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It's time for MMO developers to return to cooperative PvE as their primary focus. Virtually every new title that comes out has to highlight PvP as a feature; every survival MMO, every sandbox MMO, only the so-called "themepark" MMOs are somewhat immune from this bandwagon. And what has it brought us? Impossible balancing issues, griefers, and split communities.
I remember the glory days of EverQuest when cooperative PvE was everything. Grouping was (to an extreme extent) essentially required and cooperative, high-quality play was critical to reputations on the server. Then came Asheron's Call, EverQuest II, and of course World of Warcraft, where developers started to segregate PvP players onto their own servers. The first thing they noticed, however, was how hard it was to balance spells and abilities for both PvE and PvP.
The most successful triple-A titles learned that it was a mistake to force non-consensual PvP on to their player base. World of Warcraft, Elder Scrolls Online, FFXIV, and other big subscription based titles maintained huge client bases who were willing to pay monthly fees because, I would argue, players got what they wanted. If they wanted PvP, they could go to PvP servers. If they didn't, they could play on PvE servers. In the case of ESO, the PvP was limited to structured PvP in an isolated region that was purely opt-in.
I've been playing Albion Online in beta and love the game's gathering and crafting, they're really developed some nice mechanics that appeal to players of all types, but their full-loot non-consensual PvP once you get up into the Tier 5 and above just kills it for me. And the devs see that they've created something special that appeals to all players, and now they're struggling to find a way to reconcile the two. So they introduce a "reputation" system that punishes PvP and winds up making NO ONE happy, neither the PvPers nor the PvE'ers. Trying to serve two masters never works, and even if you could balance all abilities to make them equally effective in both PvP and PvE, you'd still have the problem that, if your game is any good, PvE players are going to want to play it too. The tension in the Albion Online community is palpable, you see it in the forums every day.
Enough with the fighting between "carebears" and the hardcore. It's time for developers to return to what made MMOs great in the first place and develop games that allow players to CHOOSE to play co-operative PvE with their friends and stop being expected to kill each other. Every survey that has EVER been done relative to MMOs has shown that there is always a much higher percentage of the player base that is not interested in non-consensual PvP. Why alienate the largest plurality of players only to create balancing headaches and leave everyone unhappy as a result?
Your thoughts?
Men do not stop playing because they grow old. They grow old because they stop playing. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Comments
MMOs have had PvP way back to UO and Meridian 59.. and graphical muds..
The problem today is that most games try to be all things to all people. And then fall all around. There is no harm in having a few PvE only games. There is no harm in having full PvP games. There is no harm in mixing both if done right (DAoC).
The balancing issues IMHO are caused by having utterly deficiant AI for NPCs. Instead of a challenging battle against a thinking opponent, the game creators fudge things and give boss XYZ the Evil Human Duke literally 1000 more HPs than the highest level character can have. Fix the AI so that NPCs actually behave remotely similar to players and... guess what... your balancing issues go away.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
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Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Yeah, PvP has been around forever. Look at what a griefer's paradise UO was. Great, fun game, with mechanics that many loved. But omg the exploits and griefing.
MMOs were still niche during Meridian and UO. In fact, UO was so interesting in large part because it was so novel. Yeah, it wasn't the "first" mmo, whatever that means, but it was a major early milestone. But it can't be denied that EQ started a whole new era of triple-A MMO titles and it began without PvP. Asheron's Call was one of the next out of the gate and it had one PvP server, the rest were PvE.
So, yes, PvP has been around forever, but the return point to which I speak is the EQ-WoW wave that segregated PvP into its own world in order to give both audiences what they wanted. I don't have any problem with that. What I find disappointing is not having the choice to avoid non-consensual PvP and having the price of playing a new title as the willingness to accept non-consensual PvP. ArcheAge, Black Desert Online, both required exposure to non-consensual PvP.
No thanks. Not any more.
Men do not stop playing because they grow old. They grow old because they stop playing. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
So all games should abandon PvP because of your personal preference?
