So this time around I want to discuss the more common arguments in favor of FFA PvP and my replies to each one. This probably won't stop these talking points from coming up, but hopefully these responses will prompt the other side to attack the debate from a new angle rather than trampling the same tired ground over and over and over... and over... and over... and... over....
So here we go:
Carebear11!!1 -
Basically, he (and it is always a HE) is calling you a pussy. A straight up ad hominem attack spiked with a hint of misogyny. This rebuttal is actually falling out of favor with FFA PvP advocates, I'm assuming, because most of them have begun to realize how ineffective it really is.
Actually, I can't really gauge how effective this argument is because I'm not sure what it's supposed to accomplish. I mean, if living in your parents basement, not holding a job and never knowing the conversation, let alone the touch, of a woman not related to you is the pinnacle of manliness, then I think I'll remain effeminate, thank you anyway. It's just really hard to not laugh at a person who believes that sucking down twinkies and Red Bull in front of a monitor all day is an adequate indicator of masculine dominance.
I guess they're hoping that all of us "cearbears" will get pissed off, log into Shadowbane, Lineage 2, Eve Online, or some random olde skool private UO shard IN MASS so that we can get slaughtered and tea bagged for the gratification of these social misanthropes. Or, more likely, they want us to log into the solitary FFA PvP server of a more popular game so that the population spike will keep that sever from being shut down. In any case, this "argument" doesn't work and just makes the person saying it look like childish prick.
Risk = Reward -
This one needs the qualifier "for some people" added to it. For the rest of us, reward comes from overcoming a particularly challenging obstacle. When I finish a really hard Sudoku puzzle, for instance, I don't gain anything. Likewise, I didn't risk anything when I picked up the puzzle and the pen. The reward is purely the sense of accomplishment and the ability to look back and say "I did that!"
Every time I see the "Risk =Reward" cliche come up in a FFA PvP thread I always wonder why someone that feels that way isn't base jumping or sky diving instead of playing video games. I still hold on to the hope that one day, all of these risk = reward people will put their money where their mouth is and go jump off a high bridge...
... with a bungie line that's ten feet too long...
The easiest way that I can take the wind out of this argument is to propose an FFA PvP MMO where you purchase all in-game currency with real money. Even if we limit the amount of currency you can buy to $15 worth a month, the risk = reward crowd will scream "UNFAIR" in a voice not unlike a man that just lost his arm in an industrial accident. This is because they're all about reward. Risk? ...meh, not so much...
It's like Poker without money! -
This is a variation of the "Risk = Reward" line. What sets this apart is the not-so-subtle implication that playing an non-FFA PvP MMO is playing the game wrong. Never mind the fact that people play Poker without money, or inconsequentially small amounts of money, and never get bored with it. If anything, the addition of money to poker makes people more conservative and causes the action at the table to drop dramatically. What some players gain in tension, others loose in excitement.
Since PvE players are being accused of ruining MMORPGs, lets run with this analogy a little ways.
In Poker: regular players, myself included once upon a time, set aside money that is to be used for poker only. This is considered money that is already spent. Normally you have a poker bank limit, mine was $500, so that any money over that can be taken out, but once the bank runs dry you're done for awhile. In short, you never risk anything because the money you are using has already been earmarked as spent. You may gain something, but the risk is completely minimal.
In FFA PvP: Regular players keep extra money and sets of gear at the bank so that they don't have to do corpse runs to get their stuff back. Veterans will also immediately replace gear that they took out of the bank so the risk is minimal. Regular players will also use the fastest means of transport available and make bank deposits at the nearby town frequently so as to minimize risk. Lastly, regular players will work in groups with complimentary character builds to increase their ability to survive and / or pwn weaker players / groups that they come across therefore minimizing risk and maximizing reward.
Once again we see that the reward side of the equation is the real emphasis here. Since there is no mystery about who will win any given encounter, everything breaks down to logistical planning and one character's ability to outrun or corner a lesser character. Veteran players will always have more money, better stats and in-game connections. FFA PvP simply rewards experienced players with the ability to keep everyone below them down... permanently.
AI mobs are predictable whereas other players are not -
Notice that this statement is really just about PvP and not FFA PvP. You can already get this from many game both in and outside of the MMORPG genre. You don't really need full loot and the ability to attack anyone anywhere for this. You can get the challenge of another player in an arena or through a duel.
