Open PvP mechanic for the mainstream

[shiznitz]

The re-opening of IPY had me thinking about this, so tell me how the players break this system:

3 categories of players: innocent, aggressor, defender

Definitions: Aggressors have a history of attacking innocents, Defenders have a history of attacking Aggressors, Innocents have little to no history of attacking other players.  The history is some form of /played time formula spent fighting others.  Player characters are immediately and easily identifiable as belonging to one of the three categories.

Mechanic to prevent ganking:  When one player of any category attacks an innocent, the attacker is stunned and rooted for 2(?) seconds.  During this 2 seconds, the victim can 1) Flee or 2) Summon Aid.

Flee: Instant teleport to nearest safe location, to be defined in any numerous ways

Summon Aid: 1-10 available (player toggle) Defenders receive a window informing them an innocent is in danger and offered a teleport to the scene of the crime.

These options are only available at the beginning of the fight and disappear if the victim inficts any damage on the attacker, thereby removing the stun+root.

Guild on guild conflict could be exempted from this mechanic or it could be tweaked to allow guild members to summon fellow guild members.

To prevent Aggressors from attacking Innocents engaged in PvE, all PvP initiations are blocked if the Innocent/victim is not at full health.

Would aggressive PvPers still want to fight if they were limited in this way?  Is attacking by surprise too much a part of PvP?

[Nebu]

Would aggressive PvPers still want to fight if they were limited in this way?  Is attacking by surprise too much a part of PvP?

There are subcategories of aggressor:

1) Those that enjoy preying on the weak

2) Those that enjoy gladiator style combat

3) Those that enjoy large scale battle type combat

4) Combinations of the above

5) Others I can't think of atm.

I imagine there exist a variety of nonaggressors as well.  Catering to all gamer types is a tough road to attempt. 

[Arrrgh]

Solo gankers mostly avoid fights unless they think they can win. They'll never win under your system so there will  be no PvP. You'll have gone to a lot of trouble to create a PvPless game so why bother? Make a PvE game.

[Nebu]

Solo gankers mostly avoid fights unless they think they can win. They'll never win under your system so there will  be no PvP. You'll have gone to a lot of trouble to create a PvPless game so why bother? Make a PvE game.

DAoC says that you're at least partly wrong.  There was a thriving solo game that had a mixture of the people that you describe as well as people that would go out of their way to find something close to a fair fight.  I can remember weeks of gaming where 8 man groups would only engage other willing 8 man groups on the island in search of "fair" fights.  A significant portion of the DAoC playerbase that lasted 3+ years after release enjoyed the bragging rights as much, if not more than stomping newbie faces.

[Arrrgh]

Solo gankers mostly avoid fights unless they think they can win. They'll never win under your system so there will  be no PvP. You'll have gone to a lot of trouble to create a PvPless game so why bother? Make a PvE game.

DAoC says that you're at least partly wrong.  There was a thriving solo game that had a mixture of the people that you describe as well as people that would go out of their way to find something close to a fair fight.  I can remember weeks of gaming where 8 man groups would only engage other willing 8 man groups on the island in search of "fair" fights.  A significant portion of the DAoC playerbase that lasted 3+ years after release enjoyed the bragging rights as much, if not more than stomping newbie faces.

The people that want a fair fight aren't assured of getting one. Their target might vanish or 1 to 10 sheepdogs might come pouring out to jump into the fight.

[Nebu]

The people that want a fair fight aren't assured of getting one. Their target might vanish or 1 to 10 sheepdogs might come pouring out to jump into the fight.

I played DAoC for years and had many nights of fun with fights as close to fair as the game's construction allowed.  Sure, there were always people more interested in engaging only in winnable fights, but I don't think that you can ever separate those two cultures in a pvp title without gating the content heavily.

[pxib]

Zerg has a set of innocent alts all logged out at the same place. Zerg takes turns bringing an innocent alt on, having it attacked by one member of the zerg, and then letting the zerg kill however many defenders are summoned. Rinse, repeat.

If an innocent can be repeatedly attacked by different individuals to re-trigger the same defender summon effect then only one innocent is needed to summon groups of defenders to their deaths.

