I think corruption should grow exponentially. So you can kill one or two players without too much penalty, that's just "friendly competition". But if you kill someone 3, 4, 5 times, you'll gain corruption exponentially for each subsequent kill. That way, if you see a bot farming, you can easily kill him and throw him off this route.
And that's how it already works. Except it's an overall count rather than "for each character" one. So your first few PKs won't give you much corruption, but your 20th will cripple you quite a lot and you'll probably have to grind for hours or die multiple times.
Well, it's always die multiple times or slowly earn xp. Even with the 1PK.
How many multiples and the time it takes to earn enough xp to clear Corruption ramps up after a bunch of kills. Yes.
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HumblePuffinMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited April 2022
@Dygz ”If you penalize Non-Combatants such that most people choose to fight when they don't truly want to, what you have is a PvP-centric game, rather than a PvX game.”-Dygz
The urban dictionary definition, which is the definition attached to the Ashes wiki: “PvX refers to "player versus anything", meaning both PvE and PvP.[1]” It’s a rather vague term that can be applied to the large majority of mmorpgs. This is not my personal definition.
If they kept the penalties exactly the same, didn’t change anything at all in that regard, and only changed that you had to flag to non-combatant, putting a giant sign on you that says “I’m probably not going to fight back, enjoy your corruption” further disincentivizing someone to attack you, what has really changed?
What I can see that changed is: 1. you have a system where people like you who do not want to PvP unless you’re in the mood get an indicator telling people like me who want to fight people but not people that don’t want to fight, that “hey, I don’t want to fight, go away, kill me at your own detriment”. 2. You have a system where PvE players who don’t really want to fight, and PvP players who don’t want to run around tagging everyone to stay flagged, but also don’t really want what are currently “normal” penalties if they die to a mob can roll the dice on if they’ll be attacked for the “lesser” penalties. 3.The will they or won’t they mystery being somewhat removed and 4. You couldn’t call non-combatant penalties “normal” anymore. It would now be 50% “more” penalties, but once again exactly the same penalties that are currently listed.
From my point of view a system like that protects players like you more than the current one, with the added benefit of all players, PvE and PvP oriented having a lower baseline of resources lost.
*edit* I’m going to add another angle to what I said that maintains more of the status quo. Instead of making combatant the baseline how I said earlier in this post, is there a problem with just letting people manually flag as combatants instead of needing to attack someone to flag? Non-combatants still get to have the title of “normal” death penalties, and players who are willing to put a big sign on them saying “attack me I’m probably gonna fight back, and you won’t get corruption” get rewarded with 50% reduced penalties. Now there’s even less of a difference.
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HumblePuffinMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I do think the corruption system will protect bots, people's fantasy is that they'll be able to stop them all, but I highly doubt it. And I think it may turn out to be a problem on launch, $15 for a month is not a hard barrier to entry for botters, and there is no way for the community to self-police bots since their corruption and PK count will skyrocket if they kill bots.
Someone, in a thread somewhere (maybe this one idr), said something along the lines of ‘instead of reporting a bot and it just getting banned, turn it into something bounty hunters can hunt down’ (paraphrased).
I thought that could be an interesting take on it, where you report the bot, and once they confirm instead of insta banning they turn red, and now players and bounty hunters can go hunt down the bot and claim their gear and resources at a 4x penalty. Can set up a script to insta ban once they die.
I thought it was a novel idea. That relies on AoC having and maintaining a solid, consistent force of in game moderators though.
Reading some earlier comments, I really don't understand how y'all can think PvPing over rare resources is worse than the awful standard we have of having to compete with a bot you can't kill lest you be karma bombed or have to deal with a troll who has slightly better movement speed than you, and just pulls mobs on you all the time and teleports to a resource node right before you can get there.
Games like that make me want to tear my hair out.
Is it "your node"? No. Do we want fulfilling competition resources instead of just the standard MMO experience with resource nodes? I would hope so.
I do think the corruption system will protect bots, people's fantasy is that they'll be able to stop them all, but I highly doubt it. And I think it may turn out to be a problem on launch, $15 for a month is not a hard barrier to entry for botters, and there is no way for the community to self-police bots since their corruption and PK count will skyrocket if they kill bots.
I don't care about competing with bots. I don't give competing with bots a thought. And, AFAIK, it doesn't affect my gameplay.
Other players forcing me to PvP when I'm not in the mood for PvP does affect my gameplay.
Bots are not forcing me to do something I don't want to do - as far as I know.
How is a gatherer not being able to level up their gathering experience or gather mats for money, because of a bunch of bots, not affecting their playstyle? It is harshly affecting their playstyle and giving them a negative experience. Even when it's not over a node and they're just lowering the price of mats it's affecting their playstyle. Look at Lost Ark where there are hundreds of thousands of bots, you really are trying to tell me that isn't making people quit the game?
Friendly competition is Combatant v Combatant.
Killing Non-Combatants is not friendly competition.
Not in the context of AoC. Flagging as Combatant is for people who want to engage in sustained open world PvP. It says "Here I am, come and fight me". Killing a non-combatant once or twice while defending a good grind spot or saying "This is my farming route, get lost kid!" is the whole reason why it's even allowed in the first place. If that's not your style, then AoC is not the game for you. Steven has made that very clear. That's the "friendly competition" aspect of AoC. It's nothing personal, but if you can't adequately defend it, it's not yours.
Corruption is meant to deter people from simply hunting down and repetitively killing non-combatants just for the LoLz (griefing)
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited April 2022
I don't know what you mean by "Not in the context of AoC."
In Ashes, in order to indicate you welcome friendly competition, you flag as Combatant by attacking another player. Everyone agrees to reward those involved with half death penalties and no Corruption so that all involved can have some friendly fun. Everyone got a chance to do what they like to do.
You indicate you do not welcome friendly competition by not flagging as Combatant and punishing your killer with Corruption and 4x the death penalties.
Also... I dunno what you mean by "If that's not your style." I'm fine with giving Corruption to people who kill me once or twice. As long as the Corruption is harsh enough that it pretty much always stops at twice. They forced me to participate in an activity I'm not in the mood for (PvP combat) so I punish them with Corruption.
