pvp is cool and all, but pve is important too. just because a game's an MMO doesn't mean it has to revolve around killing other players. Some people like playing multiplayer games to cooperate with their friends against monsters. It's nice to have both options - pvp and pve.
a MUD I used to play had a decent way of allowing/incentivising pvp without requiring it. there were 3 types of PVP zoning in the game. The first had no PKing, except of people who were flagged as PKers because they recently PK'd. xp and equipment in these zones were usually terrible. The second had PKing as mostly a nuissance - you could attack and kill someone, but it just dumped them out of the zone when they died, and it didn't increase anything but your kill count. items and xp in these zones were generally higher. The third type of zone was brutal - great xp and loot generally, but if you got pk'd, you lost a level, and your gear could be looted. Honestly, very few people risked those zones just to xp.
I don't know why I went off on that tangent. just to give people an idea of what other sort of outside-the-box pvp systems could be brought to MMO's I guess.
The big thing I want is more quests that draw people into the game world.
Everquest 2 comes closer to this than other games I've tried. I still remember one quest I did that involves uncovering a plot by the Vizeer to take control of the desert city, Maj'dul. It's a huge questline that leads you all over, but you eventually discover that the orcs are in on the plot, along with the Dark Brotherhood, an assassin's guild.
When you get near the end, your actions actually trigger an orc invasion of the entire town. Orcs literally run through the town, killing NPCs, town guards, and any player who gets in their way and doesn't have the strength to stop them. When you complete the quest, you stop the invasion, kill the person responsible, and earn a title "Hero of Maj'dul". That's the kind of quest that actually draws you and everyone nearby into the game's story.
Too bad 95% of quests are "kill this and return here".
Again, it all comes back to risk versus reward. The people who take the bigger risk will get the bigger reward. You can make the relation to gambling, where 2 people bet 5 dollars. One guy bets at 2:1 odds, the other guy bets at 40:1 odds. If they both win, the guy who bet 2:1 has no right to complain that he only won 10 dollars, while the second guy won 200 dollars, since he chose to to take the relatively safe bet. You need to reward the people who take the biggest risks proportionately, otherwise the entire system falls apart.
But why are you giving people PVE rewards for PVP achievements? Or does PVE questing give you PVP progress also (like, say, tailored equipment or the like)?
Again, it all comes back to risk versus reward. The people who take the bigger risk will get the bigger reward. You can make the relation to gambling, where 2 people bet 5 dollars. One guy bets at 2:1 odds, the other guy bets at 40:1 odds. If they both win, the guy who bet 2:1 has no right to complain that he only won 10 dollars, while the second guy won 200 dollars, since he chose to to take the relatively safe bet. You need to reward the people who take the biggest risks proportionately, otherwise the entire system falls apart.
But why are you giving people PVE rewards for PVP achievements? Or does PVE questing give you PVP progress also (like, say, tailored equipment or the like)?
That's actually exactly how it works in EVE via deadspace/faction equipment.
Again, it all comes back to risk versus reward. The people who take the bigger risk will get the bigger reward. You can make the relation to gambling, where 2 people bet 5 dollars. One guy bets at 2:1 odds, the other guy bets at 40:1 odds. If they both win, the guy who bet 2:1 has no right to complain that he only won 10 dollars, while the second guy won 200 dollars, since he chose to to take the relatively safe bet. You need to reward the people who take the biggest risks proportionately, otherwise the entire system falls apart.
But why are you giving people PVE rewards for PVP achievements? Or does PVE questing give you PVP progress also (like, say, tailored equipment or the like)?
You know, I really think that more people would be fine with PvP were it not for the advent of "camping". Take for example WoW, if they could find a way to completely discourage camping (killing one character multiple times within an hour) they would have opened up an avenue to encouraging world PvP by means such as those described in the quotes above. The quotes above are under the assumption that all things are equal between the characters involved. In WoW, you can see that Halaa PvP and Hellfire Penninsula PvP are mostly dominated by bored level 70's which is silly. I was there for the Burning Crusade launch and you're right, it was a LOT of fun to PvP in those areas when there weren't any higher level characters interfering and that is the reason the incentives made sense.
I may be in the minority but I find random world PvP with people approximately my level pretty exciting. It often happens in places like Ungoro or STV. What I absolutely DO NOT enjoy is having level 70's two shot me and then proceed to camp me until I am forced to spirit rez at which point another stealthed level 70 rogue is waiting to camp me at the graveyard yet again (FYI this did actually happen to me in STV some years ago. I was forced to log off and do something else). I think they eventually recoded the game to where if you get killed at a graveyard, it automatically assigns you to a different graveyard the next time making the situation that happened to me rather impossible to repeat. I digress.
I think that if Blizzard would attach some sort of flag to these people that would perhaps create a debuff that went something like "Your ability to earn Honor Points and Arena points has been decreased by 10%: Duration 48hrs". This debuff would stack each additional time you attack and kill anyone who is not within +/- 3 levels of you, or whatever deviation seems appropriate. I remember Lineage 2 having some extremely sophisticated system similar to that in terms of their ability to detect who initiated the combat, whether the target fought back, who landed the killing blow, etc. Lineage 2's penalties for doing so, however, were over the top in my opinion.