No thanks. I like the wide variety that is out there now. There are plenty of PvE games, PvP games and mixed
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
It is the time of mixing casual PvP and casual PvE that should end.
The whole griefing thing for instance is just bad mechanics, the idea that most fights only can be won by one side no matter on skill and only people very close on levels (and MMOs surely have many of those) means §that PvP will be boring and predictable.
This is what happens when you use mechanics mainly made for PvEn for PvP as well. So I think the games should pick one or the other and focus the mechanics to make that gameplay as fun as possible instead of mixing things up.
If you want PvP you want something closet to FPS and Moba games where you can kill everyone and everyone can kill you. You can't have people starting up as hopless peasants and turn them into demi Gods and legendary heroes because it makes sucky gameplay.
If you on the other hand go for PvE you don't want balanced classes because they means you wont get the unique classes games like D&D have. You don't want to worry about if items or skills are exactly balanced to work in PvP and you can make far more advanced group dynamics that way.
There never was a time for PvP and I frankly think the genre need a few good MMOPvP games to gain more fans. It is just the weak compromise games that doesn't work.
Stop adding a little PvP to your PvE game or the other way around, you might get a few people buying said game that shouldn't have since they read PvP somewhere but those people will probably quit in disgust soon anyways. It makes the entire game worse.
Of course you could pull of a game that have both well but in that case you need to create completely new mechanics for it and you need to put as much work into both. Even with that your chances are slim but not impossible.
If you want to keep the basic MMO mechanics at all you should just go PvE only, possibly allowing duels but that is it.
No, what Slap mentioned is, in my opinion, perfectly accurate and valid. Games need to stop trying to be everything to everyone. Pick a niche and be the best at that, you aren't going to kill WoW, only WoW will ever kill WoW, so get away from that and just try to be the best at one aspect.
It is possible to design and build a very exciting game based off one concept. Look at lobby shooters. Black ops makes millions (as just one example) every two years churning out a mediocre campaign and then throwing 15 people into a small arena and letting them slap each other around. They know their niche and they do it well. Again, just one example.
I think this next generation of MMO games will be better than what we have seen of late, and I hope they raise the bar, games like Pantheon, Chronicles of Elyria, and Crowfall, may not be the best game for everyone, but I bet they do quite well within their niche and make their player base quite happy.
As far as regressing...no, but we should hope for progression into what you want. At least some of what you want.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
I will agree that most MMOs struggle to balance pvp and pve but it is nearly always the pvpers who lose out. There are very few MMOs with open world pvp, even fewer that are free for all. PvPers are usually restricted to battlegrounds / arenas and specific zones. Most class balancing occurs due to pve, not pvp, so more often than not it is the pvpers who lose out.
I always wonder, when I see posts like this, whether the posters have ever bothered to get properly involved in the pvp community. PvP is my favourite activity, objective-based open world pvp (i.e. keep fights etc) is my true favourite and I would never play an MMO that didn't have PvP in it.
Every PvP community I've been a part of has been great. Sure, there are the occasional gankers / griefers and the language used by the players is, in general, a bit coarser. But, the ratio of nice people to idiots is pretty much the exact same for the pvp community as it is for the pve community.
Its important to remember that for the average pvper, we just want a good fight. PvE is too easy and predictable, but PvP can give you a really good challenge. A good fight requires balance, which is why the pvp crowd in mmos often complains. But, being a sandbox feature, it relies on other people so the majority of pvpers hate gankers and griefers. Those sorts of players scare off newbies which hurts pvp long term, so me and other players like me always try to hunt down gankers. I also used to go out of my way to form pvp groups with a mixture of freshies and vets, as in my experience freshies are quickly put off by bad initial experiences, but if you can give them good experiences they suddenly realise how awesome it can be. I've converted many "carebears" into pvpers using this method.
The reason I say the golden age of mmo pvp hasn't arrived yet is down to mechanics and numbers. In almost all other genres of games, pvp is the crown jewel. Shooters, RTS, mobas, fighters etc....for nearly all other genres, if you can create a good pvp mode then the longevity and popularity of the game soars. So far, that has not happened in the MMO world, which indicates that nobody has gotten it right yet.
