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Author Topic: Open PvP = gang warfare?  (Read 78172 times)
waylander
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Reply #70 on: February 20, 2007, 01:07:21 PM

/assist in PVP is nothing but a dam crutch, and shouldn't be in any PVP game.

Player guilds form to provide the player community with an additional level of focus by grouping like minded people with like minded guilds.  If some PUG guy doesn't want to be someone's dam lunch, then he or she should seriously consider joining a player guild. Some guilds don't compete seriously, and they usually end up at the bottom of the food chain as a result.  Justifying an assist function for PVP while wanting a game to be player skill driven is contradictory.

Players become more skilled as they practice, transition to a formal team based setting (like a guild), and then play competitively at a guild wide level. If anyone seriously expects to compete in today's games, they need a regular group, voice chat, and some organization. Usually this is what causes guilds to be formed.

In our recent article about building and managing successful guilds, we have this to say about voice communications.

Quote
In this day and age, voice chat is all the rage.  Any guild worth its salt is going to have ventrilo, teamspeak, or some voice server capacity.  Things happen so fast in games these days, that you just don't have time to sit there and type in text chat commands to people.  For day to day coordination, it is imperitive that you establish some sort of voice based communications capacity.

PVP should be chaotic, and assist simply makes it to easy to chain target and quickly kill a single class at a time. That's why PVP today lasts all of 5 seconds because people target the healers, chain assist, healers go down, and then everyone else dies nearly the instant they get targeted. Skill? No that's not skill at all.




Lords of the Dead
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Reply #71 on: February 20, 2007, 02:32:19 PM

/assist makes it easier for people to focus-fire on a given target (ironically, something sinij decried in an earlier post, which I agreed with for the most part).
It's funny, because the reason why M59 has targeting is because back in the day there was a client-side hack program that allowed people to auto-target enemies.  Instead of engaging in the arm's race to try to stop the unstoppable, the developers just put in targeting for everyone.  Most people (still) decry it as something that "ruined the game", but removing it just means that cheaters gain an advantage.

Given that customizable UIs are the norm thanks to WoW, I think it's a bit silly to expect that people won't develop their own auto-targeting systems even if the game doesn't supply it.  And, if the cheaters gain the upper hand in your PvP game, time to kiss it goodbye.

Interesting discussion here.  Unfortunately, I think it largely reinforces my opinion that I do not work on a PvP-focused game for a very long time, if ever.  I'll include PvP in as an element in games, but trying to make a PvP-focused game is simply tilting at windmills.  And trying to build a game to appeal primarily to obnoxious assholes (like me) is not the most profitable thing I could do with my time.  A bit sad because PvP done right is some of the absolute best gameplay you can find.  Unfortunately, the problem is less the design and more the inspiration for Lum's current blog name.

My thoughts,

Brian 'Psychochild' Green
Former Developer, Meridian 59  http://www.meridian59.com/
Blog: http://psychochild.org/
JoeTF
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Reply #72 on: February 20, 2007, 02:46:27 PM

Uhm, where it comes to EVE there is one simple fix - a Stacking Penalty for PvP.

There are two major problems with PvP metagame:
1) There are different styles of PvP - duels, small skirmishes and huge battles. All three have huge following.
2) You need to balance player skills vs. time invested. Pure skill-based PvP sucks for everyone but top 2% players, Guild Wars being prime example here.

Biggest pro of PvP?
It keeps your players hooked longer than grind and raiding, combined. With alliances and stuff, it's basically player generated content (aka. The Holy Grail of mmos)
Thus, don't bullshit me on how PvP game needs to be skill based or how it has to be skirmish oriented. Good PvP game needs to encompass all three types of PvP.
Chenghiz
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Reply #73 on: February 20, 2007, 04:43:09 PM

I define "carebears" or "carebearing" as "not taking advantage of the great PVP experiences in a given game".

