IPY is done.

[Dark Vengeance]

But that still begs the question of why IPY closed its doors.  (which HAS the benefit of observing the original UO).   Somehow i don't think quick and easy answers are forthcoming.

It's really easy....the guy was sick of spending his own time and money on a project that progressively went from an enjoyable project to a complete PITA.

Could they have modified the ruleset to try and find the perfect fix? Sure, but then they'd have lost a great deal of "Just like Pre-UO:R" appeal that made them popular in the first place.

Honestly, I just think he realized he was sick of all the bitching, and that he was going to get more bitching no matter what he did. When you're damned if you do, or damned if you don't, pulling the plug and saying "GET THE FUCK OFF MY LAWN" seems pretty attractive by comparison.

Bring the noise.
Cheers.............

[HaemishM]

UO pvp was great, it formed the basis for the greatest online roleplaying I've known to date. It also formed the basis for the most egregious griefing, because you could. And if you can, people will, because people are worthless piles of shit, for the most part.

This is why IPY closed down, and why UO lost a lot of customers. If you can, some asshole will. And the more you can do, the more harm one person can do to many.

This is the ultimate lesson of PVP environments, and I'm saying this as someone who loves PVP. If you let people do something, they WILL DO IT. And they will often do it in ways you do not anticipate, and often to hurt other players.

To a person who only wants to PVE on that particular occasion, ANY FORM OF PVP IS GRIEF. Period. If all you want to do is kill your bags of xp, get the loot and not be bothered by other people, ALL PVP IS GRIEF. Period.

That is not to say that PVP isn't a valid playstyle, or that people who PVE are pussies and PVPers are teh hardcore. But if you dont' want to be fucked with, any form of fucking with (including kill-stealing and PVP) is grief.

[geldonyetich]

Just to clarify, I'm not equating PvP to Grief.   Grief is basically the result when PvP happens irresponsibly.   (Granted, the definition of Grief need not be so needlessly restricted to actions within PvP alone.   I've been griefed by PvE kill stealers, chat windows, and winger pron (fortunately not simultaniously).)   PvP is fine so long as it's not so inadequettely controlled that hurting others is easier and more rewarding than actually playing the game in a non-grief manner.  

Early Ultima Online PvP was irresponsiblibly executed.   There were a million ways they could have reserved the freedom that made it interesting without cutting it off entirely.   These ways revolve around adequette accountability for one's actions.   Instead, they chose to be lazy.  Stat loss was a lazy solution.   Cutting the world into Felecia and Trammel was a lazy solution.   Taking IPY down was a lazy solution.   (Of course, it's all very easy for me to call them lazy when I'm not the one doing the implementing of a real solution.   Coding is easy!  You do it with a magic wand while being pleasured under the table by swedish bikini models!   Spaghetti code is actual Spaghetti you enjoy with a luscious meat sauce eaten with folks made of thousand dollar bills!)

So, lets talk about some solutions that could have worked...

Jail.  That would have worked.   I know there's at least one little known MMORPG (I forget wat it's called - Exile?) that has a system for jail.   If you PK wrecklessly and are caught, your character is locked in a little room and formed to perform medial tasks with other PKs until you're released.   That system works because PvP becomes less fun.   Also, it's very satisfying to consider Sir Ganksalot who enjoyed killing helpless miners is currently confined to a small portion of the world breaking big rocks into small rocks for hours.   Whose the miner now, Sir Ganksalot?

Permadeath for particularly flagrant criminals would have worked as well.   Yes, I'm torching your character because you were using it irresponsibly.   Cry more, you red PK.   If we're putting together a realistic game in which players are allowed to interact with eachother in a realistic manner, you should expect to face realistic consiquences for your actions.   Sending rampant PKs to the gallows (so they lose their characters altogether) works because it makes PKs have to work harder to keep their characters up to snuff versus blues or light PKs (who do not need to face permadeath).   It also makes the game more interesting at the same time - permadeath can be cool if it's something the average player can easily avoid by simply behaving themselves.

