Dreaming of a World Without PvE

[pxib]

Is the single-player portion of the MMO genre necessary?

How about:

- All goods are made by crafters. There are no other mechants. There are no "drops".
- All goods are either clothing, weapons, or trinkets.
- Clothing and weapons decay over time, require repair, can be enchanted, whatever.
- Trinkets are ammunition, potions, charms and their ilk. Small inventory space. Can be looted from corpses or stolen in PvP.
- All fighting takes place in PvP "missions".
- All resource gathering for crafting takes place in PvP "missions".
- "missions" take place in instanced locations with matched teams of similar numbers.
- "missions" involve claiming artifacts, relics, and locations which you must then defend in similar "missions".
- Artifacts, relics, and locations have value to your entire realm (to use DAoC's terminology) instead of merely to your team

- player clothing and weapons cannot be taken from corpses
- players have access to a "locker" from which they can requip once they "respawn"
- player clothing and weapons can be disenchanted or cursed while on a corpse


So one realm has the mission "defend your mine" and the other two realms (for DAoC's realm number seems about right, too) have the missions "destroy the mine" or, of more difficulty,  "destroy the defenses and capture the mine" Each assault team has fewer players than the defense team, together they have more. Players can be introduced (or leave) in groups of favorable ratios over the life of the instance. Throughout the instanced mine location are herbs and metals and animals with hides or whatever... metals and gems being the big bonus to anybody who can actually get inside the mine and spend the time extracting them. Resource Advantage: defense team! GO! Anybody who can get resources back to their "locker" will have them when they return to the towns which serve as hubs to this instanced mess... and they can sell them or use them as they see fit.

Let's play capture the Holy Grail... let's play sacrifice McGuffins on the altar... let's play skirmish on the way to another mission...

Some sort of indication in the towns as to which missions are near depature and only need a few more players.

Once they get a little starting capital, quality crafters probably wouldn't need to PvP anymore, and could hang around in the towns buying resources to fill their goods orders. They could also moonlight as warriors and run missions with everybody else. Resource gatherers can focus on their gathering at the expense of assisting with defense... PvP thieves become a viable class. Etc. etc. etc.

I know this sort of "I've got an idea! It's totally not one that everybody has already had and it's AWESOME DAMMIT!" is frowned upon, but I saw the article about Fury and it got me thinking. I don't yet have a blog on which I can post this self-important blather.

[stray]

All goods are made by crafters. There are no other mechants.

Never liked the idea myself. Gamers are not economists. For the most part, they're self gratifying adolescents who have no concern for the big picture of things (including myself). The more freedom and authority you give them in this area, the more they will fuck it up.

More NPC merchants, I say. They're like watchdogs.

[Righ]

Shouldn't this be in Game Design? You're designing a Raph Koster game, BTW. I approve, but beware of missing the fun. Also, you're trying to narrow things down too much. Churn will bite you in the ass.

[Morat20]

The first question should be:

"If I was a fucking asshole who got a stiffie from fucking over other players (note: This is not the same as "winning"), how would I exploit this game so as to remove the 'fun' elements and make attempting to play it as designed a chore for everyone else?"

Griefing isn't PvP. PvP is just an easy tool for griefing. You need to step back, look at your proposed mechanics and think "If I wanted to fuck over the fun of this system, how would I go about it from inside the game?".

[hal]

To me, the pay out in MMORPG is when we (the group) can accomplish what none of us singly could have hoped for. Now put that group dynamic with the PvP I owned you and you get my guild can or will beat your guild which has been done kinda nicely but leaves the nonguild ed out in the cold. I like the PvP dynamic to the extent that AI just doesn't cut it and a player is a much more challenging opponent. I don't like the grieving, corpse camping trash talking. And hey, I think im not alone. So tell me how do we reconcile this game wanna be so a casual gamer with 30 min to an hour can join and play. Well hey, If we can solve that why cant I get a group for a PvE instance run? Is it just me? Or is this the riddle inside the riddle? And wouldn't it be solvable by bigger worlds?

[pxib]

Shouldn't this be in Game Design? You're designing a Raph Koster game, BTW. I approve, but beware of missing the fun. Also, you're trying to narrow things down too much. Churn will bite you in the ass.

It's not in game design because I'm not designing, I'm just imagining. This is a hypothetical framework for game to be built atop, not the game itself. Narrow? Absolutely. One hopes I, or someone more clever, could think of a fun game within this system.

