f13.net

So looking at UO/SB/Eve, open PvP seems to revolve around forming gangs and battling over turf.  I personally find this very distasteful and distressed that this is what passes for 'meaningful' in the PvP crowd.  People mocked the r30s, but they were just cutting to the heart of matter and calling it what it is.

Is there any other option for open PvP?

dunno.  I've always thought of it as a team sport because designers usually only reward group sports.  I.e., you can earn more PvP-points when grouped than if you solo.

The Ballers are taking over Los Santos Park!

I mean, uh, yeah. Gang warfare.

Guilds are gangs. I coulda told ya that.

EVE has other PVP, it's just not pew-pew all the time.  Go dick around with the average regional prices of things in the EVE market and see what happens to you.  But I guess it all boils down to some form of power-acquisition, and most of the time territory = power.

Of those three, UO is the most "base". There really was no PvP objective beyond turf fighting over boundaries players did nothing but name. EQ1 PvP was all about the contested public-space content (though of course nobody called it "PvP", and what passed for legit PvP was really just people getting in the way of the grind. Some like the added danger there).

SB, Eve, and Lineage 2 add the more functionally practical layer to it. In these titles, they are real turfs. But it's not about e-peen'ing as much as it is about resources. Kick inhabitants out, gain the resources, build a stronger grip, keep gaining resources. This is all towards the larger goal. Larger cities, larger alliances, larger ships, whatever.

Is this "distasteful"? Only in the sense that it's been the primary reason for war since humanity started fighting itself. Wrap whatever justification seems appropriate for the time, but there's deep sociological reasons why PvP in any genre is structured as it is. And quite honestly, I'd very much rather have these sorts of activities just happen within the games.

  I think it is something more.  Random 1v1 PVP is usually referred to as ganking.  To prevent ganking players join others for protection, and thus gangs form.  The problem is open PvP is lawlessness and that is what causes gangs to form.  Even in the real world.  From the first immigrant gangs in America to the ghetto gangs of the 90s to the klan, even the colonial rebels who founded the united states, gangs are a result of lawlessness caused by either senseless application of laws to oppress, or from the lack of legal repercussions for illegal actions.  Unless you want to police your game, gangs are the obvious outcome of open PvP.  That said, gangs are just another word for nations.  Perhaps in that context you would be more accepting of their inevitability.

Humans have been having hot tribe on tribe warfare action since civilization began. Sports teams, corporations, gangs, cities, tribes, nations, guilds, races, schools, are all the same. The largest visible difference between two entities is what people will fight over.

No, it's not.  :-D  Of course, that doesn't mean that 1v1 pvp can't be "ganking".  But usually ganking is a more pejorative term for a player kill.

No problem with anything else you wrote. 

Open PvP isn't necessarily required for a conquest/resource takeover game.

Or is it conquest itself that you have a problem with? Then go play another game. 98% of them are made for you anyways.

Or are they so "distasteful" that you don't want anyone to play them at all?


Also, just about everything in games could be considered distasteful to someone. Big deal. Hell, I have a hippy mom friend who won't even let her son play Mario Kart because it has aggressive tactics in it.

I think the game mechanics determine, somewhat, whether the PVP will stay mostly 1v1 or evolve to GvG.  In EVE, an individual can't (officially) control territory, only a corp. or alliance can, and the ships have too few slots to allow proper weapons, defense, AND all the crowd-control EW stuff, so people are forced to group.

On the other hand, on WoW PVP servers, in the outside zones where resources or recognition don't go to the victor, it's mostly 1vs1 or small group vs. 1 gankage.

A nation is these games is either a hierarchy of gangs or a preset identity the player is assigned. BoB vs Midgard.  BoB has significant control of its destiny.  Midgard has a distinct identity.  After reading the wikipedia on nations, a gang isn't a nation.  There really isn't a way for a group of gangs to create a distinct identity to be nation in these games.  At least, I can't see any difference between any of top gangs in Eve besides raw power and that doesn't inspire me.  I figure that's why nations tend to be divided race.  It's a easy short cut to create a nation identity based on a racial identity and this too is common in RL.

lol

What do you think the Middle Ages was? Just because the rulers called themselves Kings and believed they were justified in their actions by God, does not make them more than gangsters.

I thought it was you, in one of the WAR threads, that said Open PvP was well suited to MMO because it can give players a feeling that they part of the world and control over their lifes.  On the surface, this seems like a compelling argument to me.  I'd just like "control over my life" to be more than deciding to join the Bloods or the Crips.

EDIT: Sorry, I don't have the same problem with Wikipedia.  Sure, I wouldn't want my lawyer using it to prepare my defense.  But it works perfectly fine for shooting the shit with the intertards.

Open PvP? I don't recall ever saying that. I'm just an advocate of persistency and conquest. I'm not into being overly intrusive to non-participants (i.e. open pvp).

Sure, I'd prefer an open pvp system....It's easier to accomplish those other two goals if you go that route.....But seeing that most non-pvp mmo players like to flock to every game just for the fucking sake of it, then there's little choice in the matter. You have to make some amendments for them.

Im confused.

What else can PvP be? This topic is silly.

Well, the obvious alternative would be solo PvP, at least in some form.  I think there was a thread a while back in the Game Design forum about the problem of focused fire, and why it seems to be the pinnacle of strategic genius in most PvP MMOs, and I think these are mostly the same issue.  The mechanics in most MMOs typically heavily favour groups for design reasons; given equal damage output, two guys firing at one guy can kill that one guy before he can kill either of his attackers.  At the same time, drawbacks to having a huge group of people wandering around are largely removed to prevent griefing (no accidental team damage, no collision detection, no concerns about stealth or cover, et cetera).  So, as I see it, most games are intentionally very heavily slanted towards groups because most devs want to encourage people to group. 

