General: Player Perspective: Seeing Red?

Stradden · October 2009

MMORPG.com Player Columnist Jamie Skelton writes this week on the subject of PKers, anti-PKers and carebears, three groups that started their existence in Pre-Trammel Ultima Online and continue today in games like Mortal Online.

This week, we'll start with a history lesson. Once upon a time, there was a world in which happy-go-lucky gamers lived in fear. The nerf bat was not their tyrant; in fact, it had yet to grow in power. Patch days were dreadful, but sparse enough to endure the wait. Dragons and other beasts were frightening, but could be defeated. No, the worst enemies facing these gamers were their fellow gamers: player-killers. Eventually known as "PKs" or "reds," these players thrilled upon the hunt of player versus player combat, frequently catching many players unaccustomed to such open combat from their fellows with surprise. Two factions then rose up to challenge the PKs. The first were the Anti-PKs, players devoted to the side of "good" who sought out to respond to PK attacks by finding, hunting, and killing known PKers. The second group were tamer creatures in game, but had a vicious bark: they became known as the carebears. This group wanted PvP to be optional, not mandatory; wanted safeguards to prevent griefing and the loss of hours of game time; and, most importantly, wanted the powers that resided over the game to be the hand that offered protection and justice.

Read Player Perspective: Seeing Red?

voyagervsbor · October 2009

I like the fact that Mortal Online was sort of featured, obviously a fan.

I do agree that its a triangle that couldn't have any of its parts taken away, it wouldn't function.

Very nice article.

Tolroc · October 2009

Nice article. I think you're on to something there.

Reborn17 · October 2009

I don't like the assertion that violence is inherently wrong. If I kill a guy who breaks into my house, I've done nothing wrong, if I somehow can stop him without doing so great, but if that doesn't seem an option, he had it comin. Same with the so called "Anti-Pks", their avenging the weak and the innocent is not "wrong" because it is PKing the offender. The day violence is no longer an option plan on becoming its daily doormat.

PhatWOP · October 2009

Not to derail this into a philosophical discussion. I would hate to take about something erudite when we could all be busy flaming each other and typing strings of numbers and letters mashed together.

The point of "Stopping something wrong by doing something wrong is like this." If you kill the killer, you have both commited, in the raw, the same act, ending another life. You have to then underpin that with some sort of justification. In the murderers case, perhaps it is greed, revenge, or simple madness. In your case it may be vengeance, justice or retribution or self-defense. The trick here, is that you have not said anything yet. You have only given a justification, but you can easily ask what makes the items in Column A (the murderers reasons) "Bad" and the items in Column "B" (Your reasons), Good.

So you have to offer some sort of moral system that justifies this dichotomy, but of course, in doing that, you are only going to expose yourself to all of the problems that all moral systems have.

To put it simply, the quote is about the similarity of acts and the great difficulty in saying why an act is okay sometimes and not okay other times.

Thorqemada · October 2009

I do not believe in "open-pvp".

The risk vs reward for PKers is far out of balance.

In reality it is perma death with no chance to come back into the game!

In an mmo it is a red name, loosing an item maybe and a death more on a stats site....

RvR and FvF works and i can not imagine any other system that would do.

There is nothing wrong with PvP in general, but it needs rules that an mmo MUST set!

Zarynterk · October 2009

Pre CU, NGE SWG was a perfect example of the harmony between pvp'ers and carebears... In SWG we needed the carebear crafters for wepons and armor, we needed the dancers and musicians for wound healing, and docs for buffs... Every game should learn from that, make all players dependant on each other to a certain extent.

Gikku · October 2009

Nice explanation of the PVP games. It is true they all need each other. Without storylines and quests or missions games really have no purpose.

I am one that PvP does not appeal to so if I try a game out and it is pretty much open PvP I simply don't play it. I guess I don't make a good carebear. For me it is just too frustrating trying to do a quest and keep getting killed by those you are an easy target for. My solution for me is don't play the game. If you like the game and you want to play it with the understanding that you will be killed at any given time. Then don't complain just move on or deal with it.

Yes I tried UO as well as a few others and when I did I did not realize they were PvP. When I did and was unable to move forward without guilds or groups or whatever I uninstalled and moved on.

Wraithone · October 2009

Open PvP in terms of todays audience means that a game niches itself from the start. If the Dev's are ok with that, then more power to them. But that IS the reality, and its not going to change. There are a LOT more of us CareBears than there are those who favor open PvP. Mortal Online, much like Darkfall before it, is going to have limited appeal to those outside of the ganking/griefing set. There are way too many other games to play these days, that don't require me to be constantly looking over my shoulder. That gets way past tiring after awhile.