Personally, I'd be up for a bit of both.  Jail of varying durations for minor infringements, permadeath for hardened criminals.   Perhaps for real minor infringements we can just force them to wear dresses and sing salty pirate tunes.

Nestalgia may tell you that Ultima Online had a good thing going for it because of the freedom it offered to interact with other players in a violent manner, and that's true.   However, PvP without adequette controls (not to mention being able to lift incredibly lucrative rewards off the corpse) equals grief, like it or not.   Here, I've just demonstrated a few ways you can keep the freedom that makes that PvP interesting without removing that freedom altogether.   If you want a game with realistic crimes, you need to integrate realistic punishments.   MMORPGs are unfortunately burdened in such a way that, hey, those are real player's efforts your hurting over there.   Most people don't understand that, or just say "yeah, well screw them, I'm having fun."  That's just a no go in terms of building a MMORPG responsibly.

[Calandryll]

Just to clarify, I'm not equating PvP to Grief.   Grief is basically the result when PvP happens irresponsibly.   (Granted, the definition of Grief need not be so needlessly restricted to actions within PvP alone.   I've been griefed by PvE kill stealers, chat windows, and winger pron (fortunately not simultaniously).)   PvP is fine so long as it's not so inadequettely controlled that hurting others is easier and more rewarding than actually playing the game in a non-grief manner.  

Early Ultima Online PvP was irresponsiblibly executed.   There were a million ways they could have reserved the freedom that made it interesting without cutting it off entirely.   These ways revolve around adequette accountability for one's actions.   Instead, they chose to be lazy.  Stat loss was a lazy solution.   Cutting the world into Felecia and Trammel was a lazy solution.   Taking IPY down was a lazy solution.   (Of course, it's all very easy for me to call them lazy when I'm not the one doing the implementing of a real solution.   Coding is easy!  You do it with a magic wand while being pleasured under the table by swedish bikini models!   Spaghetti code is actual Spaghetti you enjoy with a luscious meat sauce eaten with folks made of thousand dollar bills!)

So, lets talk about some solutions that could have worked...

Jail.  That would have worked.   I know there's at least one little known MMORPG (I forget wat it's called - Exile?) that has a system for jail.   If you PK wrecklessly and are caught, your character is locked in a little room and formed to perform medial tasks with other PKs until you're released.   That system works because PvP becomes less fun.   Also, it's very satisfying to consider Sir Ganksalot who enjoyed killing helpless miners is currently confined to a small portion of the world breaking big rocks into small rocks for hours.   Whose the miner now, Sir Ganksalot?

Permadeath for particularly flagrant criminals would have worked as well.   Yes, I'm torching your character because you were using it irresponsibly.   Cry more, you red PK.   If we're putting together a realistic game in which players are allowed to interact with eachother in a realistic manner, you should expect to face realistic consiquences for your actions.   Sending rampant PKs to the gallows (so they lose their characters altogether) works because it makes PKs have to work harder to keep their characters up to snuff versus blues or light PKs (who do not need to face permadeath).   It also makes the game more interesting at the same time - permadeath can be cool if it's something the average player can easily avoid by simply behaving themselves.

Personally, I'd be up for a bit of both.  Jail of varying durations for minor infringements, permadeath for hardened criminals.   Perhaps for real minor infringements we can just force them to wear dresses and sing salty pirate tunes.

Nestalgia may tell you that Ultima Online had a good thing going for it because of the freedom it offered to interact with other players in a violent manner, and that's true.   However, PvP without adequette controls (not to mention being able to lift incredibly lucrative rewards off the corpse) equals grief, like it or not.   Here, I've just demonstrated a few ways you can keep the freedom that makes that PvP interesting without removing that freedom altogether.   If you want a game with realistic crimes, you need to integrate realistic punishments.   MMORPGs are unfortunately burdened in such a way that, hey, those are real player's efforts your hurting over there.   Most people don't understand that, or just say "yeah, well screw them, I'm having fun."  That's just a no go in terms of building a MMORPG responsibly.

The problem with both of those ideas (and the problem with previous attemps to curb PKing - like stat-loss) is that they focus on punishing the PK. They do nothing to lessen the impact of being PKed by the person who did not want to be in a fight with another player.

