PVP Info

[Shockeye]

Will there be Player-versus-Player combat? Is it part of KoS?
Launching around the same time as Kingdom of Sky will be new Player-versus-Player ruleset servers. It is not part of KoS, so it will be available to all existing subscribers at launch. PvP servers will escalate the conflict between Freeport and Qeynos by allowing players to participate in direct battle with each other, earning prestige and influence within their own city for tangible and meaningful rewards. You'll need to be on your guard on PvP ruleset servers; it will not be restricted to certain zones. It's time to heat up the cold war.

How many PvP servers will there be at launch?
There will be dedicated PvP servers for US, UK, DE, and FR. On the US side, there will be one standard PvP server and one Exchange-enabled PvP server.

Find the whole FAQ here.

[Shockeye]

EQ2 PVP Details

Here's a quick rundown of how this affects alignments:

Things you CAN NOT do across alignments:

Group with members outside of your alignment
Join a guild that is not of your alignment
Send /tells to characters not of your alignment
View /auction, /ooc, /shout from characters of another alignment
Join chat channels created by characters of another alignment
View members of another alignment in the zone with /who
Send mail via the Norrathian Express
Trade items or coin
/duelbet (/duel still functions)

[Lt.Dan]

They should have allowed cross faction chat channels.  Opt-in for abuse and all that.

[Murgos]

They should have allowed cross faction chat channels.  Opt-in for abuse and all that.

Nah, then you get the whole spy/traitor thing.  No tells, no chat, no shout, no ooc, no communication at all to the other team is draconic but probably for the best.

At least make the bastards relog a different character or run the expense of having a two box with one good one evil if they want to give warnings to thier buddies.

[Righ]

Oh good, is this where we have a long pointless argument about metagaming?

[Miasma]

I like how a tank's hate generation will force them to be targeted and that skills to reduce hate will make you untargetable.  I usually play a healer and the few times I tried PvP resulted in me getting targeted first and annihilated in under three seconds.

I like that cross faction interaction is limited like in WoW too.  Grays not being attackable is also good.

I still won't go near it with a ten foot pole.

[Soukyan]

They should have allowed cross faction chat channels.  Opt-in for abuse and all that.

Nah, then you get the whole spy/traitor thing.  No tells, no chat, no shout, no ooc, no communication at all to the other team is draconic but probably for the best.

At least make the bastards relog a different character or run the expense of having a two box with one good one evil if they want to give warnings to thier buddies.

Or the easier way: friends on the enemy side and IRC. That's what folks used to do all the time in DAoC.

[eldaec]

I tend to think daoc had it right when it comes to RvR.

Complete separation, no communication through any channel, no trading, no cross-guilding, no having alts in opposing realms, not even using enemy character names in the main view.

This seems to suggest you can still communicate in local chat. If they must do that, at least require a long and boring language quest first. It also suggests you can have cross-realm alts. bah.

Current servers are supposed to have competitive realm v realm pve, but it breaks down if you allow a community to form across the realm boundaries, the community always starts asking for the remaining barriers to be broken down.

Much like IRL for that matter.

Players from opposing Daoc realms properly disliked each other. Complete segregation was the reason.

[HaemishM]

Currently, deaths from PvP kills will result in moderate experience debt. You will not receive any armor damage. *Note* If you are on any creature's hate list at the time of your PvP death, you will take normal PvE death penalties.

What... the... fuck?

Way to not learn the mistakes of the past, pigfuckers.

[Nebu]

Is there any more PvP information available beyond that FAQ?  I found it pretty sketchy.

Too many problems to even consider. 

Emotes with voiceovers: enjoy being spammed.
Multiple zone boundaries
Pervasive stuns on many classes
Game playable in windowed mode (generation of player-created lag beneficial to ranged classes)
Easy faction swapping with good/evil toons available to players on a given server
Exp debt
Multiple class balance issues
...

The list seems quite long.  I'd like to see how they are planning to address even a portion of these issues.
 

[Belce]

Currently in EQ2 the debt incurred for death is less than trivial.  Having to incur a less than a less than trivial amount of debt is less than nothing.  I don't see how it could be less.  If you get killed while on the agro list of a mob, /shrug who cares the debt is less than trivial. 

[HaemishM]

It may be trivial, but it's still a penalty. And stupid, even more stupid if the amount of debt is so trivial as to be beneath notice. There's just no reason to make an integral part of the ruleset a punishment.

[Toast]

I'm not sure why the big focus on this. In Everquest, "the zeks" were so trivially unimportant. This shouldn't be any different. The ruleset has some gaping holes, but I think that is a given. The Everquest model just doesn't work with PvP in a widely enjoyable way.