If someone ganks me or offends me in anyway, I can kill them in FFA PvP -
So the most witty retort to insult is... murder? This is an appeal to the purely atavistic desire to beat the living shit out of someone that offends us rather than just removing ourselves from their presence. Trolls live on the reactions of others and attacking them just lets them know that they successfully pushed your buttons. To put it another way, if you let somebody get your goat they're just going to ride it.
As for getting back items that were looted off of you, good luck. The most common scenario in pre-Trammel UO was that you would gear back up, gather you buddies and head back to the spot where you were ganked only to find no one there. Tracking? You track them to the bank in town and lose the trail. Why? Because they've banked your stuff and logged off. Later they'll log on with an alt that will sell all your stuff.
Sure, if you run into them again you can return the favor, but that won't get you back your stuff. It also won't set them back that far financially either for the aforementioned reasons. You're basically fucked no matter how you slice it.
In a skill based game it would work! -
How? You're still basing the outcome of everything on stats. In UO you could only have 7 skills raised to grand master but that just meant that everyone had have 7 skills at grand master. If you have a 200 in "spork dueling" and I have 50, who's going to score a hit more often? You might be able to argue about a paper-scissors-rock relationship between skills, but that doesn't change the fact that you're going to have to max out any given build that you intend to play before you'll be able to hold your own against people that have been playing the game longer than you.
In conclusion: Skill based systems are the same shit as level based systems, just in a different bag.
Well if gear wasn't the focus ... -
Then you'd still have people maxing their stats as much as possible. The only way to balance MMORPG PvP, or any RPG PvP, is to limit players to making builds of a specific power level and taking out character advancement. Of course then you won't really have an RPG in the traditional sense will you?
But a sandbox style game... -
You'll have to wait for next week for the answer to this one. I'm going to need a whole entry to fully discuss sandbox games. I'll probably talk about more than just how they relate to FFA PvP, but since the two concepts are so closely tied together for many people, I'll just include that article in this series.
Until then ;-)
User Comments
If you work, you get money as a reward. If you study maths, you learn how to do equations as a reward. If you study medecine, you get to know how to treat disease and such stuff. The reward is linked not with the risk, but with the activity itself.
I am sure someone jumping off the CN tower in Toronto would face much risk, but his reward would be a hot night in jail and/or hospital, not millions of dollar. Yet he certainly face more risk then most millionaires.
Again, the reward as to be linked with the activity itself, not with the risk. Best soloers have to be soloers. Best groupers have to be groupers. Best PvPers have to be PvPers...and so on. Saying otherwise lead to a logic of raiding, and this logic is flawed in so many ways, that I don't think any PvP fan need me to explains to them why a raider doesn't deserve PvP stats for his "risks". Again, the reward has to be linked with the activity itself, not with the risk per say.
Wow, you are stereotyping PvP'ers. Just like all the carebears weren't cut from the same cloth, neither are the PvP'ers. I've been playing MMO's since muds, and those had a substantial amount of pvp. so I guess those of us that have been playing the genre longer expect alittle more out of it. Sorry it's not your cup of tea, but mindless npc killing can be done in console games...
Well, we certainly know where you stand, eh? ;)
Just as a side not, I find the rabid anti-pve folks as obnoxious as the rabid anti-pvpers. Neither group is keeping an open mind, and neither group is accepting that it's a BIG world out there with room for lots of playstyles.
PvPers are not, as a whole, misanthropic. Most Shadowbane players I knew were adults, professionals in some field, and married. The average SB player was in their late 20s or early 30s. Contrast that with mass-market pve games, and there IS a certain appeal to some people - the FFA pvp games tend to have a slightly more mature average playerbase.
It IS worth noting that the social misanthropes who do show up in FFA games can do a lot more damage, however. They may only represent a tiny fraction of the population, as they do in any game, but they tend to be a lot more visible.
You've missed what is for myself, and for many other players, the prime reason for playing FFA games though. That is - to have an impact on the game world. I started off in AC1 back in 1999 (well, in MUDs before that, but that was my first 3D game). I played a pve server at first, but over the first two months or so, I quickly realized that nothing I was doing really mattered to the game world. The world existed separate from my actions - nothing I did could change it in any way.
