Gamers know not what they want...

[Hoax]

Wanted to bring this up after I read this:

Envision this, Tribes1 gameplay but on an even bigger scale.   With maps that feed into eachother and just generally more persistence, one war being fought on multiple fronts with multiple large flying bases etc.  Tribes1 was a great fps.  In fact it required a great deal of twitch skill, and disc jumping at times was a very valid tactic.  So why would I bother to play a MMFPS version?  I do not understand this attitude.  The only way the argument that you seem to be trying to construct makes sense is if I believe that games that require a person to use twitch skillz cannot be called tactical.  Which I dont, at all.

And it had the dumbass ski jumping also.  My point is, whether your are pixel accurate or not, what do you get for tacking the MM on a FPS.  You could say "why not?" Added complexity, cost, lag, and administration.  And what do you get?  A chain of fortresses to fight over.  At least with WWOII you got the scale model of Europe to tool around on.  In the long run, a world of fortresses isn't better than one fortress that resets every so often.  Victories are hollow, it all becomes the same.

You see, I totally made the point Tazelbain is making here, except at the time I was pointing out how shallow and stupid I found DAOC RvR to be.  This time around I'm on the other side.  Proclaiming that with Tribes1 gameplay it would be awesome because well aiming, flying and blowing things to shit is way cooler then /stick /assist and the boredom of auto attack + hotkey combat.  It is the same old stupid static fortress over and over I cried, the relics are stupid the bonus is intangible victories are meaningless boohoohoo.  I called for more "meaning" in pvp MMOG's across the board without really even knowing exactly how to define meaning.  I took that to f13 and got involved in all sorts of intraweb disscussion about the matter.

This line of thought just leads into the whole, you can't reward people for winning nor make winning matter without the losers just quitting or joining the winning side.

So should developers even be trying to make a game with persistence and pvp or is it a waste of time?  Do things like winning and loosing only work in the vacuum of instant-respawns and no item-loss?  Or can some kind of tight-rope act accomplish removing the hey we've already taken this stupid objective 100 times syndrome while still having objectives?

This question really applies to things like Age of Conan and WAR so if anyone has a good idea of how they are SAYING they will handle this, feel free to give a refresher to those of us who stay away from sites for games that aren't even in beta yet.

I'm interested to hear what others think about this, especially when it comes to those on the pvp-light end of the spectrum.



New thread, same old topic.

*edit* restructured a few things, my bad..  *edit*

[stray]

I don't think mmo players can't handle losing so much as they can't handle rebuilding. If it wasn't such a bitch to recover from your losses, then the pain of defeat might not be so bad for them. If you changed the systems that make these games harsh to begin with, then it might be easier for some to deal with losing in a persistent world.

For example, making cities cost so much in Shadowbane was a terrible mistake. That game probably wouldn't have gone down the drain so quickly if it had been easier to recover from war. As it stood, having your city baned was like getting a big "Game Over, man!" flashed on your screen (not for me necessarily, but it seemed to be that way for many others).

Then again, I could be entirely wrong. Before that Huxley thread existed, I had no idea there were people who'd consider "shooting" to be overpowered.  If there's a big segment of players like Geldon out there, then no, skill or "meaningful" pvp in mmo's in pretty much hopeless.

[Kail]

So should developers even be trying to make a game with persistence and pvp or is it a waste of time?  Do things like winning and loosing only work in the vacuum of instant-respawns and no item-loss?  Or can some kind of tight-rope act accomplish removing the hey we've already taken this stupid objective 100 times syndrome while still having objectives?

I do think that there are games that can do persistance and PvP well.  EVE comes to mind.  WoW, I think, does a lot of things well, but there have been a number of times when I've wished that they'd adopt a more Diablo-ish setup, where I can play offline or over a LAN if I want to.  I've never thought that about EVE.  EVE simply does not work without the massiveness or the persistance.  WoW, to a large extent does, and so (I'd be willing to bet) will all the "me too" clones who think they can compete with Blizzard.  That includes (as far as I know) Warhammer and Conan. 

