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Worlds Adrift promises future PvE servers.
anemo
Member RarePosts: 1,903
So recently during a dev stream that also had a larger QA section the devs said that they were going to be adding in PvE servers summary: https://www.worldsadrift.com/blog/icymi-stream/
As you can imagine being a "hardcore PvP" game that then pretty much out of the blue announcing that there will be PvE servers, the forums are in a massive uproar. It's also worth noting that if you're playing the game as "intended" it's pretty much a rust a like, where if you lose a fight you lose your house (ship in this game) that is also your storage/bank/home/base for all of your actions (though it's get cheesed by using offline alts as storage, since your ship logs out 5 or so mins after you do. It would be a Rust lite for this reason if it wasn't for the fact that ships can be sunk in minutes).
The forums actually are pretty hilarious right now. totally recommend.
_______________________
Personally I think it's kind of a good thing for the game.
Since its advertising points have always been more staged towards being an exploration, and a ship building game (until very recently even it's steam AD videos didn't even have an air ship sinking). If you were always exposed to PvP, you never wanted to spend much time on an island since each moment you were away from your ship was time it was almost completely exposed (no alerts of any sort of damage/theft/people nearby). Which meant the best gameplay was park ship high then Run-Boost-Jump your way through the island as quickly as possible, ignoring any difficult content or anything that could slow you down to minimize your vulnerability window. Then the game also has an utterly outstanding ship editor, and ship customization system BUT you'd be an idiot to use it to it's full extent since the PvP meta forces you to make nasty looking box ships that look like upside down porcupines because there are so many engines on it.
Music and Artwork theming is also way more chill than you'd expect for a PvP game. The music is literally something you would put on to calm down to, except for 2 songs that are used for storms. And the artwork seems to be closer to some green apocalypse style (calm after the worst), rather than a grungy mad max style.
Oliver: Do we have a rough estimate for when this next update (Alliances stuff) will hit?
Herb: So it’ll have to be on the PTS first; we’re working hard on that right now. There’s some stuff we’re doing that’s new and we’re running into some unforeseen issues, and so we’re working with Improbable to resolve those. Hopefully the PTS will come this week, maybe – and then we’ll see when the update drops. We did have to reassign some people to the urgent Live issues, so I don’t have a specific date on that right now. But hopefully this week for the PTS.
Oliver: Is there anything we haven’t covered that you wanted to cover, before we…
Herb: Actually I wanna be here while we talk about it
[Foreshadowing intensifies]
Oliver: So I’ll ask the question and we can ease into the second half of the stream.
Someone said, what’s the next big feature that we could be working on? Which leads us nicely…
Ric: I kind of already alluded to it earlier, around the PvE/PvP servers. I think it’s something that we’ve thought a lot about, something that we’ve discussed with the Community Cloud Council as well.
What we’ve done really is spent a lot of time and energy in the last few years looking at ways to really make as many people as we could happy. We had people who loved the PvP content, and people who loved the PvE content, but it’s very challenging to make everything play nice and everyone be coheisive. So what we’ve done is we’ve looked to the community, we’ve looked at what things have worked well on other titles, and what we’ve really thought about is that we really want to make Worlds have a place for everyone, where everyone has options. If today they want to play in one way, tomorrow they might want to play another way – they can pick and actually grow as well. Maybe in the beginning you don’t want to be attacked, you want to have a relatively tranquil experience while you’re trying to grow your ship, but at one point you might feel up to some more combatitive PvP content. So what we’re trying to move towards is more player choice in that regard, and actually in a crazy but awesome way, by giving the players more choice, it actually means there’s a different kind of pressure on us. Instead of trying to spend so much time and effort trying to make all these things work for everyone, actually it means we can give you guys choices and options and then through your behaviours and what you like to do, you can tell us what you want in each server. It’s actually freed us up and allowed us to do some other things we’ve talked about on the stream already, like cooking, some of the progression stuff, clothing and so on. So we’re really excited about it, but we should say it’s something we are working actively with the community on. I did mention the CCC; please speak to the council members if you have some feedback! I can see the chat buzzing already with specific questions, there’s so much detail in here – I know some of you identify as a specific type of player, and you’re concerned about protecting that part of the experience for yourself. We’re aware of this as well, please give us feedback and we are listening; a tonne of it has already factored into the detailed design work that the guys are doing. Keep it coming, and do let your council members know your thoughts.
Herb: Just to clarify, we want to open a PvE server, where certain things will be turned off. By turned off, I mean the damage won’t work – if you shoot someone in the face they won’t take any damage, stuff like that. This allows people who just want to get into the game with their friends, build a ship, explore, find stuff, progress through the weather walls and not really worry about all the other stuff, a place to play Worlds Adrift. So that’s what we’re working on now!