"If I wanted to fuck over the fun of this system, how would I go about it from inside the game?".

For big obvious holes, yes... and any system that depends heavily on players will certainly be rife with opportunity for the hardworking asshat. That said, as with any bug hunting, the real asshats are going to be more numerous and more successful than any asshat I can currently imagine. There is no system which dedicated asshattery cannot exploit. It's a good first question, and fifth question, and thirtieth question... but it's one that you can ask forever and still miss something ugly.

[Kail]

It sounds to me kind of like Guild Wars, but without the PvE, so it would probably still catch most of the criticism that Guild Wars caught for it's PvP design (no persistance of the world, battles feel irrelevant, just Diablo but with a graphical chat lobby, etc.).

Balancing seems a bit off to me.  You're forcing balance on the instances, which is going to insert some  barriers to entry, but it also sounds like you're building in a lot more barriers than you really need.   If you just had two even teams, the only qualification you'd need to join a game would be one other person on the other team who also wanted to join.  If you've got three even teams, you need two other people.  If you need three teams with odd balances (like where one team has more than a third of the players but fewer than half), you need more than that.  It starts getting complicated, and if the factions are unbalanced, people could be spending serious time in line waiting for one of the balancing conditions to be met.  Why not just limit it to two factions?  As far as I'm aware, the kudos that DAoC has gotten for using three factions have been largely related to dealing with population imbalance; if you're ALREADY controlling for population imbalance, what does the addition of a third faction add to the gameplay?

I also gotta agree with Stray about the crafting.  An unregulated market run by fifteen year olds will kill itself.  It also seems out of place in this game.  This sounds like a game, not a world, which is fine, but crafting is usually more of a world-y activity, and it doesn't really sit right with me (I'm having trouble putting this into words that don't sound totally idiotic, but the way I'm imagining this game, crafting seems like something only the guild mules are going to end up doing).

[JoeTF]

Let me point one flaw to you:

People don't like loosing. In your PvP, we can assume players will lose 50% times at best. In PVE, it's usually 1%  or so.

Moreover, game design is just like your standard leftist economy system should be equalling chances between players. For example by awarding persistent PVErs with better items so they chances with more gifted PVPers. Just giving the better guy your items doesn't cut it - the best guys will end with pile of loot and the 'second best' will end playing different game.

Re: Crafter haters. Play EVE, stop smoking crack. 

[Krakrok]

Re: pxib

You pretty much described Planetside.

[stray]

Re: Crafter haters. Play EVE, stop smoking crack. 

Not a crafter hater. I frown upon MMO's that don't make an effort with it actually.

What I am is a "100% player economy" hater. I like player economies, but I think games should always have some mechanism (in this example, NPC merchants) that set the trends. If you leave it to players to create prices, then they're always, without fail, going to create a market that makes everyone else to do a lot of work.

NPC merchants also give the buyer a way of telling crafters to go fuck themselves. That's a good thing. The power to bargain. Something pure player economies fail to simulate well. The power to not have to participate in their little game if you don't want to (no different than pvp flagging really).


As for Eve, I think it's boring. I wouldn't play it for that reason alone (but that's beside the point). But if you're trying to prop it up as some model to follow when it comes to "economy", I'd have to say you're the one smoking crack. If it was so good, then most of the people who play it wouldn't be RMT'ing, depending on charity, and/or working overtime to keep up.

[Strazos]

What is this Most business you speak of?

[Xanthippe]

Sounds interesting to me.  I'd like to see something like this.  I'd try it.

[tazelbain]

Have you played Fort Aspenwood in Guild Wars?

I thought Puzzle Pirates did a good job with a 100% player economy although the labor model is crap.  Instead of bidding for new commodities, you'd have them fight for them.  I don't know if I'd have such a literal implementation.  If there is a route than a bunch of resources flood the game.  On the other end, a team could fight really hard and not get anything.  I'd abstract it out.  Make a fun PvP map set it in a theme to match the resources. Then hand out resources at the end based on how well your team does.

I was thinking you could implement player monsters in a game like this.  I would love to see an epic level raid set up like this.

I know this sort of "I've got an idea! It's totally not one that everybody has already had and it's AWESOME DAMMIT!" is frowned upon, but I saw the article about Fury and it got me thinking. I don't yet have a blog on which I can post this self-important blather.