The difference is that EVE has been designed from the ground up to be extremely social, which means sometimes (quite a lot of the time, actually) people will want to do things to you that you don't want.  And, by and large, the EVE devs have been more willing to tell people to lrn2ply than most other companies.  Theirs is a game built around PvP, and that means that some people will be pissed when their ship gets dusted, and the devs understand that.  I don't think EVE (or any game like EVE) will ever challenge WoW for player numbers, because too many of those pissed off players will be leaving, and spreading negative buzz about your game, and doing all the stuff that makes marketing people cry.  But I do think that if you're going to really take the whole massively multiplayer thing to the limit, you have to allow players to interact, both positively and negatively.

[Slyfeind]

I prefer RPG gameplay to FPS gameplay, particularly in MMOs, because FPS takes too much energy. I like to relax and settle down with a game, not get psyched up about it. There are times when I like to get psyched up, like if I'm playing something in real life; laser tag or paintball or football or kick-the-gonads or whatever. But not all the time.

I think this is what Planetside has against it, and what Tabula Rasa should look out for. We need decompression time from adventuring, and it's more fun if we decompress in-game. The more energy we burn, the more decompression we need.

I love PvP in WOW, because when you lose, you get something shiny. When you win, you get something shiny. Holy crap you get shiny things no matter what you do! The more you win, the more shiny you get! If you don't win so much, well, you still get shinies! SHINY SHINY SHINY PVP YAY!!! This distracts most of us who suck at PvP, so we don't realize how bad we suck. We just get to have fun at it. Compare this to UO or SB, where if you suck at PvP, you not only lose the fight, but you lose the entire game FOREVAR. I like UO and I like PvP, but I suck at UO PvP, so I don't play UO anymore. This makes me sad.

I don't know if I suck at WOW PvP. I keep getting shiny things, so I must be doing something right.

Just random personal thoughts, for what it's worth.

[eldaec]

This line of thought just leads into the whole, you can't reward people for winning nor make winning matter without the losers just quitting or joining the winning side.

Regarding the winning/losing thing, I'd have thought you use a line of control, as one side moves the line forward it becomes steadily harder to move it further forward (more NPC guards, better keep defences etc), eventually you reach an equilibirium point with both sides winning a similar amount, and good players and teams on each side being able to score an above average number of wins; but with the system still demonstrating which realm is ahead precisely because the combat has been pushed back to Caer Sursbrooke or whatever. Daoc went a little way along this road with the NF RvR reboot, it's just a shame they don't seem to want to push it further with warhammer.

[damijin]

In most systems currently being employed by MMOs, PvP is a useless notion. In fact, it may be self-defeating to try and base an MMO on PvP. PvP, is not the MMORPG's strength on it's own. But PvP itself, need not be removed from the games. It is a useful tool, but it is only a tool. Not the endless well of content that developers want it to be. PvP can be best realized in an MMORPG as a system for settling disputes.

The only logical way to implement this PvP system into an MMORPG, is to not have any coded reward. Perhaps the system would have some mild penalty to the loser, and even some penalty to the winner if it is a PK situation, but no hard-coded reward even if the fight is consensual.

This is a system for a PvE world. A world rich in content, rich in socialization, and rich in PvE experiences. The world need not be driven by PvP, yet PvP exists. It rarely happens, but when it does, the players involved are ripped from their normally predictable AI calculations and PvE casual atmosphere, and enter a few heart pounding minutes on the edge of their seat. The people who win get nothing other than emotions of joy and feelings of superiority. And the losers get nothing more than a feeling of vengeance or defeat. Perhaps they'll now be driven to play harder to beat those guys some day.

But at the end of it all, they all go back to PvE, and the world moves forward.