The reason I feel MMOs have never gotten PvP right is because very few / no developer has managed to successfully convert the RPG part into a massively-multiplayer format. We're still hung up on single-player / coop RPG mechanics, like linear stories, levels, gear grinds, vertical progression etc. They all work great in single-player / coop environment, but when you put them into an MMO they fail. They segregate the community. They create power gaps which makes competitive play impossible.
The current crop of indie titles in development are all experimenting with new forms of progression that will finally start to tackle the inherant problems with clinging to single player RPG mechanics. Camelot Unchained, in particular, has got a great take on horizontal progression backed up by new technology that will actually support massive numbers of players, so could be a really great pvp game. If it is, it might inspire AAA devs and then, hopefully, we'll get our golden age of MMO pvp.
EQ had separate pvp servers as well.
I agree. Neverwinter is a prime example of horrible PVP thrown in as an afterthought. It is simply Paycheck vs Paycheck in that game. And because of it, they have people constantly demanding balanced classes, lol. It's been two years since they introduced a new class. No bard or druid in a supposedly D&D game. What? It's ridiculous. Of course, the whole game, like most grinders is a joke. Just a monotonous hamster wheel. Spin, spin, spin, never really get anywhere. Kill more mobs to get more power to kill more mobs faster and on and on ad infinitum. The only reason to play it is for the action combat, if you like that sort of thing.
PVP is basically never implemented well in mmorpgs, that's why most reasonable hate it. Funny thing is though, Dungeons & Dragons was originally developed from a miniature tabletop war game, and there has always been a human element controlling monsters and NPCs in pencil-and-paper rpgs. They're called Dungeon or Game Masters.
Of course, they totally screwed up many great opportunities for making the game so much better and more interesting by not including an evil leveling path in the beginning.
The only good thing I can say about Neverwinter right now (as well as WoW and its many other clones) is that they're better than watching than TV. For the most part. Usually. lol.
Well put.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
Separate server will be the only answer but pvper's don't like it because no one plays on them. So if this is true why can't devs today get a clue instead of trying to force pvp on everyone. This is one of the reasons i am starting to dislike modern mmo's.
As a thief, I can't even tell you how many boat/house keys I had stolen. How many houses I looted from stealthing in, while their careless owners did not place items for safety. Did not use the reveal skill (not spell) to make sure noone followed them in. That's what made the game so great. They gave you everything you needed to do it right, and you could capitalize off of people's mistakes. PvP was truly skill based. Losing was frustrating, but winning felt amazing. It just required you to learn from your mistakes. If you were unable to do that for whatever reason, then yeah the game wasn't for you. Doesn't mean you have to go on a crusade to ruin the fun for everyone else.
Let's party like it is 1863!
Thats not the answer at all. That's exactly the issue. Trying to be all things to all people is the surest way to fail. Having a game that is both PvE AND PvP on seperate servers is pretty much the silliest thing you can do because it would mean the systems are not integrated, but merely tacked on to appeal to more people.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Bah, thats not playing smart. You know how long it took to grind stealing, and do all that nonsense. Here is playing smart, you take a bunch of pictures from a porno page that look legit like a real person, send them over ICQ saying they are real pictures, and play along with it for a few days, and bam they give you everything. Not only do you steal all their shit, you make them feel like utter shit, and you teach them a valuable lesson, that of course is assuming they dont kill them selves hahaha.
All your grinding and thieving taught people was to type I wish to lock this down, I taught people to not trust anything unless it passes the 10 questions of the bullshit detection kit. I also made lots of gold, than sold it on ebay before they cracked down on it to haha, so dont play that game about UO not being a gerfing paradise, cause it was 100 percent.