I really really think that if a PvP situation could exist in which characters of approximately equal level could duke it out to their hearts content without interference from higher levels,"Gonna log my 70 and camp you lolz" that game would have it made.
Ah, except people who cry for more PVP can never agree just where exactly the line between "fun" and "freedom" lies. You have your permadeath group, your serious consequences group, your free-for-all group, your per-level-range group, gear looting and no gear looting... it's like undecided voters, they only thing they have in common is that they Do Not Want What Is Currently There Fix It Fix It Fix It. ;-)
Ah, except people who cry for more PVP can never agree just where exactly the line between "fun" and "freedom" lies. You have your permadeath group, your serious consequences group, your free-for-all group, your per-level-range group, gear looting and no gear looting... it's like undecided voters, they only thing they have in common is that they Do Not Want What Is Currently There Fix It Fix It Fix It. ;-)
I'm pretty certain this all comes down to the fact that PvP is almost always an after thought. In games like Planetside or EvE, PvP was integral to the design of the core game so very little people complain about it because it's designed to work and be fun and people play the game specifically for the PvP. Nobody complains about the PvP in Counterstrike or Battlefield 2 for the same reason. They complain about other things, like the balance of PvP weapons sure, but rarely about the actual concept of PvP and it's consequences themselves. Because they've signed up for them from the start. It's when you tack PvP onto a game that is essentially a PvE game and then start having that PvP affect your PvE game/character/loot in significant ways that people, quite rightly, take objection. That wasn't what they bought the game for.
But of course, this also comes back to the fact that different people want different things and as such the future of MMOs will be that there will be several different games offering different levels of PvP to cater for the different markets. Some MMOs probably won't even have any PvP.
Indeed, but if you take out the levelling I'm not sure why it'd draw any sort of PVE crowd over.
Oh no. Anything but that.
I'm not sure why it would anyway. Half Life 2 draws a pretty big PvE crowd and it doesn't have any levelling. As does Mario Kart. And FIFA. And pretty much any non-RPG game. If you took the levelling out you might alienate the RPG market, but the PvE market? I don't see why that'd be the case.
How much do you pay a month to play Mario Kart?
Where's Mario Kart's persistent world and frequent content updates?
I DON'T KNOW, I'M NOT THE ONE THAT BROUGHT IT UP IN THE MMO THREAD.
I don't think it's really possible to have a game that puts PvP and PvE on equal footing.
WoW does that, and does it probably as well as anyone's going to, and it's not particularly adequate.
To make a PvP game work, everyone has to be playing by the same basic rules, which makes it hard to have "PvE zones" where real progression is possible.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Again, it all comes back to risk versus reward. The people who take the bigger risk will get the bigger reward. You can make the relation to gambling, where 2 people bet 5 dollars. One guy bets at 2:1 odds, the other guy bets at 40:1 odds. If they both win, the guy who bet 2:1 has no right to complain that he only won 10 dollars, while the second guy won 200 dollars, since he chose to to take the relatively safe bet. You need to reward the people who take the biggest risks proportionately, otherwise the entire system falls apart.
But why are you giving people PVE rewards for PVP achievements? Or does PVE questing give you PVP progress also (like, say, tailored equipment or the like)?
It doesnt have to be a PVE reward, it could be a completely non-consequential reward, like fancy colored cloth. It doesnt even have to be a tangible reward, maybe just a percieved bonus (i cant think of any example off hand). The entire point is just to get people to fill your world up, give them a reason to do so, and keep everyone happy.
When talking about pvp in an MMO, theres 3 types of people, people who wont ever do it, people who will do it if it means theyre getting something beneficial, and people who would do it even if it meant they had to exploit game mechanics. The idea is to satisfy them all at the same time, which is difficult as fuck without making any one side feel like theyre missing out on something.
I've always wondered why people had to have a reward for pvping. for me leveling and getting better gear was so I could pvp, I didn't pvp so I could pve better. thank god for eve.
claxton on
Its not enough to win. You want nothing left of your enemy but a skull nailed to a fence post so everybody understands the cost of crossing you. -Durga
Here's a theoretical example of how to separate PvE from PvP in WoW:
Make all Gladiator gear absolutely free, but it can only be used in BG's and the Arena. You spend Arena Points on unlocking Gladiator gear for PvE usage as a reward for grinding the Arena, and having a higher standing gives you access to the Merciless or higher sets. This way, everyone is on an even footing for PvP, and yet you still reward the winners for winning with slightly (not game-breakingly) better gear and the ability to use PvP gear in PvE.
This would make PvP an even playing field for all comers (everyone has the same gear) while still giving rewards for grinding (ability to use PvP gear in PvE) and to winners (access to Merciless, etc).
delroland on
EVE: Online - the most fun you will ever have not playing a game.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
I've always wondered why people had to have a reward for pvping. for me leveling and getting better gear was so I could pvp, I didn't pvp so I could pve better. thank god for eve.
I think you could give relatively grand rewards for people while penalizing characters relatively little - for example technically speaking destroying an enemy alliance in EVE is not generally devestating to most of the characters - they move on to other corps etc.
But, what I'd really love is for the game to tell me that we're committing war crimes against civilian populations. There needs to be an "orbital bombardment" option. Also the atmosphere deprivation weapon.
