Mule PKing

On yesterday's stream we learned that killing a player's controlled creature will give us lesser corruption value than what we would've gotten if we killed the player themselves.

Here's the clip for context
https://clips.twitch.tv/SteamyLivelyWaterMau5-VRVyw0WmCXdCvPoZ

And with that in mind I started to ask myself, why would that be the case, considering that the mule can carry x10 of the player's inventory and will most likely get utilized during prolonged farming sessions (be it artisan or mob-based one) or just to "safely" transfer mats between locations, instead of using a caravan.

This seems quite counterproductive to the principle of "risk vs reward" in the context of the corruption system. You murder a mule, you get less corruption than what you would've gotten were you to kill the owner BUT THEN you get x10 more loot than what you would've gotten off of the owner. If that ain't wack I don't know what is.

Steven previously mentioned that you can knock a player off a mount with CCs. And we now know that you can't use CCs against green players. This would imply that a player who's transferring mats by riding the mule should be safe from those CCs.

But then there's a problem of

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I would assume that mule speed is rather low, otherwise the caravan system would not be used because it'd be easier to just make a few trips on a mule rather than risking a caravan. And with that speed being low, attacking a mule while not mounted should be pretty easy (especially for a ranged character). Which means that you can PK the mount directly, have your partymates completely loot it (potentially 5 players'-worth of stuff) and just run off into the sunset, while you have less corruption to work off than if you'd killed the rider.

What is yall's opinion on this? To me this seems assbackwards. There's a chance that we just don't know some detail that solves this issue or this will just get changed during testing, but what is your opinion on is as it currently stands? Do you want it to get changed or do you think it's fair to get less corruption for much greater rewards?

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It's good points but they all mainly address the victim's side of the equation, while I was more concentrated on the attacker's one. Especially the Xvs1 situations.

Usually you'd either run away from a group of attackers or hang corruption on one of them in hopes of them getting punished (with fighting back only being a valid choice if you had smth valuable). But, assuming that you can't just get on another faster mount while you have a sully stocked mule, in this situation your only real solution is to fight back, because even basic mats in big amounts are quite valuable. And to me this sounds like just the super forced type of pvp that a lot of people dislike.

Imo, considering the potential rewards, you either shouldn't be able to attack a mule-type mount until you kill the owner or the mule itself could give scaled corruption values depending on its capacity. To me this seems like a fairer "risk vs reward" equation than the current "pay a little price to get a huge prize".

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This would have to be a change to the bigger system

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https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Player_flagging

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@hzrdd you get the same portion of its inventory that you would from the owner. So a green mule will drop X amount of stuff and a purple mule will drop X/2. And obviously a red one would drop 4X.

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Oh, for sure. I mainly just want a better "risk vs reward" equation for this interaction. Definitely don't want to overprotect transportation of goods.

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The mule drops the same portion as the player. And the loot is in the mule's corpse, so I'm assuming that if no one loots it - you can just resurrect the mule after some time and all the loot will be still in it (though I'm not sure if we know either way).

And as for the corrupted interaction, like I said in the post, the loot would be picked up by the PKer's mates rather than the PK himself, so while the PKer will still suffer the death penalties, the amount of loot garnered from that single kill should far outweigh that penalty, especially considering that one death would probably be enough due to lower amounts of corruption.

And as you said, this will push people to be way more social, but it would also provide quite a lot of tedium to any solo gatherer that might've wanted to have a good gathering session. And we don't even know the values of our inventory capacity. Maybe you can only cut down 20 trees before maxing out your backpack. This would mean that you either have to use a mule to gather more or run to the nearest storage every few minutes, which is beyond being a chore it'd just be bad design imo.

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Not really though. As long as the mule holds even just a bit over the player's backpack capacity - I win out big time, because I get more resources than I would've gotten from the player himself, while also getting less corruption for doing so. And if the player fights back in hopes of avoid that loss - I stand to loot pretty much the same amount of resources as I would've from a green mule (well, that is if player's backpack is maxed and the mule has roughly the same amount of stuff).

