Without Friendly Fire you cannot have a strategic PvP world...

Archaegeo

Its the problem with GW2 and many other RvR or even PvP games.

When a melee can swing a sword wildly, or an archer fire into a mass, or a mage release nasty AOE death, without worry about killing friendlies, it promotes zerg and removes need for strategic deployment.

Think how much more carefully you would have to plan and coordinate attacks.

Think how much you would have to adapt to deal with stragglers that don't know the plan.

And of course to deal with traitors who intentionally attack friendlies (of course given there is no permanent death deterrant, griefers need a penalty for friendly kills).

But griefer/traitors aside, friendly fire is what is missing.

Kyleran

Originally posted by Archaegeo

Its the problem with GW2 and many other RvR or even PvP games.

When a melee can swing a sword wildly, or an archer fire into a mass, or a mage release nasty AOE death, without worry about killing friendlies, it promotes zerg and removes need for strategic deployment.

Think how much more carefully you would have to plan and coordinate attacks.

Think how much you would have to adapt to deal with stragglers that don't know the plan.

And of course to deal with traitors who intentionally attack friendlies (of course given there is no permanent death deterrant, griefers need a penalty for friendly kills).

But griefer/traitors aside, friendly fire is what is missing.

I dunno, when I watch Lord of the Rings movies the melee always manage to only hack down orcs, the elves always hit their targets dead on without scratching the hobbits, and Gandalf never burnt down anyone that I could see.  Even traitors to the cause never actually killed anyone.

I think is has something to do with it being a magical fantasy, and the characters are just that good.

Sure, if you are trying to create a more realistic combat simulator it seems rather stupid, but that's really not the goal in most games.

BTW, EVE is a pretty strategic game and even has friendly fire, but only if you lock someone first, so I'd have to disagree with your premise that a game must have this to be strategic.

 

 

Shadanwolf

Car makers make different models to appeal to different groups of consumers

Game makers have to decide early on who their target market is and the features  that they want to design into the game to attract their target market.

I would say "friendly fire"  would push ESO in a particular direction.A direction the designers felt they didn't want to go....given their target market.

Xasapis

I don't think that games like Planetside 2 would work without FF. I don't know what the OP had in mind when he envisioned strategic world PvP.

IPolygon

@OP: You are looking at the issue the wrong way. Not friendly fire is the problem in GW2, but the way aoe affect allies and enemies. You can mitigate most damage by stacking up in one position. If aoe spells would hit all targets and there would be no bad condition (Retaliation) to a good natural counter for bad position play, fights in GW2 played way more tactical.

g0m0rrah

  Strategy usually involves roles be it scout, medic, tank, etc.  People do not want roles unless that role is " I can do everything ".   I see the main problem as being more of a hybridization with no diversification.  Everyone tanks, heals, and deals damage so why have a strategy, you might as well zerg.

  Weakness must exist to be exploited in order to have strategy.  Most players refuse to deal with any weakness and must be the best at all things which pretty much shits all over tactics.  When a game focuses on huge burst damage then the game must also rely on huge burst healing since we all know, real tanks do not seem to exist in most mmo's.  I still have no idea why most developers believe that a dagger should hit a platemail wearing character almost as hard as cloth.  This eliminates strategies built upon character creation.  Weapon choice as a strategy becomes a zerg as well, just pick whatever and attack whatever.  This bleeds over into abilities as well.  No one simply wants an ability that slows it also has to do 9000 damage.

  If you could design a character  with advantages and weaknesses, strategy would start to have a place in the game.  If weapon choice matters, armor matters, ability and skill choice matters, terrain matters tactics begin to take shape.  At best mmo tactics have become kill healer 1st, kill dps 2nd, kill tank 3rd and at worst its focus fire any target until dead, rinse repeat.

FlyByKnight

Planetside 2 has friendly fire and that game is the zerg of all zerglings. Not much strategy going on.

 

Collision detection is a start, probably move on to having the open world bosses go enraged when too many people attack it and start doing attacks that chain through the crowd.  Nobody likes mass wipes.

 

In WvW scenarios there can be debuffs that are applied when too many people bunch up in the same space.

Mardukk

I think you can have strategy without FF.  I prefer FF as it does discourage zergs to an extent.  Being able to have everyone throw down mass AoE's does hurt a game, in my opinion.  I see collision detection being almost as important as friendly fire.  Being able to run through everything is pretty lame.

jesad

You can't trust these idiots with friendly fire.  You can't even trust half of them with grouping.  This is an unrealistic expectation and thus a pointless conversation.  No offense.

 

Loktofeit

IMO, friendly fire (and CD , as well) adds an immense amount to the depth and strategy of PVP combat, however devs learned early on that

1. some players do not want to be responsible for their actions
2. some players will abuse these features solely for the sake of griefing others

 

As both groups generate an incredibly high number of petitions, it's far more practical to avoid it simply from a workload standpoint.

 

I feel you can have a strategic PVP game without it, but friendly fire is one of those systems that definitely ups the ante to a whole new level.