The big thing I want is more quests that draw people into the game world.
Everquest 2 comes closer to this than other games I've tried. I still remember one quest I did that involves uncovering a plot by the Vizeer to take control of the desert city, Maj'dul. It's a huge questline that leads you all over, but you eventually discover that the orcs are in on the plot, along with the Dark Brotherhood, an assassin's guild.
When you get near the end, your actions actually trigger an orc invasion of the entire town. Orcs literally run through the town, killing NPCs, town guards, and any player who gets in their way and doesn't have the strength to stop them. When you complete the quest, you stop the invasion, kill the person responsible, and earn a title "Hero of Maj'dul". That's the kind of quest that actually draws you and everyone nearby into the game's story.
Too bad 95% of quests are "kill this and return here".
LOTRO certainly has its fair share of kill this and return, but these quests are filler around a continual "epic" storyline that parallels the main arc of LOTR. All of these quests, for the most part, are instanced dungeons of like 20-30 minutes and made up of almost entirely scripted encounters. The payoff is that you actually feel drawn deep into the story - even better is the fact that no matter where you start, the early plot folds into the same arc but from different angles, so if you roll a new toon as another race, you'll actually see a part of the story that you saw referenced on another toon, but only saw the actual payoff, not the buildup.
I found this a lot cooler than most of WoW's storytelling - it's a damn shame WoW doesn't do more cutscenes and such to pull you deeper into the story, at least in my experience over the past 3 years.
At least for the first attempt at this kind of content, it would be fairly easy to just have a set expansion timer.
If Mob X which spawns from Point A reaches point Z, mob plants object W and starts Timer 1.
When Timer 1 runs out, If Mob X and Object W are still present, mob Y Spawns.
Etc etc.
It would still be repetitive, but you'd at least have content in motion.
All you need is a huge pile of If code.
Right, but the problem here is that you're now devoting developer time to content that may not ever be visible, by any player, ever. If mob X is camped around the clock, it will NEVER reach point Z, and mob Y will NEVER spawn.
Oh, and Gof help you if you give mob Y some useful piece of loot. Can you imagine the BITCHING: "OMG NOOB Y U KILL X U DUMFUCK FUCK YOU GET THE FUCK OFF MY SERVER /1 HAY GUISE NOOB IZ A FUCKING DUMBFUCK DONT GRUP WIT HIM WTF"
There's a damn good reason why Blizzard isn't slashing and burning their old instances: it's so that they can devote time to MORE content, rather than REPLACING content.
Very nice point, I'd like to add my thoughts to the argument that WoW is static.
Ideally, you shouldn't be worrying about content that remains after you have played it... WoW only seems static in two cases... You keep replaying it or you get to the very end game. If you keep replaying it, obviously things will seem static, but that is how any game ever made with a story is... and don't give me some bullshit... "but some games are like replayable because you can change things" ... Right, I get it, but you can play different sides, and hit different zones too... And once you get to the end, there are still plenty of things to do.... I suppose if you want to play a game for 10000 hours, and feel that things are getting stagnant... it's probably just because you are playing a game way more than has ever been intended... that said, WoW still keeps many playing by adding things constantly.... So can we stop saying that WoW is a static world? Please? And enough about all the great things that eve does too... it's boring and shitty, that's pretty much the gist of it. I want better pvp in a game too, and WoW is even improving that now...
But it is a delicate cycle, and if you want a game to be massive, and have a lot of players, you can't make it impossible for people who aren't holding engineering degrees to play (I have one, and I still couldn't figure out Eve before I stopped wanting to figure it out)... But wow isn't static, at all...
Play from the begining, in a zone you have never played, and completely forget about leveling, just play the quests, do the things you assigned, travel to zones you've never seen before, finish content and spend some time in the Inns chatting with the locals, you will find how rediculous the amount of content is. Blizzard really just packed the game with this stuff to the point that you really never need to grind unless you are feeling to lazy to do quests, or are in a big rush to get to the end... although, if you loook at somehting like Joana's guide, you will see that you can pretty much speed quest through the game too, far faster than grinding... No MMO will beat WoW, until they realize that it's not about the new combat gimmick, it's about making a game that has an actual story going on in it, and every quest has somethi ngto do with the world... It's not blizzards fault if you don't care enough to read, and just want to play for levels.
It's not just about having a good story, but rather having a good story to which people can relate. Warcraft 1/2/3 set that story up for WoW. Everquest has a good story, but no one cares, because unless you were a hardcore EQ1 junkie, you just don't get some of the references.
WoW is a success though not just because of the story. It is also accessible to everyman player, it has a relatively intuitive interface, the artwork is very stylistic and thus can withstand the test of time, and of course the production value of WoW far outstrips anything else that has come before it.
As the maxim goes, "You have to spend money to make money." Blizzard understood this and is now a multibillion dollar company.
delroland on
EVE: Online - the most fun you will ever have not playing a game.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
Or hell, maybe MMO devs just don't give 2 shits about AI.
They really don't. What's the point of having complex AI when simple
1) if Player comes within 20 yards, Attack
2) whenever cooldown is complete, use Spell
3) When health is below 20%, Flee
is more than enough.
