The Difference

Brainy

I think why you dont see PVE economy as big problems is because even in real life people dont view it as the biggest problem.

If you asked people to make a choice between only two different communities to live.

1) Murders/Bullies/Rapists

or

2)  Inside Traders/Account Hackers/Con Artists

I think this choice is pretty obvious, even though both choices suck.

Once you understand that, you will understand why so many PVE'ers dont want to be in a world with PVP at ALL.  Especially if they plan to play in that world for signficant amounts of time.

People can play other games with high intensity PVP to get their PVP fix in a controlled limited time. 

They dont want to be on high alert 24/7 in their MMO.

Sovrath

Brainy said:

Once you understand that, you will understand why so many PVE'ers dont want to be in a world with PVP at ALL. 

Then you wouldn't buy that game.

This discussion is so ridiculous.

A pve player who doesn't want to be in a world of pvp never has to be in a world of pvp by simply not buying the game.

Mind blown.

olepi

Sovrath said:

Brainy said:

Once you understand that, you will understand why so many PVE'ers dont want to be in a world with PVP at ALL. 

Then you wouldn't buy that game.

This discussion is so ridiculous.

A pve player who doesn't want to be in a world of pvp never has to be in a world of pvp by simply not buying the game.

Mind blown.

Or better yet, create PvP zones where a player can do PvP if they want to, and PvE zones where they can just do PvE if they want to. I like both, so long as I can choose when to play which way.

Slapshot1188

Brainy said:

Once you understand that, you will understand why so many PVE'ers dont want to be in a world with PVP at ALL.  Especially if they plan to play in that world for signficant amounts of time.

I think you project your own PvE absolutist ideas on a far wider group than actually exists.

Brainy

Sovrath said:

Brainy said:

Once you understand that, you will understand why so many PVE'ers dont want to be in a world with PVP at ALL. 

Then you wouldn't buy that game.

This discussion is so ridiculous.

A pve player who doesn't want to be in a world of pvp never has to be in a world of pvp by simply not buying the game.

Mind blown.

Yeah whats your point.  Me and millions of others are sitting here willing to give our money but these games keep going out of business building PVP zones, when all they have to do is add a PVE server.  

MIND BLOWN that some dev would rather go out of business than to just add a server for 99% of the population.

But here we are in a world were these MMO's are getting like 25 people to play when there are hundreds of millions of gamers.

Brainy

Slapshot1188 said:

Brainy said:

Once you understand that, you will understand why so many PVE'ers dont want to be in a world with PVP at ALL.  Especially if they plan to play in that world for signficant amounts of time.

I think you project your own PvE absolutist ideas on a far wider group than actually exists.

Not really, the games I tend to play and like get 10's of millions of people playing them.  Where many of the games you play go out of business from lack of players.

Slapshot1188

Brainy said:

Slapshot1188 said:

Brainy said:

Once you understand that, you will understand why so many PVE'ers dont want to be in a world with PVP at ALL.  Especially if they plan to play in that world for signficant amounts of time.

I think you project your own PvE absolutist ideas on a far wider group than actually exists.

Not really, the games I tend to play and like get 10's of millions of people playing them.  Where many of the games you play go out of business from lack of players.

I like to play all games.  PvP. PvE. And Hybrid.  I'm not an absolutist.

Brainy

Slapshot1188 said:

Brainy said:

Slapshot1188 said:

Brainy said:

Once you understand that, you will understand why so many PVE'ers dont want to be in a world with PVP at ALL.  Especially if they plan to play in that world for signficant amounts of time.

I think you project your own PvE absolutist ideas on a far wider group than actually exists.

Not really, the games I tend to play and like get 10's of millions of people playing them.  Where many of the games you play go out of business from lack of players.

I like to play all games.  PvP. PvE. And Hybrid.  I'm not an absolutist.

Yeah so do I, so obviously thats not a distinguishing factor between us.

Wargfoot

I really was interested in exploring why a loss one way was considered acceptable, while a loss another way wasn't acceptable.   I think considering that gets to the heart of the problem - more so then thinking it is a loot problem.

Sovrath

Brainy said:

Sovrath said:

Brainy said:

Once you understand that, you will understand why so many PVE'ers dont want to be in a world with PVP at ALL. 

Then you wouldn't buy that game.

This discussion is so ridiculous.

A pve player who doesn't want to be in a world of pvp never has to be in a world of pvp by simply not buying the game.

Mind blown.

Yeah whats your point.  Me and millions of others are sitting here willing to give our money but these games keep going out of business building PVP zones, when all they have to do is add a PVE server.  