[Ingmar]

Solo gankers mostly avoid fights unless they think they can win. They'll never win under your system so there will  be no PvP. You'll have gone to a lot of trouble to create a PvPless game so why bother? Make a PvE game.

DAoC says that you're at least partly wrong.  There was a thriving solo game that had a mixture of the people that you describe as well as people that would go out of their way to find something close to a fair fight.  I can remember weeks of gaming where 8 man groups would only engage other willing 8 man groups on the island in search of "fair" fights.  A significant portion of the DAoC playerbase that lasted 3+ years after release enjoyed the bragging rights as much, if not more than stomping newbie faces.

Disagree, DAOC was not an open PVP game so the lessons it teaches are not really applicable, unless you're talking about the 'dreds. People in DAOC knew exactly what they were getting into when they went into the frontiers, and there were vast safe zones they could do their thing in if they weren't interested in PVP.

[shiznitz]

Zerg has a set of innocent alts all logged out at the same place. Zerg takes turns bringing an innocent alt on, having it attacked by one member of the zerg, and then letting the zerg kill however many defenders are summoned. Rinse, repeat.

If an innocent can be repeatedly attacked by different individuals to re-trigger the same defender summon effect then only one innocent is needed to summon groups of defenders to their deaths.

I count that as part of the risk of Defending.  I know of pelnty of ex-PvPers who would relish the role and the risks.  If a zerg of Aggressors want to hang out in one place and invite a zerg v zerg, then that's great.

Fair one on one fights could still happen with a /duel command that disables the flee/summon aid device.

[pxib]

I know of pelnty of ex-PvPers who would relish the role and the risks.  If a zerg of Aggressors want to hang out in one place and invite a zerg v zerg, then that's great.

Yes, but you're not trying to appeal to those people... they're not a very big market. You're trying to appeal to the Innocents, and for them there's little difference between your system and the one on a PvP server in WoW. Let's imagine a hypothetical character, leveling in the woods. Either he's not very good at PvP or they're going to be attacked by somebody with superior skills and equipment. The attacker or attackers have probably chosen him for exactly this reason.

WoW's graveyard dynamic and open PvP leaves him with a small set of choices:

1. Die. Call for help in guild or general chat. Run back to corpse in order to continue grinding and gathering.
2. Die. Call for help in guild or general chat. Respawn at graveyard. Go grind somewhere else.
3. Die. Log off.

Your Game has a few more options:

1. Teleport somewhere safe, complain on general chat, and run back to where he was grinding in order to continue.
2. Teleport somewhere safe, complain on general chat, and find somewhere new to grind.
3. Teleport somewhere safe, log off.
4. Call for help, die, and watch various defenders show up... possibly they are triumphant and resurrect him. Possibly not.
5. Always keep his health below 100%. An intriguing but potentially tedious mini-game.

He's going to learn pretty quickly that if he is attacked by a single individual it's not much of a hassle, and if he gets attacked by a dedicated group he's probably fucked. If he gets attacked by the zerg, he's definitely fucked. He won't figure out any of these things nearly as quickly as the Aggressors do, so they will only ever attack Innocents while they're in packs. This means that the chances of Defenders being triumphant drops to nearly zero... and so if he calls for help, the Innocent has basically brought his grinding to an end: The Defenders and Aggressors will be fighting where he needs to be for the forseeable future. Instead, 99% of the time he just chooses to teleport away.

This doesn't feel any different to him than a WoW graveyard run.

For Defenders and Aggressors it plays like a WoW Arena matchup, except Aggressors usually win because they can always prepare a perfect ambush.

...and if you're thinking that keeping health below 100% will be a fun game for Innocents to play, I can assure you most Innocents would much rather be on a PvE server where they don't have to play it.

[Malakili]

The long and short of it is that the people who "don't like PvP" don't like combat starting unless they initiate it.  My guess is that people who dislike PvP are going to be just as pissed when a Rift falls on them in Rift and they die without being able to do something about it.   

 I think what PvPers do is they have their PvP "switch" on all the time, which is to say, PvP isn't just the physical attacking of another player, but a state of mind which is defined by taking an approach to the game which is that while you are logged in you are committing to being aware of who and what is around you, being ready to fight all the time, and so forth. 