The fact that that is enough is what should change. Environments should be drastically more interactive. Bringing physics into an MMO would be a first step, or have the enemy NPC factions build bases and encampments if they are left to roam somewhere for too long.
EVE is a good example of a game where NPC's could be more challenging and varied. Ratting (PvE combat) and NPC questing is actually looked down upon a bit there. Having enemy NPC factions actually start a base in your system if you don't keep them out or being able to have NPC allies that fight with you would make them more interesting. Gaining that level of trust of an NPC faction should be a big investment, maybe needing to sign exclusive trade contracts with that faction for your corp or allowing them to mine in your system.
The reputation system could track infractions against those agreements and make your corp lose privileges. Sabotaging the reputation of a corp (maybe by attacking with ships or weapons made by that corp and using some covert ops skills) to make an NPC faction turn on them would be an awesome scenario made possible by more involved NPC's. Having NPC factions involved in wars opens up gameplay possibilities that would be hard to achieve with real players, since the outcome and reactions of NPC's can be controlled, more predictable and more immersive than real players.
If the AI is lacking to make good decisions for NPC factions, you could always have GM's take over control silently and make the proper choices, like between two offered contracts.
I think a way for developers to achieve more in the field of MMORPG evolution is to have more interactive combat. Would you rather click once, and then mash number buttons, or take an idea from the Jedi Knight series, and move around while swinging your sword around? Star Wars Galaxies got it right, IMO, but people seem to think it sucks.
Also, MMO devs should find a way to limit the amount of people who spam, scream in the trading channel, and can't type in proper english.
I think a way for developers to achieve more in the field of MMORPG evolution is to have more interactive combat. Would you rather click once, and then mash number buttons, or take an idea from the Jedi Knight series, and move around while swinging your sword around? Star Wars Galaxies got it right, IMO, but people seem to think it sucks.
Also, MMO devs should find a way to limit the amount of people who spam, scream in the trading channel, and can't type in proper english.
Hmmm, a Star Wars fanatic that thinks "more interactive combat" is the future of MMOs. You don't happen to work for SOE do you?
lowlylowlycook on
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Also, MMO devs should find a way to limit the amount of people who spam, scream in the trading channel, and can't type in proper english.
the rest of your post i disagree with, but this right here i have mixed feelngs about.
on the one hand i like the way that the trade channel is an endless source of amusement
on the other, i'd like to be able to sell stuff in there.
I think blizzard made a huge mistake when they made it impossible to join the Looking For Group channel unless you were actually actively in the LFG tool, looking for a group.
That channel basically just served as worldwide chat, and i think they need to bring a worldwide chat channel into the game.
I think the central problem with massive PVP play is psychological-- in short, everyone wants to be the hero, and PVE gives everyone that opportunity. Everyone loves challenge of defeating the AI, because we know the AI is more or less predictable, and if we are sure that if we just figure out how to make the most of what we have, we can succeed. It's the triumph of creativity over mechanization.
With too many people competing directly against each other, it is impossible for the game designers to provide satisfaction to all players. Consider another popular massively-multiplayer PVP game -- poker. Poker tournaments now draw thousands of players, and even though they don't all sit at the same table, they all compete for the same prize. I insist no one would pay a subscription fee to play poker unless the money they stood to win was real.
What we pay for in the subscription fee is the oppportunity to be a hero. If the game can't deliver that to some extent, it isn't worth paying for. Perhaps a case could be made that if a certain portion of the subscription fees were set aside as prizes and distributed to victorious players (which in the case of role-playing games might be winners of tournaments, raiders of treasure, etc.), it might be possible to motivate players to play what is for most a losing game. People love gameshows, and plenty of people play the lottery!
Now some people complain about the quality of AI in games, and those complaints are valid. Nobody knows how to write good strategic AI, so generally the only way to make the AI challenges difficult is to give the AI enemies advantages the players don't have. This, of course, is an ugly hack and it can be frustrating. One way around this problem would be to use some of the subscription fees to pay full-time agents in the game who would act as tour guides, enemy leaders, etc.
Now I'm sure everyone sees obvious conflict of interest problems with this scenario, especially if the salaried bad guys have friends in the game (although this situation is much worse with volunteer bad guys), but the point is really to show that in many ways the quality of the game depends in large part upon the amount people are willing to pay for it, because any and all improvements come at some cost. How many people would pay twice as much to play the game if there were a human-controlled dragon you could hunt? On the other hand, would you pay to play as a dragon, if it meant everyone in the world were after your head and your chances of surviving were essentially nil?
Actually, this second idea is quite interesting. In this case, some character types, namely monster types, would have home layers which could be raided, these players would suffer permanent death and would have to completely restart, and so on. Due to their intrinsic monster strength, they wouldn't need to level-grind as much, or perhaps at all. Your goal as a moster character would simply be to amass kills and loot. Other character types would be perhaps more mundane, but would offer the opportunity for steady improvement in terms of stats, equipment, achivement of pre-designed quests, etc. It's a tradeoff that could give an interesting new angle on gameplay.
