New Age of Conan patch on Testlive details PvP XP, gear, notoriety
by Adrian Bott 
Jul 22nd 2008 at 1:00PM
Filed under: Fantasy, Age of Conan, Patches, PvP
At last, the first portion of the promised PvP improvements are starting to appear over on Age of Conan. The Testlive server, where new patches are tested out prior to their going live, now has a new patch, and the developers have taken the opportunity to describe the basic elements of the new PvP system. These include PvP experience, gear, and player notoriety.It's very important to note that this is all currently in testing, and is not guaranteed to make it to live in its current form. With that in mind, we bring you details of the new PvP system after the cut, hot from the Testlive forums. It's not completely implemented yet, but does give an idea of where the AoC developers are going with this.
The notoriety system in brief: players apparently start out Innocent. If you attack an Innocent player, you are temporarily flagged as Criminal whether you kill him or not. (The Criminal flag vanishes after five minutes, so long as you don't do more naughty things.) If you kill an Innocent player, you gain Murder Points. If you kill a Criminal, you don't gain any Murder Points. Accumulating enough Murder Points makes you a murderer, which means guards will attack you on sight, you will be locked out of access to traders and vendors, and other players will get more rewards for killing you.
PVP Levels and XP
* There are 10 PVP levels.
* All players are worth 100 PvP XP when killed by a similar level player.
* When you die in PvP, you lose PvP XP. The amount you lose is static, regardless of the level of player who killed you.
* Losing PVP XP will not de-level you in PvP level.
* In order to prevent abuse of the system, there is a limit set on how many times one player can gain or lose PvP XP from another.
* You gain normal PVE XP when you are involved in a PVP kill. If you or your team get credit for a PVP kill, then you gain a certain amount of PVE experience from that kill. You get 10% of the XP from that player as though he were a monster of that level. You always get a minimum of 1 xp.
PVP Items
You can buy PVP items with normal money (there is no special currency for PVP). However, your PvP level will have to meet the requirements (if any) on any items you wish to use.
* Items are not tradeable
* Sold by PvP vendors
Notoriety System
A player is flagged in three different ways using this system: innocent, criminal, and murderer.
* Criminals and Murderers will have an icon showing their status.
* Innocent : No one can perform hostile actions on you without being flagged as a Criminal.
* Criminal : Performing a hostile action on an Innocent player will flag you as a Criminal for 5 minutes. Any further Criminal acts during the 5 minute time will refresh your Criminal Status.
* Attacking Criminal players and/or killing them will not flag you as Criminal.
* Killing Criminal Players will not cause you to gain murder points.
* Murderer : Players who have attacked and killed innocent players enough times to generate 100 or more points will be flagged as Murderers. Killing lower level players (outside your XP range) will result in a larger penalty towards the murderer limit.
* Murder score is capped at 1750 points.
* For every other real time hour that passes, your murder score is reduced by 1 point.
* If you die in PvP and lose PvP XP, you will receive a 3 point reduction to your total murder score.
* Killing mobs which yield XP will reduce your murder score at a rate of 1 point per 1% of a level worth of XP. Completing quests for XP will NOT contribute.
* Murderers cannot access traders or vendors.
* Guard NPCs will attack murderers on sight.
* Dying while flagged as a murderer results in the following: a. 100% increased loss of PvP XP for the murder b. 100% increased gain of PvP XP for the person killing the murderer c. 100% increased chance of dropping an item.
* Any players interacting with a Criminal or Murderer (that includes grouping with them or trading with them) will be flagged as a Criminal.
* If you group with a Criminal or Murderer, you will be flagged as a Criminal for as long as you are in the team, and 5 minutes after the team disbands (or the Criminal/Murderer leaves the team).
* Any team member performing a criminal act will flag the entire team in the vicinity as a criminal.
One curious aspect of the system that appears to contradict earlier versions: although murdering lower level Innocent players will get you increased murder points, it seems that players who attack and kill innocent players of the same level or higher will still gain murder points, pushing them towards murderer status.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Everrest said on 1:06PM 7-22-2008
Sounds like old UO. A pretty decent system IMO for a highly pvp oriented game.
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danarchy said on 1:12PM 7-22-2008
Anyone know if they have the "leveling vendors" on test live yet? I have been through too many test server wipes to want to level a toon there naturally.
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Ouzi said on 1:27PM 7-22-2008
yes they do, but im not 100% sure that you can actually do the pvp and stuff, as i think its a pve server, could look at the vendors though
Lethality said on 2:05PM 7-22-2008
So lets get this straight... they are just now testing out their ideas? The very ideas that were at the supposed core of the game that was released over 2 months ago?
I cannot believe people keep falling for the smoke and mirrors.
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Jubson said on 3:36PM 7-22-2008
Can't wait to see how much stuff this breaks...
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briannewton said on 2:46PM 7-22-2008
They are testing out publically the system that they came up with a month ago.
If you'd followed the original development of the game, their original PvP system was nothing like this. They basically just had PvP xp.
Late in beta they decided that wasn't enough and that it wouldn't handle ganking etc effectively. That's when they started talking about the whole prison system etc. They decided to not put in the PvP system at launch because it wasn't what they wanted.
So they watched players' behavior post launch, tweaked the system to become this one, tested it internally, and are now putting on the test server to be tested and tweaked by players.
Sure, it would have been ideal if they'd had this system tested in beta and released at launch, but oh well. I don't think they're being deceitful or derelict in their duties as developers when it comes to this.
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Hot$auce_Magik said on 3:10PM 7-22-2008
I like the system a lot, but i don't understand why you get punished for PvPing?
I love to pvp but if it ends up that i can't enter a city cause i killed too many other players, then what the hell is the point? The whole thing seems contradictory to me. Kill other players to level up in PvP, but also gets your murder status up, and eventually you can't enter a city without being KOS? (Did I miss something?)
I think a system like in EVE would work wonders, which is what I assume the noteriety thing is. Also player bounties and other such things are what really pulled me in, in EVE and I think would work well with a bit of tweaking here.
Tony said on 3:17PM 7-24-2008
It could be interesting if they eventually develop a system that allows only Murders to access certain things. Maybe a Murderer can't easily get into a "friendly" city, but there could be smaller villages/tribes of "evil" murderer NPCs that wouldn't attack you... etc.
Who knows, maybe that'd be too much incentive to kill others way below you. I'm sure they could find a way to balance that, though.
briannewton said on 3:29PM 7-22-2008
Yeah, we'll see how they tweak it, but I'm assuming the intention is to make it so casual PvPing will not turn you into a murderer. You will gain murder points every so often if you attack people who're near your level that haven't been engaged in PvP, but there's also a murderer point drain that happens over time and with gaining xp. I think their intention is to have that balance out for the casual PvPer.
Now if you wander around an area only fighting people who are not trying to PvP, all innocents, you might accrue some murder points. But it sounds like the fastest way to get points is each ganking the same person a billion times or killing people way lower level than you.
Also yes, I think they could easily add a player bounty system to this or a way to find people who have the murderer tag.
Keep in mind that anyone who's actively engaging in PvP will be a criminal. So if someone attacks you back, you're good to go. You'd have to purposely be killing people by surprise, then running away and finding someone else who hasn't been PvPing to kill them in order to gain a lot of murder points that way, and yeah, that should be discouraged.
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Jeromai said on 11:43PM 7-23-2008
PUGing on PvP servers is probably going to become a lot more "interesting." I can see people making a pasttime out of trying to fool the clueless into behaviors that will get them flagged Criminal, and then ganking them.
Good thing I play on a PvE server. Good luck to those on PvP ones, maybe you like this sort of thing, all power to ya.
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