Had my FFA stint in UO at release and didn't overly care for it. Had a blast with DaoC sieging and pvp though. Also did the pvp server in WoW thing, but didn't have fun always looking over my shoulder, because I spent more time being paranoid than enjoying myself. Grats to anyone that likes that kind of game though.
AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
I don't mind Open PvP, but not too keen on full loot.
I hate PvP where you have to flag to participate, its just kinda.. well poor.
I hate unbalanced PvP too, something Mythic was great at in DAoC too many classes to balance, Guild Wars is probably the most balanced PvP game I've played so far.
I like the ability to advanced my character with PvP only skills and feats and have the ability to customise this to great length.
This is a good topic. I think there are basically two camps, which can be seen in this thread. One that wants FFA with looting, and one that wants Consensual with minimal or no looting. These two groups are really looking for two different types of games. The FFA with looting camp I think would prefer an MMOFPS type game, where there is not a lot of character building involved, and little time required to gear up for PvP gameplay. The Consensual camp (where I would pin myself) wants a more indepth game with lots of character building.
I will stand by that the original SWG PvP system was the best I've ever played in, and could have been nearly perfect with a few modifications. Here's why I think so
1) You had two factional sides fighting each other, yet it was possible to be neutral in the game and not be alligned with either side. You could switch sides if you wanted to put in the time to grind the faction, or go neutral after being on a side. Topping it off, everybody could communicate with everybody, no lame attempts at breaking through the language scrambler. If you wanted to talk smack, you could, and if someone talked smack to you, you could do it right back to them without needing to know how to break through the language scrambler.
2) Everything was Consensual. You knew when you were attackable, you knew how to become attackable. Sometimes you took a risk and got a TEF, sometimes nothing happened, sometimes you came across a group of enemies and got killed. Nobody could really complain about getting ganked because you chose to be attackable. This also allowed for good competition, as both sides would amass groups and then go at it in a location. When one side won, you knew you won, and the losers knew they lost.
3) Player built bases. Putting the bugs with this aside, the destroyable bases were a great objective. Players had to put in the time to earn the faction to build them, and the other team would work to destroy them. Faction pets were also a fun thing to buy and destroy in the early game.
4) When you killed somebody, you gained faction and they lost faction. Winners gained something and losers lost something without needing to have actual items in the exchange. The faction points were the basis for purchasing things like bases.
5) Lastly, the gear situation. While people who had heavy time investments into the game would get the edge with all 90% composite armor, best sliced weapons with looted components, best socketed items, etc., you could come into the game and buy a full set of pretty good armor and a weapon for a days worth of missions, grab some buffs and be competitive if you were good at the game. The player economy provided the best stock quality equipment at competitive pricing. Veteran players only had marginal advantages. You could even buy the better armor and weapons for a bit more cash, the only thing that was truly a Veteran item was the rare socketed clothing, which was either very rare or very expensive.
6) One more, Zerging was not a viable tactic. When you died, you lost all your buffs, and without buffs, you were basically a one-shot kill. It took awhile to get buffed back up, maybe a little too long, but regardless it provided a buffer that seperated the battles. You knew when you won because the other side all died and didn't come back for awhile. When you lost, you had that time to stew and decide to get your act together so you didn't lose again.
Now, a few of the tweaks to the system that would have made it the best ever
1) The zones of control that they finally introduced later in the game (after they completely destroyed the combat system) or some other reward for having bases built. Bases were really only for pride. Eventually there weren't many because people got tired of just putting them up to get blown up and not really getting anything material for spending their faction points.
2) More faction gained for killing, but not necessarily with a bigger loss for dying. The way it was, you would lose 45 for dying, and whoever killed you gained 30. Also this should have been split evenly between the group, as it was only the killing blow got the reward. The reward for killing should have at least been worth the same as the loss for dying, and IMO should have been worth 2x or 3x more. Also, if you had no faction to give, you should not have been able to enter the battle. Being able to fight with nothing to lose broke the system, as it also made the victors gain nothing for killing you.
3) Remove the group TEF. For the unaware, there was a system that would allow undeclared group members to jump into a battle when another member of their group was attacked (usually because they were overt). However, they should never have removed the TEF entirely as they did in the CU. Getting a TEF for attacking faction NPCs was an important part of the game. If they wanted to allow people to live the Star Wars dream and fight faction NPCs in peace, they should have just made instances.