Friendly is when I indicate, "Hey, I'm not in the mood for that right now" and other people respect that by leaving me be.
Punishing someone with Corruption and 4x the death penalty is not what I call friendly.
But, maybe we have different concepts of what friendly entails.
Everyone welcomes friendly competition simply by playing Ashes of Creation. It is by design an "always on" open world PvP game. Flagging combatant goes above-and-beyond "friendly competition" and says "I'm looking for a fight". If you want to play a game where you can be "not in the mood" for PvP, then AoC is "not your style" of a game. Corruption is not intended to stop people from killing non-combatants. If that were the case, then they simply wouldn't allow it. Corruption is intended to stop people from REPEATEDLY killing non-combatants. Fighting other non-combatants over a good farming spot will be commonplace in AoC.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
How is a gatherer not being able to level up their gathering experience or gather mats for money, because of a bunch of bots, not affecting their playstyle? It is harshly affecting their playstyle and giving them a negative experience. Even when it's not over a node and they're just lowering the price of mats it's affecting their playstyle. Look at Lost Ark where there are hundreds of thousands of bots, you really are trying to tell me that isn't making people quit the game?
I have never experienced not being able to gather stuff I've wanted to gather.
I don't play Lost Ark, nor would I.
So...maybe that's something that only happens in games that already suck.
How is a gatherer not being able to level up their gathering experience or gather mats for money, because of a bunch of bots, not affecting their playstyle? It is harshly affecting their playstyle and giving them a negative experience. Even when it's not over a node and they're just lowering the price of mats it's affecting their playstyle. Look at Lost Ark where there are hundreds of thousands of bots, you really are trying to tell me that isn't making people quit the game?
I have never experienced not being able to gather stuff I've wanted to gather.
I don't play Lost Ark, nor would I.
So...maybe that's something that only happens in games that already suck.
I honestly have no idea what MMOs you've been playing then.
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HumblePuffinMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Reading some earlier comments, I really don't understand how y'all can think PvPing over rare resources is worse than the awful standard we have of having to compete with a bot you can't kill lest you be karma bombed or have to deal with a troll who has slightly better movement speed than you, and just pulls mobs on you all the time and teleports to a resource node right before you can get there.
Games like that make me want to tear my hair out.
Is it "your node"? No. Do we want fulfilling competition resources instead of just the standard MMO experience with resource nodes? I would hope so.
I do think the corruption system will protect bots, people's fantasy is that they'll be able to stop them all, but I highly doubt it. And I think it may turn out to be a problem on launch, $15 for a month is not a hard barrier to entry for botters, and there is no way for the community to self-police bots since their corruption and PK count will skyrocket if they kill bots.
I don't care about competing with bots. I don't give competing with bots a thought. And, AFAIK, it doesn't affect my gameplay.
Other players forcing me to PvP when I'm not in the mood for PvP does affect my gameplay.
Bots are not forcing me to do something I don't want to do - as far as I know.
How is a gatherer not being able to level up their gathering experience or gather mats for money, because of a bunch of bots, not affecting their playstyle? It is harshly affecting their playstyle and giving them a negative experience. Even when it's not over a node and they're just lowering the price of mats it's affecting their playstyle. Look at Lost Ark where there are hundreds of thousands of bots, you really are trying to tell me that isn't making people quit the game?
Other than just the sub price to deter bots, I think most of the other systems of the game are going to make botting in AoC a lot harder.
Just the fact that the world will constantly be influx means botters won’t have a regularly defined route. Vein gatherables are said to appear in some places and then maybe never again. Herds will travel.
Doesn’t sound like they have a gatherable node respawn system dynamic enough to make botting impossible but it’ll probably be a lot more work than normal.
More work, less botters, less need to worry about regularly murdering those bots messing up the economy.
Reading some earlier comments, I really don't understand how y'all can think PvPing over rare resources is worse than the awful standard we have of having to compete with a bot you can't kill lest you be karma bombed or have to deal with a troll who has slightly better movement speed than you, and just pulls mobs on you all the time and teleports to a resource node right before you can get there.
Games like that make me want to tear my hair out.
Is it "your node"? No. Do we want fulfilling competition resources instead of just the standard MMO experience with resource nodes? I would hope so.
I do think the corruption system will protect bots, people's fantasy is that they'll be able to stop them all, but I highly doubt it. And I think it may turn out to be a problem on launch, $15 for a month is not a hard barrier to entry for botters, and there is no way for the community to self-police bots since their corruption and PK count will skyrocket if they kill bots.
I don't care about competing with bots. I don't give competing with bots a thought. And, AFAIK, it doesn't affect my gameplay.
Other players forcing me to PvP when I'm not in the mood for PvP does affect my gameplay.
Bots are not forcing me to do something I don't want to do - as far as I know.
How is a gatherer not being able to level up their gathering experience or gather mats for money, because of a bunch of bots, not affecting their playstyle? It is harshly affecting their playstyle and giving them a negative experience. Even when it's not over a node and they're just lowering the price of mats it's affecting their playstyle. Look at Lost Ark where there are hundreds of thousands of bots, you really are trying to tell me that isn't making people quit the game?
Other than just the sub price to deter bots, I think most of the other systems of the game are going to make botting in AoC a lot harder.
Just the fact that the world will constantly be influx means botters won’t have a regularly defined route. Vein gatherables are said to appear in some places and then maybe never again. Herds will travel.
Doesn’t sound like they have a gatherable node respawn system dynamic enough to make botting impossible but it’ll probably be a lot more work than normal.
More work, less botters, less need to worry about regularly murdering those bots messing up the economy.
$15 deterring bots? You're so innocent haha, New World has a $40 box price and that didn't prevent hoards of bots. It's true that there's some dynamic spawns in the world, but that won't matter as long as the bots are going to the same areas. It's not like they've said trees will spawn in random locations, or fishing spots change. You'll just have a bot auto-farming mats all day, who cares if you're not getting the rarest spawns?
The main defense against bots seems to be GMs they have planned. I just hope they're not overloaded with work.
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HumblePuffinMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Reading some earlier comments, I really don't understand how y'all can think PvPing over rare resources is worse than the awful standard we have of having to compete with a bot you can't kill lest you be karma bombed or have to deal with a troll who has slightly better movement speed than you, and just pulls mobs on you all the time and teleports to a resource node right before you can get there.
