Most developers and publishers should know that no PVP focused game is (probably not) going to be a huge success with WoW like numbers, which really pushes them away from the idea of trying to make a PVP focused game a success.
At least AoC/Warhammer are trying, and i hope they come up with something that works well. I'm not the biggest pvp player myself but i do enjoy it.
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.
where you go wrong is the "get out of our sandbox" thing.
okay, so there may be "griefers" out there who do that, who are purely killing you because they want you to leave the game... uh, that's going to be a very small percentage of the population.
no, you're killing being killed because the person killing you probably wants something. be it a good fight, your gear, to start a war with your guild, whatever.
there's far more of those people than there are of straight griefers, because straight griefers don't survive because they suck.
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
I finally remembered what "Trammel" UO is, that's when they split the game into essentially a "Light" world and a "Dark" world, right? I think that would work with a game properly designed around it in terms of risk/reward pvp. To
In this theoretical game, the light world would basically be WoW. You pick a faction and go through the game doing quests primarily for them with 3rd party neutrals popping up every once and a while. Zones are designed with all factions in mind, with towns for all of them existing in zones they need to. The factions themselves are in a WoW-like unsteady peace, where they lash out at each other at times and others work together. Zones are like WoW, based on faction.
The dark world, on the other hand, still retains the faction aspect but they're in a full out war. Every zone is a PvP zone, no matter your faction. In zones where there would be three cities in the light world there's only one that's capturable by faction and some zones will have little camps for the non-occupying forces that offer a small subset of the possible vendors or charge more for things. Monsters are tougher but they give more exp, gold, and loot. Quests are tougher too but give better rewards. Dungeons are harder like heroics in WoW but not that quite a big jump.
While being in the dark world there's a debuff that stacks periodically that once it reaches a certain level you become "corrupted" and then if you're killed in PvP you can be looted from (to some limited manner) but you also get access to class-specific Dark skills that are pretty powerful and only can be used against other players. It's possible to put bounties on people if they've killed you and bounty hunters can make a living from hunting down griefers but those can only be collected from killing them in the dark world.
If you try to go back to the light world while corrupted, you will stay flagged for PvP in all zones (including your faction's) and all 3rd party factions treat you like shit. To get rid of the corruption you have to be purified somewhere in the light world (making that place a PvP hotspot) but to get rid of the normal dark world buff you just have to spend time in the light world. Having the dark world debuff without being corrupted wouldn't change things in the light world besides the flavor text mentioning stuff about how angry you seem lately or asking if you're getting enough sleep or how your eyes seem empty and soulless. It would be possible to spend the entire game (after finishing with the newbie zone in the light world, of course. The newbie zones in the dark world have all been razed) in the dark world if one wanted, though.
This duality system essentially makes this theoretical blockbuster game two games combined into one: one to appeal to the masses, one to appeal to the PvP centric. The masses will stay in the light world and stay unflagged. The hardcore will stay in the dark world, get corrupted, and have fun PvPing and ruling over towns. The people in the middle will go into the dark world for PvP fun and then play/log in the light world to make sure they don't get corrupted. Everyone wins! Too bad such a game would require so much money and time that it'd never happen, but if it did it definitely would be the end-all-be-all of MMOs.
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.
I firmly believe that if BoB and RA didn't exist EVE would be a giant pile of shit. It'd be just a bunch of squabbling alliances napping each other and doing nothing. Think drone regions.
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.
That is very true. People credit WoW with showing how profitable MMOs can be. To me, it's more of a curse than a blessing. With all the money being thrown around and so many new games under development, it feels like the genre is stagnating instead of thriving. Every publisher wants the next WoW so devs just tinker around the edges of the formula instead of trying something really new.
Nobody wants to really take a risk, so the upcoming games are remarkably un-ambitious compared to the first generation of MMOs (UO, EQ, and AC).
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
Most developers and publishers should know that no PVP focused game is (probably not) going to be a huge success with WoW like numbers, which really pushes them away from the idea of trying to make a PVP focused game a success.
At least AoC/Warhammer are trying, and i hope they come up with something that works well. I'm not the biggest pvp player myself but i do enjoy it.
That's not exactly an argument against making a niche MMO. If there is a player base large enough to support it and profits will be generated, and if those profits are more likely because your competition is low, then you can get a publisher to fund it. It's one of the things that keeps EvE going. It has a niche and it's not a shining example of how to make an MMO but it fulfills players needs, even if the players have to go to much more of an extreme to help CCP out with it.
