corruption system needs a rework

TLDR: rework the system so it takes a few kills on innocent players to get corrupted rather then instant corrupted

im all for the idea of consequences for negative actions but the current system in place is way to harsh. The system gives corrupt players a “kill on sight” status, but it doesn’t always take into account the context of the player’s actions. leading to a situation where the corrupt players are overly punished, even for minor infractions. Such as people stealing resources or free farming Mats where you are? if you fight for those resources odds are you are the one that's punished. Someone stealing your grinding spot, trash talking and trolling you, so you flag kill them now you are losing gear in your inventory. even if you kill them and get Highly valuable loot, you cant do anything with it, Town will kill you on sight.

for pvpers it feels like High risk, for no reward because even if you get something good out of it, you now deal reduced damage, have a Kill on sight debuff, cant go to town and turn in your valuable loot.

meanwhile for the person that did die, Its no risk high reward because not only they can get their stuff back. they get your gear as well which can cost more then any resource being farmed. Not to mention the current system could probably be abused with Karma bombing which would involve making low lvl toons running up to people in a big pvp fight and having them accidently hit and one shot you to force them corrupted.

i suggest making a system where, after 2 kills of a innocent the third one for the next 2 hours will make you corrupted. or some sort of timed system. that way this prevents people from camping or killing the same person over and over again. But also will probably encourage people to actually flag and fight back. because if they know or think they know you wont get penalized right away. they would be more inclined to defend their stuff, grinding spot or w.e it may be.

even in archeage you didn't get wanted right away on first kill, you had to get a few before you got there

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Hutchy1989

Its overtuned and placeholder for alpha 2.

That said I think corruption should be a bounty hunter only thing. As in if you kill someone, you only show up corrupted to players who have the bounty hunter profession (idk how these secondary jobs work but lets assume you can only have one)

The person you killed already didn't fight back. They don't deserve to be able to kill you at an advantage for them and also get rewarded more if they win and the corrupted punished even more if they win.

Ludullu

Nah, this particular system gotta be black and white. If you murdered someone - you're a PKer anad you deserve what's coming to you.

Hutchy1989 wrote: »

That said I think corruption should be a bounty hunter only thing. As in if you kill someone, you only show up corrupted to players who have the bounty hunter profession (idk how these secondary jobs work but lets assume you can only have one)

That is the plan for the design. I think the current implementation is simply a way to punish PKers easier/more.

Caxtren

I think the guard rails are higher atm because they need to test other things without having to manage/tweak the system as much. I doubt the current corruption is what we see at launch. It's too punishing. There's very little reward for the risk. Not at all what they had originally discussed. So just give it some time, me thinks. If it's not addressed by devs in chats/vids lets say a month or two into p3, then we have cause for concern and need to riot. Because the way it is now might drive off more people than they think they are helping.

Volgaris

I think it's supposed to be punishing. The idea is keep the pking down in the 'safe' areas. There are lawless zones for the true open pvp. I'd run around flagged pvp 24/7 if I didn't take exp debt, my personal opinion on that. But killing someone in the 'safe' zone should corrupt you. And if you out level them you should have an increased corruption level scaled to your level advantage. I would also agree to corruption for looting ashes.

EmpKaiser

Totally agree that this shouldn't be as punishing, especially around equal levels. I'd love if people couldn't just PVE and stop me from taking tags, then I can't pvp them because they refuse to flag.

I'd also love if corruption was a timer and it displayed me on the entire map and my character wouldn't disappear when I logged out. So when you go corrupt, potentially after a few kills, you then are hunted and have to survive for a while. I also think the debuff should be lessened. Corruption should make you a target, not completely helpless.

Volgaris

I'll agree that corruption shouldn't make you helpless. But the timer to drop corruption should be in the hours not minutes. Killing a non-flagged player one moment then the next going about your non corrupted life the next shouldn't be a thing. The length of corruption should be more of a deterrent than the nerfing effects. I'd also be okay with a 'revenge' kill system that didn't give corruption. If you're killed not flagged you should have a limited time to get a revenge kill that won't give corruption even if they're not flagged.

Lawful zones are to appease the PvE crowd. The Lawless zones are to appease the PvP crowd. In general PvE crowds are bigger and PvP relies on PvE more than PvE relies on PvP. I don't think they mix well in MMOs. Too much difference between playstyles, stats, loadouts, and so. Also they attract different player mindsets which tend to be conflicting. Trying to be fair to both will just everyone feel cheated.