Games like that make me want to tear my hair out.
Is it "your node"? No. Do we want fulfilling competition resources instead of just the standard MMO experience with resource nodes? I would hope so.
I do think the corruption system will protect bots, people's fantasy is that they'll be able to stop them all, but I highly doubt it. And I think it may turn out to be a problem on launch, $15 for a month is not a hard barrier to entry for botters, and there is no way for the community to self-police bots since their corruption and PK count will skyrocket if they kill bots.
I don't care about competing with bots. I don't give competing with bots a thought. And, AFAIK, it doesn't affect my gameplay.
Other players forcing me to PvP when I'm not in the mood for PvP does affect my gameplay.
Bots are not forcing me to do something I don't want to do - as far as I know.
How is a gatherer not being able to level up their gathering experience or gather mats for money, because of a bunch of bots, not affecting their playstyle? It is harshly affecting their playstyle and giving them a negative experience. Even when it's not over a node and they're just lowering the price of mats it's affecting their playstyle. Look at Lost Ark where there are hundreds of thousands of bots, you really are trying to tell me that isn't making people quit the game?
Other than just the sub price to deter bots, I think most of the other systems of the game are going to make botting in AoC a lot harder.
Just the fact that the world will constantly be influx means botters won’t have a regularly defined route. Vein gatherables are said to appear in some places and then maybe never again. Herds will travel.
Doesn’t sound like they have a gatherable node respawn system dynamic enough to make botting impossible but it’ll probably be a lot more work than normal.
More work, less botters, less need to worry about regularly murdering those bots messing up the economy.
$15 deterring bots? You're so innocent haha, New World has a $40 box price and that didn't prevent hoards of bots. It's true that there's some dynamic spawns in the world, but that won't matter as long as the bots are going to the same areas. It's not like they've said trees will spawn in random locations, or fishing spots change. You'll just have a bot auto-farming mats all day, who cares if you're not getting the rarest spawns?
The main defense against bots seems to be GMs they have planned. I just hope they're not overloaded with work.
It certainly helps vs any f2p game out there. Just saying when you add that, GMs, dynamic world not just spawns, it being harder to move large quantities of mats from one place to the next, no global auction house to sell the mats as gold easier, death penalties for when your brain dead bot accidentally aggros a mob, the players that do go corrupt on the bot, and probably other details I’m missing, it’s adds up to a bot unfriendly experience.
It’ll happen, no doubt, I just think there’s a solid chance that it won’t be as profitable of a game for botters as a lot of others just from the shear amount of work that would go into it, so therefore not as many as some other games that have it really bad.
Maybe they can include a court where you go plead your corruption away in front of a council of GMs. “I plead not guilty your honor! A bot is not a player so I player killed no one! “ *acquitted of all charges*
The biggest deterrent to bots is going to be the dynamic node spawns. That immediately eliminates the "low hanging fruit" of afk farmers/macros who sit at one node and hit it every time it pops up. It also eliminates the next level up bots who have a predefined route.
It won't eliminate more sophisticated bots that work on vision, but those are far more rare and are incredibly hard to distinguish from actual players. Honestly if these are the only ones left, that would be fine...at least until they become more accessible to the average botter.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
@Dygz ”If you penalize Non-Combatants such that most people choose to fight when they don't truly want to, what you have is a PvP-centric game, rather than a PvX game.”-Dygz
The urban dictionary definition, which is the definition attached to the Ashes wiki: “PvX refers to "player versus anything", meaning both PvE and PvP.[1]” It’s a rather vague term that can be applied to the large majority of mmorpgs. This is not my personal definition.
If they kept the penalties exactly the same, didn’t change anything at all in that regard, and only changed that you had to flag to non-combatant, putting a giant sign on you that says “I’m probably not going to fight back, enjoy your corruption” further disincentivizing someone to attack you, what has really changed?
What I can see that changed is: 1. you have a system where people like you who do not want to PvP unless you’re in the mood get an indicator telling people like me who want to fight people but not people that don’t want to fight, that “hey, I don’t want to fight, go away, kill me at your own detriment”. 2. You have a system where PvE players who don’t really want to fight, and PvP players who don’t want to run around tagging everyone to stay flagged, but also don’t really want what are currently “normal” penalties if they die to a mob can roll the dice on if they’ll be attacked for the “lesser” penalties. 3.The will they or won’t they mystery being somewhat removed and 4. You couldn’t call non-combatant penalties “normal” anymore. It would now be 50% “more” penalties, but once again exactly the same penalties that are currently listed.
From my point of view a system like that protects players like you more than the current one, with the added benefit of all players, PvE and PvP oriented having a lower baseline of resources lost.
As I already said, your denotation of a label is irrelevant.
What matters is Steven's design philosphy and how Steven uses lables to explain his design philosphy.
1: If Combatant is the default AND the Combatant death penalties are standard - such that you can remain flagged as Combatant indefinetly and people have to opt out of being a Combatant by flagging as a Non-Combatant - that means that Non-Combatants receive double the standard death penalties. They are being punished for not particpating in PvP.
People who don't enjoy PvP are not going to play a game where PvP is the deafult and they are punished with double the standard death penalties for choosing to not participate in PvP.
2: A game were most players are flagged as Combatant by default is a PvP-focused game.
And Steven does not want Ashes to be a PvP focused game. If you want to tag everyone in order to try to stay flagged as Combatant, you can do so. Just as you could run around with no armor and weapons equipped.
But, that's not the way Ashes is intended to be played.
3: Will they or won't they is part of the risk v reward dynamic Steven wants as the foundation of Ashes.
4: Again. If the Combatant death penalties are normal. And Non-Combatants re punished with 2x the normal death penalties for not flagging as a Combatant...people who don't like PvP are not going to play that game.
Even if players were Combatants by default, they would still kill Non-Combatants at the same rate they will with Steven's design. If Non-Combatants can be attacked, they will be killed for the same reasons in both scenarios. A Non-Combatatant refusing to fight back is a big enough sign that the player is not interested in PvP combat. PKers will ignore that refusal at the same rate they will in the opt out scenario because PKers are going to kill the Non-Combatants in any case. They still won't care that the player doen't want to PvP.
