... Actually I am not applying gear dependent mechanics to a looting game. I know gear isn't as big a deal as in loot dependent games but it isn't the same as taking someones piece in chess. Losing a piece in chess is like losing health, it is the condition for loss, taking someone elses items is something you do after you already beat them, it inflicts longer term setbacks to people, where as losing a chess piece has no effect beyond the scope of the match. Having your ship blown up in Eve is a death penalty and not the same as looting. I could see how they were the same if after winning a game of chess you kept your opponent's chess set and made them buy a new one. So I see it as mean, because even though the game allows it, it is still an optional action you do to benefit at anothers expense, meaning the mechanics do not force you to steal peoples items. So by looting them you are directly responsible for setting the other player back by time, items and money. Since I don't like to lose time, money or items I don't inflict it upon others either. .... That ship has some expensive gear on it. If you are familiar with EVE, you can see that a good number of the ships killed had decent gear on them. Gear is made to be used and expected to be lost. It's a very different design from gear-dependent MMOs where the game is built to instill a need and attachment to one's gear. With the hoops one has to jump through in gear-dependent MMOs, it's understandable that they would be very upset if they ever lost a single piece of it. I know that but it still isn't something most people can afford to do. It seems counter productive to try and get really nice things if I probably can't afford to replace them when I get looted.
Shortened the post a bit.
You say you think it is 'mean' to destroy another player's possessions.
But you are not thinking of EVE as an RTS game are you or as a military simulation?
Think bout it- when there is risk/loss/reward what is the end result? You have what designers call a 'victory condition'
This is why Lynx tried to get you to understand his Chess example. Chess has a victory condition.
Risk / loot pvp games have victory conditions.
Think bout two guilds that fight each other. When you beat the other Guild so bad and make them expend resources you are creating a victory condition. They can no longer fight you. All the time in EVE i have seen Guilds surrender. This is a foreign concept to WoW players
Games like WoW lack 'victory conditions'. PVPers fight all night long pointlessly. They just respawn and respawn all night long like noobs. Even FPS games have victory conditions. WoW attempted to create artificial victory conditions in their BGs and such but its not the same
You cannot have a true victory condition unless you take away something from the enemy to disable them from fighting you again.
Also, this empowers players to enforce justice in their Guild owned lands. Looting or severe penalties is a REQUIREMENT. Not an option. Otherwise, griefers can just come and gank your crafters / traders all day long and never suffer any penalty. This could never work in a sandbox where Guilds own land.
" I know that but it still isn't something most people can afford to do. It seems counter productive to try and get really nice things if I probably can't afford to replace them when I get looted."
That's the GREAT part. You don't want so overpowered griefer running around with the best stuff in the game- torturing your crafters / miners / ratters (in EVE that is the name of players that grind mobs and pay tax to corps). When there is a penalty involved, it allows you to knock this griefer down a few notches.
Richard Bartle understood this. You should check out his work on virtual worlds. He wrote that players must be knocked down otherwise the 'tyrants' will gain a grip on the world and no one can ever topple them off the pyramid
Additionally, read the other posts where we described how your Alliance / corp has ship replacement programs. So most of the time you not hurting the player per se, you're hurting an organization that is hellbent on your destruction.
edit-
TLDR Version: Without some form of loss / severe penalty there is no way to create meaningful World PVP where players can have natural victory conditions.
The thing with using RTS games or chess as an example is that no loss is long term. If you get trounced in a RTS game you can play immediately after that, you didn't lose anything, since everybody, win or lose, has their stuff reset. Same thing with chess. That is why I say losing a rook or losing a unit is like losing health, it comes back afterward and when you run out you lose.
The loss in a RPG though is diiferent, lost gear or whatever does not just come back after the fight, it isn't reset without you doing something to reset it. This hampers your ability to play, with time or costs you money and items. If you defer this cost to a guild it is just spreading th loss of time and money, but it is still a waste to the person that had their stuff destroyed. And without recooping their stuff in some way the person that lost gear can't play. Well they technically can but they will be very ineffective.
Victory conditions are whatever you make them, like any game or sport there is a way to win. It entirely depends on what you want to win. In WoW it is all about honor, winning gets you more honor than losing and each battleground has its own rules to win, there is no need to have a crushing loss inflicted on people because the game isn't about crushing your enemies but gaining as much honor as you can to get items. In that sense you would not want people to be crippled and stay out of the fight for too long as you need your enemies to potentially make more honor.
Just like if you had a PvP game based on capturing keeps, the win loss condition here is based on the keep, that probably gives you some benefit, the conditions to win is capturing a keep, taking spawn points and weaking or strengthening defenses and the like. Winning gets you a new territory losing makes you lose the territory, or at least not gaining it. The loss though is not inflicted on the player through loss of items because the focus is on territory.
If you are using item loss as a way to prevent zergs then that is a poor choice in my opinion, plus there are other ways to prevent zerging. Using item loss makes the primary focus of PvP on crushing somebody, destroying their items and crippling them, setting them and their team back time and money. Overall I think it creates a more spiteful tone to combat, even if you don't intend to comeoff as spiteful, it seems that way because the losses of battle are focused on setting another player back.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
Full-loot pvp is fun if everyone is on the same page.
i can't name a full-loot mmo, minus eve (from my lack of playing it), that had full-loot without a hacking issue in it's prime.
FC-FamineFuncom Community ManagerMemberUncommonPosts: 278
Let me toss my 2 cents in this massively long thread from a my own industry perspective.
I've been playing full loot games (MUDS and MMO's) since the late 90's and up myself. I've also have had long deep discussions with our own gaming communities on the possibilities of having it with our current games. Thus these simple points are always the same ones that I bring up the most.
