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How to reintroduce consensual world PVP into MMORPGs?
PioneerStew
Member Posts: 874
When I write the above question I am thinking of the regular Tarren Mill and Cross-Roads open-world PVP that occurred on the PVE servers in vanilla WOW. This was probably one of the highlights of my time PVPing in MMOs.
Unfortunately it is a feature that seems to have become lost to: -
- Non-consensual FFA PVP MMOs where other players dictate how and when you play a game, or simply gank and grief in place of seeking a fair and enjoyable fight.
- Battlegrounds which while fun create an arena with match-finders and hub-based background queues and provide faction points or rewards thus disincentivising any open world PVP.
- PVP zones which are a glorified version of Battlegrounds.
I would add that this situation is exacerbated by: -
- Dungeon Finders, cross-server Dungeon Finders, upiquitous fast travel, phasing, excessive instancing and all those other tools that result in hub-based gameplay and an empty world.
- Zone design that rarely brings opposing factions into contact.
I would like to see a return to those spontaneous skirmishes that used to occur while exploring an open world and would proliferate into vastly entertaining battles.
Please share your thoughts.
Comments
I completely agree. Add flying mounts to that list as well.
Those Tarren Mill - Southshore days were epic and a lot of fun. Sometimes the server crashed due to the mass amount of players in one spot, but I'm sure that could be worked out with current gen technology. Unfortunately, I don't see any developer pursuing this type of world pvp in the near future.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
I'd be happy if there were more games that just had non-consensual world PvP for players that want that and then games that had pure PvE.
I like worlds where everyone wants to PvP, and I like worlds where everyone wants to PvE, but I hate when they mix the two.
I think the problem with PvE is the lack of challenge at every level except max level. The first time a great player at low level should die should be about level 5. Get past a 4 hour introductory period and then throw the players to the wolves. Traps, wandering high level Mobs, puzzles and conditions. No more easy low levels. Change the grind we have now into challenge as it used to be.
I think the problem with a lot of PvP games is that they don't have enough content that's not PvP. In PvP games I think they should still have as much to do as in PvE games, and even just as many BIG fights.
I hate the mixed games, the PvP players are not polite or respectful to say the least. When you group with them in PvE it's not fun, but there's no way to filter out players based on ass-hat-ness. I think the PvE players want to level to max so they can get to the end game.
Asdar
I find it interesting that in your 1st point you complain about the issue of "fair and enjoyable fight", yet spend much of the rest of your post complaining about things which offer exactly that. Battlegrounds and PvP zones typically = people seeking a fight (consensual pvp) and a somewhat balanced fight (at least as far as levels / gear are concerned, as well as number of players in Battlegrounds).
Thing is, developers realize that rather than focusing on the open world part they can much more easily throw in battlegrounds and pvp areas where if you want to pvp, you just go there. Makes a lot more sense than having people roaming around pvp flagged and hoping that maybe, but possibly not, they will at some point run into someone else who is also pvp fagged. Better to just concentrate everyone into controlled areas.
They dont need to design PvE content / the rest of the world to bring you into conflict when they can more easily just put an area that says "If you WANT PVP go here".
Many times, such an organic and spontaneous feels is more important to design than clearly marking what kind of experience a player will have if he goes "here". Any open-world single player game comes to mind. GTA would be an incredibly boring game if the city was divided up into instances and labeled according to exactly what mission or gameplay flavor each instance provided.
There is much to be said about telling players only what's needed and withholding information that would be more enjoyable found through experimentation and exploration ala GTA.
The reasons behind the growing resentment towards PVP would need to be addressed if anyone wants to see PVP happen in open world, outside of arenas.
People aren't opposed to PVP, many people play FPS, many play competitive games. But PVP in MMO often includes harassment, forum gloating, ganking, spawn camping, going after individuals because you have a vendetta against person X and Y.
You would need to be able to guarantee that under no condition will this be allowed in your game, I just don't think it's going to happen. I think the damage that has been done to PVP is going to take years to be repaired, many ppl simply refuse to touch PVP.