There is way more covered, but I want some type of summary here.Herb: So it’ll have to be on the PTS first; we’re working hard on that right now. There’s some stuff we’re doing that’s new and we’re running into some unforeseen issues, and so we’re working with Improbable to resolve those. Hopefully the PTS will come this week, maybe – and then we’ll see when the update drops. We did have to reassign some people to the urgent Live issues, so I don’t have a specific date on that right now. But hopefully this week for the PTS.
Oliver: Is there anything we haven’t covered that you wanted to cover, before we…
Herb: Actually I wanna be here while we talk about it
[Foreshadowing intensifies]
Oliver: So I’ll ask the question and we can ease into the second half of the stream.
Someone said, what’s the next big feature that we could be working on? Which leads us nicely…
Ric: I kind of already alluded to it earlier, around the PvE/PvP servers. I think it’s something that we’ve thought a lot about, something that we’ve discussed with the Community Cloud Council as well.
What we’ve done really is spent a lot of time and energy in the last few years looking at ways to really make as many people as we could happy. We had people who loved the PvP content, and people who loved the PvE content, but it’s very challenging to make everything play nice and everyone be coheisive. So what we’ve done is we’ve looked to the community, we’ve looked at what things have worked well on other titles, and what we’ve really thought about is that we really want to make Worlds have a place for everyone, where everyone has options. If today they want to play in one way, tomorrow they might want to play another way – they can pick and actually grow as well. Maybe in the beginning you don’t want to be attacked, you want to have a relatively tranquil experience while you’re trying to grow your ship, but at one point you might feel up to some more combatitive PvP content. So what we’re trying to move towards is more player choice in that regard, and actually in a crazy but awesome way, by giving the players more choice, it actually means there’s a different kind of pressure on us. Instead of trying to spend so much time and effort trying to make all these things work for everyone, actually it means we can give you guys choices and options and then through your behaviours and what you like to do, you can tell us what you want in each server. It’s actually freed us up and allowed us to do some other things we’ve talked about on the stream already, like cooking, some of the progression stuff, clothing and so on. So we’re really excited about it, but we should say it’s something we are working actively with the community on. I did mention the CCC; please speak to the council members if you have some feedback! I can see the chat buzzing already with specific questions, there’s so much detail in here – I know some of you identify as a specific type of player, and you’re concerned about protecting that part of the experience for yourself. We’re aware of this as well, please give us feedback and we are listening; a tonne of it has already factored into the detailed design work that the guys are doing. Keep it coming, and do let your council members know your thoughts.
Herb: Just to clarify, we want to open a PvE server, where certain things will be turned off. By turned off, I mean the damage won’t work – if you shoot someone in the face they won’t take any damage, stuff like that. This allows people who just want to get into the game with their friends, build a ship, explore, find stuff, progress through the weather walls and not really worry about all the other stuff, a place to play Worlds Adrift. So that’s what we’re working on now!
As you can imagine being a "hardcore PvP" game that then pretty much out of the blue announcing that there will be PvE servers, the forums are in a massive uproar. It's also worth noting that if you're playing the game as "intended" it's pretty much a rust a like, where if you lose a fight you lose your house (ship in this game) that is also your storage/bank/home/base for all of your actions (though it's get cheesed by using offline alts as storage, since your ship logs out 5 or so mins after you do. It would be a Rust lite for this reason if it wasn't for the fact that ships can be sunk in minutes).
The forums actually are pretty hilarious right now. totally recommend.
_______________________
Personally I think it's kind of a good thing for the game.
Since its advertising points have always been more staged towards being an exploration, and a ship building game (until very recently even it's steam AD videos didn't even have an air ship sinking). If you were always exposed to PvP, you never wanted to spend much time on an island since each moment you were away from your ship was time it was almost completely exposed (no alerts of any sort of damage/theft/people nearby). Which meant the best gameplay was park ship high then Run-Boost-Jump your way through the island as quickly as possible, ignoring any difficult content or anything that could slow you down to minimize your vulnerability window. Then the game also has an utterly outstanding ship editor, and ship customization system BUT you'd be an idiot to use it to it's full extent since the PvP meta forces you to make nasty looking box ships that look like upside down porcupines because there are so many engines on it.
Music and Artwork theming is also way more chill than you'd expect for a PvP game. The music is literally something you would put on to calm down to, except for 2 songs that are used for storms. And the artwork seems to be closer to some green apocalypse style (calm after the worst), rather than a grungy mad max style.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
Comments
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
These same people also may spend many hours PVPing.....in games such as Fortnite or LOL, where the PVP is on a more level playing field and its easy to get matched into a team.
