While I have been a gamer most of my life, I came onto the MMO scene pretty late, around the release of WoW. For the longest time I was pretty content with the game, but after a while I saw it for the theme park it really was. I began hearing about the glory days of UO and I feel like I missed a very important and fun part of MMORPG history.
I'm not some 1337 PvP d00d, hell I'm terrible at PvP, but I would of much rather be subjected to the PvP rules of pre-trammel UO, than have to sit through another theme park carebear ranch ever again. Wheres the risk?
Originally posted by comerb Darkfall is quite successful considering its a hardcore game .
What exactly makes Darkfall a hardcore game ?
i´ll take that as WoW is Britney Spears and Darkfall is Berzerker
You know that you go to red when you kill innocent people in darkfall for example,good good all good.
Example Xxxsuperhell666xxX Ork ,goes for some hunting,he finds friendly orks crafting,he slays them because he hates orks and he knows they cant win and then he turns to red.now one of the victims gets his equipment from bank and starts chasing Xxxsuperhell666xxX ,but when he finds him this Xxxsuperhell666xxX is friendly again,because he hired some target dummy from opposite side so you will be the murderer if you attack him.
So what makes Darkfall hardcore??it has good massive battles and you can attack opposite race people with hate and anger in your mind,but what makes it hardcore?
in darkfall you can be harcore babykiller without consequences,and thats pretty far from hardcore to me.
That should be pretty obvious. It's a full loot FFA PvP game, the same as UO or Eve. I don't care if there are rules that govern it, it is what it is. If you wanna get into some retarded debate on the definition of hardcore pick another huckleberry... fact of the matter is you knew exactly what I was referring to otherwise you wouldn't have presented me with a scenario. If you got a personal grudge against Darkfall thats your problem.
Jennings please do more research next time or atleast write about your own experience...well the topic is nice but what ever you wrote is so perspective that i was like wtf !
Jennings please do more research next time or atleast write about your own experience...well the topic is nice but what ever you wrote is so perspective that i was like wtf !
I can't say she/he need more research... War/Daoc story is real. Mythic tryed so many times to balance the game, and so many people got angry at them for that exact reason... MANY of my friends got frustrated about the balancing issues in WAR... Now Daoc is still in balancing process... something like 8years after launch ?? last patch (1.100) still have balancing in it...
I dont think you gave Shadowbane a fair shot, using it as an example of a PvP game that didnt work is complete BS, it ran for 6 yrs. and has a dedicated playerbase, yea SB may not be for everyone, it is afterall a harsh PvP enviroment. but to say that it failed as a PvP game? well thats just pure horeshit.
PvP failure has been the very reason I've quit every MMORPG I've ever played. Here's a list of failures that frustrated me to the point of no return -
1. PvE Areas That Allow Unrestricted PvP - This is an attempt by the developers to please the sociopaths by letting them 'gank' players of the opposing faction. Ultimately, this feature frustrates far more people than it pleases. 2. PvP Rewards That Are Better Than PvE Rewards - Once players get to the top, this kind of system makes it almost impossible to compete against them. Players that join the game later than others are at an instant disadvantage. 3. Rock-Paper-Scissors Type Classes And Overbalancing - Instead of letting the players create their character, the game developers do it for them. Always losing to a specific class simply because it's 'better' than yours removes every bit of creativity from the game. 4. "Must Have" Gear And Gear Based Combat - PvP should be about strategy and skill, not play time and gear collection. Losing to someone because they had that 'uber epic' that took them 6 months to farm only makes me want to quit. 5. Rewards For Being In A Specific Guild - This simply makes it impossible for some people to compete properly. Why would I want to play a game where my community standing has a huge impact on my ability to have fun? Again, this is a huge disadvantage for players that join the game later than others. 6. Grinding - PvE is understandable, boring PvE isn't. Korean grindfests need to die, yesterday. I want to PvP, not PvPvEvEvEvEvE... 7. Massive, Unbalanced PvP - There's nothing like spending months of your time working on a character that isn't even noticed in a PvP battle. The side with the most players wins! Yay... 8. Pay-2-Win - Cash shops are bad, mmmkay? 9. Being Spread Too Thin - This problem has single handedly killed several MMOs. Too many servers, too many objectives, not enough focus. Where is everyone? 10. Static PvP - Not being able to evoke real change in a game sucks. This isn't necessarily a deal-breaker, but it will certainly shorten the amount of time I'm willing to spend playing. 11. Twitch Based PvP - Button-mashing zergfests that result in 2 second life spans have no place in an RPG. It's not that I don't enjoy that kind of combat, it's just that it never mixes properly with RPG style game play.
I know I'm never going to play an MMORPG that I'll enjoy. Most people like the 'problems' I've listed here and aren't going to play anything that might actually be a challenge for them. I guess MMOs are just glorified chat rooms after all...
QFT all the way. The only potentially unsolvable problem that I see is that Rock-Paper-Scissors is intended to solve the problem of "flat" abilities - a sword does the same damage as a club, making the choice meaningless for the player. The RPS model gives each player choice an advantage and makes the player use their skill to employ it, while also giving the other player the opportunity to use their choice and skill to avoid / counter the disadvantage.
Obviously, this creates a system where balance is absolutely crucial to gameplay, and any imperfection in your system is going to harm someone's play. But imho, to date it's the best system employed, and any failings on the part of the developer are both forgiveable (nobody's perfect) and fixable.
No risk of loseing things = no challange , resources should be limited to make mining , PvE and more of the carebear activity inteesting. For me , this is the perfect mmo formula, this way you have a reason to kill and cant go serialkiller beacese if you do you'll make enemies, who have a habbit of uniting against you.
In that kind of mmo , you have to adopt, make friends, join guilds simply socialise... If you are not playing for that , than go play an RPG , why spoil the fun of other people by whinning?