I moved to Darktide (AC1 FFA pvp server), and the difference was incredible. Because conflict between political groups of players was the central part of the game there, player actions really mattered. When the devs introduced new content and story, it was almost ignored - because the player-driven stories were so much more interesting! Winning or losing a fight made a difference. Leveling up mattered, because you had to make yourself ready for pvp that mattered. Controlling leveling areas mattered, because it let you level up...etc.
If a pve game existed that let what I did in the game really matter, in the context of that game, I think I'd be perfectly happy playing it! But instead, the pve based games that are released are generally more like singleplayer games with a chat channel that players occasionally group in. If you ignore that the quest you are trying to solve has already been done by 10,000+ players, will be done by hundreds more tomorrow, will reset itself the instant you finish it, and will have absolutely zero impact on the world as a whole, then you can probably have fun in a modern pve game.
I can't do that.
To me, feeling connected to a game means that I feel like what I do - or don't do - has meaning in that game. In Eve, holding a blockade matters because it damages enemy groups' ability to move freely. Mining matters because it boosts your cashflow, making your group stronger. Building stations matters because they are visible representations of the space your group claims. Being present for a station battle matters, because once a station is destroyed, it is gone. Shadowbane was much the same - farming coin mattered because having resources mattered in pvp. Leveling mattered because you wanted to have strong skills for battles. Raiding the enemy mattered because it interfered with them doing these things, and tended to do nasty things to their morale as well.
In these games and others like them, the core elements of the gameplay were the story being written by the players as they played, every day. Every time someone logged in, what they did and did not do had some sort of impact on that global story.
Contrast this with WOW, or DAOC, or EQ, or LOTRO, or other similar games, and you should instantly be able to see the difference. These games don't allow that sort of impact. If you opt not to do a quest, it will not change the world, neither will doing that quest change anything. If you don't log in for a month, the game will still be pretty much the same when you come back. There is no player-generated story. There is no evolution based on player actions.
No, these games are not the real world. But many of us play them in order to feel like a Hero - or Anti-Hero. And part of that role means being able to generate the illusion that what we are doing matters. Modern pve MMOs have thus far largely failed to generate that experience, and so they feel hollow to many players. They might be fun - Tetris is fun too - but like Tetris, they lack the depth that could be generated if what the players did mattered. For the record, I DO firmly believe that pve-only games can have this level of depth, but it hasn't really been done yet (outside of perhaps ATITD).
Now, as I said earlier - it's a big world, and there are room for all sorts of playstyles. The main angst that pvpers are feeling these past years is that WOW's massive success has so totally swung the pendulum toward WOW-style games that developers seem to have completely lost site of that other playstyle. Where pve gamers have a huge array of games to look forward to, full pvpers have one - Darkfall, whose release has always been in question - and one possible option in Age of Conan if the pvp areas are done well.
So have a little pity on us FFA players, eh? ;) Imagine if the last two years, and the next two years, were full of nothing but Shadowbane clones, and think about how frustrated you would feel - knowing what it was that you wanted to play, but not having developers working on that sort of game.
Personally i have played games with no pvp open pvp and pve style pvp where you have no open pvp and just a duel system and areanas. i like the latter better. I wont play another open pvp game especially one that allows you to loose your armor and weapons. To me this is just a waste of money. You are actually paying to be harassed by some social reject who gets his jollys off by ganking lower lvl players they know they can win. Also I have found that pvp is a money game he who has the best armor and weapons wins. Its not skill based just money based, which is a good side income for the games to make money selling ingame money for the best armor and weapons to pvp with. In all the games I have played most of the people I met new and talked to didnt like open pvp I would say 75% did not but i would say in my experiances that 50% of people playing mmorpgs did like some form of pvp just not open pvp. Like a good duel system or areanas ryzom started out as open pvp but failed badly and had to go to a pve system but it was to late most people had already left the game.Also in eq they had open pvp servers but they were very low populated and there were only 3 for the 30 servers which were up back when i played. why? Because most people didnt like open pvp. In wow we had people moving from pvp servers to our pve servers all the time complaining about being ganked. Most of these people dont post on websights like this but they do have a voice just look at the games which are open pvp and the games which are not. In RF online people would play to lvl 25 in the non pvp areas then they had to go to the open pvp areas of the game and quit playing. Now they are down to like 2 servers and free to play. i think if