f13.net

It's like Captain Ebolter without the wit:

"im not saying this as a kali member, but as a regular player...
im a bastard, i have fun from taking away other's fun...you have no idea what kind of joy i get out of killing an enemy that is doing a quest, because if i were questing i would expect the same from an enemy... but on the other hand, i do take notes of who has spared me and if i have an oppurtunity to kill them i wont take it...

and come on you guys, you know it too, its fun to ruin fun! and thats why i joined the PVP server"

Sign me up for the WoW PvP server!


http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?FN=wow-general&T=425753&P=1

Sounds like brain damaged version of my high school self..  

Although I do like PVP, I will be staying the hell away from the PVP servers.  I feel strongly enough about that that if my best friends that will be playing want to play on the PVP server, they're welcome to on their own.  You couldn't get me on one of those things unless you gave me a maxxed out character on a free account.

There's no way I want to get stuck on a server with a less intelligent 17-19 year old version of myself. I know the angst, I know the desire to piss people off, I know the boredom of having nothing significant in your life to prevent you from making a game out of pissing other people off.

Fuck gank groups. Fuck getting killed while I'm working on a quest. Fuck getting killed when I don't want to be bothered. Fuck having to be alert 24/7.  I'll pvp when I'm goddamn ready and want to.

Hopefully the PVP servers will sponge up most of the angsty idiots, the griefers, the script kiddies, and the board warriors. Perhaps I should petition Blizzard to add more PVP servers.  Being able to kill annoying assclowns is a great boon, but not enough to offset all of the bullshit.

Welcome to old age, geezer.  Dinner's at 6 and bring your own fucking wet-naps.


I loved PVP on MUDs when I was in College. It was fun, it was exciting and i had the time to do it.  I still get a thrill out of it, but I want to do it on my terms and when I want to.  These days that means FPS games with my geriatric aim and reflexes.

  Still, nothing like playing America's Army sitting in a good cover spot guarding an objective and spraying some guy with a name like "Bung33 K1ll4h" then listen to him call me a camping asshole at round's end.  Good times.

And once the PVP server is well-established and the population has dropped significantly due to griefing, I'm sure we can expect the remaining population to invade the message boards for the other servers and fill them with penis-waving about how the PVP server is the "real" server, playing on the "baby" servers is just a waste of time, and anyone who does so is a big pussy.

History shall repeat itself. It's the ciiiircle of liiiiife....

Ohh yah, I realize this fully. I used to be a pvp fanatic.  I was on several pvp muds between my stints as a bastardly UO griefer/pk. Flash forward serveral years and I'm in the cafeteria line for a nice plate of liver and onions.

I realized I just couldn't keep up and had lost the taste for being one of the undesirables (if at least a well spoken one).  I mean, these kids can play all day!  Shit, I get two hours in and I'm exceeding my bounds.  Plus, I can only be a creep for so long until my conscience kicks in and I start feeling wretched.

Still I find PVP a whole lot of fun.  Two bad no game is really capitalizing on my desire for pvp competition in chunks my life can digest.  (I've tried FPSs, my aim/avoidance/circle-strafe-like-a-chicken skills peak rather early and I just end up getting  mauled after a month. )

That's why I took-up AA.  Not only is it free, but stupid shit like Bunny-hopping and circle strafing isn't nearly as effective as other FPS games, because it's working hard to simulate RL combat as much as possible.  

Plus when it was first released I was charmed by the fact that there's actual objectives OTHER than 'kill all the fuckers.' It meant often times you could charge the objectives with a good team of 2-3 guys and win while the idiots were out trying to kill each other.

  Nothing was more amusing then seeing the betwen-round conversations comprised of "WTF happened? How'd they win?  They got the objective? Lame!"

What makes that specially sweet, is its comming from a member of a guild who GM is a known Blizzard employee.

On the other hand, the PVV server is not that bad at all. It is WAY less of a gank fest than any other pvp server, or pvp game. There are a few certen places that have constant PVP, but you can almost always find some high level player to drive them off.

Also, if you get killed its more of a "Fuck, I died, oh well" with a quick corpse run. Unlike some games where it is "FUCK SHIT FUCK I FUCKING DIED" *throw mouse at wall* "FUCCCCKKKK" *Rip shirt and have buttons go flying* "GRRRRRRAAAAAGGGHHH FUUUCCCKKKK" (True story about UO and my old roommate).

Translation- "I have small and inoffensive genitalia."

Haven't looked at WoW since the Stress Test. Haven't needed to really, as I was sold on it as a viable suckage of time four minutes into it. But I have a question about PvP, and I'd rather hear it from folks I respect than sift through a zillion terabytes of alpha pups:

Is there a difference between PvP servers and Race War servers?

On the surface, a stupid question. But I ask because I played on the Race War servers exclusively and the rules there seemed pretty good.

• A person in their homeland could not be attacked by an invading army (a Human Fighter in Northshire couldn't be attacked by an Undead Mage). The Human would have to initiate attack, in defense of their homeland or just because.
• Invaders could kill everything else of course. They could wipe out quest-giving NPCs, wipe out the local resource gates, harvest the local resources, all that good stuff.
• They just couldn't random gank squads because they couldn't randomly attack players[/list:u]
  That, to me, made PvE viable even on a "PvP" server, and I thought it was a good decision. It could allow the person disinterested in PvP for the night the freedom to quest, only calling upon their high level friends, or alts, to clear out invaders killing their quest NPCs.
  
  Has this changed?

Race wars?

