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What keeps players constantly interested in those Non-Stop RvR gameplay in certain MMOs like GW2's W
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,400
Some MMOs have a constant, nonstop RvR mode, where players are constantly fighting to Defend or Capture locations and structures.
But in a constant nonstop game mode like this, what keeps players interested, since game modes like that tend to not have any form of "End" aka Winning ( aka My team won!!!)
There seems to never be a true Victory, just bunch of many wins here and there on battles that never stop.
How do developers keep players interested in that? And what turns players off about that design?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Comments
Think the answer is rather simple:
There are no fantasy based multiplayer games. Say COD/Battlefield and such but in a fantasy settings, you see games like that are also played for years nonstop.
The feeling of playing a part in a siege with a large number of players to take an objective from an opposing large number of players is a feeling unique to MMOs. Games like Battlefield come close with 64 player matches, but even that doesn't compare to the numbers of players that can battle it out in an MMO. It's a pillar of the genre.
It also has an organic feel. Capture the Flag and (to a lesser extent I suppose) Domination are forced PvP game modes that totally break from the game world simply to provide players with a fun medium in which to compare skills with other players and hone those skills.
Hasn't been the same now that ownership really doesn't mean a thing and it's all about flipping objectives for points.
I remember back in UO I played in an RP guild on Siege Perilous (the Felucca only, "hardcore" shard) and we owned, defended, and lived in the Orc Fort outside of Yew.
It wasn't even one of the cities/towns eligible for capture in the Factions PvP system, but that fort was OURS and we fought off anyone who would try and take it from us.
I also remember fighting along my underdog-brothers in the Council of Mages, holding back the onslaught of True Brittanian's for an entire weekend and more as they desperately tried to take Moonglow - at least I think it was Moonglow?
I'm sure DAOC players have similar stories.
People who ask this question obviously just don't get it. I don't play to win; I play to have fun. I've been playing GW2 almost nonstop since launch, which, hard to believe, is two years now and I still have a blast in World v World. Often I have no idea who we a re fighting against and don't even look at the score.
The rumours of GW2's death have been greatly exaggerated.
It is not about winning it is about fun and challenge.
The true victory is when your realm manage to hold a bigger % of the keeps or such than the opposing realm, until the war is over with that opposing Realm and move on to another realm. GW2 RvR was great imo, but now its soo disorganized. From my perspective, what attracts me about RvR is that you get to fight in a large scale battle, with siege weapons, tearing down walls, shooting people off the wall as an ranger/archer, rushing into the big crowd of enemies as tank, nuking your enemies with your cool looking spells as a caster role.
Same goes with raiding, why do you raid? when in the end you get all the sets you want, but you kept raiding? You know every inch of the raid map, and every skills the boss will use, what's the point? Same answer, because you like the thrill, the reward, and the feel you get after you defeated that raid, but with RvR its only difference is that you are opposing other player, you may not know what skill/moves he/she will use on you, and the skill/moves you will use to counter is completely based on your reflex and knowledge of that class.
This is MMORPG for you, it is a never ending killing.
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE! LET THE GALAXY BURN!
We murder, we kill, it is mindless savagery, this universe is mindless - Azariah Kyras
pvp is like hamster in weel. pointless.
unless u like act big ego.
I remember back in the good old days of WOW and how much fun the all day battles in Alterac Valley used to be, I wasnt there just to grind honour I just wanted a prolonged fight and enjoyed the backwards and forwards of the battle.
I never played DAOC but I did enjoy playing WAR. Back in the early days I had such a blast doing the RVR, I had a lot of fun but the main thing that mattered was realm pride, we would be damned if we were gonna let the destruction beat us and enter our city. Sadly once crossrealming was allowed and people could just switch sides to whichever faction was winning the realm pride disappeared and most of the enjoyment too.
I also used to love the feeling of doom and helplessness as you were trapped inside a keep while the destruction zerg was smashing down the doors, you knew there was no way you were going to win this but you were going to go down fighting.
Sadly GW2 and ESO just havent captured that same feeling as playing WAR and from what i've heard DAOC.