developers want to do pvp games if the want to be succesful they have to put up pve servers to go along with the open pvp servers like in last chaos that is a realy good system,or make it where you can lvl to the lvl cap in a non pvp environment but have other parts of the ingame world with open pvp like in daoc. They could have islands for pvp or split the world half pve half pvp ect ect. Personally I play open pvp games, but i do not like them and after playing 2 of them I have sworn them off for good. I have better things to do with my time and money than to put up with some social reject getting his jollies off ganking me while my back is truned. And if they want to whine about cair bears messing up the games than so be it i dont care. Its like booking a trip to an exotic land, you trust your travel agency and give them your money then you end up in the slums of bora bora in a seedy hotel srounded by thieves and killers. Would you use that travel agency agian i dont think so. its the ingame theves and killers who are whining about carebear the ones who love to gank pk lie and cheet who complane. These are the exact people smart developers want to keep out of they"er games lol same for games you trust your game to protect you to a certan extent and find out they dont, so you move on to a better nicer more fun game who does. Just look at the populations of all the mmorpgs in america which are making good and which are failing badly the care bear ones are making good and open pvp ones are failing badly simple fact lol. So any game developer who wants my money better allow me to lvl my character to the lvl cap with out pvp or i wont buy it lol and millions of people think the same way as i do. I love to see the A holes complain about cairbear becouse i know they are mad becouse most games dont want them to play they'er games any way lol and ban them from playing
Interesting response, by Owyn. I am more of a plantinum rule type of person "Do unto others as they would have done unto them." which FFA PVP's can't grasp. Personally, I find it very difficult to let my actions negatively impact the game of other players. At the heart of this type of PVP you have to put your desires ahead of others, which is generally accepted as morally wrong. I've done some competitive gaming in EQ where we raced other guilds for raid targets, but we were never the 'bullies on the block' and raided targets that we 'needed' rather than killed monsters just to spite and block the other guilds from progression.
"Where pve gamers have a huge array of games to look forward to, full pvpers have one - Darkfall, whose release has always been in question - and one possible option in Age of Conan if the pvp areas are done well."
Well, Straybullet games are working on another PVP-centric MMO and seem to have learned some lessons from Shadowbane. I am actually looking forward to giving it a try. I definitly consider it the next big PVP game coming, but it's a few years off.
Excellent blog Jimmy.
I honestly still believe (as I've discussed far too often) that people really don't want or need fully FFA PvP. You don't need or want the ability to attack anyone, at any time, any where.
What they really want is the ability to forge their own alliances, form their own factions, form their own countries etc. and choose who they wage war against, choose their enemies.
They simple don't want to be given the choice between Side A and Side B. They want to make their own sides.
This can be accomplished with a guild vs. guild and faction vs. faction FFA PvP system.
The ability to randomly gank a stranger adds nothing to do the game but grief and annoyance to that stranger.
The ability to forge your own alliances and your own enemies is what FFA PvPers really want.
Anyone who actually wants to have the ability to kill some random player just because they are bored/ for the hell of it is a complete and total tool. That is non-negotiable.
You nailed it. MMORPG FFA PvP is crap. The people who think it rocks don't ever take up the challenge of going to a game where actual *skill* matters. They prefer their 6 on 1 ganks, thank you very much. "But you could bring friends!" Pfft, if they're still there after they ganked you 6 on 1, and you bring 5 friends to engage them, they either run away, or have more friends waiting in the wings.
MMORPG developers: Skip worrying about PvP when you design your game. Make a great game first, then when you have a bunch of spare time (never), you can try to shoe horn in a FFA server.
Gotta disagree with you, your dumbing down a lot of key elements for pvp in an effort to make it look childish.
Ill just take one example so I dont write an entire blog to your blog.
You mention the ability to kill people who insult you. Well lets just narrow that down to folks who offend you. Whether it be via taking your spawn, kill stealing, insulting you and your group/guild, scamming, lying, whatever.
FFA PvP allows the self policing and a social police force more or less. If someone is affecting your gameplay negatively, you have the ability to affect his game play.
If someones a KS'er or a Scammer they are targeted by everyone, thus lowering the overall amount of these types of playstyles.
Instead of having to wait on a GM to come sort it out and deal with it, you can take care of it yourself.
It also spawns lots of content. You now have roving bands of murderers, and likewise roaming bands of murderer hunters. These two forces clash and gives both sides content that otherwise would not be available.
The risk of murderers forces crafters to be open to the option of protection. Either paying murderers to leave them alone (extortion) or paying for bodyguards. Both of these bring entire new elements to the game.
