Quick question, don't most of the hardcore PvP Games involve less in terms of combat items? (I'm not sure). I mean the couple I remember had like 8 max, compared to WoW that has 16 slots (Maybe more) and different sets for different things?
That could be just because the trend in all fantasy-style MMORPGs has been to add more equipment slots. Not really related to PVP. And anyway, how would you compare? For current "hardcore" PVP games (excluding EVE beacuse we're talking fantasy RPG), there's... uh... yeah. Lineage II? Not anything recent, and who knows what WAR and Conan will turn out like in terms of equipment.
HarshLanguage on
> turn on light Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
Please point out to me any equipment you'd be wearing in UO that took months to achieve like raid loot does in WoW. Or anything you killed in UO that took 40 players (fine, 25 now) and 5 hours of clearing the dungeon leading up to it in order to all perform a perfectly executed kill where one key player dying can ruin it for everyone.
It's not the same thing. At all. If WoW had fully open PvP or equipment loss, the game would suck. Period.
Geez man how do you even work out how to bring the spoon to your mouth in the morning when you eat breakfast or dinner.
Lossless PVP/PVE - All good and fine np, Everquest, WOW, DAOC. The game has to be designed around that kind of game philosophy and currently Blizzard has set the bar so high I can't see anyone catching up to them for years. Although I hold out hope that some game designer will surprise me.
You can't have fully open PVP in a game like WOW it's not designed for it.
Asset Loss/Gain PVP - Ultima Online, Project Visitor(One of the single best game designs in the history of gaming IMO and it's still around albeit in a watered down form), Eve Online.
To have Asset Loss/Gain PVP the entire game has to be designed around it. But it can be done and the games that are created with this game design philosophy freaken pwn.
I tried to read this post but I don't fucking understand it at all.
What is the formatting even supposed to mean?
edit: And why did you copy/paste and then bold parts of your shitty original post?
I want to get a few friends and ruin someones day.
I think this is the nut of it. I just... don't get it. There are people in WoW who seem to have this mentality; they're the people who get on their level 70 merciless-geared rogues and camp flight points in lowbie areas for two hours, killing everything they see. They must be enjoying it, because there's no other reason to do it, but it doesn't make sense to me.
And because that doesn't seem fun to me, I don't usually want to play games where it has serious consequences, because I'm going to be on the receiving end the entire time. I like PvP just fine, even objective oriented PvP (fleet/small group stuff in EVE), but random ganking doesn't do anything for me, which leads me to dislike games that incentivize it.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
I think the problem with how some of you are looking at 'griefing-style' pvp is that you haven't experienced it first hand, or didn't stick with a game that featured it due to a bad experience. The game has to be designed around it from the bottom up. In a game like WoW, losing things in PvP would suck because of the time investment required to achieve them.
In UO, you didn't spend months in a raid trying to get some epic or whatever, which made losing things more acceptable. In EVE you simply fly what you can afford to lose, as every ship has a role. Even the 750k frigate that you can buy 20 of after a day's worth of moneymaking is worthwhile in a group.
Risk/reward in pvp usually makes the game a hell of a lot more interesting, so long as it's made for it. Current popular MMOs are not.
e: also, pointless risk sucks. there has to be a positive aspect to it. FFXI's deleveling if you died fucking blew
Quoted for truth.
And to the poster talking about lag, UO was out back before Cable was even around, lag was a fact of life. Yes, you lag now sometimes, but invest in a good connection and aside from server side issues, you will be fine.
And because that doesn't seem fun to me, I don't usually want to play games where it has serious consequences, because I'm going to be on the receiving end the entire time. I like PvP just fine, even objective oriented PvP (fleet/small group stuff in EVE), but random ganking doesn't do anything for me, which leads me to dislike games that incentivize it.
Every game with PvP incentivizes, and even games without. It's about making people nerd rage. Reacting to it at all incentivizes it.
Some people don't need incentives to be dicks, though. Even when they're playing a game for, supposedly, fun. Those are the people I don't want to have to deal with.
HarshLanguage on
> turn on light Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
Also, Age of Connan looks AMAZING to say the least. If they manage to pull it off on the PvP servers, things could be a lot of fun. The game doesn't seem to be a UO style free loot from corpses game, but if they manage to make it worth killing enemys then we will see an amazing game.
We don't see 300 pound "real" football players joining peewee football so that they can smash the face in of a 100 pound 10 year old. But, yeah, that'd be some "real" football. Maybe one day Mike Tyson can wear a wig, stuff a sports bra, and join an open weight woman's boxing league, then we can label it "real" boxing. It's all fun and games until someone loses an ear.
Or... in actuality, real competition is based on skills of even near level peers. And maybethen fun can be had for everyone, instead of encouraging players to feed off eachother's misfortune. Ask yourself, why would the average person pay 15 bucks a month to get manhandled by the biggest jerks?
Have fun playing "real" PVP on a dead game in an empty server. That's known as Player vs. Nothing.
ganking sucks. it's not that I didn't kill the occasional pvp-flagged lowie when I felt like it, but I never corpse-ganked them or something equally retarded.
Getting off on other people's misery is not a gameplay choice, it's a mental disease
We don't see 300 pound "real" football players joining peewee football so that they can smash the face in of a 100 pound 10 year old. But, yeah, that'd be some "real" football. Maybe one day Mike Tyson can wear a wig, stuff a sports bra, and join an open weight woman's boxing league, then we can label it "real" boxing. It's all fun and games until someone loses an ear.
Or... in actuality, real competition is based on skills of even near level peers. And maybethen fun can be had for everyone, instead of encouraging players to feed off eachother's misfortune. Ask yourself, why would the average person pay 15 bucks a month to get manhandled by the biggest jerks?
Have fun playing "real" PVP on a dead game in an empty server. That's known as Player vs. Nothing.
This exactly the type of no brained response I had expected when I made the thread.
Please just do NOT understand. The thread isn't about wanting to gank lowbies all day long. Hell, the game I'm using as a base for this thread, UO, saw you able to reach a high "level" and be able to defend yourself/engage targets VERY fast.
You are using a game like Warcraft as a basis for a totally retarded statement. You can turn Warcraft into the type of game I am talking about, as others have said above me.
Have fun with yor meaningless pvp, I'll stick to doing things for a reason.
We don't see 300 pound "real" football players joining peewee football so that they can smash the face in of a 100 pound 10 year old. But, yeah, that'd be some "real" football. Maybe one day Mike Tyson can wear a wig, stuff a sports bra, and join an open weight woman's boxing league, then we can label it "real" boxing. It's all fun and games until someone loses an ear.