There's a number of easy ways to create common identity, enough to rally people. In MMOs, many times the commonality is drawn from personality. It's not that everyone is the same, but rather that sub-groups come together because they realize they can all get along in a diversely social group. The most stable guilds are ones that have many types of players, with the common thread being either an open mind or simply acceptance, whether through longevity of social ties or ones rooted in the real world.

Eve is different from all other "open PvP" games because it's got the largest amount of players contested resources of any game that has ever come before it. What's concurrency these days? Something like 30k? 30-freaking-thousand-avatars. Even the most jaded have to assume at least 20 thousand people. All on one server.

The galaxy there is a good microcosm of how people band together. And some of the larger organizations have transcended "gang" long ago. You can't have organizations with thousands of people (as some do afaik) and not have a means to govern them, pull resources and work from them, mette out rewards to them, provide for basic "social services" (as they exist in Eve).

Nah, Eve is a very different beast altogether. Even SB was sharded, as is Lineage 2. And while GW isn't technically sharded and is technically PvP, that's really more a fun sport than an immersive world.

So what is the root of your question Tazelbain? You've read enough stuff to know that most PvP is modeled around real world events. Even a throw-away CTF fight in an FPS game is about resource gathering and control and defense.

The only way to do "solo" PvP would be duels. I have yet to see an implementation of duels where it actually impacted anything, but I suppose it could. Duels are typically looked at as just goofing off, not actually participating in any type of "real" PvP.

Or you could do the GW henchmen thing (or like the CoV Mastermind, or what they're talking about for TR). Why not let a soloing PvPer walk around the countryside with some NPC guards? Would be a bit of both worlds: safety in numbers (though they'd still be dumb, at least there's numbers, enough so to escape) while the feel of group-based PvP without the time-suck. Lots of details go into doing this right, but I think it's an interesting way to go.

The ability to make some sort of difference on the world, eg by owning a part of it, building structures there and using its resources as in Eve, is about as meaningful as it gets. Maybe there is some way it could be more meaningful, but what? What would you like it to be?

UO PvP, back in the pre-Trammel days when I played at least, had nothing in common with Eve btw. It was (pretend) murder and theft pure and simple, except for the roleplaying guilds who used PvP in a very different way.

I'm not really thinking of duels, just the ability for a single player to accomplish things on his own.  In real life, one guy with a gun can seriously endanger a larger group of people.  And even if he isn't Van Damming his way around dual wielding machine guns, a single person can realistically impact a larger conflict if he chooses to.  Maybe he's a thief, stealing items.  Maybe he's a wealthy businessman, covertly funding rebels (EVE has this to a degree).  That kind of thing.  He wants to compete, wants to interact with other players, but doesn't automatically want to have to jump in a party of ten other people to do so without being vaporized.  Games rarely allow these kinds of mechanics, and when they do, they're often severely gimped, while group PvP options are not.

I donno, I see stuff like that in Eve all the time. I couldn't count how many times I've been chased around by a lone pirate or single handedly dispersed a mining operation.

I posted some thoughts over on my blog: http://www.psychochild.org/?p=269

Mostly in response to Lum's response to this thread, but I thought people here might be interested.

Have fun,

Lum responded to this thread? 

To the topic, I'm confused as to why it's distasteful.  Gangs are TEH BAD because they are violent, but looking at that in the context of a game, if you don't like violence, then what are you doing straying away from, say, Tetris?

Yeah, on my blog. http://www.brokentoys.org/2007/02/20/nation-states-and-the-social-ganker/

 :roll: Look everybody, it's 'Reason why I hate blogs #343234321234'!

After reading both blogs, my question is:  "Is Braveheart a completely fabricated, unrealistic Holywood scenario?"  I'm fuzzy about how combat really went in the Middle Ages, but modern combat does seem to be all about winning at whatever costs, no "fair fights" anywhere.  And I think it was like that in the Middle Ages too.

I think that whatever else PvP can be made into, it'll feel artificial and will probably not be accepted by players.

Re: EVE, comparing the China server with the Euro server, it seems to me that the TQ community was slowly grown into what it is today.  If they open a new shard, it's likely it'll go down the drain as one gang will likely conquer everything and then sour the shard for everyone else.

Lum, you looked at history of mmorpg PvP through distorted prism of hear-say and reached wrong conclusions. I think its prevalent problem with PvP design is that it never done by someone who actually, you know, serious PvPer. Instead it is what other people think it ought to be and it falls short of what PvPers *want*. Aside from EvE and SB PvP in mmorpg market can be categorized as 'lacking'. It is designed as a distraction from PvE grind, dumbed-down for PvE people with designed limitations to prevent anyone from doing well.

PvPers *want* gang warfare and turf wars! What you think was 'success' of DAoC was a monumental failure for all PvPers out there, to the point that DAoC is not considered a PvP game. Small scale guild (gang) warfare over points of control (turf) is ideal state of PvP in any game. For example in Shadowbane its moved past gang warfare, and into large Nations composed of multiple guilds that formed Alliances and it become less-than-ideal. Its became too much of organization with too much logistics, politics and overhead. As a result fighting (what PvPers like to do) became less important than say politics, wealth and status acquisition and guild drama.