Imnotkio

Volgaris wrote: »

I'll agree that corruption shouldn't make you helpless. But the timer to drop corruption should be in the hours not minutes. Killing a non-flagged player one moment then the next going about your non corrupted life the next shouldn't be a thing. The length of corruption should be more of a deterrent than the nerfing effects. I'd also be okay with a 'revenge' kill system that didn't give corruption. If you're killed not flagged you should have a limited time to get a revenge kill that won't give corruption even if they're not flagged.

Lawful zones are to appease the PvE crowd. The Lawless zones are to appease the PvP crowd. In general PvE crowds are bigger and PvP relies on PvE more than PvE relies on PvP. I don't think they mix well in MMOs. Too much difference between playstyles, stats, loadouts, and so. Also they attract different player mindsets which tend to be conflicting. Trying to be fair to both will just everyone feel cheated.

Lawless zones were never an intended feature of the game. They were added as a temporary system to A2 developing zones. When pushed on lawless zones they kept their stance that the only place free of corruption would be the ocean and some islands in the ocean.

Lawless zones are not a reliable solution to any issue because it's not going to be prevalent at launch.

I do agree that corruption should be a lengthy thing. Bounty hunter system for hunting corrupted players exists, but with the current design of losing corruption with 2 kills it's never going to be used. Even if you require a bunch of kills, players will just feed kills to allies and lose corruption.

1. Corruption should be a long endeavor. You get corrupted, you deal with the consequence for at least hours, preferably days. But for that to be possible, either you can't get corrupted on a single kill, or the first tiers of corruption must be very lenient (very low to no chance of gear drops, full material bag drops, slightly increased exp debt). They need to implement a hard to get hard to clean philosophy.

2. To avoid people feeding kills to get rid of corruption, it also needs a timer. It needs a period where no matter how much you die you'll remain corrupted. Along with this, you need to add a character persistent timer like a 3~5 minute countdown that the players need to wait before safely logging out and removing the character from the world.

3. Corrupted players should be allowed to fight back. If the corrupted player gets more corruption by fighting back, there is 0 chance anyone is risking going corrupt, and if they do they will just feed kills/log out to get rid of it. Allowing them to fight back incentivizes them to stay logged in the game to try and clean corruption/ deal with bounty hunters and players who want to kill them.

The main issue with corruption being applied in the first kill is the certainty for the other player that you'll get corrupted if you kill them. This gives them complete safety and even an advantage in dying to get you corrupted. This creates various awkward and unpleasant scenarios of players' corruption baiting, karma bombing, playing purple footsie, and open world PVP basically becomes a pseudo opt-in system. If you want players to kill each other only when there is consent and both go purple, then just create a opt-in flagging system and cut the bullshit (please don't, that's the whole point of this feedback).

When you don't have players going corrupt on the first kill, you have the uncertainty of corruption. This means players have much less to gain by allowing them to kill you. Without this certainty, dying a person is not the best outcome, and fighting to survive and fighting back are your best options. This essentially removes all the issues of players reverse griefing and allows the flagging system to be properly used in scenarios like contesting POIs, fighting for resources, and even for events like world bosses, things that intrepid claimed they want but it's pretty much not occurring at all.

Corruption is a tool to deter grief. Griefing is the repeated targeted harassment of a player or group. A single kill is not considered griefing. The corruption system should not be used to stop players from committing isolated murders.

Ludullu

Imnotkio wrote: »

When you don't have players going corrupt on the first kill, you have the uncertainty of corruption. This means players have much less to gain by allowing them to kill you. Without this certainty, dying a person is not the best outcome, and fighting to survive and fighting back are your best options. This essentially removes all the issues of players reverse griefing and allows the flagging system to be properly used in scenarios like contesting POIs, fighting for resources, and even for events like world bosses, things that intrepid claimed they want but it's pretty much not occurring at all.