It takes a "'special" person to enjoy getting obliterated by others again and again until they somehow manage to claw their way to the top, only to then spend their days slaughtering the helpless again and again in retaliation.
One player of this game wrote a facinating but repulsive guide on the best way to "surrender" or "flee" in order to survive and continue some semblance of progression.
It included "helpful" tips on how to build the fastest ships for outrunning others, gathering resources from undersides of islands where pirates frequently could be avoided and how to lay down your guns, letting yourself be boarded.
Also how to speak to pirates so they might take "only" your really valuable items and leaving your basic ship still intact. Failing that, what materials you should store in your "unlootable" belt for a faster restart on your next chicken boat.
I am as carebear has they come, and have avoided, run from, or died honorably in many a "fight." If I ever had to go through what this guide recommended I am sure I would have flung my laptop across the room when it was over, or started kicking my cats.....
Whew.....lets save the cats.
I recall one review where a self avowed, hardcore PVPer with a solid love for L2, Shadowbane and DF spent about 9 hours trying to get started in the game only to get stomped over and over again.
Even he called for the devs to soften up the new player experience and offer some sort of protection, at least at the start so they could learn the basic game mechanics, amass some assets, and most importantly, make some friends and join a crew so they could play it as it should be, a competitive multi player game.
He suggested either making new players not attackable by veterans (he was fine if other noobs could) or even having a pvp free zone for noobs to get started.
Go figure.....
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
We are important mainly because our way of playing isn't necessarily destructive . I am not saying PvP is always destructive but it does tend to destroy the will to play. It has nothing to do with fear as it is often said and used to make fun of carebears and other names one gets called. However being constantly on the look out and being worried about being jumped is tiring and exhausting and especially so in games where you can work together and achieve so much. There can be so much to do and often these games give so much freedom to creativity and design that it is such a shame to merely reduce it to a primitive 'winner takes all' path.
I am glad they are going to offer PvE servers and I consider that if you do not have a narrow point of view about what 'interaction' is there can be so much fun to be had and games don't always have to be about confrontations and fights.
A note to @ikcin please don't quote me and reply to my posts as I am not going to respond. You're like a broken record and in all honesty I have stopped reading your posts altogether.I would appreciate it if you would do me the courtesy of similarly skipping my posts altogether.
I'm 180 hours in (over the course of a year). I'd say that most of that time was in the beginning when the community was more mixed (was far easier to get people to trade/talk on the first July release, while right now it's FAR more difficult). But still that's probably 30 hours with the current community.
And from what I've experienced is that in all that time I've had a PvP take down my ship 5 or 6 times, and lost over a dozen to personal PvE (tossing an under equiped ship at a storm wall, "I wonder where the fog kill zone is", and "I can totally fit in that gap"). I've probably had another 5 or 6 times where I chased off/escaped a PvP when they weren't on their game (I'm terrible at FPS type games, since you now old school MMO player). So the game actually got it's world size and defender advantages down well, since that's only "actual PvP risk" averaging every 5-10 hours or so (In reality that risk clusters, since the process of rebuilding strands you, and leaves you with a weaker ship for a while).
_____________________
Even though the PvP doesn't keep me from actually playing the game if I feel like it, I probably wouldn't play it on a PvP server except to join someone else's crew for a bit. Since your character itself doesn't level, rather the items that you're capable of building get better. It means that a minute 0 character is just as useful to a crew as an hour 9000+ character (player skill is not included in "character"), unless the crew is rebuilding a ship.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
In fact I'm shouldering a majority of the risk in the encounter for most situations when doing PVE such as mining, hauling or exploration.
Heck, CCP intentionally designs it this way on purpose, more realistic really, a trading fleet is never going to successfully fend off a pack of U Boats, even when escorted by a full battle fleet.
PVEers dont fear losing items when the odds are fair, but when there's little chance to avoid then they shy away.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
LoL has one ultimate objective of destroying the enemy nexus. Comparing it to even an MMO as simple as this one is pretty clumsy.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
Online games are tough for me, theres times when there is no avoiding "wasting time" and losing progression, which I loath.
I'm currently playing FO4, a single player title, and decided to free up some SSD space to install NMS.
For basically 3 characters I deleted over 3K save game files, recovering 23GBs of space. This while still retaining the last 100 saves for my first 2 characters and the last 400 for my current play through.