As to my list of lessons for any PvP designer:

1)   Even out playing field – standard gear/level/skills/whatever should be accessible to everyone in reasonable time. Call this ‘golden standard’, make sure its good enough to compete with whatever ‘best’ you put into the game and make sure nobody can be kept from reaching it.
2)   Aim for skill based PvP – you should give players enough options and enough template diversity to avoid cookie-cutter templates and predictable fights. PvP should be about paying attention to what is going on and reacting accordingly as oppose to mashing the same 3 buttons in specific order every time. There should be no ‘best way to fight’, just good counters to your opponent’s attacks.
3)   Slow it down – ideal fight should last at least 15-20 seconds and should consist of at least 5-6 individual actions. You should give enough time to act and react that less-than-ideal connection of 150-200 ping can compete.
4)   Limit effects of focus fire – you will have group warfare in your game and people will get focus fired. If you don’t take steps to prevent it from being instadeath your group warfare will be lousy regardless of how great your 1v1. Good methods to limit focus fire are – short invulnerabilities, damage feedback powers, maximum damage rate or damage saturation, friendly fire and splash damage, collision and line of sight.
5)   Add objectives to fight over – if it is going to be turf wars make sure turf has something desirable. Create few very desirable and tons of less desirable objects to control and make holding more than few highly problematic, this way more groups get a chance at ‘controlling’ something, not just best few.
6)   Add effective power reach where distance matters and adds logistical complications. You should be able to ‘pick up and leave’ and move away from ‘lost cause’ situation. Don’t ever implement instant travel or effective teleportation or summon abilities. It should be very difficult to mover anything but small group over large distances.
7)   Limit how much you can lose if you keep losing. String of bad losses should never put you into situation where you can’t realistically win again.
8)   Limit effective maximum size of any given group of players – make sure that bigger is better but up to a very hard limit and make sure that this limit dictates that there will be a number of different groups on any given server.
9)   Don’t instance – unpredictability of who will show up to any fight is what makes politics important. It puts checks in place on guilds that now have to consider use of their influence and power or face bad odds. It limits 'poor sportsmanship' guilds
10)    Make sure individual effort always matter and that it is possible to solo at all times. You should not be always forced to group to enjoy PvP, so design solo objectives and/or ways to solo. Good way to do it is via stealth classes.
11)    Segregate PvP+ and PvP-, there should be no PvP- players around PvP fights - it leads to all sorts of bad things.
12)    Always remove player from the area after death, there should be no reason whatsoever to linger or come back once fight is done. This will greatly limit all negative post-fight interaction. You do need to have in-game channels for communication, but not trash talking.
13)    Start everyone able to contribute to fighting, even if it is support or mop-up roles

A very cool group of people. I think the game ended when they left.


I remember the time we destroyed Lum and his guild on Siege Perilous. He sure taught us a good lesson when he posted a whiny diatribe on his blog (It was called a rant site before they came up with a stupid name for it.) the next day.

Lum's pvp post read like a PETA barbecue recipe.

I actually think Lum hit it pretty dead on.  Here's why:

1) I agree with you.  DAoC does this well requiring most players to have a mix of player crafted gear and reasonably easy to obtain drops.  Gear should not be the toon.

2) I agree about skill-based PvP, but let's not forget that there are MANY types of skill.  Most FPS players want skill = twitch, TBS players want skill = strategy.  I think that the ideal would be a mix of reaction and strategy, but geared a tad towards the latter due to latency etc.

3) You're still too fast.  I found that DAoC really started to get interesting when an 8v8 fight would last 3-6 minutes.  It was long enough to ensure that reaction and strategy had balance and guaranteed that the team to lose a man first could still have a chance to recover and win.  I'd love to see fights last at least 3-5 minutes with epic battles of a larger scale lasting much longer.

4) Easy ways to accomplish this are removal of tools that allow players to easily target the same player.  /assist macros and/or target bots need to be removed from PvP games.

5) Adding objectives is important, but resources may make it even more interesting (a la EVE).  Currently DAoC lacks any real incentive for PvP.  Making it a fight for some valuable resource would make the dynamic much stronger.

6) Agree again.  Travel should be organic rather than instantaneous.  Give players a decision to make about exit strategies and similarly, give terrain advantages to those cunning enough to recognize them.  

7 - 11) Agree completely.

I think between you and Lum you could design my ideal PvP mmog.  Just promise me that there will be no elves.

Oh so true, but be careful you will get him ranting about Eeeevvvill antisocial PKs that bring coordinated teams to fights and rely on teamwork and social networks to excel. If this is antisocial I don't want to be part of your society.

LOL, I am sorry I used the word 'distasteful'. 
Violence is not a problem.  It's the motivation for the violence that is at issue.  Why should I care which group of thugs control the Windmill? Open PvP interest me for its potential to give players control over their fate.  I just wonder if it can be used for something other than a virtual dick measuring contest.

Question of a national identity is interesting to me as a motivation factor.  If I can personally identify with a nation's identiy, I could see them as freedom fighters, not thugs, and feel inclined to help them capture the Windmill.  Silhouetting on the Nation level.

It's interesting that what little national identity that exists in EvE is brought in from outside world by the players. 

Don't think this can ever work with dedicated group of people, it will just widen gap of haves and have-nots. How do you ever prevent people coordinating over voice chat from hitting the same target? If you make it difficult only the best will be able to pull it off well, making them that much better and harder to kill by Regular Joe.

You incorporate voice chat into the game. I believe this is what we're going to see in the future.  If players choose to not utilize it, then they will have to live with the disadvantage.  I think players in PvP games already have come to terms with the fact that noone reads the chat box anymore.  Designers are beginning to realize this too.

