We have not received permission from Noaani to share the quoted post.
Imo this would have to be designed in a convoluted as hell way, to account for all the potential interactions, and it would also change the player behavior overall.
As for the convoluted part, there's multiple questions about how exactly the GAC is calculated
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is it on each attack?
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is it within a time window?
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is it based on variating distance between players (i.e. attacker puts a ton of distance between them and the victim, at which point the game's system no longer sees this as a "single interaction" and creates a new count if an attack happens)?
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what about dmg done?
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what about dots (in case they're not seen as a debuff)?
And those are just the ones that came to my mind right now. I'm sure there's at least a few more to be answered and considered.
You told Flanker that you don't want the 'green hp is invisible, others are visible" cause it's convoluted, but imo this system would be way more convoluted.
And if your answer to those questions is just "every single hit/ability used gives +1 count" (dots would be a single ability here) - then we come to the change of player behavior I mentioned.
This kind of design would obviously achieve your personal goal of "you only attack a green if you're going to PK them", but this flagging system is designed with a "throw a glove into their face" challenge in mind. Every person is in a "quantum" state of pvp. They can always be killed, but you only learn if they're a pvper once you start attacking, collapsing the function by doing so.
Gaining a corruption multiplier for each hit against a person would mean that you cannot collapse that function w/o making things way worse for you in the long run. This would then require softer balancing on corruption gain per kill and costs of the count reduction methods, cause otherwise you'd be removing the danger of being attacked in the open world.
And even then, if each hit gives you a GAC and the ttk takes several hits (let alone a situation where the victim can heal itself) - the multiplier would need to be something like x1.1 and going up by 1/10s per hit, otherwise you're reducing the amount of PKing ever further.
And any other design brings us back to convolution of the system, as opposed to the simplicity of "you got corrupted from a kill - that's 1 PKC".
We have not received permission from Noaani to share the quoted post.
I feel like you're oversimplifying the design differences here. You said that AA had enough content for people to not really contest it too much, right? This means that reasons to attack even just your enemy faction would already be fewer in number.
Iirc AA's "corruption" system only applied to within-faction attacks, right? So any potential player who COULD PK someone in the way we're discussing here, would need to find a location that was only filled with factionmates, not have enough content in that location for himself, AND not care enough about his rep within his faction (while PKing someone or trying to remove them from a location in L2 didn't really impact your rep with other players, cause it was seen as a normal part of the game). And from what I've understood of AA from your explanations, this kind of situation was well-nigh impossible.
In other words, both game design and social pressure made it so that the kind of actions we're discussing would've been insanely rare in AA, while they were fairly normal for the same reason (except with an abscence of social pressure of course).
We have not received permission from Chaliux to share the quoted post.
Your suggestions in this paragraph have big consequences for other things in the game.
Creating a full pvp zone around a boss immediately means that zergs go unpunished.
Randomizing gatherables spawn locations means that the caravan/market system needs to get a rebalancing. And this also makes the life of gatherers way harder, because instead of knowing where to go and building your business around that knowledge, they'd have to wonder around aimlessly hoping to find something valuable. And with a limited amount of professions per character, it's not like you could just take all the gatherer professions and just pick up everything of value you see (and this doesn't even take into the account the bag system).
Other games use pvp toggles or different server types because they're completely separating their playerbases into 2 groups. Steven doesn't want to do that, because such a split is artificial.
And considering the fact that all those other games have to have a full system-protection for their pvers - I'd imagine that there's nothing "fair" about the pvp side of things. Otherwise those pvers wouldn't need such a strong protection. Ashes will also have a protection in the form of the corruption system, but it's a softer one, which allows people to decide on the spot whether they want to pvp at that moment or not. Because even pvpers want to chill sometimes, but they also don't want to lose their ability to defend their farm if someone comes to contest it.
We have not received permission from Chaliux to share the quoted post.