It's amusing watching the PvP people complain about the honor system blizzard is building. It will be interesting to see how that develops. My money is still on the griefers of course.

I'm not sure about the "race war" server, but the description sounds like the WoW normal server ruleset. Entering an enemy city, or attacking an enemy NPC, flagging you for PvP.

Hmm, guess they dropped the "Race War" moniker then. Thanks for the info.

I guess the question then is:

What's the difference between a PvP server and a "normal" one? If players can enter the homelands of the enemy and become flagged for PvP by attacking content there (which notifies the enemy that you have done so by announcing 'enemy spotted in X area' type messages still?), what's different on a PvP server? Is the latter fulltime anyone/anywhere PvP?

No, it's still Alliance Vs. Horde.

The difference between what you said (going in and attacking NPC's to get 'flagged') and the PvP server is that in the PvP server you can go in and attack whatever and whoever the hell you want.

Normal Server = NPC kill, healing/rezzing a flagged PvP player, and attacking a flagged PvP player all give you the flag.

PvP server = there is no flag, everyone on the opposite side is fair game.

On the normal server, the griefing usually involves waiting around 10 mins for your quest NPC to respawn so you can drop off your widgets and get your cog.

On the pvp server, the griefing usually involves getting killed by a fucking dirty night elf right before you kill your last mob that will drop your last widget that will let you get your cog.

Ah, then I like the normal server. Until level-based PvP becomes something one doesn't point at and mock, I'll let others chase the mythical Balancio paper tiger while I blithely perform tasks for inanimate objects.

This kid's life must suck quite a bit. Hopefully his dad will get extra tanked some night soon and beat the kid into a coma.

Treadmill type games don't work very well for pvp but basically you just have to suck it up until you reach max level and then you don't have anything to complain about.  

I'll be playing on a pvp server anyway.

I might give WoW go if they implement PvP server. Anything else other than PvP I can get better from a single player game or chat room/message boards. Call me crazy but I still subscribe to player justice and that is after playing open-ended PvP games like UO, SB and few others.

There isn't really a non-PvP server. The only question is whether you want a seperation between PvE and PvP modes. Speaking for myself the answer is definitely yes. Challenging PvE content inevitably leaves you unbalanced to PvP ambush.

There is already a PVP server in the beta and as far as I know, they will be having at least one dedicated PVP server during release, so no need to worry.

Unless it's like the Asheron's Call Darktide server, which grew and grew and grew as people tired of the regular servers.

When I started AC, a month or two after it launched, DT was getting about 400 people on primetime.  When I quit, it was between 1,500 and 2,000.

That happened with DAoC's 2 PvP servers and then they ended up closing one of them because the populations dropped shortly thereafter. Most people went to try it out and when they got tired of the grief, they left. All that was left were those who like "ruining other peoples' fun to have fun".

My understanding of Darktide is that it had some of the worst griefing to be found since the old days of UO.

Anyways, my point is we've seen assholes like the guy quoted in the original post before (see Sullon Zek) and we'll continue to see them until either we die or we institute some sort of mandatory electroconvulsive therapy for a good portion of the world's population.

Oddly enough, PvP is about the only aspect of WoW that really intrigues me anymore.  And I started out as such a well-meaning PvEer.  

Even then, if City of Villains releases with enough fun I would probably just skip town again to do that instead.

My concern is that even a somewhat time starved powergamer like myself will run out of PvE content long before expansions are ready, leaving me with PvP or nada.  I'm not a big twinker.

Frankly given the way the "non pvp" servers work in wow I just don't see the need for a full bore pvp server unless you truly enjoy being griefed. On a normal server if you want to pvp even at low levels trust me it aint hard to find a fight. And if you get sick of pvp and want to go back go grouping and not being bothered by dilweeds just kick back for 5 minutes and go about your business.

kaid

Coming from a guy that hasn't done any beta'ing of WoW, can you have toons on more than one server at once?  I had planned to have characters on both the PvP and Normal servers just to check them out.  If it is too much of a strain to maintain the fun in both I'll eventually choose where my catassing will continue.

Is that possible?

Yes, you can have characters on both kinds of servers.  I think they said you will get 8 characters total across all servers.  The only limit I have heard is that you can't have characters on different sides of the same PvP server.

You can have up to 8 characters on each server. Right now there are 2 Beta servers and one PvP server, so that's 24 possible characters.

Right now you can have both Alliance and Horde characters on the same server, but rumor has it that when the game is released, you can only create characters on one side of the conflict for that server (like DAOC).

I tried the PvP server and hated it. Hated. It. I pretty much knew that when my night elf was killed by an undead warrior named BradPitt that someone with my personality belongs on the normal server.

Actually I think it was one of the best examples of a successful PvP server (note: in the beginning.  I haven't played in years so I have no idea what it's like now).  You probably heard about the newbie towns where people from other servers would come play - as we affectionately called it - Quaketide.

Regarding the original post:



Nice logic on that one... I guess he really DOESN'T like getting greifed after all, if he's willing to quid pro quo.

Formula:  BNet kiddies + MMOG + PvP server = dim prospects for maturity.  I am usually the PvP server type but I see this one being the exception.

If you think WoW will have issues, how about the "no monthly fee" Guild Wars?  I think that game has a ton of potential, but the people likely to play it may be enough to keep me from it.

Sounds exactly like Grimwell's buddy from Darktide...which is why I avidly avoid 'pvp' servers.

The problem, besides the obvious 'evil is COOL' kind of immaturity, is that there is a misconception that 'anything goes in war'.