PVP arenas in some PVE games does work, simply because it's optional and it protects you from all of those issues, arenas protect you from harassment, ganking, vendettas, etc, because leaving the arena is always one click away.
As he puts it, it has to be organic and spontaneous. You can't have some other ulterior motive for PvPing. If you're there to get honor to buy a mount, that's not PvP. That would be PvE, you're just farming other players instead of NPCs, that's not enjoyable.
As I said tho, I'd take it a step further. It also has to be equal. If two sides collide and one side wins every time that's not any fun for the loser. That's what Tarren Mill and South shore so awesome. Everyone was even level, even gear, sure sometimes you had numbers but sometimes they did as well.
But with the F2P craze and selling advantage on the cash shop, it's impossible to get equal anymore. You'll never find an f2p game with good open world PvP, it's just not possible
The issue is Risk vs Reward...
I think I had the best experience with Lineage 2. It cost so much money to get gear in L2 that you spent most of your time trying to craft it. Months to get one set of gear. You can attack anyone out in the world, but if you murder someone you're red and can't go in towns and when you die...you drop a piece of gear. The huge money sink and grind to get gear created a de-incentive to PKing. Sure you had some, but a majority of players PvPed through War Declaration with other clans. I played L2 a lot and although you could attack players in the open world...I rarely ever witnessed them. Better reasons to PK out there.
Step 1: Create a huge risk to gankers and murderers...make it really suck to be one.
Step 2: Make the flagging system robust enough to not be exploited...this means it's tough to have an "Action combat" game that works.
Step 3: PvP has to matter or even consensual world PvP is just a glorified battleground.
^^^ This
Agreed...I think the biggest issue with open world PvP is over zealous gankers. Players that just want to see the world burn. And, so you have to put things in place that keep them from making that happen (or they absolutely will). If you don't, it just becomes needlessly frustrating. It's like speed bumps on a race track when open world PvP is done poorly.
Just use the pvp-pk-guild war system of Lineage and the job is done. In Lineage, although there is no consensual pvp, there is a risk for the ganker = he becomes a pk and if so, he will have a high chance to drop inventory items - gear if a player kills the pk, and a pk killer won't suffer any penality for killing the pk, as I posted countless times:
Basic pvp rules in Lineage:
1 - PvP without war:
If player A wants to kill player B but player B is not at war with him(player B belongs to a clan that is not at war with player A clan, or simply doesn't belong to any clan).
Player A starts attacking, so his name changes from White(normal state) to purple(flagged state), so 2 things can happen depending whether player B will react or not:
a - Player B doesn't react: if player B doesn't want to react and player A kills him, it means that he killed a player with white name(normal state), so player A will gain karma and his name will change to red color(it means that he became pk, pks are banned from towns, he can't enter cities nor talk to npcs, and if someone dies while in pk state, he can lose some(or all) items(as his weapon or armor).
A pk player needs to kill monters of his gap of level until he cleans his karma and his name becomes white again. Anyone can kill a pk without worrying, pks can be killed and the killer won't become pk, just will have a change to loot some items from pk after killing him.
A(white name) atks B(white name) = A becomes purple name
A(purple name) kills B(white name) = A becomes red name(pk) gain karma because he killed a white name.
b - Player B reacts: player B decides to fight back, so player B will become a purple name too, both players are purple, so this fight will end up and nobody will become pk, because both players are flagged, the winner will just have to wait some time until his name turns white again.
A(white name) atks B(white name) = A becomes purple name
B(white name) atks back = B becomes purple name
Both palyer are flagged, so it doesn't matter who wins, nobody will become pk because both players opened flag.
2 - PVP with war
Player A finds player B and he notices that player B belongs to a clan that is at war with his clan(there is a sword above his nickname), in this case, the rule above does not work anymore, because both players are at war, so no matter whether player A kills player B without player B reacts or not, you can kill him without worrying about becoming pk, the winner will gain pvp point and clan reputation(you can use special clan skills with reputation). So the players make their own alliances and enemies, while a poor faction game, there are only 2(or 3) factions. As well as a clan can choose to remain neutral by not entering in a war against any other clan.
