Lum's "PvP Post" [Archive] - Quarter To Three Forums

Skipper

12-11-2007, 06:11 AM

Normally I like reading Lum's posts. I rarely disagree with what he writes about. Sometimes though I feel as though he simply states the obvious and we all nod in agreement like it's gospel. I feel this way now.

He presented both point and counterpoint for most of the PvP arguments but really didn't offer any advice beyond, "a little of this but not too much" kind of stuff. To be honest, as much as folks bitch and complain and gripe about PvP, I think he forgot the biggest part about it:

It can weigh an MMO community down with all the bitching and griping to the point that it's nearly detrimental to have it in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I like it as much as others, but I detest the constant balancing, bitching, buffing, and major gameplay changes that come about DIRECTLY due to PvP. It has to burn countless development hours, and that can detract from any game that doesn't have the resources of the big shops. And I've seen this in not one or two, but five different MMO's I've played.

As much of a necessity as it is to have it these days to draw that part of the market, it's a double edged sword. It can ruin a game just as easily as it makes it stand out. And I hope that future MMO devs can learn to balance that fine line without sacrificing the whole game in the process.

Njal

12-11-2007, 06:12 AM

I pretty much agree with what Lum said there. The one thing he doesn't go into that I think needs outlining is the pace of combat.

One shot kills under normal circumstances should not happen, to make it more clear if you can kill you're opponent before he has a realistic chance to do more than go wtf then you will lose customers. However under the right circumstances this sort of thing should be possible as long as the target(s) have put themselves into a bad enough situation (eg sitting caster being attacked by a thief type or my favourite a bunch of careless types letting a PBAE caster sneak up behind them and nuke them all to death because they are all facing the wrong direction).

Generally I like the battle to last long enough to give everyone a chance to do things in response to the threat environment. Say 30 seconds to 1 minute as a base. Care must be taken to keep the assist train from being too powerful. Collision detection (if done very carefully) could keep the train under control.

Mox

12-11-2007, 06:46 AM

Combat duration depends a lot on the game though. Planetside kills people very quickly. Take a 105mm shell to the face, and you explode on the spot. Jackhammer triple-shot will floor a trooper dressed in Reinforced Exo-Armour instantly. If you're on less than 75% health, I think, the bolt driver will one-shot you. But, all of this is appropriate to the game and works well in context. The way respawning is handled meshes very will with the rapid pace of combat.

Compare City of Heroes, where fights between Heroes and Villains can be quite lengthy. Unless you are seriously overpowered, you are unlikely to lose an engagement because you will almost always be able to escape before you get killed. If the PvP is objective-focused rather than kill-focused, this works out perfectly; instead of random skirmishing, players get to attack and defend control points, and retreat and regroup as appropriate.

Guild Wars has a moderate survivability; you can normally toe-to-toe with someone for an extended battle, but if they pop out a killer combo for which you have no counter, or at least which catches you by surprise, you can find yourself dead in seconds. It's all about the skill selection, synergies, and spur-of-the-moment opportunities.

Crowd control and disabilities can be very frustrating. The player is unable to counter-attack or escape, and has to sit there and take their beating. If the combat is over quickly, that's not too bad, but to have to sit there for up to a minute while the rest of your team is killed, waiting for your go for a punch in the teeth, is quite demoralizing. I've only seen that sort of thing on EQ PvP and of course Dark Age of Camelot.

One thing I would like to put on the table for people to chew is that often the PvE aspects of a game play very differently to the PvP aspects. The extent to which this modifies gear selection and tactics brings a tension to the game balance that can often only be fixed by making things even worse: skills and spells that only work against "Realm Enemies" or only against monsters widen the gap even further. What use is an Infiltrator on the Gaheris server, for example? Almost all the games I've played that have both PvE and PvP have required players to change their strategies depending on that human/AI divide, although I have to give credit to Guild Wars for doing this the least. But then, Guild Wars is extremely situational. It seems like EA Fairfax are at least considering this with Warhammer Age of Reckoning.

Njal

12-11-2007, 06:50 AM

It seems like EA Fairfax are at least considering this with Warhammer Age of Reckoning.

Lalalalala. No comment.

As for combat duration, you are correct about it being game dependent. I am referring to generic fantasy game combat and yes I like the occasional ability to pull out a massive burst of damage and win quickly.

Brian Rucker

12-11-2007, 06:57 AM

What Skipper said.

TheWombat

12-11-2007, 07:18 AM

Pretty good stuff. I would just say that to me, the key thing is balancing the separation. You need areas where you feel pretty safe from other players, but if you carry that too far you end up with WoW's "sporting arena" battlegrounds and no world PvP, and to me world PvP is where it's at, the combination of PvE/PvP in the same space. Something like DAOC's frontiers, but without the artificial wall--make it so you have a lot of peripheral areas where PvP gets gradually more common until you get to the free fire zone in the middle. Making sure this balance is maintained and doesn't just implode under ass hattery is I guess the challenge.

Given the choice, I'd rather have to deal with gankers than have to transition from the "real' game world into a battleground just to get PvP. I want my questing and grinding to be subject to PvP interference, and vice versa. But I agree that the challenge there is making sure new players get to that point, and constant newby ganking won't help at all.

Charles

12-11-2007, 07:29 AM

I love Lum's post, because just about every point can be appended with "Like how Eve does it."

Athryn

12-11-2007, 07:30 AM

Reldan

12-11-2007, 07:33 AM

I used to believe that the perfect PvE/PvP balanced MMO was possible. Years ago. Many years ago.

Now I feel that a good PvE game is what the vast majority want, and that overlaying a PvP system on top is precisely that - just an overlay to the "real" game. Almost like a minigame really.

You've got competing mentalities at work in these games. A bunch of people are "Play For Fun" types and the few that are taking a breaking from playing Soul Calibur or M:tG are purely "Play To Win" types. These two groups are both gamers in the way that oil and water are both liquids, but like oil and water they simply don't mix.

A true PvP MMO game is possible, but too niche to be a true commercial success. At this point I think competitive online play is best kept to the TF2s, SC2s, and Halos of the world. It's a better fit for the people who enjoy ownzorzing, the rules are balanced all around, and it keeps those people away from the folk who are just trying to socialize and maybe kill the dragon.

Charles

12-11-2007, 07:34 AM

Reldan: Eve.

Without a 3rd faction you always end up with one side or another being overpopulated, when you throw in a 3rd one, you get the awesome dynamic of the 2 "underdog" factions making a temporary truce to gang up on the bigger enemy.

Which is why Eve is awesome, because you can have infinite factions, and things can get absurdly crazy.

Soapyfrog

12-11-2007, 07:36 AM

Njal

12-11-2007, 07:36 AM

One pvp wish I have is that when you kill a farmer you get to loot him dry. Of course how to distinguish from a legit farming for personal reasons and farming for sale might be a wee problem.

Charles

12-11-2007, 07:37 AM

Better than this even would be free-form, player-made factions.

... like Eve.

Njal

12-11-2007, 07:37 AM

Better than this even would be free-form, player-made factions.

I don't agree. That was Shadowbane's way and it tended to end up with one massive alliance with no one to fight. I guess the Eve universe is big enough that no one faction can dominate but smaller worlds ...

McBain

12-11-2007, 07:39 AM

PvP players need some grinding. Without some form of ‘grinding’ - in other words, character persistence and improvement - you have a world without meaning. No one grinds in Counterstrike (unless you count the very real grind of player skill and oh boy are we coming back to that one in a bit). Very few PvP players want no character improvement - what the argument boils down to is that they want a small “ramp-up” time, and then small incremental improvements over time that give their characters a wider set of abilities without making the constantly growing equation of power growth = time invested that is so common in MMOs to date. At any rate, that’s the charitable view. The cynical view is that the average PvP player wants player growth for everyone else capped to 10% to 25% less powerful than they personally are at any given moment.

Few, if any, PvPers really did any grinding in UO. One of the reasons UO was so popular with the PvP crowd (other than the fact that you could actually, you know, PvP), was macroing. Grinding is generally a pointless and stupid area of game design that is designed as a time-sink keep the subscriptions of douchebags who want to play 12 hours a day. See: WoW's Ahn'Qiraj Gate Opening events.

And incidentally, EVE might be a decent game, but I'm not tolerant enough of horrifically bad latency problems to find out.

Athryn

12-11-2007, 07:42 AM

Hanacker

12-11-2007, 07:42 AM

Doesn't Guild Wars meet most of those requirements?

Most of them. But there's no real sense of loss and no World PvP. It's basically deathmatch, but it's fun.

Eve Online might be the closest to satisfying all of his requirements.

Njal

12-11-2007, 07:43 AM

What Athryn said.