A drastic alternative could be this:

you do get corrupted after your first kill
but dying to anything other than a BH doesn't remove corruption
you also don't drop anything on death, unless you were killed by a BH
mob farming removes corruption
speed of that removal depends on your PK count
BHs need to submit PKer's loot to their profession NPC, otherwise they'll lose their job after a few hunts for a long time (this is to avoid "friend BH" bs)
BHs get rewards from those NPCs based on their success and potentially the power of their targets
BH profession is an exclusionary one, so it's the only one you can have (this is to prevent "all my friends are BHs" bs)
there's no timer on corruption - only mob farming and BH deaths

This would increase the number of PKs in the game, but also keep the BHs on a more noble path, where the only reward is the hunt itself and the system-based stuff that you get, rather than pure vigilantism.

I'd personally prefer if PKer's drops always included their victims' items (if there were any) and those would be returned to said victims through the BH system. PKers get to kill people and risk the corruption and the hunt, BHs get to hunt people and have some nice pvp, and victims potentially get their shit back. An all-around win

Volgaris

The main issue with corruption being applied in the first kill is the certainty for the other player that you'll get corrupted if you kill them. This gives them complete safety and even an advantage in dying to get you corrupted.

This is the where we disagree. They don't have "complete" safety. Nor is dying an advantage. 99% of fights are one person getting jumped by 2 or 3 others and it's normally when they're half health after a fight with a mob to get a material node. "Lessening" corruption penalties will increase this to the nth degree. Corruption has to be a stiff penalty or it's meaningless. Can it be adjust to make more sense and encourage more meaningful PvP interactions, of course. I think we agree that it needs to be adjust and mostly how it should be. But fostering a environment that encourages random ganking is just going to make people quit.

I think lawless zones should be dynamic at launch, a Node should be able to grow and bring "law/justice" to a zone it's near if it's influence is great enough. This would add the idea of a changing world. Lawless zones should exist on land masses if it's outside the influence of the closest Node. What they decide to do probably isn't even known to them right now. Which makes sense, let see where it goes and let our voices known. It does appear they listen.... slowly.... took too long to change the gathering

Aside from the adjustment of corruption to make it more meaningful. There needs to be a Node reputation system. Killing someone of Node A in a Node A area it should drop your reputation of that Node to the point where you're an outlaw to that Node and it's guards are hostel to you, and you won't be able to use its facilities, until your reputation is repaired or the Node is destroyed. Once hostel with that Node you'd show as red (orange, or whatever) to members of that Node. But killing a member of Node A while they're at your Node's area wouldn't cause a reputation loss with Node A. There's tons of adjustments you can make from something like this. They could apply this same mechanic to the Religion system as well which would make for some really interesting interactions. You could be faced with an Enemy Node player but they're of the same Religion so they show up as yellow, and you can choose to align with your Node or Relgion at that point. Could be really fun in some situations. I'd argue this would be enough alone and corruption wouldn't even really be needed in its current state.

Corruption alone will never be enough to balance it, not matter how it's adjusted. The game is too ganky right now and it's not fun nor do I really expect it to be fun atm. I know we're testing and not all of this is the focus, but I can only judge it on what it is not what someone dreams it to be.

Gardosien

i think corp people should just lose gear, like it going POOF when they die vs dropping. I have personally had 3 people go corp on me at different times . Watched their teammate kill them to clear corruption and remove risk of gear lost. In all case guy that has killed me attacked me when i was fighting a Mob and Player had 5 levels+ on me. System is sh-t

Ludullu

Gardosien wrote: »

System is sh-t

It's shit because it's nowhere near done. Removing full items on death would simply mean that no one even attempts to attack other players, which means any and all risk in the game goes away, which is not what Steven wants for the design of Ashes.

There's multiple middle-ground ways of solving this issue w/o immediately going to the near-highest corporal punishment.

Vaknar

Just wanted to chime in here to let y'all know the team is aware of issues and feedback regarding the player corruption system, and are working on it

Be sure to tune into the livestream on Friday - We'll be giving some updates regarding PvP going forward

Gardosien

They should lose risk losing gear(not all gear), but the gear should go poof, vs them having their teammate kill them to circumvent the system. Attacking a players 5 levels lower than you while they are fighting mobs is just harassing gameplay. It needs to be delt with. Maybe something that checks levels level of each toon, and if toon is already fighting. IF 5 level different is true, and combat is true than x happens if you attack them.

Exzear

I like the idea of dynamic PvP zones. I just hope its really worth farming in those zones.. like extra % rare spawns in materials and maybe drop chance increase aswell so people go there and you easily find pvp. And people who really dont want to pvp can just go to the safer zone.

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