My only problem with what sinij said is he still holds on to notion that there is one PvP constituency.   As the PvP becomes more accepted, its stratifying.  Each layer doesn't what exactly the same thing.

Define sports... its difficult but you can easily say that watching the game from your couch is not sport. Same goes for PvP.

This is entirely another can of worms. Still, isn't it much easier to just give targeting that works to people instead of disabling it and then providing workaround for it? I don't think you can stop focus fire by making targeting system difficult to use.

Well, I think it's funny that you want skill-based PvP AND /assist in game.  For me, the skill comes in knowing what targets to pick and who to VISUALLY assist without the crutch of a key command.  I guess we just disagree here. 

But your problem is you refuse to accept Baseball as a sport because you personally don't like playing Baseball.

EVE doesn't have /assist or /target, and people assist-train anyway.   If each blob had the ability to either share their cumulative shields / armor across all members, or to instantly determine who's being targetted and then be able to easily transfer shields/armor to said person, that would probably get rid of assist trains.

I think the problem is that a group in any of these games can pool and coordinate their firepower but not their defenses.

Do you think kids playing 'tag you are it' playing sports? It has to meet minimal number of criteria before we can call it sport. Next thing you know we will call Toontown gag system a PvP.

If you want to split hairs, tag does fit some definitions of sport (sport: an active diversion requiring physical exertion and competition ).  I doubt most people would consider it sport, but that doesn't really address the question you quoted.

Fine, lets try to define what PvP is...

General:
1) Hostile competition between two or more players resulting in at least one instance of defeat
2) Act of participating in combat with another player(s) with intention of defeating them or denying them an objective

What must be present:
1) Teams
2) Goals
3) Exact loss and victory conditions
4) Combat
5) Spoils and penalties

You'll care that they hold the windmill because the windmill provides efficiency bonus for their player owned city and NPC-ran farms, as well as providing a water pump of sorts so they can irrigate more of their NPC-driven fields than you can, with your lack of windmill access. They'll also have less NPCs out in the field than you will, because with wind power on their side they can get more done than you can with your army full of water-barrel-carrying NPCs.

They'll also have a lot more invested, with a fully functional irrigation system that took awhile to build. They'll have to spend more time protecting it, because some sabotage could come into play and cause some logistical NPC-slave management issues. If someone took the windmill from them, they'd probably break off the irrigation dikes/aqueduct and start constructing their own. Then you'd be up shit creek with no flowing water and you'd have to allocate more NPCs to field work in order to keep your current standard of living. That could mean less people defending your now unused dike/aqueduct and make it easier for people to sabotage.

If you want REASONS for capture and hold style meaningful PVP I can come up with millions, and I'm sure people can easily add to that list.

And then the devs will care when you cancel your subscription because you will keep losing.

We really need to define PvP into 2 catagories:

Catagory 1: PvP games for the hardcore.
Catagory 2: PvP games that have a chance to be profitable. 


Edited for bad grammar

As a PVP guildmaster of a guild that's been around 12 years, I agree with these points except for an /assist type of command.

You forgot:
Category 3: WoW clones that have a snowballs chance in hell to be profitable.


As it stands now you have two types of mmorpgs - mega-budget PvE and niche. If you have mega budget, unlimited time and rock-solid publisher (EA need not to apply) that does not force your hand you will be crazy to go for Category 1. On other hand if you are studio trying to make a name for yourself and you decide to tackle PvP you will be insane trying to compete with juggernaut of WoW and water it down for Category 2 or 3.

You have MMORPG's, FPS's, and CORPG's that are the three staples of PVP in gaming. Sinji's post more or less defines a PVP MMORPG.

A CORPG (Guild Wars or Fury) can also incorportate several of these elements, but CORPG's are more or less designed with an Arena/Tournament style end game.  In those games you are more concerned with rankings, stats, or ladders and you generally don't need a large guild to be successful.

In FPS's, you need the latest god level gaming machine or be wtfpwned. Some folks take FPS competition serious, but I personally don't.

No, you fly back to empire space with what you can and you scheme, regroup, and you get it done.

Or you swallow your pride, ally up with someone you wouldn't normally deal with, and get it done.

Or yeah, you quit. (You don't get it done.)

Or you're a carebear and you make a decent living doing your thing in empire space, where there are windmills that will let you attach your aqueducts, but you'll get less efficiency, and you'll have to pay some kind of windmill tax for using it. But it'd be better than water-bucket runs.

I'd also appreciate it if everyone would quit pretending that they know how to get subscribers. Everyone here, there, and everywhere was so amazingly wrong about WoW we might as well not even talk about subs anymore. Ever.

Grain of truth in the sea of...

They do have the ability to remote repair and transfer shield and cap energy. It's just the opposing fleets know that, and tend to target such support ships early -- just like in real war.

I've often wondered how often the new drone types (EW drones, repair drones, sentry drones) are used in PvP -- whether they lived up to Dev expectations.

Agreed.  Saw this first hand in SB.  I ran with a small guild called "Fallen Angels" that was horribly outnumberd.  We did very well for about 2 months, then we got hit by your next one:
 
Giant guilds get formed from the smaller ones. Hope your playstyle fits being a member of a 500 person guild with spam worse than an AOL chatroom.

If anything, the lesson from Shadowbane should be "If you don't give your losers a chance to win, they will cancel their sub"  In the system you describe, the losers will have less chance of winning.  That's just not going to work.


Wouldn't bother with water-bucket runs at all then. 