Like Haemish said, the fact that a PK might go to jail, suffer stat-loss, lose standing, or even be deleted in no way makes the naked-miner feel any better about being PKed. They're still going to be pissed and they're still going to consider it griefing.

I'd love to see some solutions for open-PvP that take it from the victim's side, rather than the PK's.

[geldonyetich]

Personally, I think the PK needs to be punished, first and foremost, to stop it from getting out of hand.   If there's absolutely no reprocussion to stealing cars, my gargage would be a much more varied and intresting place.

However, from the victum angle, the idea of insurance is the best I've come up with.   The thing that chafes the most about having some jerk pop in and steal all your hard work is that all that hard work is gone through no fault of your own.   That's no good, so restoring a bit of that via insurance works.  

Yes, this has the potential to create some "duping" via insurance fraud.  That's why you can't get around punishing the PK.

[HaemishM]

Insurance for items won't matter. It isn't so much the items the victim might or might not lose, it's the interruption in his play time. You can't refund or insure that time.

[geldonyetich]

The interruption to his play time is just more play time.   In a MMORPG, you don't just happen to other players, other players happen to you.    Playing a game in which the potential exists for you to get ganked is what makes it interesting.  When it actually happens, that's genuinely exciting: time well spent.    If you're irritated that other players can butt in, a MMORPG of unrestricted freedom and potential is not for you.

It only sucks when you have to deal with long term reprocussions.  Possession loss.  Humiliation.   Death.   These are things games can get around.

Don't like Insurance?  Well, if you wanted to get really elaborate, you could always code a means to find stolen items and return them to their owner when the PK is caught.

[Dark Vengeance]

Personally, I think the PK needs to be punished, first and foremost, to stop it from getting out of hand.   If there's absolutely no reprocussion to stealing cars, my gargage would be a much more varied and intresting place.

RL comparisons to crime and punishment as a deterrent simply don't work. In MMOGs, there is no physical pain, and no punishment that can't be avoided by one method or another.

However, from the victum angle, the idea of insurance is the best I've come up with.   The thing that chafes the most about having some jerk pop in and steal all your hard work is that all that hard work is gone through no fault of your own.   That's no good, so restoring a bit of that via insurance works.

Insurance doesn't eliminate the grief. Keep PKing until the insurance runs out, and you hit the jackpot. Even if it doesn't, at least you cost the guy 300GP each time you kill him...meanwhile the victim is every last bit as aggravated as if he were being sodomized by the business end of a rake.

Above else, recognize that being killed in a MMOG by any means is a blow to the ego. That's why PKing is hated even more than thievery.

Yes, this has the potential to create some "duping" via insurance fraud.  That's why you can't get around punishing the PK.

Insurance fraud? If you use insurance, it has to be a money sink for the victim, or else you're opening up a gaping loophole. If you go that route, the PK cannot gain by PKing, and the victim has to lose moneyfor the insurance. Even as a zero-sum system, it would be exploitable.

And it still doesn't address the point that insurance doesn't remove the ability of griefers to piss someone off by killing them repeatedly.

Bring the noise.
Cheers..............

[HaemishM]

Again, it isn't so much the death or loss of items that piss off the PVE player who just got PKed. It's the interruption.

Yes, I realize that interruption is par for the course in MMOG land. But it still pisses people off, and I'd wager is the single-biggest reason PVE people don't like PVP. Well that and the fact that in games like old-school UO, the PVP was usually followed by a long, immature tirade from Jimmy Poopypants about how "owned" you were.

[Arnold]

See, it's only a tool for grief if there's no defense against it. Griefers used to love killing miners, so my friend (Il Pesto from boards past) had a miner who also happened to be a 3x GM warrior. He successfully hammered most miner killers into the ground.

I'd argue the superior method of grief is the stuff you can't directly fight, e.g. kill stealing, training in non pvp games, etc. I know when I was doing my griefing schtick when I was fifteen, the last thing I'd want to do is something people could fight against.