PVP experiences are only 'great' if they outweigh all the work you have to undertake when you eventually and inevitably lose. If I have to play (in my casual manner) for a week in EVE to afford to buy and fit a cruiser, just to run out to 0.0 and get gibbed by the first hotshot pirate I see, that ratio is horrible. I would define that as 'not fun.'

On the other hand, if I could afford to get another cruiser and fittings and head back out that day to PVP some more, maybe not get wiped out right away with the knowledge I hopefully gained from the last encounter... that is what becomes fun. But then the PVP doesn't have "consequences!"
Krakrok
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Reply #74 on: February 20, 2007, 04:55:38 PM


For $12 you can die in a cruiser in EVE 50 times before you run out of money.
LC
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Reply #75 on: February 20, 2007, 05:07:03 PM

Lum's pvp post read like a PETA barbecue recipe.

So you and your friends aren't going to cheat like baboons inplay a game that I work on?

Can I get that in writing?

Hopefully your Asian overlords will kill it before I have to make that choice. I will offer some advice though. Let the Koreans handle all of the graphics work for your game.

Quote from: slog
Old? LC and Nija hack every game they play.  Ask them about duping and teleporting people in SB sometime.  A publisher would be better of prebanning these guys, as they are guaranteed to cost you more in CS then you will ever make from subs with them playing...

We are supposed to be prebanned from all future Ubisoft mmos.

Quote from: sinij
Had no displeasure dealing with them in a memorable way but it sounds like ideal guild for beta testing. Send them invite as early as you can and data log *everything* they do, plant a mole, assign Q&A to shadow them if you must. Better start early than fight at putting out fires.

They tried the mole thing in UO. It didn't work out very well for OSI. The GM decided that we were much more fun to be with than the trash she worked with/for. If you want to send a mole, make sure that person is well paid and happy with his or her job.
Chenghiz
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Reply #76 on: February 20, 2007, 11:16:09 PM

For $12 you can die in a cruiser in EVE 50 times before you run out of money.

Something seems a little off about paying $15 a month to pay money to have fun - where I could be spending $15 a month to have fun, or even just $50 once to have fun.
sinij
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Reply #77 on: February 20, 2007, 11:18:30 PM

Quote
or even just $50 once to have fun.

Do you mean getting a hooker?

Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.
lamaros
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Reply #78 on: February 21, 2007, 12:05:37 AM

This is an odd thread. I don't think many of you want the same thing, and in that disparate group I would say not many want what I call PvP.

Why PvP? Because it's fun. Because you're a competitive person and want to beat other people.

tazelbain: Played CS:S? Played any FPS?

Why do you pick one side or the other? Maybe oyu identify with the CTs, maybe you think the other side identifies with the Ts. That's not true though. You pick and team and play that side to win the thing you're competing in. That's ALL that motivates base 'PvP'.

GuildWars had good MMO pvp. (FPS like)

Some MUDs had GREAT MMO pvp. (World/Political like)

I dont think it'd be that hard to do. There's probably not that many developers out there who are interested in it.


damijin
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Reply #79 on: February 21, 2007, 02:39:47 AM

Can battlegrounds/arena style "controlled" PvP co-exist in a game with good world PvP driven by guild politics without one being completely neglected, abused, or treated as though it were meaningless?

I think I already know the answer, but maybe you guys are smarter than me.
Chenghiz
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Reply #80 on: February 21, 2007, 06:28:04 AM

Quote
or even just $50 once to have fun.

Do you mean getting a hooker?

Yeah. No. Buying a game.
waylander
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Reply #81 on: February 21, 2007, 07:53:40 AM

Quote
or even just $50 once to have fun.

Do you mean getting a hooker?

I would be deathly afraid of a hooker that costs 50 bucks for full service! She's likely to get you with her DoT ability.