To me, any system other than this does not make sense for an MMO. If I wanted the kind of PvP in WoW, I could play dozens of non-MMO games. This goes for MMOFPS too. They cannot simply be an FPS + 5,000 player servers. MMOs have the ability to implement long-term emotion driven systems that simply cannot be done in other games. You can get a sense of accomplishment in counterstrike after you awp a guy, or even a desire for vengeance after being gunned down 3 rounds in a row by the same dude. But it doesn't really have the same weight as it would in a world where the opportunity rarely happens, and the moments of PvP are looked back on like as fond memories despite being so few and far between. It doesn't get those weeks to brew and stir and become a focus of your goals, until you finally gank that griefing bitch with your friends and proclaim victory.

Unlike many hardcore PvPers, I do not see death penalties as needing to be raised. No, that won't solve the futility of MMORPG pvp. The lack of penalties are not the reason why WoW's PvP feels pointless and repetitive. The problems are the rewards and the frequency. One should not be PvPing to advance their character. PvP is about settling a dispute, or continuing a rivalry between people or clans. Nothing should be on the line other than your reputation in each others eyes, and to be honest, for most people that's worth a lot more than shiny.

[Sky]

Until people can enjoy playing a game for the sake of playing rather than winning, no. You can't have a game unbalanced by winning, especially timesink rewards, because you'll eliminate any new players after a short time.

I think Planetside handled it pretty well, allowing vets to use more weapons but not really be stronger than a rank newblette. Of course, people still 'ground xp' like mmogtards, but whatchagonnado? They also handled it pretty well with the way benefits worked, holding the tech base or holding the bio base or whatever lent tactical advantages to everyone in that instance (continent/island/whatever).

But some people need to 'win' to have fun, and as Hoax points out, will switch to the winning side if they're not. I used to kick people from our BF1942 server for that garbage. Seems most people can't try to fight on the losing side, they'd rather bail and 'win' (even though other players pressed the advantage into place). Also seems the best BF players will hop to the losing side to avoid the mindless tards hopping to the winning side, it almost balances at times in a retarded way.

[tazelbain]

I think the only to handle it is to make it a big game of chess. The pieces would massive NPCs that duke it out and players struggle to tip the balance in their teams favor.  Eventually leading to one side winning.  I.E the Battleship White Bishop assaults the Black Knight Fortress.  Black players would attempt disable the battleship's systems and help destroy it at the same time defending their fortress.  This would add more strategic elements because different match-ups that would play out differently and players would have to decide which match to help with.  Add a finite resource system to craft new pieces.  After the game is over pass out special titles, certs, and armor looks to encourage them to stick around for the next game.

[Krakrok]

GW random arenas let everyone win 25% of the time. Which means the hardcore people only win 75% of the time. The way to add persistance to that would be to make each random battle a "switch" on a hex map. When your faction wins the hex gets set to your faction and therefore the area that your faction "controls" gets larger. The bigger your area of control gets the harder it is to hold on to because you have other factions chewing at your control area from all sides.

EVE pretty much has this implemented organically. It's just much slower paced, 100% persistant instead of instanced, and the little issue of everyone not winning 25% of the time.

[geldonyetich]

Short on time, lets see if I can get a post done in 5 minutes.  Apologies if I'm just repeating points already made here, as I had to skim.

I think that a large part of the problem with PvP having a lack of meaningful consequences in a MMO is the players' expectation of persistence.  In Tribes, it's perfectly okay for things to reset every round because the players don't expect their efforts to last beyond that round anyway.  In Planetside, however, you expect the results of your actions to have some lasting consequence on the grounds that this is supposed to be a persistent state world.

If developers want to make players feel like their interactions matter in a MMOG, they need to avoid setting up unbeatable scenarios that are intended to last forever.  By all means, let the Vanu Sovereignty wipe out the New Conglomerate and Terran Republic if they're having a good week.  Having them take over every map in the game and then nothing happens because they can't take out the HQs belonging to the other factions is crap.  People will eventually win, often due to simply being the faction with the highest population, and in this event you either let players win or you declare your online space a farce.