Thank you.  I saw very little "griefing" on Siege Perilous because you could kick the little griefing fucker's ass.  Griefing is for the weak, and they will have their asses handed to them in a full on PvP game.

[geldonyetich]

The main angle I'm arguing upon is not from the perspective of a casual player trying to avoid getting inconveienced, but along the lines ofa designer attempting to capture the sheer passion that made the old days of Ultima Online one that all those crazy PKs seem to be trying to get restored.

RL comparisons of crime and punshiment as deterrent don't work?
Insurance doesn't eliminate the grief?
People will exploit an insurance system?
Griefers will ruin a game with less restrictions on the level of interaction?

Yeah, I've heard it all before.  We've seen the "care bear" solutions.   We've seen Shadowbane's "all PvP" excess.   I'm talking about creating a virtual world that really feels like it matters here.   A game with some serious gonads that doesn't pussyfoot around the issues.

So yes, I'm instituting capital punishment within a game world because I'd like it to be a game world players take seriously.
Yes, I'm suggesting insurance because I don't want a major setback to be game breaking.
Yes, I'm aware people will exploit the insurance system, so I tweak it so that the acts involved in doing so are more costly than it's worth.
Yes, I'm aware griefers will ruin rampant if I give this level of freedom, and that's why the capital punishment is neccessary.

I'm tearing down walls over here and saying, "lets see if what happens really matches up to the lessons we think we've learned from previous MMORPGs".  

Because I'm wagering the answer is, "We overcompensated by taking the least work solution to fix these issues, and if we really knuckled down and did it RIGHT, we'd see what we think we're missing from Ultima Online."

[Calantus]

I always thought that a karma-type system would be the best way to help victims from PKing. Basically that some force protects everyone from eachother (you'd need to make everyone some sort of special freak of nature or sub-human to explain it though), but the protection waxes and wanes with certain actions. Someone who never fights would be invulnerable, someone who fights occasionally would have high damage reduction, so they'd have the opportunity to run if attacked, or would not be disadvantaged if jumped and wanting to fight back. A constant PK would be open season for everyone.

Just a thought.

Oh, and the thing with siege perilous is that it is where the hardcore supposedly go (and it was for a while, but it wasn't quite as hardcore when I rejoined). Plus most characters were made with a PVP focus, with PVP in mind, or full knowledge that they'd have to PVP. Your regular player on a regular shard even pre-trammel was hopeless at defending himself. And that's not even going into gank squads (we will ignore non-combat characters, they shouldn't exist in a PVP world without protection) or waiting for them to go low on health before jumping them. So even though they CAN fight back, they rarely do so successfully. PVP is also a very different skillset than PVE so anybody who wasn't used to it was again in a severe disadvantage. That makes the whole "the player can fight back" argument lose alot of steam.

The way I see it, you need to either have everyone ready and able to PVP, or you need to protect those who don't want to PVP (and I like Calandryll's point about punishment not being enough). I don't think it will work any other way.

[SirBruce]

geldon, the people who are "missing" that feeling from early UO are precisely those sorts of people who want the PvP that they had back then, which the bulk of players have subsequently rejected.  That's not to say everyone who waxes nostalgic about those days is a rampant PK griefer; many simply enjoyed playing in that environment.  Others view the past through rose-colored glasses.

We *have* learned the lessons from MMORPGs with PvP.  What we learned is not to put them in our PvE RPG games, or to make them extremely limited in those games, and instead to make other, PvP focused games.   That many of those games are still left found wanting I think speaks to a lot of the *other* aspects of UO that have never been fully copies (or can't be), not the PvP ones.

Bruce

[geldonyetich]

Well there we're going to have to agree to disagree.   I'm not positive we've learned those lessons.   The reason why is because we never actually took the time to implement a real solution.

And guess what?  There's some lesser known games out there that have.   Neocron actually has a "Soul light" system that is very similar to the karma system that Calantus mentioned (except the consiquences are getting attacked on sight by NPCs in civilized areas and not being protected from other players), and it works quite well.   Though there is a PvP switch in Neocron, most people disable it because the Soullight system works that well.   That game I can't remember the name of has somewhat unrestricted PvP, and it works excellently by using a jail system.