So keepign those (maybe wrong) assumptions in mind it seems that to me a system "for the mainstream" would need to include:

1) Allow players to simply "turn off" heir PvP switch without it ruining their experience of the game.  Most people simply don't want to be on edge for 2 hours a night, they are on edge enough during their day.   I can't think of a mechanic that would accomplish this without basically defeating the purpose.  I think about it some more.

2) Make death no big deal. (simple enough, plenty of MMOs do this already)

3) Make it easy for players who do want to PvP to find it.


I'm sure there are more things, but the issue I see is that frankly, its just not ever going to happen.  People want their entertainment the way they want it, if they don't like being attacked, putting in forced game mechanics that make the PvE experience tolerable and the PvP experience worse isn't going to get you any customers, the PvE players will go play WoW, and the PvP players will go player whatever it is PvPers play right now.

[Nebu]

I have many friends that are pvp adverse.  I find that they actually enjoy the pvp experience if a) they are ready for it (as Malakili stated above) and if they don't die in 10 seconds.   I think that a key to making pvp approachable is to 1) limit access to pvp areas to only those of similar ability (be it skill, gear, level, etc) and 2) limit premades until higher tiers. 

MMOs fail in the pvp department the moment that a player can be quickly killed by another player with less skill.  It's a double smack.  The gear/level difference smacks you first, followed by a faceroll to victory smack.  Most pvp-advers players won't see the light at the end of the tunnel (getting geared will make you more successful) and will never try pvp again.   

[pxib]

I also think there are people whom for whom stress is exciting, and people for whom stress is exhausting. It's a continuum rather than a switch, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's genetic. A lot of PvP+ folks talk about how the feeling of constant risk keeps them hyped up during the game, and I think that makes them more likely to stick around long enough for the gear and skill level to balance out.  On the other hand, people who feel sick and stressed when presented with constant risk are likely to find some other game to play.

[Nebu]

I also think there are people whom for whom stress is exciting, and people for whom stress is exhausting. It's a continuum rather than a switch, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's genetic.

That's an excellent point.  I wouldn't be surprised if this had a lot to do with the disproportionate playerbase sizes of the pvp and pve communities.  I know that I am a bit of an adrenaline junky, but I only enjoy playing on open pvp servers when I'm in the mood for it.  Sometimes I just want a mindless game to help me wind down from my long day at work.  PvE MMO's are ideal for that.

[Malakili]

I also think there are people whom for whom stress is exciting, and people for whom stress is exhausting.

This is probably true.  I know the fact that the stress/excitement of SC2 is what makes the game so damned hard for me to put down.  No other game I've played recently gets me going in that way and when I've tried to replace it with less stressful games, they just feel really boring by comparison.  That being said, like Nebu I do enjoy some mindless games after particularly rough days when I just don't have it in me to play something more intense.  I suspect that maybe I have a higher threshold than most though, and on the days when I'm still willing to go for "excitement" other people might be well into stage where they want something more mindless.

The other side of it is winning v. losing.  With a PvE MMO you are pretty much always winning/making progress.  If you had a shit day at work, the last thing you want is for some trash talking 13 year old to kick your ass in PvP, even if you like competition as a rule.

[Lantyssa]

While true, there are other factors.

I don't mind some risk.  I hate not having any chance.  If I have to wade through months of no chance, I won't bother.

[pxib]

Absolutely. Which is why population imbalace is such a problem. Also classes (like stealthers) which allow for easy ambush. Also wild differences in power (like levels) between characters. "An element of risk" is not "an unrelenting slaughter". Revenge is only sweet enough to cleanse the palate after a shit sandwich, not a twelve course shit supper.

I just wanted to make it clear that there is a substantial population of people who won't eat shit at all.

[Malakili]

Absolutely. Which is why population imbalace is such a problem. Also classes (like stealthers) which allow for easy ambush. Also wild differences in power (like levels) between characters. "An element of risk" is not "an unrelenting slaughter". Revenge is only sweet enough to cleanse the palate after a shit sandwich, not a twelve course shit supper.