[Belce]

You should play a game like Snakes and Ladders, sometimes you land on the snake tail and your progress is penalized, truly it is a common element in most games I know.   

[Nebu]

I'll see if I can present this properly: 

In PvE the player selects the difficulty of the encounter.  Failing the encounter results in a small penalty.  This is reasonable in a risk/reward sort of way as long as the punishment isn't so harsh to discourage risk taking.

In PvP the player often has no control over the encounter.  They are thrust into it.  Often this encounter represents an unwinnable scenario.  It's enough to be beaten into the ground by superior foes and/or superior numbers.  What purpose does taking a death penalty on the end serve?  It adds nothing to the risk/reward picture. 

That's how I see it anyway.

[tazelbain]

I'll see if I can present this properly: 

In PvE the player selects the difficulty of the encounter.  Failing the encounter results in a small penalty.  This is reasonable in a risk/reward sort of way as long as the punishment isn't so harsh to discourage risk taking.

In PvP the player often has no control over the encounter.  They are thrust into it.  Often this encounter represents an unwinnable scenario.  It's enough to be beaten into the ground by superior foes and/or superior numbers.  What purpose does taking a death penalty on the end serve?  It adds nothing to the risk/reward picture. 

That's how I see it anyway.

Bad Nebu.  It's cheating to post the end of the debate a few posts after it starts.  We're suppose to wail and nash our teeth for 7 pages while rehashing this subject for the nth time.

[Belce]

In PvP, "being thrust into the encounter" is the best part.  Considering that you can't pvp targets that are grey to you covers that to a certain extent and regarding numbers, that is a good method in my books to throw the gauntlet down to challenge the other side. 

[Belce]

If that is the end of the debate, I am glad we skipped over the lengthy middle part.  Really its kind of weak and lacks any idea of what PvP is about.  Not having control of your encounters is what PvP is about.  Not always doing something you can be successful at is PvP.  So what if death has some kind of penalty, if I am willing to meet it I would consider it your loss that you felt the need to turn away. 

[Cheddar]

This thread needs more boobs and muffins plz.

[Nebu]

If that is the end of the debate, I am glad we skipped over the lengthy middle part.  Really its kind of weak and lacks any idea of what PvP is about.  Not having control of your encounters is what PvP is about.  Not always doing something you can be successful at is PvP.  So what if death has some kind of penalty, if I am willing to meet it I would consider it your loss that you felt the need to turn away. 

Why do we need to add another penalty on top of the loss in PvP.  You've been beaten and sent back to your bind point.  You lost the encounter with another human.  You see, on a PvP server THAT's the penalty.  The fact that another player just beat you.  What purpose does tacking on a death penalty serve? 

[HaemishM]

If that is the end of the debate, I am glad we skipped over the lengthy middle part.  Really its kind of weak and lacks any idea of what PvP is about.  Not having control of your encounters is what PvP is about.  Not always doing something you can be successful at is PvP.  So what if death has some kind of penalty, if I am willing to meet it I would consider it your loss that you felt the need to turn away. 

To add to the end of the debate:

PVP is an activity most people DO NOT want to engage in, especially when it is not at a time and place of their choosing. In a PVE focused game such as EQ2, where all that really matters is the shinies and how fast you get them, doing anything that slows down that particular treadmill is going to discourage people who might otherwise want to engage in the activity. Even if the penalty is trivial, it WILL be a reason some (many) people do not wish to participate in PVP, meaning the server will be much less populated than it might otherwise be. Anything that discourages people from wanting to participate in the main activity of the server ruleset (on a PVP server, that's PVP) is a bad thing.

Belce, you and I both know from old experience that there are some people who will not participate in PVP unless there is absolutely no penalty whatsoever. We aren't those people, because we used to be the first in line to do guild wars back on Karana in EQ. But we also had a giagantic guild full of people who refused to join in the guild wars (wars fought with our guild's friends) simply because of the slimmest possibility they might lose experience on a death, even though we all tried not to use things we knew would cause XP Loss. You and I could care less as long as the fight is fun, but that is not the attitude of most people, especially most people playing a PVE-focused MMOG.

[Signe]

I thought I could find some muffins that looked like boobies, just to be funny... sort of like that boobie cake I posted a while ago.  Soooo... I googled boob muffins.   

[Nebu]

Really its kind of weak and lacks any idea of what PvP is about.  Not having control of your encounters is what PvP is about.  Not always doing something you can be successful at is PvP.   

What is pvp in an mmog about? Let's see:

Having the highest level.  
Having the best gear.
Playing the least balanced class.
Understanding the use of lag to your advantage to generate range and LoS errors.
and probably far down the list... being the most skilled.  