Full looting has always been a system to make PvP more rewarding. More rewarding in the sense that you actually gain something meaningful (loot) while also encouraging those hard to come by emotions (fear, excitement, adrenaline rush etc) in PvP. It has also always been a system that requires other systems to be designed with it in mind (much like all system design really). Which in return, makes the introduction of a full looting system into an existing game where there was no full looting from the start very very hard.
So here are the problems from my own experience and from the many discussions on the topic over the years.
Full Looting Hinders PvP
Full looting can reduce the amount of PvP fights and different PvP types in-game. I say this because in most systems, full looting only works best if the gain has meaning. That means that in a more traditional sense, the loot or items you get actually has some value to your character and to the person who lost them. When you have the chance of loosing something of value then it always has the higher chance of making people less likely to put themselves in a position to lose. This translates into your traditional non-full looting game where players are more likely to charge into combat without thought compared to a full looting game where players are more cautious about what fights they actually get into.
The most common effects of this is more groups, more safe hugging (station hugging), less solo fights, less honorable fights, and of course less fighting altogether. More grouping is only human nature really, people have more fear of losing in a game where loss could be heavy. So people group up, gang up and guild up more to survive thus increasing more ganking in todays full looting games. More safe hugging happens when there is sanctuary from combat allowing players who want to minimize their chances of loosing valuable items more by simply not fighting unless it's the right conditions (someone they can beat or friends are online). Less solo and honorable fights normally happens because grouping/ganking is higher in a game of more loss thus making it harder to fight people willing to fight one versus one (if you can catch them solo where groups have a higher chances of catching people than solo players). Then lastly less fighting all together just really summarizes it all together that in traditional non-looting games, people don't have much loss and fight more than in a game where there is more heavier loss.
Uncontrollables
The biggest issue from a developer side of things is the uncontrollables. Things like server / network lag, client crashing and exploiting whatever. Nothing sucks worse than having players lose because of the server lagging or maybe their connection lagging in battle. It happens a lot and there is simply no way around it when it happens. This can cause the most dedicated PvP'ers to not want to play anymore especially if they are good and have had good success in their progression to lose to someone they could have beaten (pride does matter as well items too).
Balance
Another big issues from a developer side of things is the balance. Balance in a full looting game is a very painstaking process because of the sometimes heavy loss. This doesn't mean it shouldn't make full looting a possibility but it should make you consider that characters rolling in a raid (no heavy loss) is a lot different than characters rolling to another player (heavy loss). Balance is more key in systems with heavy loss and requires a good amount of attention to ensure that the balance is there in order to host a robust PvP community that has the tools to succeed.
Losing is not Fun
Losing is not fun but for us hardcore players it is because we accept it. Yet for the majority, losing over and over is a real pain. It goes back to the original point of hindering PvP. Not everyone is good and not everyone will always win every battle they fight. Everyone dies to someone and at some point you will loose something you simply didn't want to loose. However, the point is really making losing more fun. It's very hard to make losing fun in a full looting system compared to a system where you might just loose some small amount of XP (typical death pen in PvE game play) or nothing at all.
I hope that adds something to the conversation and debate. This is not an anti-full looting post but more of a reference to some reasons why full looting can also be bad or maybe good?
Glen ''Famine'' Swan Senior Assistant Community Manager - Funcom
The TRUTH: Most MMOs' core game-design would be broken by Full looting
EQ-style mmos generally have a very strong element of grinding for gear. Players don't want to spend HUGE amounts of time grinding for gear if it can be easily taken away from them. That's why they don't have player-looting and why death penalties are rather mild, rather than wiping off a few player levels or being perma-death.
Full looting can work in an MMO, but it needs the right game design for it.
Eg. Darkfall didn't have it when they first released. Acquiring gear and/or money to buy it was hard. So new players tended to run around naked or in really bad gear which just made them even easier pickings for gankers. Honestly, seeing players running around naked all the time just looked silly - it's a bit of an immersion killer unless you're playing a Hippie Nature Lover MMO.
Eventually Aventurine acknowledged the problem and took steps to address this, making acquiring gear for young players easier so losing it wasn't such a big deal.
But the problem as the OP puts it isn't that most people can't handle it, it's that either the game design doesn't support it well or players simply don't enjoy it.
The vast majority of people don't want to mug other people or be mugged - so it's not hard to understand why they might not want to do it in a game.
I'd really love to see how many of these full-loot advocates would still want to keep PvPing if defeat meant not only did they lose everything they were carrying, but everything the character had in the game entirely. Bank accounts? Wiped clean. Every piece of armor? Gone. All weapons? Vanished. You're left in your underwear with absolutely nothing to your name and required to start all over again.
Losing is not Fun Losing is not fun but for us hardcore players it is because we accept it. Yet for the majority, losing over and over is a real pain. It goes back to the original point of hindering PvP. Not everyone is good and not everyone will always win every battle they fight. Everyone dies to someone and at some point you will loose something you simply didn't want to loose. However, the point is really making losing more fun. It's very hard to make losing fun in a full looting system compared to a system where you might just loose some small amount of XP (typical death pen in PvE game play) or nothing at all.
I hope that adds something to the conversation and debate. This is not an anti-full looting post but more of a reference to some reasons why full looting can also be bad or maybe good?
It was said by another poster many threads ago and I've been ripping them off ever since. Most people WILL NOT pay $15 a month to be someone elses bitch. It's why, as we speak, there's a thread from DF noob giving it a glowing review, yet is going to quit after their free month. Their story is one of many.