Except that this is a game, and games are subject to sportsmanship.

Goddamned kiddies. I love pvp in games like BF1942 or Planetside, but in 'regular' mmogs, I despise the pvp and have zero interest in it, partly because of buttwipes like some of the kids in that thread.

I think one of the things to remember about Guild Wars is that you are actually entering a pvp battle. There can't really be grief kills (though through some exploit, I suppose it's possible - much like some poisons in SW:G). It's a game designed for arena combat. There isn't much room to be evil. (This applies to the PvE game since it's all instanced)

Yes I think I can do without the 14 year-old Blizzard-griefer-fanboi emoting a$$rap3d over my corpse, thanks. PvP servers are like the angry goth clubs where angsty dickheads can go to get their daily does of OMGWTFIPWNDUNOOB!!!1

Understood. The most patience I've had is in UO and SB, because banging out a 7xGM or R5 character was about a week's worth of work, even for players like myself.

If I'm playing a game about adventuring, I'd rather just adventure within the content laid out before me. Tacking on PvP at the end is nice and all, a way to extend the account beyond the point of boredom. But the more compelling the PvP is, the more obvious the front end Grind2Crush becomes, and therefore the narrower the appeal. That's fine of course. Just not for me.

This is why I like WoW's system. At first PvP will happen across all levels. Eventually there'll be a soft cap, a price of entry for viability. I can ignore PvP in both cases, even if I play around with it in the early life of the game before the soft cap forms. This is because quests and PvE content are so thoroughly worked out, belying the nature of WoW as a PvE game first. If my interest in the game means a character survives to the soft cap, then I can try PvP, and experience it without convoluted rulesets and within the exact same environments in which I previously hunted and quested.

But the game isn't about PvP, so I'm not compelled to bypass crappy lackluster PvE content just to get to the "good stuff".

Not saying that solves all. The game could still suck by level 30, and I have as much chance of getting bored with sameness as I did in EQlive and EQ2, since the three are very similar.

PvP works in Planetside because everyone logs in with the simple understanding of what they're trying to accomplish:  destroy the enemy.

WoW, and other PvE games that like to imagine they can slap a new ruleset into a server and call it PvP, end up sending a mixed message to their players about what the players are expected to accomplish.  Namely, they are asked to try to progress through PvE while at the same time always being ready to do something totally different:  PvP.  Even SB does this, where its PvE-to-advance but PvP-to-survive.   The dissonance is what causes the problem; the object of the game isn't properly defined.

Trying to quest while getting ganked isn't fun.  Its like you and your buddies get toegether to play Jenga, and then someone wants to play that Jenga version where you play while other people throw tennis balls at the stack and at your face.

people like this asshat are why I hate PvP and avoid it like the plague for the most part. I can't stand this kind of mentality and when you couple this with the whole victory is determined more by time invested than by player skill it is just not worth it to me. Now, catch me in a FPS and that's a different story.

PvP and PvE can't co-exist. Argue:

Can PvP and PvE exist...

Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  Biggest issue though, is I don't believe a game can be setup to function fully as a PvE game and then have PvP added.  I believe that the first incarnation of UO with all the PK grief whine was and still is the best of the PvP world.  The fact that Origin, EA, or whomever caved and began the dance to Trammel is what crushed the game.

A level based PvE system has inherent problems with PvP.  PvE is a controlled content, while PvP is uncontrolled with in a level based environment.

DAOC and Shadowbane both fail in this regard.  I am looking forward to WOW and will see how the PvP is handled, but the strict PvP server is a foolish endeavor.

Building the game with PvP as a foundation, a given in the game world, and then building a PvE environment as an additive of flavor would work if build around a game not revolving around levels.  Finite power is a keystone that the current Diku lack.

I totally disagree on several points. For one thig I don't think UO was the best of anything. It had some good elements but the PvP side of it was perhaps the worst implementation I have ever seen. The game literally rewarded griefers and hampered legitimate players.

Finally the big issue with trying to mix PvP and PvE is that one aspect of the game will suffer. Period. Devs have finite time and finite resources. Thankfully it is always the PvP that suffers since I don't like PvP in MMOs as currently implemented. (If PvP had at least some aspect of skill I'd be interested. I was briefly interested in Neocron for this very reason since it seemed on the surface to be a FPS/MMO hybrid.)

I wish I had the time to find specific forums posts but you've all seen them on most major MMOs that attempt to mix PvP and PvE in the same game

PvPer: Nerf skill X or class Y it totally owns in PvP

PvEer: that skill isn't overpowered in PvE...

PvPer: shutup carebear!

PvEer: shutup griefer!

My personal opinion is that PVP and PvE cannot coexist where PvE is the dominant method of advancement in game...aka pretty much any MMORPG today.

PvE could quite happily coexist in a game where PvP is the primary focus and is simply something to do when your not killing other players.

I've always thought the PvE and PvP are very closely linked in that they rely on the same concepts usually of advancement inside the game realm. Beyond that, stylistically the players that enjoy one or the other don't really get a hard-on for both. I don't think there can be a direct link between the advancements in PvE and the overall game of PvP. To do that creates an internal problem in the flow of both games. In reality, they are two seperate entities trying to co-exist in one union. It is not unlike a marriage, and like that marriage we shouldn't be forcing them to be something that they are not. However, they can live together if we don't try to force them into one box.