My main worry here is more about the risk vs reward equation. Mules exist to carry more shit in them, yet they give you less corruption. I see that as the biggest PKing bait, while also being a huge detriment to any player who hasn't thought deeply about all of the consequences of having resources on his mule. And I feel like there's gonna be at quite a few of such people.

There's a chance that the "lower value of corruption" will be smth like 90 for the mule while it's 100 for the player, but at that point I just don't see why you'd have that distinction.

And just as a personal opinion, having a rule where you gotta kill the player before you can kill the mule would lead to a much more exhilarating risk-taking situation with a huge potential for reward. And this could then be a natural bait for PKing. You ride a super slow, but empty, mule instead of a fast mount in hope of fucking someone over with corruption. But the choice to go corrupt would be purely and truly just on the attacker, rather than have some other nefarious reason behind it, be it pve griefing or some other kind of player abuse to bait a PK.

That to me sounds like a great risk vs reward situation.

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While I get that sentiment, I'd definitely say that would be some bad design. Instead of proving a good reason to use a system, you're punishing players for not using it. And that's w/o even mentioning that caravan system is risky enough with it being a ffa pvp zone.

Why even have mules if they're there just to punish people into using caravans. It seems especially silly considering that there's already an example of an "encourage rather than punish" system in the game. That being the pvp system. You're encouraged to fight back and rewarded with lower death penalties in case you lose.

While here you have the caravan system, which is already risky, reinforced by the potential risks of your mule getting killed because it gives less corruption. And if you use neither of those systems, you have to spend a shitton of time to transfer your goods.

All while the punishments for the attackers are directly inverse. You lose pretty much nothing in a caravan attack (gear decay and potential loss of ladder progress is nothing compared to the potential rewards). You only gain a relatively small amount of corruption if you go directly for the mule, while getting up to x10 the player loot. And you get full corruption if you kill a player while only getting the smallest reward for it.

It's a weird inverse of risk system. Non-pvpers are encouraged to waste their time running around with only their backpack capacity to transfer goods, while pvpers are encouraged to attack the highest value targets. I didn't think about this interaction in-depth before, but now that I notice it, it is much much more lenient towards pvpers than I thought.

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I think this is the main point here though.

We have 2 scenarios. One is a mule standing next to a player who's gathering whatever resource. In the majority of cases it'd be pointless to attack the mule because you got no clue about its contents (unless you've been spying on this player for a long time).

The second one is a player riding a mule towards a node. The chances are, the mule has resources in it (otherwise why ride a mule, unless you're baiting the PK). And if the mule was utilized, it'd mean that it has at least more than a player's worth, because otherwise the player would've just used their own backpack instead.

You can now attack that mule and have your mates loot it, while you either run away as a Red or just let the rider kill you.

This type of activity could be done by a group of friends or guild/node-mates around well-known resource spots (a thick forest, a huge field with a ton of plants, a mine, etc). Pretty much the same as someone waiting for caravans to attack, but with mules, or most like just both/either.

This would work quite nicely under the assumption that it doesn't take an hour to fill up your backpack.

But if it does take an hour or more, then I'd ask why even have mules. Majority of people will have around 2-3h a day to play the game. If they're gatherers, they'd spend a bit of that time doing random shit or looking for a gathering spot and then they'll be gathering for around 1.5-2h, which would be right around their full backpack (depending on the resource, I'd assume). They then just run back to their node, put that shit up for sale or trade it to whoever and logoff.

In that kind of system the mules would most likely only get used to transfer several people's resources, if those people want to avoid using a caravan. At which point we get back to my first example - there's attackers waiting for such mules and are ready to attack them, except this time the mule is even juicier than in the first example because it has several backpacks-worth of resources in it.

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There, I described a situation where I'd consider it an issue. The issue being - the attackers barely risk anything while stand to get a huge reward.