Gankers killed UO, and will also likely kill DF. When ganking is possible, most players will not accept a harsh punishment for death. They'll either circumvent is (DF nekkid noobs) or they'll quit. That simple.
I think the problem for most people is they simply do not understand full looting mechanics. Losing a ship in EVE or all your armor/weapons in DF is not nearly as significant as losing just one epic weapon in EQ1. In full loot games, the lootable items are generally cheaper and easier to aquire whereas items in non-looting games tend to require more time and effort to earn.
FC-FamineFuncom Community ManagerMemberUncommonPosts: 278
Originally posted by Robsolf
Originally posted by FC-Famine
It was said by another poster many threads ago and I've been ripping them off ever since. Most people WILL NOT pay $15 a month to be someone elses bitch. It's why, as we speak, there's a thread from DF noob giving it a glowing review, yet is going to quit after their free month. Their story is one of many.
Gankers killed UO, and will also likely kill DF. When ganking is possible, most players will not accept a harsh punishment for death. They'll either circumvent is (DF nekkid noobs) or they'll quit. That simple.
Indeed and increased ganking for some is a degrade in PvP quality. You really can't avoid increased ganking due to the nature of humans wanting to stick together to survive and or win. The only good outcome of more ganking is epic group battles. But that's not to say that ganking only exists in Full Loot MMO's. There will always be ganking no matter what PvP game you play. The point however is that in Full Loot MMO's the chances of finding solo or more honorable combat becomes very very slim.
Glen ''Famine'' Swan Senior Assistant Community Manager - Funcom
It was said by another poster many threads ago and I've been ripping them off ever since. Most people WILL NOT pay $15 a month to be someone elses bitch. It's why, as we speak, there's a thread from DF noob giving it a glowing review, yet is going to quit after their free month. Their story is one of many.
Gankers killed UO, and will also likely kill DF. When ganking is possible, most players will not accept a harsh punishment for death. They'll either circumvent is (DF nekkid noobs) or they'll quit. That simple.
Indeed and increased ganking for some is a degrade in PvP quality. You really can't avoid increased ganking due to the nature of humans wanting to stick together to survive and or win. The only good outcome of more ganking is epic group battles. But that's not to say that ganking only exists in Full Loot MMO's. There will always be ganking no matter what PvP game you play. The point however is that in Full Loot MMO's the chances of finding solo or more honorable combat becomes very very slim.
(Note my reply is not in anyway shape of form an attack to Age of Conan. I never played it indepth once I saw they would not include the type of pvp server I enjoy)
1. I was ganked way less in EVE Online then EQ-style games (like World of Warcraft). In games like EVE Online, they are properly setup for PVP. Thus when hostiles enter our space, our spies will detect their presence. If they bring worthy numbers, we form a defense squad and combat them. It depends on the Alliance though. Even if we don't decide to fight the squad at that time, our crafters / traders have plenty of ways to escape via jump bridges.
I have played EVE over 2 years and never gotten ganked in nullsec while doing PVE (ratting). Only died maybe twice tops when I was a newbie in nullsec when I did not know how to use the Intel channels
Can WoW players on PVP Servers make this claim?
2. Your last comment has been true for the most part. Due to the great Intel systems EVE Online provides to it's players. No one has to die foolishly to pirates. And when you do die solo, you knew you were basically running a high-risk suicide mission. This has been my experience with EVE other players experiences may differ
I personally have found griefing and such to be way more rampant in other MMOs due to players inability to enforce justice to protect lands they dwell in. In EVE Online, Guilds -OWN- space. You live together with your Guild like a family in the same space. You hunt together. You mine together. You trade together.
It's a true virtual world. So when you pick a fight with one of my associates you best believe you are no longer engaged in a 1v1 battle. You will soon be gangbanged by many angry players. So you better have one hell of a clever escape plan, etc
Why make a game that most will never play, that is the part I dont understand. Why go into business and limit yourself to a microscopic slice of the market. Thats what Full loot PvP games do.
Why make a game that most will never play, that is the part I dont understand. Why go into business and limit yourself to a microscopic slice of the market.
Probably the same reason mom & pop businesses open every day around the world. As nice as it would be to be a millionaire, there are a lot more people out there that are happy earning a decent living doing something they enjoy, even if its for a smaller population.
Originally posted by alderdale Why make a game that most will never play, that is the part I dont understand. Why go into business and limit yourself to a microscopic slice of the market. Thats what Full loot PvP games do.
Well, I don't know if it is microscopic, but I doubt you could get more than 5% of the current MMO players into it, unless you solved it like in a FPS, all gear is easily and fast obtained (you would then have to put character development a up a few steps).
But the best way is probably by having a few different server sets, 1 with full loot and 1 where you loot a random item or money. You could possibly add a PvE only server too but most games with good PvP have weak PvE and in those cases you should just skip it.
But as long as you have a low budget you can run a game with few players, like DFO and still make enough money to live on it. PvE games are often very expensive to make since the competition is a lot tougher there. If you find a niche market you will have no or very few other games that can take your players.
You can't make a regular PvE game without competing with Wow and similar game, and the development of a game like that will take a lot of time and cost loads of money and if the result isn't better than the games already on the market you still risk all that money.
It was said by another poster many threads ago and I've been ripping them off ever since. Most people WILL NOT pay $15 a month to be someone elses bitch. It's why, as we speak, there's a thread from DF noob giving it a glowing review, yet is going to quit after their free month. Their story is one of many.
Gankers killed UO, and will also likely kill DF. When ganking is possible, most players will not accept a harsh punishment for death. They'll either circumvent is (DF nekkid noobs) or they'll quit. That simple.