Shadowbane WAS the best PVP system. It's class system was extremely open ended. Instead of having 3 "trees" everyone could alot their points in a way that was 'flavor of the day' or in a unique way and still be viable. The community was pretty tight even if there was some hardcore inter-personal politics on each server that just added to the drama.
Shadowbane's downfall was it's grind and it's look aged like dairy. What variety there was in game play and number crunching, just wasn't there in personalization or look. If they'd have looked at equipment variety and kept innovating the maps and sub-game enhancements. We'd still be talking about it today.
It may have not have gotten 30 million subscriptions, but we'd still hear about it.
Honestly, playing as Alpha the minotaur on Mourning for a good 9 months I can say it was defiantly one of the best pvp experiences I've had with a mmorpg. I can share a variety of stories that are way more interesting than.. "Bobby wasn't geared for this instance but we pwned it anyway."
I mean I was there when the Blood Axe Clan's giant city got SWAMPED by the Brotherhood.
I was there when UHC stormed the BoD's city and I had to switch sides because old guildies were protecting their city fervidly against people using exploits and I knew about it.
Stacking aside, still one of the best mmorpg experiences I think anyone could have had.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
I also take issue with him saying that "every game has a class-system". Darkfall and Eve clearly don't. How can I take this guy seriously when he doesn't even know what a class-system is?
As I noted in the blog article I linked to from the (intentionally argumentative) assertion, skill-based systems tend towards player-created classes instead of developer-created classes, have the same balancing issues of class-based systems along with higher complexity and ease of players to make non-optimal/non-functional skill builds.
Indeed. In Eve, your "class" is determined by whatever ship/weapons you've trained and outfitted. You cannot "equip" anything other than what you have trained, so effectively, the ship and armament (both of which have bonuses that complement each other) create your class, which is really identical to anyone else with the same ship and armament. A true classless system allows anyone to use anything at any time with results that vary according to their skill (at least, in an RPG game). This is analogous to real life, where anyone can physically operate anything from a butterknife to a tank, but the results will vary depending on your knowledge and personal characteristics.
The bitter truth is that you can't have true balance unless everyone has access to the same items/power etc.
In what universe do you live in? Apparently not the real one.
Not only is it entirely possible, but most of science and metascience would entirely disagree.
Please name one MMO that has balanced PVE with PVP and been a success with it. Please.
It might not be balanced, but I'd say if $$ is a factor in 'success' World of Warcraft defeats every argument you people try to make. It has pvp, it has pve, and yeah it's lost tons of players but it's kept tons and gained tons.
It's pvp system is optional. But there's plenty of pvp servers that are very active and even the pve servers have active bg and arena communities.
Short change it if you want.
Doesn't change the fact it's a successful pve game with pvp in it.
Everquest.. Ultima Online.. City of Heroes / Villains Same boat. Might you have heard of them? PvP has been more than footnote in each of their successes.
Are you F'ing kidding me. WOW? You're joking right. PVP in wow is a total joke. The PVE side of the game has been nerfed too death due to the Arena. WOW is a casual game now. The END Content is so dumbed down from WOTLK to present that it is not even funny. A full guild of retards playing on 386DX2's could beat the content. My guild cleared all of WOTLK a MONTH after hitting lvl 70. I quit because of it. It was simply too damn simple. I also played on a PVP server. AGAIN - PVP IN WOW IS A JOKE! Arena is a joke, the team that is the FOTM wins. There is no balance.
EQ? Played EQ for 5 years. PVP might be in it now, but when I played it was NOT. I quit after POP so who knows. UO? What is that again? Never played, it's not popular so who cares.
COH/COV - HAHAHAHA not what I would call a real MMO. Maybe a kids game.
The truth is that PVP and PVE can't exist on the same platform. If you want PVP you need a PVP only game centered on PVP. You simply can't BALANCE PVP and PVE on the same server. If you think for a second that WOW is anywhere near balanced for both PVE/PVP then you need to go smoke another blunt. They dumbed down PVE so much now it's not even funny. Unless you're in a T1 guild or ever been in one then you have no clue.
Look kids, this is what happens when you drink and play on the internet. For whatever reason science has yet to reveal to us; the substance makes you limber enough to put your foot in your mouth.
The truth is, those games exist.. NOW with successful and fun pvp elements alongside pve. You may not be good at it. You may not like it. Still, people play the games and enjoy them while the companies post profit. MMORPGs require massive players online interacting with one another in roles. If you want your cushiony pve to be untainted follow this path: click on start / Game / Solitaire. Careful now, some of the games have 'Internet' in their title and that means you could possibly play checkers with someone online. There is a chance you will lose. If you're prone to crying like a little bitch because you lost at a 'game' while on the 'internet' STEER clear. Sit at home and play with yourself like a good Mama's boy.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
Wootin, it may surprise you to know that a LOT of people don't have multiple accounts. I have played EVE since June of 2004, and I only acquired a second account this past February. That's 4 and 2/3 years with only one account, and I count myself as having done just fine.
No it wouldn't at all. I spent a year playing just 1 char, so I'm right in that statistic with you. And many of the newer people I met only had 1 account as well. But - and this is where my point lies - Scott and most others quote CCP's account numbers as if they were subscriber numbers. This leads to the impression that CCP has 300k PEOPLE playing Eve, and this is absolutely false in my experience. Seriously, I witnessed a mind-boggling amount of multiple account players compared to any other MMO I've played.
And there's the fact that CCP absolutely, happily encourages this for the sake of maximizing their revenue from their customer base. They are the only MMO developer I have ever seen advertise promotions for buying multiple accounts, which btw pretty much proves you can't go by their account numbers to determine subscriber numbers. (FYI, I do this kind of analysis for work. Where people are allowed to have multiple logins, you need to match evidence like IPs to account names to get an idea of how many actual people are logging in. In this case, payment information -> accounts would work better though).