The problem comes from the fact that unless the entry to PvP is low (which is why EvE hasn't torn itself apart) then you will bleed new players. Griefers tend to very "now" fixated for rewards and really lack a long term view. Instead of new players being helped out they get raped. And with any kind ofpersistent world as Griefers get more gear, the odds of a newbie wining become zero. So the newbie goes off and plays something else. Here is a great example of that thought process:
where you go wrong is the "get out of our sandbox" thing.
okay, so there may be "griefers" out there who do that, who are purely killing you because they want you to leave the game... uh, that's going to be a very small percentage of the population.
no, you're killing being killed because the person killing you probably wants something. be it a good fight, your gear, to start a war with your guild, whatever.
there's far more of those people than there are of straight griefers, because straight griefers don't survive because they suck.
In the end the reason why someone griefs is irrelevant, the end result is the same no matter what paper thin justification you use. Griefing games devour their own player base. That's the lesson learned. If they didn't, they would make money.
i'm sorry but the term is retarded and sounds like people being whiny little bitches
as far as the reason for killing somebody not being relevant...? are you fucking stupid? it makes all the difference in the world.
the only people i'd classify as the retarded term 'griefers', are the people who kill for no reason other than to annoy you. but that's a smaller population. most of the time it's for a reason.
i will gladly kill somebody to take the spawn of mobs they're fighting, or to get something decent off their corpse. that's a great reason. it's called being murdered, or mugged.
hell, in shadowbane i use to attack somebody, and then offer not to kill them if they gave me all the gold they had, so they wouldn't have to take durability loss/lose whatever else was in their inventory.
it just adds an entirely new level to a game.
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.
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.
I firmly believe that if BoB and RA didn't exist EVE would be a giant pile of shit. It'd be just a bunch of squabbling alliances napping each other and doing nothing. Think drone regions.
Don't forget Goons. Goons are necessary to make CAOD and the wider forums not suck. And have probably had all the better ideas about how to change the game recently.
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
i'm sorry but the term is retarded and sounds like people being whiny little bitches
as far as the reason for killing somebody not being relevant...? are you fucking stupid? it makes all the difference in the world.
the only people i'd classify as the retarded term 'griefers', are the people who kill for no reason other than to annoy you. but that's a smaller population. most of the time it's for a reason.
i will gladly kill somebody to take the spawn of mobs they're fighting, or to get something decent off their corpse. that's a great reason. it's called being murdered, or mugged.
hell, in shadowbane i use to attack somebody, and then offer not to kill them if they gave me all the gold they had, so they wouldn't have to take durability loss/lose whatever else was in their inventory.
it just adds an entirely new level to a game.
Griefers is an accurate term. I'm sorry if that term bothers you but it doesn't change the accuracy of it. But the reason for killing is irrelevant. If a new player dies because he has a spawn you want, or because he offered some sort of breach of mores, or if it's just Thursday and you're on the rag it doesn't matter. It drives them away.
i started playing shadowbane on its first week of release. cliche awesome concept bad engine comment here.
player run cities that could be demolished was a really cool concept. but iirc there was no real reason to invade other cities other then because we could. there was no resource bonus or anything for owning a city in a certain place, except maybe being near mobs and rare spawns or something.
i'm sorry but the term is retarded and sounds like people being whiny little bitches
as far as the reason for killing somebody not being relevant...? are you fucking stupid? it makes all the difference in the world.
the only people i'd classify as the retarded term 'griefers', are the people who kill for no reason other than to annoy you. but that's a smaller population. most of the time it's for a reason.
i will gladly kill somebody to take the spawn of mobs they're fighting, or to get something decent off their corpse. that's a great reason. it's called being murdered, or mugged.
hell, in shadowbane i use to attack somebody, and then offer not to kill them if they gave me all the gold they had, so they wouldn't have to take durability loss/lose whatever else was in their inventory.
it just adds an entirely new level to a game.
Griefers is an accurate term. I'm sorry if that term bothers you but it doesn't change the accuracy of it. But the reason for killing is irrelevant. If a new player dies because he has a spawn you want, or because he offered some sort of breach of mores, or if it's just Thursday and you're on the rag it doesn't matter. It drives them away.
