Itching for a Fight: A Modest Proposition about PvP

[Evangolis]

This is here instead of being in Game Design because it is about PvP in Persistent spaces, which pretty much means MMOs.

So, I thought I had a brilliant idea earlier today.  I've long thought that the solution to the xp grind was to make games broad instead of wide, so that everybody began with the abilities to play with others in pretty much all content, but could expand into alternate lines to broaden their character.  One of the nice things about that is it would make newbie ganking more difficult, allowing more scope for PvP.  And then I had this other thought, that you could make advancement quest based, so that what you got wasn’t cool stuff that did cool things, but flags that would let your character gain abilities that would do cool stuff.  Thus, you could allow things like PvP with full corpse looting, and it wouldn’t be a big deal.

And then I saw the flaw, of course.  If the contents of everyone’s backpack are the MMO equivalent of shiny rocks and bits of string, what is the point of being able to loot it?

And from there I moved on to another thought, namely that loot didn’t mean much if it didn’t advance your character, and if losing at PvP didn’t negatively effect your character, did it matter? 

But then I looked at PvP games.  EVE Online is often cited as a working PvP game, but I have to recall the common advice to players in EVE: ‘Don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose.”  So even though EVE has full loss of items and potential permadeath if you don’t keep up the insurance, in reality, you can always protect yourself from significant loss.  And so I have a point for debate, if you care to.  Some will doubtless view this with a ‘Well Duh’ attitude, while hardcore PvP fans may see it as foul heresy.  Myself, I think I’m not completely sure where I stand.

Resolved:  It should never be possible to loot character development from another player in a persistent world.

[lamaros]

Character development should exist more in what you choose to do, rather than what you need to have (from the the game world) to do it. So yeah.

[Venkman]

Pre-Renaissance had the same philosophy as current Eve. It worked because the majority of stuff could be somewhat easily replaced, as most of it was crafted. Sure GM-crafted wasn't as good as Invulnerable Robe of Invulnerability just as a Heavy Missile Launcher isn't as good as a Named Heavy Missile Launcher. But they'll get the job done with the proper support skills (in Eve) which is largely equivalent to the proper Template (UO). Crafted being easier to replace than loot means there's less of an issue with losing it.

When games become about items, they become about getting those items. This is an important shift because all activity revolves around acquisition, a constant growth strategy. It's a good way to control players, but requires constant new content, constant new caps and constant ways to ensure players don't get in the way of other players from their acquisition. It's very base.

I've long felt that this is better for companies than for players. It's easy for companies to make an efficient pipeline to constantly roll out new foozles. EQ2 is the pre-eminent example of this. Regardless of how not-WoW-successful it is, they simply release more content than Blizzard by what feels like a factor of ten. For a game 1/15 the population, maybe even less. How can they do that? Because they've long since made efficient the concept of feeding the players.

Eve is harder because self-motivation and governance is tied to everything. Eve can't become something about simple acquisition without kneecapping all the freedoms, like 0.0 space owning, open PvP and so on. Yet unlike EA, CCP is not scared by this. They love the rules and have a business scaled to make a continued profit off of their relative-small subscription base.

So basically, games about item acquisition almost have no choice but to be linear advancement experiences that minimize player interaction beyond cooperative acquisition. When a game is not wholly about items, players can have more freedom.

It's just that fewer people like the latter type of game. And that's fine really, as long as companies scale their business needs to match.

[tazelbain]

In some games items are charactor developement. 

Player looting isn't very much fun.  For these games items are a wager.  Both sides need a set of GM equipement to enter the fight. The winner gets the other's set.  At best, he can stock it away in case he loses later.  At worst it's junk he doesn't want/need and scraps it.  For the loser, either he has to go a set from his stash that loot from some other poor sap, or have new set made.  And if he doesn't have enough money to make a new set then he has to go grind cash.  Sounds high on headaches and low on fun. And that's not even counting the grieftastic options it opens.

And even with a very punishing game like EvE, people still complain about meaninglessness because enemies still comeback either through grinding or RMT. It's a lost cause.

[Engels]

Eve is punishing, but its not crippling. The mantra of 'be sure you can replace what you lose' is not really how folks play. The motto should be 'be sure you can do something fun in even a lesser ship, should you lose your epeen'. I seriously doubt that the first time most players go out with their first battleship they have enough in the coffers to immediately replace it; they simply have back up ships that they can stay in the game till they can rake in enough ISK to build their second one.