Another big problem Planetside ran into is the issue where you could either spend several hours wrestling a map away from the rival factions or you could spend 10 minutes taking bases with zero opposition.  If the faction starts to resist, no problem, recall back to sanctuary and hit another map with zero opposition.  There was never steady garrisons in Planetside where people are waiting around, bored, for players of rival factions to try to take bases from them.

One more thing: Resources.  Resources give players a reason to conquer terrain.  If the NCU you harvest in one continent affected all other continents, and because you don't hold more than 2 maps you can no longer spawn a Prowler tank, players will find it far more important to hold onto those continents.  (Granted, in this particular example it's actually somewhat counter to good game design because you're putting a faction already at disadvantage enough to lose terrain at a further disadvantage by robbing them of their best equipment.)

I've seen many good experiments in Battletech MU* of making holding persistent online space matter.  It's a bit of a seesaw between providing players incentive to care whether or not they have holdings in the virtual space versus causing mass defections because players don't want to deal with how much of a disadvantage they're at due to lack of holdings in the virtual space.

Alright, now I'm late :P Final point: You want to get it done right, you'll probably have to do it yourself.  Heh.

[palmer_eldritch]

I played Eve for some time and although I don't usually like PvP myself, in this game I was part of a corportion and alliance that did a lot of it, to defend their territory and sometimes to try to steal systems from their enemies.

In my experience, the vast majority of my corp friends (who were probably PvP light in the sense that they didn't seem like the people who would have been PKers in UO, for example) really hated being ganked by pirates when they were in central space doing missions or mining, but were more than happy to accept the risk of losing their expensive ships in corporation wars in disputed territories, as they considered that type of PvP to be fun.

Perhaps it helped that territory ownership in Eve was fairly static. I know huge political changes can happen, in terms of who controls star systems, but losing a battle nearly always meant losing a ship - which can actually hurt a lot in Eve - but not losing your player owned structures and the really big stuff your corp has worked for.

I was never strong enough as a character or skilled enough as a player to really take part in PvP, but if I ever went into a disputed system for some reason and got killed I was always fine with that. I knew what I was doing and it had some meaning.

(in Eve, corps who own systems will usually kill anyone who wanders into their system who is not an ally even if they are not actually an enemy - they are protecting their resources as they kind of own the asteroid belts, or they think you might be a pirate or enemy spy, or just want to show who's boss in their part of space. But sometimes you might have a reason to take a risk and see if you can sneak in).

But like the rest of my corp, I hated being killed by pirates in central space. Central space is all owned by NPC corporations and there's no political reason for killing someone - often not even an economic one, as my crappy ship had no parts worth salvaging.

You could argue that the pirates still played an important role in the game and I would agree, but that did nothing to make the experience more fun.

I'm not sure how this relates to other games, but I believe it is possible for even a carebear like me to enjoy being in a world full of PvP. I am going to try Conan and see if it offers an experience in any way similar, without getting my hopes up too much!

[Jayce]

I love PvP in WOW, because when you lose, you get something shiny. When you win, you get something shiny. Holy crap you get shiny things no matter what you do! The more you win, the more shiny you get! If you don't win so much, well, you still get shinies! SHINY SHINY SHINY PVP YAY!!! This distracts most of us who suck at PvP, so we don't realize how bad we suck. We just get to have fun at it. Compare this to UO or SB, where if you suck at PvP, you not only lose the fight, but you lose the entire game FOREVAR. I like UO and I like PvP, but I suck at UO PvP, so I don't play UO anymore. This makes me sad.

Sigged!


As to the overall point of the thread, I think Eve is important in that it shows that a PvP++ game can succeed, albeit with a niche audience - though maybe not quite as niche as people might have thought.

I think the other (major) entries into this space, namely UO and SB*, were/are loved and hated precisely because they had potential, but a few major missteps doomed them to the dustbin of history.  Eve, however, shows that the model is viable if "done right".