Indeed and increased ganking for some is a degrade in PvP quality. You really can't avoid increased ganking due to the nature of humans wanting to stick together to survive and or win. The only good outcome of more ganking is epic group battles. But that's not to say that ganking only exists in Full Loot MMO's. There will always be ganking no matter what PvP game you play. The point however is that in Full Loot MMO's the chances of finding solo or more honorable combat becomes very very slim.
You can minimize ganking, so long as you're not stuck an a ffapvp ideology. Eve Online does this, IMO, the best way I've ever seen it done. Getting Gate ganked now is difficult, provided you're not on autopilot and stay alert. This has the effect of minimal spoils for gate gankers, but still allows for afk autopilot folks to get in hot water.
But yes, in a strict ffapvp environment, you'll always have ganking, and it will always cut into the sub base. And thus, ffaPvP will always get a lesser quality game. That's the reality. And the rub is, to get Epic Group Battles to work right, a developer needs money! A catch 22.
IMO, the only way to get epic group battles is to wipe the ffa ideology right out of the design and create a system that allows clans and guilds to war with each other at any given time, while punishing PvP(non-war) in certain areas through an ingame rp system. Yes, I'm pretty much all out describing the Eve system.
Sure, you'll lose some ffa ideologue players, to be certain. You can't reach folks who insist on being lost in the forest. But I'm convinced that Eve's PvP system is one of the big secrets to its longevity and continued success. And while they don't have full loot, for the loser, they may as well have it as they lose everything; insurance is little consolation since so much money is in the mods.
But I'm convinced that Eve's PvP system is one of the big secrets to its longevity and continued success.
Why is it that EVE can be successful and show continued growth still after nearly 7 years? Why aren't other FFA PvP or full looting games sharing EVEs success?
I think the big difference between EVE and all the other PvP games on the market today is EVE was designed from the ground up with PvP in mind. You can't develop a PvE game then try to tack on a half thought out PvP system at the end of beta or post launch and expect it to be a major factor in keeping people playing.
If devs put as much thought into developing the PvP, death penalties and looting portions of their games as they do the solo content, grouping, crafting, and raiding you might see more successful games like EVE.
Originally posted by PatchDay I hate to say this but to drive this point home think about World of Warcraft. In my time, the Hand of Ragnaros was the ultimate weapon. It could insta-pwn ya. So if you ever saw a Warrior charging at ya with it- you just ran your butt off. So yeah- allowing players to make weapons of war look different can be bad. Very cool idea but will cause massive chaos.
Well, you are right to some degree, a peasant who meets a knight should run as fast as he can but at least from a historical perspective was stuff like weapons not something you just could identify like that.
The whole idea that you can tell how good someone is by just looking at his stuff is preposterous. Sure a plate is a plate and a sword is a sword. And some magic should be easy to see but in many cases you should actually be forced to take a chance.
If it works? It does, I played Lineage a long time ago and everyone looked more or less the same. You were forced to guess who you should attack at times, it was actually fun.
So my suggestion is that customization is good but you should be able to see the type of gear and most kinds of magic (some types that you can't see would be something people try to find to give away nasty surprises). You should not be able to look on something and just tell exactly what stats it have.
And I am surprised that people who wants full loot think otherwise, unless you are just out to see who you can grief or not.
For my Alliance I am often a scout. So I will sometimes sit in my covert ops ships and gather intel on enemy ship types. To a degree, players can fit their ships with various modules. However, some stats are known.
IF I had to totally guess the enemy fleet composition I'd be totally screwed. I would not be able to communicate to our fleet officers a rough estimate of their firepower, etc. This way our defense fleet can bring the proper numbers and composition to combat the fleet. For instance, if the enemy has brought Interceptor ships (small quick ships that is hard to hit in a big battleship / capital), then our fleet will want to bring a knife that can combat this threat. Thats just one example (and it has happened)
So sure, you can have some hidden potential. EVE has it. But additionally, you also want to be able to gauge your chances. If you think bout it- you really want this for games where item destruction occurs.
No one sane wants to risk billions of ISK on a fleet fight they cannot win. Sure, such encounters does happen in EVE, but the loss is very devastating to corps / Alliances. EVE is a game of economics. We often gauge our success by the cost of damages we inflicted. If we suffer more economical loss then our Fleet commanders often consider it a defeat. Even if we're the last ones standing.
When you look at EVE killboards you will often see rough estimates of losses sustained.
Why talk about full loot alone, as if that is all the games are about. What are loots? pixels on the screen, which we can never take out of the game, unless you are a gold farmer selling it for cash.
Assuming that all of us here are gamers, we play for fun. Full loot or not, it does not operation in a vacuum. Loot, and everything else, is part of the game, elements that adds up to a full game. If the game is fun in total, it is.
A bad game with full loot won't make it a better game. A good game with any form of loot is fun. Yes that is obvioius, but that is what most of the arguments here miss. Before selling the idea of full loots to us, or criticising it, first let me know what game is it?
What if you worked a full day and made a large amount of money and decide to head home. But some jerk decides to mug you and then take all your hard-earned money.
How WOULD you feel after that?
or
How would most human beings feel? Extremely happy they just lost all their hard-earned money? or.. extremely angry?
Why make a game that most will never play, that is the part I dont understand. Why go into business and limit yourself to a microscopic slice of the market.
Probably the same reason mom & pop businesses open every day around the world. As nice as it would be to be a millionaire, there are a lot more people out there that are happy earning a decent living doing something they enjoy, even if its for a smaller population.
Mom & pop businesses do not cater to tiny niches though, they don't limit their stores to selling to one-legged midgets on pogo-sticks, which is essentially what narrow niche MMOs are doing.