Charles

12-11-2007, 07:49 AM

I don't really like the infinite factions though, because it still really isn't "newbie friendly," and is much more "wolves in the woods" to me, which is why I never was into Shadowbane either. I'm also not a fan of full on anyone versus anyone pvp. That's just my own personal taste though.

The thing I loved the most about DAoC, and something which is really missing in WoW is the whole concept of "realm pride." In DAoC, you cared about the realm as a whole, and not just about your personal score or your team's score (although that did start to change towards the end.) You cared if the relics were under attack. That's not something that I've really seen in any other game (I know, "for the Horde", but it's not the same.) Wow itself really is almost designed to pit players and guilds/arena teams against each other more than the opposing faction.

The thing about Eve though, is while it may be "Wolves in the woods," the woods are policed by players. The edge of the woods are the dangerous area, but if you aren't in the woods, you really just never have to worry. I've never been touched in highsec, I got ganked the first time I stepped in to lowsec, and the only time I've been in 0.0 was for gang pvp, where we tore down a ton of shit.

What I like about player made factions, is that instead of "realm pride" you have pride for what you have built yourself. People are more personally invested in Eve. Being part of one of the big alliances, or even being a well known merc squad is a level of game investment you cannot get anywhere else.

McBain

12-11-2007, 07:52 AM

I got ganked the first time I stepped in to lowsec, and the only time I've been in 0.0 was for gang pvp, where we tore down a ton of shit.

Yeah, uh, isn't that also one of the problems with EVE's PvP? That it's usually just gate-camping or roving gang-rape squads?

Charles

12-11-2007, 07:54 AM

Yeah, uh, isn't that also one of the problems with EVE's PvP? That it's usually just gate-camping or roving gang-rape squads?

Eve absolutely isn't made for solo pvp. PVP is all about being in a fleet, and it is balanced for such. The level of tactics available for fleet or small gang pvp is pretty fantastic.

Nathan Phoenix

12-11-2007, 07:59 AM

I dunno, for me, DAoC is really the game that got the balance right. I know there are tons of people out there who wanted home invasion servers in that game, and it would have made for an interesting alternate ruleset, but for me, really DAoC's way of doing it was the bee's knees. Having that defined choice whether to PvP or PvE was great, and the persistent PvP area (as opposed to just battlegrounds) with 3 factions is also, imo, an important factor, and something I really am kinda mystified as to why no other PvP MMO (including Warhammer) is choosing to include a 3rd faction.

Without a 3rd faction you always end up with one side or another being overpopulated, when you throw in a 3rd one, you get the awesome dynamic of the 2 "underdog" factions making a temporary truce to gang up on the bigger enemy.

I guess I really wish they were going to do a DAoC 2, keeping everything that made the original DAoC awesome, but adding in stuff that's been learned by the industry since then, with a graphics upgrade and world overhaul.

QFMFT.

I'd take a DAOC 2 with the lessons learned from DAOC 1 over any MMO currently in existance or being developed by anyone.

I think Eve has awesome framework for pvp, but the actual mechanics suck. In my experience maybe one out of twenty fights in Eve aren't a foregone conclusion due to size of fleets/gangs or what ships are involved. This happens to a degree in almost every PVP game, but generally less often than it does in Eve. I played Eve for a long time but got bored because there was rarely any challenge - you're generally more concerned with keeping people that can't hope to kill you from escaping, or escaping from people you can't hope to kill, then actually having relatively balanced, challenging encounters with players.

Mox

12-11-2007, 08:02 AM

I think the player-factions games are far too fragile and can be exclusionary to new players. Realm pride really knocks people together; Planetside is truly a drop-in MMO, and Camelot featured lots of banding together against the enemy. In a sense, when you logged into a Camelot server on one of the good nights, you were automatically in an alliance with 1000 allies, but pitted against two other alliances of the same size. As Athryn has already said, if one side starts to get an advantage, capturing more towers and keeps, then they are hit harder because they have more undefended locations.

If there was some hard limit to how far a player-faction can extend control then it could be reasonably managed. Imagine if the minimum number of independent city-states in Shadowbane was, say, six or so? If you can't deploy siege under your own banned more than one or two territory-radii away? Yes, alliances. But I think we can rely on Guild Drama (tm) to make those somewhat unstable. Requiring the formal and explicit trade of resources and personnel between player factions should be all it takes to drive wedges between enormous conglomerates.

Brian Rucker

12-11-2007, 08:16 AM

My limited impression as a guy who's plenty wary about PvP in MMOs is that Eve gets it closest to right. You can't try and artificially balance things or create random justifications you hope are somehow compelling. You need players, as Charles put it, to take ownership of what they've created themselves. Maybe there are issues about how big a petri dish you need for the cultures to create a balanced system that can't be easily dominated by one alliance but this is still where PvP should be.

PvP without meaning is no fun for many people other than sadists who just like ganking for the sake of it. PvP with potentially high stakes and reprocussions as driven by player factions and economies drives more than just exciting warfare it drives 10x as much politics and diplomacy as it does fighting. That's a huge amount of content and it's all generated and consumed by players whether they're directly immeshed in the fighting or not.

Look at the gossip we have here alone about who's doing what to whom and why. Does anyone care remotely as much about something that's going on in a game where the only rewards are rankings and phat loots?

Another big factor that works in Eve's PvP favor is that it is a one-world server. The game is the game not just some shard or fragment that's lost in the shuffle. And as everyone knows it's better to be a cockroach in New York City than a king anywhere else.

But anything short of the full on, brains and brawn, playerdriven conflicts of Evelike PvP just isn't going to do it for alot of people. When the devs are the mitigators and litigators they're just setting themselves up as punching bags for everyone with an issue for how the, relatively simplistic, game dynamics function

Give the players complexity and free reign instead, as Eve does, and you'll have a far more "fix it yourself" and "quit whining" approach to design conflicts, hell, any conflicts. While gross imbalances still draw fire in the Eve forums anyone can simply build a ship to at least be competant with less than FOTM skills while the fleet or corporation oriented approach to everything minimizes the negative impact of balance issues for any one captain. He's part of a team. Good tactics trump all.

I don't love PvP but I respect it when it's done right.

Edit: Oh, and upon actually reading Lum's article I found it very good. Yes, some of it is obvious but not everything and it's helpful to have good encyclopedic overviews of concepts like this one. Lum's most important point?

Congratulations on the realization that no matter where you step, the mine will go off directly under your foot.

And that kind of feeds back into my point that it's best to give as much control and ownership as you can to players so they're the ones stepping on and clearing mines themselves.

Lum

12-11-2007, 08:25 AM

It can weigh an MMO community down with all the bitching and griping to the point that it's nearly detrimental to have it in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I like it as much as others, but I detest the constant balancing, bitching, buffing, and major gameplay changes that come about DIRECTLY due to PvP. It has to burn countless development hours, and that can detract from any game that doesn't have the resources of the big shops. And I've seen this in not one or two, but five different MMO's I've played.

As much of a necessity as it is to have it these days to draw that part of the market, it's a double edged sword. It can ruin a game just as easily as it makes it stand out. And I hope that future MMO devs can learn to balance that fine line without sacrificing the whole game in the process.

All this is true, but well-done PvP is also one of the few sources of compelling player-generated content we've found. Which for MMO development is pretty huge. That's why most MMOs try to include it in some fashion (even a half-assed sort of way.) It's a relatively safe way to deliver a lot of bang for the buck when done right.

Lum

12-11-2007, 08:30 AM

I don't agree. That was Shadowbane's way and it tended to end up with one massive alliance with no one to fight. I guess the Eve universe is big enough that no one faction can dominate but smaller worlds ...

Eve has two servers, the Western server and the Asian server. On the Western server competing factions constantly fight for dominance. On the Asian server, one alliance has taken over the server. One of these situations is interesting. Luckily for CCP, Westerners like to squabble!

Charles

12-11-2007, 08:42 AM

Eve has two servers, the Western server and the Asian server. On the Western server competing factions constantly fight for dominance. On the Asian server, one alliance has taken over the server. One of these situations is interesting. Luckily for CCP, Westerners like to squabble!

Interesting, I didn't know that.

That being said, it's not like alliances haven't *tried*. I'm curious to know the size of the game world on the Asian server. Maybe the population is small. But if there's still empty spaces in the world, people can eventually start up a competing alliance.

Interesting social experiment as much as anything else, I'm sure. I can't think that suddenly there's no pvp in the Asian server. I expect that maybe there's a much higher population of pirates, and thus the need for a larger alliance? I just can't see everyone living in harmony.

Kalle

12-11-2007, 08:48 AM

How does it work, being a Lum fangirl?