It isn't that I have to reload very often, not playing in death mode or anything (just Hard I think) like that. I literally save or quick save after accomplishing anything. Selling stuff to a vendor, sell the weapons first, exit vendor, quick save, sell armor, exit vendor, quick save, sell rest, exit again and do a full save before heading out to explore. (and probably quicksaving after arriving from my fast travel port, just in case I'm ambushed as I arrive)
So imagine my approach in dealing with online games, as best as I am able, I minimize my risk and losses, and try to remove progression loss as much as possible.
How do I enjoy playing EVE in 0.0? Despite occasional losses its the safer and more efficient location to earn ISK which I made hand over fist compared to high sec.
First 5 years or so playing EVE I netted around 15B ISK. 2.5 years of mining? Cleared about 70B or so, despite easily losing 10 to 15 along the way.
PVP is just useless to me, no real progression to be achieved (killboard stats? lulz) the real power in EVE is ISK and the carebears in the game control much of it.
Solo PVE pays very well.....
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The only PvP deathmatch MMO that is successful is EVE, but it offers a ton of PVE content, "safer" (not safe, but safer) areas AND just added solo instances. Why doesn't anyone copy EVE if they want a deathmatch PvP MMO is beyond me.
Its why UO removed PvP pretty quickly in its life, and made it an option for those who want PvP. The game would not have seen the success it did if it remained a gankers paradise.
Its also why Blizzard tried very hard to entice people to PvP, they had to actually offer rewards, incentives and a small talent "tree" because barely anyone would PvP otherwise. We'll see how that works out, or if people still keep PvP turned off in BFA
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
I don't enjoy PVP, yet often play on PVP servers because it adds some challenge to the PVE that is generally missing from most games.
Like you noted, progression without some challenge is pretty pointless. Trick is to not make it crushing, especially to newer players, at least until they get a good understanding of the game and a chance to make a few friends or join a guild.
I just started playing NMS, and I've been struggling a bit to get going.
I would not welcome the extra "challenge" of some experienced player trying to kill me at this point, but later on, sure, I'd take a risk if there was a decent reward for doing so.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The only reason the game's tiny community is upset is because they won't have as many noobs to grief. They want easy kills, not fair fights.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
#IStandWithVic
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
The people that enjoy PvP, I suspect, which is the ideal PvP player, is it not?
The only way all the servers would become PvE is if the vast majority abandoned the PvP servers, such that they were always empty. That won't happen, unless the majority were only playing on PvP servers because they were the only option, and abandoned them once they had a choice which would mean they didn't want the PvP to begin with.
Players that are genuinely in WA for the PvP will stick with PvP servers. If those requesting a PvE server were happy with the games you mentioned they would have just gone there directly and not bothered with WA at all. No, those who wanted a PvE server option will return for it.
It will make WA more popular for those who wanted a PvE version of it.
If being unique was enough they wouldn't be shifting gears now, would they. Clearly they feel their PvP audience alone won't be enough, so are trying to broaden their appeal.
If it works, you'll still get to enjoy PvP servers. If not, depending on how badly they need to expand their player base, it could be possible there will be no servers left for any to enjoy.
People on both sides of this, but ESPECIALLY THE DEVS, need to remember that PvP restrictions and PvP countermeasures are what makes for a good PvP experience.
The best example I have is a 90's MUD - full loot, open world PvP, that also penalized experience for each death (yes, you could essentially de-level if you died often). This was a harsh, hard-core game world... but...
There were mechanics built in to the game that counteract these PvP instances. One was having a +/- 2 to 6 level PvP targets, preventing the extreme level players for trouncing newbies in one hit. Though it allowed leeway for the lower levels, since a level 1 could pick a fight with a level 50 if they wanted to.
Another source of any in-game restriction were city guards (like UO implemented later) that would aid the defender in such PvP attacks within city limits.
The final feature was allowing for a variety of legitimate in-game ways to escape PvP for the non-PvPer. From teleportation, to invisibility, to hiding, sneaking, "detecting life", etc. if you got stuck in a PvP fight, you had no one to blame but yourself at that point!
Worlds Adrift failed at considering these details. Countless other "Open World PvP" games also fail miserably at considering these details. Thanks to all of these new PvP games, and their "hurry up and get it done" attitude that lacked any foresight into the future of their game, people cringe at hearing the 3 letters, PvP. When in fact, PvP should add a HUGE element of adrenaline packed fun and excitement for the non PvP player.
* And for the record, I never once killed a single player in my 4 years of playing that MUD. When you can charm them, and command them as pets, weaken them with plague and poison so they can't hold their weapons any longer, blind them (text becomes non-specifics "someones" and "somethings") , "sleep" and mute (Can't wake to move or defend themselves them, or chat on any of the in-game channels) with spells, straight-forward PvP just doesn't become exciting anymore!