4) Have more purchasable faction items to make the faction more valuable. Constantly introduce new items. Again for the unaware, there was a total lack of new content in the game for the first 2 years, and eventually nobody cared about faction because they had already bought the same crap 10 times over. The game overall just needed any kind of content for the PvP aspect of the game. The Imperial Crackdown yielded the best NPC battles I ever experienced
I'm sure I could think of a couple more, but I've lost my train of thought and this post is too long. This is my ode to the best game that could have been but got destroyed by SOE. I only hope someday to play a game just like it, but with a few improvements.
Originally posted by Ohaan You are not being objective. If you are referring to games such as UO, Shadowbane, AC2 and FFA servers for games like DAoC, and AC1 then there is more to it than the issue of PvP: - UO was buggy the first couple years and lacked a context for the PvP. - Shadowbane and AC2 were technical disasters and suffered from high level vs low level ganking. - FFA servers for DAoC and AC1 were not purpose built. They were alternate rulesets overlayed onto games that were designed for something different. So it is not that FFA PvP doesnt work, it is that nobody has matched a good FFA PvP concept with a technically polished game.
Umm, actually: UO, AC1, DAOC and EVE online were/are largely successful & AC2's failure had little to do with it's (watered down) PVP.
PvP did not evolve from RPG's. Yes it did, and that's where the term PVP originated from (nwn1, uo, meridian) as did the term PVE, PVM, PK, RPK etc.. or do you PVM in chess as well? Just because people have taken the term literally and broadly applied to everything under the sun doesn't change this fact.
PvP doesn't belong in RPG games. Well as long as there are people interested in playing that ruleset, yes it does. Infact, I think it's just a matter of time before MMO's become the norm for most genres including FPS.
I like it hardcore. Once you dead it's game over. And I like that your stuff can be looted once you are dead. I like games where staying alive for 10 minutes is an absolute feat of gameplay. I don't like WoW for many of the same reasons although they have at least picked up on making the gameplay meaningfull. They have added 2nd gen pvp game design, like capture the flag, hamburger hills, domination games and all the other new modes brought to us by Unreal Tournament. Instanced arenas' and open field pvp and even third gen PvP with open domination that gives faction rewards to other allied players pve'ing in the same region. Meaningful? ha, maybe if you find instanced, repetitive, pointless missions that simply reward you for turning up 'meaningful', and in a game where items & class > skill no less. WOW pvp isn't even first gen IMO, it's a pile of stinking trash catering for the MMO noobs (but that's for another thread). For PvP, I'm really looking for Chess, Netris, Quake Wars, Battlefield 2, Dawn of War, Hidden And Dangerous 2; Games that are either primarily designed for PvP or for which it has been an integral feature since the dawn of the genre. That have evolved through many generations to better understand what makes for a good player vs player game. I thought you said you liked your PVP hardcore? How is clicking the respawn button in FPS games hardcore exactly? It's a far cry from the 'once you are dead you it's game over' stuff you were preaching above. Off the top of my head, some reasons why I enjoy PVP in FFA MMO's w/ item looting is because:
* It's random. You never know who/what your going to run into or when. Always learning new strategies.
* Death penalty. Harsh death penalty creates excitement/adrenaline. If there's something meaningful on the line then it's a whole different kettle of fish.
* Guild politics / Consequences for your actions. It's not just a matter of see the enemy -> attack (or at least not for most guilds :P )
* Persistent world. Combine this with capturable cities/forts/dungeons and you have more meaning than any FPS IMO.
With that said, I do enjoy FPS - hell, I won $5,000 in a Quake World tornament when I was 17! But IMO they lack the depth and meaning of well designed skill based MMO's (or flukes like ac1) and often simply boil down to quick reflexes and good aim.
MMO's have the best platform for PVP, we are still in the early days yet - give it time.
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
This is a good topic. I think there are basically two camps, which can be seen in this thread. One that wants FFA with looting, and one that wants Consensual with minimal or no looting. These two groups are really looking for two different types of games.
Agreed. I have always felt that you cannot cater 100% to every audience simultaneously. Kinda like in phys ed back in school when you played team sports. If everyone on one team is into the game and makes an effort and some of the people on the other team are not, you get a lopsided game; unchallenging for the winners and frustrating for the losers. Putting a lot of PvE (or using a lot of instancing) in an otherwise PvP game defeats the purpose IMO.
Originally posted by Tierce
The FFA with looting camp I think would prefer an MMOFPS type game, where there is not a lot of character building involved, and little time required to gear up for PvP gameplay. The Consensual camp (where I would pin myself) wants a more indepth game with lots of character building.