Why make a game that most will never play, that is the part I dont understand. Why go into business and limit yourself to a microscopic slice of the market.
Probably the same reason mom & pop businesses open every day around the world. As nice as it would be to be a millionaire, there are a lot more people out there that are happy earning a decent living doing something they enjoy, even if its for a smaller population.
There is a small shop at the end of my street at the corner of one of the main streets in Cambridge (MA.) which is a paint your own pottery place.
Now, I'm not into paint your own pottery unless of course you throw it yourself. However, this small place does enough business to keep itself open and to provide a place for families and people who want to dabble in creativity to come and enjoy themselves. In no way, shape or form are they ever going to make millions. but the owner enjoys her shop and enjoys her place in the community.
Same can be said for a Bead Shop in Harvard Square or a small Baseball/sports memorabilia shop in Boston.
I applaud businesses who know what they are about and can make a go of it without having to sell their souls to the devil.
Not everyone would agree and I'm sure there are more than enough people who not only want to have their own business but want it to be a huge as possible. I can of course see the merit in that. But there is also great deal of merit in having a small corner that one can call their own, where they can have a business that they believe in and that gives them great purpose.
I would love to see a small mmo do well in today's climate. Let's hope games like Dark Fall and Mortal Online become so successful that they can satisfy their clientele. Even if that clientele doesn't make up a majority of the market.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Comments
Shortened the post a bit.
You say you think it is 'mean' to destroy another player's possessions.
But you are not thinking of EVE as an RTS game are you or as a military simulation?
Think bout it- when there is risk/loss/reward what is the end result? You have what designers call a 'victory condition'
This is why Lynx tried to get you to understand his Chess example. Chess has a victory condition.
Risk / loot pvp games have victory conditions.
Think bout two guilds that fight each other. When you beat the other Guild so bad and make them expend resources you are creating a victory condition. They can no longer fight you. All the time in EVE i have seen Guilds surrender. This is a foreign concept to WoW players
Games like WoW lack 'victory conditions'. PVPers fight all night long pointlessly. They just respawn and respawn all night long like noobs. Even FPS games have victory conditions. WoW attempted to create artificial victory conditions in their BGs and such but its not the same
You cannot have a true victory condition unless you take away something from the enemy to disable them from fighting you again.
Also, this empowers players to enforce justice in their Guild owned lands. Looting or severe penalties is a REQUIREMENT. Not an option. Otherwise, griefers can just come and gank your crafters / traders all day long and never suffer any penalty. This could never work in a sandbox where Guilds own land.
" I know that but it still isn't something most people can afford to do. It seems counter productive to try and get really nice things if I probably can't afford to replace them when I get looted."
That's the GREAT part. You don't want so overpowered griefer running around with the best stuff in the game- torturing your crafters / miners / ratters (in EVE that is the name of players that grind mobs and pay tax to corps). When there is a penalty involved, it allows you to knock this griefer down a few notches.
Richard Bartle understood this. You should check out his work on virtual worlds. He wrote that players must be knocked down otherwise the 'tyrants' will gain a grip on the world and no one can ever topple them off the pyramid
Additionally, read the other posts where we described how your Alliance / corp has ship replacement programs. So most of the time you not hurting the player per se, you're hurting an organization that is hellbent on your destruction.
edit-
TLDR Version: Without some form of loss / severe penalty there is no way to create meaningful World PVP where players can have natural victory conditions.
The thing with using RTS games or chess as an example is that no loss is long term. If you get trounced in a RTS game you can play immediately after that, you didn't lose anything, since everybody, win or lose, has their stuff reset. Same thing with chess. That is why I say losing a rook or losing a unit is like losing health, it comes back afterward and when you run out you lose.
The loss in a RPG though is diiferent, lost gear or whatever does not just come back after the fight, it isn't reset without you doing something to reset it. This hampers your ability to play, with time or costs you money and items. If you defer this cost to a guild it is just spreading th loss of time and money, but it is still a waste to the person that had their stuff destroyed. And without recooping their stuff in some way the person that lost gear can't play. Well they technically can but they will be very ineffective.
Victory conditions are whatever you make them, like any game or sport there is a way to win. It entirely depends on what you want to win. In WoW it is all about honor, winning gets you more honor than losing and each battleground has its own rules to win, there is no need to have a crushing loss inflicted on people because the game isn't about crushing your enemies but gaining as much honor as you can to get items. In that sense you would not want people to be crippled and stay out of the fight for too long as you need your enemies to potentially make more honor.
Just like if you had a PvP game based on capturing keeps, the win loss condition here is based on the keep, that probably gives you some benefit, the conditions to win is capturing a keep, taking spawn points and weaking or strengthening defenses and the like. Winning gets you a new territory losing makes you lose the territory, or at least not gaining it. The loss though is not inflicted on the player through loss of items because the focus is on territory.
If you are using item loss as a way to prevent zergs then that is a poor choice in my opinion, plus there are other ways to prevent zerging. Using item loss makes the primary focus of PvP on crushing somebody, destroying their items and crippling them, setting them and their team back time and money. Overall I think it creates a more spiteful tone to combat, even if you don't intend to comeoff as spiteful, it seems that way because the losses of battle are focused on setting another player back.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
Full-loot pvp is fun if everyone is on the same page.
i can't name a full-loot mmo, minus eve (from my lack of playing it), that had full-loot without a hacking issue in it's prime.
Let me toss my 2 cents in this massively long thread from a my own industry perspective.
I've been playing full loot games (MUDS and MMO's) since the late 90's and up myself. I've also have had long deep discussions with our own gaming communities on the possibilities of having it with our current games. Thus these simple points are always the same ones that I bring up the most.
