Meandering through MMORPG's...

Author: t0nyd

"- Advancement Through PvP

    If you kill a mob or player, you should gain exp and loot. There should be pve and pvp titles to obtain. There should be a multitude of rewards to gain by doing what you enjoy."

Generating loot out of thin air for PVP is problematic because we simply cant trust players. This is why player looting has advantages. Now if you dont want to mess around with that then PVP objectives is what you want. If you got NPC guards in there then good now we know how long it will take players to win. Now you can award loot at the end of the play session and XP.

"I want language barriers to be in place so that factions/nations can not communicate."

Dont forget about Ventrillo. It's getting to the point developers have given up on enforcing roleplay. This is why PVP is a bit more shaky then PVE as well....

"Maybe we could have a centaur like race that actually moves faster than normal due to being half horse. Why would a human run as fast as a centaur. Why must games totally defy logic."

Yeah I wonder why as welll.... Surely devs can mix realism with 'gamey' ideas to make a fun game

"

- A Sandbox World with Real World Objectives

    I want player controlled and conquerable cities. I want NPC guards and armies. I want the feeling of a huge world with huge conflicts."

Yeah we all do...... Keep it going why not turn this into a series?

After more thought it might be some interesting ways to spawn loot in PVP for players. But in any case you can always attach loot for successful completion of PVP objectives. Or perhaps it doesnt even matter if players farm each other if we have low drop rates.

interesting, all kinds of ways you could probably work it

You could do a random item generator based upon what the player is wielding/wearing. If a player is wielding a sword, it would drop a sword that is randomly generated at that players level. This way it would be semi-realistic in the sense that the player drops what you see him using, instead of him smashin on you with a hammer and you go to loot him and get a sword.

The problems of races being factions is that the game will never be balanced. I would prefer a game that has variety and several faction, but that uses the same classes and races, to ensure all have access to exactly the same resources. This means it's automatically balanced between factions all the time.

Yeah I agree with you Spirer on that point. All the factions would need access to exact same options. You can have different races but please allow all factions equal opportunity to access them

This is one of the areas I have major concerns about Warhammer Online. They are disabling pvpers ability to optimize because Classes/Races are non-unique to the Factions

You would hope mmorpgs would advance beyond silly mistakes like that. These are flaws that PVP centric games evolved out of many years ago

Honestly..

I think you just described Warhammer Online.

1. No bug races, but 6 very distinctive and fun races with unique classes and abilities, backed by 25 years of lore.

2. Go from 1-40 totally through PvP if you want to, loot drops from PvP other players (random not that players loot) and titles, etc. experience and reputation / faction.

3. Unknown at this time how much gear / level matters vs. player skill, but hopefuly they learned the "WoW" lesson and made more focus on player skill and strategy.

4. Keeps and other locations in the Open world of for control and ownership by PvP, ALL PvP and PvE add to global battle and "end-game" city sieging for absolute victory.

They will (probably so they've said) have PvE and PvP servers, every map in the game has PvE and PvP (RvR) areas...

On PvE servers enemy cannot attack you in your PvE area, only in RvR areas...  on PvP servers you can be attacked and attack in both PvE and RvR areas.

Forced PvP, as in WAR or EvE is already eliminating over half the players base.

You haven't even focused on anything yet, but the lack of REAL PvE servers = losing more than half of the players.

Irth online was having an interesting idea to avoid the needs of a PvP server, they where planning on a PvE race (a race which nobody can PvP, no matter what, and of course, said race has access to all loot throught PvE)....honestly, I rather have my server than be confined to 1 race, but either might work.

I think what I am asking for is a mix between Warhammer and AoC.

-diversity

   When I talk about diversity, I dont mean order vs chaos. I mean several different races, on each server it could be set up different so that each race is allied with different races. On one server you could have the generic fantasy human,dwarf, elf alliance vs whoever. On another server you could have every race vs every other race. On another server you could make it FFA and the players determine their own alliances.

The insect race example I gave could be its own faction vs everyone. I love the idea of playing a monster and your only allies are your own breed of monster. Your method of leveling and equipment use would be based on what type of monster that you are. Of course, some monsters wouldnt even need equipment. LotR really fucks up monster play by giving wargs and spiders money and bags. WTF would a giant wolf have backpacks.

- balance

 I do not feel the need for perfect balance because it can not exist unless you are fighting an exact clone of yourself. As long as player advantages are counter by player weaknesses it will all work out. Personally I do not want a game of clones. I want to see an opponent and be unsure of what I am about to engage. I do not want to know everything he has and how to counter each just by looking and seeing that he/she is a mage. This would come from diversity with in your class or skill set. This comes from, not every warrior gaining every warrior skill. Hard choices must exist when picking skills or there is no point. Every warrior will end up with mortal strike, heh.

Balance comes from allowing pvpers to optimize into their ideal Team compositions. PVE'ers can do it- but developers disable PVPers from this freedom.