*I think M59 is in this crowd too, but I can't really speak to its success or failure because I don't know much about it.

[tazelbain]

I trying to put my figure want I find distasteful about Eve's PvP, the best I come with is...
I don't want to be another point in the blob.
Politics and the political state are opaque to the spectators and the majority of the players.
Something about the target system felt alien to me.


Mass PvP should be more like the NFL.

[Akkori]

I think you can mesh the two quite nicely. It's obvious many heavy PvP players don't like the "worldly" part of the games. Thye just want to kill stuff. If Devs could nest something like BF2142 inside an MMO and make the results of those battles reflect on the persistent state of the World, it could be very cool. There were "battlefields" in a game-that-shall-remain-unnamed that could have been used for this purpose. Marked off parts of every planet where it was PvP only.

[stray]

Mass PvP should be more like the NFL.

I agree, but that would never happen in a digital medium. Imagine playing Madden where every player was controlled by a real person. It wouldn't be any better than any other pvp game. Even if all of the individuals knew how a football game should work.

I think you can mesh the two quite nicely. It's obvious many heavy PvP players don't like the "worldly" part of the games.

I'd have to disagree there. Seems to me most heavy pvp'ers like to simulate all the goods and ills of worlds more than anyone else.

[Akkori]

I don't know. Of course, my perspective is mostly from the people on that other game, whose forums are hosting about a dozen threads based on the "decay or not" concept. PvP'ers don't want decay because it would take away from their killing time, and they don't want to give their money to other players for said goods. They seem vehement in playing an online version of Quake or PS.

[stray]

Some would like Quake, I guess, but as far rpg's go, many people want lootable corpses (far beyond mere item decay), non cookie cutter class systems, conquest (as opposed to a WoW bg scenario), city building, etc..

[tazelbain]

I agree, but that would never happen in a digital medium. Imagine playing Madden where every player was controlled by a real person. It wouldn't be any better than any other pvp game. Even if all of the individuals knew how a football game should work.

I didn't mean literally :)
It should be:
A) winnable
B) transparent, everybody plays with their cards up.
C) watchable, you should able to watch it figure out what is happening.
D) broken up discrete objectives. plays -> drives -> points -> wins -> championships
E) parity
F) room for individuals to shine, and because of C people can see them.

[geldonyetich]

My problem with PvP in EvE is much the same as it was in UO.  You leave a gate, there's a player sitting on the other side, they launch their "An Corp!" missiles, and boom: you're dead, and the product of 50 hours of ore harvesting is now theirs for the taking.  Oh, too bad, I guess you weren't in the exclusive club that knew that was a bad place to be.  LOL n00b, suck it.  The only reason this isn't entirely out of control in EvE is that there's some level of accountability - you can't escape retribution quite as easily as in UO, so when said n00b complains to his big bad corp members the pirate has either moved on to another gate or is scrap.

I think that things lost and gained in PvP should not belong to players, but rather an organization above the player.  Those dirty socialists in the United Federation of Planets in Star Trek didn't having to stress overmuch about losing their ship to a Borg Cube because it wasn't their ship but rather belonged to the greater organization.  Assuming the officers survived, the next ship off the construction line will likely benefit from their experience.  We don't necessarily need to have a socialist government for this to happen, as such a thing is really the case in any army.  You don't own the tank or aircraft you're piloting, you're just a soldier fighting for the country, and so you won't be expected to pay $30M when your F-15 gets shot down.

Players in MMOGs where it death is a PITA are basically entrepreneurs.  They pay for their own gear and take their own risks to make a profit of which they keep 100% of.  Maybe they have insurance, but chances are they're expected to shoulder the majority of the burden in deaths, and that's what makes organized PvP efforts counter-intuitive.  It's not rewarding to risk your own junk. 

Players in Planetside have no problem with death because they don't own anything they're losing.  So, why do we have a problem with Planetside?  Because things don't matter enough, defeat is impossible anyway, and victory is meaningless knowing that the base grants you nothing any other base doesn't already and in another hour you could lose the very base you took because there's nobody around to defend it.