This is where I disagree a bit. I think you can have a deep, instance-free, persistent world PvP MMO even with a lot of character building. The key is a steep diminishing-returns curve. It should be relatively quick to get to 90-95 percentile. The extra 5% or so is gravy for the power gamers who want to invest the time.
A good substitute for standard character 'building' is character customization. Appearance and non-combat skills go a long way towards personalizing your experience.
Also, devs seriously have to consider the fun factor. I liked the PvP in UO because damage output was relatively low. Battles lasted a while and you could often safely make a retreat. If you were killed, you could get back into the action in a few minutes if you stocked up in advance. Original DAoC sucked IMO: you could be mezzed right off the bat, two-shotted, killed, and then it was a 10 minute horse ride to the frontier fort, and then up to 15 minutes to wait for a portal. 25 seconds of action followed by 25 minutes of downtime was just lame.
Small differences in game design can make for big differences in game play.
Originally posted by Ohaan You are not being objective. If you are referring to games such as UO, Shadowbane, AC2 and FFA servers for games like DAoC, and AC1 then there is more to it than the issue of PvP: - UO was buggy the first couple years and lacked a context for the PvP. - Shadowbane and AC2 were technical disasters and suffered from high level vs low level ganking. - FFA servers for DAoC and AC1 were not purpose built. They were alternate rulesets overlayed onto games that were designed for something different. So it is not that FFA PvP doesnt work, it is that nobody has matched a good FFA PvP concept with a technically polished game.
Umm, actually: UO, AC1, DAOC and EVE online were/are largely successful & AC2's failure had little to do with it's (watered down) PVP.
Personally, I agree with you. My post was a response to another by someone who's personal opinion on FFA PvP MMOs was that most were failures. Of course that is debatable since most are actually still running. All I was saying that even if you do consider them failures, there are many other variables involved such that isolating the PvP feature itself as the failing point is not possible.
This was a very hard choice considering there was no vote for all button. I really just like pvp, any type is my type to be honest. But I voted for FFA+Looting, just because it would be the more difficult pvp out of the choices. A game called Darkness Falls: The crusade (mythics 1st rvr) had a great full looting system, it was a player based economy game, which made the looting system shine. In the game you could litterally invade the enemy realm (by boat) unnoticed if you were sneaky. Then able to pick off players on 1 by 1, some might have crap gear, but it was the ones with the epic/rare items that was the most rewarding. A game that you can PK someone and take there loot that they worked so hard for(goes both ways), is definattly a game for me.
1) You had two factional sides fighting each other, yet it was possible to be neutral in the game and not be alligned with either side. You could switch sides if you wanted to put in the time to grind the faction, or go neutral after being on a side. Topping it off, everybody could communicate with everybody, no lame attempts at breaking through the language scrambler. If you wanted to talk smack, you could, and if someone talked smack to you, you could do it right back to them without needing to know how to break through the language scrambler. It would be a lot better if you had multiple factions. Even better if guilds can chose not to be in a faction at all. In Swg there was not much room for diplomacy, politics, gaining allies etc. This is where FFA + looting really shines. Banding together is necessary in such a chaotic world. and reading about the political scheme of the guilds is great especially when you yourself are involved.
2) Everything was Consensual. You knew when you were attackable, you knew how to become attackable. Sometimes you took a risk and got a TEF, sometimes nothing happened, sometimes you came across a group of enemies and got killed. Nobody could really complain about getting ganked because you chose to be attackable. This also allowed for good competition, as both sides would amass groups and then go at it in a location. When one side won, you knew you won, and the losers knew they lost. I remember a lot of fights where we wanted to attack an enemy base but the enemy already had spies in our midst who could not be not attacked. The spies simply scouted out our forces, told the commanders which players are involved and what their character type is (medic, doc etc...) so that target priorities could be made. I am sorry but the situation was simply ridiculous: moving along in a swamp with 30 people and having 2 non-attackable hostiles in our mids shading us and giving intel via ts back to the enemy. Thats why I hated the consensual stuff in swg. Nothing worse than attacking a base and getting killed in seconds because your healers are getting focus fired from the start. 3) Player built bases. Putting the bugs with this aside, the destroyable bases were a great objective. Players had to put in the time to earn the faction to build them, and the other team would work to destroy them. Faction pets were also a fun thing to buy and destroy in the early game. As you said they were rather useless. Combine them with increased boni for production and harvesting in the bases vicinity. ...
I agree more or less with the rest.
--- Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
100% FFA and looting. under certain circumstances, there should be safe areas/zones for people that dont want to pvp. also, equipment should be fairly easy to replace so people do not get discouraged, and the looting should be limited to 1 or 2 items max.