Perhaps we didn't learn those lessons as well as we think, hmm?

(It's a pity that Neocron and that other game suck for other reasons.  Mostly weak development budgets.)

So yes, there are PvP games and PvE games.  I'm talking about a game in which you mesh PvP and PvE along the lines of trying to go for the "virtual world" approach.   In other words, early Ultima Online done right.

If you want Carebear Everquestish PvE, you've got Everquest (and it's sequel).  If you want competitive Shadowbane PvP, you've got Shadowbane and GUild Wars.  This is something else.

[Joe]

UO had implements to protect people from pvp: guards and houses. You could ban anyone you wanted from your house (unless you were red on Seige), and you could do your thing in town with literally no risk.

However, adventuring beyond the borders of town for whatever reason usually required at least some form of combat prowess, be it magery or melee fighting. Mining and other resource gathering was about the only thing you could do outside of town that didn't require at least a rudimentary understanding of how fighting things worked. Only the stupid ones died, really.

I was a miner for a year. I was PKed once. How did I avoid the wolves among the sheep? High hiding skill, an the ability to avoid the crossroads. It's not like PKs are hard to avoid if you're half awake. Most people aren't, or don't want to be, which is fine, but saying that people are sitting ducks for some faceless thirteen-year-old is a bit of a stretch.

People shouldn't be rewarded for not using the tools in front of them, especially in a world simulation like UO.

[SirBruce]

And there you hear the tired refrain of the PvP proponent.  "All other attempts at PvP/PvE integrated games have failed because they didn't use the RIGHT solution.  *I* have the elusive, perfect solution that other game companies with dozens of developers and millions of dollars couldn't come up with.  All those other PvE games with PvP that failed to capture a large audience sucked for *other* reasons."  Sure, maybe you are the Orville and Wilbur Wright of PvP/PvE game integration.  But somehow I doubt it.

It's nothing personal against you, geldonyetich.  I've heard the same claims from dozens of people going all the way back to before Shadowbane.

Bruce

[geldonyetich]

My experience with PvP in UO was that housing was one of the reasons they did so well.   You could ban anyone from your house even if they had a very good reason to want to pursue you there, heh.

Aside from that, interesting point there Joe: Realistically it's not unfair to expect a sheep to take steps to protect itself.

Although I could come back and say that realistically it's not unfair to expect the virtual society to take adequette steps against crime.

Is my idea the one best way to make an early UO-like?  Hah, I don't think a "best" way exists.   However, it's not a bad idea.    It's not even all that complicated of an idea.  All I'm saying is if you expect to put realistic crime in the game, you'd dang well better put realistic punishment in as well.

Am I the Orville and Wilbur Wright of PvP/PvE Game integration or even a drop in the greatness of Sid Meyer?   Not until I pull off something like that successfully I'm not.   Just kicking around ideas.  The implementation, now there's the challenge.

[Ganon]

I remember one time in UO, about 1999, when I stole an entire keyring of boat keys at Brit bank.  The guy noticed just as I was teleporting out to the first boat.  He had like 12 boats all next to each other.  Some of the boats had stuff on them and some didn't.  We played a mad game of randomly teleporting to the various boats, as I would try to spend hte few seconds before he found the right key looting the best stuff from the hold as he swore at me from three boats over.  I managed to drydock 2-3 of them and get a few good items and make it back to the bank once, he caught me on the second trip.  No MMORPG could EVER recreate that experience...why did perfection have to happen in the very first  large scale MMO and last for so short a time?

[SirBruce]

Because your "perfection" came at the cost of the other guy's "fun" -- if not him specifically, then other boat-owners in general.  And there are more of them than their are you, so they went off to play someplace else -- and you don't have nearly as much fun doing that with others of your own ilk.

You're basically like the big bully who went out on the basketball court, punched the kid who had the ball until he dropped it, and then shot the basket yourself.  When all the other kids stopped playing, you wondered whatever happened to those great basketball games.