Or... in actuality, real competition is based on skills of even near level peers. And maybethen fun can be had for everyone, instead of encouraging players to feed off eachother's misfortune. Ask yourself, why would the average person pay 15 bucks a month to get manhandled by the biggest jerks?
Have fun playing "real" PVP on a dead game in an empty server. That's known as Player vs. Nothing.
This exactly the type of no brained response I had expected when I made the thread.
Please just do NOT understand. The thread isn't about wanting to gank lowbies all day long. Hell, the game I'm using as a base for this thread, UO, saw you able to reach a high "level" and be able to defend yourself/engage targets VERY fast.
You are using a game like Warcraft as a basis for a totally retarded statement. You can turn Warcraft into the type of game I am talking about, as others have said above me.
Have fun with yor meaningless pvp, I'll stick to doing things for a reason.
It's not just about levels. There's also groups ganking solos. There's people that just plain suck at the game. Why should they suffer everytime some jackass wants to mess with them? Just because its fun for YOU? Well, yeah, you're in the minority. You'll be playing with the minority, and the game will be a failure.
People die, lose their gear/gold/xp, whatever, and they've just wasted their time on top of humilation from e-peen players. Then what happens? They're stuck with a gimped character so that they can die in the same cycle of vampirism.
I hate to break it to you, but in any game there's the average player. And 50% of the population sucks worse than that average player. That person and half the population will be the ones getting punished, over and over. Sure, YOU might be able to defend yourself, but everyone else isn't going to even buy the game or will quit sooner or later; then you'll be back on this board wondering why there's no "real" PVP MMOs coming out. There's a large difference between having fear/tension in a game, and trying to make people fear playing the game or annoyed.
Have fun with yor meaningless pvp, I'll stick to doing things for a reason.
And your reasons for thinking that all other forms of PvP are inferior are...? You listed what you're looking for:
- Die and have your gear looted
- Group gank to ruin someone's day (your emphasis, not mine)
- Want to fear PKers
None of that describes meaningful PvP. It describes high-risk PvP. There is a huge difference. And, unsurprisingly, you want to gang up to make sure that the risk is all on the side of whoever you attack. That is the standard PKer modus operandi, after all: Kill the guy who is weaker, or unable to fight back, or who is doing something other than PvPing. No one wants to be the victim!
Face it, even a game like WoW adds more gameplay meaning (ie, consequences) to a PvP death than the UO-type game you say you want. Because WoW has a system (or more than one system, I guess) for making PvP kills/deaths "count" that goes beyond "oh I lost all my items and a lot of time." Even EVE does that, via corp/alliance wars. Those gameplay systems make PvP a competition, and you don't want a competition -- you just want bad consequences.
That's why I called what you described griefing-style PvP. Because historically there has been little or no in-game meaning to it beyond wrecking someone else's fun.
Also remember that every game needs non-PvPers to run. The "carebears" you and others insult and ignore are what keep MMOs going. A game full of only ganking PvPers would be quite interesting... in a terrible, boring, meaningless way. PvP of the type you describe does not make a game.
HarshLanguage on
> turn on light Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
Face it, even a game like WoW adds more gameplay meaning (ie, consequences) to a PvP death than the UO-type game you say you want. Because WoW has a system (or more than one system, I guess) for making PvP kills/deaths "count" that goes beyond "oh I lost all my items and a lot of time." Even EVE does that, via corp/alliance wars. Those gameplay systems make PvP a competition, and you don't want a competition -- you just want bad consequences.
I will admit in my haste to post I haven't been able to flesh out exactly what I want in an MMO's PvP portion.
You are right, EvE does do that, and I absolutely LOVE the way EvE does it!If you were to take the EvE style PvP, and in turn make it into a, I'm not sure how to put this, non space theme, I would gobble it up.
It's not that I just want to run around and snatch everyones shit ala Runescape. I just am so sick of PvPing to get "honor points" or in EQ's case to get "coins".
A competition is FINE! But to be able to give me the control over what I do as in a free PvP environment... In my mind, I would love to see this scenario-
Person X is walking along on a road to get to his next destination. You, being the Rogue you are, have been waiting patiently for a while for someone to mug. you attack him, kill him, and take your reward, be it everything on his body, such as Runescape or UO, or just one or two items, as in PvP EQ, or even some of his gold.
Does it suck to get killed? You bet your ass it does! When I use to get murdered in EQ by those level 70 bastards when Iwas level 25, it really upset me, I lost XP and items! But you know what, I really did enjoy it. I liked grinding my way up the level tree, seeing a level 70 Vashir (sp?) run up to me and wonder if I was gone for. More often than not, nothing came of it! Being polite and respectfull to the other factions usually worked for me, and I liked it. Had it not been a PvP server I wouldnt have thought twice about it though, oh some stupid cat, hope he doesnt steal my mobs.
I hope I made a better point here, I'm sorry its pretty late here and my mind is all over the place! I know I've been coming across like an elite bastard, and that's really not the way I want to sound. Yes, "carebears" make up a good portion of the population, and that is perfectly fine, dont join the PvP server then, thats pretty simple!
ganking sucks. it's not that I didn't kill the occasional pvp-flagged lowie when I felt like it, but I never corpse-ganked them or something equally retarded.
Getting off on other people's misery is not a gameplay choice, it's a mental disease
No, getting so into a computer game that you get miserable if you die is a mental disease. Man, I play Eve and I barely PvP, but I still love it. Running through a gatecamp in a hauler or covops and making it out alive, thats a rush, and I'm on the receiving end of the gankage there. If what you have cannot be taken away from you ever, like in WoW, there is no point to the game for me. Hell, PvE in games like EvE, UO, and EQ were all higher risk then any of the PvP in WoW.
Neaden on
0
TavIrish Minister for DefenceRegistered Userregular
edited November 2007
Its people like the ones posting in this thread that make me glad I roll on PVE servers. If you find getting ganked and corpse camped by some omgl337uberpwner fun, then fair fucks to ya. I certainly don't think I'm diseased for not not agreeing with your idea of "fun", but to each his own I guess.
preface about mmo background: My first MMO was Shadowbane, which I played after release for two months. I've played EVE for 10 months now, and have played UO for a short time on a free shard. Also played Guild Wars.
There's also three terms i'll use-ganks, meaning taking another player/group of player by surprise and fighting them, usually with victory pre-assured by the surprise; 'good fights', where the sides are even and ready for the fight, and territorial warfare-having your actions matter in the actual game by changing ownership of towns/stations and control of areas.
from those experiences, it's really clear that a lot of people like to run around a gank each other. I did this in shadowbane a huge amount, both solo and with two RL friends. We succesfully griefed people out of the game-after killing them daily they'd just stop logging in. But it had no real point so we got bored. While it did have ganks, good fights, and territorial war, the territorial war had no real purpose when you hit max level, so everyone just ran around ganking with the rare fight in between.