I like the RvR(vR) type PvP. I don'yt enjoy the full loot type games, but rather the idea of people dropping items when they die. Not just money... But like 3 random items in your inventory. It could be all of your money, or your epic item, or it could just be a cheap health potion.
What side your own, shouldnt however be determined by your class/race or what so ever.
RvR is the only type that I enjoy. FFA rule-sets and full loot rule-sets allow for too much greifing. It makes the game pretty much pointless and appeals to the fringe social outcasts of the gaming populous.
Currently playing: LOTRO & WoW (not much WoW though because Mines of Moria rocks!!!!)
Looking Foward too: Bioware games (Dragon Age & Star Wars The Old Republic)
Originally posted by Ohaan This is where I disagree a bit. I think you can have a deep, instance-free, persistent world PvP MMO even with a lot of character building. The key is a steep diminishing-returns curve. It should be relatively quick to get to 90-95 percentile. The extra 5% or so is gravy for the power gamers who want to invest the time.
A good substitute for standard character 'building' is character customization. Appearance and non-combat skills go a long way towards personalizing your experience.
Also, devs seriously have to consider the fun factor. I liked the PvP in UO because damage output was relatively low. Battles lasted a while and you could often safely make a retreat. If you were killed, you could get back into the action in a few minutes if you stocked up in advance. Original DAoC sucked IMO: you could be mezzed right off the bat, two-shotted, killed, and then it was a 10 minute horse ride to the frontier fort, and then up to 15 minutes to wait for a portal. 25 seconds of action followed by 25 minutes of downtime was just lame. Small differences in game design can make for big differences in game play.
Good to know that some Pro FFA w/Looting do want full game worlds with exploration, character building, etc. Taking that into consideration, makes more sense how companies go wrong with the PvP design of their game. They try to make the same game cater to both crowds, so they put the big environment and rich character building, but then throw in FFA PvP at the end. The FFA Looting crowd is upset because they need to spend tons of time building their characters and doing endgame PvE to get the gear to be competitive in PvP. The Consensual PvP crowd is upset because they want to be able to explore the game world and experience other non-PvP parts of the game without being forced into a PvP situation at any given time.
Since I'm in the latter camp, that's why SWG was great for me. I could go Overt and fight people when I wanted, and there were usually other people I could find who were doing the same thing. If I just wanted to go kill MOBs or explore the massive game world without fighting anybody, I could do that too with no worries. The only flaw was as I said, no content for the PvP, so eventually people stopped wanting to participate and you couldn't choose to go Overt and fight because nobody else would go Overt as they had to incentive to do so.
Originally posted by Tierce ... 1) You had two factional sides fighting each other, yet it was possible to be neutral in the game and not be alligned with either side. You could switch sides if you wanted to put in the time to grind the faction, or go neutral after being on a side. Topping it off, everybody could communicate with everybody, no lame attempts at breaking through the language scrambler. If you wanted to talk smack, you could, and if someone talked smack to you, you could do it right back to them without needing to know how to break through the language scrambler.
It would be a lot better if you had multiple factions. Even better if guilds can chose not to be in a faction at all. In Swg there was not much room for diplomacy, politics, gaining allies etc. This is where FFA + looting really shines. Banding together is necessary in such a chaotic world. and reading about the political scheme of the guilds is great especially when you yourself are involved.
2) Everything was Consensual. You knew when you were attackable, you knew how to become attackable. Sometimes you took a risk and got a TEF, sometimes nothing happened, sometimes you came across a group of enemies and got killed. Nobody could really complain about getting ganked because you chose to be attackable. This also allowed for good competition, as both sides would amass groups and then go at it in a location. When one side won, you knew you won, and the losers knew they lost.
I remember a lot of fights where we wanted to attack an enemy base but the enemy already had spies in our midst who could not be not attacked. The spies simply scouted out our forces, told the commanders which players are involved and what their character type is (medic, doc etc...) so that target priorities could be made. I am sorry but the situation was simply ridiculous: moving along in a swamp with 30 people and having 2 non-attackable hostiles in our mids shading us and giving intel via ts back to the enemy. Thats why I hated the consensual stuff in swg. Nothing worse than attacking a base and getting killed in seconds because your healers are getting focus fired from the start.
3) Player built bases. Putting the bugs with this aside, the destroyable bases were a great objective. Players had to put in the time to earn the faction to build them, and the other team would work to destroy them. Faction pets were also a fun thing to buy and destroy in the early game.
As you said they were rather useless. Combine them with increased boni for production and harvesting in the bases vicinity.