I always loved DAoC RVR, however I would agree that GW2 RVR is absolutely terrible. I know when I played DAoC, the RVR was all about controlling your servers RVR area's. Now in GW2, I would think this would be the same, especially since the servers your fighting change over time. (If I recall correctly)
Full disclosure, I was able to play GW2 for about a week, then I had to drop the game, I didn't find it fun at all. With that said, the RVR there never really captured me at all. It was zerg vs zerg not RVR. Not to mention, small group RVR seemed non-existant, I would think cause you would just get zerged and whats the point of that.
I will say, I like the commander system that GW2 installed, that's very cool, but I will say that GW2, at least for me, didn't capture me, even though with my DAoC experience, I thought it would.
ESO I can't speak too cause I never played it.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
DAoC RvR had far-reaching consequences for your realm. That, I think, is what added such a fun factor to it that newer MMOs aren't using. Darkness Falls wasn't open to your faction unless you owned a majority in the frontiers (generally), and there were mobs and drops in Darkness Falls you couldn't find anywhere else in the game.
Even players whose primary goal was to PvP would participate in RvR to help secure keeps for entrance into DF. And once you were in, you could stay in until another realm took more keeps and you left (by either zoning out or being killed and releasing). For brief periods, DF became a PvE and PvP zone, with level 50 characters trying to hold out for as long as they could after another realm took the dungeon. I remember hearing in guild chat while leveling in DF that Midgard had taken the dungeon... And the increase in adrenaline knowing, at any moment, a Shadowblade might jump out on me while I was battling a mob. Or maybe I'd run around the corner to find a small battle between my realm and a group of Midgardians to which I could jump in to help. It was the expectedly unexpected here that made it so fun. You knew Midgard was going to flood the dungeon to empty us out, you just didn't know where or when. Or if you would survive it.
I don't know how they can stand to keep riding the treadmill of these games, but I played Daoc for years and it was done in a way that made you want to fight for your realm. It was all about community and realm pride, us vs. them.
The biggest difference is these so called rvr games today have this league type crap with seasons which blow imo. Daoc was a persistent war, not some weekly sports match. The other side(s) "won" when they took your relics from you, and you were hating life until you got them back, and dammit that is all you thought about until marching into the lands of the enemy to get them back. It was epic on so many levels people who never played will never understand.
This^
It is a matter of pride I guess. How dare those darn enemys to take OUR keep?
But in DAoC you had Relics (realm(rvr), guild(pvp server wide dmg bonus) which were stored in a keep and we kind of wanted to have them all..all the time. So no matter what, 1 attacker, a group or 100 attackers we defended that thing until they gave up. It often took a long time but it felt good to go to bed victorious, getting up 2 hours later kind of didn't.
GW2 did not keep me interested. I thought it was cheap replacement for world PvP.
ESO has kept me interested for a few reasons, Cyrodiil, combat and the skill system.
Cyrodiil makes me think it was the original game world, and zenimax tacked on some pve zones.
You could probably compare that idea to why people play things like Counterstrike, Battlefield, League of Legends...there were a few key reasons why I personally would get into stuff like that.
1) It's fun to compete and win against thinking human opponents, AI controlled NPCs are still painfully dumb at times with current technology
2) It's fun to have a randomized set of opponents and teammates to play with, adapting to their different tactics and skill levels
3) BIGGEST REASON: It's fast. Games/activities like this are very quick to get into, very quick to get out of and don't take up much time to do. So for someone with a rather busy real life who doesn't have very long extended periods of free time, but does have short bursts of time scattered all over the place during the day, stuff like this is among their best options for relaxing and having some fun before they get back to the RL grind.
Where's the any key?
Both of these right here. Great explinations that I just couldn't put together. The pvp was epic and I completely forgot about DF. Hell I remember taking a group and pvping in there for the fun of it. Sometimes knowing we are going to lose DF and zone in just to PVP their peeps after they took it.
Good Times.