So, again, the difference will be that Non-Combatants receive double the standard death penalty.
And PvErs are not going to play a game where PvP is the default and they receive double the standard death penalty for not flagging as Combatant.
There is no incentive for them to play the game. It's a lose/lose scenario.
In order to get players who don't like PvP to play on the same servers as players who love PvP, you make Non-Combatant the default and the death penalties for Non-Combatant the default. Then Non-Combatants are not punished for not particpating in PvP.
And Combatants are rewarded for flagging as Combatants.
Most players spend most of the time not flagged for PvP. Which means it's not a PvP-focused game.
It's certainly intriguing reading throughout threads on this topic. Griefing is obviously a hotly debated topic, haha!
It's difficult to draw the line of griefing in a PvX game
I suppose it's also good to talk about potential exploits or ways to use and abuse the corruption system ahead of Alpha Two
So, did you misrepresent it on purpose then? Or just a blonde moment?
I didn't misrepresent it though. I was talking about the severity of the stat dampening penalty after you've gotten 10 kills on you. And the fact that they haven't tested anything properly yet, so we got 0 clue about the scaling of that penalty.
You did misrepresent it.
You said you may start to feel the effects of corruption after 10 damn kills - your words.
This is a misrepresentation of what was said. If you have 10 PK count, you may start to feel the effects of corruption after 1 kill.
Assuming you understood the PK mechanic, that is blatant misrepresentation.
Again the quote went "If you go on a murder spree and you have 10 pks under your belt then you might start feeling a significant dampening to your skill effects against other players."
This means that on the lower PK counts, the stat dampening effects are either miniscule or just insignificant. Which was my entire point. I didn't misrepresent anything. I was just pointing out that they haven't tested it, hence the vague language. But even before testing, Steven's stance is "PKing is meant to be fun in limited amounts, which is why your first few kills won't influence your pvp power that much".
I remember Noaani and I got into this debate a year or so ago. I was calling it a very pvp focused game, which I still know to be true, based on current design concepts.
But then I found a direct quote from Steven calling it a pvx focused game. I posted it and acknowledged that that kind of settles it, it's a pvx focused game. It didn't change my mind on anything, but the label was there in the quote.
So how does the argument keep coming up? Because by default, most of the games we think of in our mind are very obviously games with a strong pve focus. We know near universally that a game is going to have pve. One of the main questions many people have when learning about a new mmo is will there even be pvp at all. If there is, will it be relegated to some instanced battleground or arena? Is there an opt in system? Because that pretty much means near zero pvp.
So it really doesn't take much in the way of pvp content for the collective gaming community to think of a game as a pvp focused game, even if its developer calls it a pve or pvx game. Certainly a 50/50 split between pvp/pve content will have large swathes of the gaming community saying yeah, "pvp game." Even a 70pve/30pvp split, if you can't opt out of pvp, many people are going to be like, yep pvp game.
Pvpers have to deal with pve in nearly every game we play. In many games, pvers don't have to pvp at all. That imbalance causes people to label a game a pvp game if it even begins to approach levels of suitable pvp content.
In the case of Ashes, you can judge for yourself. But it is a pvx game with the goal of blending pve and pvp together.
In the case of Ashes, you can judge for yourself. But it is a pvx game with the goal of blending pve and pvp together.
And this is why I'm interested in Ashes in the first place. Lineage 2 was one of the best pvx games imo and these days people would 100% call it a purely pvp game, even though 95% of your gameplay was just mob grind.
Yeah somehow I missed Lineage, didn't even know it existed at the time. Guess I was playing DAOC or something. But I've heard it referred to as one of the greatest pvp mmos of all time. Cant believe I missed it haha
My opinion hasn't changed much on what PvX will feel like in Ashes. By logging in, you're agreeing to a social contract where you can be attacked at any time, any place (with the exception of your own freehold), while doing anything. The probability will be lower in 'civilized' areas, but not zero.
Prepare accordingly.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Typically, MMORPGs are designed for PvE with PvP as an after thought - Especially games like EQ and WoW.
Shadowbane tried to be all "Play to Crush" but that game folded in just a few years.
In most MMORPGs, PvE servers have the highest populations compared to PvP servers.
I like PvP sometimes, so I would typically start on PvP-Optional servers to play on the same world with friends who are PvP fans - but always eventually rage-quit to play on PvE-only servers.
EQNext and Ashes are trying to get everyone to play on one server. Even though people who play on PvE-Only servers don't really believe that is possible. We're trusting that the people who played Lineage II with Karma when they say Corruption should make PKing rare enough that we'll be comfortable playing with PvP-focused players on the same server.
Steven wants large scale PvP combat to be fun. He hopes to entice PvP-Only players to dabble in PvP at least some of the time. Which is why he rewards people who flag as Combatant, rather than punishing players who won't.
Half death penalties for choosing to play as a Combatant when you're attacked in the hunting grounds.
No death penalties and no Corruption when auto-flagged for Events, like Caravans and Sieges.
Words and labels are just symbols to try to make communication easier.
Steven uses PvX as a quick and easy way to say he wants PvE-centric players to feel comfrtble playing on the same servers as PvP-centric players.
Ashes is not catering to PvE-Focused players and also not catering to PvP-focused players.
Rather, Ashes strives to support both those playstyles while disincentivizing killing Non_Combatants.
I don't even know how one goes about determining 50/50 v 70/30, but yeah...
If I'm expected to spend 50% of each game session engaged in PvP combat, I'm not playing that game.
I'm willing to spend about 12% of each game session engaged in PvP combat. And, when I reach that 12%, that pretty much needs to be the end of it.
By PvX, Steven is saying that Corruption will be enough of a PK deterent that I should be able to keep PVP engagement around 12% if I want to. And there are ways to keep it between 2-5% if I want to.
There's also ways for people to focus on PvP for 88-98% of the time.
And there's even ways for people to PK sometimes, if they don't care about Corruption.
A key aspect of PvX is that all servers are the same - no separate PvP or PvE servers.