Full looting has always been a system to make PvP more rewarding. More rewarding in the sense that you actually gain something meaningful (loot) while also encouraging those hard to come by emotions (fear, excitement, adrenaline rush etc) in PvP. It has also always been a system that requires other systems to be designed with it in mind (much like all system design really). Which in return, makes the introduction of a full looting system into an existing game where there was no full looting from the start very very hard.
So here are the problems from my own experience and from the many discussions on the topic over the years.
Full Looting Hinders PvP
Full looting can reduce the amount of PvP fights and different PvP types in-game. I say this because in most systems, full looting only works best if the gain has meaning. That means that in a more traditional sense, the loot or items you get actually has some value to your character and to the person who lost them. When you have the chance of loosing something of value then it always has the higher chance of making people less likely to put themselves in a position to lose. This translates into your traditional non-full looting game where players are more likely to charge into combat without thought compared to a full looting game where players are more cautious about what fights they actually get into.
The most common effects of this is more groups, more safe hugging (station hugging), less solo fights, less honorable fights, and of course less fighting altogether. More grouping is only human nature really, people have more fear of losing in a game where loss could be heavy. So people group up, gang up and guild up more to survive thus increasing more ganking in todays full looting games. More safe hugging happens when there is sanctuary from combat allowing players who want to minimize their chances of loosing valuable items more by simply not fighting unless it's the right conditions (someone they can beat or friends are online). Less solo and honorable fights normally happens because grouping/ganking is higher in a game of more loss thus making it harder to fight people willing to fight one versus one (if you can catch them solo where groups have a higher chances of catching people than solo players). Then lastly less fighting all together just really summarizes it all together that in traditional non-looting games, people don't have much loss and fight more than in a game where there is more heavier loss.
Uncontrollables
The biggest issue from a developer side of things is the uncontrollables. Things like server / network lag, client crashing and exploiting whatever. Nothing sucks worse than having players lose because of the server lagging or maybe their connection lagging in battle. It happens a lot and there is simply no way around it when it happens. This can cause the most dedicated PvP'ers to not want to play anymore especially if they are good and have had good success in their progression to lose to someone they could have beaten (pride does matter as well items too).
Balance
Another big issues from a developer side of things is the balance. Balance in a full looting game is a very painstaking process because of the sometimes heavy loss. This doesn't mean it shouldn't make full looting a possibility but it should make you consider that characters rolling in a raid (no heavy loss) is a lot different than characters rolling to another player (heavy loss). Balance is more key in systems with heavy loss and requires a good amount of attention to ensure that the balance is there in order to host a robust PvP community that has the tools to succeed.
Losing is not Fun
Losing is not fun but for us hardcore players it is because we accept it. Yet for the majority, losing over and over is a real pain. It goes back to the original point of hindering PvP. Not everyone is good and not everyone will always win every battle they fight. Everyone dies to someone and at some point you will loose something you simply didn't want to loose. However, the point is really making losing more fun. It's very hard to make losing fun in a full looting system compared to a system where you might just loose some small amount of XP (typical death pen in PvE game play) or nothing at all.
I hope that adds something to the conversation and debate. This is not an anti-full looting post but more of a reference to some reasons why full looting can also be bad or maybe good?
Glen ''Famine'' Swan
Senior Assistant Community Manager - Funcom
The TRUTH: Most MMOs' core game-design would be broken by Full looting
EQ-style mmos generally have a very strong element of grinding for gear. Players don't want to spend HUGE amounts of time grinding for gear if it can be easily taken away from them. That's why they don't have player-looting and why death penalties are rather mild, rather than wiping off a few player levels or being perma-death.
Full looting can work in an MMO, but it needs the right game design for it.
Eg. Darkfall didn't have it when they first released. Acquiring gear and/or money to buy it was hard. So new players tended to run around naked or in really bad gear which just made them even easier pickings for gankers. Honestly, seeing players running around naked all the time just looked silly - it's a bit of an immersion killer unless you're playing a Hippie Nature Lover MMO.
Eventually Aventurine acknowledged the problem and took steps to address this, making acquiring gear for young players easier so losing it wasn't such a big deal.
But the problem as the OP puts it isn't that most people can't handle it, it's that either the game design doesn't support it well or players simply don't enjoy it.
The vast majority of people don't want to mug other people or be mugged - so it's not hard to understand why they might not want to do it in a game.
Tired old topic with nothing new to see here. Full loot in an internet game is like real-life without laws. Discuss....
I'd really love to see how many of these full-loot advocates would still want to keep PvPing if defeat meant not only did they lose everything they were carrying, but everything the character had in the game entirely. Bank accounts? Wiped clean. Every piece of armor? Gone. All weapons? Vanished. You're left in your underwear with absolutely nothing to your name and required to start all over again.
Bet you wouldn't get many takers.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
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It was said by another poster many threads ago and I've been ripping them off ever since. Most people WILL NOT pay $15 a month to be someone elses bitch. It's why, as we speak, there's a thread from DF noob giving it a glowing review, yet is going to quit after their free month. Their story is one of many.
Gankers killed UO, and will also likely kill DF. When ganking is possible, most players will not accept a harsh punishment for death. They'll either circumvent is (DF nekkid noobs) or they'll quit. That simple.
I think the problem for most people is they simply do not understand full looting mechanics. Losing a ship in EVE or all your armor/weapons in DF is not nearly as significant as losing just one epic weapon in EQ1. In full loot games, the lootable items are generally cheaper and easier to aquire whereas items in non-looting games tend to require more time and effort to earn.
