Corruption system in relation to auto-flagging in open sea

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My post was going to be a bit longer but I think you didn't watch the full conversation between Dygz and Steven. EvE's PvP zones came up before the quote you are discussing. If Steven really intended to have this specific system before when Dygz was asking Steven about PvP there is almost no chance he wouldn't have clarified that 'Ashes will have zones like EvE' or noted one of the differences between Ashes and Archeage was the persistence of areas where you can always engage in PvP without penalty.

It's really obvious why Dygz asks these kinds of questions. I think Steven is an intelligent enough guy to understand that PvP 'always on war' zones would be relevant information to Dygz's question here. There are a lot of things about 'misunderstanding Steven' I feel are valid to assert against Dygz about his 1 to 1's with Steven. This is certainly not one of them.

Dygz had clear intentions in asking and vetting out Steven's perception of what qualifies as a murder box to Steven and EvE's zoning came up right before this part of your quote. Note that Steven did not consider EvE to be a murder box. But the fact that Dygz showed a pretty strong reaction relative to it would make it really weird to not have brought up and tried to walk Dygz through. After all Dygz expressed uncertainty, not rejection.

It was a clear part of the context of this conversation. It would have made sense from Steven's perspective to clarify to Dygz the PvP zone thing at this point in the conversation. So either Steven knew he was going to be making this change back then and was just trying to coax Dygz into not giving him a certain kind of press (which is a bad look imo)..... Or it changed after the fact (much more favorable look)....

"Your Bad Omen Feeling Intensifies."

We now seem to be 'well it's your mistake for not thinking the game might not be for you in the first place, and clearly the goal is to have some free for all areas, you could just not play in those'.

I see the implication here as 'but you should play anyway, it's not a big deal'.

But some PvE players, and at least the PvP players I know personally, have seen this in other games and it usually amounts to just the 'wolf and sheep' thing. Because in the end, some people prefer their danger and challenge to primarily come from PvE content.

And if you say 'the world is supposed to feel dangerous' but then go 'so we have increased the PvP content', those people have no recourse. AI plays fair, people don't, and I'm not talking about power gaps. If an AI starts to do something contrary to 'general reason' that is somehow annoying (not even necessarily effective), a PvE player complains, or flags it as a bug.

If a human starts to do something 'contrary to general reason' that is somehow annoying (again, not necessarily effective), the PvE player can't be sure it will or won't continue. Some people say 'just adapt', but the stronger option is just better because most PvP opponents are not fun.

The stronger option being the one chosen. "Just don't play". That's the core here. If you can't grasp why Dygz doesn't play on servers with autoflag PvP zones, one big potential reason is because games like that get more of a certain annoying type of player in their population .

My fighting game experience applies in this case only because it's the psychology of players that applies, not the mechanics. In those games if I get into a match where my opponent's entire goal is to annoy and negate any option I have, even if I win I lose so I stop fighting. I can 'leave altogether'. Some of those people will invite me back, sometimes I'll go back because I think their intention is 'Ok ok I'll stop'.

8 out of 10 times it isn't. They're so dedicated to just being annoying that they do this anyway.

So from my end, PvP heavy games aren't unappealing because of the threat of people killing me. They're unappealing because people are annoying , often instead of actually fighting. Ashes explicitly has no defenses against people being annoying in their owPvP as it is. To me, this would be a big deal. This may not apply to any of you talking now, but I know you know they exist.

The most appealing thing about a strongly designed PvX game for me was the idea that the 'person who plays just to annoy' would not even want to play. I feel like that's been eroded now, but I'm not sure, so I'll await the 'reassurances'. Corruption wasn't even going to resolve this in 1v1, and if I start fighting and start winning but then keep being pinged or 'harassed' by an opponent who now flees, every time I flag Combatant I have removed any chance they have corruption. I've looked into ArcheAge, and am doing so more and more from this. It's not the same as playing it, but it's certainly not showing up any good points so far.

I'm already thinking about how the 'attacking a ship in coastal waters from Open Sea' and 'moving in and out of open sea or neutral waters quickly' mechanics will work in Ashes (I expect they will be fine, but expectation isn't a strong factor around here at the moment)

tl;dr People suck and this change makes more of the worst people more willing to play this game.