However, as I said, all this is fine with me. I don't play Eve anymore, and therefore - I don't really care about the game at all. Sorry
But I do take issue with seeing subscriber numbers that I KNOW are wrong quoted in an article, especially when they're used to back up a really shiny impression of the game. The number of accounts shows how successful CCP is, but it's the number of actual players that shows how successful Eve Online is. That's why I think it's absolutely appropriate for me to post about this, and as I said, I'd welcome seeing actual subscriber numbers from CCP instead of just the (misleading) number of accounts.
There are some valid points in this thread. Though nobody mentioned my personal number 1 problem:
---> 99,9% of the developer teams/publishers don't have enough resources to actually create a masterpiece in PvP and PvE. Either PvE is somewhere between "sucks" and "non-existant", like in EvE, or PvP is somewhere between "sidekick" and "minigame", like in Lord of the Rings Online.
So if I want to coop, roleplay and have a laid back fun time together-> LotRO
And if I want to hunt and compete-> EvE
You don't go to a bowling alley if you want to dance, right?
Jennings please do more research next time or atleast write about your own experience...well the topic is nice but what ever you wrote is so perspective that i was like wtf !
I can't say she/he need more research... War/Daoc story is real. Mythic tryed so many times to balance the game, and so many people got angry at them for that exact reason... MANY of my friends got frustrated about the balancing issues in WAR... ...
WAR was always going to have 'balancing' issues - because it was an RvR game and had no kind of population balance for RvR.
You can't really balance your PvP when there is also a massive population imbalance in RvR... well, you can...but players won't see it. Let's face it, if you are outnumbered 2:1 or 3:1 even if your class IS overpowered you probably will still think you are nerfed because you die all the time. And if the Devs then nerf you further (because of what they see on other servers) you will feel totally victimised.
Mythic never even had a plan on the population balance except hoping it would "sort itself out" (if you really like I can provide the links to Mark Jacobs saying that).
That is absolutely fatal in a game that relies heavily on RvR. It won't sort itself out. Players will flock to one side or the other.
So, even if the PvP in WAR had been totally balanced (class wise) it was always going to fail because of the complete lack of balance in RvR. PvP and RvR are different even if they interact and are co-dependent.
I'm sorry Scott, being a PVP oriented player since the early days of UO I must respectfully disagree with a few of your assessments.
Bugs, exploits, bugs, asian zergs, bugs, lack of budget, keycloning, and bugs are what truly killed Shadowbane. The game was around for six years, roughly half that time it was pay to play. I enjoyed the hell out of it and on average had up to four accounts running when it was pay to play. I also never had trouble finding more than enough people to nation up with and have some damn good wars with. When I consider it outlasted games like Matrix Online and Tabula Rasa, and was more lively than other pvp games PVP games such as AOC and Warhammer Online, I feel Shadowbane didn't fair all that badly. Especially since it was created in the early days of MMOs and the game authors didn't have much previous game experience to draw from.
Also there have been some damn fine arguments that it was the arrival and popularity of EQ being the main reason Trammel came about. (Personally I feel it was a bit of both).
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Shadowbane WAS the best PVP system. It's class system was extremely open ended. Instead of having 3 "trees" everyone could alot their points in a way that was 'flavor of the day' or in a unique way and still be viable. The community was pretty tight even if there was some hardcore inter-personal politics on each server that just added to the drama. Shadowbane's downfall was it's grind and it's look aged like dairy. What variety there was in game play and number crunching, just wasn't there in personalization or look. If they'd have looked at equipment variety and kept innovating the maps and sub-game enhancements. We'd still be talking about it today. It may have not have gotten 30 million subscriptions, but we'd still hear about it. Honestly, playing as Alpha the minotaur on Mourning for a good 9 months I can say it was defiantly one of the best pvp experiences I've had with a mmorpg. I can share a variety of stories that are way more interesting than.. "Bobby wasn't geared for this instance but we pwned it anyway." I mean I was there when the Blood Axe Clan's giant city got SWAMPED by the Brotherhood. I was there when UHC stormed the BoD's city and I had to switch sides because old guildies were protecting their city fervidly against people using exploits and I knew about it. Stacking aside, still one of the best mmorpg experiences I think anyone could have had.
Though SB is still one of my all time favorites, I doubt you were there in the beginning. Because lag, crashes to desktop, and exploits made the large scale massive battle unplayable for most people. Still love the game and the overall concepts more than most things I have played, and good post!
Shadowbane was a great game. It still remains one of my faveourite mmos of all time. But its execution was horrible.
The concept of building your city and using a mix of politics and force to defend it sounds good on paper, but didnt work out too well in game. It was tough for a new city with a fresh guild, or a smaller guild joining a small alliance to actually keep their city for very long due to the massive zerg alliances basically taking over the entire continent across virtually all the servers. It ended up toward the end being more about who you were allied with rather than how good your group set ups were or how mobilized your guild was. You could have the perfect group make up, everyone communicating on guild vent and all of your raid being great players, but much like warhammer has proven recently, the zerg conquers all no matter what. One ironic thing I always noticed was that the huge zerg ended up being really organised with loads of holy based groups (sentinels debuffing and nuking backed up by nuker healer crusaders and prelates) so the gap widened even further.
As for the pve side, yes it was very tedious levelling if you were solo. If you were a perma flying nuker like a warlock or fury, you could simply dual box with your strength based bard (so he could carry all your stuff :P ) complete with track and stealth then round up and aoe nuke the hell out of big groups of mobs at a time. If you were some poor melee or rogue class new to the game and a member of an npc guild, it took forever. Most of the time youd get into a little cave somewhere with the rock exploit and have your high level druid friends to sit and macro some aoe for a few hours, with the rest of us killing any stragglers and if allowed, looting.