Do you follow Lum on tour, find out what hotels he's staying at, and then wait for hours in the hope that he'll walk by you so you can get a quick look and an autograph when he already snuck out the back door to avoid you?

Ephraim

12-11-2007, 08:51 AM

I just can't see everyone living in harmony.

Then you're not fully appreciating the difference between a collectivistic culture and an individualistic one. It really is a radically different mindset.

Alan Dunkin

12-11-2007, 08:52 AM

Of course it's possible he doesn't offer hard solutions because he already knows the solutions and he's putting it into his own product, hence he doesn't want to give away the candy just yet.

--- Alan

Athryn

12-11-2007, 08:54 AM

Guido Jones

12-11-2007, 08:55 AM

Without a 3rd faction you always end up with one side or another being overpopulated, when you throw in a 3rd one, you get the awesome dynamic of the 2 "underdog" factions making a temporary truce to gang up on the bigger enemy.

Having played on a underdog realm for a long time in DAoC, it actually rarely works this way. Most of the time, the big realm would choose one of the others to beat on. The realm that wasn't being beaten on would then help the big realm beat on the smaller one.

Three realms doesn't magically fix population balance, and often just makes things worse.

Soapyfrog

12-11-2007, 08:57 AM

Yes you have to combat the dogpile mentality somehow. While it may seem logical for the weak to band up against the strong, in practice the opposite seems to happen more often than not. This is becuase people like to WIN in the short term, without thinking about how badly they are going to lose in the long term.

Athryn

12-11-2007, 09:02 AM

I still maintain that 3 factions is better than only 2. On the server I played on in DAoC, there was a flux of which side was considered powerful, and the alliances changed, temporary truces were made. When you only have 2 factions, and one is overpopulated, there's nothing to balance that at all, short of making a battleground queue, which nobody really likes. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I think it's an important design element that many developers seem to overlook.

Guido Jones

12-11-2007, 09:07 AM

Njal

12-11-2007, 09:09 AM

LesJarvis

12-11-2007, 09:11 AM

Then you're not fully appreciating the difference between a collectivistic culture and an individualistic one. It really is a radically different mindset.

Yeah, that's my take. Interesting (though not really surprising) how the game mirrors those cultural values.

Lum's post was more about generalized design than mechanical design, but I think one key component to sustainable PvP is proper scaling. WoW has had major issues with this because its mechanics do not scale correctly, so you have different classes jumping around in terms of viability as gear level increases, and in turn endless buffs and nerfs. Ideally you want classes to stay the same in terms of relative power, so if class A starts off doing 100 DPS and class B doing 80 DPS, once class A gets to 200 DPS class B is doing 160 DPS in comparable gear. This isn't limited to damage, of course, but it's one of the easier ways to demonstrate the issue. There's a guy named Muphrid who's written extensively about this problem as it relates to WoW on the official forums if you're, uh, really bored, or find this kind of thing interesting:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=108235377
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=106865398

This is obviously only relevant in a class based game.

One other thing of note that at first glance might seem obvious, but often ends up being forgotten, is that everything needs a counter. Everything. Any time you let a player take a significant action that cannot in some way be impeded by the opposition you tread dangerously into overpowered territory.

Guido Jones

12-11-2007, 09:13 AM

Let me give you an anecdote of why I love what DAoC did right and how compelling it could be.

I get up usually around 3am ( I blame the army) so here it is I'm online on one of the DAoC rp servers at 3am christmas morning and the treacherous Albs decide to go keep taking in Midgard.

There were only about 15 of us who were PvP capable as it was 3 months or so from launch and levelling was slow but we all knew each other from fighting inthe frontier even though were were almost all from different guilds. It took us 3 hours but evreone rushed from whereever they were doing PvE and even though we were outnumbered we gradually drove them out of the frontier. It's hard to explain the feeling of realm pride that was there but this wasn't an isolated incident.

I had that occur many times when I played DAoC as well. But as ToA and Population imbalance slowly destroyed the playerbase, gank groups took the place of realm pride.

Mox

12-11-2007, 09:13 AM

The Realms aren't huge hive-mind collectives that people are plugged into the moment they log in. The psychology doesn't work like that. It's simply a matter of people banding together and looking for a fight, usually. If Albion controls 60% of the PvP territory, then the Hibernians and the Midgardians are more likely to find themselves assaulting an Albion tower than another Realm's tower.

Ironically, the flags indicating "hot spots" of combat can work against the system - especially if you have intelligence about the kinds of forces being fielded by the three Realms that night. If Albion is out as a zerg, then the Hibernians may be looking for a small group of Midgardians to roll, trying to avoid the red steamroller.

It's even more obvious in Planetside that it can work very well. When a faction gets shut out (e.g., Vanu are dominating, NC are losing badly, and TR attacks the last NC cont from the other side), the forums are often full of angry players from all factions complaining about the target selection of the piggy-in-the-middle faction. As often, I've seen global orders to attack the bases of the dominant faction on a different continent.

In fact, that's a little strange, now I think about it. In Planetside, all fights are about bases. You're defending a base, or assaulting a base. You don't just drive around the countryside looking for a fight. I wonder if the fortifications in Camelot were just too defensible?

Rollory

12-11-2007, 09:14 AM

Eve has two servers, the Western server and the Asian server. On the Western server competing factions constantly fight for dominance. On the Asian server, one alliance has taken over the server. One of these situations is interesting. Luckily for CCP, Westerners like to squabble!

This is deceptively phrased.

There is a monopoly of force on the Asian server because one group went all-out to get capital ships, which (last I heard) can only be built in 0.0. Once they had them, they made a point of preventing anybody else from getting a foothold in 0.0 to build their own. It's self-perpetuating - until they get bored.

It isn't a question of culture, it's a question of force and abuseable game mechanics. BOB would have done the exact same thing if they'd had a chance. They didn't because the Western server was around long enough before POS warfare and capships got added in for different camps to get established, *before* the tools were in-game for one group to be able to actually implement a true monopoly of force.

Njal

12-11-2007, 09:18 AM

I had that occur many times when I played DAoC as well. But as ToA and Population imbalance slowly destroyed the playerbase, gank groups took the place of realm pride.

Alas, true.

Guido Jones

12-11-2007, 09:35 AM

In fact, that's a little strange, now I think about it. In Planetside, all fights are about bases. You're defending a base, or assaulting a base. You don't just drive around the countryside looking for a fight. I wonder if the fortifications in Camelot were just too defensible?

Before the new frontier stuff, fortifications were great for range classes, and sucked very badly for melee types. Melee participation in these fights boiled down to either running a ram, or hiding until the doors dropped. Once the doors dropped, you either ran in and were killed instantly by PBAoE, or killed the enemy nearly instantly.

After new frontiers, keep fights were a bit more fun for melees, but ultimately you could gain more Rps running around open field. Plus by the time of new frontiers most realm pride was gone with only gank groups left.

Athryn

12-11-2007, 09:41 AM

I think somewhere in between Guido's bitterness and my rosy eyed recollection there's a middle ground about the issue. It was awesome in it's heyday, and horrible near the end, but there were a lot of things that developers could learn by looking at DAoC.

Guido Jones

12-11-2007, 09:46 AM

I'm actually not bitter - just voicing the complaints I heard most people say when I was part of the pendragon boards and as a TL.

Well, I am bitter about population imbalance, but that's what comes after being on a server where one realm is 40% of the player base, and used to drive around emain with a 120 man zerg to fight the 20 or so enemy players that would come out and fight.

DAoC was a great game, but it had many many flaws. Both public and private.

Supertanker

12-11-2007, 09:50 AM

With the increased availability of PvP epic gear in WoW, the "tyranny of the skilled minority" has become the "tyranny of the 75%." There are a couple bits of gear I'd like to get, but I've learned I will face the unpleasant experience of being dominated by almost anyone on the other team. The entry price for new players just gets higher & higher.

What I think MMO PvP needs is headshots - critical hits that will instantly kill a player. There needs to be a risk to a skilled and geared character that they will die attacking a new player, otherwise it's just a beating. For example, my fresh 70 rogue was attacked by a warrior in full PvP epics, and I literally had no chance, dying before I could hit three buttons (CloS, Stoneform, Vanish). There was an interesting comment in the latest GFW in the "behind the scenes" article about TF2. Basically, the TF2 team sees two aspects to critical hits. Sure it helps new players, but when an experienced player gets a lucky string of them, it lets the player do something incredible that they talk about for a long time. I hate the guaranteed win both as winner and loser (and as someone who PvP'd as a Shadow Priest and a Warlock in the pre-BC days, I had a lot of guaranteed wins), it needs fixing.