Lords of the Dead
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Reply #82 on: February 21, 2007, 08:34:01 AM

Disease resist gear, duh.
tazelbain
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tazelbain


Reply #83 on: February 21, 2007, 09:18:16 AM

Why PvP? Because it's fun. Because you're a competitive person and want to beat other people.

tazelbain: Played CS:S? Played any FPS?

Why do you pick one side or the other? Maybe oyu identify with the CTs, maybe you think the other side identifies with the Ts. That's not true though. You pick and team and play that side to win the thing you're competing in. That's ALL that motivates base 'PvP'.

GuildWars had good MMO pvp. (FPS like)
I am not a competitive person (Christ, I must be getting old).  I like to win but that is secondary to having fun.  I enjoy PvP in GW and still play causally.  The combat mechanics are fun in and of themselves. I don't play against other because I want to proof myself better than someone else.  People provide the most interesting challenge.

Back to the topic, I guess what I am asking for are tangible and ideological differences between the nations in an open PvP environment so I have reason to join a group beyond "I have to in order to survive." and "My friend is in that group." and other base considerations.  Guilds that gather strength for helping the npcs, that gather strength corrupting the land, that gather strength by bring about the apocalypse, that gather strength by healing the land, that gather strength by build elaborate cities.  With these tangible differences, that could create ideological differences as people gravitate toward guilds that suite them.  "To lamentations of their women" is a legitimate reason to fight, but right now it is the only reason to fight.  This also enhances the dull "with us or against us" politics because the tangible differences would create tangible conflict.  You need help from the corrupting guild, but part of your land may be corrupted, what do you do?
« Last Edit: February 21, 2007, 09:21:10 AM by tazelbain »

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Nonentity
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Reply #84 on: February 21, 2007, 09:19:34 AM

Disease resist gear, duh.

That would break the $50 limit of having fun! This is a hard limit, imposed by the boundaries of the imagination!

...

You'll have to rely on Seran Wrap.

But that Captain's salami tray was tight, yo. You plump for the roast pork loin, dogg?

[20:42:41] You are halted on the way to the netherworld by a dark spirit, demanding knowledge.
[20:42:41] The spirit touches you and you feel drained.
Kail
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Reply #85 on: February 21, 2007, 02:14:35 PM

Can battlegrounds/arena style "controlled" PvP co-exist in a game with good world PvP driven by guild politics without one being completely neglected, abused, or treated as though it were meaningless?

Not sure what you mean here.  You could take something like EVE and add instanced, zero death penalty battlegrounds or something fairly easily (well, I say "easily" in the sense that it sounds possible, not in the sense that it would be finished in a few hours).  Say there's some "VR tournament" or something that you can log in to while you're docked at a station, and it simulates what a battle would be like in one of your ships (only you don't lose the ship, because it's in VR).  There, done.  Maybe top ranked players get ISK, a write up on the news feed, their faces on the jumpgate billboards, that kind of thing.  Doesn't seem terribly hard. 

But then, it's not going to be "meaningful" in the same way that the world PvP is; you're not really fighting for anything, any more than you are in WoW or GW, so if that's what you mean by "meaningless" then maybe it would be, but I don't know how else you'd handle instanced battles.  Likewise, I'm not sure how it would be neglected, since the devs don't (or shouldn't, ahem) produce content for the PvP game.  It seems like most of their work would be focused around hunting bugs and fixing imbalances, and a fair amount of those would overlap between instanced and non-instanced battlegrounds.  So, I dunno.  Seems feasable to me, anyway.
Krakrok
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Reply #86 on: February 21, 2007, 02:24:07 PM

Say there's some "VR tournament" or something that you can log in to while you're docked at a station, and it simulates what a battle would be like in one of your ships (only you don't lose the ship, because it's in VR).  There, done. 

It would be meaningful in that you'd win in game money, a spot on the ladder, maybe trophies on your profile, and prestige. About as meaningful as NASCAR which isn't saying much I guess.
tazelbain
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tazelbain


Reply #87 on: February 21, 2007, 02:29:18 PM

Shit, I'd totally sub to play DotA, EvE style.