It also had nothing really substantial outside of pvp, and even that was mainly high level sieges and mine fights. before that it was either random city defending or getting tracked, ganked and looted by level cap vampire fotm classes who only attacked when you were at low health with a mob on you. There wasnt any actual crafting in the traditional sense as in everyone having a trade skill, there wasnt any good pve encounters apart from tracking rune droppers or finding named, and even that was easy to do since websites listed their co-ordinates.
lol, all these replies to the blog and you all missed the most important bit on what makes or break a PvP focus game. It's right there at the end. It's what he wrote last: TRAMMEL.
UO Trammeled and is still around today. Shadowbane did not and is gone. Darkfall will survive or close depending on how they handle their Trammel. WAR launched with Trammel so did AION. WOW went overboard with their Trammel that their PvP is concidered "TEH SUCK" . Even EVE confronted it's Trammel, but being EVE did it differently from everybody else.
So what is TRAMMEL? basicly it's the dev's response to the "gank them till they quit" crowd. Trammel is the "new subscription/revenue source protection patch v. gank them till they quit crowd." If you let this crowd run free you will soon have no new players. No new subscription equals no growth and most likely shrinkage and eventually have to close down.
The "hardcore purest" hate Trammel, but the Dev's need it. Because with out it the game will fail. To be a viable business venture the Dev's must Trammel. Now Trammel does not guarantee success because of other issues discussed in this thread but with out Trammel it's a guarantee failure.
i loved for someone else to recognize the effects of nerfs on player retention. i cant even count how many games ive left without ever looking back bcz of nerfs. reading forum posts regarding op claims bcz ppl cant play their class and constantly fail makes me laugh scornfully.
in most cases, devs have the balance right at the start but bcz a melee char wants to be able to pwn a mage and cant, they cry tears of OP in the forums rather than understand that melee cant solo a mage and to play to their strengths rather than have every class be a cookie cutter. im oversimplifying here and i add that caveat so ppl dont start saying "well i can solo a mage..." blah blah blah, good players are good players regardless of the game.
but what the author didnt touch on, and i believe to be even more devastating than a nerf, are the pvp rules themselves. in subscription games, there are generally not micro transactions with game changing items where you can buy your way out of fail and become OP for the unreasonable price of $xxs.xx. in those situations, what im about to say does not apply ( but thats changing now too, just fyi to devs, ill nvr buy a subscription to a game that also has a cash shop, (sorry soe, u fail hard, thanks for fucking up gaming). but in f2p models with item shops, and where 'open pvp' exists, you have your casual players trying to have fun, but get griefed constantly by those who are stealing mommies credit card. i dont have the luxury of swiping cash from my parents for a few years now, but i am one of those. if you have a few bucks, you can buy your way to the 'next' level. and i love to kill peeps.
at the same time im lol'ing bcz i killed the same guy for the 4th time in an hour, im also aware that the guy im killing may not log in the next day...or ever again, thus reducing the pool of victims and new players. some games put a level requirement on open pvp, but this is just a delay tactic for the inevitable.
what im suggesting here is not that open pvp be removed. i hate limitations on pvp as do most gamers. what i am suggesting is that game changing items be removed from cash shops so everyone can be competitive. or allow those items to be easily obtained thru in-game economies or quests that dont require 3 months of fail gaming to obtain. i understand the need to feed the devs through income generating virtual items, but to use runes of magic as an example, wings came out costing 400 diamonds at item release. a diamond on the us servers at that time cost roughly $20.00usd for 500. the benny to wings is it allowed you to add 6 more stats than the guy who didnt spend 20 bucks. thats game changing when i can load stamina equating to mass hp gain on those wings and have my mage take hits from uber melee characters. money should not equal power like that. it simply makes f2p a misnomer and those games should be renamed p2bc (pay to be competitive). and yes, i bought those damned wings.
i loved for someone else to recognize the effects of nerfs on player retention. i cant even count how many games ive left without ever looking back bcz of nerfs. reading forum posts regarding op claims bcz ppl cant play their class and constantly fail makes me laugh scornfully.
in most cases, devs have the balance right at the start but bcz a melee char wants to be able to pwn a mage and cant, they cry tears of OP in the forums rather than understand that melee cant solo a mage and to play to their strengths rather than have every class be a cookie cutter. im oversimplifying here and i add that caveat so ppl dont start saying "well i can solo a mage..." blah blah blah, good players are good players regardless of the game.
but what the author didnt touch on, and i believe to be even more devastating than a nerf, are the pvp rules themselves. in subscription games, there are generally not micro transactions with game changing items where you can buy your way out of fail and become OP for the unreasonable price of $xxs.xx. in those situations, what im about to say does not apply ( but thats changing now too, just fyi to devs, ill nvr buy a subscription to a game that also has a cash shop, (sorry soe, u fail hard, thanks for fucking up gaming). but in f2p models with item shops, and where 'open pvp' exists, you have your casual players trying to have fun, but get griefed constantly by those who are stealing mommies credit card. i dont have the luxury of swiping cash from my parents for a few years now, but i am one of those. if you have a few bucks, you can buy your way to the 'next' level. and i love to kill peeps.
at the same time im lol'ing bcz i killed the same guy for the 4th time in an hour, im also aware that the guy im killing may not log in the next day...or ever again, thus reducing the pool of victims and new players. some games put a level requirement on open pvp, but this is just a delay tactic for the inevitable.
what im suggesting here is not that open pvp be removed. i hate limitations on pvp as do most gamers. what i am suggesting is that game changing items be removed from cash shops so everyone can be competitive. or allow those items to be easily obtained thru in-game economies or quests that dont require 3 months of fail gaming to obtain. i understand the need to feed the devs through income generating virtual items, but to use runes of magic as an example, wings came out costing 400 diamonds at item release. a diamond on the us servers at that time cost roughly $20.00usd for 500. the benny to wings is it allowed you to add 6 more stats than the guy who didnt spend 20 bucks. thats game changing when i can load stamina equating to mass hp gain on those wings and have my mage take hits from uber melee characters. money should not equal power like that. it simply makes f2p a misnomer and those games should be renamed p2bc (pay to be competitive). and yes, i bought those damned wings.