MIND BLOWN that some dev would rather go out of business than to just add a server for 99% of the population.

But here we are in a world were these MMO's are getting like 25 people to play when there are hundreds of millions of gamers.

You've said this stuff before and it sounds quite entitled.

You and millions of people like you can throw yourselves into the next AAA game that comes down the pike. Might take a bit but eventually it will happen.

These developers don't want to go out of business. They WANT to make the game THEY want to play. Not that you want. That they want. You don't seem to understand that. It's their company on the line and if they fail well, they fail.

You absolutely do not understand that there are people out there with different tastes who put it all on the line to try to make something they are proud of. That they want to play.

The issue is that a lot of these developers don't have the experience or the resources to make a game that is feature full and polished enough to withstand a proper launch.

Developers who do have the resources know it takes a decent amount of time and money to make a proper mmorpg. And they don't want to risk losing it all on taking a chance, so of course they make games more for people like you.

Let these small developers have their dream and take their chances. They provide a little bit of fun for like minded people and maybe someone will deliver something decent.

Heck, it happened with Albion online.

Slapshot1188

Wargfoot said:

I really was interested in exploring why a loss one way was considered acceptable, while a loss another way wasn't acceptable.   I think considering that gets to the heart of the problem - more so then thinking it is a loot problem.

You won't like my answer.

It's a lack of self-confidence.  It's like Road Rage.  When you put a normally mild person behind the wheel and someone cuts them off.  It turns into some burning rage and hate far beyond the actual offense.

ValdemarJ

Wargfoot said:

I really was interested in exploring why a loss one way was considered acceptable, while a loss another way wasn't acceptable.   I think considering that gets to the heart of the problem - more so then thinking it is a loot problem.

The premise is kind of flawed because the scenarios are overly simplistic and reductive, but here goes.

In the PvE scenario, I'm collecting a resource I may or may not want to sell. If I do go to sell it and the market value isn't there, then I'm out nothing. I may have missed an opportunity for money, but I still have the resource to use. If the resource is really cheap I can save my time by purchasing it and going after better resources.

Unless I'm bleeding money over time and resources spoil, the PvE scenario just means I need to bide my time.

In the PvP scenario all the time spent on gathering whatever is lost to me, gained by another who didn't have to spend time or the ability to harvest it. I lose and someone else gains at the expense of my work.

If I must always calculate in a "loss factor" due to this, then I'm always less than efficient and someone is profiting off my work. On top of that the market fluctuation situation, from the PvE game, is still there. So, now I face more loss factors than simply biding my time.

It isn't a matter of what I consider acceptable loss. It's a matter of how I want to spend my time. I personally wouldn't play the PvP game and I don't engage in competitive meta market trading. I like to play cooperatively in an online game.

AAAMEOW

Wargfoot said:

Xiaoki said:

The real difference is tolerance.

In a PvE game if someone has their hard earned auction house wares under cut by a bot they will be upset but continue.

In a PvP game if someone gets ganked and has their 10 gold pieces stolen after 10 minutes of playing they will quit.

People will tolerate set backs in PvE but not PvP.

I think another difference is that I can totally prevent being undercut on cotton by not selling it anymore.   

Maybe you really hate playing the auction house.  Maybe lvl 1 newbie really hate getting killed by lvl 100 players.

People don't like to be forced to do things.  Generally PvE farmers or people leveling have no chance fighting pvp minded players.  

The main word is concensual.  Why do you call it a pvp game when those players have no chance of fighting back.  

Let me assume you are ganker or griefer type of players that play this type of game.  Would you take heavy penalty if you get killed as griefers or gankers?  All I remember is those gankers/griefers threaten to quit games too if developers raise penalty for ganking.  It's the same both ways.  

Either ways, these games are really niche.  There are surviving games or fornite taking the place.  

I actually don't have a strong detest for open world ganking type of games.  But it's weird people asking why people hating getting killed in unfair pvp.  

olepi

The original premise is Murder Hobos vs Farmville. I think it is inaccurate because most PvE games are not farming simulators. I would guess that most PvE players are not playing the market in the auction house, and wouldn't care of the price of cotton has tanked. I'd probably use cotton to make something else like clothes anyway.

I'm playing LoTRO now, 100% PvE, and I don't even look at pricing of items. I'm killing mobs, following the story lines, and harvesting items to use in crafting. I can't remember the last time I tried to sell anything. 