To accomplish that - if you want people who prefer playing on PvE only servers to play the game, you're going to have to do something to entice them. Especially if they can always be attcked by other players.
I suppose New World might be considered PvX, but the label is irrelevant to me. All I need to know is that I can be permanently flagged to not be attacked by other players and not suffer any penalties for doing so.
Any game where it's likely I could spend 20+% of my game session in PvP combat is too PvP-centric for me.
I would call such a game PvP-centric or even PvP-focused - BUT - if challenged on my terms, I would acquiesce that it is too PvP-centric for me to play - even if objectively I'm not spending more time in PvP tha I am in PvE.
Again, the PvX label doesn't really matter other than as a shortcut for Steven to explain the design goal of enticing PvE-Only players to feel comfortable playing on the same servers with PvP fans and perhaps also at least dabble in some PvP some of the time.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
It's difficult to draw the line of griefing in a PvX game
I suppose it's also good to talk about potential exploits or ways to use and abuse the corruption system ahead of Alpha Two
I think Steven's been quite consistent in refering to PKing Non-Combatants as griefing.
The penalty for it is Corruption.
Just as a penalty for a foul in basketball is a free throw.
By PvX, Steven is saying that Corruption will be enough of a PK deterent that I should be able to keep PVP engagement around 12% if I want to. And there are ways to keep it between 2-5% if I want to.
I'm just curious, how would you control that? Do you mean that you would just switch your daily gameplay goals if you see that there's PvP/PKing going on in the location where you wanted to go on that particular day? Or is it some other way?
I don't even know how one goes about determining 50/50 v 70/30, but yeah...
If I'm expected to spend 50% of each game session engaged in PvP combat, I'm not playing that game.
I'm willing to spend about 12% of each game session engaged in PvP combat. And, when I reach that 12%, that pretty much needs to be the end of it.
You won't be spending even close to 50% of your game session in PvP if you don't want to. Unprovoked open world PvP will only account for MAYBE 5-10% of your time. Most of the time you'll be running around minding your own business, doing quests, dungeons with PvE friends, etc. The only time you'll ever engage in PvP is if you just so happen to come across someone else farming your same route and they just so happen to want to fight you over it. My guess is most people will be perfectly happy grinding alongside you without any confrontation. And if you spend 15 minutes of a 3 hour play session dealing with some guy who was bothered by your presence, well that would account for ~8% of your time, which I imagine would be about expected for someone who wasn't otherwise looking to do any PvP. The possibility of PvP doesn't mean everyone is going to fight everyone over everything. It just means you have to keep an eye out and not be a dickhead to other players because they just might take a swing at you.
Now, someone who wants to spend 50% of their time doing PvP will likely be flagged as a combatant and they'll likely only be fighting other combatants because they don't want corruption. So you can rightfully ignore any combatants you see out in the world. The hardcore PvPers (>50%) will probably rush to endgame and then spend all their time doing sieges, castle wars, and bounty hunting...none of which affects you as a PvE player.
The hardcore PvPers (>50%) will probably rush to endgame and then spend all their time doing sieges, castle wars, and bounty hunting...none of which affects you as a PvE player.
This will highly depend on how Intrepid decides to design endgame gameplay loops. If the only thing I can do every day for 10h+ is grinding mobs or gather stuff or doing menial quests in the open world - I'm most likely gonna pvp people doing the same thing.
And when a pvp-disliking person gets to the same lvl of progress where the only thing they can do are those activities - they gonna come across a tooooon of pvpers, which, just as you said, would've been at that lvl of progress for quite some time so they'd most likely win most of pvps against the pvp-dislikers.
And there's a high chance that those pvpers would be wearing 3rd-4th sets of gear, so that if they get some corruption, they wouldn't ruin their main set. And they wouldn't care about some corruption here and there because they're probably playing a ton and can grind the XP debt back up (that is if they even die corrupted, which is not a 100% assurance). And depending on how Intrepid designs the PK count reduction methods, those PvPers might optimize the hell out of them and not care about their count at all, because they can reduce it back to low values somewhat easily.
So I'm really interested in hearing how people plan on avoiding pvp to such an extent that it's only <10% of their gameplay.
@NiKr Sure, but that's where the Bounty Hunting system comes in. It's a self balancing scale. As more people get the itch for open world PvP and take it out on non-combatants, more people will take up Bounty Hunting to go kill the Corrupted with a chance to take their gear. As a bounty hunter you don't gain corruption, so you get all the reward of PvP with none of the drawbacks of going Corrupted. There's also Caravans which are "pvp events" with no death penalties. So I'm guessing that will be a big part of the end game PvP loop, both attacking caravans and being a hired guard.
@NiKr This is just where testing corruption (and it’s downstream impacts) will be critical for appropriately balancing PvX. I don’t think Steven will let Ashes turn into an MO2 bloodbath - but the world will have serious risks, especially in the mid-wilds around settling nodes.
It’s possible that the community has a solid blend of white hats protecting their nodes. But again, testing will tell.
@NiKr Sure, but that's where the Bounty Hunting system comes in. It's a self balancing scale. As more people get the itch for open world PvP and take it out on non-combatants, more people will take up Bounty Hunting to go kill the Corrupted with a chance to take their gear. As a bounty hunter you don't gain corruption, so you get all the reward of PvP with none of the drawbacks of going Corrupted. There's also Caravans which are "pvp events" with no death penalties. So I'm guessing that will be a big part of the end game PvP loop.
There's a high chance that most people at the top of any gameplay ladder (adventure/artisan/faction lvls) will be playing in groups/guilds. If one of the group decides to PK someone, the group can go grind some mobs to remove their corruption.
If they see a random player approaching their group, they'll assume it's a BH hunting their red player. They'll throw a few hits in his face (or use a ton of super weak abilities) to bring his HP bar down to mid-low decay stage and let the PKer finish him off w/o a problem (maybe even healing the PKer, if Intrepid allows it).
At this point the BH might bring some of their own guildies and it'll start a big ol' pvp war. That's fun and all, but the victim of that PKer can't go to that place now because there's a shitton of people killing everything that moves and most likely gathering stuff in the process.
Now that pvp-disliker doesn't have this particular content available to them. And depending on their progress lvl, they might not have any other worthwhile content to do, or they might only have the stuff they're not in the mood for.