And what about people how just don't want to compete? I QFT the trammel post.
In a game with good PvP AND good PvE there need to be places for people that don't WANT to PvP, people that would let you live even if you were on 5% health and running... I don't know any game that delievers there. I'd choose two games with clear focus over a bad hybrid any day...
Very good article, kind of makes me think of Mortal Online in their attitude in development, "game crushing bugs", and the attitude on the forums. Just chalk it up to another Shadowbane, though I think they will outlive their utility far sooner than Shadowbane did. The game is basically unplayable for an "MMO", unless "MMO" means 3 people on your screen.
And what about people how just don't want to compete? I QFT the trammel post.
In a game with good PvP AND good PvE there need to be places for people that don't WANT to PvP, people that would let you live even if you were on 5% health and running... I don't know any game that delievers there. I'd choose two games with clear focus over a bad hybrid any day...
M
the original authors topic was regarding pvp, not those who wish to sightsee. i understand thats a market too, but not for discussion in a pvp thread. with no pvp there is no motivation to be better being as most games dont really have challenging pve. at least not solo pve. anyway, if you dont like to fight, you need to be choosing carebear servers when available, or change your game choice entirely if not available.
. Shadowbane was the primary proof of this concept - a group of developers who cut their teeth on a hardcore PK mud, and spent years bringing that vision to life, in short bursts between postings on message boards about "not playing games to bake bread, but playing them to CRUSH!" (a direct quote from the game's art director, later memorialized in the game's marketing). When Shadowbane finally launched, it was an innovative sandbox-PvP design that was crippled by game-killing bugs, tedious leveling, and exploit-ridden combat. (In a footnote that cannot be touched for irony, most of the founding developers of Shadowbane later moved on to KingsIsle, and the successful tween-friendly and not at all dark and hardcore MMO Wizard 101.)
I would love to address these comments. Shadow Bane as a PVP game was a complete success. Yes, it was a horrible launch with bugs, lag and really just a beta, but as a PvP game it did "Crush". there has been nothing like it, build an empire, defend it, make alliances, use politics or watch your Keeps fall. Leveling was simple, easy, and fast, I have no clue where "tedious" leveling came from, being a vet of the game, it was days to reach max level. The character combos and templates and flavors of the month chars, were awesome. Something new always answered the "it" build.
If Shadow Bane was launched right, polished, and run and supported correctly, we would still be playing the game this very day. It truely was the only PvP game since UO for us PvPers!
Zerackus Undead Lords
Only true pvp game lightyears ahead of shadowbane and uo(carebare i say) was asheron's call Darktide best hardcore pvp ever in mmo.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009..... In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
But for god's sake, I wish reporters like you would check into the facts before spouting off about the "astounding success" of Eve Online "omgspacegamesandboxwith300ksubstheymustRULE!!!11!!!!1". They are not a 300k subscriber game. In my guesstimation (calculated completely in my butt from the number of players I've known and the number of alts they had), they've got around 1/4 of those numbers of long-term players
While this may be (in fact I'm fairly sure it's not) the answer you like, it is the correct one: the measure of a success for an MMO is financial. Whether a game has 300,000 subscribers or 30 very dedicated multiboxers, the income for the developer is the same. You may of course not want to play such a game, and if many agree with you, their subscriber numbers will reflect that.
Comments
While I have been a gamer most of my life, I came onto the MMO scene pretty late, around the release of WoW. For the longest time I was pretty content with the game, but after a while I saw it for the theme park it really was. I began hearing about the glory days of UO and I feel like I missed a very important and fun part of MMORPG history.
I'm not some 1337 PvP d00d, hell I'm terrible at PvP, but I would of much rather be subjected to the PvP rules of pre-trammel UO, than have to sit through another theme park carebear ranch ever again. Wheres the risk?
What exactly makes Darkfall a hardcore game ?
i´ll take that as WoW is Britney Spears and Darkfall is Berzerker
You know that you go to red when you kill innocent people in darkfall for example,good good all good.
Example Xxxsuperhell666xxX Ork ,goes for some hunting,he finds friendly orks crafting,he slays them because he hates orks and he knows they cant win and then he turns to red.now one of the victims gets his equipment from bank and starts chasing Xxxsuperhell666xxX ,but when he finds him this Xxxsuperhell666xxX is friendly again,because he hired some target dummy from opposite side so you will be the murderer if you attack him.
So what makes Darkfall hardcore??it has good massive battles and you can attack opposite race people with hate and anger in your mind,but what makes it hardcore?
in darkfall you can be harcore babykiller without consequences,and thats pretty far from hardcore to me.
That should be pretty obvious. It's a full loot FFA PvP game, the same as UO or Eve. I don't care if there are rules that govern it, it is what it is. If you wanna get into some retarded debate on the definition of hardcore pick another huckleberry... fact of the matter is you knew exactly what I was referring to otherwise you wouldn't have presented me with a scenario. If you got a personal grudge against Darkfall thats your problem.
What game is in screenshot at page 1 of the article?
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Holy Flamin' Frost-Brand Gronk-Slayin' Vorpal Hammer o' Woundin' an' Returnin' an' Shootin'-Lightnin'-Out-Yer-Bum!! ~Planescape: Torment~
Shadowbane.