"Me am play gods"
Venkman
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Reply #88 on: February 21, 2007, 06:46:11 PM

Not sure what the beef is with targeting locking. It's just another feature, a way to make things happen even faster. If you want that removed ya sorta need to look at the whole D&D rule subset thing too.

I'd prefer a purely skills-based game with friendly fire and where you can't run through people (so you can have positional relevance, fields of fire, etc). THEN you really need to be careful. Doesn't need to be WWII or sci-fi either. I'd love someone to break that stupid myth.
Hoax
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Reply #89 on: February 21, 2007, 08:18:59 PM

Whew, I think I at least sort of read everything including both blog posts, I hate threads that move fast and that I actually want to read before posting in.

I'm going to ignore the OP, because I still dont even get the gang "problem" and nobody else has articulated any response that made sense that did not boil down to "wtf?".

So I'll pick up with Lum's post on his blog.  Firstly, I agree with Sinji in that Lum doesn't seem to come across as a complete pvper.  But as usual he does have a good grasp of the long view and the conclusions at the end are interesting and have laid the framework for this interesting thread.

re: SB
-R30 were awesome an entire server basically started a slow death (Scorn) once they were caught cheating and destroyed.

Lum says:
Quote
In practice, the meta-groups never really took; the game crystallized into guild vs guild
What are you talking about?  The Meta-groups (nations) got too fucking big if anything.  One of the million lessons one could learn from SB is that you should make it a balancing act with in-game mechanics to increase guild size.  EvE seems to avoid needing this because the game world is just so damn big and the population is just that freaking large.

--Psychochild went on to say something that amounted to SB being just gang-warfare and lacking epic struggles ala Braveheart.

Umm what?  Sure, sb.exe 4tL but Shadowbane did a hell of a job having awesome sieges until everyone realized that 3am raids were teh win.  Another SB lesson, 3am sieges are a bitch.  It is advisable if your going to have a time window siege system you shard your game like this:
PST shard (all sieges can only take place between 5pm and 10pm PST) and do this for all the major timezones and make sure all noobs have this info when they make a char.

I'll edit in some more or make another post later, need to post this and double check it makes some sense for now.
« Last Edit: February 21, 2007, 08:21:48 PM by Hoax »

A nation consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual's morals are situational, then that individual is without morals. If a nation's laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn't a nation.
-William Gibson
tazelbain
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tazelbain


Reply #90 on: February 21, 2007, 09:19:09 PM

Since no ones what the fuck I am talking about, I guess the thread is just another rehashing of the rift between the PvP "true-believers" and the rest of us.

Anyway, good luck playing Civilization where everyone plays the Huns. 

"Me am play gods"
Venkman
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Reply #91 on: February 21, 2007, 09:58:37 PM

We're on page 3 of many derails man. Something's obviously not connecting. Could you take it from the top? And I'm serious. The arguments happening now are 3-5 years old.
pxib
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Reply #92 on: February 21, 2007, 10:18:26 PM

Back to the topic, I guess what I am asking for are tangible and ideological differences between the nations in an open PvP environment so I have reason to join a group beyond "I have to in order to survive." and "My friend is in that group." and other base considerations.  Guilds that gather strength for helping the npcs, that gather strength corrupting the land, that gather strength by bring about the apocalypse, that gather strength by healing the land, that gather strength by build elaborate cities.  With these tangible differences, that could create ideological differences as people gravitate toward guilds that suite them.  "To lamentations of their women" is a legitimate reason to fight, but right now it is the only reason to fight.  This also enhances the dull "with us or against us" politics because the tangible differences would create tangible conflict.  You need help from the corrupting guild, but part of your land may be corrupted, what do you do?
Well first, I subscribe to your newsletter.