I see it as a pyramid of progress. At the base of the pyramid you're at low lvl of your character progress (as are a lot of people around you). There's a shitton of stuff to do and barely any of it involves pvp. But the higher you progress, the less space there is and the more pvp-centered the content becomes. And after some time you can only level up in lvl 6 nodes, you can only gather super rare resources which are hunted by all the other people at the same lvl of progress (unless they allow us to gather anything at high artisan lvls, which imo would kinda ruin it for any new players), your quests would most likely involve higher lvled locations/mobs/bosses which all would be hunted by the high lvl pvpers.
All of that either involves direct pvp or has you dying to the numerous potential PKers who might not even have that high of a PK count, so their penalty is not even that high and BHs might not even get to them on time. At least that's how I see the game progressing. I might be completely wrong and Intrepid might be making the best PvX mmo out there, which, instead of siphoning its players towards soft friction, gives them ample space to coexist peacefully. Though I do recall Steven mentioning soft friction systems quite a bit in his interviews, so I'm not so sure Ashes is gonna be that kind of game.
@NiKr This is just where testing corruption (and it’s downstream impacts) will be critical for appropriately balancing PvX. I don’t think Steven will let Ashes turn into an MO2 bloodbath - but the world will have serious risks, especially in the mid-wilds around settling nodes.
It’s possible that the community has a solid blend of white hats protecting their nodes. But again, testing will tell.
That is very true. And I do hope that a ton of PvE guilds will provide safe haven for all the pvp-dislikers out there. But it'll be on those players to find and join such guilds, instead of complaining that in a game with owpvp they get hit and sometimes even killed.
Comments
How many multiples and the time it takes to earn enough xp to clear Corruption ramps up after a bunch of kills. Yes.
The urban dictionary definition, which is the definition attached to the Ashes wiki: “PvX refers to "player versus anything", meaning both PvE and PvP.[1]” It’s a rather vague term that can be applied to the large majority of mmorpgs. This is not my personal definition.
If they kept the penalties exactly the same, didn’t change anything at all in that regard, and only changed that you had to flag to non-combatant, putting a giant sign on you that says “I’m probably not going to fight back, enjoy your corruption” further disincentivizing someone to attack you, what has really changed?
What I can see that changed is: 1. you have a system where people like you who do not want to PvP unless you’re in the mood get an indicator telling people like me who want to fight people but not people that don’t want to fight, that “hey, I don’t want to fight, go away, kill me at your own detriment”. 2. You have a system where PvE players who don’t really want to fight, and PvP players who don’t want to run around tagging everyone to stay flagged, but also don’t really want what are currently “normal” penalties if they die to a mob can roll the dice on if they’ll be attacked for the “lesser” penalties. 3.The will they or won’t they mystery being somewhat removed and 4. You couldn’t call non-combatant penalties “normal” anymore. It would now be 50% “more” penalties, but once again exactly the same penalties that are currently listed.
From my point of view a system like that protects players like you more than the current one, with the added benefit of all players, PvE and PvP oriented having a lower baseline of resources lost.
*edit* I’m going to add another angle to what I said that maintains more of the status quo. Instead of making combatant the baseline how I said earlier in this post, is there a problem with just letting people manually flag as combatants instead of needing to attack someone to flag? Non-combatants still get to have the title of “normal” death penalties, and players who are willing to put a big sign on them saying “attack me I’m probably gonna fight back, and you won’t get corruption” get rewarded with 50% reduced penalties. Now there’s even less of a difference.
Someone, in a thread somewhere (maybe this one idr), said something along the lines of ‘instead of reporting a bot and it just getting banned, turn it into something bounty hunters can hunt down’ (paraphrased).
I thought that could be an interesting take on it, where you report the bot, and once they confirm instead of insta banning they turn red, and now players and bounty hunters can go hunt down the bot and claim their gear and resources at a 4x penalty. Can set up a script to insta ban once they die.
I thought it was a novel idea. That relies on AoC having and maintaining a solid, consistent force of in game moderators though.
How is a gatherer not being able to level up their gathering experience or gather mats for money, because of a bunch of bots, not affecting their playstyle? It is harshly affecting their playstyle and giving them a negative experience. Even when it's not over a node and they're just lowering the price of mats it's affecting their playstyle. Look at Lost Ark where there are hundreds of thousands of bots, you really are trying to tell me that isn't making people quit the game?
Not in the context of AoC. Flagging as Combatant is for people who want to engage in sustained open world PvP. It says "Here I am, come and fight me". Killing a non-combatant once or twice while defending a good grind spot or saying "This is my farming route, get lost kid!" is the whole reason why it's even allowed in the first place. If that's not your style, then AoC is not the game for you. Steven has made that very clear. That's the "friendly competition" aspect of AoC. It's nothing personal, but if you can't adequately defend it, it's not yours.
Corruption is meant to deter people from simply hunting down and repetitively killing non-combatants just for the LoLz (griefing)
In Ashes, in order to indicate you welcome friendly competition, you flag as Combatant by attacking another player. Everyone agrees to reward those involved with half death penalties and no Corruption so that all involved can have some friendly fun. Everyone got a chance to do what they like to do.
You indicate you do not welcome friendly competition by not flagging as Combatant and punishing your killer with Corruption and 4x the death penalties.
Also... I dunno what you mean by "If that's not your style." I'm fine with giving Corruption to people who kill me once or twice. As long as the Corruption is harsh enough that it pretty much always stops at twice. They forced me to participate in an activity I'm not in the mood for (PvP combat) so I punish them with Corruption.
Friendly is when I indicate, "Hey, I'm not in the mood for that right now" and other people respect that by leaving me be.
Punishing someone with Corruption and 4x the death penalty is not what I call friendly.
But, maybe we have different concepts of what friendly entails.
I don't play Lost Ark, nor would I.
So...maybe that's something that only happens in games that already suck.
I honestly have no idea what MMOs you've been playing then.
Just the fact that the world will constantly be influx means botters won’t have a regularly defined route. Vein gatherables are said to appear in some places and then maybe never again. Herds will travel.
