PVP system thoughts

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Your suggestion wouldn't discourage, it would remove griefing of lowbies. It's good in that aspect, but it completely defeats the goal of "risk vs reward" in Ashes. You want to kill a lvl20 dude as a lvl50 dude, for whatever reason? You can in the current system, but in yours you'd have to level up a lowbie of your own.

Now, the chances are, people will do that either way, but your system doesn't stop lowbie alts from griefing other lowbies so it's not like you're solving this problem.

And as Dygz said, Corrupted players are pretty much loot piñatas, so that is not an issue either.

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That's already kinda the case because everyone can kill anyone from lvl1.

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Also the case. Green players drop a particular amount of gatherables and processed goods on death. And flagged people drop 50% of that amount on death.

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That's the case in a way. There'll be pvp seasons of different kinds, with some kind of rewards, so killing someone will give you "currency" that gets you that reward.

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As Depraved (and I before this) has already said, this would not solve the issue of lowbies dying. The only thing you would influence is the number of alts on the server. Those who really want to PK others will always find a way to do so, and, more often than not, do so in the least detrimental way for them.

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That issue is already solved by corruption. A single kill of a lowbie would throw you deep into corruption, at which point you'll have to die multiple times, you'll go back hours if not days of XP grinding, you might destroy whatever gear you have on your through decay (depending on a few variables), you'll lose some gear due to it just dropping - and even if you manage to not die as a deep Red, you'll have your stats slashed in pvp so you won't be able to keep killing for much longer.

Will a few lowbies on the server die at the hand of a high lvl player? Probably. Will a waaaaay bigger amount of them die at the hands of an alt of that high lvl player? Most definitely. The first one is not much of a problem and the second one is the intended gameplay (even if it does make those lowbies feel bad).

Now I could see account-wide corruption being a thing. Maybe if you go past some PK count value (which would be account-wide too), your future corruption begins to overflow onto your alts. This way you'd slash the number of PKs across the whole game. Any player that just PKs here and there can do the counter decreasing quest and be on their merry way, but anyone who wants to have a PKing alt would get fucked. Obviously this would have to be properly tested, but I think it might work.

@Azherae what does your designer brain think of this additional solution for hardcore PKers? Or do you consider PKing alts a non-issue and deem this suggestion to be pointless?

This is pointless relative to what Ashes wants.

(I try not to judge these systems outside of what the Devs or Head Designer says they want).

I would absolutely accept it myself, if Corruption on one character could affect your alts, but this would be unfair to people who make Alts specifically to 'roleplay as Corrupted'.

The question is if Intrepid is condoning that type of behaviour as a Character Choice.

If it is NOT something they want people to be doing generally ('just having Character A suffer the consequences and not Character B') then there is a case for making bleedover. But from the sounds of things Steven has said many times, he still really believes that the social stigma and other things will be enough.

(note that I cannot bring myself to agree with this because of my own experiences, but they're just anecdotal).

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So you want to prevent people from being free to attack anyone they want (with consequence) under the pretense of protecting lowbies, yet you're against direct in-system prevention of the same lowbies dying even more? That's a weird take.

It keeps coming up so I might as well since I'm in that mood today.

Note, @NiKr this is mostly for you and as I always always say about it, it does not work in Ashes (which is why I have no problem sharing it because I don't think Intrepid would ever use it and honestly I also don't care if they do).

Imo the correct way to do this is.

1. Combatant attacks Non-Combatant and does damage, a Gauge fills up relative to those two players only. The value of that Gauge applies a percentage reduction to any further damage the Non-Combatant takes, increasing as you get lower, but does NOT affect DoT in exactly the same way.
2. If Non-Combatant changes to Combatant, the Gauge is zeroed and the two can battle 'fairly'. This allows a player to treat an initial hit as a challenge not a panic moment. If Non-Combatant agrees to flag up and fight for the position, they can heal first. If Combatant is not okay with them healing first, they keep attacking.
3. Every time Non-Combatant heals themselves or is healed, the Gauge is reduced. You can run, stall, or negotiate, but that's it.
4. Combatant can continue all the way to killing Non-Combatant at which point the Gauge converts into Corruption. If anything ELSE kills the Non-Combatant, same deal. The Gauge increase is pretty exponential as health gets lower, mind you, so it's a LOT of potential Corruption to kill even one person. Multiply even higher for level gap situations.
5. After a certain period of TIME, the Gauge also becomes Corruption whether you kill the target or not. So just 'raw griefing' will eventually corrupt you, but pinging people probably doesn't give much.

There's a bunch of other stuff related to this Gauge and the Corruption in the system I have that makes it harder to steal bosses from people without a fairISH fight.

None of this is what Ashes wants, but when you notice that I kinda 'dismiss' other options, it's because I've ran some scenarios and I only put effort into thinking about stuff that has an effect that I personally consider better than the above.

This does not fit Ashes. There's no reason for anyone to care about it, but similarly, I don't care about Ashes' system and plan to just ignore it, other than the obvious unavoidable consequence of 'dying while Red' that I will just consider part of the game.

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Right, because that would fit with Ashes' goals better.

The game I am 'designing this for' is not intended to have the same type of player friction that Ashes does. It's meant to be more cooperative. So the idea would be that most people would think of fighting others as a natural part of the game, and the Gauge is there as a way of resetting the perspective.

"You hit me, but I'm not disadvantaged terribly, if you want a fair fight, gimme a minute."
"Nah I took you by surprise on purpose, if you just want to buff up before we even start, I'm not interested."
"Oh well then you're just gonna have to finish killing me but I'm not fighting you if I can't even buff first, if you want the spot, go Red for it."

(I'm still working out which Rogue skills give less Gauge on first attack in this system)

Without the damage reduction, it still works fine for Ashes MAYBE but I've never thought about it, and don't plan to. They will do their own thing.

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Oh no, note again...

If you 'bring a guy down to 1%' and have been annoying them so long that your Dv Gauge is up to like 1200, it's just going to turn into Corruption points ANYWAY in about... 10 minutes. It's in your best interest if you are willing to go red to JUST use a rotation meant to kill your opponent as quickly as possible with minimal Gauge gain.

The better you are at PvP, the LESS risky it is supposed to be to do this, RELATIVE to 'the sort of person who is just trying to win by getting advantage but isn't as skilled'.

Make Assassins Great Again.