Vanilla WoW was a completely different time and age in terms of "MMO history".
Pretty much everyone was sort of a noob back then and most people actually cared about the faction they were in and about the history of the world / what was going on in it. That was due to the Warcraft strategy games, and it made it so even people on PvE servers had fun fights.
Right now people usually don't really care about setting, time and place. Tarren Mill fights wouldn't happen even if a game like vanilla WoW were to release again, because there were no significant rewards to be earned.
Unless a game truly manages to make people care, you won't see that kind of fight again. Especially not if people need to flag themselves for "consensual PvP" first.
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Furthermore OP, you state that FFA PvP is so prolific, I would love to hear where you're getting that from.
There's really no getting around the problem that PvE reward setups have infiltrated PvP far too thoroughly in most big MMO's out there.
The best way to make people care about the PvP itself and not the rewards is by putting guilds in the central role of the game. Defending your bunch of friends, staking your claim, people still care about that.
But there's no way that can happen on a PvE server.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
The OP did not state this at all. The OP stated that consensual open world pvp has been replaced by: FFA PVP, Battlegrounds, PVP zones. It was a list without any particular weighting given to the individual items. I agree with this assessment.
As said above, the Tarren Mill/ Southshore PVP belonged to a different time and if the same game released now I do not believe the battles would be repeated.
Wouldn't the "untidiness of a real war" include civilian casualties and non-consensual fights?
Before I even start my post I'll admit to the fact on being a bitter old school MMORPGer from the days where idea of Trammel was considered an abomination. As one of the few of this dying breed I just have to state that PvP without risk vs. reward will turn into a boring tread-mill of ideas that just do not satisfy today's market (as the market craves for constant, ever-developing character growth). As people in this thread agree PvP has to possess some form of meaning, but if you can gain something in PvP without having the possibility of losing something, isn't the outcome of said PvP rather meaningless?
Then there's the issue of people's mindset: "I shouldn't have to fight unless I want to" in a multiplayer environment that can only translate into one thing; Players freedom is limited. Personally, I hate absolutely every single feature that restricts me from doing exactly what I want to do; However I am always prepared to face the consequences, but unfortunately todays MMORPGs do not offer either freedom or consequences for my actions (neither do the players, truth to be told). I remember back in the days even players gave you some thought, as you wouldn't mindlessly murder a member of a clan just for the fun of it, knowing that there would most likely be retaliation.
Helbreath had a feature, which we could apply to modern MMOs to tackle this problem with ease. For early levels, you could join either of the factions as their "civilian", you would then be protected by that city and the opposing factions members wouldn't be able to attack you. However criminals could (but they had insane risks for being one, including being completely exiled from NPC's). But in today's market, it wouldn't be just for early levels. People who wouldn't want to fight could be civilians, they would then be excluded from the PvP feautures (and the risks and rewards it would share); but in turn, they would gain protection from non-consensual PvP. If there were to be major PvP events (ex. war) civilians could then switch to "Militia" for a brief amount of time, allowing them to participate in PvP at the risk. Or we could have that each city has a townhall where they could enlist as militia for x amount of time (or until logged out).
So we'd have:
- Actual faction member (Open to FFA PvP; all death penalties apply)
- Civilian (Protected from faction PvP; Criminals could still assault you but you wouldn't suffer any death penalties)
- militia (temporary PvP enabled; all death penalties apply)
bah..WoW generation.. dont even know how pvp could and should work on PVE games..
Take a look at SWG's old system and learn
And so it did if you were foolish enough to stand at the edge of the battle and watch.
give 1 hour buff to dead player so he wont die again and get spawn camping. but the player can disable the buff at the npc if he want revenge.
i hate faction pvp. because faction is very far to one another. i dont want to walk like 5 maps just want to pvp
I'd love to see something like this. Maybe a better idea is the buff applies to that specific toon, and only if that toon is, say, 5+ levels above you. Furthermore, maybe it gives the dead a buff that temporarily raises their level X levels above that enemy, X being the level difference, but it only applies when attacking that enemy.