Playing NMS too, 100% PvE. I don't care about the markets at all, except to buy low and sell high. There is a chance that someone else could tank the local market for a short time for an item, I suppose. With trillions of planets I've never seen it happen though.

In City of Heroes, I've accumulated so much money that I don't look at prices. Except perhaps for the highest end enhancement sets. There is an active market for these, but I still don't look at the prices.

In ESO, playing PvE, there are multiple auction houses run by players and guilds. I've never tried to make money playing the market although I played since beta.

So the analogy fails. In PvE playing for 20 years, I've never "played the market" and don't look at prices in the auction house. This type of "economic PvP" has never been part of my playing in all this time. I can say however that if in any of those games I can be killed at any time by a murder hobo, and I have no choice, then my choice is to not play the game.

The difference is real.

Sovrath

AAAMEOW said:

I actually don't have a strong detest for open world ganking type of games.  But it's weird people asking why people hating getting killed in unfair pvp.  

I don't think the majority of people think it's weird that people don't want to get killed in "unfair pvp."

The ffa pvp games are simply about people being able to make choices in fights/warfare. Choices as to whether or not they want to kill some people in order to start a war. Not "choice" as to whether or not a person wants to take part or not.

What I think is weird, and it's beyond weird in my book, is that you have players who hate these types of games but they consider themselves "forced" into the play style when all they had to do was "not buy the game."

Though, if I were to make a game, I'd have two continents, one for just pve and the other for ffa pvp. To that point, I would still make it that a pve player could get ganked or attacked, just from pve enemies.

I wonder if that would be an issue or not? I suspect (and I could be wrong) that there is a group of pve players who don't like the danger or facing a sudden unknown force but they like the even keeled nature of "going to quest giver/getting quest/running to a spot/doing a thing 4 ties/running back.

Rinse and repeat.

My idea is that a world should be dangerous, no matter if it's pvp or pve.

At lest for a game that I would like to play.

I remember, in closed beta for Lord of the Rings Online, there was a troll in the road on the way to Erlrond's house. I thought it was great. I also remember being attacked by a ... I think it was a goblin, while running on the road. It sort of came out of nowhere and attacked me. I loved it.

All that was removed by the time the game launched.

olepi

Sovrath said:

AAAMEOW said:

I actually don't have a strong detest for open world ganking type of games.  But it's weird people asking why people hating getting killed in unfair pvp.  

I don't think the majority of people think it's weird that people don't want to get killed in "unfair pvp."

The ffa pvp games are simply about people being able to make choices in fights/warfare. Choices as to whether or not they want to kill some people in order to start a war. Not "choice" as to whether or not a person wants to take part or not.

What I think is weird, and it's beyond weird in my book, is that you have players who hate these types of games but they consider themselves "forced" into the play style when all they had to do was "not buy the game."

Though, if I were to make a game, I'd have two continents, one for just pve and the other for ffa pvp. To that point, I would still make it that a pve player could get ganked or attacked, just from pve enemies.

I wonder if that would be an issue or not? I suspect (and I could be wrong) that there is a group of pve players who don't like the danger or facing a sudden unknown force but they like the even keeled nature of "going to quest giver/getting quest/running to a spot/doing a thing 4 ties/running back.

Rinse and repeat.

My idea is that a world should be dangerous, no matter if it's pvp or pve.

At lest for a game that I would like to play.

I remember, in closed beta for Lord of the Rings Online, there was a troll in the road on the way to Erlrond's house. I thought it was great. I also remember being attacked by a ... I think it was a goblin, while running on the road. It sort of came out of nowhere and attacked me. I loved it.

All that was removed by the time the game launched.

LoTRO has a feature now that will adjust the difficulty of the PvE enemies. Set to +2, it makes them all aggro the player and they are +2 levels higher than before. If you turn off the names floating above everything and try to go somewhere, you will be suddenly attacked all the time. 

That was in response to the complaints the PvE players had that the overland mobs were too easy. In my experience, most PvE players want a challenge and are not happy just running errands and mowing down weak mobs.

In ESO, like in many other games, the world is broken into zones based on level, and the player could attempt to go into a higher zone to get a bigger challenge. ESO since went to "one Tamriel" where all mobs scale to the player, taking away the ability to pick higher mobs. This caused more complaints.

In City of Heroes, the team leader can set the difficulty of the task, and many go with the max which is +4. Mobs are 4 levels higher than the team, making for a bigger challenge and more XP.

The common thread through all of this is the player can make a choice. Do they want faceroll easy? They can set it that way. Do they want a challenge? They can set it that way. And in many games if they want to PvP they can choose that too.