Reborn17 · October 2009

Originally posted by PhatWOP

Not to derail this into a philosophical discussion. I would hate to take about something erudite when we could all be busy flaming each other and typing strings of numbers and letters mashed together.
The point of "Stopping something wrong by doing something wrong is like this." If you kill the killer, you have both commited, in the raw, the same act, ending another life. You have to then underpin that with some sort of justification. In the murderers case, perhaps it is greed, revenge, or simple madness. In your case it may be vengeance, justice or retribution or self-defense. The trick here, is that you have not said anything yet. You have only given a justification, but you can easily ask what makes the items in Column A (the murderers reasons) "Bad" and the items in Column "B" (Your reasons), Good.
So you have to offer some sort of moral system that justifies this dichotomy, but of course, in doing that, you are only going to expose yourself to all of the problems that all moral systems have.
To put it simply, the quote is about the similarity of acts and the great difficulty in saying why an act is okay sometimes and not okay other times.

I understood the quote, I disagree with it. You not believing in the existence of a right or wrong is individual opinion, not empirical data.

...and believe you me, its not a moral code in terms of just rules, but true righteous "lookin out for the next man" and the protection of the rights of the individual that keeps the weak from being devoured by the strong. Your freedom is inherent, but other's respect for it is maintained by the threat of violence.

Gikku · October 2009

Originally posted by Wraithone

Open PvP in terms of todays audience means that a game niches itself from the start. If the Dev's are ok with that, then more power to them. But that IS the reality, and its not going to change. There are a LOT more of us CareBears than there are those who favor open PvP. Mortal Online, much like Darkfall before it, is going to have limited appeal to those outside of the ganking/griefing set. There are way too many other games to play these days, that don't require me to be constantly looking over my shoulder. That gets way past tiring after awhile.

Yes and for those of us carebears that just plain don't want all that grief we simply aren't going to play it. If I want PvP then I will go to a PvP server or game. It is not my idea of fun. For those that enjoy PvP then they are going to look for games that are PvP driven.

I have been following for some time the new game Aion. I simply have not tried it because I have to shell out $50 to do so. But I do have friends and fellow gamers giving it a try . I don't think I will even worry about it as after you reach a certain level you are in and open PvP enviorment. Like I have said not my idea of fun so I am glad I did not waste my money on it.

DrowNoble · October 2009

An interesting read but I disagree with one point. At the end it was impied that losing the PKers would be a "bad" thing for MMOs. Current games and statistics say otherwise.

WoW has more pve servers than pvp. In addition, the world pvp objectives are typically very underused while the instanced battlegrounds and arenas are widely used. This is evidence to support that people prefer restricted pvp, when they want to do it they will and when they don't they do not want to be bothered by it.

City of Heroes added pvp in 2005 with City of Villains, yet the players have asked for more co-op content than pvp.

Dark Age of Camelot, a game built and balanced around pvp, opened up two ffa pvp servers (red server if you will) and shortly after they were condensed into one due to low populations. The co-op (no pvp) server Gaheris typically has the same or slightly higher pop than Mordred (red server).

Age of Conan implimented a criminal system for people who blatantly PK. Despite the pvp being more open early on, the majority of players didn't like that so a retuning was done.

FarOutFish · October 2009

I played Bounty Bay Online from it's BETA untill the close of the P2P version and for six months of the F2P version. In the P2P version there were verry few PK players, I had an instance with one who targeted me on sea untill I lurede him on land and killed him eight times. I then turned myself in and spent 48 reqal time hours in jail. It was worth it because he quit the game and moved to the newely created F2P server. When YUSHO closed the P2P server I moved to the F2P and found it was populated by a horde of The Kiddie Klown Klub, youngsters who lived for nothing but killing AFK players. BBO's design promoted AFK play, however with the hord of immature children running around looking for those they could kill easily it stoped being fun. My characters were Merchants, Miners, Loggers and Crafters, with the one exception in P2P I never attacked another player with the exception of guild sieges. (My Main was a Merchant-Warrior who did fight in organized events) After six months of putting up with PKs, flame wars, and the exodus of most of my friends who felt the same way as I did, I quit and will never go back to a game I loved and would have played for years had it's enviroment remained as it was in P2P(That kept the kids out) YUSHO's decision to close the P2P server was certainly financialy driven however it ruined the game for many of us older gamers as the F2P degenerated into "The Lord of the Flies"

maimeekrai · October 2009

"take away the PKer and - well, we've seen the ending of that story in countless MMOs."