It was said by another poster many threads ago and I've been ripping them off ever since. Most people WILL NOT pay $15 a month to be someone elses bitch. It's why, as we speak, there's a thread from DF noob giving it a glowing review, yet is going to quit after their free month. Their story is one of many.
Gankers killed UO, and will also likely kill DF. When ganking is possible, most players will not accept a harsh punishment for death. They'll either circumvent is (DF nekkid noobs) or they'll quit. That simple.
Indeed and increased ganking for some is a degrade in PvP quality. You really can't avoid increased ganking due to the nature of humans wanting to stick together to survive and or win. The only good outcome of more ganking is epic group battles. But that's not to say that ganking only exists in Full Loot MMO's. There will always be ganking no matter what PvP game you play. The point however is that in Full Loot MMO's the chances of finding solo or more honorable combat becomes very very slim.
Glen ''Famine'' Swan
Senior Assistant Community Manager - Funcom
It was said by another poster many threads ago and I've been ripping them off ever since. Most people WILL NOT pay $15 a month to be someone elses bitch. It's why, as we speak, there's a thread from DF noob giving it a glowing review, yet is going to quit after their free month. Their story is one of many.
Gankers killed UO, and will also likely kill DF. When ganking is possible, most players will not accept a harsh punishment for death. They'll either circumvent is (DF nekkid noobs) or they'll quit. That simple.
Indeed and increased ganking for some is a degrade in PvP quality. You really can't avoid increased ganking due to the nature of humans wanting to stick together to survive and or win. The only good outcome of more ganking is epic group battles. But that's not to say that ganking only exists in Full Loot MMO's. There will always be ganking no matter what PvP game you play. The point however is that in Full Loot MMO's the chances of finding solo or more honorable combat becomes very very slim.
(Note my reply is not in anyway shape of form an attack to Age of Conan. I never played it indepth once I saw they would not include the type of pvp server I enjoy)
1. I was ganked way less in EVE Online then EQ-style games (like World of Warcraft). In games like EVE Online, they are properly setup for PVP. Thus when hostiles enter our space, our spies will detect their presence. If they bring worthy numbers, we form a defense squad and combat them. It depends on the Alliance though. Even if we don't decide to fight the squad at that time, our crafters / traders have plenty of ways to escape via jump bridges.
I have played EVE over 2 years and never gotten ganked in nullsec while doing PVE (ratting). Only died maybe twice tops when I was a newbie in nullsec when I did not know how to use the Intel channels
Can WoW players on PVP Servers make this claim?
2. Your last comment has been true for the most part. Due to the great Intel systems EVE Online provides to it's players. No one has to die foolishly to pirates. And when you do die solo, you knew you were basically running a high-risk suicide mission. This has been my experience with EVE other players experiences may differ
I personally have found griefing and such to be way more rampant in other MMOs due to players inability to enforce justice to protect lands they dwell in. In EVE Online, Guilds -OWN- space. You live together with your Guild like a family in the same space. You hunt together. You mine together. You trade together.
It's a true virtual world. So when you pick a fight with one of my associates you best believe you are no longer engaged in a 1v1 battle. You will soon be gangbanged by many angry players. So you better have one hell of a clever escape plan, etc
Why make a game that most will never play, that is the part I dont understand. Why go into business and limit yourself to a microscopic slice of the market. Thats what Full loot PvP games do.
Probably the same reason mom & pop businesses open every day around the world. As nice as it would be to be a millionaire, there are a lot more people out there that are happy earning a decent living doing something they enjoy, even if its for a smaller population.
Well, I don't know if it is microscopic, but I doubt you could get more than 5% of the current MMO players into it, unless you solved it like in a FPS, all gear is easily and fast obtained (you would then have to put character development a up a few steps).
But the best way is probably by having a few different server sets, 1 with full loot and 1 where you loot a random item or money. You could possibly add a PvE only server too but most games with good PvP have weak PvE and in those cases you should just skip it.
But as long as you have a low budget you can run a game with few players, like DFO and still make enough money to live on it. PvE games are often very expensive to make since the competition is a lot tougher there. If you find a niche market you will have no or very few other games that can take your players.
You can't make a regular PvE game without competing with Wow and similar game, and the development of a game like that will take a lot of time and cost loads of money and if the result isn't better than the games already on the market you still risk all that money.
I hate Darkfall's free-for-all full-loot, but love Eve's, because in Eve there are tangible repercussions for the offender.
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It was said by another poster many threads ago and I've been ripping them off ever since. Most people WILL NOT pay $15 a month to be someone elses bitch. It's why, as we speak, there's a thread from DF noob giving it a glowing review, yet is going to quit after their free month. Their story is one of many.
Gankers killed UO, and will also likely kill DF. When ganking is possible, most players will not accept a harsh punishment for death. They'll either circumvent is (DF nekkid noobs) or they'll quit. That simple.
Indeed and increased ganking for some is a degrade in PvP quality. You really can't avoid increased ganking due to the nature of humans wanting to stick together to survive and or win. The only good outcome of more ganking is epic group battles. But that's not to say that ganking only exists in Full Loot MMO's. There will always be ganking no matter what PvP game you play. The point however is that in Full Loot MMO's the chances of finding solo or more honorable combat becomes very very slim.
You can minimize ganking, so long as you're not stuck an a ffapvp ideology. Eve Online does this, IMO, the best way I've ever seen it done. Getting Gate ganked now is difficult, provided you're not on autopilot and stay alert. This has the effect of minimal spoils for gate gankers, but still allows for afk autopilot folks to get in hot water.
But yes, in a strict ffapvp environment, you'll always have ganking, and it will always cut into the sub base. And thus, ffaPvP will always get a lesser quality game. That's the reality. And the rub is, to get Epic Group Battles to work right, a developer needs money! A catch 22.