Sovrath

olepi said:

LoTRO has a feature now that will adjust the difficulty of the PvE enemies. Set to +2, it makes them all aggro the player and they are +2 levels higher than before. If you turn off the names floating above everything and try to go somewhere, you will be suddenly attacked all the time. 

That was in response to the complaints the PvE players had that the overland mobs were too easy. In my experience, most PvE players want a challenge and are not happy just running errands and mowing down weak mobs.

hmmm ...

I was semi-following that and I know that they added that feature.

But pve players wanting a challenge?

maybe?

I mean, they removed the Troll from Lord of the Rings online that was patrolling the road. They made the Old Forest hella easy because people complained.

It's my understanding that they changed things around in Moria though I don't know what those changes are. Harder? Easier?

In Lineage 2 there was this awesome area that had the "tortured souls" in a small path/valley.

People did level there but you had to be very careful as they would just come for you, sometimes many at a time. They were sort of these "undead" that had their arms bound behind them but had a dangling axe from the hand area.

In order to pass you also had to deal with them and they hit hard.

Some time after I had quit for a while I came back to the game and discovered they were no longer attacking. They just stood around. Apparently that was because players kept complaining that the area was too dangerous.

There were several areas that were made easy.

Should a player choose difficulty? I' afraid I'm on the other end of that spectrum. If a person wants to play in a "world" then there is a shared experience for being successful in various areas. And of course if it's too difficult there is always getting a group.

Fighting in the Tower of Insolence means nothing if a player can put it to easy mode. Maybe games like Dungeons and Dragons Online benefit from it but for a full on "world" where players share that world and take part in various parts in the world? Not for it.

Angrakhan

I think some PvE players for sure want a challenge. Not all. I've seen guys that clamor for hardcore and tough souls like combat. Some people like that level of challenge. I personally am not one of them. That's not to say I want easy. If 1 is "cozy" and 10 is souls like I want a 7-8. I want to feel like I got something accomplished but I don't want it so crazy hard I'm beating my head on my desk. I get enough of that in my day job. I'm not looking to double down in my free time. That being said the primary source of difficulty I run into in online games is the grouping requirement. I don't have any real life friends who play games and I don't really have all this extra free time to invest in new relationships to do this stuff online, so more and more I find myself relegated to single player games. Be nice if there was a middle ground. Maybe this delve stuff with WoW, but I'm not holding my breath.

cheyane

For me it's a weird thing I absolutely detest a real person killing me even once but then an NPC can murder me 15 times and I would still go back and try to finish. For me it's because the NPC cannot gloat or feel good about killing me. I imagine a real player does though.

In real life I don't like being bested and it always made me work doubly hard. I cannot do that due to my lack skills in a game that is to try to do better. I physically cannot manage it so I get resentful. Yes in spite of all this I still play PvP games but do my absolute damnest to avoid it. I mean I only play games where I have a decent chance of actually avoiding PvP. 

I prefer games that put PvP in a zone like Dark Age of Camelot or ESO but hey I don't whine if I cannot play the game. I recognize early the game isn't for me and move on. That is the best attitude in my book. Don't go and mess things up for the fans just walk away.

Sovrath

Angrakhan said:

I think some PvE players for sure want a challenge. Not all. I've seen guys that clamor for hardcore and tough souls like combat. Some people like that level of challenge. I personally am not one of them. That's not to say I want easy. If 1 is "cozy" and 10 is souls like I want a 7-8. I want to feel like I got something accomplished but I don't want it so crazy hard I'm beating my head on my desk. I get enough of that in my day job. I'm not looking to double down in my free time. That being said the primary source of difficulty I run into in online games is the grouping requirement. I don't have any real life friends who play games and I don't really have all this extra free time to invest in new relationships to do this stuff online, so more and more I find myself relegated to single player games. Be nice if there was a middle ground. Maybe this delve stuff with WoW, but I'm not holding my breath.

I for one would prefer more challenge in the PvE side of things.

 hate the term “trash mobs” as it indicates there really isn’t much from them other than getting in the way or being an inconvenience.

