Corruption system in relation to auto-flagging in open sea

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But we're still talking about the generality of 'pirates vs explorers/fishermen' technically.

And for those people, having to have more ships cuts into their profits (or if they lose them all, into their gaming time).

This is why I'm fine if the Open Sea is just 'useless', personally. Some trophy fish no one really needs, some strong but not interesting enemies, nothing of value to explore?

No longer matters if auto-flagging happens or not. But otherwise, explorers will probably 'get on someone's boat', possibly even paying someone with a good boat, then when a PvP crew spots that boat and goes to take it out, they arrive and find... players with no intention of a battle, who will then not even be worth killing/sinking.

But at least then, if the Ocean were 'useless', they would not need to 'worry' about it. In the standard system, you couldn't know that those 'explorers' weren't really 'people who had found cool content that they were on their way to'. You'd have to follow them, etc, using up all your PvP time just to 'make sure' they didn't get something before you if the Ocean had good stuff in it.

In the current proposed system, just sink them for being there and solve the problem.

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Ah sorry, I think I was misleading.

I also find this decision confusing and suspicious from the perspective of certain goals of game design that I consider positive/logical.

My point was that such a perception is subjective. Steven is a big fan of ArcheAge, and could just be trying to make an experience similar to the one in the link provided, and internal discussion led to the conclusion that this was the way to achieve it most often.

Or it could just be, as the many supporters of it imply, 'just okay for the lore', and then maybe it's a contradiction to the Corruption System's implied purpose, but not really to 'Risk vs Reward' because you have to look at those terms from Steven's perspective, which, if you research ArcheAge, might start to seem a little different.

tl;dr if Steven wants to re-experience the feelings from ArcheAge and wants others who play the game to have those same feelings, this decision makes sense even without testing, because Corruption was never meant to protect from PvP anyway, it's just a stopgap, so we should probably be expecting that any situation where Corruption CAN be 'reasonably removed' in future, it will be.

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But for some people, the penalties for Corruption would have been enough to make it so that they don't just treat every ship they see as content.

If this wasn't true, then we're back to 'Corruption doesn't technically work'. But this might also be an incorrect perception based on what 'work' means.

I would have assumed Corruption must be powerful enough that Aggressive Players do not immediately view all Passive Players as content/potential rewards. It would then have to be the same on the ocean.

I don't assume that anymore, basically. If Corruption isn't even intended to be powerful enough that I don't view Passive Players as people I should leave alone, there's no point in having it in the open sea at all, it would just encourage those players to go out there expecting to be protected by the system and then not, because the player groups out there are different.

This could even be practically a signal to those players 'Hey this is the actual PvP area, you may want to stay out of it'.

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And my point is that I think Steven does NOT want that.

I think Steven doesn't even want that on LAND.

Which is why the Corruption system is so much more functionally lenient than it could be and will require testing. But I've been thinking all this time that 'requires testing' meant 'how can I tweak this so that it makes people not want to go Red on a whim', when there's no basis for that. It could easily mean 'testing to see if they can remove it entirely', or 'testing to see which zones they can remove it from', or even 'testing to see what level of being ganked is the precise amount required for players to not leave or complain and start fighting back instead'.

Ashes needs losers.

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Ah, but does Steven like that layer?

Is it necessary to Ashes' design?

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Not entirely. This is the situation where it explicitly matters.

"If you are Green and have no chance, you might as well not fight."

On Land, this will prevent your opponent from maybe REPEATEDLY killing you AFTER the first time. Like, if I kill a player because I think they have loot today, and they don't fight back and die REALLY easily, I can just extort them the next day, or choose to help them, or any number of things. I probably got a lot of corruption too, so I don't want to kill them again if they're just in my space.

Difference is at sea, if I sink their ship, they're not necessarily coming back. And whatever they were out there for is gone, it's not just 'regular existence near my Node', for example. So Corruption isn't necessary. I wasn't going to kill them again anyway.

Corruption itself would still serve the purpose of 'protecting someone who just wants to exist from being killed daily because they're just a Mob that spawns with Loot, to me', without making them unable to play the game in my vicinity .

At sea, the INTENTION could be that 'weaker players are unable to play the game in my vicinity'. Even at Sea, why shoot back if you know you're so much more likely to lose? On Land you 'don't fight back' because you 'have no choice, you're just existing playing the game at all'. At Sea, the answer is 'don't go out there'.

That's why I would also expect to see more Corruption-free zones or situations popping up. Anything a player 'could reasonably avoid' could also 'just not have Corruption anymore'.

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The only reason I don't agree with you fully is that Coastal Waters actually ARE 'a place where a player might be just existing', and therefore the 'You can still play the game in the vicinity of stronger players' should still apply. Peaceful or less-leveled players who want to just be fishers or divers or such on a coastline.

It's easy to make the distinction between this and Open Seas, in my mind. So:

"Strong ship/crew in an area where weaker players are supposed to feel like they get to play the game is subject to Corruption."
"Strong ship/crew in an area where weaker players are not considered in the same way are not subject to Corruption."

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Ah, but it DOES tell the 'weaker' players very pointedly:

"You are not tall enough to ride, and we are not giving you any leverage over the strong, here."