Yes, a third faction might have made it more interesting. Maybe at least had the neutral faction have its own faction type reward system without necessarily committing its members to being PvP attackable. I have to disagree about the politics though. There was a lot of politics involved on the Server I played on. There were alliances amongst the guilds on the same faction. You were not forced to defend your own faction 100% of the time. As an Imperial, there were some Imperial player cities that I refused to help defend. Conversely, there were some rebels that I had respect for and some that I did not. The type of tactics I used against those I respected greatly differed from the tactics I used on those I vehemently hated. There was a very deep player community. People who proved to be smacktards were blacklisted from shops and could not get the good gear to PvP with. People who proved to be good helpful individuals had all the best crafters on the server volunteering to build them custom equipment and share rare looted items and rare resources.
With the unattackable spies from within, I think you run into that with every game. At least in SWG you could communicate to everybody and the added transparency made it much easier to know who was a spy. Even then, I never felt that the spies changed much in any battle. Even when they did, it's nothing like the faction traitors you have in other games, especially ones that disallow cross faction communication. Nothing aggravates me more than the, "I'm so cool cause I'm on the other side's vent getting you killed. You can't talk to them, but I can." That crap didn't exist in SWG because everybody could talk to everybody anyways. There wasn't anything special about relaying information to the enemy because anybody could do it. Because it wasn't so Taboo, you had fewer people doing it.
Well since I'm not a PvP fan I would say none at all, but if I were to pick a system I would say consenual only since even WoW's system promotes assinine behavior. There should be consequences to this type of activity instead of the game expecting the players themselves to police the griefers.
What I mean by that is if you decide you want to go on a PK spree of low levels then be prepared to be barred from every settlement in the game, guards of all factions attacking you on sight for the game impossed bounty on your head. Not being able to sell or trade items with tradesmen in towns, you would have to go to unsavory locations to base out of where your goods bring less cash and even mundane items cost an arm and a leg.
Games these days don't place consequences on nefarious behavior and some by design seem to promote it to a greater degree. I'm not so naive as to think that games without any PvP are better than those with it, but if a company wants my subscription fees then they had better provide me a product I'm willing to pay to play, and a game that forces me to PvP won't be getting my cash.
OH! and no class should have the capability to stealth to complete invisibility at least not be able to renenter it once its broken for a sneak attack. I just find this to be the refuge of cowardly behavior. I might allow that you can use this type of ability to preform recon work or to move through an area unseen due to superior use of camoflage but it doesn't meet the common sense test to be able to skulk around in the middle of an open area and remain unseen.
LOL, fair enough. Any game then that is FFA PvP with just bag looting and no equipped item looting is fine with me. I don't like gank fests from people out ganking for the sole purpose full corpse looting looking for ultra rare items that took me months to earn.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
Trust me, Ive lost more than My fair share. but I always came back. I didnt run away crying, I stood my ground and got rolled so many times, I lost count. If people lose thier armor, weapons, gold , whatever ..would they be so bold?. If people were to lose with a cost, perhaps they would not engage the enemy as much. In fact, because of this, you may actually find less fights as people only enter fights they think they can win, or cut and run a lot sooner. That, and a lot more people playing stealth/invisibility/cherry picking classes that offer first strike potential and escapability (which are already prevalent). To me, PvP is putting the best you've got against the best Ive got. I dont like losing items, but I dont feel I need a reward other than my victory. Just my thoughts on it Torrential
you know what we need a Victory condition here friend I'm sorry but what you describe isn't really PVP. That's senseless PVP without an objective
Guild vs Guild fighting over a resource node would be a good start towards good PVP with firm Victory condition
it doesnt have to be looting but there needs to be LOSS like you cant rez without a teammate or something. Because fighting all night long like immortal gods might be fun for you but I've tired of that years ago.
Weirdly enough I am a care bear and don't get involved in PvP but I prefer the game I'm in to have FFA PvP with full looting. Ok so I'm going to get ganked once in a while and loose stuff I've been putting time and effort into getting but the risk of this happening adds to my enjoyment of the game.
I support Belgiums efforts to get noticed ... at all.
A lot of great info so far. I think this thread sheds a lot of light on the PvP scene for me. All of the ideas you guys have come up with are great. I know somewhere, somehow there has to be a middle ground between PvP and PvE. I don't feel they should be separate games. The community in the game, no matter what your play style, should be able to contribute to one another and enjoy the game. Finding this common ground will not be an easy task. I think all of your comments help to find or design a top notch game for everyone to enjoy. I'm trying to think outside the box.