I'll be honest, it's this attitude of players that annoys me the most. When I died (rather a lot) when I first started playing EVE, I managed to somehow not get it because I thought "clearly I did something wrong, I should find out what the counter to that is"
i'm sorry but the term is retarded and sounds like people being whiny little bitches
as far as the reason for killing somebody not being relevant...? are you fucking stupid? it makes all the difference in the world.
the only people i'd classify as the retarded term 'griefers', are the people who kill for no reason other than to annoy you. but that's a smaller population. most of the time it's for a reason.
i will gladly kill somebody to take the spawn of mobs they're fighting, or to get something decent off their corpse. that's a great reason. it's called being murdered, or mugged.
hell, in shadowbane i use to attack somebody, and then offer not to kill them if they gave me all the gold they had, so they wouldn't have to take durability loss/lose whatever else was in their inventory.
it just adds an entirely new level to a game.
I'd like to point out that I never used the term "Griefer" in my post. You did that. I used the term "Gank", which to me is non-consensual PvP of any kind, but it typically pertains to ambush tactics, exploiting some unrealistic portion of the gameplay (a party that can easily find monsters, including ones that are DESIGNED to be sneaky, can't see an ambush coming?). I prefer to think of it as the Wolf/Sheep dynamic (or Predator/Prey).
Regardless of terminology, it's all semantics. If a person dies, and if the loss due to the death is great, the chance that the person will want to come back to the game is low. And this is what it comes down to: you start leaking players. It doesn't matter the reasons why, from whether the player was a "whiny brat" or the player was looking for some other experience or the player doesn't want to deal with the game on an adversarial level. The MMO just lost a customer. Eventually, you'll end up with a core group of players who don't care much about the loss, but they are subject to the standard attrition of ALL games (finding greener pastures, real life, etc.).
Again, the reason behind the non-consensual PvP does NOT matter, nor does the ultimate reasons behind why the "prey" departs. Folks will leave when they get killed. Folks will stop playing when their stuff is taken away. It's just like if a GM started taking away people's equipment at random in a "carebear" MMO or you play a tabletop PnP with a jerk GM who takes away your equipment, messes with your stats, and berates you during the game. A player doesn't have to put up with that, especially when there are more entertaining avenues of gaming.
It also doesn't help that most folks who defend PvP-heavy games cannot articulate their thoughts in a matter that makes sense.
i'm sorry but the term is retarded and sounds like people being whiny little bitches
as far as the reason for killing somebody not being relevant...? are you fucking stupid? it makes all the difference in the world.
the only people i'd classify as the retarded term 'griefers', are the people who kill for no reason other than to annoy you. but that's a smaller population. most of the time it's for a reason.
i will gladly kill somebody to take the spawn of mobs they're fighting, or to get something decent off their corpse. that's a great reason. it's called being murdered, or mugged.
hell, in shadowbane i use to attack somebody, and then offer not to kill them if they gave me all the gold they had, so they wouldn't have to take durability loss/lose whatever else was in their inventory.
it just adds an entirely new level to a game.
Griefers is an accurate term. I'm sorry if that term bothers you but it doesn't change the accuracy of it. But the reason for killing is irrelevant. If a new player dies because he has a spawn you want, or because he offered some sort of breach of mores, or if it's just Thursday and you're on the rag it doesn't matter. It drives them away.
meh, you should know what to expect when you roll on a pvp server in a pvp game.
I don't mean to sound like a dick, but if you get killed once by someone in world pvp, i have no sympathy for you. Getting camped and killed repeatedly i totally understand though.
i started playing shadowbane on its first week of release. cliche awesome concept bad engine comment here.
player run cities that could be demolished was a really cool concept. but iirc there was no real reason to invade other cities other then because we could. there was no resource bonus or anything for owning a city in a certain place, except maybe being near mobs and rare spawns or something.
Unless im mistaken.
it was a really complicated system. people wanted some places for tactical advantages, for their vendors, for rare spawns, etc.
for instance, in the game, the most expensive rune to buy was called the commander rune. it dropped once every... 12 hours i believe, and you had to be the first people to loot it off the corpse of a mob. so, if you owned a tree near the commander spawn? you bet your ass it's going to get baned really quickly, in order to have the tactical advantage.
owning an entire island, like, UDI (undead island), was a big advantage too, because you knew that when you were out farming for gold/leveling characters, that nobody was going to make it onto the island without another member of your nation alerting you.
also hahnsoo: the griefer comment was really in regard to thomamelas.
also, it's nothing like a GM randomly taking your stuff on a carebear MMO. it's up to you to make sure you get away, and survive. that's what makes it fun. not some shitty game mechanic that dictates that you will get away/not lose anything just... because. that's why games with consequences have had things like recall spells for a long, long time.
you were a fool if you didn't have a recall macro in UO. if you saw a red starting to cast paralyze on you, you were already mashing your recall button to get the fuck out of there.
