PvP aspect and the likely effect to casual players

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How is it a PvX game if the non-combatant can treat a combatant as just another mob though? You can completely ignore the pvp part of the game by treating other players as just mobs with a bit better AI.
You had a caravan and it got attacked? Just monsters crossing the road decided to attack it. Your node got sieged? Literally the same as the dragon event, but with more "mobs".

Hell, it's even in-lore, because if a player goes red, he gains corruption, which is a thing that affects mobs too, so in a way any combatant players are just mobs that are sometimes cursed with corruption. Turns out that Ashes has been a PvE game all aloooong lol.

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PKing was somewhat rare there only because people fought back in, like, 80+% of the cases. That game was a pure PvX game because your main activity in the game was just grinding mobs. And the better the farming spot you were grinding - the more the chances of someone coming there to claim that spot for themselves. Which would lead to PvP, because you didn't want to give up the juicy farm or you didn't want to waste time to return to that spot again. So you have PvP in your PvE.

But there were some assholes that liked to run around as pure murderhobos and just PK newbies, and due to the low time-to-kill values it was very easy to make an alt that would just run around red w/o much trouble. And this is why Steven added the stat dampening, so that even if that same asshole tried to go on the same killing spree in Ashes - he physically wouldn't be able to after just a few kills.

But with that being the case, you could still PK a dude deep in a dungeon and remove that corruption quite quickly. The kill would be against an equally-leveled player so the amount of karma you'd get was quite small (unless you had a PK count in the dozens). And I personally hope that AoC's has a similar balance when it comes to the amount of corruption you get for an equal-lvl kill.
And imo having visible player lvls would help that very much. And it would help both sides. A PvPer wouldn't attack a newbie, because he doesn't want to go red, so the lower-leveled gatherers would be able to just gather in piece (unless there's other same-lvl PvPers around), while fights for high lvl farm spots or high lvl super rare resources would still allow for some limited PKing to occur w/o insanely high penalties.

But obviously, this kind of balancing would have to be tested a lot in alpha-betas.

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Which would make it a purely pve game then lol.

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Yes, exactly for the reasons I've described. We've yet to learn how much corruption we'll gain for killing a player of the same lvl. Or, we know that it's a "moderate" amount, but that obviously tells us nothing because we don't know what the upper and lower limits are.

And imo, a PvX game is one where PvP stands between you and your PvE goals. And depending on how harsh the corruption balance will be, AoC's place on the PvX spectrum could differ wildly - from almost completely PvE (on the off chance that some of the suggestions from this thread get implemented) to almost completely PvP (if the penalties are only super harsh for 5+ kills or newbie murders).

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We know about the resulting penalty, but not the period of time this penalty would be applied to us. There's been quotes of "it might take several deaths to clear it", but those could mean amounts of corruption after genocidal runs or newbie killings.

Here's another quote from Steven:
" 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. I don't want to give necessarily a number or curve for players to extrapolate prior to us having the ability to actually test these ideas and where those numbers are going to lie; but I would say what is the intent behind that dampening: The intent isn't to limit the fun of the player, the intent is to provide a give-and-take or a risk-versus-reward; and the risk of continuing down the road of accruing corruption is not only the loss of your gear and amplified death effects but also your ability to perform in that activity . – Steven Sharif"

Here he says that "you might" start feeling the harsher effects after 10 damn kills. And says that corruption penalties are not to "limit the fun of the player", which would imply 2 things: they obviously don't know precise value because 0 testing has been done and the corruption itself is as viable of an activity for players as caravans or sieges are.

Which leads me to believe that Steven's underlying design is way closer to L2's one than to what you think it'll be. But obviously, I might be completely wrong or after all the testing the casual crowd will just push for way harder punishments. Only the time will tell.

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Yeah, I know how the system works. I've played with this system for 12 years in Lineage 2.

And that quote is ripped out of bigger context. It's the 16th reference on the "Corruption" page of the wiki. And if you watch the interview, Steven says "if you kill one dude, you get a bit of corruption so the stat dampening is weak. If you go kill 10 dudes - you gonna feel it".

So yet again, Steven's base penalties are based on L2's system, until they won't be because people complain during testing.

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Btw, interesting point about that. I wonder if we get more XP from the same mobs if we have a ton of XP debt on us. in theory this should help casual players who might be dying often get back up quicker, but it could also help the super corrupted dudes to clear their debt quicker too, because they'd be punching above their lvl by a lot (that is if their gear allows them to kill those same high lvl mobs).

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Very true.

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Again, I'm talking about the time-to-cleanse values. In L2 it was maybe a few mobs of your lvl if you PKed an equally-lvld dude. The amount of karma gained with each new kill would grow, so if you had a PK count of 10, you would not only risk dropping gear (same as Ashes), but you'd also need to grind mobs for a few minutes.

And if you killed some dude who's 20 lvls below you, you'd need several deaths or 20-30 mins of grinding high lvl mobs (which would be almost impossible due to how farming spots in L2 were located).

And those time values will be tested in Ashes, because from the quote I posted it seems like right now those values are close to L2's, that is "you get small amount of corruption for a single kill w/o a PK count and you get way more corruption if you kill your 10th dude or a low lvl".
And right now this would mean that PKing a dude deep in a high lvl dungeon won't really impact your character all that much. You might even PK him a few more times and still manage to clear the corruption on the mobs in the dungeon (unless there's someone around to immediately kill you obviously). But the more you kill, the harder it'll be (as it should be).

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But did I not relay the same meaning? One kill = very little corruption, while a lot of kills = way more.

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No, those values only matter if you die as a corrupted player. Death is not the only way to remove corruption.
Which is why I'm hammering down the idea of time-to-cleanse values. If I have very little corruption on me after killing a dude deep in a farming dungeon - I'll just kill some mobs and clear the corruption. No other penalties apply. The death penalties don't matter if you don't die.

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And that's where our approaches towards this system differ the most. You look at it as a "death is the main and only way to remove corruption so only the increased death penalties matter", while I look at it from the angle of "grinding mobs is the main way to remove corruption so the time required to do that matters the most".
And I get a feeling that Steven is closer to me interpretation of the system, because he added the Bounty Hunter system to the game. If death was the only way to remove corruption, all reds would just die to the nearest mob and that'd be that. There'd be no point in having a BH system that relies on there being several red players in the world for a prolonged period of time.

But if you look at the system with mob grinding in mind, then it makes complete sense. You go red for whatever reason, you now need to remove your corruption by killing mobs (because you wanna avoid the harsh death penalties) so you spend way more time, running around as red, as you would if your only choice was death. And now the BHs have the time to try and catch you.

I'd personally prefer an additional "afterglow" period of time for BHs (mb 20-30 min), where even after the red player removed their corruption (through whatever means), the BHs would still have a bounty on his head and would be able to kill that player for free (and the ex-red player wouldn't flag against BHs, so their death penalty would be the default one instead of 1/2). But the bounty would go away after the first BH claims it.

This way the red players would still get some punishment for the murder, the corruption amount for singular kills could still be somewhat low and grindoffable, the BHs would be highly motivated to participate in the system and would have way more targets to hit. Hell, make the resources involved in the killing of the first victim traceable and if the BH loots them from the PKer, they should get even more in-system rewards for returning those resources to the victim. This would promote more community-based relations and would make casuals feel much better about the situation. An absolute win across the player spectrum board.

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But they are though https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Player_death