I just wanted to make it clear that there is a substantial population of people who won't eat shit at all.

I've never really minded that personally in PvP games.  I really think the key to a good PvP experience is simply not playing if you aren't in the mood to possibly die.  Now, thats a problem because in PvP SOMEONE is going to die.  The good thing about PvE is no amount of kobolds feel bad, even after you've camped their spawn for 2 hours or something.  Whether I had a chance to fight back is far less of an issue to me than whether or not I'm in the mood to die.

I've gotten FUCKING PISSED in WoW when I died a death that set me back nothing in a battleground that meant nothing because I was in a bad mood and queued anyway and wasn't really in a PvP mood. (stupid I know, but illustrates my point).  Likewise, I've lost ships in EVE worth quite a pretty sum and not really missed a beat, same thing for that matter with hardcore characters in Diablo 2 or Torchlight (more recently), though that isn't PvP.

My point being I think that the biggest issue is the mindset of the players.  No mechanic can substitute for that when it comes down to it, the more I think about it.  THe issue is, how do you make a game that lets you remove yourself from the possibility of PvP, and still be an open PvP game in anything but name?  I'm not sure you can.  "Just don't play" works for me if I'm subscribed to a PvP MMO, I'll stay subscribed just to play when I'm in the mood if I like the game enough.  On the other hand, I suspect a lot of people will simply unsubscribe if they find they are paying 15 bucks a month for a game they often simply don't want to log into.  EDIT: Maybe thats the genius of EVE's leveling system, it gives you a reason to keep paying even on those off times.

[Kageru]

Open PvP is pointless because it has no direction, no mechanisms with which to try for some degree of "balance" and if there are objectives they will either get blobbed or alarm-clocked. Eve being an example of the last. So if you are happy with being "niche" then play it up and integrate it. The world is dangerous and when attacked you need to fight back, flee or travel in packs. Only design requirement is to make sure you have graduation of threat from safe core, contested space with havens (stations in Eve) and neutral or enemy space with no havens.

I've heard lots of people saying they enjoy the "danger" of being in an open-PvP environment. But I'd say virtually all of them are pretty sure they're going to be playing the part of wolves rather than sheep. I mean half the reason most of them are looking for X on 1 PvP in a MMO is because it generally allows for imbalance through gear, spec and situation over a game dedicated to PvP where you don't tend to run into people "just levelling".

That said there are WoW mods that will permanently flag you as being PvP if you really wanted to exist in a world where everyone is your enemy. Likewise you can assault a city or enemy guard and not only get PvP flagged but send out a message to the enemy channels that they can come and find a fight. Don't wait up though, in general most people in WoW get their PvP in battlegrounds where there is an objective, incentive and in theory a balanced field, numbers and levels as well as constant activity. And I'd expect pretty much all future MMO's to follow that model because it is the only way you can have balanced PvP. Possibly connected with some sort of abstracted strategic layer like global agenda and WoT.

[Zetor]

Pretty much what Kageru said. I'll also take this opportunity to link an interesting Massively opinion article about pvp sandboxes / open pvp; I agree with most of it, I think "open pvp" is just a cop-out and isn't actually fun for most of the populace.

(aside: I used to GM for a RP-heavy UO shard with full open pvp and permadeath. Oh god, the metagaming. )

[Malakili]

Pretty much what Kageru said. I'll also take this opportunity to link an interesting Massively opinion article about pvp sandboxes / open pvp; I agree with most of it, I think "open pvp" is just a cop-out and isn't actually fun for most of the populace.
)

I agree with that, it isn't fun for most people.  That fine.  I've played a few open PvP MMOs (UO, EVE, Darkfall).  The truth of it is, I never played a "wolf" in any of those.  Hell, in EVE I could barely pilot a ship with guns.   In fact, as an industrial corporation in EVE we relied HEAVILY on diplomacy to keep ourselves safe.  It didn't always work *shrugs*  Fact of the matter is, without the open PvP system EVE had, there would've been no need for large scale industrial corporations like us in the first place, and that kind of fun would've been inaccessible to us.  Maybe people like us are just the very small minority of MMO players, I'm willing to accept that.