What you are asking for is difficult to produce and balance, while relatively straighforward games of Civilization where everyone plays the Huns are still selling well. For meaningful alliances to form there have to be more than three sides, and very few MMOs have even attempted that  many. I think five would be the minimum.  The tangible differences between them would need to be carefully cast lest population balance become even more obscene than usual. Players will constantly gripe about how the land healers have it easy, and that city builders are just cannon fodder... or the other way 'round... or both. The more sides and the more tangible their differences the more ways there are for players to gripe.

Could it be done? Absolutely.

But right now players will pay a monthly fee to sit around watching IRC and a spreadsheet with only the occasional promise of hun vs. hun space-warfare. Until the "true believers" stop rehashing, bored at last of the same old thing, the best we'll see is Hun vs. Cossak vs. Mongol.

if at last you do succeed, never try again
JoeTF
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Reply #93 on: February 22, 2007, 03:57:10 AM

On the VR thingy, you could make those champin style, where teams fight for system ownership or Empire favors or simply large bets of money/
slog
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Reply #94 on: February 22, 2007, 06:10:22 AM

Quote
-R30 were awesome an entire server basically started a slow death (Scorn) once they were caught cheating and destroyed.

Bone Dancer and friends were hacking/duping etc in Beta as well as release.

Quote
Lum says:
Quote
In practice, the meta-groups never really took; the game crystallized into guild vs guild
What are you talking about?  The Meta-groups (nations) got too fucking big if anything.  One of the million lessons one could learn from SB is that you should make it a balancing act with in-game mechanics to increase guild size.  EvE seems to avoid needing this because the game world is just so damn big and the population is just that freaking large.

What I think Lum is saying here is that Nations were not really Meta-groups, but were effectively Uber-guilds with minro subdivisions.  The original design of SB was for Nations to be made up of independent sub guilds that would band together for short periods of time under the Nation Banner to fight a common enemy.  Sub guilds were supposed to be constantly switching Nations as the political landscape changed.

While there were some minor exceptions, it didn't turn out that way. 

Friends don't let Friends vote for Boomers
waylander
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Reply #95 on: February 22, 2007, 06:46:50 AM

Shadowbane's fundamental problem was that it was changed over the objections of myself and a few other people to favore the extrme hardcore segment, and the game mechanics altered so that crushed = quit the game.

I still have a lot of my old war journals archived, and sometimes I go back and read them fondly to remember what could have been.  Once SB mechanics were changed so that it was hard to rebuild, it caused crushed guilds to fold into another guild that had a city. It also caused small guilds to have to fold into more established nations that had a city because ultimately a small guild had no real way to defend or maintain that city if it got in the crosshairs.

So SB suffered greatly during its first two years because:

1. Player City was the nucleus of the end game
2. Without a player city, you had to join a nation that had one
3. Rebuilding took too long and cost too much
4. Siege WoO's and removal of rolling trebs made PVP too predicatble and less tactical
5. Knowing the time and place of sieges allowed for zergs to form
6. The average player had little investment in their cities, so they only cared after it was lost.  I proposed 3 times for mines to generate wages for all city citizens, and based on guild rank. Someone could have earned a good wage by protecting their city and its mines.

I could go on and on, but to me those were the critical things that drove casual players from the game and caused zerg nations to form that ultimately destroyed nearly every single server.  R30 only got so powerful so fast on Scorn because they knew how to dupe billions in gold, and that gave them a huge advantage in city building and funding warfare. After they got nailed for duping and had their gold and duped assets frozen, they fell rather quickly to the LAPD alliance.
« Last Edit: February 22, 2007, 06:58:35 AM by waylander »

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Nija
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Reply #96 on: February 22, 2007, 09:40:44 AM

Well I think SB's biggest problem is that people really wanted to defend their towns, against any odds. They'd just spend 3-4 hours at a time trying to defend it, but of those 3-4 hours trying to defend, 75% of the time was spent frozen in lag, staring at their desktop, or rebooting their PC.