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
So would all the advocates of "real" PvP be as willing to play (and pay a monthly fee for) these games if they were on the loosing end of the PvP 99% of the time?
So would all the advocates of "real" PvP be as willing to play these games if they were on the loosing end of the PvP 99% of the time?
yeah, i have a feeling we would. i know i would. you know why?
because we all start out that way. we don't have some inherit ability to be awesome and know all the good places to go and things to do and blah blah at the beginning.
it takes work. it takes time. the good players are the ones who get ganked 99% of the time, and then after a good while of gameplay, come back and choose their special shade of gray.
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
Power will eventually gather in a minority of hands, is the issue, unless there are ways for absolute weaklings to kill off people who have a serious head start.
Stop assuming we're talking about somehow making WoW PVP hardcore with item/cash looting off corpses, we aren't.
We're talking about an entirely new game, thats built entirely around pvp. I dont want my shit in WoW getting looted, because i'd be fucking pissed if someone took my T5 shit because i got killed in netherstorm or some shit.
Again, we're talking about an entirely new game thats designed around the idea of Risk/Reward in PVP. Please stop trying to think about "Hardcore" PVP in WoW, and try to grasp the idea of what someone might enjoy in a game thats actually built for PVP.
Power will eventually gather in a minority of hands, is the issue, unless there are ways for absolute weaklings to kill off people who have a serious head start.
If this was true, every server on UO would have been dominated by a small group, same with Shadowbane and Eve Online.
also, it's nothing like a GM randomly taking your stuff on a carebear MMO. it's up to you to make sure you get away, and survive. that's what makes it fun. not some shitty game mechanic that dictates that you will get away/not lose anything just... because. that's why games with consequences have had things like recall spells for a long, long time.
you were a fool if you didn't have a recall macro in UO. if you saw a red starting to cast paralyze on you, you were already mashing your recall button to get the fuck out of there.
Because there is no such thing as Lag or bugs in the game or exploits to prevent people from getting away. Because there is always an escape route situation and you can always have control over any situation that you are in. Because all MMOs have magical spells, and these are all freely accessible for every single player. In case you can't tell from the hyperbole, this is sarcasm.
In MMOs, there are exploiters, and there are PvPers who take advantage of unrealistic game mechanics. There will be situations from which you cannot escape (either by design or by exploit) and that you will not be compensated for (subscription dollars). You may get a handful of people who enjoy playing a game based on the exploits that they know... but for the rest of the players, they are simply going to log off and not log back on again. They will take their time, and their money, elsewhere.
For all other games, this doesn't matter. But for MMOs, which rely on large populations of live human players, this is anathema.
unless you are some all encompassing being and can speak for all the players of all MMOs everywhere.
Except that almost all of the PvP MMO's with griefing have failed. EvE is the exception. It's not me, it's this theory that griefers have that their numbers matter. If this kind of MMO had the numbers to make it, Darkfall would have a publisher.
If this was true, every server on UO would have been dominated by a small group, same with Shadowbane and Eve Online.
With the exception of EvE, you didn't have game design that allowed for that at the guild level. EvE China however is dominated by a single guild. And who says the Goons won't attempt to grab it all (and then blow it up for the chaos)?
Stop assuming we're talking about somehow making WoW PVP hardcore with item/cash looting off corpses, we aren't.
We're talking about an entirely new game, thats built entirely around pvp. I dont want my shit in WoW getting looted, because i'd be fucking pissed if someone took my T5 shit because i got killed in netherstorm or some shit.
Again, we're talking about an entirely new game thats designed around the idea of Risk/Reward in PVP. Please stop trying to think about "Hardcore" PVP in WoW, and try to grasp the idea of what someone might enjoy in a game thats actually built for PVP.
I am assuming from the ground up and looking at games like Darkfall and EvE which were built with this idea in mind. Bolting this onto WoW would break it in a heartbeat.
yeah, i have a feeling we would. i know i would. you know why?
because we all start out that way. we don't have some inherit ability to be awesome and know all the good places to go and things to do and blah blah at the beginning.
it takes work. it takes time. the good players are the ones who get ganked 99% of the time, and then after a good while of gameplay, come back and choose their special shade of gray.