Mox

12-11-2007, 09:52 AM

Guido Jones

12-11-2007, 09:52 AM

WOWs problem is mudflation, pure and simple.

Linoleum

12-11-2007, 09:56 AM

Njal

12-11-2007, 09:59 AM

I remember on Galahad/Albion in old frontiers we had to defend Myrddin from nightly raids by the Hibernians. Every night, we'd get the messages that Myrddin was under attack, every night we'd rough them up then spend ages fixing those doors. Eventually those damned Celts bankrupted the entire Realm of Albion, and no guild was prepared to stump up the cash to fix Myrddin's doors.

Yeah there was a 3 month period when both the other realms seriously strained Guenevere Midgard finances too. That was sort of the period when realm pride was fading. However I think it lasted longer for us (especially after we crushed the Hibs for two months and they stopped coming out for a while Keep summoners ftw) because we were always outnumbered by both the other realms.

AaronSofaer

12-11-2007, 10:05 AM

I still remember when Midgard Percival ruled the server, and Galroth's nightzerg was crushing its foes, me and my in-game buddies created a farming group to go claim Club Bled and turn it into RPs Land.

We'd usually last for four or five assaults, till we were outnumbered by about fifty. Fun times...

And as far as DAoC's downturn goes, it started with ToA (ugh) and the finisher, for me at least, was Catacombs. That was when I gave up on realm pride and whatnot and just became a hardcore gank-group guy. (Not always with the same people; I'd often just pick up a couple people for fillers and we'd still do well.)

DAoC had huge, huge balance issues that were never resolved. It basically became a game of "may the most overpowered exploitive group win", with the zergs there to be farmed.

And yet, it was a great game in its time.

metta

12-11-2007, 10:17 AM

I still remember when Midgard Percival ruled the server, and Galroth's nightzerg was crushing its foes, me and my in-game buddies created a farming group to go claim Club Bled and turn it into RPs Land.

Haha! I fought at the Battle of Club Bled. For the Mids, though :p I practically pitched a tent for the weekend at Logmeer.

My friend Clapperoth wrote a History of Perc that ran from launch through until just before ToA. I'll see if I can dig it up. It's sure to give you a romantic stroll down amnesia lane.

For me, 80% of what made DAoC special was the community, and the way the game required that you get along with and respect your realm-mates. I don't expect to ever see the particular celestial conflux again.

AaronSofaer

12-11-2007, 10:31 AM

I remember the History of Percival. Good stuff.

Do you remember the three-day-long campaign that started the day they put summoners in? I guess there weren't any Hibs around, because for about three days it was just the Albs and Mids duking it out in the Mid frontier, abusing the corpse summoner in whatever Keep we had.

I used to run a lot with Ravus and Vinas back in the day. The hilarious part was all the drama around them never included me, and I was always so oblivious to it... and there was plenty of it!

Michael Fortson

12-11-2007, 10:35 AM

The thing I loved the most about DAoC, and something which is really missing in WoW is the whole concept of "realm pride." In DAoC, you cared about the realm as a whole, and not just about your personal score or your team's score (although that did start to change towards the end.) You cared if the relics were under attack.
This and the 3 realms concept really nails it. I had no idea Warhammer Online was only going to have 2 factions (I know nothing about the IP for that). We don't need to be able to hear those people, either -- and I much prefer not to.

metta

12-11-2007, 10:38 AM

AaronSofaer

12-11-2007, 11:01 AM

Yeah, what was the name of that Necro? One of the first. He had the name of a soccer player and ran with Pony Boy and his crew. Er...Inzagi!

I was an SB, always crossing daggers with Serapis. Fuck, I loved that game.

Shit, Serapis, talk about a pro. When I started leading in RvR, Serapis was always there as a scout and giving me advice and being patient.

I still remember, I used to run alot with another Necro ... can't remember his name. He had more RPs than the next three Necros in all of DAoC combined... and he was like 8Lsomething ... so sad. Such a buggy, broken class in RvR/PvP.

VegasRobb

12-11-2007, 11:28 AM

I think EQ2 does a really good job with PVP. It's evolved into 2-6 player groups running around getting things done, but it's not so bad for the brave soloer.

Tim Partlett

12-11-2007, 11:33 AM

The thing I loved the most about DAoC, and something which is really missing in WoW is the whole concept of "realm pride." In DAoC, you cared about the realm as a whole, and not just about your personal score or your team's score (although that did start to change towards the end.) You cared if the relics were under attack. That's not something that I've really seen in any other game (I know, "for the Horde", but it's not the same.) Wow itself really is almost designed to pit players and guilds/arena teams against each other more than the opposing faction.

I got that feeling too, but how do you think they achieved it?

mouselock

12-11-2007, 11:45 AM

All this is true, but well-done PvP is also one of the few sources of compelling player-generated content we've found. Which for MMO development is pretty huge. That's why most MMOs try to include it in some fashion (even a half-assed sort of way.) It's a relatively safe way to deliver a lot of bang for the buck when done right.

It's only compelling to a subset of the MMO population though. It's not a panacea. Folks like me who have little to no PvP impulse aren't going to be sucked in no matter how well you think you've gotten the PvP, IMO. I just don't want to go home and look for more sources of conflict at the end of a day. It does nothing for me.

So in that regard, every time something in the static carebear world of PvE gets mucked around with because of the PvP setup, it's somewhat akin to being PvP'd involuntarily: My game is being changed despite my having "opted out" of PvP. That's a fairly strong demotivator.

Njal

12-11-2007, 11:52 AM

Get thee to Trammel newb :)

Nathan Phoenix

12-11-2007, 12:01 PM

It's only compelling to a subset of the MMO population though. It's not a panacea. Folks like me who have little to no PvP impulse aren't going to be sucked in no matter how well you think you've gotten the PvP, IMO.

I disagree. Not with regards to you, specifically, but in general. I know a lot of people that got into DAOC with little to no PVP impulse, and many with an outright aversion to PVP, and all of them ended up enjoying fighting in the frontiers.

Shadari

12-11-2007, 12:05 PM

It's only compelling to a subset of the MMO population though. It's not a panacea. Folks like me who have little to no PvP impulse aren't going to be sucked in no matter how well you think you've gotten the PvP, IMO. I just don't want to go home and look for more sources of conflict at the end of a day. It does nothing for me.
Are you into other forms of competitive multi-player gaming? If so, then why not in MMOs?

To me, PvP in an MMO is much the same as it is in shooters, RTSs, etc.; the difference is that in MMOs strong communities are formed and players develop lasting bonds and rivalries with other players. This makes the PvP more intense and meaningful, at least in my opinion.

Skipper

12-11-2007, 12:10 PM

If nothing else the comments here just make me realize the one month I gave to trying Eve probably wasn't enough. I love sci-fi, but I jumped on that bandwagon early and gave up. I really should reload it and try it again. The problem now is how far behind I'd be and the lack of time. Lum I propose as your next discussion you talk about ways to find more time to actually play games as we get older. ;)

As we are speaking to PvP, what's the hottest unreleased game that PvP folks are talking about?

Marcin

12-11-2007, 12:12 PM

Conan maybe? There are siege machines and some vaguely RTS-like mechanics in there. I think you can maybe hire troops to bolster your forces, or some such ... I'm not sure if you can take towns or not, though.

In theory, Huxley is the next Planetside, although it seems like it's going to be the next vaporware.

And then there's Warhammer....

In other words, things look bleak.

TheWombat

12-11-2007, 12:14 PM

I loved DAOC for what it was, but I hated the PvE. It blew chunks. Terrible, even with all the hard work they eventually put into it. I like questing, grinding, adventuring in general all within a PvE type world where you have traditional MMO stuff to do. Don't get me wrong, I loved RvR, but I think the mix of "world" activities and PvP is the most exciting. I love having to factor in other players when questing, harvesting, or transiting an area. The challenge of taking a group or raid somewhere where you might find your goal contested by others--that's the only reason I even play EQ2 now, or played WoW before world PvP died on the server I was on at least.

I realize I am in a minority. I'm willing to accept games that don't 'cater' to me, becaue yeah, you gotta make a living and good PvE costs money and has to appeal to, well, PvE players. But if anyone can get the balance decent--solid PvE, good tech and looks, meaningful PvP with rewards and penalties, all within the game world--I'm happy. Right now for all of its flaws EQ2 does it the best for me (could never get into Eve, as neat as it is). If Warhammer can give DAOC quality RvR with more world interaction while doing it, I'll be pretty pleased.