I didn't play another MMO until Guild Wars, which had 'balanced' PvP (generally). This I played for a long time competitively, but there wasn't any real thrill to it besides playoff matches that mattered (and I wasnt even in those). It was 'good fight' after good fight, but really, it got very repetitive.
I tried out UO-it was just like shadowbane . Spend a while levelling to what you want to be, then go look for ganks. I saw it for what it was and didn't spend any time on it. Ganks and good fights again, but no real acquisition.
EVE has done it the best, albeit very badly still. It manages to have ganks, 'good fights', AND territorial consequences that actually matter. The territorial consequences are what really matter, and it's on a very fine edge. If holding space was just a bit harder, the game would suck because the majority of people would just live in areas where you don't need to hold space, and roam around ganking / getting good fights, with no ultimate purpose.
Really, the good fights crowd is better served playing a FPS or RTS, and so is the ganking crowd.
I wish the people arguing for UO-style PVP could write slightly more coherent posts.
Anyhow.
Player versus player in a game like Ultima Online was exciting. No matter what side you were on, who you were attacking, if you were being attacked, ganked, or ganking, etc. It just doesn't matter, because you never know when three other guys might pop up on the screen. It made it exciting, which I find other games lack these days when it comes to PvP.
When that happens in WoW, I'll shrug and lazily try to run off, throwing healing spells on myself and what have you. In Ultima Online? Suddenly your heart is pumping, because damnit, I don't want to die. In WoW? Oh well, I died, better spend 30 seconds running back.
oh, just remember the wolf/sheep analogy. pkers=wolves, carebears=sheep. One of Shadowbane's failings was that all the sheep quit and the wolves had no one to kill but each other, which it turned out most weren't interested in doing because they didn't want to die either.
I read it in another forum; basically, it's your character that's the badass, not his gear. It's a style of fantasy RPG where the innate character abilities are much stronger than a normal RPG and the gear is expendable.
Quote: "You are not your magic weapon and armor. You are not your spell buffs. You are not how much gold you have, or how many times you've been raised from the dead. When a Big Bad Demon snaps your sword in two, you do not cry because that was your holy avenger. You leap onto its back, climb up to its head, and punch it in the eye, then get a new damn sword off of the next humanoid you headbutt to death."
I played Ultima Online, and coerced one of my real-life friends into playing Ultima Online. We were both about thirteen at the time, and I paid for the first month of his account figuring that if he really did enjoy it he could start picking up the bill on his own.
He-- we'll call him Job, for convenience's sake-- immediately took a liking to the PvP of UO. He began completely ignoring me while we played, instead content to just wander the countryside ganking people. I became involved in the roleplaying community, and Job got banned before the month was up. C'est la vie.
The Ultima Online roleplaying community thrived -- and I will say that it thrived more heartily than any other MMO of the period, Everquest included -- in no small part due to the PvP system. This had nothing to do, though, with the fact your possessions could be looted; it had nothing to do with the griefing elements outlined here. What I enjoyed about Ultima Online's PvP, and what the rest of the community as well enjoyed and really needed, was that it was free-for-all and structure could be imposed upon it instead of the other way around.
I honestly spent more time playing in post-Trammel UO, and the PvP community only grew more thriving within the RP community after the split. Over the past few years, patches introduced guild alliances to overhaul the extant feature of guild wars -- conflicts which made it possible for non-consensual PvP to happen between willing combatants even in the non-PvP zones. Still, though, this wasn't really the perfect fit for our community and there were a few rules that managed to spontaneously and separately arise on all of the different servers; among which, unanimously, was "you shall not loot anything but replaceable items (reagents, bandages, gold) from those that you kill, unless you ask the player in question."
Now, admittedly, RP communities are not a market base that can sustain an MMO. It's rather unfortunate, too, because Ultima Online seems to be on its last legs (EA relocated their offices cross-country, again, and laid off the few remaining legacy employees from Origin after their 3D overhaul failed).
I think the real tenets of 'REAL' PvP are malleability, imperfect information, immersion, and openness. It's very hard for me to find any value in World of Warcraft roleplaying because when conflict arises between me and someone else, the only solutions are to go to the arena (and be ganked) or duel. Even then, because the World of Warcraft class-advancement system is so set in stone, even if I don't look the guy up on Armory I know already what to expect.
My ideal PvP game would feature the a la carte skill selection of Ultima Online; the ability to modify the environment around you as in Ultima Online (not necessarily player housing; even before we had housing, we could come up with makeshift barricades by dragging cabinets and chairs onto the roads); the ability to attack anyone at any time anywhere, but only through some manner of consent (guild conflict, enlisted faction conflict); and the lack of an automatic respawn every 20-30 seconds as we have in World of Warcraft battlegrounds.
Just the same, I think there should always be an option that allows players to advance their skills and gear in safety if that's what they want; it is not fun, for me, to always be looking over my shoulder. It is fun, sometimes, to be looking over my shoulder -- but when I am in that mood, I would prefer if I could toggle it on instead of being forced into it. Ultima Online has changed from its decade-old roots; gear has become more important (though still easily-accessible), and skills have by and large become even easier to train. In the 24 hours of in-game time that will get me to level 20, 25 in World of Warcraft, I can have a character completely viable for most of the PvE content and for any PvP content. Another few hours will cap the character out.
I don't know of any game coming out that boasts any or even most of these features, and I sort of don't expect there ever to be one. A lot of what made Ultima Online the roleplaying game of choice for me was only really possible due to its 2D interface -- simple but very realistic conversation (no chat box), a sprite-based world allowing you to litter the ground however you wanted / decorate however you wanted ... stuff like the remarkable skills system might make a return, which is good, but so much of Ultima Online just isn't salvageable in the current engines we see the MMOs running on.
Which is sad.
But anyway, I'm just waxing nostalgic now, so. The OP should play Ultima Online on a freeshard, along with many others in this thread, and the word "carebear" should be purged from the universe because there exists absolutely no reason why a pejorative should exist to describe people who have different gaming preferences. It's discrimination akin to 'cism, and it's sort of disgusting.
EDIT: Also, how does a player-run economy run at all alongside the world you envision? The griefing climate does not lend itself to populations of crafter-players, which tend to shy away from conflict -- the only time you get crafter-players in the PvP population is when the crafting is easy or when you have a mechanic like WoW's bind-on-pickup that necessitates it. If player conflict becomes so rampant, structure will need to arise from the players in order to protect their resources -- i.e., EVE -- and, well.
