PKers will actually go corrupted.
So let's make some assumptions: 12 out of 100 players you run into are looking to PK you. From those 12 PKers, maybe 1-2 will turn corrupted. So for every 1000 players, you have 10-20 corrupted players, probably generous, and even smaller number than that.
This maybe encourages PvP or rather it encourages fighting back, but you won't see that many corrupted players. In my opinion, this is not a great outcome, as the corruption system is clearly being underutilized, since players will mostly look to fight back to avoid the penalty of dying. You will rarely see players go corrupted, and other systems like Bounty Hunting, etc, are just there, but not being utilized that often.
Scenario 2: The rewards you get from killing non-combatants is low.
The incentive to fight back will be lower, and so will be the incentive to finish off non-combatants. Overall, this should keep the number of corrupted players, pretty much the same - low.
So in this case, we also have a small number of players actually going corrupt, but also potentially less incentive to attack other people in general (unless the reward isn't just coming from the loot dropped by players, but from other things like controlling an area and what not - in which case, this doesn't seem too bad compared to other options, but the issue remains - very low number of corrupted players).
Now we move onto hypothetical scenarios, where what you lose and what PKers gets is not the same.
Scenario 4: The reward you get from finishing off a non-combatant is high, but the actual amount/value of stuff the non-combatant loses upon death is low.
Example: I PK a non-combatant, I get 10 iron, the non-combatant only loses 1 iron.
People wouldn't mind dying without fighting back as much, while PKers will be more incentivized to actually kill those players for loot.
This is a better solution overall, but it can easily be tuned in a way that makes it worse. If the reward is too high, then PKing will just be way more common than it should be, and it will be a gank fest, which is again, BAD.
Players can chose to fight back if they wish to, if they don't, then they don't lose too much, other than the fact that they lose time, being messed with if they don't want to be.
Scenario 5: The reward you get from finishing off a non-combatant is low, but the actual amount/value of lost stuff is high for the non-combatant.
This scenario again just encourages people to fight back, and we see even less players going corrupted. Simple.
If anything, this encourages griefing. The reward for PKers doesn't come from obtaining loot, but from making other people lose stuff.
This is the worst option, and I feel like these people are the worst. I don't want to deal with this.
So what's the actual solution? Increasing/decreasing rewards has different outcomes, all of which are not great for different reasons.
Well, back to my reply to the previous quote above:
Introduce corruption that stacks just by attacking other non-combatant players, regardless if they fight back or not. It should scale with how much damage you do to them, if you just hit them with one basic ability, you shouldn't get too much corruption. If you end up killing them, you gain more.
To make PvP viable, at the same time you also make dungeons, areas around world bosses, and other POIs into Static PvP zones (just like with the caravans). There, you can freely PvP against other groups, and you don't have to worry about accumulating corruption.
Maybe I'm missing some details here, or I misunderstood how it will actually work.
Please do reply back to correct me if I'm wrong, if there's a certain situation/outcome I missed, to offer a different perspective, or just to add something I missed, rather than attacking me because I have a different opinion from yours.
Yes, obviously some people will fight back and that's great, because that's the entire point of purpleness decreasing death penalties. That would simply mean that the system is working as intended.
But A TON of people will not fight back. Even more will not fight back if it's well-known that corruption kicks your ass quite hard (as it does, from what's been said by Steven), because the victim would know that only a fraction of a fraction of attackers would be willing to go all the way.
And this is why I said that I'd expect/prefer ~1% of the concurrent players would go corrupt (if even that tbh). These would be the people who are either sure in their overwhelming power to avoid punishment (i.e. grind some mobs w/o dying to BHs and other players) or those who simply do not care about the penalty at all (I call these "career PKers").
And imo the corruption should be balanced in a way where your first kill (that is, you had a 0 PK count previously) gives you a fairly low amount of corruption, where the only ones who might be fast enough to kill you are other people in the vicinity, if the victim shouts about you being a PKer in chat.
Anything at 2-4 PK count should not only give enough time for the victim to come back to the same place and try to take revenge, but also give enough time for almost any BH on the continent to get to your place (~50min on mount if you are at the southern most point and the BH is at the northernmost point).
Anything beyond that should grow exponentially and VERY quickly to a point where you'll have to die a ton of times to even just remove the corruption. It should also pretty much disable your character's PKing ability after a single new kill and should drastically increase the chances of your dropping gear.
All the while PK counter decreasement methods are costly as fuck, the more PKs you have under your belt (but even the first one should still take quite a bit of money/resources and time to remove).