Right, but your good players are 10% of the player base....so what happens when the other 90% quit? There is a reason the WoW expansion added alot more endgame things to do besides raid.
If i was a game designer i might be able to write up some huge paper on how to make a fair and balanced PVP game with reason risk/reward, but i'm not. i'm not so blind as to believe a game like that is impossible to achieve. It won't pull in 9 million subscribers, it won't be a huge commercial success.
But it could be a success, it could make money, it could be alot of fun, it could be balanced and it could form an amazing player community.
It could also be a game you might not like to play, but theres alot of games i'm sure you don't like to play.
If i was a game designer i might be able to write up some huge paper on how to make a fair and balanced PVP game with reason risk/reward, but i'm not. i'm not so blind as to believe a game like that is impossible to achieve. It won't pull in 9 million subscribers, it won't be a huge commercial success.
But it could be a success, it could make money, it could be alot of fun, it could be balanced and it could form an amazing player community.
It could also be a game you might not like to play, but theres alot of games i'm sure you don't like to play.
And that's been my point. There's a reason you don't see games like this. It's not the inability to design it, but simply the realization that "PvP Death should have a penalty" line of thought attracts poorly socialized sadists. It won't be the entirety of your player base, but it will be a much higher percentage. The Griefers bring up UO PvP as a Golden Age, with the irony of Ralph Koster (Lead Dev for UO) seeing it as a debacle.
i'm sorry but the term is retarded and sounds like people being whiny little bitches
as far as the reason for killing somebody not being relevant...? are you fucking stupid? it makes all the difference in the world.
the only people i'd classify as the retarded term 'griefers', are the people who kill for no reason other than to annoy you. but that's a smaller population. most of the time it's for a reason.
i will gladly kill somebody to take the spawn of mobs they're fighting, or to get something decent off their corpse. that's a great reason. it's called being murdered, or mugged.
hell, in shadowbane i use to attack somebody, and then offer not to kill them if they gave me all the gold they had, so they wouldn't have to take durability loss/lose whatever else was in their inventory.
it just adds an entirely new level to a game.
Griefers is an accurate term. I'm sorry if that term bothers you but it doesn't change the accuracy of it. But the reason for killing is irrelevant. If a new player dies because he has a spawn you want, or because he offered some sort of breach of mores, or if it's just Thursday and you're on the rag it doesn't matter. It drives them away.
I'll be honest, it's this attitude of players that annoys me the most. When I died (rather a lot) when I first started playing EVE, I managed to somehow not get it because I thought "clearly I did something wrong, I should find out what the counter to that is"
The thing is, in EVE often all you "did wrong" was be a new player. EVE is (or least was, I haven't played in about a year) very friendly to griefers and very unfriendly to new players. High learning curve, massive bonuses for older players (via isk and SP), and unexplained aspects of the game that created huge confusion (remember the old escrow system? the one where newbies could easily think they were taking a "mission" only to end up ganked and bankrupt at a station they can't dock at?).
That's just plain old griefing. Killing weaker players for the pleasure of seeing them suffer, scamming newbies or anyone who was distracted while doing a trade or market transaction, etc. Many EVE players reveled in those things, saying they were an essential part of the game -- when really those things just drove people away and kept the game in its tiny niche. And defending such griefing only served to undermine the really cool parts of the game, namely the joy of flying awesome spaceships, creating a name for you/your corp, having real FUN, and ultimately controlling part of space.
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.
EVE has it's problems with the new player experience that they have been working to correct, but in terms of being a new player it has quite possibly one of the best design balances ever invented - just, as I said - people walk in, don't understand something, die as a result and then go "fuck, clearly the game is broken" rather then "I should try and learn from this experience".
MMO players are by and large the reason MMOs are by and large mediocre.
EVE has it's problems with the new player experience that they have been working to correct, but in terms of being a new player it has quite possibly one of the best design balances ever invented - just, as I said - people walk in, don't understand something, die as a result and then go "fuck, clearly the game is broken" rather then "I should try and learn from this experience".
MMO players are by and large the reason MMOs are by and large mediocre.
Those people who go "fuck, clearly the game is broken" are the majority and are needed to keep the game afloat. Thus, as a company that wants to make money, the developers will design their games to keep those people from leaving. It's a simple equation and indeed why MMOs are mediocre to the types of people who enjoy more involving games.