That never happened in UO. It happened in EVE, but it never happened in UO, and I don't really know myself what the distinction is. I think, partly, it's that the EVE economy is mostly macroscale instead of microscale, and similarly that the tools already existed for corporations and territorial control whereas they were only later -- and shoddily -- attempted to be patched into UO.
I have played some on Darktide, an Asheron's Call server.
Basically at anytime in any place anyone can kill you. There is no stealthing, and when you die you lose items.
And dying sends you to a lifestone, which is an area in the public, where a person can track you down and then camp you.
So if a small group of friends find someone they want to mug over and over, it is just a matter of scouting out their lifestone, setting 2 or 3 people up at the LS and then sending 2 or 3 people out to get the first kill.
And then they chase you and kill and loot you repeatedly.
But since in that game you will be the prey instead of the predator, I doubt you will ever go try it out.
I think the problem with how some of you are looking at 'griefing-style' pvp is that you haven't experienced it first hand, or didn't stick with a game that featured it due to a bad experience. The game has to be designed around it from the bottom up. In a game like WoW, losing things in PvP would suck because of the time investment required to achieve them.
In UO, you didn't spend months in a raid trying to get some epic or whatever, which made losing things more acceptable. In EVE you simply fly what you can afford to lose, as every ship has a role. Even the 750k frigate that you can buy 20 of after a day's worth of moneymaking is worthwhile in a group.
Risk/reward in pvp usually makes the game a hell of a lot more interesting, so long as it's made for it. Current popular MMOs are not.
e: also, pointless risk sucks. there has to be a positive aspect to it. FFXI's deleveling if you died fucking blew
Quoted for truth.
And to the poster talking about lag, UO was out back before Cable was even around, lag was a fact of life. Yes, you lag now sometimes, but invest in a good connection and aside from server side issues, you will be fine.
Picking nits a little here, but back in the days of early UO, DSL and some cable lines were, in fact around. Just not nearly as much as today. The problem was, if you had cable (or lived reeeeally close to one of the servers), you actually got a mechanical advantage in that you moved faster than everyone else. If that uber guild that terrorized your server was on cable, you were basically fucked, since there was pretty much no way you could run.
But that is old and in the past. Anyway, yes, "high-stakes" PvP can be fun if the game is designed for it. Unfortunately, the games designed for and around it usually end up fucking sucking. If the dev teams don't manage to fuck up something, the harder-core members of the player base are usually more than happy to do it for them. Usually through short-term mass exploits or longer-term cannibalizing of the playerbase.
People will only willingly play as sheep for the wolves for so long, you know.
Edit: Yeah yeah, most of my points were made earlier in the thread, but I don't care.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
0
ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
oh, just remember the wolf/sheep analogy. pkers=wolves, carebears=sheep. One of Shadowbane's failings was that all the sheep quit and the wolves had no one to kill but each other, which it turned out most weren't interested in doing because they didn't want to die either.
Right, and that's why the market for such MMO's is at best tiny. EvE works by having an amazing Metagame. And unless you really recreate that metagame you can't simply clone EvE. The only other MMO aiming for that space is Darkfall which is still looking for a publisher. There simply isn't enough demand to support that kind of PvP.
I know those pushing this kind of "death has meaning cause I take your stuff, lololol" PvP like to see themselves as wolves. But for the most part they are more like jackals on the food chain. Weaker prey are attacked, but equal or greater prey is ran away from. There are exceptions to this (EvE in particular is good at encouraging it) but for the most part when you make a game of jackals....not even the jackals want to play.
oh, just remember the wolf/sheep analogy. pkers=wolves, carebears=sheep. One of Shadowbane's failings was that all the sheep quit and the wolves had no one to kill but each other, which it turned out most weren't interested in doing because they didn't want to die either.
Right, and that's why the market for such MMO's is at best tiny. EvE works by having an amazing Metagame. And unless you really recreate that metagame you can't simply clone EvE. The only other MMO aiming for that space is Darkfall which is still looking for a publisher. There simply isn't enough demand to support that kind of PvP.
It doesn't help that the Darkfall fanbase is rabid to the point of launching all-out raids against any blog or forum daring to suggest that Darkfall may not be the end-all, be-all, of pee vee pee games.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
oh, just remember the wolf/sheep analogy. pkers=wolves, carebears=sheep. One of Shadowbane's failings was that all the sheep quit and the wolves had no one to kill but each other, which it turned out most weren't interested in doing because they didn't want to die either.
Right, and that's why the market for such MMO's is at best tiny. EvE works by having an amazing Metagame. And unless you really recreate that metagame you can't simply clone EvE. The only other MMO aiming for that space is Darkfall which is still looking for a publisher. There simply isn't enough demand to support that kind of PvP.
It doesn't help that the Darkfall fanbase is rabid to the point of launching all-out raids against any blog or forum daring to suggest that Darkfall may not be the end-all, be-all, of pee vee pee games.
darkfall is literally just shadowbane with prettier graphics.
but i think that AoC has a legitimate shot at being the next MMO with good pvp - if they decide to make either partial loot/full loot servers.
heck, i'm fine with just looting an inventory. that's totally cool with me - that means i can run around to popular spawns and kill people and get lots of money and good items and whatnot.
people who haven't played MMOs where there's a consequence to death just don't get it. if they don't find it appealing, they'll never understand the argument for them. games like WoW are literally just like playing an FPS, like unreal tournament or something. ultima online was... it was pure adrenaline. when you were fighting or running, you felt it in your balls. it was scary as fuck, and if you got away, it was like this unbelievable sense of relief - or, if you killed somebody and looted a high selling item, it was just this great fucking sense of accomplishment
the element of danger really makes or breaks a game for me, which is why instanced pvp sucks balls.
i get the arguments for instanced pvp, blah blah, people think it's fun. but do you get the rush? to use shadowbane as an example here, do you get the insane feeling of danger when your tree has been baned, and everything you've spent time on has the potential to be torn the fuck down?
answer: no.
that shit was hardcore - your tree got destroyed, your guild got disbanded, and your city? it was now their city.
Xenocide Geek on
i wanted love, i needed love
most of all, most of all
someone said true love was dead
but i'm bound to fall
bound to fall for you
oh what can i do
The problem is, in most MMO these days is these days is that the PvP has no point. Take WoW for example, what do you get for PvPing? Some more items to make PvPing easier? Yeah, that's hollow and boring.