I don't think it is frowned on per say.  It just some people get all defensive when people criticize their "brilliant" idea.  So remember we are just shooting the shit.  Things will be fine.  Multiverse.net looks like it may be going into Open Beta sometime this summer, so I have been thinking about what game I'd build.  Many of my points were the same as yours.

[Soln]

you pretty much come close to describing SWG.  The only (and big) issue there was crafting became a matter of getting the best component crafting drops, since with prime resources and rare components people could easily outperform anyone else.  And this was a real drag in PvP.  But it also affected PvE because those same folks then could take down Krayt Dragons, for instance, more easily, thus getting more component loot , and so on.  While it sucks, some kind of soul-linking is needed per item if you're going to go this route.  But yeah, I like to overall model you propose as well.

[Rhonstet]

Re: pxib

You pretty much described Planetside.

No kidding.  Add crafting to Plantside, and maybe a better commander interface, and it's spot-on.

[Stephen Zepp]

Re: pxib

You pretty much described Planetside.

No kidding.  Add crafting to Plantside, and maybe a better commander interface, and it's spot-on.

I don't know that that is a bad thing honestly.

You guys may remember when I first joined the community, I talked a lot about a bunch of ideas that pointed in this way--and Planetside for all it's downside (no persistence -really- sucks IMO for long time players), but one of them is that different playstyles interact with the world in different ways. You let your RTS style players create your cities, your crafters populate those cities with items, your explorers go out and gather raw materials (as appropriate for your world), and hell--even give your griefers a positive conflict play mechanism: let them be powerful monster-type creatures that can raid cities...

[Xanthippe]

No, I don't know what Fort Aspenwood is.  I played GW when it came out, but didn't play the expansion.

Never got into the economy in Puzzle Pirates.  I saw the shops but didn't quite understand what was to be done.

[Rhonstet]

I don't know that that is a bad thing honestly.

You guys may remember when I first joined the community, I talked a lot about a bunch of ideas that pointed in this way--and Planetside for all it's downside (no persistence -really- sucks IMO for long time players), but one of them is that different playstyles interact with the world in different ways. You let your RTS style players create your cities, your crafters populate those cities with items, your explorers go out and gather raw materials (as appropriate for your world), and hell--even give your griefers a positive conflict play mechanism: let them be powerful monster-type creatures that can raid cities...

Let me point one flaw to you:

People don't like loosing.

PvP rocks, I think that can be determined by people still playing Counterstrike.  But losing sucks only if you lose something that it took significant time to earn.  The key is to find a way to do lossless PvP without giving up persistence.  Figure that out and you don't need PvE anymore, you just let people play as monsters that level up. 

PlanetSide came close, with free equipment limited by character experience and death didn't cost you more then a minute or two at the most.  WoW came closer, where crafted items can give you an edge in PvP. 

Maybe the next novel iteration will be a hybrid, and have some kind of 'rationing' system, where people will be assigned a limited number of 'points' at spawing, and they add abilities, equipment, and other character traits in preloaded configurations, letting people rebuild their images at will.
 

[pxib]

Well thanks everyone, you've pulled my head out of the clouds and given me a lot to think about. I'll definately give Planetside a more serious look, give Fort Aspenwood a try (I bought the Guildwars Expansion, was turned off by the start of the new campaign and haven't played since) and perhaps devote a little time to grim introspection over the ruins of SWG. I'm glad to see that other people are thinking along these lines and hope one of them somewhere is more likely to produce a game than I am.

[Merusk]

I don't know that that is a bad thing honestly.

You guys may remember when I first joined the community, I talked a lot about a bunch of ideas that pointed in this way--and Planetside for all it's downside (no persistence -really- sucks IMO for long time players), but one of them is that different playstyles interact with the world in different ways. You let your RTS style players create your cities, your crafters populate those cities with items, your explorers go out and gather raw materials (as appropriate for your world), and hell--even give your griefers a positive conflict play mechanism: let them be powerful monster-type creatures that can raid cities...

Let me point one flaw to you:

People don't like loosing.

PvP rocks, I think that can be determined by people still playing Counterstrike.  But losing sucks only if you lose something that it took significant time to earn.  The key is to find a way to do lossless PvP without giving up persistence.  Figure that out and you don't need PvE anymore, you just let people play as monsters that level up. 

PlanetSide came close, with free equipment limited by character experience and death didn't cost you more then a minute or two at the most.  WoW came closer, where crafted items can give you an edge in PvP. 