IMO, the only way to get epic group battles is to wipe the ffa ideology right out of the design and create a system that allows clans and guilds to war with each other at any given time, while punishing PvP(non-war) in certain areas through an ingame rp system. Yes, I'm pretty much all out describing the Eve system.
Sure, you'll lose some ffa ideologue players, to be certain. You can't reach folks who insist on being lost in the forest. But I'm convinced that Eve's PvP system is one of the big secrets to its longevity and continued success. And while they don't have full loot, for the loser, they may as well have it as they lose everything; insurance is little consolation since so much money is in the mods.
Why is it that EVE can be successful and show continued growth still after nearly 7 years? Why aren't other FFA PvP or full looting games sharing EVEs success?
I think the big difference between EVE and all the other PvP games on the market today is EVE was designed from the ground up with PvP in mind. You can't develop a PvE game then try to tack on a half thought out PvP system at the end of beta or post launch and expect it to be a major factor in keeping people playing.
If devs put as much thought into developing the PvP, death penalties and looting portions of their games as they do the solo content, grouping, crafting, and raiding you might see more successful games like EVE.
Well, you are right to some degree, a peasant who meets a knight should run as fast as he can but at least from a historical perspective was stuff like weapons not something you just could identify like that.
The whole idea that you can tell how good someone is by just looking at his stuff is preposterous. Sure a plate is a plate and a sword is a sword. And some magic should be easy to see but in many cases you should actually be forced to take a chance.
If it works? It does, I played Lineage a long time ago and everyone looked more or less the same. You were forced to guess who you should attack at times, it was actually fun.
So my suggestion is that customization is good but you should be able to see the type of gear and most kinds of magic (some types that you can't see would be something people try to find to give away nasty surprises). You should not be able to look on something and just tell exactly what stats it have.
And I am surprised that people who wants full loot think otherwise, unless you are just out to see who you can grief or not.
For my Alliance I am often a scout. So I will sometimes sit in my covert ops ships and gather intel on enemy ship types. To a degree, players can fit their ships with various modules. However, some stats are known.
IF I had to totally guess the enemy fleet composition I'd be totally screwed. I would not be able to communicate to our fleet officers a rough estimate of their firepower, etc. This way our defense fleet can bring the proper numbers and composition to combat the fleet. For instance, if the enemy has brought Interceptor ships (small quick ships that is hard to hit in a big battleship / capital), then our fleet will want to bring a knife that can combat this threat. Thats just one example (and it has happened)
So sure, you can have some hidden potential. EVE has it. But additionally, you also want to be able to gauge your chances. If you think bout it- you really want this for games where item destruction occurs.
No one sane wants to risk billions of ISK on a fleet fight they cannot win. Sure, such encounters does happen in EVE, but the loss is very devastating to corps / Alliances. EVE is a game of economics. We often gauge our success by the cost of damages we inflicted. If we suffer more economical loss then our Fleet commanders often consider it a defeat. Even if we're the last ones standing.
When you look at EVE killboards you will often see rough estimates of losses sustained.
This is an example of an EVE killboard. Notice how it shows the 'ISK Lost' column.
Why talk about full loot alone, as if that is all the games are about. What are loots? pixels on the screen, which we can never take out of the game, unless you are a gold farmer selling it for cash.
Assuming that all of us here are gamers, we play for fun. Full loot or not, it does not operation in a vacuum. Loot, and everything else, is part of the game, elements that adds up to a full game. If the game is fun in total, it is.
A bad game with full loot won't make it a better game. A good game with any form of loot is fun. Yes that is obvioius, but that is what most of the arguments here miss. Before selling the idea of full loots to us, or criticising it, first let me know what game is it?
Take this into thought,
What if you worked a full day and made a large amount of money and decide to head home. But some jerk decides to mug you and then take all your hard-earned money.
How WOULD you feel after that?
or
How would most human beings feel? Extremely happy they just lost all their hard-earned money? or.. extremely angry?
The same applies to an MMO.
Probably the same reason mom & pop businesses open every day around the world. As nice as it would be to be a millionaire, there are a lot more people out there that are happy earning a decent living doing something they enjoy, even if its for a smaller population.
Mom & pop businesses do not cater to tiny niches though, they don't limit their stores to selling to one-legged midgets on pogo-sticks, which is essentially what narrow niche MMOs are doing.
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Now Playing: None
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Probably the same reason mom & pop businesses open every day around the world. As nice as it would be to be a millionaire, there are a lot more people out there that are happy earning a decent living doing something they enjoy, even if its for a smaller population.
There is a small shop at the end of my street at the corner of one of the main streets in Cambridge (MA.) which is a paint your own pottery place.
Now, I'm not into paint your own pottery unless of course you throw it yourself. However, this small place does enough business to keep itself open and to provide a place for families and people who want to dabble in creativity to come and enjoy themselves. In no way, shape or form are they ever going to make millions. but the owner enjoys her shop and enjoys her place in the community.
Same can be said for a Bead Shop in Harvard Square or a small Baseball/sports memorabilia shop in Boston.
I applaud businesses who know what they are about and can make a go of it without having to sell their souls to the devil.
Not everyone would agree and I'm sure there are more than enough people who not only want to have their own business but want it to be a huge as possible. I can of course see the merit in that. But there is also great deal of merit in having a small corner that one can call their own, where they can have a business that they believe in and that gives them great purpose.
I would love to see a small mmo do well in today's climate. Let's hope games like Dark Fall and Mortal Online become so successful that they can satisfy their clientele. Even if that clientele doesn't make up a majority of the market.
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