Comments
FFA = 4TW
Had my FFA stint in UO at release and didn't overly care for it. Had a blast with DaoC sieging and pvp though. Also did the pvp server in WoW thing, but didn't have fun always looking over my shoulder, because I spent more time being paranoid than enjoying myself. Grats to anyone that likes that kind of game though.
I don't mind Open PvP, but not too keen on full loot.
I hate PvP where you have to flag to participate, its just kinda.. well poor.
I hate unbalanced PvP too, something Mythic was great at in DAoC too many classes to balance, Guild Wars is probably the most balanced PvP game I've played so far.
I like the ability to advanced my character with PvP only skills and feats and have the ability to customise this to great length.
Something definately not like this! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFMoHGAUhCk
This is a good topic. I think there are basically two camps, which can be seen in this thread. One that wants FFA with looting, and one that wants Consensual with minimal or no looting. These two groups are really looking for two different types of games. The FFA with looting camp I think would prefer an MMOFPS type game, where there is not a lot of character building involved, and little time required to gear up for PvP gameplay. The Consensual camp (where I would pin myself) wants a more indepth game with lots of character building.
I will stand by that the original SWG PvP system was the best I've ever played in, and could have been nearly perfect with a few modifications. Here's why I think so
1) You had two factional sides fighting each other, yet it was possible to be neutral in the game and not be alligned with either side. You could switch sides if you wanted to put in the time to grind the faction, or go neutral after being on a side. Topping it off, everybody could communicate with everybody, no lame attempts at breaking through the language scrambler. If you wanted to talk smack, you could, and if someone talked smack to you, you could do it right back to them without needing to know how to break through the language scrambler.
2) Everything was Consensual. You knew when you were attackable, you knew how to become attackable. Sometimes you took a risk and got a TEF, sometimes nothing happened, sometimes you came across a group of enemies and got killed. Nobody could really complain about getting ganked because you chose to be attackable. This also allowed for good competition, as both sides would amass groups and then go at it in a location. When one side won, you knew you won, and the losers knew they lost.
3) Player built bases. Putting the bugs with this aside, the destroyable bases were a great objective. Players had to put in the time to earn the faction to build them, and the other team would work to destroy them. Faction pets were also a fun thing to buy and destroy in the early game.
4) When you killed somebody, you gained faction and they lost faction. Winners gained something and losers lost something without needing to have actual items in the exchange. The faction points were the basis for purchasing things like bases.
5) Lastly, the gear situation. While people who had heavy time investments into the game would get the edge with all 90% composite armor, best sliced weapons with looted components, best socketed items, etc., you could come into the game and buy a full set of pretty good armor and a weapon for a days worth of missions, grab some buffs and be competitive if you were good at the game. The player economy provided the best stock quality equipment at competitive pricing. Veteran players only had marginal advantages. You could even buy the better armor and weapons for a bit more cash, the only thing that was truly a Veteran item was the rare socketed clothing, which was either very rare or very expensive.
6) One more, Zerging was not a viable tactic. When you died, you lost all your buffs, and without buffs, you were basically a one-shot kill. It took awhile to get buffed back up, maybe a little too long, but regardless it provided a buffer that seperated the battles. You knew when you won because the other side all died and didn't come back for awhile. When you lost, you had that time to stew and decide to get your act together so you didn't lose again.
Now, a few of the tweaks to the system that would have made it the best ever
1) The zones of control that they finally introduced later in the game (after they completely destroyed the combat system) or some other reward for having bases built. Bases were really only for pride. Eventually there weren't many because people got tired of just putting them up to get blown up and not really getting anything material for spending their faction points.
2) More faction gained for killing, but not necessarily with a bigger loss for dying. The way it was, you would lose 45 for dying, and whoever killed you gained 30. Also this should have been split evenly between the group, as it was only the killing blow got the reward. The reward for killing should have at least been worth the same as the loss for dying, and IMO should have been worth 2x or 3x more. Also, if you had no faction to give, you should not have been able to enter the battle. Being able to fight with nothing to lose broke the system, as it also made the victors gain nothing for killing you.
3) Remove the group TEF. For the unaware, there was a system that would allow undeclared group members to jump into a battle when another member of their group was attacked (usually because they were overt). However, they should never have removed the TEF entirely as they did in the CU. Getting a TEF for attacking faction NPCs was an important part of the game. If they wanted to allow people to live the Star Wars dream and fight faction NPCs in peace, they should have just made instances.