There's no legitimate reason for levels / skillpoint disparity /etc in a PvP focused mmo. Let the actual player's skill at moving his mouse/pressing buttons/selecting good equipment be why he wins, not time played. Shadowbane was pretty close to this since it was so damn easy to level to max, and the equipment disparity was extremely minimal between incredible gear and crap gear.
This is why I think an RTS MMO would be excellent. The only balance factor would be resources, but a fool and his money would soon be parted anyways and an intelligent new player would be at a severe advantage.
I'd think that an RTS MMO would have to be reset after a certain point though. There would be a large possibility of resource monopolization after a few months of joyful chaos.
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At least AoC/Warhammer are trying, and i hope they come up with something that works well. I'm not the biggest pvp player myself but i do enjoy it.
where you go wrong is the "get out of our sandbox" thing.
okay, so there may be "griefers" out there who do that, who are purely killing you because they want you to leave the game... uh, that's going to be a very small percentage of the population.
no, you're killing being killed because the person killing you probably wants something. be it a good fight, your gear, to start a war with your guild, whatever.
there's far more of those people than there are of straight griefers, because straight griefers don't survive because they suck.
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
In this theoretical game, the light world would basically be WoW. You pick a faction and go through the game doing quests primarily for them with 3rd party neutrals popping up every once and a while. Zones are designed with all factions in mind, with towns for all of them existing in zones they need to. The factions themselves are in a WoW-like unsteady peace, where they lash out at each other at times and others work together. Zones are like WoW, based on faction.
The dark world, on the other hand, still retains the faction aspect but they're in a full out war. Every zone is a PvP zone, no matter your faction. In zones where there would be three cities in the light world there's only one that's capturable by faction and some zones will have little camps for the non-occupying forces that offer a small subset of the possible vendors or charge more for things. Monsters are tougher but they give more exp, gold, and loot. Quests are tougher too but give better rewards. Dungeons are harder like heroics in WoW but not that quite a big jump.
While being in the dark world there's a debuff that stacks periodically that once it reaches a certain level you become "corrupted" and then if you're killed in PvP you can be looted from (to some limited manner) but you also get access to class-specific Dark skills that are pretty powerful and only can be used against other players. It's possible to put bounties on people if they've killed you and bounty hunters can make a living from hunting down griefers but those can only be collected from killing them in the dark world.
If you try to go back to the light world while corrupted, you will stay flagged for PvP in all zones (including your faction's) and all 3rd party factions treat you like shit. To get rid of the corruption you have to be purified somewhere in the light world (making that place a PvP hotspot) but to get rid of the normal dark world buff you just have to spend time in the light world. Having the dark world debuff without being corrupted wouldn't change things in the light world besides the flavor text mentioning stuff about how angry you seem lately or asking if you're getting enough sleep or how your eyes seem empty and soulless. It would be possible to spend the entire game (after finishing with the newbie zone in the light world, of course. The newbie zones in the dark world have all been razed) in the dark world if one wanted, though.
This duality system essentially makes this theoretical blockbuster game two games combined into one: one to appeal to the masses, one to appeal to the PvP centric. The masses will stay in the light world and stay unflagged. The hardcore will stay in the dark world, get corrupted, and have fun PvPing and ruling over towns. The people in the middle will go into the dark world for PvP fun and then play/log in the light world to make sure they don't get corrupted. Everyone wins! Too bad such a game would require so much money and time that it'd never happen, but if it did it definitely would be the end-all-be-all of MMOs.
I firmly believe that if BoB and RA didn't exist EVE would be a giant pile of shit. It'd be just a bunch of squabbling alliances napping each other and doing nothing. Think drone regions.
Nobody wants to really take a risk, so the upcoming games are remarkably un-ambitious compared to the first generation of MMOs (UO, EQ, and AC).
That's not exactly an argument against making a niche MMO. If there is a player base large enough to support it and profits will be generated, and if those profits are more likely because your competition is low, then you can get a publisher to fund it. It's one of the things that keeps EvE going. It has a niche and it's not a shining example of how to make an MMO but it fulfills players needs, even if the players have to go to much more of an extreme to help CCP out with it.