I dunno, for me, DAoC is really the game that got the balance right. I know there are tons of people out there who wanted home invasion servers in that game, and it would have made for an interesting alternate ruleset, but for me, really DAoC's way of doing it was the bee's knees. Having that defined choice whether to PvP or PvE was great, and the persistent PvP area (as opposed to just battlegrounds) with 3 factions is also, imo, an important factor, and something I really am kinda mystified as to why no other PvP MMO (including Warhammer) is choosing to include a 3rd faction.

Without a 3rd faction you always end up with one side or another being overpopulated, when you throw in a 3rd one, you get the awesome dynamic of the 2 "underdog" factions making a temporary truce to gang up on the bigger enemy.

I guess I really wish they were going to do a DAoC 2, keeping everything that made the original DAoC awesome, but adding in stuff that's been learned by the industry since then, with a graphics upgrade and world overhaul.

Skipper

12-11-2007, 12:16 PM

That does indeed sound bleak, but there's always room for a niche game if it's fun. It's due time for another big MMO hit.

Shadari

12-11-2007, 12:17 PM

As we are speaking to PvP, what's the hottest unreleased game that PvP folks are talking about?
If it ever actually comes out, Darkfall Online by a long shot. But those guys have been working on that game forever and I'm beginning to doubt that it makes it to the market. But the high level design, from a PvP standpoint, is close to perfect.

Brian Rucker

12-11-2007, 12:29 PM

I disagree. Not with regards to you, specifically, but in general. I know a lot of people that got into DAOC with little to no PVP impulse, and many with an outright aversion to PVP, and all of them ended up enjoying fighting in the frontiers.

All of them? You must be a hell of a salesman. In my opinion Mouselock's more right than not. Given the really nasty environment PvP players tend to make for themselves in many games (language, behavior, whinging, etc...) there's a huge disincentive, whether you're a naturally competative person or not, to getting involved for well adjusted human beings. I remember in the 70's the horror stories of people going to play D&D in the sewers...they had no idea!

And beyond that there are many other reasons people play MMOs that have nothing to do with competition. Yes, PvP is a gerbil wheel that in theory is self perpetuating and cost effective. But as Skipper suggests it tends to be very expensive to develop and maintain because the hardcore players are so hopped up on sugar, caffiene, self-importance and paranoia. Nerf! Buff! Nerf! Buff! Devs are biased! Look at Me! Devs Listen to Me! Devs All Hate Me!

Lordy. It's like a daycare center on amphetamines out there.

mouselock

12-11-2007, 12:30 PM

Are you into other forms of competitive multi-player gaming? If so, then why not in MMOs?

No. And I'm thinking I may not be alone in that, given those figures that are bandied about concerning the percentage of folks who buy Unreal Tournament and then never go online with it. (I'm one of them, btw. Except I went online twice before I decided bot matches were it for me.)

There's always this underlying thread that tends to permeate discussions about multiplayer games that "If only the game were good enough, everyone would play competitive multiplayer." Simply not true. I apparently don't have the ingrained killing instinct necessary to care about competitive or combatitive multiplayer. I suspect my normal reptile-brain DNA was secretly switched with fluffy-bunny DNA through some type of alien experiment.

Guido Jones

12-11-2007, 12:36 PM

All of them? You must be a hell of a salesman. In my opinion Mouselock's more right than not. Given the really nasty environment PvP players tend to make for themselves in many games (language, behavior, whinging, etc...) there's a huge disincentive, whether you're a naturally competative person or not, to getting involved for well adjusted human beings. I remember in the 70's the horror stories of people going to play D&D in the sewers...they had no idea!

The reason it worked in DAoC is because of a couple reasons - one being the realm pride thing that we mentioned earlier in this thread. There were people that became leaders and encouraged people to play together to accomplish something.

The other one is that you couldn't talk to your opponents in the game - no trash talking, no way to taunt someone you just owned etc. Between those two things most of the bad things occur when people play competitively didn't really exist (unless you went looking for them on VNBoards).

metta

12-11-2007, 12:47 PM

The other one is that you couldn't talk to your opponents in the game - no trash talking, no way to taunt someone you just owned etc.

Yeah, the worst thing you could do was give someone an asshat, if they didn't release too quickly.

In DAoC, when you dropped an item, even just a penny, a bag would appear on the ground. Many used to spell out words using bags, if they could do it before the bags vanished.

fu TesFaYe

Supertanker

12-11-2007, 01:03 PM

Are you into other forms of competitive multi-player gaming? If so, then why not in MMOs?

I play a lot of FPS online, but I hate MMO PvP because of random numbers and statistics. I don't like that my ability to hit someone is decided by random numbers, and then I hate it even more that my chances are modified by character level and whatever gear the target is wearing. I don't even like CS much because the cones of fire are too large.

Player survivability bothers me too. I hate beating on someone for a day before they die. I like accurate & lethal weapons, so I've always gravitated toward stuff like Rainbow Six 3, Day of Defeat, and instagib UT. If I expose my back to a noob, I should die for that mistake. In MMOs, he just hits me to let me know I should turn around and kill him.

Guido Jones

12-11-2007, 01:05 PM

yeah you could emote someone. But you couldn't call them a cockgobbler, unless they willing went and looked at VN for it. Which a majority of the player base didn't do.

I never saw someone use the bag trick to taunt enemies - only people in their own realm.

My favorite "own realm taunting" was a bunch of people who built trebs and catapaults and attacked a rival guild leaders house. They couldn't actually do damage to it, but it made a lot of pretty explosions :)

AaronSofaer

12-11-2007, 01:12 PM

Player survivability bothers me too. I hate beating on someone for a day before they die.

Then you'd have loved DAoC. I could take down a fully-buffed, fully-geared player in four seconds flat on my Cabalist. That's an eyeblink in MMOs.

And in groups it was even worse; our group's main strat was run around for a bit, then when I got a debuff off, everyone tosses two nukes and the guy dies before his health bar updates.

Dave Weinstein

12-11-2007, 02:31 PM

I like PvP games, but when it's a PvP game I want it to *be* a PvP game. Not a PvP layer on a PvE game.

<Impersonate User="Charles">...Like EVE does...</Impersonate>

Desslock

12-11-2007, 02:52 PM

Get thee to Trammel newb :)

That's probably the best evidence of how niche non-consensual PvP is -- over 95% of the player base of Ultima Online abandoned the PvP world as soon as they were able.

Shadari

12-11-2007, 03:17 PM

That's probably the best evidence of how niche non-consensual PvP is -- over 95% of the player base of Ultima Online abandoned the PvP world as soon as they were able.
And yet it appears that WoW's population is roughly split even between PVE and PVP servers.

Nathan Phoenix

12-11-2007, 03:21 PM

Is that population estimate based on the north american market, or all markets combined?

Shadari

12-11-2007, 03:26 PM

Is that population estimate based on the north american market, or all markets combined?
It's based on my logging into WoW and looking at how many respective server types there are. Clearly, I'm not adhering to any scientific principle, but I'd bet your left nut that the WoW population distribution is fairly evenly mixed. :)

EDIT: It's based on North American servers.

Nathan Phoenix

12-11-2007, 04:17 PM

That's cool. I just wondered what the distribution was in other regions as well.

TheWombat

12-11-2007, 05:33 PM

And yet it appears that WoW's population is roughly split even between PVE and PVP servers.

WoW's PvP is not quite like UO's was--I haven't played on all the PvP servers by any means but where I have played the world (non-BG) PvP has been anemic, largely because the rewards are 100% in the BGs and arenas. The amount of world PvP (or ganking, if you want) is pretty low because the game doesn't encourage world PvP. So even being on a PvP server doesn't really put you into the same category as being on a PvP server in a lot of other games.

One interesting thing I find is the different definitions of "consent" people often have. Some folks clearly feel that even on a server designated as PvP, they shouldn't have to fight other players unless they choose to. Consent, to them, is on a case by case, fight by fight basis. Others, myself included, feel that consent is implied when you roll on a PvP server. Consent, then, is given up front and any PvP combat thereon in is consensual.

Clearly there are relatively few folks who like open world PvP in a PvE setting. But for me most every MMO is boring as hell if you can just stand there indefinitely and not be in any danger (because you know the mob pathing, or you're not in the agro range of mobs, or whatever), and where most of the challenges come from figuring out the AI and the social organization to get people into effective raiding groups (the latter is a rewarding enterprise, though, I will admit). I much prefer a world where, yeah, I'm gathering 340 goretusk livers or whatever but in doing so I have to watch out for someone ganking my ass, taking my money, and leveling off of me.

Because, I admit, I love doing that to them. There's nothing quite like hitting a group that is pulling a heroic quest mob at the end of a long quest chain...and rolling them, forcing them to do it over and taking the gold they got from the previous six quests that they forgot to bank....