PLaying: EvE, Ryzom
Waiting For: Earthrise, Perpetuum
Jennings please do more research next time or atleast write about your own experience...well the topic is nice but what ever you wrote is so perspective that i was like wtf !
I can't say she/he need more research... War/Daoc story is real. Mythic tryed so many times to balance the game, and so many people got angry at them for that exact reason... MANY of my friends got frustrated about the balancing issues in WAR... Now Daoc is still in balancing process... something like 8years after launch ?? last patch (1.100) still have balancing in it...
Nice article BTW!
(They'll never learn lol)
I dont think you gave Shadowbane a fair shot, using it as an example of a PvP game that didnt work is complete BS, it ran for 6 yrs. and has a dedicated playerbase, yea SB may not be for everyone, it is afterall a harsh PvP enviroment. but to say that it failed as a PvP game? well thats just pure horeshit.
QFT all the way. The only potentially unsolvable problem that I see is that Rock-Paper-Scissors is intended to solve the problem of "flat" abilities - a sword does the same damage as a club, making the choice meaningless for the player. The RPS model gives each player choice an advantage and makes the player use their skill to employ it, while also giving the other player the opportunity to use their choice and skill to avoid / counter the disadvantage.
Obviously, this creates a system where balance is absolutely crucial to gameplay, and any imperfection in your system is going to harm someone's play. But imho, to date it's the best system employed, and any failings on the part of the developer are both forgiveable (nobody's perfect) and fixable.
An article by a whinning carebear imo
No risk of loseing things = no challange , resources should be limited to make mining , PvE and more of the carebear activity inteesting. For me , this is the perfect mmo formula, this way you have a reason to kill and cant go serialkiller beacese if you do you'll make enemies, who have a habbit of uniting against you.
In that kind of mmo , you have to adopt, make friends, join guilds simply socialise... If you are not playing for that , than go play an RPG , why spoil the fun of other people by whinning?
Pardon my english it's not my first language.
Life is a game - Play it!...
Shadowbane WAS the best PVP system. It's class system was extremely open ended. Instead of having 3 "trees" everyone could alot their points in a way that was 'flavor of the day' or in a unique way and still be viable. The community was pretty tight even if there was some hardcore inter-personal politics on each server that just added to the drama.
Shadowbane's downfall was it's grind and it's look aged like dairy. What variety there was in game play and number crunching, just wasn't there in personalization or look. If they'd have looked at equipment variety and kept innovating the maps and sub-game enhancements. We'd still be talking about it today.
It may have not have gotten 30 million subscriptions, but we'd still hear about it.
Honestly, playing as Alpha the minotaur on Mourning for a good 9 months I can say it was defiantly one of the best pvp experiences I've had with a mmorpg. I can share a variety of stories that are way more interesting than.. "Bobby wasn't geared for this instance but we pwned it anyway."
I mean I was there when the Blood Axe Clan's giant city got SWAMPED by the Brotherhood.
I was there when UHC stormed the BoD's city and I had to switch sides because old guildies were protecting their city fervidly against people using exploits and I knew about it.
Stacking aside, still one of the best mmorpg experiences I think anyone could have had.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
As I noted in the blog article I linked to from the (intentionally argumentative) assertion, skill-based systems tend towards player-created classes instead of developer-created classes, have the same balancing issues of class-based systems along with higher complexity and ease of players to make non-optimal/non-functional skill builds.
Indeed. In Eve, your "class" is determined by whatever ship/weapons you've trained and outfitted. You cannot "equip" anything other than what you have trained, so effectively, the ship and armament (both of which have bonuses that complement each other) create your class, which is really identical to anyone else with the same ship and armament. A true classless system allows anyone to use anything at any time with results that vary according to their skill (at least, in an RPG game). This is analogous to real life, where anyone can physically operate anything from a butterknife to a tank, but the results will vary depending on your knowledge and personal characteristics.
In what universe do you live in? Apparently not the real one.
Not only is it entirely possible, but most of science and metascience would entirely disagree.
Please name one MMO that has balanced PVE with PVP and been a success with it. Please.
It might not be balanced, but I'd say if $$ is a factor in 'success' World of Warcraft defeats every argument you people try to make. It has pvp, it has pve, and yeah it's lost tons of players but it's kept tons and gained tons.
It's pvp system is optional. But there's plenty of pvp servers that are very active and even the pve servers have active bg and arena communities.
Short change it if you want.
Doesn't change the fact it's a successful pve game with pvp in it.
Everquest.. Ultima Online.. City of Heroes / Villains Same boat. Might you have heard of them? PvP has been more than footnote in each of their successes.
Are you F'ing kidding me. WOW? You're joking right. PVP in wow is a total joke. The PVE side of the game has been nerfed too death due to the Arena. WOW is a casual game now. The END Content is so dumbed down from WOTLK to present that it is not even funny. A full guild of retards playing on 386DX2's could beat the content. My guild cleared all of WOTLK a MONTH after hitting lvl 70. I quit because of it. It was simply too damn simple. I also played on a PVP server. AGAIN - PVP IN WOW IS A JOKE! Arena is a joke, the team that is the FOTM wins. There is no balance.
EQ? Played EQ for 5 years. PVP might be in it now, but when I played it was NOT. I quit after POP so who knows. UO? What is that again? Never played, it's not popular so who cares.
COH/COV - HAHAHAHA not what I would call a real MMO. Maybe a kids game.
The truth is that PVP and PVE can't exist on the same platform. If you want PVP you need a PVP only game centered on PVP. You simply can't BALANCE PVP and PVE on the same server. If you think for a second that WOW is anywhere near balanced for both PVE/PVP then you need to go smoke another blunt. They dumbed down PVE so much now it's not even funny. Unless you're in a T1 guild or ever been in one then you have no clue.