My idea is this: you cannot have the same character or the same items used for both PvP and PvE. Imagine them as two seperate games tied together with the common thread that they exist in a similar gameplaying world. In my vision you would have a PvP character in a PvP world, and you would have a PvE character in a PvE world. Both of these worlds would be based on the same lore, the same look, but with different objectives. It's akin to the idea of the Frontiers in DAOC, but not exactly. DAOC fails because you carry the total equivilant of all PvE items and skills into the battlefield, so PvE play directly affects PvP. What we need is a system that rewards PvE players with PvP bonuses, but nothing so drastic as to take the raid weapons into combat. I envision almost a system of points or cash built up by PvE play that can be used to purchase skills and items in the PvP world. That way changes can be made to items and skills independant of their affects on either game, but there would still be a link that binds the games together. If a person wanted to earn the same points by only PvPing, it would be possible since points would be allocated at greater portions there.

You could also connect it back to the PvE game with rewards like better titles, cooler items, and cash rewards for good PvP play. It works both ways.

We will have to agree to disagree on this point.  The game did not reward either side, it just did not do anything except the god guards to curb the lord of the flies syndrome.  Some great elements began to shine through the initial morass.  Kazola's Tavern, Shadowclan, the Britonian Guard (think that was the name... they would guard players for a price to travel from one city to another), and many more.... No game has this level of interaction currently.  None.

I don't feel PvP can work on a PvE foundation as well as a PvP game that didn't use levels at all. I accepted SB and UO, but both games have very narrow appeal. Grinds are like that. Grinds to unlock future potential fun are even more so.
[list=1]

• Part of the problem is that PvE mostly only rewards for success. Systems built on that usually have fast fights with preordained outcomes. Players are going to win if they match the requirements the game says they need. Most games don't offer a huge variety of ways to defeat PvE content, separated as everyone is into some type of class or templated specialty.
  
• Another problem is that MMORPGs reward time investment. That's one reason to bother with the monthly fee. Other games you just walk away from when they're done, but MMORPGs are never done. Either you haven't seen everything because the game is bug riddled mess, or the devs outpace your advancement with new content and new rewards.
• Finally, more players are disinterested in PvP than those who are. This has drawn the money and time to PvE games. Notice the reintegration of core-RPG methodologies rather than a fundamental overhaul of any PvP system? Games still tack PvP on as a neato whizbang toy in predominantly PvE games because the devs think that's the side their bread is buttered on.[/list:o]
  
  In my ideal world, which is forever in flux, players wouldn't know if the enemy was a player or a mob. Nothing indicates this. No floating name shows this. No language is understood. The enemy simply starts behaving differently than predictable AI.
  
  However, this can only work if advancement is based on the fight, and not on the win. In a level based games, they'd gain XP with each use of a skill (a successful spell cast, a successful hit with a sword, etc). UO is the only game that does this. All others hold back rewards until the fight ends.
  
  Unfortunately, this can't happen because that ensures a rapid advancement through levels. It's too exploitable. So instead, we can only advance when we win contrived fights specifically designed to be won over periods of time during which we are hopefully still having fun.
  
  But this core system could still be facilitated with RPG features.
  
  • Your quests could involve hunting Orcs.
  • Those Orcs may include a few player Orcs.
  • Perhaps the Orc player has an ability to form a group with those Orcs. You don't know this, but brought friends anyway. [/list:u]
    The result is still RPG gaming though, not gaming based on PvP having been a buzzword for a short time. But this assumes things like balance, time investment, equipment distribution, and fun combat systems are included at all.
    
    My eyes are next on City of Villains. That is the closest thing to twitch this genre has come. If PvP is rolled effectively into CoH next year, and the game is much less grindy, it'll be worth a looksee once EQ2 or WoW or both dry up for me.
    
    Until then, I can have a good time with the much better quest-based systems the genre is finally getting.

These were player reactions to a broken system. I, as a player, should not be forced to depend on other players to protect me from still other players. It is an interesting experiment in social dynamics but in my opinion not a good game system.

The reason I said it rewarded griefers and punished legit players is because of two aspects of UO during the days I played:

1) You dropped all items upon death
2) You got exps for fighting other players

It was very common in those days for the little PK punks to beat each other up to get maxed out skills, then make a living almost exclusively off of the items they looted off of other players.

The only people I've ever seen say that UO was a great game in those days were in most cases these same PKs.

Here is where I think our view differs... I think the idea that saying the system is broken to begin with is the problem.  The system was not broken, it was just open and undefined.  The chaos of this and the fact that EA when ape nuts over the forum whine play destroyed the possibility.  One thing most of the MMORPG's of today have learned from UO ... or I hope learned about UO was the amount of grief on the forum and having to carve a customer service solution with the amount of stupid that commonly lands on the official or god forbid the official vault boards....

The community was so small and was targeted at the Ultima player base and not a MUD player base... hell the whole endeavor was aimed at an unknown market in terms of like and dislike of interaction with other players.  I can easily see Richard and Raph thinking the experiment would be tempered by the players following the 'good virtues' of Ultima.  The problem is that the endeavor was never allowed to progress, it was tackled as a cluster without first seeing if the reality was as bad as the whine play indicated.  The common thought today is that what.. 4% of your playerbase posts on the forums.. and then they are the crazy 5%s from the bell curve of the game experience at that....

Planetside also works for PVP because everyone basically starts out the same, and doesn't gain power in an exponential fashion with respect to time played!

Think about it:  a BR4 newb, who goes and sits in every vehicle, gets enough cert points to get some armor and a few guns.  He can still shoot a very veteran player dead in his first battle if he aims carefully.  A senior BR20 player may be able to drive three different kinds of vehicles, and repair them in the field, but the basic assumption in the game is that everyone is equal (from the perspective of the end of a shotgun barrel, that is), regardless of being brand new or having played the game for a year.