I wasn't wrong :)

I never tire of the word "carebear".  Every time I see it in a pvp context instead of "carebear" I see "person that has different taste in games than I do and is therefore beneath me in status".  Some people don't happen to like pvp... interestingly, their gaming dollar is worth EXACTLY the same as yours.  Can we grow up and lose the carebear term?  Who gives a shit if people prefer PvE... it has nothing to do with the discussion.  

Sinij has done an excellent job outlining the fix that most mmog-based pvp games need.  I think the two most difficult challenges that exist are a) to make the pvp meaningful without giving too imbalancing an advantage to the victors and b) A way to de-personalize the pvp experience such that it's more about playing the game than it is about assaulting the senses of other players.  If I were to design a pvp system, I'd look hard and long at the 3 games that seemed to be on the right track: Shadowbane, DAoC, and EVE.  

I define "carebears" or "carebearing" as "not taking advantage of the great PVP experiences in a given game".

"Carebearing around Empire" has a great ring to it.

In UO, as I quit early, the term I used was "bank huggers" or something along those lines, relating to the never ending fashion show that went on at the western bank in Britain. I quit pre-tramel, so tramellites or whatever didn't make any sense at the time.

This is usually the effect that the word has on me...

But on the next level why do I care any particular group succeeds or fails.  Sure if there was a F13 guild, I might care if they controlled Windmill because I identify them outside of the game.  But in-game they just another guild in a long list of guilds.

I took it to mean that they will be realitively stonger (and your guild will be relatively weaker).  I also assume there are no fixed sides (he doesn't mention it explicitly, so I could be wrong)

So you and your friends aren't going to cheat like baboons inplay a game that I work on?

Can I get that in writing?

Bingo.

/assist makes it easier for people to focus-fire on a given target (ironically, something sinij decried in an earlier post, which I agreed with for the most part).

There is nothing quite as satisfying as digging up old grudges.

...save acting on them!

Old? LC and Nija hack every game they play.  Ask them about duping and teleporting people in SB sometime.  A publisher would be better of prebanning these guys, as they are guaranteed to cost you more in CS then you will ever make from subs with them playing...

/assist will happen anyways, if you give tools for it in your game it will be more accessible reducing skill gap. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for eliminating assist trains, I just don't see a feasible way to do it. "Knowing your target" is what PUG do, in any organized PvP guild fight you have battle leader giving orders and you follow them. If you remove /assist or even /targ its functionality will be moved to voice chat or 3d-party apps. If you manage to stop it you will have people on the phone conferencing. Focus Fire is very similar in its dynamics to griefing, no matter what you do you can't stop it, you can only hope to lessen its effects.

Had no displeasure dealing with them in a memorable way but it sounds like ideal guild for beta testing. Send them invite as early as you can and data log *everything* they do, plant a mole, assign Q&A to shadow them if you must. Better start early than fight at putting out fires.

  The point is, as you said, to lessen the effects. Taking auto targeting out of a battle means the players have to communicate.  That’s what we want; it’s what MMOGs are all about.  By removing auto targeting you force the player to engage more fully in the game.  Furthermore you force them into a position where their attention to the game dictates their success.  So that, for example, if a player can’t quickly locate the next target their battle leader orders them to attack, they will have been the cause of their group’s failure.  In other words skill based battles.  Now certainly this isn't the holy grail of PVP, but it is one step in the right direction, and it seems that you would agree to that… in theory.

I do agree with it in theory... my another concern is that there are a lot of lousy players out there. They might be new, they could just suck. With easy interface good leader can still effectively use poor players making them useful grunts. If interface is difficult to use grunts will be useless and you will see only good leaders with top players crushing everything else, making it impossible for anyone else to win.

Lets say 5% of population is excellent PvPers, of this 5% of population you have 1-2% capable battle leaders that can rally people, get them to follow orders and give out good orders. Typically guilds have 'core' members that worked with each other over long time and multiple games and they pick up 'fluff' members in any given title and train them to be good grunts but without investing too much into them. If you make grunts useless (high skill barrier to entry) you will see less of them being used and you will see less training and game dominated by smaller groups of 'never die' players. You will also make it impossible for new players to join your title at a later time.

But again this is all speculative.

I personally think targeting should work in a following way:

1) Leader can place visual marks on any target and declare target's name
2) Grunts can ether type /target 4-5 letter of the name of your enemy or visually find mark and target that way
3) Grunts can type /assist 4-5 letter of the name of your guild mate

With this in mind put Focus Fire preventors in your game, making it likely that effective fighting would require 2-3 simultaneous targets at the same time.

I went through many PvP titles, starting with UO in 98, and was part of PvP guild for most of this time. I will have zero problems following battle leader and finding target regardless of method it uses and my guild will still have assist trains in any game that has targeting. On other side I know many players that would have difficulty even with simple /assist interface if more than one target present at the time. While I like winning I don't feel like not ever being challenged aside from fighting few other long-standing PvP guilds.

Exactly.  It takes considerably less skill to spam some /assist key than it does to actually visually assist.  That's why I made the comment. 

That's a standard Hunter responsibility in WoW raids. Everyone's supposed to /assist off a specific tank or take targets in a specific order (and CT_Raid makes it really easy to do so), but it's generally easier for people to follow the Red Arrow -- don't have to remember the target order. (Which means that stupid hunters can hose the raid -- more than one Mark and things get confusing).

Of course, WoW lets the raid leaders mark targets now too -- but with multiple targets, it's easier just to make sure the Hunters know the order.

/assist in PVP is nothing but a dam crutch, and shouldn't be in any PVP game.