The problem comes from the fact that unless the entry to PvP is low (which is why EvE hasn't torn itself apart) then you will bleed new players. Griefers tend to very "now" fixated for rewards and really lack a long term view. Instead of new players being helped out they get raped. And with any kind ofpersistent world as Griefers get more gear, the odds of a newbie wining become zero. So the newbie goes off and plays something else. Here is a great example of that thought process:
In the end the reason why someone griefs is irrelevant, the end result is the same no matter what paper thin justification you use. Griefing games devour their own player base. That's the lesson learned. If they didn't, they would make money.
i'm sorry but the term is retarded and sounds like people being whiny little bitches
as far as the reason for killing somebody not being relevant...? are you fucking stupid? it makes all the difference in the world.
the only people i'd classify as the retarded term 'griefers', are the people who kill for no reason other than to annoy you. but that's a smaller population. most of the time it's for a reason.
i will gladly kill somebody to take the spawn of mobs they're fighting, or to get something decent off their corpse. that's a great reason. it's called being murdered, or mugged.
hell, in shadowbane i use to attack somebody, and then offer not to kill them if they gave me all the gold they had, so they wouldn't have to take durability loss/lose whatever else was in their inventory.
it just adds an entirely new level to a game.
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
Don't forget Goons. Goons are necessary to make CAOD and the wider forums not suck. And have probably had all the better ideas about how to change the game recently.
Griefers is an accurate term. I'm sorry if that term bothers you but it doesn't change the accuracy of it. But the reason for killing is irrelevant. If a new player dies because he has a spawn you want, or because he offered some sort of breach of mores, or if it's just Thursday and you're on the rag it doesn't matter. It drives them away.
player run cities that could be demolished was a really cool concept. but iirc there was no real reason to invade other cities other then because we could. there was no resource bonus or anything for owning a city in a certain place, except maybe being near mobs and rare spawns or something.
Unless im mistaken.
I'll be honest, it's this attitude of players that annoys me the most. When I died (rather a lot) when I first started playing EVE, I managed to somehow not get it because I thought "clearly I did something wrong, I should find out what the counter to that is"
unless you are some all encompassing being and can speak for all the players of all MMOs everywhere.
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
Regardless of terminology, it's all semantics. If a person dies, and if the loss due to the death is great, the chance that the person will want to come back to the game is low. And this is what it comes down to: you start leaking players. It doesn't matter the reasons why, from whether the player was a "whiny brat" or the player was looking for some other experience or the player doesn't want to deal with the game on an adversarial level. The MMO just lost a customer. Eventually, you'll end up with a core group of players who don't care much about the loss, but they are subject to the standard attrition of ALL games (finding greener pastures, real life, etc.).
Again, the reason behind the non-consensual PvP does NOT matter, nor does the ultimate reasons behind why the "prey" departs. Folks will leave when they get killed. Folks will stop playing when their stuff is taken away. It's just like if a GM started taking away people's equipment at random in a "carebear" MMO or you play a tabletop PnP with a jerk GM who takes away your equipment, messes with your stats, and berates you during the game. A player doesn't have to put up with that, especially when there are more entertaining avenues of gaming.
It also doesn't help that most folks who defend PvP-heavy games cannot articulate their thoughts in a matter that makes sense.
meh, you should know what to expect when you roll on a pvp server in a pvp game.
I don't mean to sound like a dick, but if you get killed once by someone in world pvp, i have no sympathy for you. Getting camped and killed repeatedly i totally understand though.
it was a really complicated system. people wanted some places for tactical advantages, for their vendors, for rare spawns, etc.
for instance, in the game, the most expensive rune to buy was called the commander rune. it dropped once every... 12 hours i believe, and you had to be the first people to loot it off the corpse of a mob. so, if you owned a tree near the commander spawn? you bet your ass it's going to get baned really quickly, in order to have the tactical advantage.
owning an entire island, like, UDI (undead island), was a big advantage too, because you knew that when you were out farming for gold/leveling characters, that nobody was going to make it onto the island without another member of your nation alerting you.
also hahnsoo: the griefer comment was really in regard to thomamelas.
also, it's nothing like a GM randomly taking your stuff on a carebear MMO. it's up to you to make sure you get away, and survive. that's what makes it fun. not some shitty game mechanic that dictates that you will get away/not lose anything just... because. that's why games with consequences have had things like recall spells for a long, long time.
you were a fool if you didn't have a recall macro in UO. if you saw a red starting to cast paralyze on you, you were already mashing your recall button to get the fuck out of there.