The argument that some people don't have enough time to play is an argument that I can't stand. If you don't have 5+ hours a week to play, go find a single player game, not a MMO. Single player games are made for that quick burst of time and than a return to RL. I hate that the market goes to the people that have less time rather than the people who will give it more time, just doesn't make sense to me.
gw2 was epic for a while all these small structured battles.
joined gw2 with a group of friends(55 players) and well we started WvW(RvR) hardcore pvp gaming it was epic between November until May. in every map there was always guild groups or structured raid.
these days gw2 looks like shit when all good guilds have left and commanders..... only 1-2 servers in NA still got structured raids or good guilds.
my suggestion if you wanna see how a normal gw2 fight look these days in tier 1.
----> youtube ----> handara there and back to desolation.
it's a tier 1 fight between sfr and deso, funny is that they call for commands but pretty much nobody listen, they try to stick on the commander and press 1. funny way to spend your hours in the house<3
eso is a great game sure most of the stuffs was a total copy and the ideas got from gw2 but they balanced it out, currently running with 33 guys around in eso and having an epic time killing zone blobs, in eso there is way better skills to balance out the pug vs guild group battles and way more things to do.<3
I dunno, i tried the WvW or RvR what ever its called in GW2 and wasnt impressed at all. it was just giant zergs running around flipping forts back and forth. not my cup of tea i guess, i dont really like standing around in a zerg spamming AoEs all day.
and when me and some friends tried to go off and do our own thing it was really pointless, all you do is try to take a smaller area over and the zerg can see its being attacked on the map and guess what happens? you either get rolled over by the zerg or run giving up the point. so whats the point of even doing it?
not sure how Daoc was i never played it, i heard it was much better. wish that was my first experience and not GW2.
I hope people who never played DAoC didn't play GW2 and think that that's what they were missing out on in DAoC. Running around like one giant mindless blob the way people do in GW2 is not RvR. To answer the original question, I don't know how people can do that every night and not get bored. I did it for about 2 days before I knew GW2 wasn't going to be worth my time.
OP
the thing that keeps em interested is that its a consistent fight or struggle..one night your server or faction is kicking ass but then after you log to sleep take a break or what ever you see you faction or server has lost ground and now you have to "PLAY" to work back towards the top
unlike other mmorpgs where they plop you into a small pvp map or arena with a time limit means absolutely nothing ..nothing at all unless you just want to troll people or put down the other team in the chat box for shits n giggles..most of the times its full of people not trying or just watching or just there to get quick xp and leave it also leaves open a loop hole of some kind for botters ..no sense of feeling your advancing towards a goal..at least for me its like that
being in a pvp world with politics / server gains / faction gains are far more fun for me than being tossed into a arena or to capture a flag..if i wanted arena id just stop and duel somebody on the side of the road..its the same thing imo and get no gains
but everybody is diff and everybody dosent like the same style of pvp
I don't like the RvR design personally.
I like the 'old west' style. Pick your area that has the resources you want, hold it. less restrictive. RvR makes it feel more like a toy or more like your still working for someone else.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
That's funny, I don't remember being surprise CC'd and insta-gibbed while defending a keep... Nor in such a "zerg vs zerg" scenario, as both sides had CC to use and only fools in a zerg all stood shoulder to shoulder waiting to be slaughtered.
Do you mean small, coordinated groups of players that ran together with speed and used the strategy to surprise CC a group and focus down their healers and CC so that they were able to wipe much larger groups of players? CC may be annoying, but to act as if this required no skills is ludicrous. A smaller group of players utilized a game mechanic to defeat much larger groups of players.
Or maybe there weren't realm abilities that reduced (by up to 55%) CC duration, or realm abilities that removed negative effects (such as CC) while still triggering CC immunity timers. Or an ability that granted you speed while making you immune to roots, snares, stuns, and mesmerize spells for 15 seconds. Nah, probably not.
These things were implemented to combat CC spamming. They did so. If a small group of elite players still managed to run over your zerg, your zerg was ill-equipped (granted I can feel sorry for those just entering PvP here) and/or not very well-trained.