The main thing that SB tried to do didn't work. The only reason to play the game was broken. Wolfpack was okay with that.

If the game actually worked correctly, instead of spending 45/240 minutes actually playing and defending your town, you'd be spending much more time actually "losing gracefully". Actually PLAYING.

Most people who "gave up and quit" SB had one too many nights of sb.exe errors and fighting with the client before they could actually fight their in-game enemies.
Morat20
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Reply #97 on: February 22, 2007, 10:12:42 AM

On the VR thingy, you could make those champin style, where teams fight for system ownership or Empire favors or simply large bets of money/
Someone should hassle an EVE developer about that -- it would address one of the big problems with their PvP system: Learning is too damn expensive. Unless you set out to PvP right away, by the time you feel your skills are right and youv'e mastered enough of the game -- you've got a head full of implants and you're a bit worried about podding.

Playing some VR PvP to get a feel for the game and tactics would be nice.
Slayerik
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Reply #98 on: February 22, 2007, 11:17:42 AM

On the VR thingy, you could make those champin style, where teams fight for system ownership or Empire favors or simply large bets of money/
Someone should hassle an EVE developer about that -- it would address one of the big problems with their PvP system: Learning is too damn expensive. Unless you set out to PvP right away, by the time you feel your skills are right and youv'e mastered enough of the game -- you've got a head full of implants and you're a bit worried about podding.

Playing some VR PvP to get a feel for the game and tactics would be nice.

Its called Sisi (test server) hehe

"I have more qualifications than Jesus and earn more than this whole board put together.  My ego is huge and my modesty non-existant." -Ironwood
Hoax
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Reply #99 on: February 22, 2007, 12:21:41 PM

Back to the topic, I guess what I am asking for are tangible and ideological differences between the nations in an open PvP environment so I have reason to join a group beyond "I have to in order to survive." and "My friend is in that group." and other base considerations.  Guilds that gather strength for helping the npcs, that gather strength corrupting the land, that gather strength by bring about the apocalypse, that gather strength by healing the land, that gather strength by build elaborate cities.  With these tangible differences, that could create ideological differences as people gravitate toward guilds that suite them.  "To lamentations of their women" is a legitimate reason to fight, but right now it is the only reason to fight.  This also enhances the dull "with us or against us" politics because the tangible differences would create tangible conflict.  You need help from the corrupting guild, but part of your land may be corrupted, what do you do?

Face of Mankind tried really hard to pull this off, it sort of worked but the gameplay was pretty broken and the game was very ghetto.  It got absolutely smashed around f13 by everyone but me at the time.  What you are saying there is interesting, sorry for missing it earlier.  But it is very very hard to codify.  Some factions in FoM just refused to actually act like the faction should according to the fluff, there were also tons of population issues.  I'll try to think about ways to make a "ideal based faction pvp" work for shit and post later.  Sorry I missed that paragraph when I was reading through last night.

Other interesting stuff I read in this thread:

We should really have a discussion in the game dev forum imo about removing inter-faction chat and alternative ways to get rid of smacktardation without removing all politiking from pvp games.  There are major pro's and con's addressed in the thread and on the blogs about chat freedoms given to players.

Psychochild says:
Quote
[not having chat] also hinders the real possibility of PvP becoming anything more than gangs beating on each other. After all, what really separates a large war from a small-time gang fight? Politics. And without meaningful communication, politics falls flat.

I sort of agree with that.


Another thing that I've been waiting and waiting to see discussed is WoW's new direction for pvp.  Seems to me they are going the GW route, by making the arena pvp "the" pvp.  I fully expect the 3rd round of Arena pvp to make it onto G4 at this point.  I'm at a loss to why MMO's should be competing with RTS/FPS games for prime-time skill competitions which force them to completely isolate the combatants from the "world" that they spent all this time creating.