EvilIdler

12-11-2007, 06:13 PM

I also think that DAoC was the perfect PvP game at one point (sometime before ToA, perhaps).
Even while playing one of the gimpiest classes, the friar. You grow attached to them, like you do
with an Xbox 360 or a kitten with a heart defect.

I'm occasionally logging into the Pirates of the Burning Sea beta, and there's
a bit of that RvR feel there. You need to keep your ports free of enemy
nations (there are four nations total, not just three), or you lose it, and any
production/trade you may be doing there. PvP for a pirate allows them to
take the loser's ship, leaving them with their fallback ships. It hurts a bit,
but there are ways to get back on your feet fairly soon.

The nation chat has a lot of EVE players who are considering a complete change of game.

hong

12-11-2007, 06:25 PM

Me, I play Guild Wars for the compelling storyline and narrative, intricate combat mechanics, emphasis on action, and opportunity to deck out your dolls I mean NPC party members in pretty clothing I mean equipment. The PvP part I really couldn't care less about, and in fact, I also almost never touch the coop PvE.

I wouldn't describe GW as a "massively multiplayer online RPG" or even a "competitive online RPG" as Anet calls it. I call it a "selectively multiplayer online RPG". I like the fact that 99% of the time I can ignore the other people logged in, while retaining the option to team up with a buddy should I choose to. I like the sense of isolation that comes from its fully instanced nature: out in the wilderness, it's just you and 1,000,000 monsters who want to eat your brane. I like the fact that I'm not dependent on the goodwill of others to experience the sort of game I like, whether in a passive sense (no risk of being PKed when I have no interest in that sort of thing), or an active sense (no requirement to form a group to do critical parts of the story). Sure, some elite dungeons are only really feasible with a group, but I don't consider such areas to be critical to the overall GW experience.

From a balance perspective, I like how GW (in its most recent versions) has introduced PvE-only skills as a counterpoint to how the rest of the mechanics tend to be balanced mainly for PvP. Both sides get their toys to play with. Ideally from my point of view there would be no PvP at all, but seeing as how PvP is one of GW's core missions, that's unlikely to happen. So this is the next-best thing.

Mister Widget

12-11-2007, 06:36 PM

hong, you just summed up everything I like about Guild Wars. I know the devs originally pinned all their hopes on PVP, and I know many QT3 players like it just for the PVP, but for me, it's a great big single-player PVE playground. They don't make very many single-player CRPGs anymore, and they never did make anything as big and open-ended as Guild Wars.

Of course, none of that was true prior to the Nightfall expansion... but Eye of the North happily continued that style.

Desslock

12-11-2007, 07:21 PM

And yet it appears that WoW's population is roughly split even between PVE and PVP servers.

....the key differences are that's not non-consensual PvP, which is why everyone abandoned UO's PvP servers, and the consequences of being killed by other players were much more severe in UO.

PvP definitely adds a lot of gameplay, and it's probably the most interesting way to play an MMO if, and only if, you have a fair amount of time to devote to it and you have a bunch of buddies or have a lifestyle that'll allow you to find an appropriate guild. But otherwise, PvE is probably a better fit for people. These days I prefer PvE roleplaying servers to any others.

EvilIdler

12-11-2007, 07:36 PM

I only have patience for two hours at a time of any MMO, no matter how much I enjoy it.
I couldn't devote much time towards gaining PvP-überness. I sure hope that piratey game gets a
nice, relaxed role-playing server.

I've found some role-playing guilds to be better coordinated in PvP, simply because the members can form complete sentences.

Shadari

12-11-2007, 07:38 PM

the key differences are that's not non-consensual PvP
Choosing to play on a PVP server in WoW is just about the same as choosing to play on Felucca in UO.

which is why everyone abandoned UO's PvP servers
I believe you're wrong about this. To be sure, probably a very big majority of UO players prefered Trammel and the ability to adventure in relative peace. But there were many other reasons why so many people flocked to Trammel. Among them was the huge housing rush that came with all the new real estate. And there just was this snowball effect where even people who preferred Felucca ended playing on Trammel because the majority had already moved. Put it this way, even if 60% or so of the UO player base initially moved to Trammel at the very outset because of preference, I'd bet you another 30% or so would follow simply because the new place would be more alive and populated. Hell, I love PVP, and even *I* played on Trammel more the Felucca after a while.

and the consequences of being killed by other players were much more severe in UO
The consequences of death for a veteran UO player were virtually nil -- pretty much the same as in WoW. Sure, they probably lost all the gear they were carrying, but guess what... gear wasn't the point in UO back in the early days. Everyone ran around using cheap, extremely-easy-to-obtain equipment. And everyone had houses stocked with a nearly infinite supply of replacement gear.

Eventually UO became a more item-based game similar to WoW or Everquest. But when that happened, they conveniently added item insurance so that players wouldn't lose all their fancy gear.

Dave47

12-11-2007, 08:59 PM

Yeah, uh, isn't that also one of the problems with EVE's PvP? That it's usually just gate-camping or roving gang-rape squads?
EVE combat is actually extremely strategic, even in smaller engagements. And even when it's completley lopsided, like when a single mining cruiser is blown up by roving band of combat ships, that loss is a very small one for the victim, and will often set off some organized PvP as a local defense gang forms to hunt down the intruders. After the first kill of the night, a roving gang has to become increasingly nervous that they'll be tracked down, or that their next mining-cruiser victim is actually an armored bait ship.

It's an interesting dynamic... One that is completely absent in the lowsec space that delivers most new players' first taste of EVE PvP. Lowsec space is the worst part of EVE PvP. EVE has a lot of problems, but if you don't like it because you think it's PvP revolves only around random invincible gank squads, you're really missing out.

Unicorn McGriddle

12-11-2007, 10:40 PM

WoW's PvP is not quite like UO's was

Quoted for emphasis. WoW's PvP was hardcore in direct inverse proportion to its popularity with respect to UO's PvP.

McBain

12-11-2007, 10:57 PM

EVE combat is actually extremely strategic, even in smaller engagements. And even when it's completley lopsided, like when a single mining cruiser is blown up by roving band of combat ships, that loss is a very small one for the victim, and will often set off some organized PvP as a local defense gang forms to hunt down the intruders. After the first kill of the night, a roving gang has to become increasingly nervous that they'll be tracked down, or that their next mining-cruiser victim is actually an armored bait ship.

It's an interesting dynamic... One that is completely absent in the lowsec space that delivers most new players' first taste of EVE PvP. Lowsec space is the worst part of EVE PvP. EVE has a lot of problems, but if you don't like it because you think it's PvP revolves only around random invincible gank squads, you're really missing out.

I played EVE for a couple of months. My experience with EVE's PvP can be summed up as follows:

Laggy piece of WHAT THE FUCK MAN GET SOME FUCKING BANDWIDTH WOW I JUST DIED INSTANTLY GOING THROUGH A GATE COME THE FUCK ON GOD DAMN, GET A LIFE MOTHERFUCKERS JESUS CHRIST WHY IS THIS SHIT SO LAGGY?

In summary, it was like UO, except not as novel or anything.

Michael Fortson

12-11-2007, 11:04 PM

These days I prefer PvE roleplaying servers to any others.
I much preferred DAoC's roleplaying servers (PvP of course) to the normal variety as well. Fewer asshats -- at least for awhile. Mythic was much more active in enforcing things, though, than any company I have seen since then. I don't think any company realizes just how much they suck compared to Mythic in that regard. Not that they were perfect, mind you -- not by a long shot. But far, far removed from the "we really don't give a damn what you do in-game" of every single other company under the sun.

_scout_

12-12-2007, 01:18 AM

Regarding Eve:

Congratulations on the realization that no matter where you step, the mine will go off directly under your foot.

And that kind of feeds back into my point that it's best to give as much control and ownership as you can to players so they're the ones stepping on and clearing mines themselves.

And as good as that conclusion is, it is the reason why Eve Fails to have "good and balanced" PvP .. ->

... In my experience maybe one out of twenty fights in Eve aren't a foregone conclusion due to size of fleets/gangs or what ships are involved. This happens to a degree in almost every PVP game, but generally less often than it does in Eve. I played Eve for a long time but got bored because there was rarely any challenge - you're generally more concerned with keeping people that can't hope to kill you from escaping, or escaping from people you can't hope to kill, then actually having relatively balanced, challenging encounters with players.

The game mechanics are balanced, PvP is meaningfull as you have losses that hurt and loot to win, so what do you do to ensure you have the upperhand?

You'll bring more friends and so does the other side and then you stock up yourself on more and more and more ...