Ultimately, however, I think it's clear that most markets are dominated by cheap, passable goods, and online games are no exception. So really the question might be, "Is there a market for a *luxury* online game?" If a game of obviously superior quality were developed, is there a large enough set of players who would be willing to spend, say, $50 or $100 a month to play it? Some people spend that much on cable, and they get hundreds of channels, all with paid actors, writers (pending the current labor dispute, of course), etc. The only reason there is enough money to pay all these people is that the subscribing audience is huge.
So there's really only two ways about it-- make a game everyone will like, which apparently either means waving money in people's faces or giving everyone the opportunity to be the hero (or perhaps villain) of the game, or make a game for experienced gamers who like to compete on a level, unrestricted field of play. In the first case, you can afford to charge a little for the game, and in the second case, you must charge more. Would enough people pay the premium?
p.s. about that writer's strike -- networks are relying on reality TV shows a great deal to keep audiences. What if online games, in turn, captured the reality TV audience? I haven't thought too much about that might mean, but I thought I'd throw the idea out there. There's a similarity between online games and reality TV/gameshows that I can't quite pinpoint...
Now that I got thinking about this, I find myself with a flurry of ideas. Would people pay to watch live epic battles involving hundreds of characters or maybe elite duels? Maybe the future of games is to involve people who don't actually play. Professional sports, gladiator arenas, etc. have always been like this-- more observers than participants. I am aware that in South Korea at least, Starcraft matches draw real audiences. I don't suppose those count as massively multiplayer, however.
What if the world were filled with immortal gods and goddesses, sprites, demons, etc., all which were playable? In these cases, there would be rules limiting your interaction with characters and their interaction with you. For example, perhaps the most you could do would be to give players information and perhaps aid in extreme circumstances, or give players misinformation and summon storms to hinder their progress. Regular characters, on the other hand, could at best banish you back to the Astral plane or prevent you from interfering or something. Maybe you couldn't help unless players performed some spell or ritual. Perhaps you could, as a god or goddess, assume mortal form temporarily. Maybe players could force you to assume mortal form!
Once you get thinking about it, the possibilities are almost endless. The problem, I suppose, is that it's easier to daydream about ideas than it is to implement and play-balance them. Even as it is, play balancing is difficult, and adding extra dimensions to the gameplay will only make it harder.
Think of all the ways the death system could be changed. Perhaps sometimes players who died would opt to bury the character. This would leave a grave, which some other character could revive. This would give a whole new style of play to the undead race in World of Warcraft, for example. The undead would start at whatever level they were when they died, with that equipment, etc. The undead couldn't level up further, couldn't pick up loot (maybe they are like shades or ghosts) and there would be no way to save your game. Once you logged out, the reanimating spirit would leave the corpse, and the corpse would return to the grave.
This way, players wouldn't have to start over to experiment with new classes, etc. Maybe everyone would choose to go grave-robbing first to see what classes they liked best. Perhaps there would be premade "bones piles" (to borrow a term from Nethack) of various classes and levels, so regardless of many players who had buried their characters, there would be a constant base of choices.
This would be a great way to retire an epic hero if you decided to leave the game. Bury the character, and then everyone who went grave-digging to play undead could see and experience for themselves the hero you built. Maybe you could customize the inscription on the headstone, etc.
Casuals wouldn't complain about not being able to access the best equipment, etc. because they could always just play undead. Maybe there would be a short time limit on how long you could play the undead character, to keep play balance fair. Maybe only one person could reanimate a given bones pile at a time.
Maybe in-game characters could reanimate the bones piles as well, and they would be controlled by AI. The undead would be like sidekicks or pets in this case, and would assist the character who summoned them. This would give priest characters an interesting new dimension. Many role-playing games already have "summoning" abilities, and this is sort of a variant. In this case presumably you would have to actually physically go to the graveyard to do it, and then the ghost/zombie/whatever would follow you for a while. Maybe you could summon an entire ghost army, with the risk it might turn on you!
Finally, many games feature pets or mounts. What if these animals were playable directly? What if characters were able to build armies of NPCs (by paying mercinaries, bodyguards, etc.), and usually they were controlled by AI, but the mercinary characters were playable if the owning player agreed? These options give even more ways casual players could enter the game and have fun without making a huge time commitment. They would give a good way to "audition" for a guild-- maybe the guild has a private army of guards on payroll, and if you want to join the guild you have to prove yourself first by playing one of the guards well. Maybe you got to "keep" the guard character if your audition was successful, and begin play with whatever equipment, abilities, etc. the guard had.
I can't believe how similar most games really are given all the possibilities!
Posts
a MUD I used to play had a decent way of allowing/incentivising pvp without requiring it. there were 3 types of PVP zoning in the game. The first had no PKing, except of people who were flagged as PKers because they recently PK'd. xp and equipment in these zones were usually terrible. The second had PKing as mostly a nuissance - you could attack and kill someone, but it just dumped them out of the zone when they died, and it didn't increase anything but your kill count. items and xp in these zones were generally higher. The third type of zone was brutal - great xp and loot generally, but if you got pk'd, you lost a level, and your gear could be looted. Honestly, very few people risked those zones just to xp.
I don't know why I went off on that tangent. just to give people an idea of what other sort of outside-the-box pvp systems could be brought to MMO's I guess.