[Rithrin]

I don't know if I'm just restating the obvious here, but I think EVE definately wins when it comes to PvP. You obviously can't have a large subscription based game where there is character permadeath, but EVE certainly does make killing someone feel like you've killed them. They are out of the game, and they are out until they can purchase a new ship (Sure, people have backups, but usually not as good as their big one you just exploded). You feel like you've accomplished something - eliminating an enemy.

Not to mention in EVE, you're main means of character development is skills, not items. I think this causes EVE to succeed, and where games like SB failed. I remember from playing that game that everyone had a "Normal set" of items all in their +stat glory, and a "PvP set" of items which was usually trash you picked up on the last farming run that you took on town raids. All because if you lost those Elven Plate Boots of Speed Bonus or whatever specialized gear you needed for your build to work, it could quite possibly mean you never got them back since there was no player crafting, which of course is another thing EVE got right.

"Be sure you can replace what you lose" generally only applies to things like special unique one-of ships and items, everything else you can replace just not always right away.

[Venkman]

Yea, replacing one's losses isn't about keeping a duplicate set of the exact same stuff in a hold somewhere. It means as Engels said, being able to stay in the game in some capacity.

Loss sucks no matter how you slice it. But there's return-to-bind-point loss and there's shit-I-won't-be-that-dumb-again loss. Lots more people prefer the former because it allows them to be a bit more carefree about the game. That's not an insult. It's life really. Everyone games these days, and therefore everyone is a potential market in some way. Each person can be as into WoW as someone is into Eve. What's required of these people is very different, but people feel like they're having short, mid- and long-term fun regardless of game.

What type of game they're having fun is important for companies to consider, but it's not just about what type of game to make. Whether you're eGenesis, Linden Labs, SOE or Blizzard, there's customers out there for you. You just need to find out how many of them are there and scale your business and revenue needs accordingly.

Plus there's all these ideas that have been tried but either executed wrong or tried with other features executed poorly. Having a player-driven crafting-based economy ala Eve proves it can work, whereas someone might point to SWG old vs new as proof that it doesn't. What really happened there though is the exposure of a fundamental element of this genre:

Most people simply don't want to get that immersed in a game. There will always be a sub-group that does. But the vast majority of players don't have four hours a day to play. Maybe they have six hours a week they either can, or want to, play. The best games for them are not those that include so many roadblocks to their feeling of a rewarding experience.

For now. I do feel someone will one day make a game so inclusive it can appeal to a lot of different playstyles. SWG with a good combat system and, removal of the punitive and arbitrary interdependencies and the removal of the license that I'm sure hampered some things could have. Even with all the problems, they did cap at 275k after all.

And if he doesn't have enough money to make a new set then he has to go grind cash.

Agreed. Eve PvP is most often a money sink. But people either know that going in, or learn it right quick :)

[Telemediocrity]

When games become about items, they become about getting those items. This is an important shift because all activity revolves around acquisition, a constant growth strategy. It's a good way to control players, but requires constant new content, constant new caps and constant ways to ensure players don't get in the way of other players from their acquisition. It's very base.

This is part of why I loved AC, could never get into EQ, and absolutely loathed Diablo.

I think, as players start to broaden their horizons more, we'll move to more of the "Korean model" - items as a means of personalizing/customizing your guy, not a prerequisite to experiencing certain content.

[caladein]

When games become about items, they become about getting those items. This is an important shift because all activity revolves around acquisition, a constant growth strategy. It's a good way to control players, but requires constant new content, constant new caps and constant ways to ensure players don't get in the way of other players from their acquisition. It's very base.

This is part of why I loved AC, could never get into EQ, and absolutely loathed Diablo.

I think, as players start to broaden their horizons more, we'll move to more of the "Korean model" - items as a means of personalizing/customizing your guy, not a prerequisite to experiencing certain content.

Can you reference a game? My only involved experience with a Korean MMO was Lineage 2, and if you were perma-red, you'd have to follow the same advice as in EVE, "'be sure you can replace what you lose" because those shiny weapons and high-grade armors were the vast majority of your character.

Excuse me if L2 is the main exception to the model .

[Rithrin]

Can you reference a game? My only involved experience with a Korean MMO was Lineage 2, and if you were perma-red, you'd have to follow the same advice as in EVE, "'be sure you can replace what you lose" because those shiny weapons and high-grade armors were the vast majority of your character.

Excuse me if L2 is the main exception to the model .

That's what I was thinking. I remember from my limited L2 experience that getting that next upgrade in weapon or armor was CRUCIAL to playing the normal game. Not to mention making sure you always had Soulshots or whatever those were called.