Contrast this with a level based game like DAOC, where a level 20 player can run into RVR and come across a level 50 player, and the game won't even let the low level player damage the high level player!  If Planetside worked this way it would be a disaster.  And I don't think it solely is related to FPS vs. RPG either.

The more and more I think about it, and hear it discussed, leads me to believe that the only truly successful PVP systems will be those based on systems where time played is rewarded with increased flexibility, not exponential power growth over other players.

I will agree that in some ways UO was a kind of pioneer and so alot of mistakes happened and alot of things were unforseen. The devs pretty much thought that players would police themselves which did happen to an extent. I think what they didn't anticipate was that a large part of the playerbase didn't enjoy being victims.

Frankly, I remember my early UO days. I remember literally being almost unable to play because the PKs were so prevalent. I remember literally breaking my CD in half and writing a very nasty email to Origin over it all.

I think the problem, at least in the early days was just as nasty as the forums indicated. I will admit that I left probably 6 months in because the game was in no way fun for me anymore. I had one or two heart pounding adrenalin moments but I had many more rage filled, frustrating experiences.

UO had some really interesting concepts but I do think it was a case of naive developers not understanding that totally open PvP mixed with a PvE game with odds stacked in favor of griefers was not going to work out.

When it comes to having real, competative player vs player, it's going to be games like Planetside, where the competion itself is the fun, where I think PvP needs to go (or stay, when you consider fps have been doing it forever now).  When imagining what I think a fun, PvP-based mmorpg would be like, this is the direction I think the genre has to go down.

PvP in traditional mmorpg's is all about character level and phat lewts.  It's more about achievement and griefing than competition.  This is one of the reasons why I don't really care much for PvP in mmorpg's.

I'm looking forward to when someone comes up with a planetside/fps style pvp game which takes better advantage of what persistant online games can offer the gamer.

Weren't you the person who mentioned that you had played Arctic MUD in another thread?  99% of my time in that game was devoted to PVE, but pretty much all of my fondest memories of it involve PVP.  Since losing a PVP fight tended to be so brutal (exp loss, possible level loss, possible permentant hp loss, though they removed that a few years ago, probably full item loss), large-scale PVP didn't happen that often at the high levels, but when it did it had a huge effect.  If you got the drop on an enemy clan and took out their stacked characters, you could set them back a month or more.  Or they could do the same to you, heh.  Certainly losing in that environment wasn't fun, but winning was such a rush for me.

I think it's silly to say they can't co-exist.  Obviously they have and continue to do so.  Whether they can co-exist and attract a huge number of players is a different question, but clearly there are people who enjoy a mix of PVE and PVP (and I'm one of them).  For instance, Sullon Zek was pretty much the only fun I ever had in EQ.  The regular servers bored me to tears, and I never got over about level 20 on any of them.

Most people tend to find that anarchy is not to their taste.  Yet, the only other option that devs have seem to have been able to come up with are either PvP switches or PvP zones - which only relegates anarchy to a certain place/group.  This only turns that place into the third world of the MMOG world that people avoid like the plague.

Because most people tend to find that anarchy is not to their taste.

Correct

I played Arctic for the PVE, if they'd removed PvP from the game I wouldn't have cared one bit.  Now can you imagine if your a semi-casual player on EQ or whatever (where remember your paying 13 bucks a month to play) zoning away happily and a group of high level clannies come past and kill you in two tics because they feel like it..and you lose all your eq and gold?

Well the obvious part of my statement that was missing was the 'and attract a huge number of players' I figured most ppl would assume thats what I meant.
And thats the whole point. Arctic MUD is a horribly bad example to project onto your modern MMRPG, almost completely unfettered PVP with full item loot? Remember Arctic is free with about 80 players on at max...theres a difference.
Yes there are people who enjoy a mix of PvE and PvP and pretty much your the minority.
The whole point of stating PvE and PvP can't co-exist WELL is that if your power in a PvP matchup is derived from your ability to PvE then only the hardcore catass is rewarded. Many in this thread have already pointed out why the lack of player skill in PvP = the suk.

Dont get me wrong, I love PvP. I used to play Battletech Mux's where the learning curve is clifflike and if you took a headshot you'd sit in death for an hour (nevermind having to get a new mech)..you had to make BTH rolls so luck was a factor, but your kill determined how much of a factor it was. Knowing how to use LOS, your mechs weapons, moving to get good firing solutions etc made combat intensely fun. (Geldon can attest to this)

Maybe thats problem with mmrPG combat, theres no luck factor. Theres no chance to minimize or maximize your lucky opportunities..Even in battletech when you run into that heavy mech with your light you know that with skill and a bit of luck (a crit, headshot, a good charge) you could win the battle...You run into the proverbial 50 level warrior in EQ with your 20 and you have ZERO chance.

As Miguel said in another thread 'Higher levels/rank should afford more flexibility not exponential power growth over other players.

meaningful PvP cannot exist in a persistent world at all.  Even if it could, PvP and PvE have too many opposed goals to work well in the same game.  For one, PvP requires a meticulously balanced character system whereas PvE requires a metric fuckton of content added on a regular basis.

Just look at this genre’s inability to make a truly great PvE game OR a truly great PvP game.  You want to do both at once?  That’s like trying to make a great Civilization/Counterstrike hybrid.  In 1978.