Doesn’t sound like they have a gatherable node respawn system dynamic enough to make botting impossible but it’ll probably be a lot more work than normal.
More work, less botters, less need to worry about regularly murdering those bots messing up the economy.
$15 deterring bots? You're so innocent haha, New World has a $40 box price and that didn't prevent hoards of bots. It's true that there's some dynamic spawns in the world, but that won't matter as long as the bots are going to the same areas. It's not like they've said trees will spawn in random locations, or fishing spots change. You'll just have a bot auto-farming mats all day, who cares if you're not getting the rarest spawns?
The main defense against bots seems to be GMs they have planned. I just hope they're not overloaded with work.
It certainly helps vs any f2p game out there. Just saying when you add that, GMs, dynamic world not just spawns, it being harder to move large quantities of mats from one place to the next, no global auction house to sell the mats as gold easier, death penalties for when your brain dead bot accidentally aggros a mob, the players that do go corrupt on the bot, and probably other details I’m missing, it’s adds up to a bot unfriendly experience.
It’ll happen, no doubt, I just think there’s a solid chance that it won’t be as profitable of a game for botters as a lot of others just from the shear amount of work that would go into it, so therefore not as many as some other games that have it really bad.
Maybe they can include a court where you go plead your corruption away in front of a council of GMs. “I plead not guilty your honor! A bot is not a player so I player killed no one! “ *acquitted of all charges*
It won't eliminate more sophisticated bots that work on vision, but those are far more rare and are incredibly hard to distinguish from actual players. Honestly if these are the only ones left, that would be fine...at least until they become more accessible to the average botter.
As I already said, your denotation of a label is irrelevant.
What matters is Steven's design philosphy and how Steven uses lables to explain his design philosphy.
1: If Combatant is the default AND the Combatant death penalties are standard - such that you can remain flagged as Combatant indefinetly and people have to opt out of being a Combatant by flagging as a Non-Combatant - that means that Non-Combatants receive double the standard death penalties. They are being punished for not particpating in PvP.
People who don't enjoy PvP are not going to play a game where PvP is the deafult and they are punished with double the standard death penalties for choosing to not participate in PvP.
2: A game were most players are flagged as Combatant by default is a PvP-focused game.
And Steven does not want Ashes to be a PvP focused game. If you want to tag everyone in order to try to stay flagged as Combatant, you can do so. Just as you could run around with no armor and weapons equipped.
But, that's not the way Ashes is intended to be played.
3: Will they or won't they is part of the risk v reward dynamic Steven wants as the foundation of Ashes.
4: Again. If the Combatant death penalties are normal. And Non-Combatants re punished with 2x the normal death penalties for not flagging as a Combatant...people who don't like PvP are not going to play that game.
Even if players were Combatants by default, they would still kill Non-Combatants at the same rate they will with Steven's design. If Non-Combatants can be attacked, they will be killed for the same reasons in both scenarios. A Non-Combatatant refusing to fight back is a big enough sign that the player is not interested in PvP combat. PKers will ignore that refusal at the same rate they will in the opt out scenario because PKers are going to kill the Non-Combatants in any case. They still won't care that the player doen't want to PvP.
So, again, the difference will be that Non-Combatants receive double the standard death penalty.
And PvErs are not going to play a game where PvP is the default and they receive double the standard death penalty for not flagging as Combatant.
There is no incentive for them to play the game. It's a lose/lose scenario.
In order to get players who don't like PvP to play on the same servers as players who love PvP, you make Non-Combatant the default and the death penalties for Non-Combatant the default. Then Non-Combatants are not punished for not particpating in PvP.
And Combatants are rewarded for flagging as Combatants.
Most players spend most of the time not flagged for PvP. Which means it's not a PvP-focused game.
It's difficult to draw the line of griefing in a PvX game
I suppose it's also good to talk about potential exploits or ways to use and abuse the corruption system ahead of Alpha Two
You did misrepresent it.
You said you may start to feel the effects of corruption after 10 damn kills - your words.
This is a misrepresentation of what was said. If you have 10 PK count, you may start to feel the effects of corruption after 1 kill.
Assuming you understood the PK mechanic, that is blatant misrepresentation.
This means that on the lower PK counts, the stat dampening effects are either miniscule or just insignificant. Which was my entire point. I didn't misrepresent anything. I was just pointing out that they haven't tested it, hence the vague language. But even before testing, Steven's stance is "PKing is meant to be fun in limited amounts, which is why your first few kills won't influence your pvp power that much".
I remember Noaani and I got into this debate a year or so ago. I was calling it a very pvp focused game, which I still know to be true, based on current design concepts.
But then I found a direct quote from Steven calling it a pvx focused game. I posted it and acknowledged that that kind of settles it, it's a pvx focused game. It didn't change my mind on anything, but the label was there in the quote.
So how does the argument keep coming up? Because by default, most of the games we think of in our mind are very obviously games with a strong pve focus. We know near universally that a game is going to have pve. One of the main questions many people have when learning about a new mmo is will there even be pvp at all. If there is, will it be relegated to some instanced battleground or arena? Is there an opt in system? Because that pretty much means near zero pvp.
So it really doesn't take much in the way of pvp content for the collective gaming community to think of a game as a pvp focused game, even if its developer calls it a pve or pvx game. Certainly a 50/50 split between pvp/pve content will have large swathes of the gaming community saying yeah, "pvp game." Even a 70pve/30pvp split, if you can't opt out of pvp, many people are going to be like, yep pvp game.
Pvpers have to deal with pve in nearly every game we play. In many games, pvers don't have to pvp at all. That imbalance causes people to label a game a pvp game if it even begins to approach levels of suitable pvp content.
In the case of Ashes, you can judge for yourself. But it is a pvx game with the goal of blending pve and pvp together.
Prepare accordingly.
Shadowbane tried to be all "Play to Crush" but that game folded in just a few years.
In most MMORPGs, PvE servers have the highest populations compared to PvP servers.
I like PvP sometimes, so I would typically start on PvP-Optional servers to play on the same world with friends who are PvP fans - but always eventually rage-quit to play on PvE-only servers.
EQNext and Ashes are trying to get everyone to play on one server. Even though people who play on PvE-Only servers don't really believe that is possible. We're trusting that the people who played Lineage II with Karma when they say Corruption should make PKing rare enough that we'll be comfortable playing with PvP-focused players on the same server.