You are still thinking about it in WoW pvp terms. The whole point of this discussion has been "people who attack others TRYING TO AVOID BECOMING A PKer". Yet you ask how does invisible hp help a non-combatant in the case where the attacker is completely fine becoming a PKer.
The advantage to the green player here is that the hidden rogue would NOT know how much hp the green player has. So if that rogue was trying to avoid becoming corrupted (and he's trying to avoid it cause corruption is bad for you, due to the penalties related to it) - invisible hp of a victim that's been in a fight means a much higher risk for the rogue to become Red.
And this higher risk for the attacker would then decrease the risk of being PKed for the green player. That is the advantage of the system.
As for building up a gauge of attacks on the greens, at the end of which you gain corruption - the result would be really similar to what I explained to Noaani above, so you can just refer to that. The behavior would change too much from what Intrepid is going for. And I know that you dislike what they're going for, but I've already spoken with you about that before.
We have not received permission from Noaani to share the quoted post.
Just to reiterate what I said above, the goal of arguing for invisible hp is to decrease the amount of green player PKings that go unpunished.
Your suggestion decreases the amount of attacks on green players.
Your suggestion would just umbrella our goal, but would also influence other interactions as well. So these two suggested mechanics do not achieve the exact same goal.
We have not received permission from Chaliux to share the quoted post.
To you and some others, but not to everyone, nor is it a problem for Intrepid, cause, as I've said before, if it was a problem for Steven - he wouldn't have taken that part of the design from L2.
We have not received permission from Chaliux to share the quoted post.
They arleady exist, and I'm sure some people will use them for this purpose.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Duels
But duels are not pvx. They're purely pvp. They also will do nothing to remove a player from the premises. If anything, when the weaker player loses - they'll stay in the same place on purpose and will never flag up, because they'd know they'll lose. So the stronger player would need to go corrupt.
But what happens when the stronger player was the one who was farming the location in the first place? Instead of having a full fight that would've removed the other player from the location, which would defend the farming spot - the stronger player now has to go corrupt to achieve the same thing. And I know that you dislike the notion of "competing over content", but that is what this game is about, so, no, they cannot just share with each other while dancing under a rainbow amidst the sunflowers.
And if you're fine with the duel fully killing a player - I dunno how many others would support your position there. I'd be personally more than fine with that, cause I'd never use a duel or accept one, but I really dunno about others.
We have not received permission from Chaliux to share the quoted post.
You are still thinking in the binarity of WoW's pvp/pve servers or of toggleable pvp.
In this kind of system any green player can be a pvper whenever they want. That's their freedom of choice at any given moment, instead of only at the server choice or in town at an npc that flips the switch.
And those greens that DO want to pvp in that moment - will simply fight back. And not only that, but they'd now have the advantage of the first CC, because they themselves couldn't be CCed when they were green. And this is the fairness of this system. The initial attacker might've chunked your hp a bit, but you can now use a CC against him and turn the battle around.
We have not received permission from Chaliux to share the quoted post.
Except attacking other players was not an issue in L2, nor was it griefing. It was a normal occurrence in a competition for limited content/reward.
And Steven kept this competition for Ashes, because he likes this design.
If anything, those of us who want invisible hp are the exact people trying to minimize the amount of griefers in the game. That's exactly WHY we're asking for invisible hp. Because we know that whatever the amount of griefers that L2 had - Ashes will have more due to visible hp.
We have not received permission from Chaliux to share the quoted post.
And you should treat Ashes just as you would those WoW pvp servers, except here you have even more choice, because you choose the time when you want to pvp, instead of simply choosing a server and submitting yourself to constant attacks by the enemy w/o any rest.
We have not received permission from Chaliux to share the quoted post.
The reward for any green player is the content of the game. The risk for that player is the ability of others to kill him for said content.
The green player has a lower risk, because the corruption system limits the amount of people willing to kill the green player. A purple (and let alone a red) player will have way more risk because anyone else is free to kill him w/o penalties (though killing a purple does raise the risk of the killer as well).