Everquest 2 comes closer to this than other games I've tried. I still remember one quest I did that involves uncovering a plot by the Vizeer to take control of the desert city, Maj'dul. It's a huge questline that leads you all over, but you eventually discover that the orcs are in on the plot, along with the Dark Brotherhood, an assassin's guild.
When you get near the end, your actions actually trigger an orc invasion of the entire town. Orcs literally run through the town, killing NPCs, town guards, and any player who gets in their way and doesn't have the strength to stop them. When you complete the quest, you stop the invasion, kill the person responsible, and earn a title "Hero of Maj'dul". That's the kind of quest that actually draws you and everyone nearby into the game's story.
Too bad 95% of quests are "kill this and return here".
You know, I really think that more people would be fine with PvP were it not for the advent of "camping". Take for example WoW, if they could find a way to completely discourage camping (killing one character multiple times within an hour) they would have opened up an avenue to encouraging world PvP by means such as those described in the quotes above. The quotes above are under the assumption that all things are equal between the characters involved. In WoW, you can see that Halaa PvP and Hellfire Penninsula PvP are mostly dominated by bored level 70's which is silly. I was there for the Burning Crusade launch and you're right, it was a LOT of fun to PvP in those areas when there weren't any higher level characters interfering and that is the reason the incentives made sense.
I may be in the minority but I find random world PvP with people approximately my level pretty exciting. It often happens in places like Ungoro or STV. What I absolutely DO NOT enjoy is having level 70's two shot me and then proceed to camp me until I am forced to spirit rez at which point another stealthed level 70 rogue is waiting to camp me at the graveyard yet again (FYI this did actually happen to me in STV some years ago. I was forced to log off and do something else). I think they eventually recoded the game to where if you get killed at a graveyard, it automatically assigns you to a different graveyard the next time making the situation that happened to me rather impossible to repeat. I digress.
I think that if Blizzard would attach some sort of flag to these people that would perhaps create a debuff that went something like "Your ability to earn Honor Points and Arena points has been decreased by 10%: Duration 48hrs". This debuff would stack each additional time you attack and kill anyone who is not within +/- 3 levels of you, or whatever deviation seems appropriate. I remember Lineage 2 having some extremely sophisticated system similar to that in terms of their ability to detect who initiated the combat, whether the target fought back, who landed the killing blow, etc. Lineage 2's penalties for doing so, however, were over the top in my opinion.
I really really think that if a PvP situation could exist in which characters of approximately equal level could duke it out to their hearts content without interference from higher levels,"Gonna log my 70 and camp you lolz" that game would have it made.
I'm pretty certain this all comes down to the fact that PvP is almost always an after thought. In games like Planetside or EvE, PvP was integral to the design of the core game so very little people complain about it because it's designed to work and be fun and people play the game specifically for the PvP. Nobody complains about the PvP in Counterstrike or Battlefield 2 for the same reason. They complain about other things, like the balance of PvP weapons sure, but rarely about the actual concept of PvP and it's consequences themselves. Because they've signed up for them from the start. It's when you tack PvP onto a game that is essentially a PvE game and then start having that PvP affect your PvE game/character/loot in significant ways that people, quite rightly, take objection. That wasn't what they bought the game for.
But of course, this also comes back to the fact that different people want different things and as such the future of MMOs will be that there will be several different games offering different levels of PvP to cater for the different markets. Some MMOs probably won't even have any PvP.
I DON'T KNOW, I'M NOT THE ONE THAT BROUGHT IT UP IN THE MMO THREAD.
Honestly I want someone to take the gameplay of Red Alert (the original) and put that into MMO form. That would be perfect and awesome.
WoW does that, and does it probably as well as anyone's going to, and it's not particularly adequate.
To make a PvP game work, everyone has to be playing by the same basic rules, which makes it hard to have "PvE zones" where real progression is possible.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Yeah, I think MMO RTS is a pretty good format idea for making an MMO that might actually require some skill from the player.
Shatted Galaxy still involves a lot of leveling though.
It doesnt have to be a PVE reward, it could be a completely non-consequential reward, like fancy colored cloth. It doesnt even have to be a tangible reward, maybe just a percieved bonus (i cant think of any example off hand). The entire point is just to get people to fill your world up, give them a reason to do so, and keep everyone happy.
When talking about pvp in an MMO, theres 3 types of people, people who wont ever do it, people who will do it if it means theyre getting something beneficial, and people who would do it even if it meant they had to exploit game mechanics. The idea is to satisfy them all at the same time, which is difficult as fuck without making any one side feel like theyre missing out on something.
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Make all Gladiator gear absolutely free, but it can only be used in BG's and the Arena. You spend Arena Points on unlocking Gladiator gear for PvE usage as a reward for grinding the Arena, and having a higher standing gives you access to the Merciless or higher sets. This way, everyone is on an even footing for PvP, and yet you still reward the winners for winning with slightly (not game-breakingly) better gear and the ability to use PvP gear in PvE.
This would make PvP an even playing field for all comers (everyone has the same gear) while still giving rewards for grinding (ability to use PvP gear in PvE) and to winners (access to Merciless, etc).
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
Indeed
But, what I'd really love is for the game to tell me that we're committing war crimes against civilian populations. There needs to be an "orbital bombardment" option. Also the atmosphere deprivation weapon.