A nation consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual's morals are situational, then that individual is without morals. If a nation's laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn't a nation.
-William Gibson
tazelbain
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tazelbain


Reply #100 on: February 22, 2007, 10:32:55 PM

We're on page 3 of many derails man. Something's obviously not connecting. Could you take it from the top? And I'm serious. The arguments happening now are 3-5 years old.
I want a pony with a spoiler and ground effects.
What you are asking for is difficult to produce and balance, while relatively straighforward games of Civilization where everyone plays the Huns are still selling well. For meaningful alliances to form there have to be more than three sides, and very few MMOs have even attempted that  many. I think five would be the minimum.  The tangible differences between them would need to be carefully cast lest population balance become even more obscene than usual. Players will constantly gripe about how the land healers have it easy, and that city builders are just cannon fodder... or the other way 'round... or both. The more sides and the more tangible their differences the more ways there are for players to gripe.
Selling well in Korea, maybe.  One of the geniuses at Puzzle Pirates said that the key to a good puzzle is conflicting goals.  Alliances with many guild-types would have a lot tension.  Alliances with a single guild-type would lack diversity.  The problem with SB guild-types was they were asking the players to cut off a limb and didn't add anything meaningful to the game.

The impressive trick would be if you could structure the guild-types so that like minded individuals gravitate towards the same-type.  Guild-types for domination-types, ganker-types, tight-group types, peacekeepers-types, merc-types, builder-types, achiever types, trader types etc.  So external differences could reflect internal differences.

"Me am play gods"
JoeTF
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Reply #101 on: February 22, 2007, 10:41:18 PM

On the VR thingy, you could make those champin style, where teams fight for system ownership or Empire favors or simply large bets of money/
Someone should hassle an EVE developer about that -- it would address one of the big problems with their PvP system: Learning is too damn expensive. Unless you set out to PvP right away, by the time you feel your skills are right and youv'e mastered enough of the game -- you've got a head full of implants and you're a bit worried about podding.

Playing some VR PvP to get a feel for the game and tactics would be nice.

Its called Sisi (test server) hehe

Nope, SiSi sucks for that:
1) It's down 99% f time.
2) Stuff might be affordable, but getting a stock everytime they d a wipe is ultra painful.
3) They will gank you anyway.
Calantus
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Reply #102 on: February 22, 2007, 11:47:45 PM

I still have a lot of my old war journals archived

Are those public? I love me some war journals.
Venkman
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Reply #103 on: February 23, 2007, 06:29:20 AM

Quote from: Hoax
I'm at a loss to why MMO's should be competing with RTS/FPS games for prime-time skill competitions which force them to completely isolate the combatants from the "world" that they spent all this time creating.
Because a) it's a good sport; and, b) more players are likely to try it.

The single biggest problem with relevant PvP is that most players do not want that level of immersion full-time.

I liked where WoW was heading with BGs initially, but they quickly devolved to mere sport. This I believe is because they forced the broad array of activities all into the same zone. I'm thinking particularly of the side-quests in Alterac Valley. Had they had those mines and the unlocking of various NPCs all outside of the zone, in PvE public-space content, then you could atttract those who just want to PvE to the larger "war" effort, allowing the soldiers in the zone itself doing the actual taking of towers and whatnot. This would be similar to the unlocking of the Ahn'Qiral gates event, but be much more relevant than simply farming drops. PvEers could feel they are contributing to something by playing the protected PvE game thay like, while PvPers are in doing the actual fighting while getting the support from more than just those stuck in the fight.

There's a lot of things to figure out, like timing specifically, but it's all doable and would allow more to contribute WHILE getting that immersive feel.
sinij
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WWW
Reply #104 on: February 23, 2007, 09:43:23 AM

Quote
or even just $50 once to have fun.

Do you mean getting a hooker?

Yeah. No. Buying a game.

I think we need some standardized units to measure mmorpg fun, I propose to measure it in hookers or HK. So much HK does your mmorpg has under the hood?

Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.
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