Yes, the world would be a Utopia and subs would go up. Players would able to play the game without looking over their shoulders all the time. As the immortal Cartman said after they vanquished the exploiting PK, "Now we can finally play the game."

Apparently there are 2 kinds of Carebears, the PvP kind who are comfortable with just stat loss, and the non-PvP kind that want more protections. Which kind of sounds elitist and makes it sound like no matter how many PvPers you get together in a PvP only game, some could still be classified as "Carebears"?

and if there are no Carebears, the anti-PK's would just go back to being the PVPer's they are. And then the game would eventually die. (Assuming it's not a Magnet PVP game attracting PvPers from other games allowing them to die in it's stead. )

So, I guess all are NOT needed?

hogscraper · October 2009

I'm definitely an anti-pvper. Kicking a 5 year old in the face is about the level of challenge I see most pvpers going for when I play. And that's worse than playing a single player game on easy. You're not really playing the game, your walking through and patting yourself on the back for what amounts to killing an almost dead gray mob. That's what makes most pvpers that lean towards greifing look foolish. Take any one of them, put them into a pve only game, and watch how fast they would be laughed at running around bragging about having just owned a half dead gray con mob. You can see these losers in DAoC all the time. They run in a full group and /emote the crap out of the solo they just ran over. Being incapable of putting up a real fight is the only reason I can find that someone would willingly spend all their time hunting grays. You wouldn't do it in pve so why look like a sad little bully doing it in pvp?

Anubisan · October 2009

Very nice article.

I agree completely that all three sides must be represented in order for a game to truly shine like UO did...

There was a time when I felt that OSI really had their ruleset right with Ultima Online. At one point, PKing was possible, but you would incur stat loss if you died while red. This kept most players from just running around and killing everyone, but still allowed for the most hardcore of the PKs to continue PKing if they so chose. This made it a bit more liveable for the carebears and really separated the men from the boys in terms of the PKers.

Furthermore, at that time there were huge guild vs. guild wars that were being declared and big bands of players would storm into the bank of the opposing faction's home city and fight it out. It was epic and incredibly fun. There was still plenty of PvP to go around, but it wasn't a complete gankfest like some recent attempts have become.

I really loved the ruleset at that time... I still don't understand why they had to go and screw it all up by making Candyland (Felucca). It totally ruined the game for me and many others.

Wraithone · October 2009

Originally posted by Gikku

Originally posted by Wraithone

Open PvP in terms of todays audience means that a game niches itself from the start. If the Dev's are ok with that, then more power to them. But that IS the reality, and its not going to change. There are a LOT more of us CareBears than there are those who favor open PvP. Mortal Online, much like Darkfall before it, is going to have limited appeal to those outside of the ganking/griefing set. There are way too many other games to play these days, that don't require me to be constantly looking over my shoulder. That gets way past tiring after awhile.

Yes and for those of us carebears that just plain don't want all that grief we simply aren't going to play it. If I want PvP then I will go to a PvP server or game. It is not my idea of fun. For those that enjoy PvP then they are going to look for games that are PvP driven.

I have been following for some time the new game Aion. I simply have not tried it because I have to shell out $50 to do so. But I do have friends and fellow gamers giving it a try . I don't think I will even worry about it as after you reach a certain level you are in and open PvP enviorment. Like I have said not my idea of fun so I am glad I did not waste my money on it.

Thats my point exactly. Aion looks like it would be fun, but I'm not going to put up with NCsofts bait and switch. Their PvPvE is simply yet another take on the same, tired old Asian approach to these games. Games with open PvP niche themselves in the west. Thats simply the reality. If Aion had a PvE server I'd be more than happy to give it a try. Absent that, I have other games I can play.

Kylrathin · October 2009

No.

If you are going to call those who don't like open PvP "Carebears", then you must call those who demand it "Griefers". None of this hiding under the guise of PK mealy-mouth one-sided bullshit. You sound like the mainstream media, twisting words to suit your agenda. I LOVED your last article, but this one is so biased it's not funny. People who want to kill anyone anywhere at anytime are "PKers", but people who don't want to be content for others are "carebears"? Let me reverse it for you. Those who want to play the game as delivered are called "game players" while those who want to interrupt other peoples' games should be referred to as "selfish bastards". Words matter. You can't argue semantics when it's the point of the article.