Maybe the next novel iteration will be a hybrid, and have some kind of 'rationing' system, where people will be assigned a limited number of 'points' at spawing, and they add abilities, equipment, and other character traits in preloaded configurations.

Those are still flawed, simply because of the nature of persistant worlds vs FPS servers.  The key difference being, if you get stuck on a server in CS where you're repeatedly getting slaughtered, you can find another server. 

You can't do this in MMOs.  It would be like taking your 5-hour a week CS player, telling him he gets to play ONLY against a Professional Team of  Counterstrike players, or he doesn't get to play.

 If you let them jump servers, where is the persistance? The whole system starts to become more transitory, like Guild Wars.

[stray]

What I would give to actually have the MMO equivalent of "Professional Counterstrike Players". At least there'd be more options to compete with them other than what it usually comes down to MMO's : Catass or quit.

[sinij]

I approve, but beware of missing the fun.

Ouch. Wouldn't PvP take care of fun, given you don't make it overly punishing on the loser?

[Kail]

Wouldn't PvP take care of fun, given you don't make it overly punishing on the loser?

Not automatically.  There are a lot of sub-optimal PvP systems out there.  If you took World of Warcraft and just sold the PvP game (the battlegrounds), it would suck.  Heck, even among online FPS games (where loosing is about as painless as you can make it), there are a lot of stinkers.  I suspect that's why you don't see many PvP centric MMOs; it's HARD to do a PvP game that's complex enough to hold people's interest, easy enough for newbies to understand, and polished enough that you don't put your fist through the monitor when someone kills you with an exploit.

[Big Gulp]

Not automatically.  There are a lot of sub-optimal PvP systems out there.  If you took World of Warcraft and just sold the PvP game (the battlegrounds), it would suck.  Heck, even among online FPS games (where loosing is about as painless as you can make it), there are a lot of stinkers.  I suspect that's why you don't see many PvP centric MMOs; it's HARD to do a PvP game that's complex enough to hold people's interest, easy enough for newbies to understand, and polished enough that you don't put your fist through the monitor when someone kills you with an exploit.

You also need to make it so that although PvP is possible, it isn't a constant occurence.  No one likes to play long-term, persistent worlds where there is gankage left, right, and center.  That's not PvP, that's anarchy.  PvP can introduce an element of danger to the world, but it can't be so common that one is aware that they are going to be ganked around every corner.

The problem is that the playerbase for these games can't be trusted to behave like grownups, so developers need to place artificial, annoying, and counter-intuitive blockades in the way to ensure that online sociopathy doesn't run rampant.  I don't see any way around that.  Eve has probably come closest, but they still have blockades in place (patrolled space, etc).

[HRose]

What is there in that idea beside a crappy form of instanced PvP?

I mean, where's the difference from DAoC, WoW's BGs, Guild Wars?

Beside the fact that there isn't PvE, obviously.

[sinij]

No one likes to play long-term, persistent worlds where there is gankage left, right, and center.

Why not? If you play to PvP and you have different goals and some impact (so you don't get burnt out rushing the tower add nauseum) I don't see why not. Many play FPS to "gankage left, right, and center" why mmogs would be that different?

[tazelbain]

What is there in that idea beside a crappy form of instanced PvP?

I mean, where's the difference from DAoC, WoW's BGs, Guild Wars?

Beside the fact that there isn't PvE, obviously.

Fine you hate instantized PvP, but there are a good number of us who don't. 

Getting rid PvE is a good first step.  I just don't think fighting AI monsters can be compelling in the long run.  Unless you have eaten a lot of lead paint chips, it not going to be very long before you see through the AI.

I mentioned Fort Aspenwood earlier.  It's casual friendly.  It has many strategies.  It is fun.  Sadly, you have plow through a lot of crappy PvE to get to it.  If you made an entire game of missions like these, I feel it'd be pretty damn good.  Sure, making good PvP missions is hard, but the longevity on that content would be amazing.

Fury does seem something like this.

[HRose]

Fine you hate instantized PvP, but there are a good number of us who don't. 

The point is that "not having" something isn't usually a quality.

What I mean is that it makes more sense to wish for a PvP game, instead of one "without PvE". Which is again nothing new around here. So where's the idea? In instanced PvP? Because if we are wishing for a good PvP game then there are plenty of better systems than mission-based instances.

[Righ]

What is there in that idea beside a crappy form of instanced PvP?

I mean, where's the difference from DAoC, WoW's BGs, Guild Wars?