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
yeah, i have a feeling we would. i know i would. you know why?
because we all start out that way. we don't have some inherit ability to be awesome and know all the good places to go and things to do and blah blah at the beginning.
it takes work. it takes time. the good players are the ones who get ganked 99% of the time, and then after a good while of gameplay, come back and choose their special shade of gray.
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
We're talking about an entirely new game, thats built entirely around pvp. I dont want my shit in WoW getting looted, because i'd be fucking pissed if someone took my T5 shit because i got killed in netherstorm or some shit.
Again, we're talking about an entirely new game thats designed around the idea of Risk/Reward in PVP. Please stop trying to think about "Hardcore" PVP in WoW, and try to grasp the idea of what someone might enjoy in a game thats actually built for PVP.
If this was true, every server on UO would have been dominated by a small group, same with Shadowbane and Eve Online.
saban has the right idea though - no way would i play a game like WoW with an open looting system
unless it was just inventory, which i have no problem with. anything not soulbound, basically. gold, reagents, etc. that makes sense to me.
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
tons of risk, no reward.
We're talking about Lineage here, Look up Worthless Korean Grindfests in the dictionary and you'll find a picture of the dark elf chicks from L2.
First you have to find a phrase dictionary though.
In MMOs, there are exploiters, and there are PvPers who take advantage of unrealistic game mechanics. There will be situations from which you cannot escape (either by design or by exploit) and that you will not be compensated for (subscription dollars). You may get a handful of people who enjoy playing a game based on the exploits that they know... but for the rest of the players, they are simply going to log off and not log back on again. They will take their time, and their money, elsewhere.
For all other games, this doesn't matter. But for MMOs, which rely on large populations of live human players, this is anathema.
Shit happens, get over it?
Except that almost all of the PvP MMO's with griefing have failed. EvE is the exception. It's not me, it's this theory that griefers have that their numbers matter. If this kind of MMO had the numbers to make it, Darkfall would have a publisher.
With the exception of EvE, you didn't have game design that allowed for that at the guild level. EvE China however is dominated by a single guild. And who says the Goons won't attempt to grab it all (and then blow it up for the chaos)?
I am assuming from the ground up and looking at games like Darkfall and EvE which were built with this idea in mind. Bolting this onto WoW would break it in a heartbeat.
Right, but your good players are 10% of the player base....so what happens when the other 90% quit? There is a reason the WoW expansion added alot more endgame things to do besides raid.
But it could be a success, it could make money, it could be alot of fun, it could be balanced and it could form an amazing player community.
It could also be a game you might not like to play, but theres alot of games i'm sure you don't like to play.
Yes, but that's hardly innovative.
It just means the game will only attract people with THAT much time on their hands.
You could do the same by making corpse runs reduce your movement speed to oh-my-god-so-fricking-slow-it-hurts.
I would love to see a game show up that is all about the hardcore pvp. I wouldn't play it, but I am sure there are people out there who will.
WoW can be modified to waste extra time in soooo many ways.
Is there some way of wasting extra time that people find fun?
Like, hell, if you die you have to complete a bunch of puzzle games?
And that's been my point. There's a reason you don't see games like this. It's not the inability to design it, but simply the realization that "PvP Death should have a penalty" line of thought attracts poorly socialized sadists. It won't be the entirety of your player base, but it will be a much higher percentage. The Griefers bring up UO PvP as a Golden Age, with the irony of Ralph Koster (Lead Dev for UO) seeing it as a debacle.
The thing is, in EVE often all you "did wrong" was be a new player. EVE is (or least was, I haven't played in about a year) very friendly to griefers and very unfriendly to new players. High learning curve, massive bonuses for older players (via isk and SP), and unexplained aspects of the game that created huge confusion (remember the old escrow system? the one where newbies could easily think they were taking a "mission" only to end up ganked and bankrupt at a station they can't dock at?).
That's just plain old griefing. Killing weaker players for the pleasure of seeing them suffer, scamming newbies or anyone who was distracted while doing a trade or market transaction, etc. Many EVE players reveled in those things, saying they were an essential part of the game -- when really those things just drove people away and kept the game in its tiny niche. And defending such griefing only served to undermine the really cool parts of the game, namely the joy of flying awesome spaceships, creating a name for you/your corp, having real FUN, and ultimately controlling part of space.
> 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.
MMO players are by and large the reason MMOs are by and large mediocre.
God that would be rad.