Player guilds form to provide the player community with an additional level of focus by grouping like minded people with like minded guilds.  If some PUG guy doesn't want to be someone's dam lunch, then he or she should seriously consider joining a player guild. Some guilds don't compete seriously, and they usually end up at the bottom of the food chain as a result.  Justifying an assist function for PVP while wanting a game to be player skill driven is contradictory.

Players become more skilled as they practice, transition to a formal team based setting (like a guild), and then play competitively at a guild wide level. If anyone seriously expects to compete in today's games, they need a regular group, voice chat, and some organization. Usually this is what causes guilds to be formed.

In our recent article about building and managing successful guilds (http://www.lotd.org/index.php?page=48), we have this to say about voice communications.


PVP should be chaotic, and assist simply makes it to easy to chain target and quickly kill a single class at a time. That's why PVP today lasts all of 5 seconds because people target the healers, chain assist, healers go down, and then everyone else dies nearly the instant they get targeted. Skill? No that's not skill at all.

It's funny, because the reason why M59 has targeting is because back in the day there was a client-side hack program that allowed people to auto-target enemies.  Instead of engaging in the arm's race to try to stop the unstoppable, the developers just put in targeting for everyone.  Most people (still) decry it as something that "ruined the game", but removing it just means that cheaters gain an advantage.

Given that customizable UIs are the norm thanks to WoW, I think it's a bit silly to expect that people won't develop their own auto-targeting systems even if the game doesn't supply it.  And, if the cheaters gain the upper hand in your PvP game, time to kiss it goodbye.

Interesting discussion here.  Unfortunately, I think it largely reinforces my opinion that I do not work on a PvP-focused game for a very long time, if ever.  I'll include PvP in as an element in games, but trying to make a PvP-focused game is simply tilting at windmills.  And trying to build a game to appeal primarily to obnoxious assholes (like me) is not the most profitable thing I could do with my time.  A bit sad because PvP done right is some of the absolute best gameplay you can find.  Unfortunately, the problem is less the design and more the inspiration for Lum's current blog name.

My thoughts,

Uhm, where it comes to EVE there is one simple fix - a Stacking Penalty for PvP.

There are two major problems with PvP metagame:
1) There are different styles of PvP - duels, small skirmishes and huge battles. All three have huge following.
2) You need to balance player skills vs. time invested. Pure skill-based PvP sucks for everyone but top 2% players, Guild Wars being prime example here.

Biggest pro of PvP?
It keeps your players hooked longer than grind and raiding, combined. With alliances and stuff, it's basically player generated content (aka. The Holy Grail of mmos)
Thus, don't bullshit me on how PvP game needs to be skill based or how it has to be skirmish oriented. Good PvP game needs to encompass all three types of PvP.

PVP experiences are only 'great' if they outweigh all the work you have to undertake when you eventually and inevitably lose. If I have to play (in my casual manner) for a week in EVE to afford to buy and fit a cruiser, just to run out to 0.0 and get gibbed by the first hotshot pirate I see, that ratio is horrible. I would define that as 'not fun.'

On the other hand, if I could afford to get another cruiser and fittings and head back out that day to PVP some more, maybe not get wiped out right away with the knowledge I hopefully gained from the last encounter... that is what becomes fun. But then the PVP doesn't have "consequences!"

For $12 you can die in a cruiser in EVE 50 times before you run out of money.

Hopefully your Asian overlords will kill it before I have to make that choice. I will offer some advice though. Let the Koreans handle all of the graphics work for your game.


We are supposed to be prebanned from all future Ubisoft mmos.


They tried the mole thing in UO. It didn't work out very well for OSI. The GM decided that we were much more fun to be with than the trash she worked with/for. If you want to send a mole, make sure that person is well paid and happy with his or her job.

Something seems a little off about paying $15 a month to pay money to have fun - where I could be spending $15 a month to have fun, or even just $50 once to have fun.

Do you mean getting a hooker?

This is an odd thread. I don't think many of you want the same thing, and in that disparate group I would say not many want what I call PvP.

Why PvP? Because it's fun. Because you're a competitive person and want to beat other people.

tazelbain: Played CS:S? Played any FPS?

Why do you pick one side or the other? Maybe oyu identify with the CTs, maybe you think the other side identifies with the Ts. That's not true though. You pick and team and play that side to win the thing you're competing in. That's ALL that motivates base 'PvP'.

GuildWars had good MMO pvp. (FPS like)

Some MUDs had GREAT MMO pvp. (World/Political like)

I dont think it'd be that hard to do. There's probably not that many developers out there who are interested in it.

Can battlegrounds/arena style "controlled" PvP co-exist in a game with good world PvP driven by guild politics without one being completely neglected, abused, or treated as though it were meaningless?

I think I already know the answer, but maybe you guys are smarter than me.

Yeah. No. Buying a game.

I would be deathly afraid of a hooker that costs 50 bucks for full service! She's likely to get you with her DoT ability.

Disease resist gear, duh.

I am not a competitive person (Christ, I must be getting old).  I like to win but that is secondary to having fun.  I enjoy PvP in GW and still play causally.  The combat mechanics are fun in and of themselves. I don't play against other because I want to proof myself better than someone else.  People provide the most interesting challenge.