Beside the fact that there isn't PvE, obviously.

Perhaps you could read the title of the thread and come to an understanding of what it's about. But maybe you just like typing.

[tazelbain]

> Because if we are wishing for a good PvP game then there are plenty of better systems than mission-based instances.
Well, Gee Whiz Whillikers. I don't know you had already solved the riddle of good PvP.  It must be the heat that causes me to see large gaping flaws in all the PvP systems.

[pxib]

I like instanced PvP because it can discourage teh zerg while assuring player consent and combat-readiness. I like mission-based PvP because it gives the players a goal other than FFA slaughter. In the better instanced PvP scenarios I've played (some in WoW, some in GW) ganking is actually counter-productive. Any time you waste killing random people is time in which the other team is completing important tasks. If one player can distract several of the other team's killers, every second that they do so is one more second their team has to do the important work of... well, winning.

Now, I was a big fan of DAoC back in the day. World PvP certainly creates the feeling of being a member of an army, a cog in a great war machine -- when you're part of teh zerg. When you accidentally meet teh zerg it tends to create the feeling of being a turtle on the highway. Outside teh zerg there are occasional moments of fine small-group PvP, but they are much rarer than either small group vs. zerg and small group vs. lone PvEer. You don't get to choose which of these situations occur, they happen at random amidst long hours of waiting for something exciting to happen.

Admittedly, I treasure those rare experiences more than anything that I ever did in Guild Wars. I have told and retold the stories of my friar being ambushed by ignorant backstabbers (dodge dodge OH SHI-), of my troll cave shaman turning the tide in the battlegrounds "Whoa, Book is like an army!", and of three healers defending a keep against a full, higher-level group just by staying inside and keeping the archers alive. Those few stories comprise the entirety of my happy memories of RvR. Everything else was empty and dehumanizing. Long on stress and boredom, short on fun.

Guildwars small-arena fighting is constant fun, but utterly meaningless. There's no community except at the very high end. You never feel particularly proud of yourself for beating any particular player because you'll likely never see them again. Same goes for guilds. I play a little random arena once a week or so. I always enjoy it, but it's a silly time waster not a world.

Warcraft's world PvP was almost as meaningless as Guild Wars' while simultaneously being as boring and stressful as Dark Age's. You eventually got to know the good players on the other side (it's just a server, not the whole gameplaying population of the world), but mainly you get to know how it feels to be killed by a rogue or by a large group. Warcraft's battlegrounds keep the community advantage ("Oh hey, that's Slam. He's a scary Dwarf Warrior with a lot of hitpoints.") while making sure that there will be equal numbered groups of players, all of whom are ready to fight. Trouble is, they're worthless for anything other than trinkets and bragging rights... and the mission goals never change... and then because people spend most of their time in PvE, there's the queues...

Still, I tell people heroic stories from Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin... both in game and to players in my real life. When I talk about Guild Wars I have lively discussion of various build and team-composition ideas. I see no reason why a game couldn't encourage both, even though I lack the resources and imagination to invent one. If I want to play PvE, nobody does it better than single player games. I have had the highest PvP fun/wait ratio in instances, whether it felt like part of a community or not... so I'd like to see games focus there.

[Hoax]

You said meaningful and pvp in the same sentence, brace yourself.

I will help you if I can, but I fear that even a veritable army of "heavy hitters" wouldn't be enough to protect you from the derision that usually accompanies such a statement.

[tazelbain]

At least he used meaningful = memoriable instead meaningful = punishing which is a step up in my book.

[HRose]

Yep, the main problem is that considering mission/instanced based PvP as something helping the longevity is a myth.

Mission based PvP gets boring FAST (as in WoW), for the very simple reason that it lacks persistence, so it lacks purpose.

PvP has the real potential IN the persistence. Providing motivation, context, consequences. A reason to fight for, to feel involved, to make choices. Elements that build a world where you have a role. Removing it would mean removing one of its innate and most important qualities.

That idea is like DDO. You take those PvE dungeons and turn them into PvP missions and that's it. I don't think it would be all that successful. And I know that it wouldn't appeal me so much.

Like Guild Wars, but without the PvE. So where's the cool factor?

[Morat20]

pxib: What you are describing sounds an AWFUL lot like the system the Stargate MMORPG is supposedly going to use. Admittedly, I'm thinking "All hat, no cattle" on their laundry list of promises, but it pretty much sounds like what they're aiming for.