LOTRO certainly has its fair share of kill this and return, but these quests are filler around a continual "epic" storyline that parallels the main arc of LOTR. All of these quests, for the most part, are instanced dungeons of like 20-30 minutes and made up of almost entirely scripted encounters. The payoff is that you actually feel drawn deep into the story - even better is the fact that no matter where you start, the early plot folds into the same arc but from different angles, so if you roll a new toon as another race, you'll actually see a part of the story that you saw referenced on another toon, but only saw the actual payoff, not the buildup.
I found this a lot cooler than most of WoW's storytelling - it's a damn shame WoW doesn't do more cutscenes and such to pull you deeper into the story, at least in my experience over the past 3 years.
Very nice point, I'd like to add my thoughts to the argument that WoW is static.
Ideally, you shouldn't be worrying about content that remains after you have played it... WoW only seems static in two cases... You keep replaying it or you get to the very end game. If you keep replaying it, obviously things will seem static, but that is how any game ever made with a story is... and don't give me some bullshit... "but some games are like replayable because you can change things" ... Right, I get it, but you can play different sides, and hit different zones too... And once you get to the end, there are still plenty of things to do.... I suppose if you want to play a game for 10000 hours, and feel that things are getting stagnant... it's probably just because you are playing a game way more than has ever been intended... that said, WoW still keeps many playing by adding things constantly.... So can we stop saying that WoW is a static world? Please? And enough about all the great things that eve does too... it's boring and shitty, that's pretty much the gist of it. I want better pvp in a game too, and WoW is even improving that now...
But it is a delicate cycle, and if you want a game to be massive, and have a lot of players, you can't make it impossible for people who aren't holding engineering degrees to play (I have one, and I still couldn't figure out Eve before I stopped wanting to figure it out)... But wow isn't static, at all...
Play from the begining, in a zone you have never played, and completely forget about leveling, just play the quests, do the things you assigned, travel to zones you've never seen before, finish content and spend some time in the Inns chatting with the locals, you will find how rediculous the amount of content is. Blizzard really just packed the game with this stuff to the point that you really never need to grind unless you are feeling to lazy to do quests, or are in a big rush to get to the end... although, if you loook at somehting like Joana's guide, you will see that you can pretty much speed quest through the game too, far faster than grinding... No MMO will beat WoW, until they realize that it's not about the new combat gimmick, it's about making a game that has an actual story going on in it, and every quest has somethi ngto do with the world... It's not blizzards fault if you don't care enough to read, and just want to play for levels.
WoW is a success though not just because of the story. It is also accessible to everyman player, it has a relatively intuitive interface, the artwork is very stylistic and thus can withstand the test of time, and of course the production value of WoW far outstrips anything else that has come before it.
As the maxim goes, "You have to spend money to make money." Blizzard understood this and is now a multibillion dollar company.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
The fact that that is enough is what should change. Environments should be drastically more interactive. Bringing physics into an MMO would be a first step, or have the enemy NPC factions build bases and encampments if they are left to roam somewhere for too long.
EVE is a good example of a game where NPC's could be more challenging and varied. Ratting (PvE combat) and NPC questing is actually looked down upon a bit there. Having enemy NPC factions actually start a base in your system if you don't keep them out or being able to have NPC allies that fight with you would make them more interesting. Gaining that level of trust of an NPC faction should be a big investment, maybe needing to sign exclusive trade contracts with that faction for your corp or allowing them to mine in your system.
The reputation system could track infractions against those agreements and make your corp lose privileges. Sabotaging the reputation of a corp (maybe by attacking with ships or weapons made by that corp and using some covert ops skills) to make an NPC faction turn on them would be an awesome scenario made possible by more involved NPC's. Having NPC factions involved in wars opens up gameplay possibilities that would be hard to achieve with real players, since the outcome and reactions of NPC's can be controlled, more predictable and more immersive than real players.
If the AI is lacking to make good decisions for NPC factions, you could always have GM's take over control silently and make the proper choices, like between two offered contracts.
Also, MMO devs should find a way to limit the amount of people who spam, scream in the trading channel, and can't type in proper english.
Hmmm, a Star Wars fanatic that thinks "more interactive combat" is the future of MMOs. You don't happen to work for SOE do you?
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
topic over
the rest of your post i disagree with, but this right here i have mixed feelngs about.
on the one hand i like the way that the trade channel is an endless source of amusement
on the other, i'd like to be able to sell stuff in there.
I think blizzard made a huge mistake when they made it impossible to join the Looking For Group channel unless you were actually actively in the LFG tool, looking for a group.
That channel basically just served as worldwide chat, and i think they need to bring a worldwide chat channel into the game.
With too many people competing directly against each other, it is impossible for the game designers to provide satisfaction to all players. Consider another popular massively-multiplayer PVP game -- poker. Poker tournaments now draw thousands of players, and even though they don't all sit at the same table, they all compete for the same prize. I insist no one would pay a subscription fee to play poker unless the money they stood to win was real.
What we pay for in the subscription fee is the oppportunity to be a hero. If the game can't deliver that to some extent, it isn't worth paying for. Perhaps a case could be made that if a certain portion of the subscription fees were set aside as prizes and distributed to victorious players (which in the case of role-playing games might be winners of tournaments, raiders of treasure, etc.), it might be possible to motivate players to play what is for most a losing game. People love gameshows, and plenty of people play the lottery!