[stray]

I agree, but that would never happen in a digital medium. Imagine playing Madden where every player was controlled by a real person. It wouldn't be any better than any other pvp game. Even if all of the individuals knew how a football game should work.

I didn't mean literally :)

Yeah, I was just typing in a rush. I thought you were mainly talking about cooperation.....Which would still be difficult to encourage in online games. People who cooperate are going to do it despite whatever game system exists. And people who don't will probably go on being dumbasses.

[Fordel]

My problem with PvP in EVE is much the same as it was in UO.  You leave a gate, there's a player sitting on the other side, they launch their "An Corp!" missiles, and boom: you're dead, and the product of 50 hours of ore harvesting is now theirs for the taking.  Oh, too bad, I guess you weren't in the exclusive club that knew that was a bad place to be.  LOL n00b, suck it.  The only reason this isn't entirely out of control in EVE is that there's some level of accountability - you can't escape retribution quite as easily as in UO, so when said n00b complains to his big bad corp members the pirate has either moved on to another gate or is scrap.

That brings up another issue with games like EVE. Sure it's great to be in that corp/guild that has all the resources and power and can provide you with the replacement gear when lost, but most people Do Not get to be in that corp/guild. When most people start playing EVE these days, they already have friends in game, or are bringing a pack of them from a different game. Trying to play EVE while not knowing a single soul in the game... it's just frustrating at best, down right unplayable at its worst.

It's these situations where games like DAOC have the edge so to speak. DAOC made everyone part of the team and even at its worst you could still hop onto a zerg and smack some albs etc. Everyone was welcome for a keep take, or a relic raid, no one was really excluded.

PvP must be inclusive for it to ever be anything but a sideline or niche. Of course, the very same things that allow for ease of inclusion also create a 'lack of meaning' ... quite the problem isn't it :(

[Endie]

My problem with PvP in EvE is much the same as it was in UO.  You leave a gate, there's a player sitting on the other side, they launch their "An Corp!" missiles, and boom: you're dead, and the product of 50 hours of ore harvesting is now theirs for the taking.  Oh, too bad, I guess you weren't in the exclusive club that knew that was a bad place to be.  LOL n00b, suck it. 

Have you played Eve?  Is that a real example from your life?!?  The only way that happens is if you're not n00b but retarded.

I've only been to 0.0 once and lowsec a few times so far, but I've known for a long time that I wouldn't jump willy-nilly into a lowsec system in a hauler with the results of "50 hours of ore harvesting" sitting in my cargo.  Even using a single mining laser on crappy, 1.0 space ore that's almost 50,000,000 ISK. And you didn't check for podding or ship deaths in the last hour on the map before jumping into the system?  And did you just sit there while your cloak wore off (UO didn't let you stand there, invisible, and decide what to do)?  Did you decide to take extra cargo expanders in your low slots instead of stabilisers?  Did you just cross the boundary from lowsec to 0.0 without considering what the numbers meant?  Yuo didn't bother to get a scout to jump through first when hauling your 50 million+ ISK?  Were you, ilke, on autopilot?

Nobody, after 50+ hours in a game, can make the excuse of being a n00b.  Yes, there are always things to learn, but if you decided to run the results of all that mining down into zerosec space you were either after money and willing to gamble, or you had just indulged in 50 hours of hermeticism.

Eve is about player knowledge as much as character skills, sure, but that's a good thing.  And the info is all there to be seen in prminent places, especially when you're about to leave 0.5+ space and the system pops up a warning box saying that you're giong to a bad place where you're not protected...

[Sky]

If the faction starts to resist, no problem, recall back to sanctuary and hit another map with zero opposition.

This recalls what I said about lame players who switch sides in BF2 when they start losing. The whole fucking point of the goddamned game is to fight. Recalling to sanc when someone puts up a fight is so utterly fucking stupid I can't even comprehend how someone like that makes it through a day. You're playing a wargame and when someone actually engages in war, you leave? Seriously?