I think that when you're dealing with buffs, you really need to limit their effectiveness, but I definitely think there should be something done to prevent general douchebaggery.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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The Asheron's Call series had some good ideas for PvP in a mainly PvE game. Let's ignore Darktide server (FFA PvP server) for the sake of this discussion.
In Asheron's Call 1:
Players could choose to flag for PvP by going to a shrine and basically turning themselves "Red". When in PvP mode you were attackable by any other red player, including your own teammates. The same death rules applied; drop half your coin and a few of your most valuable (as in coin value) items, which were lootable. People turned their coin into notes (specific coin value sheets of paper purchased for a fee) and carried death items (like worthless items that had a high coin value like cups and plates). The PvE folks could run around doing their own thing and could even watch the PvP fights. Each existed together.
Later on Turbine added PvPlite, which was going pink, and you could pvp but you wouldn't drop items on death. I think you could only attack other pink players.
In Asheron's Call 2:
Again, ignoring Darktide. Players could swear allegiance to one of three kingdoms (Dominion, Shadow and Order). Scattered throughout the world there were random PvP areas that when entered you were flagged for pvp. There were free or all areas, but those were minimal areas, there was pvp areas where you weren't attackable by group or clan mates, and there were KvK areas where you were attackable by enemy factions but not yours. While you wouldn't drop items in PvP, if you were participating in KvK you could earn Kingdom Points (you'd lose some on death too), which would allow you to rank up your kingdom's skill tree. Unfortunately that system wasn't fleshed out very well.
Additionally, some of the best xp spots for groups were on the various kingdom islands so there was always fights breaking out for one reason or another.
Players who chose not to join a kingdom were considered neutral and not attackable.
Both games, I felt, had brought a lot of choice to PvP on PvE servers. There wasn't a ton of incentive to do so, aside from the love of PvP, but the community was very tight and there were many rivalries created so it was interesting.
I would say the greatest problem developers face for PvP in mmos is that players expect something in return for their efforts for the most part. That and the fact that there are other genres that deliver better pvp experiences overall, like FPS games and MOBAs.
In my opinion DAOC did it best... PvP was a conscious decision where you went to the areas of conflict specifically for that purpose.
It wasn't a cross realm thing like WOW or Wildstar where there are shared faction zones with neutral quest hubs.
The closest we have come to PvP like this is really ESO and GW2 and even though it is instanced (unfortunately) the areas are vast enough that you can choose to engage in group PvP or solo PvP just like in the days of yore.
Modern PvP is pretty much either super casual instanced battlegrounds/arena style PvP or it is super hardcore, get killed lose all your shit PvP.
One of the best examples of Modern PvP is Age of Wushu, although I didn't like the game all that much as I just couldn't get into the whole Wuxia theme, I am sure bcbully would chime in and discuss their system that at least tried to enforce some order while remaining open. More games should try to incorporate some hard rulesets like this so that if you really wanted to gank someone you really had to make a conscious decision to do so and then deal with the repercussions.
What are your other Hobbies?
Gaming is Dirt Cheap compared to this...
If you have the ability to willy nilly swap servers, factions, races, guilds, et al, there can be no open world skirmishes. What you had back then was a closed ecosystem. Everyone on the server leveled on the server. They've PVP'd together. They've waited outside (and sometimes PVP'd) the raid instances together. They raided the city capitals of other factions. They knew each other.
We had something called Friday night Drunken Raid on our server. Our guild would head out to Tarren Mill to face off against an Alliance guild. We would all be on the same Vent together... talking smack and drunk off our asses. Those days are long gone.
By definition, PVP is non-consensual. It's not something you turn on and off at you whim. What you are after isn't PVP, but a friendly game of smack talk. Nothing is stopping you from engaging in it, just no one cares to do it. There's no upside to do it. No payout. No benefit. Back in the day peeps did this for the hell of it. It's what made AV so epic back then. The notion that you had to get an entire server to work together in order to win the game, not just 10 people.
It doesn't even exist on the private servers anymore either. The boat has sailed. Try as you might, this is one memory that can never be revisited.