Steven wants large scale PvP combat to be fun. He hopes to entice PvP-Only players to dabble in PvP at least some of the time. Which is why he rewards people who flag as Combatant, rather than punishing players who won't.
Half death penalties for choosing to play as a Combatant when you're attacked in the hunting grounds.
No death penalties and no Corruption when auto-flagged for Events, like Caravans and Sieges.
Words and labels are just symbols to try to make communication easier.
Steven uses PvX as a quick and easy way to say he wants PvE-centric players to feel comfrtble playing on the same servers as PvP-centric players.
Ashes is not catering to PvE-Focused players and also not catering to PvP-focused players.
Rather, Ashes strives to support both those playstyles while disincentivizing killing Non_Combatants.
I don't even know how one goes about determining 50/50 v 70/30, but yeah...
If I'm expected to spend 50% of each game session engaged in PvP combat, I'm not playing that game.
I'm willing to spend about 12% of each game session engaged in PvP combat. And, when I reach that 12%, that pretty much needs to be the end of it.
By PvX, Steven is saying that Corruption will be enough of a PK deterent that I should be able to keep PVP engagement around 12% if I want to. And there are ways to keep it between 2-5% if I want to.
There's also ways for people to focus on PvP for 88-98% of the time.
And there's even ways for people to PK sometimes, if they don't care about Corruption.
A key aspect of PvX is that all servers are the same - no separate PvP or PvE servers.
To accomplish that - if you want people who prefer playing on PvE only servers to play the game, you're going to have to do something to entice them. Especially if they can always be attcked by other players.
I suppose New World might be considered PvX, but the label is irrelevant to me. All I need to know is that I can be permanently flagged to not be attacked by other players and not suffer any penalties for doing so.
Any game where it's likely I could spend 20+% of my game session in PvP combat is too PvP-centric for me.
I would call such a game PvP-centric or even PvP-focused - BUT - if challenged on my terms, I would acquiesce that it is too PvP-centric for me to play - even if objectively I'm not spending more time in PvP tha I am in PvE.
Again, the PvX label doesn't really matter other than as a shortcut for Steven to explain the design goal of enticing PvE-Only players to feel comfortable playing on the same servers with PvP fans and perhaps also at least dabble in some PvP some of the time.
The penalty for it is Corruption.
Just as a penalty for a foul in basketball is a free throw.
You won't be spending even close to 50% of your game session in PvP if you don't want to. Unprovoked open world PvP will only account for MAYBE 5-10% of your time. Most of the time you'll be running around minding your own business, doing quests, dungeons with PvE friends, etc. The only time you'll ever engage in PvP is if you just so happen to come across someone else farming your same route and they just so happen to want to fight you over it. My guess is most people will be perfectly happy grinding alongside you without any confrontation. And if you spend 15 minutes of a 3 hour play session dealing with some guy who was bothered by your presence, well that would account for ~8% of your time, which I imagine would be about expected for someone who wasn't otherwise looking to do any PvP. The possibility of PvP doesn't mean everyone is going to fight everyone over everything. It just means you have to keep an eye out and not be a dickhead to other players because they just might take a swing at you.
Now, someone who wants to spend 50% of their time doing PvP will likely be flagged as a combatant and they'll likely only be fighting other combatants because they don't want corruption. So you can rightfully ignore any combatants you see out in the world. The hardcore PvPers (>50%) will probably rush to endgame and then spend all their time doing sieges, castle wars, and bounty hunting...none of which affects you as a PvE player.
And when a pvp-disliking person gets to the same lvl of progress where the only thing they can do are those activities - they gonna come across a tooooon of pvpers, which, just as you said, would've been at that lvl of progress for quite some time so they'd most likely win most of pvps against the pvp-dislikers.
And there's a high chance that those pvpers would be wearing 3rd-4th sets of gear, so that if they get some corruption, they wouldn't ruin their main set. And they wouldn't care about some corruption here and there because they're probably playing a ton and can grind the XP debt back up (that is if they even die corrupted, which is not a 100% assurance). And depending on how Intrepid designs the PK count reduction methods, those PvPers might optimize the hell out of them and not care about their count at all, because they can reduce it back to low values somewhat easily.
So I'm really interested in hearing how people plan on avoiding pvp to such an extent that it's only <10% of their gameplay.
It’s possible that the community has a solid blend of white hats protecting their nodes. But again, testing will tell.
If they see a random player approaching their group, they'll assume it's a BH hunting their red player. They'll throw a few hits in his face (or use a ton of super weak abilities) to bring his HP bar down to mid-low decay stage and let the PKer finish him off w/o a problem (maybe even healing the PKer, if Intrepid allows it).
At this point the BH might bring some of their own guildies and it'll start a big ol' pvp war. That's fun and all, but the victim of that PKer can't go to that place now because there's a shitton of people killing everything that moves and most likely gathering stuff in the process.
Now that pvp-disliker doesn't have this particular content available to them. And depending on their progress lvl, they might not have any other worthwhile content to do, or they might only have the stuff they're not in the mood for.
I see it as a pyramid of progress. At the base of the pyramid you're at low lvl of your character progress (as are a lot of people around you). There's a shitton of stuff to do and barely any of it involves pvp. But the higher you progress, the less space there is and the more pvp-centered the content becomes. And after some time you can only level up in lvl 6 nodes, you can only gather super rare resources which are hunted by all the other people at the same lvl of progress (unless they allow us to gather anything at high artisan lvls, which imo would kinda ruin it for any new players), your quests would most likely involve higher lvled locations/mobs/bosses which all would be hunted by the high lvl pvpers.
All of that either involves direct pvp or has you dying to the numerous potential PKers who might not even have that high of a PK count, so their penalty is not even that high and BHs might not even get to them on time. At least that's how I see the game progressing. I might be completely wrong and Intrepid might be making the best PvX mmo out there, which, instead of siphoning its players towards soft friction, gives them ample space to coexist peacefully. Though I do recall Steven mentioning soft friction systems quite a bit in his interviews, so I'm not so sure Ashes is gonna be that kind of game.