4) Have more purchasable faction items to make the faction more valuable. Constantly introduce new items. Again for the unaware, there was a total lack of new content in the game for the first 2 years, and eventually nobody cared about faction because they had already bought the same crap 10 times over. The game overall just needed any kind of content for the PvP aspect of the game. The Imperial Crackdown yielded the best NPC battles I ever experienced
I'm sure I could think of a couple more, but I've lost my train of thought and this post is too long. This is my ode to the best game that could have been but got destroyed by SOE. I only hope someday to play a game just like it, but with a few improvements.
Umm, actually: UO, AC1, DAOC and EVE online were/are largely successful & AC2's failure had little to do with it's (watered down) PVP.
IMHO, it is ALL carebear pvp unless it is perma-death.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
Agreed. I have always felt that you cannot cater 100% to every audience simultaneously. Kinda like in phys ed back in school when you played team sports. If everyone on one team is into the game and makes an effort and some of the people on the other team are not, you get a lopsided game; unchallenging for the winners and frustrating for the losers. Putting a lot of PvE (or using a lot of instancing) in an otherwise PvP game defeats the purpose IMO.
This is where I disagree a bit. I think you can have a deep, instance-free, persistent world PvP MMO even with a lot of character building. The key is a steep diminishing-returns curve. It should be relatively quick to get to 90-95 percentile. The extra 5% or so is gravy for the power gamers who want to invest the time.
A good substitute for standard character 'building' is character customization. Appearance and non-combat skills go a long way towards personalizing your experience.
Also, devs seriously have to consider the fun factor. I liked the PvP in UO because damage output was relatively low. Battles lasted a while and you could often safely make a retreat. If you were killed, you could get back into the action in a few minutes if you stocked up in advance. Original DAoC sucked IMO: you could be mezzed right off the bat, two-shotted, killed, and then it was a 10 minute horse ride to the frontier fort, and then up to 15 minutes to wait for a portal. 25 seconds of action followed by 25 minutes of downtime was just lame.
Small differences in game design can make for big differences in game play.
Umm, actually: UO, AC1, DAOC and EVE online were/are largely successful & AC2's failure had little to do with it's (watered down) PVP.
Personally, I agree with you. My post was a response to another by someone who's personal opinion on FFA PvP MMOs was that most were failures. Of course that is debatable since most are actually still running. All I was saying that even if you do consider them failures, there are many other variables involved such that isolating the PvP feature itself as the failing point is not possible.
oh sorry forgot, there isn't any...
Maybe you should design one?
I'm sure it would be an instant hit
This was a very hard choice considering there was no vote for all button. I really just like pvp, any type is my type to be honest. But I voted for FFA+Looting, just because it would be the more difficult pvp out of the choices. A game called Darkness Falls: The crusade (mythics 1st rvr) had a great full looting system, it was a player based economy game, which made the looting system shine. In the game you could litterally invade the enemy realm (by boat) unnoticed if you were sneaky. Then able to pick off players on 1 by 1, some might have crap gear, but it was the ones with the epic/rare items that was the most rewarding. A game that you can PK someone and take there loot that they worked so hard for(goes both ways), is definattly a game for me.
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Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
100% FFA and looting. under certain circumstances, there should be safe areas/zones for people that dont want to pvp. also, equipment should be fairly easy to replace so people do not get discouraged, and the looting should be limited to 1 or 2 items max.
I like the RvR(vR) type PvP. I don'yt enjoy the full loot type games, but rather the idea of people dropping items when they die. Not just money... But like 3 random items in your inventory. It could be all of your money, or your epic item, or it could just be a cheap health potion.
What side your own, shouldnt however be determined by your class/race or what so ever.
Futilez - Mature MMORPG Community
Correcting people since birth.
RvR is the only type that I enjoy. FFA rule-sets and full loot rule-sets allow for too much greifing. It makes the game pretty much pointless and appeals to the fringe social outcasts of the gaming populous.
Currently playing:
LOTRO & WoW (not much WoW though because Mines of Moria rocks!!!!)
Looking Foward too:
Bioware games (Dragon Age & Star Wars The Old Republic)
Good to know that some Pro FFA w/Looting do want full game worlds with exploration, character building, etc. Taking that into consideration, makes more sense how companies go wrong with the PvP design of their game. They try to make the same game cater to both crowds, so they put the big environment and rich character building, but then throw in FFA PvP at the end. The FFA Looting crowd is upset because they need to spend tons of time building their characters and doing endgame PvE to get the gear to be competitive in PvP. The Consensual PvP crowd is upset because they want to be able to explore the game world and experience other non-PvP parts of the game without being forced into a PvP situation at any given time.