Look kids, this is what happens when you drink and play on the internet. For whatever reason science has yet to reveal to us; the substance makes you limber enough to put your foot in your mouth.
The truth is, those games exist.. NOW with successful and fun pvp elements alongside pve. You may not be good at it. You may not like it. Still, people play the games and enjoy them while the companies post profit. MMORPGs require massive players online interacting with one another in roles. If you want your cushiony pve to be untainted follow this path: click on start / Game / Solitaire. Careful now, some of the games have 'Internet' in their title and that means you could possibly play checkers with someone online. There is a chance you will lose. If you're prone to crying like a little bitch because you lost at a 'game' while on the 'internet' STEER clear. Sit at home and play with yourself like a good Mama's boy.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
No it wouldn't at all. I spent a year playing just 1 char, so I'm right in that statistic with you. And many of the newer people I met only had 1 account as well. But - and this is where my point lies - Scott and most others quote CCP's account numbers as if they were subscriber numbers. This leads to the impression that CCP has 300k PEOPLE playing Eve, and this is absolutely false in my experience. Seriously, I witnessed a mind-boggling amount of multiple account players compared to any other MMO I've played.
And there's the fact that CCP absolutely, happily encourages this for the sake of maximizing their revenue from their customer base. They are the only MMO developer I have ever seen advertise promotions for buying multiple accounts, which btw pretty much proves you can't go by their account numbers to determine subscriber numbers. (FYI, I do this kind of analysis for work. Where people are allowed to have multiple logins, you need to match evidence like IPs to account names to get an idea of how many actual people are logging in. In this case, payment information -> accounts would work better though).
However, as I said, all this is fine with me. I don't play Eve anymore, and therefore - I don't really care about the game at all. Sorry
But I do take issue with seeing subscriber numbers that I KNOW are wrong quoted in an article, especially when they're used to back up a really shiny impression of the game. The number of accounts shows how successful CCP is, but it's the number of actual players that shows how successful Eve Online is. That's why I think it's absolutely appropriate for me to post about this, and as I said, I'd welcome seeing actual subscriber numbers from CCP instead of just the (misleading) number of accounts.
There are some valid points in this thread. Though nobody mentioned my personal number 1 problem:
---> 99,9% of the developer teams/publishers don't have enough resources to actually create a masterpiece in PvP and PvE. Either PvE is somewhere between "sucks" and "non-existant", like in EvE, or PvP is somewhere between "sidekick" and "minigame", like in Lord of the Rings Online.
So if I want to coop, roleplay and have a laid back fun time together-> LotRO
And if I want to hunt and compete-> EvE
You don't go to a bowling alley if you want to dance, right?
M
I can't say she/he need more research... War/Daoc story is real. Mythic tryed so many times to balance the game, and so many people got angry at them for that exact reason... MANY of my friends got frustrated about the balancing issues in WAR... ...
WAR was always going to have 'balancing' issues - because it was an RvR game and had no kind of population balance for RvR.
You can't really balance your PvP when there is also a massive population imbalance in RvR... well, you can...but players won't see it. Let's face it, if you are outnumbered 2:1 or 3:1 even if your class IS overpowered you probably will still think you are nerfed because you die all the time. And if the Devs then nerf you further (because of what they see on other servers) you will feel totally victimised.
Mythic never even had a plan on the population balance except hoping it would "sort itself out" (if you really like I can provide the links to Mark Jacobs saying that).
That is absolutely fatal in a game that relies heavily on RvR. It won't sort itself out. Players will flock to one side or the other.
So, even if the PvP in WAR had been totally balanced (class wise) it was always going to fail because of the complete lack of balance in RvR. PvP and RvR are different even if they interact and are co-dependent.
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
I'm sorry Scott, being a PVP oriented player since the early days of UO I must respectfully disagree with a few of your assessments.
Bugs, exploits, bugs, asian zergs, bugs, lack of budget, keycloning, and bugs are what truly killed Shadowbane. The game was around for six years, roughly half that time it was pay to play. I enjoyed the hell out of it and on average had up to four accounts running when it was pay to play. I also never had trouble finding more than enough people to nation up with and have some damn good wars with. When I consider it outlasted games like Matrix Online and Tabula Rasa, and was more lively than other pvp games PVP games such as AOC and Warhammer Online, I feel Shadowbane didn't fair all that badly. Especially since it was created in the early days of MMOs and the game authors didn't have much previous game experience to draw from.
Also there have been some damn fine arguments that it was the arrival and popularity of EQ being the main reason Trammel came about. (Personally I feel it was a bit of both).
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Though SB is still one of my all time favorites, I doubt you were there in the beginning. Because lag, crashes to desktop, and exploits made the large scale massive battle unplayable for most people. Still love the game and the overall concepts more than most things I have played, and good post!
Shadowbane was a great game. It still remains one of my faveourite mmos of all time. But its execution was horrible.
The concept of building your city and using a mix of politics and force to defend it sounds good on paper, but didnt work out too well in game. It was tough for a new city with a fresh guild, or a smaller guild joining a small alliance to actually keep their city for very long due to the massive zerg alliances basically taking over the entire continent across virtually all the servers. It ended up toward the end being more about who you were allied with rather than how good your group set ups were or how mobilized your guild was. You could have the perfect group make up, everyone communicating on guild vent and all of your raid being great players, but much like warhammer has proven recently, the zerg conquers all no matter what. One ironic thing I always noticed was that the huge zerg ended up being really organised with loads of holy based groups (sentinels debuffing and nuking backed up by nuker healer crusaders and prelates) so the gap widened even further.
