Ultima Online never existed.

[Sky]

The shitty game engine and pve requirements as well as my suspicion of templating were all the reasons I never bought SB after beta.

Then reading how some guilds dominated servers, the thought of losing the entire town, dropping those whatevers (banes? I dunno) in the middle of the night, it just seemed like a pretty shitty way to have consequence and persistance. I don't like games that are only fun for one side.

Oh, and level-based pvp is retahded.

[sinij]

Level-based PvP doesn't work unless everyone on the same level. Fortunately SB level grind is done macro AFK and is reasonably short. Makes you wonder why not just skip it altogether and let everyone start at completive level?

[Alkiera]

Level-based PvP doesn't work unless everyone on the same level.

Sigged!  Tho you basically repeated what sky said, the way you said it was funnier.

Alkiera

[Megrim]

Level-based PvP doesn't work unless everyone on the same level. Fortunately SB level grind is done macro AFK and is reasonably short. Makes you wonder why not just skip it altogether and let everyone start at completive level?

Which then in turn brings the thought; why even have levels in the first place?

 - meg

[Sky]

[Megrim]

<3

[Megrim]

Someone mentioned Eve in this thread.  I think Eve is a little bit of a different case.  In essence, you have UO's open PvP, even including color-coding known gankers, but the guard zone extends to cover a lot of territory in which you can actually do interesting things like hunt NPCs or mine.  Effectively you have the friendly/contested territory duality of WoW but it's not a hardcoded prohibition on attacking, just suicide if you do (same as uber UO town guards).

Even given that, Eve is niche.  It doesn't seem as niche as others because of their single-server model (11,000 peak lately, with a total of like 40k accounts IIRC).  I think that's pretty good evidence that an open PvP game can work, but they will ALWAYS be niche.  And that might be a good thing. 

This messageboard is niche, but the Vault isn't.  Think about that one.

Er, yea... which would make it open pvp i think, unless they've done some drastic changes since the last time i played.

To be honest, i don't really want to split straws, but i had been trying to subtly trying to point out that making retarded statements like "open pvp does not work period" is silly. Now obviously EvE gets the 'niche' label stuck onto it, but that does not, in my eyes, make it any less sucessfull a game. This is where the Vault analogy works both ways - WoW has many subscribers, but 99.99% are retards. Much like those who bought the millions of Britney Spears cds does not make her a worthy musician.

 - meg

[sinij]

Which then in turn brings the thought; why even have levels in the first place?

To measure your character's achievement to some degree. At release reaching maximum level was a PvP achievement since every spawn that would get you there was highly contested. Not so much anymore, so PvE in SB is largely meaningless and unwanted.

Ideally in a PvP game you should start at PvP-ready status and then proceed to fine-tune your character through PvP or quests. In SB terms you should start at lvl 10 then complete quest for your class, get bumped to level 60 somewhat trained then PvP to get to level 75 while getting your disks, gear and stat runes through quest system or your guild.

[Megrim]

*sigh* I don't know, i just don't get it i guess. Why have levels when you end up skipping them anyway?! It all sounds too contrived.

I guess i will just sit quietly and wait until someone makes a player-skill-based morpg. Maybe Vin Diesel can...


 - meg

[sinij]

Unless your game is free of class restrictions you will want some character achievement to stop people from jumping into flavor-of-the-patch character. Also a lot of PvPers are also Achievers, just not your typical bash-the-mole for ding EQ catasses.

I think UO's 'use your skill to improve it' approach might work for PvP-oriented games, as log as improvement curve is fairly shallow and does not make untrained characters completely useless. Perhaps way to do it is to give more options at higher levels instead of more raw power.

[WayAbvPar]

God this is just begging to be photoshopped. Someone creative (and with PhotoShop) get cracking!

[Alkiera]

Unless your game is free of class restrictions you will want some character achievement to stop people from jumping into flavor-of-the-patch character. Also a lot of PvPers are also Achievers, just not your typical bash-the-mole for ding EQ catasses.

I think UO's 'use your skill to improve it' approach might work for PvP-oriented games, as log as improvement curve is fairly shallow and does not make untrained characters completely useless. Perhaps way to do it is to give more options at higher levels instead of more raw power.

My current concept involves advancement as mostly refinement, rather than the massive level improvement curve.  In CoH at level 2 you hit even mobs for 10, say, and at 50 you hit even mobs with the same attack for 250... and level 2 mobs for over 1100.  In my system, a newbie mage could use a spell and do X damage, whereas an experienced one would do the same damage with the same spell... but might have an easier time switching to a different spell if that one didn't work than the newbie.  A newbie fighter would know several useful combos for attacking/defending with his sword, but an experienced one would have more options gained thru questing/training.  Not Always better options, but options that were better in some circumstances.

Thus, an experienced character could likely defeat a newbie, not because his attacks do 20 times the damage and always hit, but because they have a few more options when fighting, and are likely to be better at the fighting 'mini-game'.  Idea being that with combat slowed down moreso than CoH, there is more room for thought, and therefore tactics and skill.

Alkiera