I prefer a more souls like difficulty and while the regular enemies are mildly challenging if you miss or misjudge an attack, they can be very dangerous if there are a few adds.

cameltosis

Sovrath said:

Angrakhan said:

I think some PvE players for sure want a challenge. Not all. I've seen guys that clamor for hardcore and tough souls like combat. Some people like that level of challenge. I personally am not one of them. That's not to say I want easy. If 1 is "cozy" and 10 is souls like I want a 7-8. I want to feel like I got something accomplished but I don't want it so crazy hard I'm beating my head on my desk. I get enough of that in my day job. I'm not looking to double down in my free time. That being said the primary source of difficulty I run into in online games is the grouping requirement. I don't have any real life friends who play games and I don't really have all this extra free time to invest in new relationships to do this stuff online, so more and more I find myself relegated to single player games. Be nice if there was a middle ground. Maybe this delve stuff with WoW, but I'm not holding my breath.

I for one would prefer more challenge in the PvE side of things.

 hate the term “trash mobs” as it indicates there really isn’t much from them other than getting in the way or being an inconvenience.

I prefer a more souls like difficulty and while the regular enemies are mildly challenging if you miss or misjudge an attack, they can be very dangerous if there are a few adds.

I too prefer challenge in my PvE.

I view PvE as a puzzle to be solved. The enemy has a certain amount of skills, health, plus RNG for crits etc. I have a certain amount of skills with which to overcome that enemy. Can I figure it out? Can I solve the puzzle?

I definitely prefer tactical combat, where I solve the puzzle using decision making, rather than action combat where I solve the puzzle using physical skills. Group content then adds another level of difficulty, as you have to have decent inter-personal skills on top of whatever tactical or physical skills you need.

If the puzzle is too easy - like trash mobs - then there is no satisfaction in solving it. You're just going through the motions.

Wargfoot

cheyane said:

For me it's a weird thing I absolutely detest a real person killing me even once but then an NPC can murder me 15 times and I would still go back and try to finish. For me it's because the NPC cannot gloat or feel good about killing me. I imagine a real player does though.

In real life I don't like being bested and it always made me work doubly hard. I cannot do that due to my lack skills in a game that is to try to do better. I physically cannot manage it so I get resentful. Yes in spite of all this I still play PvP games but do my absolute damnest to avoid it. I mean I only play games where I have a decent chance of actually avoiding PvP. 

I prefer games that put PvP in a zone like Dark Age of Camelot or ESO but hey I don't whine if I cannot play the game. I recognize early the game isn't for me and move on. That is the best attitude in my book. Don't go and mess things up for the fans just walk away.

This is getting to the heart of the issue.

I think you could have a PvE encounter and a PvP encounter, that thanks to AI, plays out exactly the same in every regard.  A PvE player would be fine with the PvE death, but hate the game over the PvP death - even though the experience was exactly the same and cost the same.

The player would literally decide love/hate once being told that the enemy was AI vs. another player.

As an aside, PvE enemies need to start looting and talking trash. 

Cogohi

Wargfoot said:

The player would literally decide love/hate once being told that the enemy was AI vs. another player.

As an aside, PvE enemies need to start looting and talking trash. 

Sovrath alluded that "trash mobs" are irritating and I wholly agree with that.  They are a waste of time and defeating them has negligible benefit to me.  Their entire purpose is to slow me down.  Tedium is not challenge or at least not one that I find entertaining.

Open world PVP is even more tedious than NPC combat.  At least with NPCs there's a small chance of getting decent loot drops but even that's not enough to make me love having to plow through fields of trash just to get to whatever I had planned to do.

Smart game developers know they must be very careful with mob density and respawn rates.  Human players usually don't have to honor this.  While some games do have mechanics to prevent a defeated aggressor from returning to harass the same party it's often laughably easy to work around simply by logging into an alt character or switch to another account.

Nobody would want to play a game if it had an AI that was just as irritating as human griefers.

Wargfoot

For me the key take away - and this has been an opinion of mine for a long time and is shared by many here - is that many developers hear the following complaint:

"A PvP player killed me and took 500gp"

The developer reads that as a loot problem, so they do goofy things like increase drop rates in PvP zones, or up the loot, or find a way for a player to keep more of their stuff when they die.  They come out with solutions that appeal to people already okay with some PvP.

The developer fails to realize it is a humiliation problem - and no amount of candy will get the kids into the van.

Sovrath

Cogohi said:

Nobody would want to play a game if it had an AI that was just as irritating as human griefers.

I wouldn’t be making such definitive statements. 

I would absolutely love intelligent ai npc’s to hunt down and attack players. I would especially love if they looted something from the player if the player was defeated.

The resurrection of “Dark and Light “ (which went nowhere) had that.

Instead of corpse looting you had to find the thing that looted you.

now THERE’S your quest!

Not some generic “farmer brown” is having issues with goblins. Now the player is having an issue and they need to deal with it.