Another strength that turned out into a disadvantage of Eve is the "one server to rule them all". Since so many ppl are on that one server and some ingame goals are so high (sov.) alliances can turn up to be pretty big, hence the recent massfleet warfare with hundreds of ppl fighting each other. In "sharded" servers the alliances wouldnt turn out so big. Not to say that a split server is good (IMHO its not) but this strength slightly backlashed at Eve, since it agains just support to bring more friends to a fight or have the bigger gang.

Brian Rucker

12-12-2007, 04:30 AM

Maybe if there were some way to bottleneck things a bit more to limit how big engagements can get or somehow boost server power enough that massive armadas aren't gamekilling? Now, I've only personally been in one big engagement in Eve and it was exciting as hell and lasted for hours - but, it was a laggy, incoherent, mess much of the time when actual fighting was going on.

I don't have the issue you do with the whole avoiding killer forces while trying to gank the weak though. It just means you play with an eye to the big picture rather than just kinda cruising through life in a zenlike state. Knowing there are folks out there who can kill you and have hundreds of friends around makes even the most mundane tasks potentially exciting. And it provides incentives to bond and coordinate with large groups, formal or informal, of other players. That's just the kind of glue MMOs need to keep players around.

But you need honest operators in a zero-sum game like Eve. That's been the biggest issue - developers getting involved with the factions (for good reasons or selfish ones) and creating a sense that the house, or it's individual employees, are tilting the table.

_scout_

12-12-2007, 06:00 AM

Every limitation will feel have a certain "artifical" feel to it. In a so strong "sandbox" style game as Eve tends tries to be, it will feel even more artificial.

Throwing in more bandwith will only enlarge the fleets. It's like throwing more bandwith at jita. If it can handle 1000 well, players will throw 1500 into it. If a fleet battle with 300 is going well, both parties will throw in another 300 to "lag out the others" and "maximize their fleet size/numbers" to overwhelm the others.

But you need honest operators in a zero-sum game like Eve. That's been the biggest issue - developers getting involved with the factions (for good reasons or selfish ones) and creating a sense that the house, or it's individual employees, are tilting the table.

I dont have any cards in that big alliance politics, but to me its sounds CCP let this "sense of feeling" slip into the community, which is their biggest error. I honestly dont think that DEVs behind the game are really actually tinkering with game mechanics to tilt the table to "their" advantage.

IMHO what Eve misses is the intermediate PvP goal. In the long turn EvEs PvP goals are great (with sovereignty over systems to hold) lots of ISKs can switch hands, but something "intermediate" is totally missing. Something you can achieve slightly faster and doesn't hurt that much to loose again.

Also the “You gotta keep ‘em separated.” - "But not too separated" is partially applying to Eve in terms of PvP and Im not talking about the security levels.

The very large areas and travel times within Eve leave some systems totally empty and players only concentrating on choke points. As these choke points (stargates, choke point systems) are easy identified everything focuses on them, again inviting the numbers game, bring more.

Jape

12-12-2007, 07:33 AM

Charles

12-12-2007, 07:35 AM

I played EVE for a couple of months. My experience with EVE's PvP can be summed up as follows:

Laggy piece of WHAT THE FUCK MAN GET SOME FUCKING BANDWIDTH WOW I JUST DIED INSTANTLY GOING THROUGH A GATE COME THE FUCK ON GOD DAMN, GET A LIFE MOTHERFUCKERS JESUS CHRIST WHY IS THIS SHIT SO LAGGY?

In summary, it was like UO, except not as novel or anything.

That's interesting, seeing as it's impossible nowadays. Maybe you played a long long time ago?

When you jump through a gate now, you come out cloaked on the other side, and you stay cloaked for something like thirty seconds.

Charles

12-12-2007, 07:37 AM

Throwing in more bandwith will only enlarge the fleets. It's like throwing more bandwith at jita. If it can handle 1000 well, players will throw 1500 into it. If a fleet battle with 300 is going well, both parties will throw in another 300 to "lag out the others" and "maximize their fleet size/numbers" to overwhelm the others.

The problem with fleet combat isn't necessarily lag, it's balance. They need to find a way to make it so that one side can't crowd out another. It's not so much about lagging them out, so much as having more people at the system node cap.

_scout_

12-12-2007, 07:49 AM

The system node cap or lagging out, both are technical limitations of the used hardware behind the scenes. You can raise these as much as you want, it doesnt changes anything to the game mechanics.

It doesnt stop, in Eve's case, people from bringing more people to the fight, even if you balance it at 1000 vs 1000 and servers/nodes can handle it, as long as one side think it's necessary to ensure victory (which I assume both will) as long as they have the opportunity to bring more people, they will.
Especially when there is lots to loose, as "you need to screw someone".

If there are intermediate goals which screw you/your corp but "not so badly", the incentive to absolutely ensure victory is lowered so you don't have the urge to field hundreds of people right away.

Charles

12-12-2007, 07:53 AM

Yeah I know, that's what I was saying. They need to find a game mechanic to limit it, rather than a tech limitation, which players will never care about.

Weren't stealth bombers supposed to fix some of it, by wiping out all the small ships in a conflict to prevent that kind of system clogging?

Anyway, they should do something like cap the numbers per alliance engaged in the combat. If the server has a 1000 person cap, it shouldn't allow more than 500 per side, rather than letting one side fill up the numbers.

I don't claim to have an answer, but certainly CCP needs a game rules solution. A tech solution will never work.

_scout_

12-12-2007, 08:01 AM

(Very eve related)
:)

My personal fix would be introducing area damage for exploding ships, which though could be abused in empire (and according to some responses would strain client server communication a lot).

I think stealth bombers were the only ones able to launch bombs with area damage but only in 0.0 sec, but they are very fragile and are very likely to get in the blast as well. So it's just one ship to fix it all, not really working.

Game goal mechanic wise, yeah they are in dire need of something, my hopes were on factional warfare and what I have heared so far, its more likely ambulation will hit before they introduce factional warfare.

Charles

12-12-2007, 08:05 AM

(Very eve related)
:)

My personal fix would be introducing area damage for exploding ships, which though could be abused in empire (and according to some responses would strain client server communication a lot).

Ehh, sending a single damage event to each ship in the area on ship explosion shouldn't be so bad.

But yeah, they need a way to cleanup smaller ships. When conflicts scale, they should do so with ship size, not ship numbers. IMO, once a ship is a certain size larger, it should be able to smack smaller ships out of the sky. There's no reason a battleship shouldn't be able to one-shot a T1 frigate, for example.

I understand their reasoning behind making it difficult to kill small ships from big ships, but honestly, at this point in time it would probably fix more than it would break. People may be willing to blob a system with t1 frigs that cost pennies a piece, but will they do it with AFs or Interceptors which cost 15 mil before loadout?

_scout_

12-12-2007, 08:09 AM

Now I'm getting really off topic :D :
If you really like mindtwisting what eve could be:
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=625147&page=1

It would fix at least the stargates as choke points and reduce the gate camping blobs.

Charles

12-12-2007, 08:13 AM

It would fix at least the stargates as choke points and reduce the gate camping blobs.

That would be so easy, when you get down to it. Just make the radius at which you appear at another gate a random value up to, say, 500km. Sure, some will land on the gate. A reasonable amount will still be in range to get fucked. But a larger amount will just be able to run.

edit: You could even tie it in to a skill or module, so that with more skill or a special module, you can control what range you jump in at.

Soapyfrog

12-12-2007, 08:26 AM

IMHO though the chokepoints are a very good thing. They force fights, and give the defender a "terrain" advantage.

ravenight

12-12-2007, 10:12 AM

Just a quick comment about classes in that post...

- If you create class based character development, it tend to become group pvp (like daoc is with healers, dps classes, casters, etc. ie: whole group is trying to act as one entity to beat their opponents). Usually you simply cannot compete without other players in your group (solo warrior is pretty much cannon fodder, but if you group with healer your performance suddenly goes up a lot).

- If you create skill based character development (like AC1), it tends to become solo game (ie: you vs the world). If you have the option to create character without any class restrictions, why wouldnt you (atleast try to) create character that can do evertything (ie: BBQ everything you come across).

Skill-based isn't the only option for a non-class-based system, though. For example, you could use the Guild Wars system, but let players choose which stats they had and give them access to all skills. It might make it a little harder to tell what someone was capable of when you ran across them, but not necessarily - you could always create equipment that was visually distinct and required to use of certain categories of powers, or just have precusor skills that need to be employed to activate a group of powers. You don't really need classes, in the MMO sense, in order to have recognizability. What you really need are colors, in the M:tG sense - groupings of abilities that have a common approach and a recognizable source of power.