Not to mention FFA PvP and Item loss are about the only ways to have a functional player economy. I.E. Current EvE, Pre-trammel feluca UO.
I will say FFA pvp isnt for everyone, and if its not your cup of tea, dont play it. I dont play WoW cause its not my cup of tea.
However, as has been stated, your stereotyping pvpers the way you claim they stereotype you. Not really a fair shake.
Pyro, the problem with FFA PvP is it loses subscribers. UO is the perfect example. Everyone bailed when they had a choice of trammel and EQ1. Eve is successful as it is because its the only space MMO out there. The PvE section of the game is extremely populated as well (its where I hang out most of the time), as "player policing" doesn't work in these games.
UO was the first, EQ was the second.
People leaving for the next big thing isnt really tied to PvP. The world split and the population declined. If your theory was correct the population should have increased.
As for EvE, player policing does happen, you anger the wrong person and you can find yourself being hunted across the galaxy.
But we can argue till the cows come in. Some people are Republicans some are Democrats. Some are Religious some are Agnostic.
Im not going to convince you anymore than your going to convince me =)
Eric, it is not that FFA PvP loses subscribers; it's that a lot of people don't like that sort of play. It's a design decision that a developer makes. If I make an RTS game, I will "lose" all those potential players who hate RTS games and like puzzle games or shooters better. That doesn't make RTS games bad - there is a strong, well-defined market for them.
Likewise pvp. Just because most people prefer not to play FFA pvp games (which is true) does not mean that there is not a substantial (and growing) market of players interested in such games! A well-built FFA pvp game would not garner as many subs as a well-built pve one, but...that's actually not as critical as it sounds, because the lack of competition for the FFA market would make those players much more 'sticky', and less likely to wander off to another game.
Heerobya, I think you're absolutely right. Virtually the entire crowd that likes FFA pvp enjoys it not for the ability to gank whomever at will, but for the ability to play what amounts to a realm vs realm game with a "build your own realm" feature. People very consistently build factions inside FFA games - it is universally the dominant playstyle on every FFA server. They just don't want to have those factions declared FOR them; they want to be able to found their own, declare their own friends and foes, and not have the game tell them that every Hibernian and Middie is an enemy just because they started Avalonian (to borrow a DAOC example).
Scythe - your stereotyping of PvPers at the start there wasn't really called for and cheaped the rest of your entry.
Pyrostasis - we've disagreed on this before :-) What if it's the griefers who end up dominating the server? I know you believe in player-driven justice, but griefers have advanced in their tactics too. They form up guilds, try to get the other player to strike first (if there's a penalty for that). Also, FFA PvP in UO did drive away players who didn't want that kind of game. Sure, Trammel came up, but the damage had been done for a lot of players who didn't want to start again.
Owyn - in general, FFA PvP servers / games have had the lowest populations and FFA PvP areas tend to be the least populated spots in MMOs. Sure, a MMO with FFA PvP may be released at some point that sets the market on fire, but it's not on the horizon that I'm aware of.
Unsub, you missed the boat.
Player justice works precisely because it IS possible for the just to fail. If justice automatically won against the unjust, then the game would have no challenge and the pvp would have no point. The challenge - the struggle - and the price of failure! - are what draws pvpers to such games.
And in general, you are right. PvP servers do have lower pops. But... AC1-Darktide held high pops longer than any other AC1 server. Eve is the only MMORPG release to ever consistently grow for over four years. Shadowbane even, which would have flopped HORRIBLY as a pve game (it really had some terrible code) grossed millions of dollars.
Point is, there are a lot less pvp games. "FFA servers" tend to flop badly (DAOC, Vanguard) because the rulesets don't really support them. That really leaves only a very few games that are actually designed with open pvp in mind - they're rare. And that means that players who prefer this playstyle have less choice.
MOST of the people who played through the first six months of Eve are still playing Eve. That says something. No other MMORPG has *ever* had that level of stickiness. In contrast, at it's highest pop, EQ was losing over 60,000 subscribers per month (and getting back that plus a bit).
PvP games are not going to "set the market on fire". But a decent Darkfall release tomorrow would grab a nice little 100-150k pop and hold onto it for years. Completely viable, very profitable. It ain't gonna compete with WOW, but then again - what is? :)
Eve is over 70% PvEers however... becareful using it as a PvP game.
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