Factions, PVP, Churn

[Slayerik]

I have always been a PVP+ kind of player. Nothing beats the rush of real, unadulterated open field battle. With all the UO rehash discussions it makes me think about certain PVP systems I liked over time.

There are the standard 2 sides PVP game. Anarchy online had Omni and rebels (or whatever), WoW has Ally / Horde, SWG Empire/Rebels, and others

The games I have found most entertaining from a PVP aspect are the ones that had a more complex system than that, or at least more options. UO, for example, had Guild Wars, Chaos v Order, eventually Factions, Red Vrs Anti/Blue, Permagrey v All

Neocron had a very cool faction system, where there were something like 10 different factions you could be a part of ... These would allow freely killing your faction enemies, while having repercussions when you murdered people green to you. Each faction had a certain list of hated and allied sides, some having more greens than reds (easier) and others, like Twilight whatever, having mostly red.

Shadowbane had its own system that was dirived from in game alliances, wars, diplomacy, that had a way of governing itself. A simple act of murdering another player could result in your town being destroyed in the long run. This caused people to think before they ganked.

I did not play DaoC but I understand it had many sides, and I wish I would have played it now. For me, the games with more in depth PVP systems hold my interest the longest. If you design a game with PVP at least as a concern and not a backthought, with some decent options, you have my subscription. Even with trash like Shadowbane.

Oh yeah, churn. I hate that word, and anyone that uses it. I'm not smart enough to understand what it means, im a PVP kiddie. Any games on the rise that have some actual PVP options, instead of....kill the ones that dont look like you?

[shiznitz]

From the limited PvP I have done, to make it truly tactical and interesting, there should be more than two sides. Teamkilling should probably be permitted, but the penalties for such need to match the circumstances. In PS, damaging allies happens quite a bit in crowded situations, but you only get weapons lock if you are completely careless since TK counts (grief points) decay quite rapidly. However, in a DAoC-type game, killing a friendly would never be accidental and therefore the consequences need to be much harsher. If this can be balanced correctly, then AoE spells can become quite cool because the caster will pay a sever in-game penalty if he fireballs his friends.

I would like to try a game where players can assume the guise of the same monsters encountered the PvE framework. Not knowing if that orc is a dumb orc or a player-controlled orc would be quite cool, even though the reality would become evident quickly. I expect I would be more tolerant of getting "ganked" by some player-controlled mobs than by a player character. Playing a mob would have to offer some downside, though, e.g. no levelling/improvement. Maybe player kills accumulate as loot in the lair and more loot opens more mob types to use.

[Slayerik]

I would like to try a game where players can assume the guise of the same monsters encountered the PvE framework. Not knowing if that orc is a dumb orc or a player-controlled orc would be quite cool, even though the reality would become evident quickly. I expect I would be more tolerant of getting "ganked" by some player-controlled mobs than by a player character. Playing a mob would have to offer some downside, though, e.g. no levelling/improvement. Maybe player kills accumulate as loot in the lair and more loot opens more mob types to use.

Thats funny, I had the same idea for an MMO, where a priest type (after killing a boss mob gets a 1 time usable "soul shard"). In order to summon this Priest controlled beast, he would need X number of people at the shrine all praying or whatever. BAM - World of Warcraft like Mind control effect happens, priest controls the Boss Mob while each player controls a standard mob from that dungeon or area. The "Mind Controlled" monsters spawn an area near a similar level town (i.e. if it was a dungeon like Uldaman (level 40) these monsters would spawn at a level 30 type Player town.

If the priest is killed, the effect breaks. If these boss mobs had some type of group buffs, it could be an End-game assualt essential. Organized guilds would have 20 regular players attack, while they use their "Boss Mob Y" soul stone to try to overrun a high pop town. Getting to and killing the Mayor would increase your rep or something. The people on the other end would receive PVE experience for fighting off the attack and possible reputation as well. The priest class, would have to be slightly gimped to have such a cool feature. I dont know, could be fun!

[HaemishM]

Shadowbane had its own system that was dirived from in game alliances, wars, diplomacy, that had a way of governing itself. A simple act of murdering another player could result in your town being destroyed in the long run. This caused people to think before they ganked.

Not really. About the only time thought had to be given was if the person you wanted to gank had the crest of the server's resident top guild. Otherwise, there were so many ways around accountability in Shadowbane that it was a useless concept. Having crap guard AI helped the gankers, as did the ability of anyone to plant a tree anywhere for a pittance of gold. It was harder to kill a rank 1 tree with 2 people guilded to it than it was to farm the gold needed to buy the tree seed.

I agree that having more than 2 factions is a good thing, but I really think it's better when you go a lot more than 2 factions. DAoC's 3 factions just usually meant that the blood in the water principle held true. Whichever side of a 2-faction battle was winning would probably end up either having temporary allies in the 3rd faction to mop up the losers, or would have both losers teaming up to balance things out again. You really need more than 4 factions, and you need the ability for factions to appoint leaders who can declare truces that the game engine enforces. Allow guild leaders to override the truce for their guild's members to keep the asshole factor open.

[Slayerik]

Well I do recall a war that started over a rune ganking. We wiped those guys off the face of the map cause they ganked one of us at a traveller or commander rune spawn. From that point on, it made me realize it was best to not gank unless I either was A. At war or B. Wanted to start one

I know many times, things would not escalte from a simple occurance like this. But other times, the attitudes of the people involved could really snowball into a mess.