Look, you must allow gamers to choose the optimal Class/Race for their Teams.

I know it all sounds cute right, let the Insects fight against the Humans. roleplay. We all love it. Its immersive, romantic, and fun. But its not fun getting your butt kicked and youre helpless to go make a Class that can win

All factions really need access to all the same Classes. Even in RTS trust me Blizzard would not be the success they are today if pvpers lacked freedom to choose the best Races for their strategies

All pvp centric games work that way. In mmorpg space its the only genre devs split apart friends due to their Racial choices

Go look at City of Heroes those devs are PVP noobs. Hero vs Villain really blew for professional PVP. We had to stick to Hero vs Hero or Villian vs Villain for some decent pvp at pro level

Blah I guess a pvp centric MMO can handle race imbalances. I havent seen a good implementation. WoW made the differences really minor for thier MMO for PVP. We'll see when WAR comes out

I agree with heeroboya WAR is pretty much this idea. We'll see what they do

Vajuras, just because something hasnt been done doesnt mean it cant be done. Look at how horrible WoW PvP balance is. They opened up paladins and shaman to balance out alliance vs horde. All this dude was remove a bit of flavor from the game. It still isnt even close to balanced.

If you tailor all factions to be successful in their own way, then they will be fun to play.  Back to your RTS scenario, look at Starcraft as an example, zerg, humans, and protoss play very differently yet they are all fun to play.

Everything you say is true but in Starcraft players can pick whatever race they prefer. In mmorpgs, if all my friends play Choas for example then I'm stuck playing Chaos side. If Choas side is weaker then Order then I'm screwed. I cant even reroll a new Class to fix the imbalance cause the devs tied my arms behind my back.

Every other genre allows pvpers to switch. In Street Fighter, if I'm better with Ken i can switch to Ken over Ryu. In mmorpgs, if Ken was Order and Ryu was Choas I'd be stuck playing one or the other. No freedom to optimize to win which is what PVP is bout

I really don't think WoW is imbalanced at all.

There are some classes I tend to destroy with ease and others that I have a lot of problems with, and usually lose against.

They don't have 1=1=1 balance, they have paper-rock-scissors balance. Some classes are SUPPOSE to be worse against other classes and better against some.

Despite what many think, there is a LOT of strategy that goes into being successful at WoW PvP. Especially in the Arena.

True, most people just look at the top few Arena teams and try to match what they do, but not every top team is exactly the same. 

It's all about finding a balance that works.

WoW is balanced well for Team vs Team PVP. The differences between factions are very minor

I just dont care for their focus on small team Arenas and  Capture the Flag.  We'll see what they do with that upcoming expansion.

Battlegrounds I still think simply reveals the flaws in Static Class based games especially when I see PUGs get destroyed like they do by any organized force that optimizes their team selections

WoW at its prime was World PVP right before Battlegrounds (for me)....

I think sharing pally and shaman was a great move though. Lots of good decisions by Blizzard.

-heerobya

  Your WoW comments make little sense to me. One reasons why they do not make sense is that Arena combat isnt PvP in my opinion. I look toward world PvP as my method. In WoW, world PvP is heavily skewed toward specific classes. Hell, a decent rogue can kill or atleast escape from anyone. Paper, rock, scissors is a joke. The game is not based on this concept and never was. With talent trees being the way they are, it changes who you fight well. A marksman spec will get owned by a rogue 1v1, where as a beast spec isnt quite as owned due to stun immunity, either way, the rogue should always win or atleast escape. Hunters are supposed to be a rogues weakness right? Guess not. So its warriors who are their weakness? Any rogue in world pvp that dies to a warrior, well, he blows. I could go on forever at the whacked balancing tactics of WoW. Its CC vs Itemized CC counters (lame). Its lack of equipment balancing. Its lack of balance through all levels.

-vajuras

 Im sorry if you have to pick your faction based on your friends choices. Personally I play the class that fits my style. If you are forced to pick chaos and can not find a class that fits your style with in chaos, greenskin, and dark elf, I doubt you will find a class on the order side. If one side is weak compared to the others, then its up to the mythic to fix this. If they do not, its not the idea of the game thats flawed, its the creators...

If you would say, in starcraft, that zerg, protoss, and humans are balanced... then tell me why this can not exist in an mmorpg?

I'd love to hear thoughts on how you'd handle PKing as well. In my opinion the penalties too often don't do enough to dissuade or, at the least, give people reason to pause before going the PKer route.

Laethan, he is talking about a PvP system.  Pk is a moot point as all players are PK's.

If you make a system that is skill based and allow all players access to the skills it makes it a more even fight without arbitrary limits on the race/class.  Of course it also poses other balance issues but, it has not been tried in a while.

I think flagging players as PK to a race would be a good idea.  Or a factional system like DF has in developement.  Let the players get rewards and fun for policing the system.

With their recent post of a go live date in Jan 09 (Darkfall)  it will be fun to see what the almost 6 years of dev was able to produce.