Bruce

[Arnold]

Your regular player on a regular shard even pre-trammel was hopeless at defending himself. And that's not even going into gank squads (we will ignore non-combat characters, they shouldn't exist in a PVP world without protection) or waiting for them to go low on health before jumping them. So even though they CAN fight back, they rarely do so successfully. PVP is also a very different skillset than PVE so anybody who wasn't used to it was again in a severe disadvantage. That makes the whole "the player can fight back" argument lose alot of steam.

The way I see it, you need to either have everyone ready and able to PVP, or you need to protect those who don't want to PVP (and I like Calandryll's point about punishment not being enough). I don't think it will work any other way.

I'd be willing to bet that 99%+ characters in UO had enough magery to cast recall.  That's ALL it took to defend yourself in UO.  Even if a PK gank squad was charging through your hunting area, all you had to do was recall, bank your loot for a minute, and recall back.  The gank squad was gone, hunting in another location by then.

[Joe]

No, he was just the bank thief who stole a bunch of keys a guy shouldn't have been carrying if he didn't want them stolen. The remainder of the story is just cool interaction.

I've been on the receving end of a situation like that, except I had one boat and the guy who teleported onto it was trying to kill me. I ended up piloting the boat between successfully hiding from him into guard territory around Britain and got him guardwhacked. It took me forty-five minutes to beat the guy, but it felt great when I did.

Even as a victim in that situation, I felt like I'd experienced something coming close to an actual adventure, though not nearly as epic as I'd experienced later in my UO "life."

I think a lot of it comes down to how willing you are to allow other players to encroach upon your gameplay while you're simultaneously working to affect their world. Some people just don't seem overly intrigued with the prospect of changing the way others experience things. Granted, neither were situations I'd term grief; both my and Ganon's experiences were just non standard player vs. player encounters that UO allowed for.

[Calandryll]

Your regular player on a regular shard even pre-trammel was hopeless at defending himself. And that's not even going into gank squads (we will ignore non-combat characters, they shouldn't exist in a PVP world without protection) or waiting for them to go low on health before jumping them. So even though they CAN fight back, they rarely do so successfully. PVP is also a very different skillset than PVE so anybody who wasn't used to it was again in a severe disadvantage. That makes the whole "the player can fight back" argument lose alot of steam.

The way I see it, you need to either have everyone ready and able to PVP, or you need to protect those who don't want to PVP (and I like Calandryll's point about punishment not being enough). I don't think it will work any other way.

I'd be willing to bet that 99%+ characters in UO had enough magery to cast recall.  That's ALL it took to defend yourself in UO.  Even if a PK gank squad was charging through your hunting area, all you had to do was recall, bank your loot for a minute, and recall back.  The gank squad was gone, hunting in another location by then.

I played UO from day 2 up through UO:R and like many people posting here I was very, very rarely killed by a PK. As you said, if I didn't want to fight or wasn't prepared, I just recalled. In fact, most of the time if I just ran in a straight line away from the PKs I could get away. But while recall was an option, the fact is many players were not able to get away. Some panicked, got killed before they could cast, or didn't have magery. Some had just taken their first three steps out of town.

The real issue is this. If a game is open PvP and allows for activities that are not PvP related and someone is doing one of those activities and gets PKed, there is a good chance they are going to be upset. Even if it says right on the box and every time you log in "YOU MIGHT BE PKED WHILE PLAYING THIS GAME!".  Especially if they are playing a character that isn't built for combat (like a miner - not to mention most player's combat characters were not built for PvP either).

So even though every player in UO who left town knew they might get attacked, if they weren't leaving town with the purpose of PvPing (ie: mining, skill gain, etc) getting PKed was often seen as an interruption by a good number of players. They don't care that the PK might suffer stat loss eventually, or that he can't go into town, or any of that.

The bottom line is the player decided to do something that night and wasn't able to do it...that's what a vast majority of the complaints (aside from the harrassment issues) over PKing boiled down to.