That is the risk/reward equation of this system.
We have not received permission from Chaliux to share the quoted post.
But the situation you described here will exist within the flagging system of Ashes. Someone will flag up on another player, because they want to compete for the content, and that other player will just fight back and they'll both have a fair pvp.
And both of these players will have made a conscious choice to participate in pvp right at that moment.
But where you're wrong is saying that nothing else is competition. The entire game is competitive, because it'll have limited resources, limited open world content and waaay more players trying to get those resources and participate in that content. There's an inherent competition imbedded into the design.
So far, the only non-competitive thing is the instanced story content, because Steven wants everyone to experience it. Everything else will be fought over in one way or the other.
We have not received permission from Chaliux to share the quoted post.
The example you gave is not an example of meaningful pvp. I do believe all L2 players would agree with that.
A meaningful PK there would be if Kevin killed you because he wanted to fish in that location. And that PK would've become a meaningful pvp if Jason fought back, because he neither wanted to lose the fish he had already caught, nor the spot itself, because the fish was highly valuable and he wanted to fish there for longer.
And our suggestion of invisible hp would help punish Kevin for being a dick and just attacking a random person for no real reason. Maybe Jason was only wearing the fisherman gear and had super low defense and hp. Kevin would hit him once and do half hp dmg, but wouldn't know that. Then he'd hit Jason again and kill him, making himself Red.
Now Kevin is hunted by BHs and/or by other people in the vicinity cause Jason shouted in chat "there's a PKer by the pond named Kevin". Kevin gets killed, suffers high corruption death penalties and potentially loses some gear. Now he'll think twice before mindlessly attacking others.
If he does decide to repeat this bs, Jason can just shout in chat about him again, and any pvper in the area would gladly come there and have a fun time killing Kevin-the-dick. If Kevin doesn't stop with his bs even after that - he gains bad rep with guilds and node communities. And he might even become a KOS target for Jason's guild, if Jason is in one (this is also the reason why I kept pushing for people to join guilds in our other discussion).
Imo, this is how a social mmo with deeper player interactions works. This is how L2 worked and it was great. People would always come to each other's help against dicks like Kevin.
We have not received permission from Chaliux to share the quoted post.
Ah, funny how pvp-toggle/server games also need workarounds for their pvp designs. Seems that systems like that are also in no way perfect.
This is exactly why I'd rather have a system like the current one. Yes, it will need the workarounds too, but it'll have a broader spectrum of player interactions than just "pvers can't be touched, while pvpers can be slaughtered with no penalties".
We have not received permission from Chaliux to share the quoted post.
The other player does have a choice. He can fight back and potentially win, or he can put high penalties on his attacker, which will punish said attacker for killing this player.
And this choice can be made at any point in the game instead of only at login or in town.
We have not received permission from Chaliux to share the quoted post.
It's real funny to me that you keep saying "mature and adult design", while suggesting utter coddling of poor pvers who cannot be touched by any means, or they'll get upset and leave. Really doesn't sound all that mature to me.
I don't need a Big Brother to defend me from spooky attackers. I need a choice to be able to do it on my own or to punish my attacker in a bigger way.
There's also now fairness or maturity in a toggleable/server pvp system, because zergs will always abuse those systems to their own benefit. They'll be slaughtering anyone who's not with them, all the while not suffering a single penalty for doing so. They'll dominate a region (if not a server) and no one will ever even try toggling on pvp.
Such systems are the exact reason why all the wow-like players are scared shitless of pvp. Because the only design they're used to is them being assblasted by way stronger foes, while those foes not only do not get punished but even get rewarded and celebrated for having genocided their enemies.
That is neither good nor a mature design. It's a "big bully in a sandbox" design. They can stomp your sandcastle all the want and you can't do shit about it, except leave (as all the wow players did by either switching to the bigger faction on the server or by going to a pve server completely).