I don't think its a cop out at all though.  I think its a way to make a very specific kind of game, and maybe it just isn't a type of game people are willing to invest time in.  Some of that article is really bogus too:

Kidnapping? Torture? Imprisonment? Trials? Fines? Bounties? Piracy? Espionage? Public executions? So very few games even bother with these elements, preferring instead to just turn us loose on each other like rabid dogs.

Yeahhhhh a lot of thats going to go over real well.  Piracy, Bounties and Espionage already emerge freely in PvP games if players want to play those roles, and they don't need specific mechanics.  Imprisonment? Yeah, that'll go over well, instead of killing someone, lets lock their character up.  Same with kidnapping.  Torture is meaningless.

My best and most interesting roleplaying experiences all happened in Star Wars Galaxies, a sandbox in which PvP was conducted through duels and Rebel-vs.-Imperial factional warfare only. Because we could not just murder our enemies in cold blood, we were forced to invent more interesting solutions on our own -- key citizens were kidnapped, guild leaders were imprisoned, bugs were planted, poisons were imbibed, and a force-sensitive even agreed to her own murder and perma-death, arranged ahead of time for maximum story impact.

This is just talking about standard MMO RP - you can do this is ANY MMO regardless of PvP or PvE, or hell remove the MMO all together and just to it on some forums somewhere to cut out the middle man since the game mechanics are being totally ignored anyway.

Lastly:

The first thing I need to counter is the idea that "corporate thieves, spies [and] gankers" are roleplayers. Roleplaying is a conscious separation of yourself from your character. When I'm playing a wicked character, I usually strike up a private OOC conversation to make sure my "victim" is comfortable with whatever antisocial act my character has planned. If my victim isn't happy OOC, then neither am I. By contrast, a griefer is only happy when his victim is miserable. He might make a show of roleplaying to try to legitimize his behavior, but at the end of the day, Bad Bobby isn't kicking back with his victims in Ventrilo, drinking to the Good Times they all had in their RP session when he robbed them of billions of ISK. Consequently, it's no wonder that serious roleplayers, even the kind who enjoy PvP, avoid game worlds populated by griefers who justify any action that pops to mind as "roleplaying."

I disagree just about as much as I possibly can here.  This is my absolute main problem with MMO RP - it isn't RP - its storytelling.  Storytelling is fine, I actually think its a great tradition, but to me the potential of MMO RP is that non consentual actually playing a role in the world RP.  Yes, people might not even do it with the intention of "RP" might loathe "RPers" but exactly the kind of thing the author is bitching about is exactly why I think EVE hits the nail on the head - because you are effectively RPing even when you aren't an "RPer" because your motives mirror the motives of your character. 


I do agree with his point that hardcore PvPers are best served in no MMOs though.  Starcraft 2 , Quake 3, whatever, I think those are the best purely "PvP" fighting games, they are a comeptition.   MMO PvP to me isn't about a competition, its ideally about simulating the "old west" sort of romanticized lawless setting.  EVE does this well because it has a gradient of lawlessness.


Anyway, none of this servers to answer the question of what an open PvP mechanic for the mainstream would be.  I'd simply say - make PvP games for the niche and and if can't stand the heat, stay out if the kitchen.  Hell - I might even add that lately I CAN'T stand the heat because I don't have the time to devote - my response isn't to bitch about game mechanics, its been to stop playing those games for now.  When I have the time again, I'll be playing them.

[Lantyssa]

I disagree just about as much as I possibly can here.  This is my absolute main problem with MMO RP - it isn't RP - its storytelling.  Storytelling is fine, I actually think its a great tradition, but to me the potential of MMO RP is that non consentual actually playing a role in the world RP.  Yes, people might not even do it with the intention of "RP" might loathe "RPers" but exactly the kind of thing the author is bitching about is exactly why I think EVE hits the nail on the head - because you are effectively RPing even when you aren't an "RPer" because your motives mirror the motives of your character. 

As an RPer I disagree, too.  I want to react to situations as my character would.  Pre-scripted events have no interest to me.  Improv is far more interesting.  If I wanted to be an actor playing out others' tales, I'd join a theater troupe.