Back to the topic, I guess what I am asking for are tangible and ideological differences between the nations in an open PvP environment so I have reason to join a group beyond "I have to in order to survive." and "My friend is in that group." and other base considerations.  Guilds that gather strength for helping the npcs, that gather strength corrupting the land, that gather strength by bring about the apocalypse, that gather strength by healing the land, that gather strength by build elaborate cities.  With these tangible differences, that could create ideological differences as people gravitate toward guilds that suite them.  "To lamentations of their women" is a legitimate reason to fight, but right now it is the only reason to fight.  This also enhances the dull "with us or against us" politics because the tangible differences would create tangible conflict.  You need help from the corrupting guild, but part of your land may be corrupted, what do you do?

That would break the $50 limit of having fun! This is a hard limit, imposed by the boundaries of the imagination!

...

You'll have to rely on Seran Wrap.

Not sure what you mean here.  You could take something like EVE and add instanced, zero death penalty battlegrounds or something fairly easily (well, I say "easily" in the sense that it sounds possible, not in the sense that it would be finished in a few hours).  Say there's some "VR tournament" or something that you can log in to while you're docked at a station, and it simulates what a battle would be like in one of your ships (only you don't lose the ship, because it's in VR).  There, done.  Maybe top ranked players get ISK, a write up on the news feed, their faces on the jumpgate billboards, that kind of thing.  Doesn't seem terribly hard. 

But then, it's not going to be "meaningful" in the same way that the world PvP is; you're not really fighting for anything, any more than you are in WoW or GW, so if that's what you mean by "meaningless" then maybe it would be, but I don't know how else you'd handle instanced battles.  Likewise, I'm not sure how it would be neglected, since the devs don't (or shouldn't, ahem) produce content for the PvP game.  It seems like most of their work would be focused around hunting bugs and fixing imbalances, and a fair amount of those would overlap between instanced and non-instanced battlegrounds.  So, I dunno.  Seems feasable to me, anyway.

It would be meaningful in that you'd win in game money, a spot on the ladder, maybe trophies on your profile, and prestige. About as meaningful as NASCAR which isn't saying much I guess.

Shit, I'd totally sub to play DotA, EvE style.

Not sure what the beef is with targeting locking. It's just another feature, a way to make things happen even faster. If you want that removed ya sorta need to look at the whole D&D rule subset thing too.

I'd prefer a purely skills-based game with friendly fire and where you can't run through people (so you can have positional relevance, fields of fire, etc). THEN you really need to be careful. Doesn't need to be WWII or sci-fi either. I'd love someone to break that stupid myth.

Whew, I think I at least sort of read everything including both blog posts, I hate threads that move fast and that I actually want to read before posting in.

I'm going to ignore the OP, because I still dont even get the gang "problem" and nobody else has articulated any response that made sense that did not boil down to "wtf?".

So I'll pick up with Lum's post on his blog.  Firstly, I agree with Sinji in that Lum doesn't seem to come across as a complete pvper.  But as usual he does have a good grasp of the long view and the conclusions at the end are interesting and have laid the framework for this interesting thread.

re: SB
-R30 were awesome an entire server basically started a slow death (Scorn) once they were caught cheating and destroyed.

Lum says:
What are you talking about?  The Meta-groups (nations) got too fucking big if anything.  One of the million lessons one could learn from SB is that you should make it a balancing act with in-game mechanics to increase guild size.  EvE seems to avoid needing this because the game world is just so damn big and the population is just that freaking large.

--Psychochild went on to say something that amounted to SB being just gang-warfare and lacking epic struggles ala Braveheart.

Umm what?  Sure, sb.exe 4tL but Shadowbane did a hell of a job having awesome sieges until everyone realized that 3am raids were teh win.  Another SB lesson, 3am sieges are a bitch.  It is advisable if your going to have a time window siege system you shard your game like this:
PST shard (all sieges can only take place between 5pm and 10pm PST) and do this for all the major timezones and make sure all noobs have this info when they make a char.

I'll edit in some more or make another post later, need to post this and double check it makes some sense for now.

Since no ones what the fuck I am talking about, I guess the thread is just another rehashing of the rift between the PvP "true-believers" and the rest of us.

Anyway, good luck playing Civilization where everyone plays the Huns. 

We're on page 3 of many derails man. Something's obviously not connecting. Could you take it from the top? And I'm serious. The arguments happening now are 3-5 years old.

Well first, I subscribe to your newsletter.

What you are asking for is difficult to produce and balance, while relatively straighforward games of Civilization where everyone plays the Huns are still selling well. For meaningful alliances to form there have to be more than three sides, and very few MMOs have even attempted that  many. I think five would be the minimum.  The tangible differences between them would need to be carefully cast lest population balance become even more obscene than usual. Players will constantly gripe about how the land healers have it easy, and that city builders are just cannon fodder... or the other way 'round... or both. The more sides and the more tangible their differences the more ways there are for players to gripe.

Could it be done? Absolutely.

But right now players will pay a monthly fee to sit around watching IRC and a spreadsheet with only the occasional promise of hun vs. hun space-warfare. Until the "true believers" stop rehashing, bored at last of the same old thing, the best we'll see is Hun vs. Cossak vs. Mongol.

On the VR thingy, you could make those champin style, where teams fight for system ownership or Empire favors or simply large bets of money/

Bone Dancer and friends were hacking/duping etc in Beta as well as release.


What I think Lum is saying here is that Nations were not really Meta-groups, but were effectively Uber-guilds with minro subdivisions.  The original design of SB was for Nations to be made up of independent sub guilds that would band together for short periods of time under the Nation Banner to fight a common enemy.  Sub guilds were supposed to be constantly switching Nations as the political landscape changed.

While there were some minor exceptions, it didn't turn out that way. 