[Venkman]

It's not about swords and armor per se, and not just the "Korean" model. Rather, it's about items in general (incl. buffs and consumables) and how that is fed, in many cases, by an e-commerce system of microtransactions (read: legit RMT).

Player skill is as important. It's how players get itemns which is slightly different.

In my opinion :)

[Telemediocrity]

Sorry, when I said "the Korean model" I was thinking of two games:  Gunz and Gunbound.  You're right, in hindsight the phrase must have been somewhat confusing.  I've never played L2 but I can imagine a lot of Korean games are also very item-centric.

[Jayce]

Resolved:  It should never be possible to loot character development from another player in a persistent world.

I think a more correct thing to say is that it's gasoline to allow looting of character development from another player.  UO got away with it because it was the only thing going, and it didn't continue to get away with it.  EVE gets away with it because it's niche.  AC1 got away with it by toning it down (you only looted a few of the highest value items in PvP).

So, with no mitigating factors, I'd say the above statement is true for the mainstream.  The farther you go down that path, the farther away from the mainstream you get, but the more consequential and visceral the PvP gets, hence the more devoted fans you have.  If you have enough to sustain a community.

[sinij]

How much fun do you think you will have re-re-re-doing all quest on your Nth reroll, even if quests are not your typical 'kill 10 rats" if you make advancement quest-based? Maybe if quest is to go to Crossroads and pwn first five people that show up....

[Kail]

Resolved:  It should never be possible to loot character development from another player in a persistent world.

I think this sidesteps the issue a bit.  PvP ALWAYS takes away someone's "development" in some form.  That's the nature of any competition.  The problem I see is "to what extent do we allow them to do this," rather than "should they be allowed to at all."

Even looiking at WoW, you're loosing something you worked to get pretty much every time you died.  Maybe you lose the enemy flag, maybe you lose honor points, maybe you just lose advancement in the literal sense, so that you have to do a bit of jogging to get back to where you physically were before.  Either way, you've lost something, so the question I'd ask is: how do you draw that line between trivial junk that it's okay to lose (e.g. time, patience, faith in humanity) and the important stuff (the "character development") that should be untouchable?  Bearing in mind that making you unable to cause any sort of lasting effect to your opponenf makes the PvP come off as meaningless, while making it easy to cripple your opponents makes your game a drooling gankfest.

EVE, I think, works because has two separate routes of character development: money and skill points.  Money you can lose easily in PvP, but skill points are a lot easier to hang on to (theoretically you'd have to get someone so poor that they wouldn't be able to upgrade their clone, and then keep killing them, but I've never heard of anyone getting quite that badly whupped).  So even though the systems are co-dependent (money means jack if you don't have the skills to pilot the big ships, and the skills are useless without the gear they operate), there's still the sense that you can bounce back.  They can take your money, but at least you never have to start back from square one.  At the same time, money is still very important, so it's not like blowing up a half dozen dreadnoughts isn't going to seriously set your opponent back, so the PvP doesn't feel  as empty as it does in something like WoW.

[Xilren's Twin]

Resolved:  It should never be possible to loot character development from another player in a persistent world.

MtG and Ante. It could work so long as the loss was A) a random subset of the skills/items you brought to the battle, b) the battles themselves were optional and with known "difficulty ratings" for lack of a better term (i.e. all commons decks,  5 rares max, tribal, mono-color, etc), c) individual skills/items were not permenant anyway (think set rotation), d) a level playing field instead of "anything goes" (1 on 1 duels, 3 on 3 matches, 8 player mini tournaments), e) some elements of random chance, but not too much f) oh yeah, and their were acquisition rules/game rules to minimize the person buying easy victories with RMT.

Damnit, why wont someone make the game i really want to play! MtGORPG.

Xilren
PS For those who never played, Ante was envisioned by Magic's creator as a risk reward balancing mechanism.  Basically, if wanted to duel another player a card would be chose randomly from your deck of 60 to basically be the bet.  Winner got the other player's card.  The thought was while you could certainly make a deck chock full of 60 expensive rare cards to steamroll your casual competition, you risked losing something of value even against the newbie with an all goblin theme deck or wacky combo deck.  Losing 1 card out of sixty can have bite if it's a rare/valuable one, but not like losing all your gear in UO/Eve or your home city in SB.
 AC's item loss is the cloest thing I can think of to that concept, but was easily gotten around with death items.

[Fargull]

Okay.. Couple of thoughts.

