Corruption

Corrupt troll concept.

Corruption in Ashes of Creation refers to:

• A great calamity that drove the original inhabitants from Verra (Lore).
• Player corruption gained through the PvP flagging system.

Corruption tarnishes the character’s spiritual essence. Their ability to utilize the Verra’s magic found within them is diminished. – Steven Sharif

A great calamity

Read more...

Player corruption

Corrupted player in the Alpha-1 preview.

When you gain that corruption you have the potential of losing your completed items, your weapon, your armor, stuff that is very difficult to achieve; and then the other aspect of that is, that in order to deter basically players taking alternate characters and saying this is my PK alt, the more players you kill, the more corruption you gain, the higher your combat efficacy in PVP diminishes. If you're out there and you killed 20 players... you will not be able to perform in PVP any longer. You will need to take that character and go work off that corruption. The other aspect of corruption is that if you kill another player, who is a non-combatant and the level disparity between you and that player is great, you will gain a higher amount of corruption from that single kill. To the point where you should not be killing a level one character. – Steven Sharif

If a combatant (purple) character, or their summon, kills a non-combatant (green) character, or any of their controlled entities, in Open-world PvP, they will be flagged as corrupted (red). Corruption gained for killing controlled entities is a lower value than killing players. Player corruption has been referred to as a status condition.

There is no incentive to go corrupt... There's zero incentive for a player to go red. It actually gives you negatives for doing that- very significant downsides. – Steven Sharif

• The goal of the corruption system is to keep risk alive while significantly curtailing or deterring the ability for players to grief other players.

It is my expectation that the system will perform very well in keeping risk alive, but significantly curtailing or deterring the ability for players to grief. – Steven Sharif

• A player's corruption score (corruption value) increases with each non-combatant player killed. Corruption score has a scaling impact on the efficacy of a character's skills in PvP combat. The higher the corruption score:
  • The more skill and stat dampening applies until the corrupt player ultimately becomes ineffective at combat. This dampening only affects PvP combat.

  The more corruption you gain, the less effective you become in PvP and there's going to be a certain period at which point you have gained enough corruption that you're going to be gearless and you're also going to have a massive reduction in your PvP efficacy. – Steven Sharif

  • The higher chance of dropping of carried raw materials and gear (Weapons and Armor) when the corrupted player dies.

  If you go on a murder spree and you have 10 pks under your belt then you might start feeling a significant dampening to your skill effects against other players. I don't want to give necessarily a number or curve for players to extrapolate prior to us having the ability to actually test these ideas and where those numbers are going to lie; but I would say what is the intent behind that dampening: The intent isn't to limit the fun of the player, the intent is to provide a give-and-take or a risk-versus-reward; and the risk of continuing down the road of accruing corruption is not only the loss of your gear and amplified death effects but also your ability to perform in that activity. – Steven Sharif

  • Corruption penalties occur as the corruption is gained.

Reward without risk is meaningless... Corruption is just another word for risk. – Steven Sharif

• The wider the level disparity between the players, and the higher the attacker's PK value, the more corruption they gain.

Corruption value from PK'ing a non-combatant is based on level disparity along with the PKer's cumulative PK value. – Steven Sharif

• Corrupt players suffer death penalties at four times the rate of a non-combatant.
  • Death penalties for corrupt players apply in every location, including naval PvP zones.

You can't necessarily time perfectly the damage or understand even the health of the player. Unless you were in their party you cannot see an opponent's health as well, so that's another component that adds risk.. – Steven Sharif

• Corrupted players remain corrupted when they enter naval PvP zones.

• Corrupted players can be attacked regardless of other affiliations. This is something that will be tested during Alpha-2.
  • If a non-combatant attacks a corrupt player, the non-combatant will not flag as a combatant.
  • Non-combatants who heal, buff, or otherwise assist combatants or corrupted players will be flagged as combatants.

• A corrupt player’s location is revealed to bounty hunters on their world map.

• Corrupted players may kill bounty hunters without acquiring additional corruption score.
  • Corrupted player's combat penalties do not apply when battling bounty hunters.

• Player to player trading, interacting with vendors or NPCs, and the ability to access storage is disabled for corrupted players.
  • Previously it was stated that corrupted players could not store items in public warehouses but could utilize private storage within their freehold.
  • Corrupted players will still be able to enter and leave their freehold buildings but may not deposit or withdraw items from storage.

• There is a 60 second timer to logout while corrupt. Force-disconnecting the client during the cooldown will leave the character in-game.

Q: Will there be any large-scale consequences when many players in a group guild region religion etc become corrupted frequently or for an extended period of time?

A: There are not group dynamics or mechanics that revolve around mass murdering people in the world. The corruption system is intended to deter mass murdering, not to provide incentives by which players can go out and gain corruption. – Steven Sharif

Q: If my guild has no one corrupted and your guild is like always killing people and always corrupted, will your guild have repercussions because they're corrupted versus my guild?

A: No I don't think so either. And the reason why is we want to deter it, but we don't want to make the system meaningless; and if the deterrent becomes too heavy-handed then it's a system without a purpose. And I think that the intent behind the corruption is that like during a rise in passion and like anger and whatever you want to make this decision and do something and you'll suffer the repercussions later. But if those repercussions are just overwhelmingly bad and even anti-social in the sense that like your guild is like hey man you went corrupted and this gives us like corruption points on the guild, and like you're out of here, then people just aren't going to choose to use it; and then at which point might as well just take it out. So I think there's a healthy balance between the type of deterrent used. – Steven Sharif

• Players do not lose gold upon death, no matter their corruption level.
• Player corruption is different to the corruption found in corrupted areas.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• Corruption has a visible effect on a player’s appearance.

Removing corruption

Cemetery concept art by Tad Ehrlich.

The primary means to remove corruption is through death. Multiple deaths may be necessary to remove all corruption.

• Dying removes a significant portion of a player's corruption score.
• Gaining experience will also slowly reduce a player's corruption score.

  Any experience that's gained by the player, whether it be through achievements in crafting, or in adventuring, or through other types of achievements: All of that experience goes towards your adventuring class experience gained; and then some experience can dual purpose towards professions as well. So if I reach an achievement in my crafting profession and that grants me additional experience within that profession to rank up, it will also grant the same amount of experience over in my adventuring level; and to that point, anytime you gain adventuring experience you tick away at the corruption. – Steven Sharif

• A quest may be utilized to reduce the player kill (PK) count of a corrupt player in order for them to accumulate less corruption score in the future.
  • This is a design shift from a religious quest being used to directly reduce the corruption score.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• Corruption duration is reduced in military nodes.

Read more...

Bounty hunter maps

Corrupted players with a high enough corruption score will be visible on the world and mini maps. These players will have markers posted on the map by an NPC from a Military node of at least stage 4 (Town), and will only be granted to players who have the Bounty hunter title. The accuracy of bounty hunter maps is determined by a player's progression in the bounty hunter system.

Taverns are one of the locations that bounties will be posted. As players gain corruption, taverns may offer bounties to eliminate those players; or have a specific area cleared of problem players, thus giving a POI (point of interest) on the world map.

Artwork

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

See also

• World PvP
• Player flagging
• Player death
• Lore