Since I'm in the latter camp, that's why SWG was great for me. I could go Overt and fight people when I wanted, and there were usually other people I could find who were doing the same thing. If I just wanted to go kill MOBs or explore the massive game world without fighting anybody, I could do that too with no worries. The only flaw was as I said, no content for the PvP, so eventually people stopped wanting to participate and you couldn't choose to go Overt and fight because nobody else would go Overt as they had to incentive to do so.
Yes, a third faction might have made it more interesting. Maybe at least had the neutral faction have its own faction type reward system without necessarily committing its members to being PvP attackable. I have to disagree about the politics though. There was a lot of politics involved on the Server I played on. There were alliances amongst the guilds on the same faction. You were not forced to defend your own faction 100% of the time. As an Imperial, there were some Imperial player cities that I refused to help defend. Conversely, there were some rebels that I had respect for and some that I did not. The type of tactics I used against those I respected greatly differed from the tactics I used on those I vehemently hated. There was a very deep player community. People who proved to be smacktards were blacklisted from shops and could not get the good gear to PvP with. People who proved to be good helpful individuals had all the best crafters on the server volunteering to build them custom equipment and share rare looted items and rare resources.
With the unattackable spies from within, I think you run into that with every game. At least in SWG you could communicate to everybody and the added transparency made it much easier to know who was a spy. Even then, I never felt that the spies changed much in any battle. Even when they did, it's nothing like the faction traitors you have in other games, especially ones that disallow cross faction communication. Nothing aggravates me more than the, "I'm so cool cause I'm on the other side's vent getting you killed. You can't talk to them, but I can." That crap didn't exist in SWG because everybody could talk to everybody anyways. There wasn't anything special about relaying information to the enemy because anybody could do it. Because it wasn't so Taboo, you had fewer people doing it.
Well since I'm not a PvP fan I would say none at all, but if I were to pick a system I would say consenual only since even WoW's system promotes assinine behavior. There should be consequences to this type of activity instead of the game expecting the players themselves to police the griefers.
What I mean by that is if you decide you want to go on a PK spree of low levels then be prepared to be barred from every settlement in the game, guards of all factions attacking you on sight for the game impossed bounty on your head. Not being able to sell or trade items with tradesmen in towns, you would have to go to unsavory locations to base out of where your goods bring less cash and even mundane items cost an arm and a leg.
Games these days don't place consequences on nefarious behavior and some by design seem to promote it to a greater degree. I'm not so naive as to think that games without any PvP are better than those with it, but if a company wants my subscription fees then they had better provide me a product I'm willing to pay to play, and a game that forces me to PvP won't be getting my cash.
OH! and no class should have the capability to stealth to complete invisibility at least not be able to renenter it once its broken for a sneak attack. I just find this to be the refuge of cowardly behavior. I might allow that you can use this type of ability to preform recon work or to move through an area unseen due to superior use of camoflage but it doesn't meet the common sense test to be able to skulk around in the middle of an open area and remain unseen.
LOL, fair enough. Any game then that is FFA PvP with just bag looting and no equipped item looting is fine with me. I don't like gank fests from people out ganking for the sole purpose full corpse looting looking for ultra rare items that took me months to earn.
Fear not fanbois, we are not trolls, let's take off your tin foil hat and learn what VAPORWARE is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware
"Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product."
you know what we need a Victory condition here friend I'm sorry but what you describe isn't really PVP. That's senseless PVP without an objective
Guild vs Guild fighting over a resource node would be a good start towards good PVP with firm Victory condition
it doesnt have to be looting but there needs to be LOSS like you cant rez without a teammate or something. Because fighting all night long like immortal gods might be fun for you but I've tired of that years ago.
open - RvR with semi full looting (No losing of equiped items)
I also like War there system. Where PvP get more room every tier, till it is open-PvP at tier 4.
Weirdly enough I am a care bear and don't get involved in PvP but I prefer the game I'm in to have FFA PvP with full looting. Ok so I'm going to get ganked once in a while and loose stuff I've been putting time and effort into getting but the risk of this happening adds to my enjoyment of the game.
I support Belgiums efforts to get noticed ... at all.
A lot of great info so far. I think this thread sheds a lot of light on the PvP scene for me. All of the ideas you guys have come up with are great. I know somewhere, somehow there has to be a middle ground between PvP and PvE. I don't feel they should be separate games. The community in the game, no matter what your play style, should be able to contribute to one another and enjoy the game. Finding this common ground will not be an easy task. I think all of your comments help to find or design a top notch game for everyone to enjoy. I'm trying to think outside the box.