  There was never steady garrisons in Planetside where people are waiting around, bored, for players of rival factions to try to take bases from them.

I would often hang out in periphery bases, those on contested continents that had strategic value, but weren't currently under assault. The ones that people would always try to sneak into without a fight (in a wargame).

Problem was, not many people played like I did. I had the same issue with UO thieves. I played a great rp thief, but most were dipshit bank thieves or notopks.

As always, the problem with mmo are the fucking players. Thus I contend, going with the topic, that I know what I want. Single player games, mostly. I don't want to spend my evening with people who aren't interested in a good battle in a wargame. Or who are more interested in winning than in having a good fight.

Players in Planetside have no problem with death because they don't own anything they're losing.  So, why do we have a problem with Planetside?  Because things don't matter enough, defeat is impossible anyway, and victory is meaningless knowing that the base grants you nothing any other base doesn't already and in another hour you could lose the very base you took because there's nobody around to defend it.

I guess I'll never understand why people need 'meaning' in a goddamned video game. There was no meaning in Gauntlet, there was no meaning in Pac Man. The game is supposed to be fun. You shoot people. People shoot you. You try to pull off some interesting tactics to shoot people better, they try to outsmart you. Meaning? Fuck.

[Kamen]

My problem with PvP in EvE is much the same as it was in UO.  You leave a gate, there's a player sitting on the other side, they launch their "An Corp!" missiles, and boom: you're dead, and the product of 50 hours of ore harvesting is now theirs for the taking.  Oh, too bad, I guess you weren't in the exclusive club that knew that was a bad place to be.  LOL n00b, suck it.  The only reason this isn't entirely out of control in EvE is that there's some level of accountability - you can't escape retribution quite as easily as in UO, so when said n00b complains to his big bad corp members the pirate has either moved on to another gate or is scrap.

You're confusing ganking with PvP.  Eve has both.  The tools and techniques are there to prevent or minimize your ship losses.  Some people learn and use them, others don't and die a lot.

Although far gentler than it used to be, Eve can still be brutal.  It usually weeds out the people who get all queasy over self-inflected laziness/stupidity induced losses fairly quickly.  That's fine with me; the servers can barely keep up with the people joining the game as it is.  Actually no, that's impossible, we all know a PvP oriented game will never succeed because all gamers are pussies.

Without the risk of a painful setback your gains are meaningless.  There are plenty of risk and pain free games out there for those of you who can't cut it in Eve.

[Nebu]

Actually no, that's impossible, we all know a PvP oriented game will never succeed because all gamers are pussies.

You're right.  People that enjoy and have success with hardcore pvp in video games are quite obviously non-pussies.



 

[tazelbain]

Without the risk of a painful setback your gains are meaningless.  There are plenty of risk and pain free games out there for those of you who can't cut it in Eve.

Ya, no. You can keep your self-flagellation.  I am here to have fun.

[Kamen]

Actually no, that's impossible, we all know a PvP oriented game will never succeed because all gamers are pussies.

You're right.  People that enjoy and have success with hardcore pvp in video games are quite obviously non-pussies.
 

The knock on Eve years ago (and the predictions of how it was doomed to failure) was that everybody "knew"  how PvP oriented games could never succeed because everybody "knew" that gamers would never stand painful setbacks.  That in other words - gamers are pussies.

Asserting the reverse as an rebuttal in your attempt to win board snark points doesn't work.

You're attempt at sarcasm fails.

[Kamen]

Without the risk of a painful setback your gains are meaningless.  There are plenty of risk and pain free games out there for those of you who can't cut it in Eve.

Ya, no. You can keep your self-flagellation.  I am here to have fun.

That's cool with me - different stroke and whatnot.

[Nebu]

You're attempt at sarcasm fails.

Gamers are typically people seeking entertainment, not validation.  Keep that in mind when you consider the success of hardcore pvp games. 