If, you are focusing on the same switching as DAOC, as in known separated battle feilds, why not force the character to chose a standard set of equipment load out before joining their (ahem) kingdom forces in battle.  Remove standard inventory and have a plunder pack set to hold standard taken the battle feild junk that can not be equiped durring the standard battle.  If you drop, your corpse is lootable.  You get a buy out of cash based on what you have in your plunder bag at the time of exit from the zone/instance.

And, perhaps, similar to WOW's pvp flagging, have your backpack lootable, but not your equiped items when in a contested zone.  And, allow mobs to loot players.  I always enjoyed killing that storm elemental and finding several backpacks of juicy loot.

[Telemediocrity]

AC's item loss is the cloest thing I can think of to that concept, but was easily gotten around with death items.

The nice part about death items is that while in theory you can fully protect your stuff always, in reality situations get messy and once in a while someone ends up with someone else's gear; there's that bit of tension, that element of suspense in there that makes a "death items" system appeal to me.  Also, the general rule that the better items you're holding, the more you need to invest in high-value death items to cover them - in other words, wearing good gear requires you to put a large bounty on your own head to make sure you don't lose said gear.  It always struck me as a cool system.

[caladein]

Resolved:  It should never be possible to loot character development from another player in a persistent world.

I think this sidesteps the issue a bit.  PvP ALWAYS takes away someone's "development" in some form.  That's the nature of any competition.  The problem I see is "to what extent do we allow them to do this," rather than "should they be allowed to at all."

Even looiking at WoW, you're loosing something you worked to get pretty much every time you died.  Maybe you lose the enemy flag, maybe you lose honor points, maybe you just lose advancement in the literal sense, so that you have to do a bit of jogging to get back to where you physically were before.  Either way, you've lost something, so the question I'd ask is: how do you draw that line between trivial junk that it's okay to lose (e.g. time, patience, faith in humanity) and the important stuff (the "character development") that should be untouchable?  Bearing in mind that making you unable to cause any sort of lasting effect to your opponenf makes the PvP come off as meaningless, while making it easy to cripple your opponents makes your game a drooling gankfest.

Well, losing the flag in a WSG match doesn't really count as persistent in my eyes, although getting completely rocked does still net you some honor, reputation, and a (very small) chunk of experience. In terms of the honor, you don't "lose" honor, like I said, going into a battleground and getting your face kicked in actually still improves your relative position (since it's basically Alliance vs. Alliance on their own ladder).

Nitpicking aside, I think the important part of WoW's "death penalty" is that you are losing potential character development. I could be riding around on my mount screaming "I have a pretty pink pony," (Red Skeletal Horse my ass) or I could be working on a quest, I still suffer the same penalty, a loss of time.

No one will argue that time isn't an important resource, but like in the above, it could be used for something that advances my character, or for doing something idiotic. But, the important difference is, that once I have made that step, of actually advancing my character, it cannot be lost. Essentially, "I have a pretty pink pony and you can't ever take it away from me."

I think that's where the line is currently drawn, that, "It is fine to take away the potential for character development from another player in a persistent world."

[Venkman]

"It is fine to take away the potential for character development from another player in a persistent world."

Yes, as long as it's just about time. There has been used a mechanical version of this quote, that being the XP debt system from, say, AC1 and CoH. However, that to me always felt as much like a penalty as a straight XP loss, because both slowed down advancement.

Just keep it that a loss is a temporary halt in a forward momemtum, be it being dumped back a few minutes away to a bind point, having to repair equipment, having to hit your gravesite or whatever and I think players will be fine with it. For a diku.

For other games, where there's a robust player economy allowing for the easy replacement of just-as-workable non-elite gear (ala: pre-Ren UO), ya have more options. But then, ya also have fewer players :)

[Kail]

I think that's where the line is currently drawn, that, "It is fine to take away the potential for character development from another player in a persistent world."

But what's the difference between potential character development and actual character development?  I've got goals I set for my character; the closer I am to those goals, the further my "advancement."  Maybe I want to be a high end raider, maybe I want to be the top ranked PvPer, maybe I just want to see some dungeon somewhere.  If I come into the game just wanting to get to a certain location, and someone keeps killing me and sending me back to the graveyard, they're preventing me from reaching my goal, just the same as full item looting would prevent a high end raider from collecting his full armor set.

Losing the flag in a battleground, for example, is a setback.  You are in a favorable position, someone else knocks you out of that position.  You can work to get it back, but you've still lost something.  You're claiming this isn't actual character development (if I'm not reading you right, feel free to correct me).