[Calantus]

Recalling was a major pain if you were forced to do it. You couldn't go back right away because they might still be there, and that's if you had a rune there in the first place. If they didn't have a thief take all your pearl first. If you were exploring it was a major pain in the butt. Or my favourite, trying to mark a rune and getting jumped just before you get it. It also depends on how dedicated your pks were on whether you can hide. Some would have tracking and use explosion potions to get you to auto-attack when next to them. Or run off, hide, and stealth back. But the death wasn't the worst part. Sometimes you'd go all over trying to find a good mining spot only to have to run from pks, and then minoc guarded area was full. Or you'd want to go somewhere to train only to find PKs there so you had to go to a lesser place.

I got PK'd a fair bit because I usually fought back on a char if he wasn't new. It rarely annoyed me because I liked that aspect most times (sometimes though...). Even if you or I liked it, alot of people didn't, even if they could fight back or avoid the fight. It was the annoyance of it all that got to people.

[sinij]

Insurance for items won't matter. It isn't so much the items the victim might or might not lose, it's the interruption in his play time. You can't refund or insure that time.

Insurance was and still is outright bad idea for UO - it killed all need for crafts and turned PvP into 'who has best loot' contest. As to ‘interruption in his play time’- ‘he’ should not play mmorpgs if ‘he’ is concerned that interaction with other people might lessen your fun.

[Calantus]

As to ‘interruption in his play time’- ‘he’ should not play mmorpgs if ‘he’ is concerned that interaction with other people might lessen your fun.

See this? This is exactly why PVP is not a big part of most mmorpgs. Developers like paying customers.

[HaemishM]

Well there we're going to have to agree to disagree.   I'm not positive we've learned those lessons.   The reason why is because we never actually took the time to implement a real solution.

I am positive that the developers and publishers never learned the RIGHT lessons from those games. They learned some lessons.

Lessons learned:
1) Unrestricted PVP in a PVE world leads to lots of CSR calls and cancelled subscriptions
2) A small minority determined to make things harder for the majority can and will do so if you let them, causing the majority to cancel subs
3) People don't want to be protected, they want to be INSULATED

See other comments I've made about virtual worlds. We are nowehere near mature enough technology to allow virtual worlds to be worth a damn, nor do we have mature enough gamers to allow it. I'm talking we're an entire generation of gamers (not games) from virtual worlds. The online medium does not allow enough accountability to enable virtual worlds, and we as netizens do not have the maturity yet with said technology to not use it as a shovel in someone else's brainpan. We are virtual babes being given howitzers and told "Don't shoot this off!"

I'm not saying PVP can't work, nor that virtual worlds are impossible. It's obvious neither one of those statements are true. But the player base barely has an idea of its own net space, much less someone else's. We don't know how to not act like savages to each other.

EDIT: And when people are PAYING FOR A SERVICE, they have the right to demand not to be interrupted in what they are doing.

[Dark Vengeance]

I'm just angry that I pay for my Lions tickets, and the other team's defense keeps interrupting them. Oh wait, what's that you say? It's part of the game? And everyone involved knows it's part of the game before they ever go in?

Hmm, interesting....so basically people get mad when they can't et their way all the time, and the fact that they are paying (and can threaten to stop paying) provides them with enough leverage to make people listen.

It's like playing Monopoly against someone, and having them get mad because I bought Marvin Gardens, and won't sell it to them under any circumstances. Or getting mad because I built Hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place. I have something to gain by doing so, and they are just mad because I am standing in the way of their success. Quite frankly, I don't care if their only objective is to see how many laps they can make around the board...my goals oppose theirs, whether they like it or not.

Bring the noise.
Cheers............

[HaemishM]

Ahhh, but in football, that is a PVP-only game. There isn't a pair of people in football standing in the field tossing around a baseball while the Lions are playing the Bears. That's a PVP-only game with a VERY STRINGENT set of rules. And I imagine that those football players would get very pissed if some jackass ran down onto the field and starting tossing around exploding devices.

Yes, some people play MMOG's to play what is in essence, a single-player or co-op game with only a certain set of people. And they pay for that, that is their expectation and someone coming in uninvited to mess that up WILL upset them. For early UO, that's the game many people expected, and they were never informed of the ability for someone else to interrupt that fun. That is just one of the reasons instancing has become so popular in MMOG's. It allows for massive subscriptions (good for the devs) while allowing boutique play (good for players).