Its not PvP that most non-PvPers object to, it is penalty for loosing. I don't see how can game designers can justify harsh punishments for death penalty for PvP when loosing is expected outcome for fair chunk of players in any given PvP encounter. On other hand you can't make loosing battles in PvP meaningless - for PvP to be fun there should be some meaningful goals you can achieve with it. What I think correct solution to this situation is to penalize PvP encounters based on PvP goals – experience, levels and gear are all geared toward PvE and should be left out but control over areas, ownership of status symbols and ability to change certain game mechanics is what PvP should be about.

In early UO’s example – say your miner/monster basher does not looses anything when killed if they purchase item insurance for nominal cost, but people in control of any given dungeon have an ability to increase or decrease spawn/resources, disable or enable recall in and out of dungeon, tax all collected gold/resources and control artifacts that are associated with that dungeon. So non-PvPer looses only minimal cost of item insurance when killed but PvPers might loose control over dungeon and all associated benefits of that.

You say that like you haven't seen Raph address this before.  He has in person to previous iterations of this board and community.  At those times he said that UO was losing players on the scale of tens of thousands due to the actions of a portion of the playerbase that was at most somewhere in the neighborhood of 1-2%. Something had to be done, because it wasn't just forum whining.

As I've said before, I don't think it's necessarily impossible to integrate PvP and PvE play in an MMORPG... but teams with a lot more talent and money than <insert some guy's board posting idea here> have tried it, and they've all failed.  So whenever someone claims to have the perfect PvP system for a PvE game, I'm not going to believe it until I see it.

The dealth penalty is at the core of the issue, although even with no death penalty at all I still wouldn't PvP much at all.  And the thing is, there's no way you're going to get NO death penalty into the design, especially when I think most MMOGs have too high a dealth penalty for PvE as it is.  About the only one I could think of was friendly dueling in World of Warcraft, which I did a couple of times in beta, and which carried no penalty when I lost, and which I would not be all that interested in doing in release.

Bruce

Death penalty is an issue, but don't most games restrict penalties from a pvp death? Of course, still plenty of room for grief, as someone who's been jumped countless times fighting elementals in Shame with a sliver of health left can attest to.

For me, the worst part about mmog pvp/pve hybrids is the levelling. The artificial gimping of new players. The artificial buffing of players with a lot of time on their hands. PvP will always suck (imo) when there is an uneven playing field. The fun is in beating someone equivalent to you, not in 'pwning' some newb. Again, imo, and mo is apparently in the minority. Seems folks just want to wtfpwn.

Now...if there were some fauna (and maybe even flora, eh) that made things between the bases in Planetside a bit more treacherous (and interesting), I wouldn't mind. PvE can serve as setting, too, not just the core reason for the advancement and foozle dropping in a massive timesink.

For PvP to be meaningful, it must confer a real benefit on the winner and/or a real detriment on the loser.  If the world is persistent, the reward or detriment must be as well.  The problem is that once you win a few times or lose a few times, you are well on your way to being a perma-winner or perma-loser.

That's why PvP needs some form of board-wiping mechanism, unless you are satisfied with a deathmatch system that has no real impact on the world (e.g. a ladder board or something).  PvErs want NO PART of any kind of board-wiping mechanism that destroys all their progress,

There's a reason you reset the board after every chess match, and there's a reason the next Steelers-Browns game doesn't start with the score 3,641-2,087.  It's the same reason there will never again be a competitive combat between the United States and the Iroquois Nation, and it’s the same reason persistent world PvP MMOGS are doomed if they are placed in truly persistent worlds.

Isn't the board wiped a bit when people go to bed? You might get a periodic domination, but barring an uberguild that keeps a high level of players in the game around the clock...

I like the way Planetside makes the playing field so large that it's difficult to dominate the entire world, and even if you can, it's impossible to do so for any serious length of time. You get the short term 'win' of locking some continents, but it's also only a short term loss.

I worked up this long post last night and as sometimes happens at home nothing appeared when I tried to post... Anyway, the gist was that on Great Lakes the only noticable decline when beta ended and UO went live was from Lag.  That was the dominating issue two-three months after release.. the PK issue was becoming a board topic, but Lag was the dominating force.  Of course that never really got resolved... Yes, I remember Raph speaking to the subject, though never in the tens of thousands before and the only time I noticed a drastic drop in population was when EQ released.  The largest pain I heard on the PK front was when the first exploits reared their head, and I dont mean the death shroud one...

Yeah, I have to admit I never really had much of a problem with pks in UO. Pk'd maybe a half dozen times in this first year. And even then only bothered when it happened to my miner while he was mining.

Lag, the broadband users on horses, exploits...that was the stuff I remember having problems with in early UO. Heck, even late UO. When I cancelled for the first time (EQ beta), the final straw was watching some exploiter robbing my house through the walls. Took screenshots, CS didn't do squat, so I just quit.

Other then running from 7 PKs my only memory that I giggle about was making a new bank theif char and stealing someone's keys from them at the bank, then trying the keys on the first house I passed and them opening the door.

I wasn't that evil so I just re-arranged their stuff, then logged in my other character and just laughed as I heard them talking to the Bluerobe.

I had a rough time with them when I was first starting, but most of that was a result of being so weak that they could one or two shot me.  After working out how to train and basic escape strategies, they weren't much of an issue.

People like this asshat are the primary reason for a lot of problems in MMOG's.

PVP and PVE can't co-exist because people like the assclown quoted at the top of this thread can barely control their own fucking bladder, much less their more juvenile impulses. On top of that, they can't control their mouths, so they end up berating their victims, making the victimization worse, as well as berating anyone who disagrees that this kind of stupidity is fun. This berating generally reveals that said person has about the intellectual capacity of fermented camel jizz left on a window sill for six years.

