Are Dev's Bad, or do MMO PVP Games Not Work?
Venkman:
Righ raises a good point about the Lineages. You might want to break your consideration between various markets. Afaik, Lineage 1 and Lineage 2 never hit it well in the US and EU, so the main appeal of their core systems is for a different culture.
Slayerik:
Quote from: Arinon on October 24, 2008, 04:59:39 PM
Quote from: eldaec on October 24, 2008, 04:15:35 PM
stuff
Both Planetside and Guildwars involved the unlocking of character options no? I would consider this a power curve. Flexibility, even if you can only leverage it outside of a hot zone, is definitely an advantage. Guild Wars especially had you playing with a partial deck of skills to draw from unless you paid your dues in the horrendous PvE of that game.
DAoC most definitely had a power curve with realm ranks and like, the entire ToA expansion. Even using the term 'end game' kinda implies the curve had to be traversed. That fact that someone might have capped off a character is kinda moot. In a game with time based advancement you get to kill targets that are still in the capping out process. That's the draw/trap.
If you separate those still advancing and those capped out, you pretty much have two games. The second one better be damn fun because with PvP the first one ends up being a tutorial.
I don't think Diku and PvP go that well together for very long, but I keep playing them anyway. The games I stick with for any length of time these days are the ones that relegate PvP to the sidelines. They just need to make new games fast enough that there is always one less that 3 months old. Problem solved!
Comparing a BR 20 in old PS with a BR 1 , and a level 10 in any game and a level 20 doesnt even come close. Even as a low ranked noob I was fuckin people up in PS.
Jayce:
I think it's important to draw a line between two very different kinds of PvP:
1. Battleground-type. Also called "sport" PvP. This is very akin to FPS, where the "world", be it the entire map or just the scenario, resets. GW, SB (I think?), and WoW battlegrounds and arena are in this category.
2. Persistent. EVE, UO, AC Darktide, and (sort of) Planetside. Gains stay gained until you lose them again. I guess you could break this into item loss versus territory loss, but it seems like the two go together.
I tend to favor #2. I lost my taste for #1 after Quake 1, though it took me a while to figure out why I didn't like it. So I'll talk about #2.
To generalize a few of these points:
- Have a big world. AC DT got this right, EVE gets it right, even UO got it right if you could find space for a house. Make it possible to "set up shop" far from anywhere.
- Don't have a level or other type of grind before the PvP. Let a newbie be useful in some way. AC1 fails, EVE wins. SB tried to mitigate it by making the leveling process fast.
- At the same time let the veterans get something worth striving for. This is one really hard part. Even EVE doesn't quite get this right.
- Item dependency has to be limited. You can't make people lose something it takes over a day to get back. However they should have the ability to risk losing something powerful for an advantage.
- Maybe this is debatable, but I don't think winning should be based on twitch. Lag and disconnects are too big a factor. Factors like thinking ahead and game knowledge should be the deciding factors.
UnSub:
Quote from: Slayerik on October 24, 2008, 01:15:39 PM
Why is it no dev house can seem to make a game with that Counterstrike kind of replayability and grab? Are we closer, or farther away than 1997?
Counterstrike is free, with no real death penalty, a limited form of item loss, puts you into an auto generated team and plays quick matches that reset the map constantly.
WAR scenarios are very close to what Counterstrike is.
Heh, you could make the argument that MMOs make PvP too complex by giving about 80 different abilities per character and then timers to force you to use a lot of those abilities. Counterstrike just lets you point and click.
The problem is that 'meaningful' PvP only feels good when you are winning. Getting stomped into the dirt is less fun, as is being in a permanent world where you are almost guaranteed to always be a bug unless you are willing to devote a 40 hour work week to PvP.
Jayce:
Quote from: UnSub on October 24, 2008, 10:05:49 PM
The problem is that 'meaningful' PvP only feels good when you are winning. Getting stomped into the dirt is less fun,
Not true. The agony of defeat doesn't stop athletes from chasing the thrill of victory. Not everyone has the guts for it, sure, but that's why there are pure PvE games.
Quote
as is being in a permanent world where you are almost guaranteed to always be a bug unless you are willing to devote a 40 hour work week to PvP.
This would be a design flaw IMO. A common one, to be sure.
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