Now, you don't necessarily have to be able to loot the corpse of someone you kill, or grief, or whatever, to have a point. If killing someone was part of an over-arching goal like capturing a city (like how it is in the concept for the Warhammer MMO) then PvP has a point, and thus accomplishes something, giving it meaning and making it more exciting.
If I'm going to play a game where the combat has no point other then just combat for combat's sake and no tangible affect on the game world, I'll just play a game that has a combat system with depth and substance like Virtua Fighter instead of something shallow like WoW.
Inquisitor on
0
ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
oh, just remember the wolf/sheep analogy. pkers=wolves, carebears=sheep. One of Shadowbane's failings was that all the sheep quit and the wolves had no one to kill but each other, which it turned out most weren't interested in doing because they didn't want to die either.
Right, and that's why the market for such MMO's is at best tiny. EvE works by having an amazing Metagame. And unless you really recreate that metagame you can't simply clone EvE. The only other MMO aiming for that space is Darkfall which is still looking for a publisher. There simply isn't enough demand to support that kind of PvP.
It doesn't help that the Darkfall fanbase is rabid to the point of launching all-out raids against any blog or forum daring to suggest that Darkfall may not be the end-all, be-all, of pee vee pee games.
It was kinda funny when they went after Scott Jennings...I mean the guy might know just a little bit about MMO design and PvP. Just a tiny bit. To quote him for why this kind of game will fail:
Ah, for the days when games violently punched you in the throat and dared you to keep paying them money.
The problem with hardcore PvP games is, as has been often said by myself and others, that while many think they are of the hardcore, few actually are. And while the spectre of being killed repeatedly with no recourse, your home sowed with salt and your guild banners used for tablecloths for the meal of human jerky you kindly donated to may sound nice at first, the bloom tends to fade from the rose when you realize that no, you’re probably never going to be the guys carving the jerky.
when will people realize you dont need 9 million subs to make a successful mmo. Eve online makes a tidy profit and it has very steep learning curves and low to extreme pvp losses.
There is a serious market for more serious PVP games, someone just needs to make one worth playing.
when will people realize you dont need 9 million subs to make a successful mmo. Eve online makes a tidy profit and it has very steep learning curves and low to extreme pvp losses.
There is a serious market for more serious PVP games, someone just needs to make one worth playing.
age of conan! come on, it will do it!
if it doesn't, i will cry.
Xenocide Geek on
i wanted love, i needed love
most of all, most of all
someone said true love was dead
but i'm bound to fall
bound to fall for you
oh what can i do
when will people realize you dont need 9 million subs to make a successful mmo. Eve online makes a tidy profit and it has very steep learning curves and low to extreme pvp losses.
There is a serious market for more serious PVP games, someone just needs to make one worth playing.
age of conan! come on, it will do it!
if it doesn't, i will cry.
I'm happy I'll actually get to aim my bow in that game, but annoyed that the projectile physics seem like they are going to be very simplistic, and that the enemies will only posses one hit box.
But, I guess it's a latency thing.
Inquisitor on
0
ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
when will people realize you dont need 9 million subs to make a successful mmo. Eve online makes a tidy profit and it has very steep learning curves and low to extreme pvp losses.
There is a serious market for more serious PVP games, someone just needs to make one worth playing.
The problem comes from "Persistent skill based PvP with Consequences" being somewhat contradictory in nature. Take gear looting. If gear provides any advantage then over time then the newbies will be driven away as the Griefers outgear them to the point of making it impossible for them to win or run away. If gear doesn't matter, then where do the consequences come into play?
when will people realize you dont need 9 million subs to make a successful mmo. Eve online makes a tidy profit and it has very steep learning curves and low to extreme pvp losses.
There is a serious market for more serious PVP games, someone just needs to make one worth playing.
Good luck getting a publisher to see it that way.
If you want any investment to make a game.. it has to be a WoW clone. That's the only thing that can get attention now. The manpower required to make and run a MMOG is far too much for a tiny company to get going on their own.
10,000 subscribers isn't even a blip on the radar anymore.
All I can think about, sometimes, is "Aww, poor widdle woofie, lost all his sheepies." Most people who are begging for an environment where they can run amok ganking (the wolf/sheep metaphor here) typically fail to realize that all of the innocent little targets that they gank have to come from somewhere. The higher the losses, the greater chance that the target isn't going to come back to the game ever again. You hunt and feed too much, you lose your food. It's as simple as that. Every time a sheep is killed, you are effectively saying "I don't want you to play my game. Get out of my sandbox." And oddly enough, they do.
There are two issues that need to be ironed out before any PvP RPG can be successful. The first is the technical side. There needs to be rock-solid gameplay with as few bugs as possible, and certainly no ongoing exploits. The PvPers often look for every advantage that they can get, and they certainly have no qualms about using every advantage they can get. Even if you word your EULA carefully and ban the appropriate felons using hax and sploits, you can't catch everyone, and a few players will dominate.
The other is the roleplaying side. The game world has to be robust enough to handle PvPers. There have to be elements in the game that make it more than just "Deathmatch with Elves!" This means having cities that you can burn and pillage, but this also means having guards for the larger cities who can kill the stupid and unprepared. This means having ways to lose your loot, but also ways to get it back. If you have ways to mitigate death, there has to be rock-solid ways for people to continue to play. There needs to be a Police entity in the major cities. Most games right now split PvP and non-PvP zones in some fashion in order to compensate for the fact that there is no Government or Law Enforcement. There are not enough players in all MMOs (current or past) to form any long-standing upright citizens brigades, and often there are no "hooks" in game play for PCs to fill in those administrative and law enforcement roles (let alone NPCs). Also, people tend to join games to become a certain role, and this role is often heroic rather than administrative.
when will people realize you dont need 9 million subs to make a successful mmo. Eve online makes a tidy profit and it has very steep learning curves and low to extreme pvp losses.
There is a serious market for more serious PVP games, someone just needs to make one worth playing.
That's the real problem. No one has made one worth playing since UO. And UO was only good for it's time, it barely holds up today. EVE isn't even worth playing, it just has a playerbase that took their shitty game and turned it into something decent. Pretty much anything in the game that CCP has direct involvement with sucks hard, from the UI to netcode to the majority of game mechanics.
No publisher is going to say "So you want to make a game like Shadowbane and EVE Online, one a complete failure, and the other being an active MMO with the smallest marketshare" and think they've found a brilliant group of developers and start throwing money at them.
Posts
That could be just because the trend in all fantasy-style MMORPGs has been to add more equipment slots. Not really related to PVP. And anyway, how would you compare? For current "hardcore" PVP games (excluding EVE beacuse we're talking fantasy RPG), there's... uh... yeah. Lineage II? Not anything recent, and who knows what WAR and Conan will turn out like in terms of equipment.