But what's the difference between losing the flag and losing gold, or losing XP, or losing all your items, or any other death penalty?  Almost any time you're penalized for dying, you can make it up.  You can make back the gold, you can re-earn the experience, you can redo all those raids to get back your gear.  Functionally, they're identical to losing the flag: in all the cases, you've got something you want to fulfil some goal, someone takes it away from you, and you've got to earn it back.  The only difference is the amount of time it takes, and it seems a bit arbitrary to say something like "anything that takes more than a half hour to earn is character advancement, anything that takes less is not". 

I can't think of a working definition for "character advancement" that doesn't include things that you're excluding and which doesn't seem ad hoc.

[Yegolev]

A lot of the difference is in perception.  Having your ship assploded in EVE is pretty shocking (especially the first time) and time is lost where you fit it together and whatnot, but in the end you usually have cash and equipment as fallback so it's not a massive setback if you aren't completely misplaying the game.  Once you're done kicking yourself for doing something stupid in your shiny hotrod that you spent the past few weeks anticipating, you get back in the saddle of your last ship and get out there again.

On the opposite side, when you take down someone's ship, there is a satisfying explosion and removal of an enemy pilot from combat.  You can even podkill them, which is really just an insult to someone not wearing implants.  You know he will be back eventually, but for those few minutes you know you totally fucked him.

When death includes massive explosions, it's more fun for everyone.

[caladein]

I think that's where the line is currently drawn, that, "It is fine to take away the potential for character development from another player in a persistent world."

But what's the difference between potential character development and actual character development?  I've got goals I set for my character; the closer I am to those goals, the further my "advancement."  Maybe I want to be a high end raider, maybe I want to be the top ranked PvPer, maybe I just want to see some dungeon somewhere.  If I come into the game just wanting to get to a certain location, and someone keeps killing me and sending me back to the graveyard, they're preventing me from reaching my goal, just the same as full item looting would prevent a high end raider from collecting his full armor set.

Losing the flag in a battleground, for example, is a setback.  You are in a favorable position, someone else knocks you out of that position.  You can work to get it back, but you've still lost something.  You're claiming this isn't actual character development (if I'm not reading you right, feel free to correct me).

But what's the difference between losing the flag and losing gold, or losing XP, or losing all your items, or any other death penalty?  Almost any time you're penalized for dying, you can make it up.  You can make back the gold, you can re-earn the experience, you can redo all those raids to get back your gear.  Functionally, they're identical to losing the flag: in all the cases, you've got something you want to fulfil some goal, someone takes it away from you, and you've got to earn it back.  The only difference is the amount of time it takes, and it seems a bit arbitrary to say something like "anything that takes more than a half hour to earn is character advancement, anything that takes less is not". 

I can't think of a working definition for "character advancement" that doesn't include things that you're excluding and which doesn't seem ad hoc.

Ah, I wasn't too clear on why I was excluding stuff in Battlegrounds (or any instanced PvP thingy). The reason I don't think of losing the flag in WSG as taking away "character development from another player in a persistent world" is the persistent part.

Inside of Warsong Gultch 17, yes, by returning the flag, you are setting back my development inside of WSG 17. In the persistent world, I am still advancing my character (via Honor and Reputation), so my development in the persistent world is slowed by you returning the flag, but it is not set back (ala CoX's XP debt, you don't lose XP you've already earned, you simply gain your next bit at a slower rate). Additionally, the events of the previous WSG have no effect on the next (mechanically), so again, lack of persistence is the key.

By entering a BG, you are agreeing that yes, you can lose, you can be set back in your pursuit of victory, but, when it's all over, you got something out of it in the persistent world (whether it was worth the time put in, like a lost pre-1.11 8-hour AV game, isn't really in the equation).

I agree with you that if your goal is simply to reach a location, then yes, I am slowing your progress by killing you, but you're ignoring the corpse run being free of monsters, and in worse case scenarios, hopefully you found the flight path so it isn't a complete loss.

Kind of in the same way, if my guild wipes yours on a world boss, you did lose your current progress on that boss (and possibly the spawn if we have enough guys to take it ourselves and prevent the reverse from happening) so it is a tad on the arbitrary side. Of course, your victory wasn't assured, and if say, we killed you after you downed the boss, we can't get the loot. I guess the best way to put it, once the advancement is, "mechanically complete" (exploration credit is a good example here), before then it's all theoretical.

A lot of the difference is in perception.

...

When death includes massive explosions, it's more fun for everyone.

That too.

(For what it's worth, in WoW, I'm not really the corpse-camping type, simply because I see it as a waste of time for both parties.)