And imo the PK count should be account-wide, to keep any career PKer from multiplying their PKing ability by the number of chars we can have on one acc.
And, as I see it, this kind of balancing would lead to the numbers I gave in my initial comment. People will PK here and there for a good reason, the random greens would be less likely to fight back which would keep the PKers coming, while BHs can hunt anyone who's not on their very first kill.
Greens not fighting back also automatically boosts the amount of repeat PKers, because some people will be "forced" to PK another person over and over, if they can't remove them from a location in any other way.
The entire corruption system would have to be completely revamped if you gained corruption on hit rather than on kill, because the current super high penalties are a direct balancing tool for the amount of PKs that would happen in the game. This balancing tool influences a ton of other systems, like gear decay rates, XPing rates, player loot on death, etc.
those are clueless people's opinion.
there will be corruption for sure, but that will be minimal, and it will be with a specific purpose in certain situations like defending a farming spot or a boss, other than going red just because.
It completely makes sense, and it remains to be seen how it actually plays out when the game launches.
Again, in my opinion the need to fight back will be also impacted by stuff I mentioned, and if there's a higher incentive to fight back, people will do it - OR quit the game if they're really PvP averse.
But what about PKing, when it's groups trying to take control of a POI, world boss, dungeon? You'd think that would always be combatant vs combatant, but you could also have PvE players just farming, and then if a group comes in to take over the spot, they just die without fighting back, while the other group accumulates corruption. They could just go back to the spot, and try to continue farming, and if the other group tries to take them out again, they can again just die without fighting back.
At some point that other group will accumulate too much corruption.
I'm not sure how exactly this is going to work, but like I said, it would be a good idea to have certain areas like these as designated PvP zones.
There will be alliances of guilds who make it thier duty to safeguard regions and implement a degree of law and order.
Politics/economics could revolve around mutual relations between pvp guilds and non-pvp focused guilds/nodes.
Examples: nodes/guilds in an area peacefully running caravans, doing gathering, fishing, crafting etc can have mutual agreements with pvp oriented guilds to protect against ganking and aggression (or even war).
And even outside of GWs, it should only take one PK to make a group completely fail a boss or even a dungeon run, cause I sure as hell hope that pve is hard enough that removing a group's healer should wipe them. And ideally, it should be enough to simply put pressure on that healer to make their coordination crumble, cause he'll overextend on mana usage or cds.
Everyone is worried about too much / not enough ganking, but the systems really do serve to make a natural balance. What will probably be tweaked are the death/combat penalties, but I don't expect that to be finalized until beta.
It's a puzzle that no one has been able to answer for me haha. I think there needs to be corrupt players in the game to make this work, and to even make open world gathering have some risk to it. But corruption also has to be punishing enough to where the same people aren't constantly being ganked to the point of quitting the game.
I think corruption needs to be balanced to where a high tier gatherer runs the risk of being killed for their loot. Then I'd let us test that In Alpha 2, see if community solutions can protect the high tier gatherers, and look at emergent gameplay from that.
It's an odd assumption that the initiator of PvP will win most of the time against Greens who flag Purple.
Depends on how many Resources the target has and what those Resources are. Also depends on whether the target prefers to punish their PKers with Corruption.
Really can't make any valid assumptions at this point.
We need to be deep enough into A2 to have Classes and Augments to have a decent idea of how players are likely to react. And, even then, it will really be determined by playstyle demogrpahics for each Realm.
How about granting regional (node) mayors the ability to decide PK penalty severity through management sliders which could introduce significant points of differentiation between regions.
This customization would allow mayors to tailor penalties based on local player / community preferences and playstyles, fostering a deeper sense of player engagement and connection to regional governance. By adapting the severity of penalties, regions can develop unique cultures and play environments, enhancing the role-playing aspect of the game and providing a more immersive experience.
Additionally, this dynamic approach would create varied gameplay across different regions, making exploration and regional travel more intriguing for players.
I would like something similar but only when I forget that we have caravans.
Corruption is supposed to let players explore and gather somewhat less stressed than those who run caravans.
We seen the slow caravans meant for groups but they mentioned also solo caravans which will be faster than a player can walk. Those will be ambushed if they are not careful.
I see no reason to try to gank explorers and farmers except when
- they are acting as spies, observing what other players do
- they gather with good reason from places which some bigger guilds consider their own territory
I mean the game will be boring if big guilds will vote to lock out soloers and small guilds from gathering in a specific area.
The idea is okay, it just doesn't mesh well with existing systems.