Selling Content for PvP?

[tazelbain]

It seems to me that modern have become content delivery systems.  It also seems to me there ia a large (unfulled) desire for PvP.  These two things don't play well together.  If you add more lands, you dilute the playerbase.  If you added more advancement (item or level), it destroys parity and creates a grind.  Expansion creates walls in player base.  Etc.

I understand the whole "virtual world" are better argument, but I don't think anyone has come up with a content solution for VW either.

[Azaroth]

Should the title of this post be "Horizontal Power Advancement"?

I'm actually asking. If so, I have plenty to say.

[tazelbain]

If you think "Horizontal Power Advancement" is the solution to selling content for PvP, please by all means make your case.

[Aez]

Yep, seems like the problem is more related to the difficulty of blending PvP and DIKU than it is related to land mass or open worlds.

[Azaroth]

Well, I guess it depends what you mean by "selling". I'm assuming you just mean selling as in getting players convinced of its worth and enjoying it, not some sort of strange PvP content RMT system.

Blending PvP player expectations and Diku (or doing PvP at all these days) is tricky, but not impossible.

[tazelbain]

I mean adding expansions to the game.  You know adding more content to the game to keep it fresh, but not ruining what you got.  Paid or Unpaid.

Land size is very important in PvP.  WAR had a huge PvP land mass and LoTD adding more made it worse.  Laws of Thermal Dynamics and all that.

[Aez]

Some easy solutions to common PvP problems :

Players are too spread out: hot spot detection on the map and fast travel  - ex: Planetside

Player advancement turns PvP into a grind to compete: Horizontal character progression, ideally with minimal stats progression (healt, base atk, etc) - ex: GuildWars if it had no character level, Magic the Gathering

Midnight raids in virtual world PvP games: find a lore consistent way to gate the guild city (portal or stargate).  The gate can be closed to everyone expect guild member or it can be opened to get additional resources (npc caravan and unaffiliated players pass through the portal to commerce) but it also leave you open to attack from an other guild.  Ideally, your gate is frozen once you're attacked so only one guild can attack at any given time.  - ex : has this ever been done?

[Grimwell]

Giving players too much land is a problem greater than PVP; the very same issues it causes in that sphere carry over to the PVE game as well. When people don't see other folks during the course of play, they assume the server is dead. Even if they are 'alone' in a field of thousands. So it's a consideration for all game teams who are trying to balance out the allure of shiny and new places against the problem of dead zones that are no longer used.

I think it can be a good thing in a PVP game because player groups need relative isolation in order to feel that they have some claim to territory, and also a little padding between gank fests. PvP on Asheron's Call was a lot like that. Guilds could claim some space, hold it, and for a brief period of time grow their fortunes. Eventually some other group would roll in and create a war; but that rhythm was very important for the political side of the game.

I'd have to figure EVE is like that too; for the corps that aren't in the top ten and being hunted deliberately.

[Slyfeind]

I wonder if correlations can be found among PvP tendencies, trade skills and harvesting, group versus solo play, and overall land usage and exploration. For example, are fighter/alchemists interested in PvP, group more often for soloable content, prefer deserts, AND generally seek out of the way places?

[Viin]

The only thing I can think of that you could 'sell' for PvP would be skill packs or equivalent in a horizontally progressing PvP game.

The world (considered "content" in this thread) is only there as a backdrop. Think of the chess board. It's there to facilitate movement, space, time, etc.

The world is *not* the content in a PvP game.

[tazelbain]

Well new maps with novel layouts and mechanics seem like PvP content to me.  Fort Aspenwood plays out significantly different than Random Arena.  The Pacific Theater in WWII was different than the European.  I thought one of the many^10 flaws in WAR RvR was that keeps were the same shitty map that was cut 'n' pasted 30 times.

[pxib]

One thing I haven't seen tried is arranging a game with five to seven different armies in a conflict. All have natural enemies and allies and their powers are designed to support or harass specific other groups. Then sell each army as a separate package. Perhaps picking up two allying sides gets you hybrid classes and picking up enemies gets you beneficial skills against that group for everyone you own that they're enemies of. The more sides you've purchased, the more advantage there is to buying just one more... but the game is playable from any one of them.

Charge less than regular box price each, but buying all of them would be two or three times as much as a regular game. Introduce new armies as necessary.

Basically Warhammer tabletop.

[Sheepherder]

The Prince: Online

Cities are the serious pvp battlefield with the greatest rewards, the countryside is casual with the least rewards, in both cases you must get away from the lawmen to reap the rewards of your reputation as a cunning adversary.  In the city the guards severely impede your ability to be hostile, or wear heavy weapons and armour in public, deep in the wilds everything is game but rewards are slim.  The cities are fought over by great houses, the towns and wilderness by lords, guilds, and freemen.  In the city protection money and goods gleaned from residences and businesses trade hands, in the countryside are the mines, farms, and logging camps which feed the urban centre(s), leading to a natural hierarchy of catasses supplied by lesser forces sworn or forced into alliegance to the greater.  Let those uninterested in either gameplay simply welcome their catass overlords to avoid pvp conflict, free-agent themselves out to any side at any time, or turn bandit and be the enemy of everyone.

[tazelbain]

Maybe this thread got muddled with "How would you fix PvP?" which a bit different than what I was asking.  So how about this: "How would you sell PvP content from an in-game store?" So far:

Sell Armies which include counters to that Army.
Sell Possessable Units for a limited time.
Sell ablities or items that are lateral power enhancement.

I still would like to sell maps because I don't players want to play the same maps forever.  But you sell a map, you have/have nots and scuming like Tor Anroc.

[Sheepherder]

Selling abilities, or anything that equates to an ability set, would be a balancing clusterfuck of epic proportions.  Like the Death Knight launch in WoW repeated anew every patch cycle.  Warhammer tabletop and Magic: The Gathering are predicated on planned obsolescence, which would probably piss off a lot of people not used to that model.

At some level you should also be discouraging your super-hardcore from staying super-hardcore all the time, forcing/encouraging your super-poopsock crowd to go casual every now and then isn't a bad thing if it makes room at the top for others and helps attenuate burnout.

[Famine]

Maybe this thread got muddled with "How would you fix PvP?" which a bit different than what I was asking.  So how about this: "How would you sell PvP content from an in-game store?" So far:

Sell Armies which include counters to that Army.
Sell Possessable Units for a limited time.
Sell ablities or items that are lateral power enhancement.

I still would like to sell maps because I don't players want to play the same maps forever.  But you sell a map, you have/have nots and scuming like Tor Anroc.

• Melt Faces Ability
• Black Armor Dye
• Corpse Hump Emote
• Potion of Healing
• Some Elite Weapon Enchantment
• QQ Stone

I think these would work, yes?