As for the pve side, yes it was very tedious levelling if you were solo. If you were a perma flying nuker like a warlock or fury, you could simply dual box with your strength based bard (so he could carry all your stuff :P ) complete with track and stealth then round up and aoe nuke the hell out of big groups of mobs at a time. If you were some poor melee or rogue class new to the game and a member of an npc guild, it took forever. Most of the time youd get into a little cave somewhere with the rock exploit and have your high level druid friends to sit and macro some aoe for a few hours, with the rest of us killing any stragglers and if allowed, looting.
It also had nothing really substantial outside of pvp, and even that was mainly high level sieges and mine fights. before that it was either random city defending or getting tracked, ganked and looted by level cap vampire fotm classes who only attacked when you were at low health with a mob on you. There wasnt any actual crafting in the traditional sense as in everyone having a trade skill, there wasnt any good pve encounters apart from tracking rune droppers or finding named, and even that was easy to do since websites listed their co-ordinates.
lol, all these replies to the blog and you all missed the most important bit on what makes or break a PvP focus game. It's right there at the end. It's what he wrote last: TRAMMEL.
UO Trammeled and is still around today. Shadowbane did not and is gone. Darkfall will survive or close depending on how they handle their Trammel. WAR launched with Trammel so did AION. WOW went overboard with their Trammel that their PvP is concidered "TEH SUCK" . Even EVE confronted it's Trammel, but being EVE did it differently from everybody else.
So what is TRAMMEL? basicly it's the dev's response to the "gank them till they quit" crowd. Trammel is the "new subscription/revenue source protection patch v. gank them till they quit crowd." If you let this crowd run free you will soon have no new players. No new subscription equals no growth and most likely shrinkage and eventually have to close down.
The "hardcore purest" hate Trammel, but the Dev's need it. Because with out it the game will fail. To be a viable business venture the Dev's must Trammel. Now Trammel does not guarantee success because of other issues discussed in this thread but with out Trammel it's a guarantee failure.
i loved for someone else to recognize the effects of nerfs on player retention. i cant even count how many games ive left without ever looking back bcz of nerfs. reading forum posts regarding op claims bcz ppl cant play their class and constantly fail makes me laugh scornfully.
in most cases, devs have the balance right at the start but bcz a melee char wants to be able to pwn a mage and cant, they cry tears of OP in the forums rather than understand that melee cant solo a mage and to play to their strengths rather than have every class be a cookie cutter. im oversimplifying here and i add that caveat so ppl dont start saying "well i can solo a mage..." blah blah blah, good players are good players regardless of the game.
but what the author didnt touch on, and i believe to be even more devastating than a nerf, are the pvp rules themselves. in subscription games, there are generally not micro transactions with game changing items where you can buy your way out of fail and become OP for the unreasonable price of $xxs.xx. in those situations, what im about to say does not apply ( but thats changing now too, just fyi to devs, ill nvr buy a subscription to a game that also has a cash shop, (sorry soe, u fail hard, thanks for fucking up gaming). but in f2p models with item shops, and where 'open pvp' exists, you have your casual players trying to have fun, but get griefed constantly by those who are stealing mommies credit card. i dont have the luxury of swiping cash from my parents for a few years now, but i am one of those. if you have a few bucks, you can buy your way to the 'next' level. and i love to kill peeps.
at the same time im lol'ing bcz i killed the same guy for the 4th time in an hour, im also aware that the guy im killing may not log in the next day...or ever again, thus reducing the pool of victims and new players. some games put a level requirement on open pvp, but this is just a delay tactic for the inevitable.
what im suggesting here is not that open pvp be removed. i hate limitations on pvp as do most gamers. what i am suggesting is that game changing items be removed from cash shops so everyone can be competitive. or allow those items to be easily obtained thru in-game economies or quests that dont require 3 months of fail gaming to obtain. i understand the need to feed the devs through income generating virtual items, but to use runes of magic as an example, wings came out costing 400 diamonds at item release. a diamond on the us servers at that time cost roughly $20.00usd for 500. the benny to wings is it allowed you to add 6 more stats than the guy who didnt spend 20 bucks. thats game changing when i can load stamina equating to mass hp gain on those wings and have my mage take hits from uber melee characters. money should not equal power like that. it simply makes f2p a misnomer and those games should be renamed p2bc (pay to be competitive). and yes, i bought those damned wings.
And what about people how just don't want to compete? I QFT the trammel post.
In a game with good PvP AND good PvE there need to be places for people that don't WANT to PvP, people that would let you live even if you were on 5% health and running... I don't know any game that delievers there. I'd choose two games with clear focus over a bad hybrid any day...
M
Very good article, kind of makes me think of Mortal Online in their attitude in development, "game crushing bugs", and the attitude on the forums. Just chalk it up to another Shadowbane, though I think they will outlive their utility far sooner than Shadowbane did. The game is basically unplayable for an "MMO", unless "MMO" means 3 people on your screen.
And what about people how just don't want to compete? I QFT the trammel post.
In a game with good PvP AND good PvE there need to be places for people that don't WANT to PvP, people that would let you live even if you were on 5% health and running... I don't know any game that delievers there. I'd choose two games with clear focus over a bad hybrid any day...
M
the original authors topic was regarding pvp, not those who wish to sightsee. i understand thats a market too, but not for discussion in a pvp thread. with no pvp there is no motivation to be better being as most games dont really have challenging pve. at least not solo pve. anyway, if you dont like to fight, you need to be choosing carebear servers when available, or change your game choice entirely if not available.
Only true pvp game lightyears ahead of shadowbane and uo(carebare i say) was asheron's call Darktide best hardcore pvp ever in mmo.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
While this may be (in fact I'm fairly sure it's not) the answer you like, it is the correct one: the measure of a success for an MMO is financial. Whether a game has 300,000 subscribers or 30 very dedicated multiboxers, the income for the developer is the same. You may of course not want to play such a game, and if many agree with you, their subscriber numbers will reflect that.