One of the things that makes EVE more interesting than a lot of other PvP games is that there is a real economy going on, which provides a large number of possible roles and activities, as opposed to simply "kill mobs", thus giving an incentive for lightly armed or completely non-combat ships to go into harms way, which in turn allows pirates to exist, and gives pirate hunters someone to hunt. There's no reason the underlying tenets of PvP in EVE couldn't be incorporated into other games, even fantasy ones, and if you make the economy interesting enough, then you can have plenty of ways for people to participate and get some of the good aspects of large-scale PvP (the "realm pride" type of thing, a sense of having an effect on the world) without actually having to play directly against another human.

_scout_

12-12-2007, 01:31 PM

Isnt that (playerdriven economy) why every war is counted in "ISK lost value" (ISK = cash in Eve).

And didnt they got rid of the player driven economy in SWG "because it was not appealing enough ?" (Yeah Im still bitter about the NGE)

From my reading on the EvE O they introduced in the beta or alpha somewhere these stargates to give people a staging ground as everybody was too scattered. Although they open up a staging ground for the defenders and "force" PvP, their drawbacks with the current state of EvE, outweight their benefit.

Whole areas of 0.0 are untouched because a single choke points is blobbed up so long till the node crashes. "Trying to circumvent" the choke points usually leads to +20jumps routes just getting stopped at anther lowsec-0.0 choke point, blobbed up as well.

foogla

12-13-2007, 01:40 PM

Isnt that (playerdriven economy) why every war is counted in "ISK lost value" (ISK = cash in Eve).

no, it's all about sovereignity, having a better isk ratio is meaningless if you lost all your regions

Whole areas of 0.0 are untouched because a single choke points is blobbed up so long till the node crashes. "Trying to circumvent" the choke points usually leads to +20jumps routes just getting stopped at anther lowsec-0.0 choke point, blobbed up as well.

actually whole areas in 0.0 are empty because you can make way more money in a few other, better systems nearby

controlling chokepoints is vital for sovereignity, removing the need to build stuff in 0.0 (because getting freighters out and into 0.0 would be too easy) would cheapen sovereignity wich would lead to less emergent gameplay

also controlling chokepoints is the intermediate PVP goal in EVE, I see every day 3 man gangs camping vital gates (blobbing is different from region to region, but I doubt gatecamps reach more than 20 people), and those same three then can go roaming into the surrounding space

Kunikos

12-13-2007, 03:18 PM

All I know is that the World of Darkness MMO better have some fan-fucking-tastic solo-able PvP. I want to make a Werewolf and munch on Vampires or make a Mage and light Vampires on fucking fire.

AaronSofaer

12-13-2007, 04:01 PM

All I know is that the World of Darkness MMO better have some fan-fucking-tastic solo-able PvP. I want to make a Werewolf and munch on Vampires or make a Mage and light Vampires on fucking fire.

And then you eat annihilation-worthy points of paradox and, assuming you survive, are assassinated by the Technocracy.

Speaking of the Technocracy, I want to have a character named The Agent, who is a ninja assassin working for the Technocracy, killing Mages.

Unicorn McGriddle

12-13-2007, 05:08 PM

All I know is that the World of Darkness MMO better have some fan-fucking-tastic solo-able PvP. I want to make a Werewolf and munch on Vampires or make a Mage and light Vampires on fucking fire.

You shut the fuck up. You shut up and you die.

Especially since they're probably going to do exactly that. World of Darkness: Gurubashi Arena.

AaronSofaer

12-13-2007, 05:14 PM

You know, working for the Technocracy and lighting Vampires on fucking fire would be perfectly suitable within the context of WoD.

Kunikos

12-13-2007, 05:54 PM

And then you eat annihilation-worthy points of paradox and, assuming you survive, are assassinated by the Technocracy.

I was under the impression that in PnP if you do it right you don't get any paradox points (no non-supernaturals observe it). It's all in the roleplaying of your mage's focus and such. For example, if I'm an Order of Hermes mage, and I have a giant bottle of aerosol spray and a Zippo lighter... AFAIK, humans will see that as a non-profane action, even though the fire shooting out is much bigger than they anticipated.

Although, the big question I have is what's going to happen if they decide to incorporate the newly rebooted Vampire and Werewolf, when the other franchises haven't been revamped yet (pardon the pun).

You shut the fuck up. You shut up and you die.

Especially since they're probably going to do exactly that. World of Darkness: Gurubashi Arena.

What the fuck does Gurubashi Arena have to do with being able to roam the mean streets as a Bone Gnawer and take down unwary vampires when nobody is looking? Detecting the taint of the Wyrm is not exactly a tough Gnosis thing to do. The whole WoD should be one big nasty PvP place where there are consequences to your actions (even if it's as nasty as Iteration-X Hitmark drones hunting you).

AaronSofaer

12-13-2007, 06:30 PM

I was under the impression that in PnP if you do it right you don't get any paradox points (no non-supernaturals observe it). It's all in the roleplaying of your mage's focus and such. For example, if I'm an Order of Hermes mage, and I have a giant bottle of aerosol spray and a Zippo lighter... AFAIK, humans will see that as a non-profane action, even though the fire shooting out is much bigger than they anticipated.

You're saying two different things, and one is wrong.

Regardless of whether a non-supernatural observe it, you can still get paradox. Think of it as an invisible observer; the Paradigm of the World is always there, watching you break it.

However, your second statement is correct. If you have a makeshift flamethrower and it happens to work really well, this is fine. You can still get paradox for it if you roll badly, but it's a circumstantial, non-profane working of magic; it can pass off as fine.

Hope you roll well.

Do it too often, though, and you will still end up accruing Paradox. And canon states that the Technocracy can sense and track Paradox (or so my GM claimed) and thus it is especially bad.

The only place where you may use magic with impunity is in a Sanctuary of appropriate power to the profanity of your magic.

And of course, the more powerful the Sanctuary, the more dangerous it is to you, the little hunted Mage living amongst the Technocracy and its ninja assassins.

Kunikos

12-13-2007, 08:16 PM

And canon states that the Technocracy can sense and track Paradox (or so my GM claimed) and thus it is especially bad.

AFAIK yes, they do but they are not omniscient. They have to deploy resources here and there just like any technological solution would require. Especially so if you're talking about other supernatural things like bending dimensional barriers (werewolves and other shifters entering the Umbra) or performing blood magic (thaumaturgy or other vampiric gifts).

I could be wrong though, it's just what I remember from playing a last edition World of Darkness game. (One player's Bastet mystic unfortunately shifted to the Umbra in front of a new X-Files dimensional detection unit set up in a friendly ghost's Haunt and suddenly he was facing a self-destructing Hitmark android.)

Who knows if anything will stay the same when they revise the Mage sourcebooks to be more in line with the new Vampire/Werewolf/World of Darkness 2.0 stuff.

AaronSofaer

12-13-2007, 08:19 PM

They're not omniscient. It's just that on a personal level, they are close enough to omnipotent as to not make a difference.

They control the Paradigm. If they want, they can wish you and your entire group out of existence. And you go away.

Unicorn McGriddle

12-13-2007, 09:51 PM

Who knows if anything will stay the same when they revise the Mage sourcebooks to be more in line with the new Vampire/Werewolf/World of Darkness 2.0 stuff.

They did that already; there were some minor improvements (mainly having to do with the new core system being a bit more streamlined), some fairly important changes that are arguably for the better (the new setting's lower power levels, more local focus, and more pervasive degeneration system), and one huge fucking mistake (you'll know it when you see it).

They control the Paradigm. If they want, they can wish you and your entire group out of existence. And you go away.

Yeah, that would make for great PvP in an MMO.

the big question I have is what's going to happen if they decide to incorporate the newly rebooted Vampire and Werewolf, when the other franchises haven't been revamped yet (pardon the pun).

Franchises revamped so far: Mortal (which really wasn't emphasized in the original WoD), Vampire, Werewolf, Changeling, and Promethean (actually, those are entirely new -- based on Frankenstein's Monster, more or less, and self-aware reanimated corpses in general).

Whether they'll use the new setting is actually still an interesting question. OWoD is firmly on White Wolf's Dead to Me Board with respect to PnP roleplaying -- the books are all out of print and there are no more coming out. But their Jyhad collectible card game, still set in Masquerade (as opposed to Requiem) as far as I know, continues to see new releases.

My guess is that they will use the new setting, but I guarantee you that if they do, they'll cripple Humanity or strip it out entirely. How else to make a game that's about killing your way through setpiece after setpiece of either NPC goons or rough-hewn CTF matches?

If they make that Sabbat/GTA/Living City game I was on about several months ago, where there's a short, slight power curve and vampire gangs fight each other for territorial control and stuff, I'll forgive them. They can even add werewolf gangs in the expansion.

Edit: Tenses.