I've been playing pvp games online since they were in text.  What makes pvp fun is that you're facing an opponent that offers a more diverse interaction than an npc.   The loss is the penalty.  Especially when you've been beaten by someone on an equal footing.  I just don't see what purpose exp debt serves to make the pvp experience "more fun".  If you can explain that to me (us) then yes, the debate would be over.

[Righ]

The concept of a penalty in PvP is reasonable, because otherwise you're just standing at arms length slapping one another like those guys in the New Order video. It's not really appropraite for PvP to penalise the PvE game because different players associate different values to the PvP and PvE experience. Since you cannot gain experience and levels from PvP, you should not lose experience and levels in it either. An appropriate form of penalty would be the loss of ability to participate in that PvP for a while - ressurected back at your home town, or having a temporary action penalty in PvP combat.

(Edit: linky)

[tazelbain]

I guess we will rehash for the nth time, LOL. 
It's a like bad song that gets stuck in your head.

Hey, can we cover PK vs PvP also, that's a golden oldie too!

[Toast]

PVP advocates are no good, pitiful misfits. All they want to do is grief other people and cause as much unhappiness in their foes as possible. This helps to give structure and meaning to an otherwise feeble and ineffectual life...and so on.

They dine on hot pockets, keep a cooler full of mountain dew near the pc, and they always make sure to keep a steady supply of poopsocks available.

Their account is paid from mom's credit card.

No matter what disincentive is put in place, they will seek out the weak and least sporting conflicts in PvP. Any griefable situation (permanent stun lock, maximum exp loss by victim, corpse camping, obscene taunting, etc.) will be gleefully pursued, even if there is no in game reward. The only defense is call in powerful friends of one's own to end the griefing and give some back. Thus, the cycle of violence continues.

It is a cycle run on the tears of the righteous, the anger of the jaded, and the joy of the griefer.

How was that?

[Righ]

Bite the dust lika a man and stop whining u nub killa. Ur a cowardly carebear and u prolly still piss ur bed. we will pwn u and ur pals while u sing kumbuyah cuz we can and its fun. kkthxbye

[MrHat]

f13.net - fucking the n00b right out of y00

[Shockeye]

f13.net - fucking the n00b right out of y00

I miss thejeni.

[Cheddar]

I thought I could find some muffins that looked like boobies, just to be funny... sort of like that boobie cake I posted a while ago.  Soooo... I googled boob muffins.   

Your husband has a 5th degree belt in google-fu.  I imagine he can help you.





edit. Added a pic from the google search.

[Righ]

I bet you were trying to hotlink that image of Moira before Tripod pwn'd you.

[Cheddar]

I bet you were trying to hotlink that image of Moira before Tripod pwn'd you.

Forgot tripod would pwn me.  Shoulda used a cached image but I do not have the wherewithal to fix it.

[Venkman]

XP debt is there because XP gain is as well. That's fine, and will result in predictably underpopulated PvP servers.

But Grey or not, Levels are a part of the formula. I imagine it's the Soft Cap thing we've all come to know and love. I'll wager it's level 45 or 50, since the new Achievements system (sort of extended-AAXP) begins at 20. People will treat it like SB or WoW: grind on PvE until they're at the soft cap.

It doesn't help that PvP has no real point to it. either Oh, I'm sure they're thinking that the point is to keep the opposing side from leveling up, allowing the winning side more command of the resources, to level up guilds and whatnot. But XP debt in PvP sucks enough that people will assiduously avoid the chance of loss by avoiding PvP altogether. Then when they hit the soft cap and don't need any more levels, XP debt becomes irrelevant, removing this single "point" of PvP anyway.

In my opinion. There's no point to XP debt because there's no point to XP gain.

[Toast]

PVP completely breaks the holy "risk versus reward" mechanic used to balance these games. So much of what happens in PVP is not controllable. Risk is constant and very difficult to mitigate without leaning on powerful friends.

It's also very exploitable. PVP is just a darn tough nut to crack, so I stay away. To each his own, for sure though.

[Belce]

Well there is certainly an conservative ideal concerning pvp on this forum.  Its bad, its wrong, its the anti-christ.  I have played pvp in EQ as warrior, Ao, DAoC, SWG and have never encountered a really bad pvp experience.  I am sorry if you all have had a universial bad experience with pvp, but outside of what that experience offers I haven't seen any.  Your experience is counter to my experience in this field and therefore I disregard it.

Besides I am afraid of pvp, none of you have yet offered a valid reason why pvp is poor play. 

And to the person that suggested that this forum was fuckin the noob out, I suggest you drop your jar of mayo and hero sandwich loaf and play some pvp, that you all do and realize that its the best thing that happened to roleplay in this genre.