LordDmaster · October 2009

Ying and Yang

Heaven and Hell

Life and Death

You can not have one with out the other, it has been proven time and time again. We have all seen movies where the main character has lived forever. We watched as thay strugel with the moral problems of out living their friends and family, or getting board doing the same things over and over again for centries. In all of these situations we've learned that life has little to no meaning with out death. So although all of us would like to step into an MMO world and forget that we will not be here forever, death needs to be a small part for these game, or atleast the threat of death anyway. Some people have said that thay have never felt so alive until mere inches from death, for the most part its the thrill seekers that say this. In my 12+ years of gaming and 45+ years of what I would like to think as living, I have learned that I like a little thril in my day to day life also. You know we drive our cars to work with the seatbelts on, we wear safty glasses to protect our eyes and countless other items to keep us safe. Gaming is my day to day way of getting a little controled thrill, my way of getting the adrenaline flowing even if its just for a moment or two in a fantasy world. The key here is control, I don't want to feel like I've jumped out of a perfectly good airplain without a parachute. So yes, I beleave that all MMOs need to have some aspect of PVP, but they need some control mechanism to prevent PKers from ruining the game. We need the parachute, but let me freefall as long as possible before opening the canopy.

flydowntome · October 2009

Too bad your article is pointless. Why exactly does a carebear need a PK or even an Anti-PK? The PK kills him and loots him, wasting his time and effort while providing nothing to him. All an anti-PKer does is act much less efficiently in preventing griefing than a game with restricted or consensual PvP.

The point is that both PK and anti-PKers need carebears much more than they need them. PKers need weak targets to prey on, and anti-PKers need someone to protect to feel morally justified. Carebears really don't need either.

shabazzster · October 2009

Yeah, we all like PVP at certain times with certain games, but the truth is in the form of a question. "Are the Mobs (in-game) smarter than the humans who play the game.?.. I mean, you never see mobs killing mobs, but you always see players/humans killing players.. so who's smarter i ask you?... Maybe 1 day we'll get npc's killing npc's and npc factions alike, and maybe this will balance the challenging equation i'm asking you and all gamers to contemplate.

thnks

K

Valth · October 2009

I dont really care if theres open pvp, if theres someone standing in the open and hes about your lvl and you wanna go attack him fine, what I hate is where you are a really low lvl and all of the sudden this guy whos at maxed lvl comes up to you kills you in one hit and calls you a noob (ohhh conquer online I hated you for that) but thats when you join a guild, have someone whos maxed lvl in there say this guy just pked me and then watch him getting killed and laugh at him

Slackerboy · October 2009

I like how the author seems to totally have missed the fact that the open PvP UO servers had a much smaller population then their counterparts.

And what killed UO was not any move on the PvP front. It was Everquest. Plain and simple. UO was basically the first MMO, as soon as a better MMO came out they lost.

I also find PvP games to be lazy, the devs can't make enough content to fill a game, so they just throw their hands up and say it's open PvP. Takes a lot less work and development (And money).

Of course most PKers hate being on a server with nothing but other PKers, so as soon as all the "Carebares" have quit the game and they no longer have anyone to grief, they all move on to the next open PvP game.

Navra · October 2009

Jamie missed another PvP modification. It is option available on Lord of the Rings Online. It seems to satisfy the needs of all 3 of the groups defined.

illanadan · October 2009

Very good and well written article! I miss my times with Sinners Among Saints [SAS] in UO. Yes, we were a PK guild but more so... a PK family. I find that in games anymore lack in this feeling of belonging. Even in LoTRO where the majority of players are older or atleast act more mature there is a sense of something lacking. Maybe we need the PK's and Anti-PK's to help forge those bond's of brotherhood.

illanadan · October 2009

Originally posted by Slackerboy

I like how the author seems to totally have missed the fact that the open PvP UO servers had a much smaller population then their counterparts.
And what killed UO was not any move on the PvP front. It was Everquest. Plain and simple. UO was basically the first MMO, as soon as a better MMO came out they lost.
I also find PvP games to be lazy, the devs can't make enough content to fill a game, so they just throw their hands up and say it's open PvP. Takes a lot less work and development (And money).
Of course most PKers hate being on a server with nothing but other PKers, so as soon as all the "Carebares" have quit the game and they no longer have anyone to grief, they all move on to the next open PvP game.

You do realize that all Shards (servers) were open PvP don't you? To claim that EQ killed UO is just idiocy. There was no big noticeable drop in numbers from before -> after EQ launched. Yet you could see a HUGE decline in numbers shortly after the Trammel/Felucia catastrophe.

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