EDIT: Oh yeah, to this day I will still claim Neocron was one of the most fun MMOGs ever. I absolutely loved the implant system, drugs, factions, outpost wars, etc

[Hoax]

I wanted to like Neocron, I really really did.  I tried to make up for the lack of a chance I gave that game by playing a great deal of Face of Mankind even though it lacked in damn near every department including good fps combat.

All it took to make me quit Neocron during the beta was this experience:

Spawn.
Find out where I'm supposed to go to get started on skill-ups.
Go to sewer.
Fight spiders and rats (wtf... not even mutant evil looking spider and rats, spiders and fucking rats).
Decide, I want a fucking gun.
Finally get enough credits for a gun (w00p, eat shit and die spiders and rats!)
Go back to sewer.
Shoot at rat.
Miss.
Miss.
Miss.
Miss.  (bear in mind, I am not missing, the game has decided my fucking character can't hold a gun steady enough to shoot where he aims)
...
Uninstall. 

[Slayerik]

I wanted to like Neocron, I really really did.  I tried to make up for the lack of a chance I gave that game by playing a great deal of Face of Mankind even though it lacked in damn near every department including good fps combat.

All it took to make me quit Neocron during the beta was this experience:

Spawn.
Find out where I'm supposed to go to get started on skill-ups.
Go to sewer.
Fight spiders and rats (wtf... not even mutant evil looking spider and rats, spiders and fucking rats).
Decide, I want a fucking gun.
Finally get enough credits for a gun (w00p, eat shit and die spiders and rats!)
Go back to sewer.
Shoot at rat.
Miss.
Miss.
Miss.
Miss.  (bear in mind, I am not missing, the game has decided my fucking character can't hold a gun steady enough to shoot where he aims)
...
Uninstall. 

lmao ... cant argue that.

Still, if you made it through the shit PVE the game was very cool. :) From all your posts Hoax, and im a lurker, I find your opinions about most games similar to mine. The thing is with Neocron, I got so juiced up over it cause it sounded so cool I was blind to the shitfest that was a lot of the game. By the time the blinders were off, I already had a pimped out PSI-Monkey. There was no way i was ever going to level in that game again, id rather eat shit.

Die rats DIEEEEE!!!!111one11!!1

[sinij]

Failure of SB was that there was no control of any land outside your city walls and no benefit to alliances other than safety in numbers. This was compounded with the fact that your loses tended to stack against your nation and recovery was uphill battle against the same opponents you lost in the first place. There was no reason to ‘let off’ your opponents once they were down and there were no logistical problems following them wherever they decided to move.

Other than all of the above it is by far the best PvP dynamic out there.

[Strazos]

EQ tried the "player-Mod" thing for a bit. I forget why, but it was quickly removed.

[Phred]

EQ tried the "player-Mod" thing for a bit. I forget why, but it was quickly removed.

If you mean players playing mobs it was on the test server and buggier than shit. People who crashed got stuck in a loop and couldn't log in any of their characters or something. Other than that it was reported to be quite fun. The mob you occupied was randomly assigned and you lost any gains you made as soon as you logged out but people still loved it. They incorporated it into the monster missions they added a few expansions back but it sounds like they missed the point people really enjoyed, of being able to fight other players, because monster missions just have you play a monster in an instanced encounter against other npc's from what I've read.

[Toast]

I played around with the "Project M" experiment in Everquest. It was some of the most fun I had playing that game.

You couldn't control where you spawned, and it was actually somewhat difficult to find human players to grie..err attack.

I finally was able to spawn in as a Kliknik beetle just outside of Freeport. I found a new level one who was finishing up a tough fight and sprung into action. My un-AI chase behavior immediately marked me as a player-controlled creature, and a higher level finished me off.

That is what ultimately lead to the ending of player controlled monsters. Verant/SOE stated that players were unhappy with having non-consensual pvp forced upon them. It was so awesome while it lasted. You should have seen the swarms of gnolls and klikniks terrorizing newbie hunting grounds.

[tazelbain]

Because Player-monsters make life for regular players.  They want nice, easy xp.  The GW playerbase wailing right now because A.net bumped up the difficulty.

For something like this to work, you'd have design the game from the ground up to use it and set player expectations in advance.  Level 2 isn't a give me level anymore.  You going have to fight for it and if you suck it going to take a while.  But one thing it wont be is boring, like all. the other level 2s.  I think there is very fertile ground here, but I doubt the McMMOGs are willing to try something new.

[Venkman]

Player Mobs and PvE don't mix. PvP and PvE really don't mix well either (for most people) because the motivations within the games are entirely different, almost diametrically opposed. I also really don't think RPGs and PvP don't mix, because the former is about game-directed content in a linear narrative, but I'm open-minded about that part. Some of the missions in GW that are game directed but involve fighting other players who are assigned an opposing task make for a great start. WoW should do way more with this than it has too. Some upcoming titles are trying a few more things too.

To me though, the killer is the stats. PvP becomes about time when combat overly relies on stats. I soooo wish Planetside took off enough for people to rip off the combat system. It wasn't the best or anything, but it leveled the playing field pretty well. Throw some normal MMOG convention at the combat system and there'd be goodness all around.