These people ruined the virtual world aspect of UO, and every game since then, including SB, has had to alter its game designs to keep these muffin-snatchers from driving off anyone with an IQ above room temperature.

I don't consider it a broken system, personally.  Seemed quite appropriate for a semi-roleplaying game.  There was a benefit from winning (loot), something to lose (loot), and recovering wasn't too hard (if you were smart about things).  Keep a full set of spare equipment in the bank.  Know you are going to die at some point, and be prepared for it.  Constantly update your spare equipment set.  (I had 2 sets of spare equipment, infact).  Don't go to dangerous places without being either confident that you can get away (and ready to be proven wrong), or with many friends.  Just being intelligent, strategic, prepared...  I, and many people I knew, went weeks without being killed because we were smart and took precautions.  Occasionally we would lose in combat to PK's, and we were prepared for that.  People who treated the world as if they should have the divine right to do anything they please and not have anyone be able to do anything to them...they got killed a lot.  Then they whined.  And they made the game suck for those of us who liked it the old way.

I think depending on others for protection was interesting.  It limited what I could do at any given time, but it meant I knew people.  And in a game where you could chat with those who were in your physical presence, and THAT WAS IT, no tells, guildchat, channels, shouts, etc, I had a lot of friends.  I have never had that many people I know in any games since, because since then, we've been shielded and buffered from anyone we don't feel like interacting with - and without a good reason to do so, I never feel like interacting with anyone in these games.  We had groups and communities that existed for greater reason than simply to wipe out the latest ubermob.  The simple act of *finding* your friend required other people to be involved, in which you would ask them if they'd seen him around...

But, I question whether or not a game that does work for those of us who liked UO will ever be successful.  Perhaps the audience isn't big enough to make what is considered a financially successful MMOG in this age.  UO was, I think, in many ways, the best MMOG to date.  I see many changes, some improvements, but nothing that is 'the game I played back then, only better'.

As my final notes...note that I say semi-roleplaying.  A roleplaying game will never work in MMOG format, and I would never look for one that did, at least not by my definition of roleplaying (hint: it does not include immortal characters that are slain and automatically come back to life an infinite number of times, or any of the other 'game' elements to make the game tolerable when you have assholes).  And as far as the only people that liked UO back then being PK's goes..  I certainly wasn't.  Oh, I'd occasionally toast some idiot that pissed me off, but I definitely wasn't the type that'd just spring out and attack random people for no reason at all.  More often I'd find myself hunting down said PK's...which was extremely fun.

I think they also did not believe that such a large part of the playerbase would so enjoy being victimizers as well.

Haemish,

I keep coming back to DAoC and wonder if instead of an open chat enterface, that each player playable race/nation would have it's own language not understood by anyone outside their race/nation.  Have the same system as UO, but no cross chat at least in game.  No pvp with in one's own nation/race except via mutual dual.  Would this help?

I think it would help a lot. Look at DAoC, an ostensibly PVP game with a PVE front end. Dave Rickey once listed some stats from the game that said over 70% (I think, Dave can correct me) of the people in the game had actually participated in RVR at some point. DAoC is still over 200k users. It was very very difficult to "grief" in DAoC with PVP. There's something to be said for that.

I agree that DAOC's model for the RvR idea was good and that Foundations went a long way to do it even better, but they lost their way with the idea of ToA. That expansion literally killed everything for me. I bought it, I played it for two hours, and I quit the game.

Never looked back either.

You thought you had The Quote, but lo, the Diablo2er had not yet spoken.



Yes, he wants a Hardcore PvP WoW server.  Yes, he was told how assinine that is.

Thank god they are self neutering themselves.

I think I gave up on D2 about 1/4 of the way because it was such an almightly boring slug fest.

Contrary to the bulk of the group think: I believe that a persistant role playing game can't exist without PvP.

Quite frankly, you cannot be a big bad ass if you cannot whup someone's ass.  If a game removes my ability to whup ass (or have my ass whupped) I'm not really interested in it.

I'm not a griefer, nor am I capable of catassery, but I prefer playing in full PvP environments.  One of the primary factors for that preference is the greatly reduced number of pussies whining about kill stealing, training, harrassing, and general griefing.  Frankly, the griefing on PvE only servers is higher IMHO.

That is not to say that living in a PvP environment isn't frustrating when you are on the recieving end of a constant ass whupping... but look at WoW for a minute.  What happens when you get whupped?  You have to run back from a cemetary and possibly go somewhere else to avoid repeated whuppings.  Horror of Horrors.

And yet, I can choose to play on the non PVP server and never have to do that at all! Plus, there's still the large portion of people that you're going to want to kill that you won't be able to: the training, kill stealing douche bags on your own team.

I think I'll wait and see what they have in store as far as the PVP instances and other routes go.  Hell, it'll take me probably half a year to get to 60 anyhow (if I don't quit before then); so I don't mind if it's not there at release.  



I'm secure with my e-peen.

Help yourself.  Some folks don't like the additional stress of having to watch their backs when they play.  They get really uptight when someone stomps them flat and laughs at them.  I don't begrudge you your opinion, but don't begrudge mine.  for me it's not about "epeen", it's about AI and Roleplay.  

I find games more interesting when there is something other than AI to compete against.  I prefer playing roles that have to do with conflict between good and evil rather than foozles and zerg rushes.  That means I have to get my ass kicked by people I'd rather not be kicked by... but it makes my successes at the game all the more sweet.  Non-PvP games feel insipid to me.  