[Dark Vengeance]

Haemish, I agree with the sentiment about flawed expectations. I think a lot of people look at MMOGs and think "wow, it's like a persistent Diablo, with more players, and new content added regularly".

Even though their expectations were not consistent with the original intent of designers like Raph, those were the players that were inevitably catered to once Garriott and Koster were out the door. Because there are a lot of them, and they feel it is their god-given right to play any and every game they want to that same way.

As much as those folks may have helped create a comfy niche for producers with their 'persistent Diablo with content updates', some of us still want the virtual worlds that were supposed to be what the genre was all about.

Bring the noise.
Cheers.............

[HaemishM]

There aren't currently enough of us who want a persistent virtual world to justify developers spending the money needed to make one worth a damn. The hybrids we have gotten so far are the best we are going to get for a long while.

We aren't ready for them as a playerbase.

[geldonyetich]

My school of thought is one that says that a game trains the players to play in a method that generally is the quickest path to success.   So, along those lines, I don't think of the general MMORPG player base as being "unready" for an unrestricted PvP game so much as the game needs to be designed to facilitate teaching those players the desired way for them to PvP.

[Arnold]

For early UO, that's the game many people expected, and they were never informed of the ability for someone else to interrupt that fun.

Umm, the original playbook that came with UO flat out tells new players DO NOT LEAVE THE GUARDZONE WITHOUT LOTS OF FRIENDS OR YOU WILL PROBABLY BE KILLED!  That book goes into detail about how other players can, and will, affect your play experience and gives suggestions on precautions players can take to avoid them.

[rscott]

Except playerbooks are unreliable, and in even the best of circumstances they say things that are best considered optional.  Heck, if i thought i had to do everything that was listed in the eq manual, i never would have played.

[Sky]

Hide and recall foiled 99% of pk attempts I didn't feel like retaliating. I played from beta (phase 2? I forget, been too long) through UOR, then for a bit on SP about the time I became a lummite. Hell, my SP character had no combat skills whatsoever, nor magery at all, he was straight treasure hunting/rogue-type. Incredibly fun, only killed a couple times, most of those when I went on guild raids (on enemy hqs or whatnot, not some ghey dragon with phat lewtz ;) because I was acting as a distraction for the real combat forces or causing mayhem behind the lines. You can't have that much fun without that level of interaction between players, and you can't have that level of interaction without griefers taking advantage of it to harass people in a mixed environment.

If there had been more options for resource harvesting in justice zones, I doubt I'd have bitched about pking at all, for the rest was pvp and par for the course. For the record, I'm very pro-pvp, partook in pvp heavily in UO, and enjoy online shooters, I'm no carebear.

Aside from that, interesting point there Joe: Realistically it's not unfair to expect a sheep to take steps to protect itself.

That's the fundamental problem with player justice, it empowers the griefer, as I said in my post above.

Though I'm not a big fan of using retaliation (player justice, whatever) as a valid excuse, because then you shift the pacing and gameplay to the griefer. If we are in a town meeting with the yew militia and have to go fight off a wave of death-robed purple-potioners for a couple hours, then the griefers have their fun for that duration, and we are cockblocked from our meeting until we're done dealing with them. And we were a goddamned player justice organization.

[Xilren's Twin]

Haemish, I agree with the sentiment about flawed expectations.

I'd go so far as to say the vast bulk of complaints from mmorpg players amount to disconnects between expectations and reality.  Sometimes it's the players fault for not taking time to understand how a game is supposed to work (i.e. if you signed up for Shadowbane not understanding it's a guild focused game), but more often, it the failure of the dev to properly set, live up to, and more importantly, manage and understand, player expectations (i.e. players expecting PvE to not be a requirment in SB, or players epecting large scale battles to work without sb.exe errors :) ).

That's not even unique to mmorpgs; almost any service organization faces the bulk of complaints from the same thing.

Xilren