Shadowbane's fundamental problem was that it was changed over the objections of myself and a few other people to favore the extrme hardcore segment, and the game mechanics altered so that crushed = quit the game.

I still have a lot of my old war journals archived, and sometimes I go back and read them fondly to remember what could have been.  Once SB mechanics were changed so that it was hard to rebuild, it caused crushed guilds to fold into another guild that had a city. It also caused small guilds to have to fold into more established nations that had a city because ultimately a small guild had no real way to defend or maintain that city if it got in the crosshairs.

So SB suffered greatly during its first two years because:

1. Player City was the nucleus of the end game
2. Without a player city, you had to join a nation that had one
3. Rebuilding took too long and cost too much
4. Siege WoO's and removal of rolling trebs made PVP too predicatble and less tactical
5. Knowing the time and place of sieges allowed for zergs to form
6. The average player had little investment in their cities, so they only cared after it was lost.  I proposed 3 times for mines to generate wages for all city citizens, and based on guild rank. Someone could have earned a good wage by protecting their city and its mines.

I could go on and on, but to me those were the critical things that drove casual players from the game and caused zerg nations to form that ultimately destroyed nearly every single server.  R30 only got so powerful so fast on Scorn because they knew how to dupe billions in gold, and that gave them a huge advantage in city building and funding warfare. After they got nailed for duping and had their gold and duped assets frozen, they fell rather quickly to the LAPD alliance.

Well I think SB's biggest problem is that people really wanted to defend their towns, against any odds. They'd just spend 3-4 hours at a time trying to defend it, but of those 3-4 hours trying to defend, 75% of the time was spent frozen in lag, staring at their desktop, or rebooting their PC.

The main thing that SB tried to do didn't work. The only reason to play the game was broken. Wolfpack was okay with that.

If the game actually worked correctly, instead of spending 45/240 minutes actually playing and defending your town, you'd be spending much more time actually "losing gracefully". Actually PLAYING.

Most people who "gave up and quit" SB had one too many nights of sb.exe errors and fighting with the client before they could actually fight their in-game enemies.

Someone should hassle an EVE developer about that -- it would address one of the big problems with their PvP system: Learning is too damn expensive. Unless you set out to PvP right away, by the time you feel your skills are right and youv'e mastered enough of the game -- you've got a head full of implants and you're a bit worried about podding.

Playing some VR PvP to get a feel for the game and tactics would be nice.

Its called Sisi (test server) hehe

Face of Mankind tried really hard to pull this off, it sort of worked but the gameplay was pretty broken and the game was very ghetto.  It got absolutely smashed around f13 by everyone but me at the time.  What you are saying there is interesting, sorry for missing it earlier.  But it is very very hard to codify.  Some factions in FoM just refused to actually act like the faction should according to the fluff, there were also tons of population issues.  I'll try to think about ways to make a "ideal based faction pvp" work for shit and post later.  Sorry I missed that paragraph when I was reading through last night.

Other interesting stuff I read in this thread:

We should really have a discussion in the game dev forum imo about removing inter-faction chat and alternative ways to get rid of smacktardation without removing all politiking from pvp games.  There are major pro's and con's addressed in the thread and on the blogs about chat freedoms given to players.

Psychochild says:

I sort of agree with that.


Another thing that I've been waiting and waiting to see discussed is WoW's new direction for pvp.  Seems to me they are going the GW route, by making the arena pvp "the" pvp.  I fully expect the 3rd round of Arena pvp to make it onto G4 at this point.  I'm at a loss to why MMO's should be competing with RTS/FPS games for prime-time skill competitions which force them to completely isolate the combatants from the "world" that they spent all this time creating.

I want a pony with a spoiler and ground effects.
Selling well in Korea, maybe.  One of the geniuses at Puzzle Pirates said that the key to a good puzzle is conflicting goals.  Alliances with many guild-types would have a lot tension.  Alliances with a single guild-type would lack diversity.  The problem with SB guild-types was they were asking the players to cut off a limb and didn't add anything meaningful to the game.

The impressive trick would be if you could structure the guild-types so that like minded individuals gravitate towards the same-type.  Guild-types for domination-types, ganker-types, tight-group types, peacekeepers-types, merc-types, builder-types, achiever types, trader types etc.  So external differences could reflect internal differences.

Nope, SiSi sucks for that:
1) It's down 99% f time.
2) Stuff might be affordable, but getting a stock everytime they d a wipe is ultra painful.
3) They will gank you anyway.

Are those public? I love me some war journals.

Because a) it's a good sport; and, b) more players are likely to try it.

The single biggest problem with relevant PvP is that most players do not want that level of immersion full-time.

I liked where WoW was heading with BGs initially, but they quickly devolved to mere sport. This I believe is because they forced the broad array of activities all into the same zone. I'm thinking particularly of the side-quests in Alterac Valley. Had they had those mines and the unlocking of various NPCs all outside of the zone, in PvE public-space content, then you could atttract those who just want to PvE to the larger "war" effort, allowing the soldiers in the zone itself doing the actual taking of towers and whatnot. This would be similar to the unlocking of the Ahn'Qiral gates event, but be much more relevant than simply farming drops. PvEers could feel they are contributing to something by playing the protected PvE game thay like, while PvPers are in doing the actual fighting while getting the support from more than just those stuck in the fight.

There's a lot of things to figure out, like timing specifically, but it's all doable and would allow more to contribute WHILE getting that immersive feel.

I think we need some standardized units to measure mmorpg fun, I propose to measure it in hookers or HK. So much HK does your mmorpg has under the hood?

A veritable trunkful of dead hookers.