> turn on light
Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
I tried to read this post but I don't fucking understand it at all.
What is the formatting even supposed to mean?
edit: And why did you copy/paste and then bold parts of your shitty original post?
I think this is the nut of it. I just... don't get it. There are people in WoW who seem to have this mentality; they're the people who get on their level 70 merciless-geared rogues and camp flight points in lowbie areas for two hours, killing everything they see. They must be enjoying it, because there's no other reason to do it, but it doesn't make sense to me.
And because that doesn't seem fun to me, I don't usually want to play games where it has serious consequences, because I'm going to be on the receiving end the entire time. I like PvP just fine, even objective oriented PvP (fleet/small group stuff in EVE), but random ganking doesn't do anything for me, which leads me to dislike games that incentivize it.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Quoted for truth.
And to the poster talking about lag, UO was out back before Cable was even around, lag was a fact of life. Yes, you lag now sometimes, but invest in a good connection and aside from server side issues, you will be fine.
Every game with PvP incentivizes, and even games without. It's about making people nerd rage. Reacting to it at all incentivizes it.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
> turn on light
Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
Or... in actuality, real competition is based on skills of even near level peers. And maybethen fun can be had for everyone, instead of encouraging players to feed off eachother's misfortune. Ask yourself, why would the average person pay 15 bucks a month to get manhandled by the biggest jerks?
Have fun playing "real" PVP on a dead game in an empty server. That's known as Player vs. Nothing.
Getting off on other people's misery is not a gameplay choice, it's a mental disease
This exactly the type of no brained response I had expected when I made the thread.
Please just do NOT understand. The thread isn't about wanting to gank lowbies all day long. Hell, the game I'm using as a base for this thread, UO, saw you able to reach a high "level" and be able to defend yourself/engage targets VERY fast.
You are using a game like Warcraft as a basis for a totally retarded statement. You can turn Warcraft into the type of game I am talking about, as others have said above me.
Have fun with yor meaningless pvp, I'll stick to doing things for a reason.
People die, lose their gear/gold/xp, whatever, and they've just wasted their time on top of humilation from e-peen players. Then what happens? They're stuck with a gimped character so that they can die in the same cycle of vampirism.
I hate to break it to you, but in any game there's the average player. And 50% of the population sucks worse than that average player. That person and half the population will be the ones getting punished, over and over. Sure, YOU might be able to defend yourself, but everyone else isn't going to even buy the game or will quit sooner or later; then you'll be back on this board wondering why there's no "real" PVP MMOs coming out. There's a large difference between having fear/tension in a game, and trying to make people fear playing the game or annoyed.
And your reasons for thinking that all other forms of PvP are inferior are...? You listed what you're looking for:
- Die and have your gear looted
- Group gank to ruin someone's day (your emphasis, not mine)
- Want to fear PKers
None of that describes meaningful PvP. It describes high-risk PvP. There is a huge difference. And, unsurprisingly, you want to gang up to make sure that the risk is all on the side of whoever you attack. That is the standard PKer modus operandi, after all: Kill the guy who is weaker, or unable to fight back, or who is doing something other than PvPing. No one wants to be the victim!
Face it, even a game like WoW adds more gameplay meaning (ie, consequences) to a PvP death than the UO-type game you say you want. Because WoW has a system (or more than one system, I guess) for making PvP kills/deaths "count" that goes beyond "oh I lost all my items and a lot of time." Even EVE does that, via corp/alliance wars. Those gameplay systems make PvP a competition, and you don't want a competition -- you just want bad consequences.
That's why I called what you described griefing-style PvP. Because historically there has been little or no in-game meaning to it beyond wrecking someone else's fun.
Also remember that every game needs non-PvPers to run. The "carebears" you and others insult and ignore are what keep MMOs going. A game full of only ganking PvPers would be quite interesting... in a terrible, boring, meaningless way. PvP of the type you describe does not make a game.
> turn on light
Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
I will admit in my haste to post I haven't been able to flesh out exactly what I want in an MMO's PvP portion.
You are right, EvE does do that, and I absolutely LOVE the way EvE does it!If you were to take the EvE style PvP, and in turn make it into a, I'm not sure how to put this, non space theme, I would gobble it up.
It's not that I just want to run around and snatch everyones shit ala Runescape. I just am so sick of PvPing to get "honor points" or in EQ's case to get "coins".
A competition is FINE! But to be able to give me the control over what I do as in a free PvP environment... In my mind, I would love to see this scenario-
Person X is walking along on a road to get to his next destination. You, being the Rogue you are, have been waiting patiently for a while for someone to mug. you attack him, kill him, and take your reward, be it everything on his body, such as Runescape or UO, or just one or two items, as in PvP EQ, or even some of his gold.
Does it suck to get killed? You bet your ass it does! When I use to get murdered in EQ by those level 70 bastards when Iwas level 25, it really upset me, I lost XP and items! But you know what, I really did enjoy it. I liked grinding my way up the level tree, seeing a level 70 Vashir (sp?) run up to me and wonder if I was gone for. More often than not, nothing came of it! Being polite and respectfull to the other factions usually worked for me, and I liked it. Had it not been a PvP server I wouldnt have thought twice about it though, oh some stupid cat, hope he doesnt steal my mobs.
I hope I made a better point here, I'm sorry its pretty late here and my mind is all over the place! I know I've been coming across like an elite bastard, and that's really not the way I want to sound. Yes, "carebears" make up a good portion of the population, and that is perfectly fine, dont join the PvP server then, thats pretty simple!
There's also three terms i'll use-ganks, meaning taking another player/group of player by surprise and fighting them, usually with victory pre-assured by the surprise; 'good fights', where the sides are even and ready for the fight, and territorial warfare-having your actions matter in the actual game by changing ownership of towns/stations and control of areas.
from those experiences, it's really clear that a lot of people like to run around a gank each other. I did this in shadowbane a huge amount, both solo and with two RL friends. We succesfully griefed people out of the game-after killing them daily they'd just stop logging in. But it had no real point so we got bored. While it did have ganks, good fights, and territorial war, the territorial war had no real purpose when you hit max level, so everyone just ran around ganking with the rare fight in between.
I didn't play another MMO until Guild Wars, which had 'balanced' PvP (generally). This I played for a long time competitively, but there wasn't any real thrill to it besides playoff matches that mattered (and I wasnt even in those). It was 'good fight' after good fight, but really, it got very repetitive.
I tried out UO-it was just like shadowbane . Spend a while levelling to what you want to be, then go look for ganks. I saw it for what it was and didn't spend any time on it. Ganks and good fights again, but no real acquisition.