[shiznitz]

I am by no means a hardcore PvPer, but I do like how the threat of being attacked by a player adds to the drama and excitement of an MMOG as long as 1) defeat is not destructive to progression (exp & equipment loss) and 2) there are reasonable ways to take a break from that drama and excitement without logging off.  I am just curious how much leash the wolves would tolerate.

[Mrbloodworth]

Every day I think about PvP for the mainstream, I feel more inclined to say the problem is the power discrepancy in most games progression systems, not the fact that PvP happens. This thread seems to want to address the latter. That ultimately means less PvP happening.

As time has gone on, more and more systems try to adress the consequences of the progression system, this is a mistake i think, or at the least, not the real issue.

A separate issue is that of some players do want PvP, but only when they are READY for it (Meaning they dont really, but thats a different topic). That at times is at odds with most PvP systems. Systems get developed to cater to those two things, and essentially strip away PvP, or making it extremely rare or complicated to do.



Funny side note:

In LFd2, players are the non PvPers (they have a goal), the undead are the PvPers (they want to interfere with that goal), and the director AI is a griefer! (Waits for you to be alone).

No one gets pissed at this though, mostly because of the incapacitation system (Team based system), and the fact that investment in toon set up is short/shallow/utility based (Axe or chainsaw with the shotgun or machine gun?). And it was not a die roll augmented by a bandanna that made that head shot.

[shiznitz]

What about a system where everyone had the same hit points forever?

[Mrbloodworth]

What about a system where everyone had the same hit points forever?

Slight variations are not all that bad. Things can be balanced by give and take. However once you have a bandanna of +20000000 to hit, its not a PvP game anymore. And thats the part that pisses off the level 5 player. Not really that PvP happened.

[Zetor]

Which is why Guild Wars is the game with [arguably] the best-balanced pvp currently (also see this thread) and part of the reason why the only mmog I'm looking forward to is GW2.

[Sheepherder]

Yeahhhhh a lot of thats going to go over real well.  Piracy, Bounties and Espionage already emerge freely in PvP games if players want to play those roles, and they don't need specific mechanics.  Imprisonment? Yeah, that'll go over well, instead of killing someone, lets lock their character up.  Same with kidnapping.  Torture is meaningless.

Encouraging all of that to happen in-game through dedicated mechanics lets the developer spread that information around so that uninvolved parties know shit is going down, throw in a ton of little mini-games to give the players a visceral reaction to it, and reward the character that does it in ways that encourages them to use their main rather than a bank alt. (skill+/experience+, faction+, crafting recipes, non-transferable currency rewards, achievements, titles)

Piracy: Let the player don a disguise, do their banditry as fast as a [minor?] skill allows them to identify and strip items off of players/conveyance/properties, and doff the disguise to shed the bounty.  The game records relevant data, and an investigation skilled player can reconstruct the crime scene by tracking the criminal to the place where they donned/doffed the disguise, ask nearby NPC's to identify the perpetrator, and identify the stolen articles to be returned if recovered or re-imbured by insurance.

Bounties: If they're posted on a sign in-game it gets the entire player base in on the action.

Espionage: Stealth missions in the enemy's guild HQ, complete with NPC's including guards and clerks which will sound the alarm.  Or the ability to disguise your avatar's name and disguise yourself as a different person.  Stealth missions can be a variety of stuff: from robbing the guild bank (requires physical access in a NPC patrolled area which is frequented by players), covertly adding yourself to a low rank position in a guild, stealing crafting plans, getting detailed information on player location.  Make all of these activities result in an NPC "mole" and clues to the whereabouts and identity of the infiltrator being placed in the guild HQ, giving the targeted players something to do with the investigation skill (weed out the mole NPC's, find the infiltrator).

Death: Characters are instantiated.  Instead of permadeath, or corpse runs, you can freely switch to an alternate version of your main character, with the same skills, a modified name that they can still identify as you, and a modified appearance.  Consequently death timers can be long (hours long, even), but the penalty is fairly slight because you're right back in the action.  Whether you get to customize the appearance and name, and whether or not gear transfers too, could vary depending on how you want the system to work.  If gear does transfer you would need a system whereby which players can't loot corpses past a set period of time, or alternatively can't loot equipped items, so that your alt doesn't have shit disappearing on them as you play and item dupes don't occur.