[Sky]

Hey, look! Another one who thinks they can gain 'meaning' (in a video game) by punishment.

Since you're new, I'll share my solution with you: Hook your nuts up to a car battery and light 'er up when you die in a game. That should provide the negative reinforcement you seek.

Have a cookie.

[Kamen]

Hey, look! Another one who thinks they can gain 'meaning' (in a video game) by punishment.

Since you're new, I'll share my solution with you: Hook your nuts up to a car battery and light 'er up when you die in a game. That should provide the negative reinforcement you seek.

Have a cookie.

ALL games have goals.

Some games provide the goal(s) for you and others allow you to set them.

The goals of whatever game you play should be fun and enjoyable to you.

Eve provides me with the opportunity to set myself goals and challenges that I find to be enjoyable.

Because the goals and challenges I find to be enjoyable you find to be masochistic does not mean I feel validated, or superior to you.  Furthermore, it does not mean that I enjoy testicular mutilation.  It simply means we like different things.

[geldonyetich]

Have you played Eve?  Is that a real example from your life?!?  The only way that happens is if you're not n00b but retarded.

Yes.  Thus, what you're saying here is basically, "L0L [retarded] n00b, suck it." 

Not that you need to be retarded to run into this scenario.  I've been podded just mining asteroids in one jump away from the starting system, and I don't think mental deficiency was the cause.  Maybe EvE has increased security levels a bit since then, or maybe the person who podded me was another newbie who was bored and didn't mind having security forces come after him later.  The details, like the 50 hours of mining that was a massive exaggeration, aren't really the point.

The point is only this: unrestricted open-ended PvP opens the possibility for ganking of newbies and veterans alike.  Being better at avoiding it doesn't remove the consideration it may be a problematic game aspect.  It belongs in this conversation just because we're discussing improved "meaningful" PvP models (and the neccessity thereof).

This recalls what I said about lame players who switch sides in BF2 when they start losing. The whole fucking point of the goddamned game is to fight. Recalling to sanc when someone puts up a fight is so utterly fucking stupid I can't even comprehend how someone like that makes it through a day. You're playing a wargame and when someone actually engages in war, you leave? Seriously?

I've run into this in every single online game I've played: When one side begins to lose, there's a surge of turncoats to the other side so they can win.  It's something the developers need to plan for, perhaps provide shineys to keep people interested in playing the losing side.  It's the bane of autobalancing on BF2142.  Why the developers couldn't code it to only autobalance the players that had been on that team the least is beyond me, but it sucks when you've been working hard and are about to score your x2 victory points only to get shuffled over to x1 defeat points land.

[palmer_eldritch]

You can get ganked in "safe" space in Eve.

[MahrinSkel]

The point here is not whether you can get ganked, even (theoretically) while running through the newbie tutorial.  You can, Eve is PvP+ all the time, everywhere.  The point is that there's a PvP+ game that is commercially successful, on a scale that is beyond what we believed possible (Eve is well over 100K paying accounts, probably past 150K).  That may be small potatoes in this post-WoW, anything-under-1-million-is-a-failure market, but that says something too, that there really is an alternative to chasing the mass market.

Eve is probably the most *important* game in existence right now.  WoW is destined to become a footnote in history, the game between EQ and the Game That Replaced Religion.  Eve shows us that most of what we thought we had learned about MMO game design was wrong.

--Dave

[Lantyssa]

For the few that played it, I enjoyed Battletech 3025 as a PvP experience.  (PvP only at that.)  Territory was fluid but by having pre-defined realms people worked very hard on defending them before pushing into enemy territory.  Slyfiend's point about always getting shiny was true here as well.  Whether you won or lost, you got some pay.  Winning and being good got you more.  Your 'mechs were repaired after each battle.  The only real consequence to losing was a loss of territorial control.

Now there certainly could have been more to the game, but as far as PvP goes it was one of the few where I had tons of fun.