I actually prefer having to stay on my toes and... yes, I think even the wow should have FFA servers (no teams).  I agree, WoW's PvP servers will be lame when they force me to be on one team or another.   I strongly suspect the most annoying people in the game will probably be on my own team (alliance/horde).  In fact, I'm thinking of going alliance just because I suspect the "leet evil" types will lean towards horde (we'll see).

Incidently that is some of what I am looking for in an MMO. Savage+Rome: TW.



For me though, I knew that would happen any time I went into a dungeon, no, I EXPECTED that to happen and I was prepared for it and even welcomed it.

Actually, if release is any thing like beta, more of the mature players seem to go Horde, and the bnet kiddies to alliance. This is by no means a hard and fast, it just leans a bit more that way. The two biggest grief/zerg guilds are alliance.

Now my view point might be a bit skewed due to spending more time on Horde than Alliance, but that seems to be the general concesus.


Now if you said you wanted to go allaince because you want to fight the more skills guilds, that would be true.

Amen.  Plus some status and cosmetic changes seen on the battlefield, such as Planetside and Savage.

But, this takes a bit more roleplaying out of the game.  Then again, it is a carefree foundation of successful PVP, that can be built upon.

Umm.  EverQuest?  At least 400,000 people seem to be perfectly able to brag about their ability to kill hostile stoplights.  And as (IMO) CoH has demonstrated, PvE does not need to be dull.

Enter Guildwars...

I agree. However, I believe that good persistent roleplaying cannot happen in a PVP environment where power is based almost solely on time spent in-game. There are way too many jackanapes who think that because they can play 50 hours a week, that gives them the right to lord it over everyone within reach. Additionally, there are too many types that want nothing to do with roleplaying; they just want to be able to beat the shit out of other players, and will put no thought into the world they are a part of.

I've come to the conclusion that the best PVP happens when I choose to be subjected to it, AND when I'm only marginally better or worse than my opponents. Things like DAoC's Battlegrounds are much more fun than their Frontiers; in the former, I have a chance no matter how much time I've spent on my character. In the latter, I have no chance unless I've spent an equal amount of time. I am the Iraqi militia facing off against the U.S. Marines, only I'm still tossing spears and the Marines have insta-kill laser death rays.

Is it "immersion-breaking?" Sure. But so is being pounded into paste in two-hits, with my killer screaming "WHO'S UR DADDY BIOTCH!"

I guess that's just another example of how different players enjoy widely different things.  Clan wars and pvp was the absolute best part of that game for me, no exceptions.  I never would have played as much as I did (and it's honestly the online game I've spent the most cumulative time in) if I couldn't have killed rival clans for their gear.



The fee never made any difference to me.  I might be more likely to check a game out if it's free, but if I start playing it regulary then I don't play it any differently than I do a subscription game.

Anyways, I've had that exact experience in MUDs; I've been pk'd in UO and dropped all my gear; I've been pk'd in AC and lost good items; I've been pk'd in EQ and lost exp.  It's never much bothered me.  Being griefed is a state of mind; if you don't get upset, then you weren't griefed.

I'll fully agree that unrestricted pvp with full item loss in EQ probably wouldn't work, but then, not all MMORPGS have to be EQ-clones, do they?  Hell, in my opinion, EQ doesn't work as is, but 400k people seem to disagree with me.



Fair enough.  But from my perspective as a player, whether it can attract a huge number of players isn't a big deal for me.  It'd be nice, if it meant more resources devoted to PVP, or more games with it, but as long as I can go play on, say, the WoW PVP server, I'm content with that.  It's far from perfect, but I stopped expecting too much from MMORPGs a long time ago.



Is there?  No one has made a MMORPG that has been even remotely like Arctic MUD, so I'm not sure how we'd know.  Maybe a MMORPG like it wouldn't work, maybe it would, I don't know.  I'd be interested in seeing it tried though.  Perhaps it would be a horrible failure, but then, what hasn't been MMORPG-wise?




I more or less agree with that.  I think the amount of skill in MMORPG PVP is downplayed, but it is only a factor between relative equals.  There's plenty of fights in these games where no amount of skill is going to get you a win, for instance your 20 warrior vs 50 warrior example.   If there's no increase in power from leveling though, I'm not sure why anyone would bother leveling.  Unless they actually like killing bunnies 2000 times to get the next "ding" sound.  

Personally, I think leveling should grant more power, but the leveling curve should be extremely short.  To the point where a regular but non-catass player (say, maybe 15-20 hours a week) could reach max level in less than a month from normal (non-exploitive) playing, if they knew what they were doing.  And then add on to that a very deep endgame of "raiding" and pvp.  Everyone always wants to reach the endgame anyways in games like this, so why not let people get there without having to drop out of school/quit work/divorce their loved ones?

I think SB tried something like that, without success, but I can't really comment on that game, since I never tried it.  I couldn't get over how buggy and unstable I knew it was.

Can't argue with that.  I suppose this is where Guild Wars comes in... err... again.

I'm hoping Guild Wars has some interesting content and some mild role play opportunities, however.  Thus far, I don't see it.

But back to WoW.  I'm going to give it a shot.  From the stress test I saw enough content and PvE fun that I think it will be fun.  I will, however, be on a PvP server to add that element.

As to current population dynamics, I think there are currently a lot of alliance because the alliance is/was more developed when this beta period started.  The jury is still out about what everyone will take upon release.