(could also be a non-magical version of fast travel)

Imprisonment: See "Death," but you can raid the other players to break your main out of jail, or log onto your main and effect the escape on your own.

Torture: They can show up at your cell, attempt to wrestle you character into a chair, (you can escape if they fail) and flog the shit out of you/your NPC stand-in to gain access to guild info or bonuses to espionage attempts.  If you happen to be online you can resist, if you're on an alt you will be warned of what is happening on your main.  If you resist the attempt you can give them false info, force them to kill you, (you are free, but dead) or attempt escape depending upon how successful your resistance was.  They / you get additional rewards beyond just the info for doing it the hard way.


Oh, and a danger meter UI element telling you the threat posed by enemy players.  Whether they're close/stealthed/targeting you.

[Lantyssa]

In LFd2, players are the non PvPers (they have a goal), the undead are the PvPers (they want to interfere with that goal), and the director AI is a griefer! (Waits for you to be alone).

It helps you can't have a level 32 Smoker beat up a level 4 Zoe.

Having any serious power curve to PvP is stupid and it always will be short of finding a way to leverage that power difference for a play mode, such as King of the Hill.

[Mrbloodworth]

Yep, thats what I said.

[Koyasha]

One of the biggest questions to me about any kind of open pvp is, what happens when you lose?  Obviously in a game where there's a serious penalty to dying (like losing gear or your ship or whatever) this is inherent in that penalty, but bringing pvp to the masses can't possibly be considered compatible with that kind of mechanic, I don't think.  So we assume no penalty.  But if there's no penalty and you can run back and fight the same guy that just killed you, then you didn't really lose.  You were slightly delayed.  No open world fight in those circumstances ever amounts to a victory or a loss, it's simply a question of who happens to stay in the area the longest and put up with the fighting the longest. 

Take WoW pvp servers for instance.  I get attacked while out in the world and let's assume it's someone close enough to my level that I fight and defeat them.  I happen to be questing in the area or whatever.  They come back a couple minutes later, catch me when I'm weak, and kill me.  I come back a couple minutes later and do the same to them.  This continues until one of us finishes our quests in this area, or gets tired of the constant 'catch him when he's weak'.  I never 'win' since the closest options I have to 'victory' are 'outlast the enemy in willingness to remain in the area' and 'leave the area on a high point, after having killed him'.

To that end I like Sheepherder's above mechanic of an alternate version of your character after you die.  Sort of.  I think that, if when you die, you simply get phased out of the victor's worldspace into an 'alterante character' or something of that nature, where you can go about your business but cannot interact with the person who killed you or his allies (in any way - nothing you can do can hinder them even slightly, you can't take their mobs or anything else, because they have an entirely different set of mobs even if you're basically in the same area) that allows for some victory in open pvp.

If you can make open pvp result in actual victory and loss, without inconveniencing the player so much that it makes the system something only feasible in a very niche game, then I think that's the first necessary step in making an open pvp mechanic.

[Malakili]

One of the biggest questions to me about any kind of open pvp is, what happens when you lose?  Obviously in a game where there's a serious penalty to dying (like losing gear or your ship or whatever) this is inherent in that penalty, but bringing pvp to the masses can't possibly be considered compatible with that kind of mechanic, I don't think.  So we assume no penalty.  But if there's no penalty and you can run back and fight the same guy that just killed you, then you didn't really lose.  You were slightly delayed.  No open world fight in those circumstances ever amounts to a victory or a loss, it's simply a question of who happens to stay in the area the longest and put up with the fighting the longest.  

Take WoW pvp servers for instance.  I get attacked while out in the world and let's assume it's someone close enough to my level that I fight and defeat them.  I happen to be questing in the area or whatever.  They come back a couple minutes later, catch me when I'm weak, and kill me.  I come back a couple minutes later and do the same to them.  This continues until one of us finishes our quests in this area, or gets tired of the constant 'catch him when he's weak'.  I never 'win' since the closest options I have to 'victory' are 'outlast the enemy in willingness to remain in the area' and 'leave the area on a high point, after having killed him'.