God damn thing was a shit bag online simulator, to show what happens when there are no rules. 99 percent of every one ran amok in that game. There were no groups of people helping out any one. You tried to make a honest living in UO, here is how that worked. You had hide, and mine. You go mine some ingots, and hide from the raging demon summoners, and usally 99 percent of the time got away. Then you took you ingots to town, to get your self some gold, and have a blacksmith make you some weapons. Then you walk out of town and bam 10 people kill you steal you shit, and you start over.
The only people who made it back in UO are people who literally made gangs, and all the gangs were bastards. Love how mmos call them guilds too haha, cause they are 100 percent gangs. gang1
A guild is an association of artisans or merchants who control the practice of their craft in a particular town. There are no guilds in mmos like Uo, there are gangs.
It just goes to show you the majority of people are dirty dirty bastards, and if they can get away with something bastardish they will 100 percent do it. I tried to make a guild once of people to fight back, no one thought it was a good idea to run around and kill the bastards, they thought it was more fun to be the bastards. Its no wonder for the majority of human history, it has been ruled by filthy lawless bastards, cause the mythical paladin is make believe, and not in human nature, but the bastard guy that runs around and rapes and steals is in every single one of us.
So I guess you've just admitted to hacking people's accounts? Pretty much the lowest of the low. So you pretty much lose all credibility when it comes to just about anything.
In regards to the actual game.. I can think of at least 2 major guilds that were on my server that were 100% anti-pk guilds that would organize and go hunt PKs when given reports by the average joe. They were honestly good people fighting the good fight, even though they, for the most part, we're not that great at PvP. Maybe this was not the case on your server. I can only speak for mine.
I also remember a number of legitimate miners/blacksmiths that made tons of money selling their own gear off their vendors. So, yes it was very possible to be successful without being any type of PvP/PKer.
Not gonna lie.. what happened to you just seems like karma. To clarify, i'm not interested in a retort here.. but hacking accounts and tormenting people for your own personal pleasure is pretty messed up. It's also completely outside the game rules, and today would probably net you a felony charge. Also, it's borderline sociopathic behavior.
Yes, it was. The reason I brought it up is because it negates the OP's claim that "Then came Asheron's Call, EverQuest II, and of course World of Warcraft, where developers started to segregate PvP players onto their own servers."
By and large you had still had PvP and pve players separate.
His claim is that separate pvp servers started with the gen 2 mmo's, which is false. EQ 1 had separate pvp servers long before EQ2 and WoW came along.
When did I say I hacked some ones account. I said I pretended I was a women from a porno page, and he gave me access to the stuff in his house, and I took it all and sold it, than sold the gold on ebay. Where did hack come from? So out of the 1000s of gangs, you counter it with 2 guilds.
Karma had nothing to do with it, it was a open world PVP game, if you go out side of town at some point some ones gonna kill you lol. As for sociopath behavior, tricking some one out of their in game stuff, is by default part of that game, I just took it to pretending I was a women haha. As for caring about that guys feelings, not really no. He was a idiot, he needed to learn. You don't trust random people on the internet. Would I do that now no, I am not 12 years old any more. I also don't play games that whole goal is to make a game around stealing peoples shit, like UO was, eve is, and all the open world pvp games are.
Haha and to that the OP of the UO thing, you bastard why did you steal my boat key you got me banned. I remember when I spent like 6 days getting a boat, and you stole it from me. I bitched at the GMs for like 3 hours, in my teenage rage hahahaahahahaha. Good times though, I def was stupid to be walking around minoc with that on me. Its your fault I had to resort to pretending I was a girl, and robbing that other guy blind hahahahahaha.
Haha thats cause pvp servers always end up having like 10 people on them. So they thought that if they made a game where they force every one together, some how that was gonna work out. I think people keep forgetting that we are all old men now haha. Forced pvp games were fun when we were all 12-18 but we are all old men now. Then you got the majority of today kids who are raised totally different. They get thinking they are a victim about this garbage, and get all butt hurt. So yeah thats why pvp grief fest games do not work any more. Back in the 90s though it sure did, and it was fun as hell. Now a days nah its no fun, people take it to seriously.