EVE has done it the best, albeit very badly still. It manages to have ganks, 'good fights', AND territorial consequences that actually matter. The territorial consequences are what really matter, and it's on a very fine edge. If holding space was just a bit harder, the game would suck because the majority of people would just live in areas where you don't need to hold space, and roam around ganking / getting good fights, with no ultimate purpose.
Really, the good fights crowd is better served playing a FPS or RTS, and so is the ganking crowd.
Anyhow.
Player versus player in a game like Ultima Online was exciting. No matter what side you were on, who you were attacking, if you were being attacked, ganked, or ganking, etc. It just doesn't matter, because you never know when three other guys might pop up on the screen. It made it exciting, which I find other games lack these days when it comes to PvP.
When that happens in WoW, I'll shrug and lazily try to run off, throwing healing spells on myself and what have you. In Ultima Online? Suddenly your heart is pumping, because damnit, I don't want to die. In WoW? Oh well, I died, better spend 30 seconds running back.
Different strokes for different folks and all.
If you want that risk you're pretty much shit outta luck. Make your own game, and have fun never topping a thousand subscribers.
I read it in another forum; basically, it's your character that's the badass, not his gear. It's a style of fantasy RPG where the innate character abilities are much stronger than a normal RPG and the gear is expendable.
wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Heroes
Quote: "You are not your magic weapon and armor. You are not your spell buffs. You are not how much gold you have, or how many times you've been raised from the dead. When a Big Bad Demon snaps your sword in two, you do not cry because that was your holy avenger. You leap onto its back, climb up to its head, and punch it in the eye, then get a new damn sword off of the next humanoid you headbutt to death."
Margaret Thatcher
He-- we'll call him Job, for convenience's sake-- immediately took a liking to the PvP of UO. He began completely ignoring me while we played, instead content to just wander the countryside ganking people. I became involved in the roleplaying community, and Job got banned before the month was up. C'est la vie.
The Ultima Online roleplaying community thrived -- and I will say that it thrived more heartily than any other MMO of the period, Everquest included -- in no small part due to the PvP system. This had nothing to do, though, with the fact your possessions could be looted; it had nothing to do with the griefing elements outlined here. What I enjoyed about Ultima Online's PvP, and what the rest of the community as well enjoyed and really needed, was that it was free-for-all and structure could be imposed upon it instead of the other way around.
I honestly spent more time playing in post-Trammel UO, and the PvP community only grew more thriving within the RP community after the split. Over the past few years, patches introduced guild alliances to overhaul the extant feature of guild wars -- conflicts which made it possible for non-consensual PvP to happen between willing combatants even in the non-PvP zones. Still, though, this wasn't really the perfect fit for our community and there were a few rules that managed to spontaneously and separately arise on all of the different servers; among which, unanimously, was "you shall not loot anything but replaceable items (reagents, bandages, gold) from those that you kill, unless you ask the player in question."
Now, admittedly, RP communities are not a market base that can sustain an MMO. It's rather unfortunate, too, because Ultima Online seems to be on its last legs (EA relocated their offices cross-country, again, and laid off the few remaining legacy employees from Origin after their 3D overhaul failed).
I think the real tenets of 'REAL' PvP are malleability, imperfect information, immersion, and openness. It's very hard for me to find any value in World of Warcraft roleplaying because when conflict arises between me and someone else, the only solutions are to go to the arena (and be ganked) or duel. Even then, because the World of Warcraft class-advancement system is so set in stone, even if I don't look the guy up on Armory I know already what to expect.
My ideal PvP game would feature the a la carte skill selection of Ultima Online; the ability to modify the environment around you as in Ultima Online (not necessarily player housing; even before we had housing, we could come up with makeshift barricades by dragging cabinets and chairs onto the roads); the ability to attack anyone at any time anywhere, but only through some manner of consent (guild conflict, enlisted faction conflict); and the lack of an automatic respawn every 20-30 seconds as we have in World of Warcraft battlegrounds.
Just the same, I think there should always be an option that allows players to advance their skills and gear in safety if that's what they want; it is not fun, for me, to always be looking over my shoulder. It is fun, sometimes, to be looking over my shoulder -- but when I am in that mood, I would prefer if I could toggle it on instead of being forced into it. Ultima Online has changed from its decade-old roots; gear has become more important (though still easily-accessible), and skills have by and large become even easier to train. In the 24 hours of in-game time that will get me to level 20, 25 in World of Warcraft, I can have a character completely viable for most of the PvE content and for any PvP content. Another few hours will cap the character out.
I don't know of any game coming out that boasts any or even most of these features, and I sort of don't expect there ever to be one. A lot of what made Ultima Online the roleplaying game of choice for me was only really possible due to its 2D interface -- simple but very realistic conversation (no chat box), a sprite-based world allowing you to litter the ground however you wanted / decorate however you wanted ... stuff like the remarkable skills system might make a return, which is good, but so much of Ultima Online just isn't salvageable in the current engines we see the MMOs running on.
Which is sad.
But anyway, I'm just waxing nostalgic now, so. The OP should play Ultima Online on a freeshard, along with many others in this thread, and the word "carebear" should be purged from the universe because there exists absolutely no reason why a pejorative should exist to describe people who have different gaming preferences. It's discrimination akin to 'cism, and it's sort of disgusting.
EDIT: Also, how does a player-run economy run at all alongside the world you envision? The griefing climate does not lend itself to populations of crafter-players, which tend to shy away from conflict -- the only time you get crafter-players in the PvP population is when the crafting is easy or when you have a mechanic like WoW's bind-on-pickup that necessitates it. If player conflict becomes so rampant, structure will need to arise from the players in order to protect their resources -- i.e., EVE -- and, well.
That never happened in UO. It happened in EVE, but it never happened in UO, and I don't really know myself what the distinction is. I think, partly, it's that the EVE economy is mostly macroscale instead of microscale, and similarly that the tools already existed for corporations and territorial control whereas they were only later -- and shoddily -- attempted to be patched into UO.
Basically at anytime in any place anyone can kill you. There is no stealthing, and when you die you lose items.
And dying sends you to a lifestone, which is an area in the public, where a person can track you down and then camp you.
So if a small group of friends find someone they want to mug over and over, it is just a matter of scouting out their lifestone, setting 2 or 3 people up at the LS and then sending 2 or 3 people out to get the first kill.
And then they chase you and kill and loot you repeatedly.
But since in that game you will be the prey instead of the predator, I doubt you will ever go try it out.