To that end I like Sheepherder's above mechanic of an alternate version of your character after you die.  Sort of.  I think that, if when you die, you simply get phased out of the victor's worldspace into an 'alterante character' or something of that nature, where you can go about your business but cannot interact with the person who killed you or his allies (in any way - nothing you can do can hinder them even slightly, you can't take their mobs or anything else, because they have an entirely different set of mobs even if you're basically in the same area) that allows for some victory in open pvp.

If you can make open pvp result in actual victory and loss, without inconveniencing the player so much that it makes the system something only feasible in a very niche game, then I think that's the first necessary step in making an open pvp mechanic.

All I keep thinking with all these suggestions is that the people who want PvP will think these games have stupid mechanics that prevent them from fighitng and the people who don't want PvP would just keep playing WoW.    I think a much better approach would be to try and emulate a PvP that already has a big following - something like Call of Duty.

Without putting too much thought into it, I could see an open world PvP game in which objectives are designed as sort of individual "maps" that have a victory condition, and when that is won, its locked down for a some amount of time to encourage players to go fight over a different objective.  These would be part of a larger open world, but would be designed as to be fun as self contained areas as well. Fast paced combat, easy respawning, heck, even let people switch sides if they want (like WW2O does).  The idea being that you can get a similar experience of CoD in any given play session, but over the longer term, you experience a changing map, which objectives matter the most, and so forth.  

I think this "make PvP suck less for the people who don't want it" idea is just the wrong way to approach the problem.  The answer is to figure out what kind of PvP people do like (I'm using CoD as an example purely because of its popularity), and make a game that features that kind of PvP.  Trying to force PvP in some kind of minimally odious way to an experience that most people expect or want to be PvE based, and it just seems like you are going to end up with a game that feels really unintuitive, arbitrary and unsatisfying.

[Nebu]

The bottom line seems to be: People will engage in pvp more often if they feel like they got a fair fight before they lost (FPS are a great example).   PvP MMO's by and large don't do much to ensure a fair fight.  I think that's why they attract the players that they do. 

[pxib]

I think Malakili's got it: If you want a mainstream PvP game, make a mainstream PvP game. My concern is that the best, cheapest, most profitable PvP you can make isn't an MMO. Most players are happiest when they don't have very much at stake. They aren't playing to see a character they've lovingly leveled up and customized get smeared across the pavement, and they aren't playing to watch equipment or territory they've carefully acquired destroyed and despoiled. Most players aren't playing games in order to experience loss:

The punishments and setbacks a player experiences must be delivered with care. “Players are very much inclined to accept anything you give them gladly and feel it was their own clever play, their own incredible strategy that earned them that cool reward. On other hand, if something bad happens to the player, your game is broken, there's something horribly wrong, the game is cheating. It’s really important to be very careful with the setbacks the player experiences.”

The majority of dedicated PvPers aren't interested in a fair fight so much as they're interested in a meritocracy. They don't care if every fight is fair, so much as they care that skill determines who wins and who loses. In their ideal game, a skilled and prepared veteran should be able to ambush the unprepared and unskilled because the veteran understands the strengths and weaknesses of every attack and knows the ins and outs of the local terrain. Winning unfair fights is the veteran's reward for study and practice. When that same PvPer was on the opposite side of the same fight he understood that his loss was just a signal that he had more to learn, and took notice of the tactics his opponent used to destroy him.

Most people would rather win all the time. As Sid notes, people who want to learn from failure are rare.

Just not quite as rare as the people who genuinely want an endless stream of fair fights.

[Sheepherder]

[stuff]

I was sort of pointing towards the Eve cloning idea, which would be painless if insurance covered the full cost of any ship you lost and it wasn't possible to deny people access to cloning facilities. (last I checked, I just watch the war stories, I don't play)

World of Warcraft is interesting on a pvp server.  What's on the line is your grinding time.  Sure, if they gank you you're pretty much forced to call it quits for leveling in the vicinity.  But then, depending on your temperament, maybe so are they.  My younger brother calls this "don't shit where you eat."  He's very, very good at it.