Now some people complain about the quality of AI in games, and those complaints are valid. Nobody knows how to write good strategic AI, so generally the only way to make the AI challenges difficult is to give the AI enemies advantages the players don't have. This, of course, is an ugly hack and it can be frustrating. One way around this problem would be to use some of the subscription fees to pay full-time agents in the game who would act as tour guides, enemy leaders, etc.
Now I'm sure everyone sees obvious conflict of interest problems with this scenario, especially if the salaried bad guys have friends in the game (although this situation is much worse with volunteer bad guys), but the point is really to show that in many ways the quality of the game depends in large part upon the amount people are willing to pay for it, because any and all improvements come at some cost. How many people would pay twice as much to play the game if there were a human-controlled dragon you could hunt? On the other hand, would you pay to play as a dragon, if it meant everyone in the world were after your head and your chances of surviving were essentially nil?
Actually, this second idea is quite interesting. In this case, some character types, namely monster types, would have home layers which could be raided, these players would suffer permanent death and would have to completely restart, and so on. Due to their intrinsic monster strength, they wouldn't need to level-grind as much, or perhaps at all. Your goal as a moster character would simply be to amass kills and loot. Other character types would be perhaps more mundane, but would offer the opportunity for steady improvement in terms of stats, equipment, achivement of pre-designed quests, etc. It's a tradeoff that could give an interesting new angle on gameplay.
Ultimately, however, I think it's clear that most markets are dominated by cheap, passable goods, and online games are no exception. So really the question might be, "Is there a market for a *luxury* online game?" If a game of obviously superior quality were developed, is there a large enough set of players who would be willing to spend, say, $50 or $100 a month to play it? Some people spend that much on cable, and they get hundreds of channels, all with paid actors, writers (pending the current labor dispute, of course), etc. The only reason there is enough money to pay all these people is that the subscribing audience is huge.
So there's really only two ways about it-- make a game everyone will like, which apparently either means waving money in people's faces or giving everyone the opportunity to be the hero (or perhaps villain) of the game, or make a game for experienced gamers who like to compete on a level, unrestricted field of play. In the first case, you can afford to charge a little for the game, and in the second case, you must charge more. Would enough people pay the premium?
p.s. about that writer's strike -- networks are relying on reality TV shows a great deal to keep audiences. What if online games, in turn, captured the reality TV audience? I haven't thought too much about that might mean, but I thought I'd throw the idea out there. There's a similarity between online games and reality TV/gameshows that I can't quite pinpoint...
What if the world were filled with immortal gods and goddesses, sprites, demons, etc., all which were playable? In these cases, there would be rules limiting your interaction with characters and their interaction with you. For example, perhaps the most you could do would be to give players information and perhaps aid in extreme circumstances, or give players misinformation and summon storms to hinder their progress. Regular characters, on the other hand, could at best banish you back to the Astral plane or prevent you from interfering or something. Maybe you couldn't help unless players performed some spell or ritual. Perhaps you could, as a god or goddess, assume mortal form temporarily. Maybe players could force you to assume mortal form!
Once you get thinking about it, the possibilities are almost endless. The problem, I suppose, is that it's easier to daydream about ideas than it is to implement and play-balance them. Even as it is, play balancing is difficult, and adding extra dimensions to the gameplay will only make it harder.
This way, players wouldn't have to start over to experiment with new classes, etc. Maybe everyone would choose to go grave-robbing first to see what classes they liked best. Perhaps there would be premade "bones piles" (to borrow a term from Nethack) of various classes and levels, so regardless of many players who had buried their characters, there would be a constant base of choices.
This would be a great way to retire an epic hero if you decided to leave the game. Bury the character, and then everyone who went grave-digging to play undead could see and experience for themselves the hero you built. Maybe you could customize the inscription on the headstone, etc.
Casuals wouldn't complain about not being able to access the best equipment, etc. because they could always just play undead. Maybe there would be a short time limit on how long you could play the undead character, to keep play balance fair. Maybe only one person could reanimate a given bones pile at a time.
Maybe in-game characters could reanimate the bones piles as well, and they would be controlled by AI. The undead would be like sidekicks or pets in this case, and would assist the character who summoned them. This would give priest characters an interesting new dimension. Many role-playing games already have "summoning" abilities, and this is sort of a variant. In this case presumably you would have to actually physically go to the graveyard to do it, and then the ghost/zombie/whatever would follow you for a while. Maybe you could summon an entire ghost army, with the risk it might turn on you!
Finally, many games feature pets or mounts. What if these animals were playable directly? What if characters were able to build armies of NPCs (by paying mercinaries, bodyguards, etc.), and usually they were controlled by AI, but the mercinary characters were playable if the owning player agreed? These options give even more ways casual players could enter the game and have fun without making a huge time commitment. They would give a good way to "audition" for a guild-- maybe the guild has a private army of guards on payroll, and if you want to join the guild you have to prove yourself first by playing one of the guards well. Maybe you got to "keep" the guard character if your audition was successful, and begin play with whatever equipment, abilities, etc. the guard had.
I can't believe how similar most games really are given all the possibilities!