Picking nits a little here, but back in the days of early UO, DSL and some cable lines were, in fact around. Just not nearly as much as today. The problem was, if you had cable (or lived reeeeally close to one of the servers), you actually got a mechanical advantage in that you moved faster than everyone else. If that uber guild that terrorized your server was on cable, you were basically fucked, since there was pretty much no way you could run.
But that is old and in the past. Anyway, yes, "high-stakes" PvP can be fun if the game is designed for it. Unfortunately, the games designed for and around it usually end up fucking sucking. If the dev teams don't manage to fuck up something, the harder-core members of the player base are usually more than happy to do it for them. Usually through short-term mass exploits or longer-term cannibalizing of the playerbase.
People will only willingly play as sheep for the wolves for so long, you know.
Edit: Yeah yeah, most of my points were made earlier in the thread, but I don't care.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
Right, and that's why the market for such MMO's is at best tiny. EvE works by having an amazing Metagame. And unless you really recreate that metagame you can't simply clone EvE. The only other MMO aiming for that space is Darkfall which is still looking for a publisher. There simply isn't enough demand to support that kind of PvP.
I know those pushing this kind of "death has meaning cause I take your stuff, lololol" PvP like to see themselves as wolves. But for the most part they are more like jackals on the food chain. Weaker prey are attacked, but equal or greater prey is ran away from. There are exceptions to this (EvE in particular is good at encouraging it) but for the most part when you make a game of jackals....not even the jackals want to play.
It doesn't help that the Darkfall fanbase is rabid to the point of launching all-out raids against any blog or forum daring to suggest that Darkfall may not be the end-all, be-all, of pee vee pee games.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
darkfall is literally just shadowbane with prettier graphics.
but i think that AoC has a legitimate shot at being the next MMO with good pvp - if they decide to make either partial loot/full loot servers.
heck, i'm fine with just looting an inventory. that's totally cool with me - that means i can run around to popular spawns and kill people and get lots of money and good items and whatnot.
people who haven't played MMOs where there's a consequence to death just don't get it. if they don't find it appealing, they'll never understand the argument for them. games like WoW are literally just like playing an FPS, like unreal tournament or something. ultima online was... it was pure adrenaline. when you were fighting or running, you felt it in your balls. it was scary as fuck, and if you got away, it was like this unbelievable sense of relief - or, if you killed somebody and looted a high selling item, it was just this great fucking sense of accomplishment
the element of danger really makes or breaks a game for me, which is why instanced pvp sucks balls.
i get the arguments for instanced pvp, blah blah, people think it's fun. but do you get the rush? to use shadowbane as an example here, do you get the insane feeling of danger when your tree has been baned, and everything you've spent time on has the potential to be torn the fuck down?
answer: no.
that shit was hardcore - your tree got destroyed, your guild got disbanded, and your city? it was now their city.
most of all, most of all
someone said true love was dead
but i'm bound to fall
bound to fall for you
oh what can i do
Now, you don't necessarily have to be able to loot the corpse of someone you kill, or grief, or whatever, to have a point. If killing someone was part of an over-arching goal like capturing a city (like how it is in the concept for the Warhammer MMO) then PvP has a point, and thus accomplishes something, giving it meaning and making it more exciting.
If I'm going to play a game where the combat has no point other then just combat for combat's sake and no tangible affect on the game world, I'll just play a game that has a combat system with depth and substance like Virtua Fighter instead of something shallow like WoW.
It was kinda funny when they went after Scott Jennings...I mean the guy might know just a little bit about MMO design and PvP. Just a tiny bit. To quote him for why this kind of game will fail:
The problem with hardcore PvP games is, as has been often said by myself and others, that while many think they are of the hardcore, few actually are. And while the spectre of being killed repeatedly with no recourse, your home sowed with salt and your guild banners used for tablecloths for the meal of human jerky you kindly donated to may sound nice at first, the bloom tends to fade from the rose when you realize that no, you’re probably never going to be the guys carving the jerky.
There is a serious market for more serious PVP games, someone just needs to make one worth playing.
age of conan! come on, it will do it!
if it doesn't, i will cry.
most of all, most of all
someone said true love was dead
but i'm bound to fall
bound to fall for you
oh what can i do
I'm happy I'll actually get to aim my bow in that game, but annoyed that the projectile physics seem like they are going to be very simplistic, and that the enemies will only posses one hit box.
But, I guess it's a latency thing.
The problem comes from "Persistent skill based PvP with Consequences" being somewhat contradictory in nature. Take gear looting. If gear provides any advantage then over time then the newbies will be driven away as the Griefers outgear them to the point of making it impossible for them to win or run away. If gear doesn't matter, then where do the consequences come into play?
Good luck getting a publisher to see it that way.
If you want any investment to make a game.. it has to be a WoW clone. That's the only thing that can get attention now. The manpower required to make and run a MMOG is far too much for a tiny company to get going on their own.
10,000 subscribers isn't even a blip on the radar anymore.
what does this even mean
are businesses not supposed to make money or something?
Shareholders win, gamers lose.
Thats cool i guess, money is money.
There are two issues that need to be ironed out before any PvP RPG can be successful. The first is the technical side. There needs to be rock-solid gameplay with as few bugs as possible, and certainly no ongoing exploits. The PvPers often look for every advantage that they can get, and they certainly have no qualms about using every advantage they can get. Even if you word your EULA carefully and ban the appropriate felons using hax and sploits, you can't catch everyone, and a few players will dominate.
The other is the roleplaying side. The game world has to be robust enough to handle PvPers. There have to be elements in the game that make it more than just "Deathmatch with Elves!" This means having cities that you can burn and pillage, but this also means having guards for the larger cities who can kill the stupid and unprepared. This means having ways to lose your loot, but also ways to get it back. If you have ways to mitigate death, there has to be rock-solid ways for people to continue to play. There needs to be a Police entity in the major cities. Most games right now split PvP and non-PvP zones in some fashion in order to compensate for the fact that there is no Government or Law Enforcement. There are not enough players in all MMOs (current or past) to form any long-standing upright citizens brigades, and often there are no "hooks" in game play for PCs to fill in those administrative and law enforcement roles (let alone NPCs). Also, people tend to join games to become a certain role, and this role is often heroic rather than administrative.
That's the real problem. No one has made one worth playing since UO. And UO was only good for it's time, it barely holds up today. EVE isn't even worth playing, it just has a playerbase that took their shitty game and turned it into something decent. Pretty much anything in the game that CCP has direct involvement with sucks hard, from the UI to netcode to the majority of game mechanics.
No publisher is going to say "So you want to make a game like Shadowbane and EVE Online, one a complete failure, and the other being an active MMO with the smallest marketshare" and think they've found a brilliant group of developers and start throwing money at them.