As you probably know pvp ffa has its flaws. It sounds fun on paper, but if anyone can be attacked by anyone on anytime, you will end up with a fraction of players who do just that: do nothing but ganking all the time. And there will almost never be fair fights but they will always ambush weaker players.

If there is something undesired happening in a game, it is always a good solution to investigate why this does not happen in the real world. Well, in this case, because no sane human does that. Only psychopathic mass murderers act like that.

So what you need to do is to hardcode something like a moral compass into your game. There need to be rules for when you may attack other players and when not. Technical this is no pvp ffa anymore but pvp with full loot and rules, or something like that.  

I have some ideas on how PvP could work on differed occasions:

If you kill another player in combat you and you party members may loot him. And you always can fight back when you or one of your party members is attacked. I’m not sure about the exact time scales, so I left them out.

1. Challenge to a duel (d’Artagnan style):

You can only challenge or be challenged to a duel x times a day. The duel will then take place on a duelling site after some minutes. The challenged player may also choose one of his friends to fight in his place, and there are also 2v2 and 5v5 duels.

If one of the duellists does not show up on time, he can be attacked and looted one time by the other player for x days. If nobody comes to the duel nothing happens.

2. Robbery (Robin Hood style):

A player may threaten another player next to him and keep him from running away (only works on short distance). He may then loot up to x items from the robbed player. The robber can be attacked by everyone as long as he threatens somebody and 1 minute afterwards.

The stolen are then flagged as stolen for x days. They can’t be stored in the bank and everyone who has them (or something made out of them) on him can be attacked by the original owner and his party members. Someone who has robbed someone is shown as robber for x days.

3. Guild battles:

A Guild can challenge or be challenged to a battle x times a week. Battles are always fought over certain properties (guild keeps, land / town ownership, whatever there is in the game). The battle starts after x minutes, so both sides can gather their troops. Other guilds can be called in as allies. Players killed in the battle can’t be looted expect for guild specific items (banners and tunics). The battle then lasts for x minutes. If the attacker does not achieve his goal he must pay reparation. If he can’t or refuses all members of the loosing guild can be attacked and looted for x minutes.

A battle can also be fought for driving another guild out of an area. Members of the losing guild can then be attacked by the winning guild for x days when entering the set area.

I don’t claim that this is the best way to handle pvp ffa, but I think this would make a fun gameplay. Don’t nail me down to the details. I guess there are also a lot of other situations for pvp that did not come to my mind. Are there games that already have something like this implemented?

I doubt any simple rules can make FFA PvP work well.  People always find ways to exploit those rules.  For example, you mention being in a group with players.  People simply will or won't group up in order to bypass the negative parts of the system.

The best system I think is to link PvP actions with NPC factions and add other penalties, like bounties for criminals.  Simulating the social aspects of medeival criminals and tribes of savage raiders is more along the lines of what I think a FFA PvP game should funnel dishonorable players into.

You could just change PvPer and combat in general and make players immortal.   Instead parties choose how personal the conflict is.

Essentially as you take damage you take a debuff instead.   As you take more damage the debuff becomes stronger and longer, with no maximum limit and minimal/no ways to get rid of the debuff.

Next you offer players the ability to slowly teleport their inventory away(1 item in a 1 min or so time period assuming you have the traditional 8-12 gear pieces).

Next you offer the option of performing a guild call to teleport guild members in. (depending on design this could be a defender only option since the attacker chooses the ground/allies around, or not be in at all if you can travel really fast in your game)

First person to hit the "submit" button becomes lootable. 

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Basically you need to make PvP really really really personal.   With the system above we're talking about debuffs that could be insane with 2 hours of -50% damage, 3 hours of 50% "damage weakness", and similar.    Depending you could make this playtime to make it more personal(active play time in which you gain experience).

To make it even higher risk(more personal) to the attacker you could have a "winning defender" have a % of their penalty taken off, and transferred to the "losing attacker".  Which I think makes some sense since an attacker has the ability to choose their conflict, weigh risks and reward, where as the defender does not. It also encourages a defender to actually fight instead of give up the first moment.

With the ability to teleport items away, it means that if the defender know they are going to be the loser they can choose to reduce their "debuff damage/defense" but remove all profit motivations from an attacker.   Who will have to contend with debuffs from the fight for no profit, even if he defender by doing this collects much worse debuffs(no defense) but keeps gear.

With the ability to teleport allies in(and unlimited time to do so either attacker/defender want to eat that many debuffs) it means that the "classic and solo" ganker can and will eventually have to lose if he decides to go for profit.   Taking debuffs at double/triple/whatever rate would suck.

You also need to consider that the "classic and solo" ganker uses minimal gear to have as little risk as possible.   However this means the "classic and solo" ganker pretty much renders their character useless for a much longer time than the person who is taking it personalally and with their best gear.

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Essentially with the system above it becomes an excelent griefing tool, but it actually costs the griefer as well and to a great extent.   Their character will just end up becoming less and less effective at further griefing as well, they have to literally decide how much it is worth to them and take full consequences win or lose.

Of course if you're worried about hour long fights and other silliness you could consider that the point of the system is to make so that if PvPer happens it's personal. I've never heard of a real grudge getting solved in a measly 2 minutes or less. But you could easily add a limit where if both players are fighting for X time they're both teleported away with no winner/loser, and will all debuffs intact.

I totally pictured a guy pulling off his silk glove and slapping another in the face with it challenging them to a duel reading this thread title.

Unfortunately PvP has never really been my thing, so I don't have anything constructive to add to this discussion.  :P

@syntax42

I think this is a bit pessimistic. Of course, griefers will never stop. One will have to carefully test everything and look for exploits.

What I am looking for is a way to save ffa pvp.  For my part, I’m not going to play a game that has traditional pvp ffa in place again. Most games have flagging mechanics in place, but these don’t really seem to work. Traditional pvp ffa is only something for a small minority of players that hast a radical differed mindset, I think.

Mainstream themepark games (wow gw2) go the route of not allowing players to affect others in any negative way outside of battlegrounds. But I think there must be some middle ground to handle pvp.

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@anemo:

Sorry, it seems like a quite elaborated system you are talking about, but I don’t really get it. What for example is a “losing attacker”? The idea of teleporting your own gear away during combat seems quite artificial to me. Why would someone want to make himself lootable? And how can a pvp fight take a whole hour?

Maybe you are coming from some asian game with quite unique gameplay, that I don’t know

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Essentially my idea is to take the element of surprise out of pvp. My memories of ffa pvp are that one or a couple of guys jump at you from behind a hill while you are weakened or unprepared and chop you to pieces before you have any time to react.

Gankers only attack if they know they are going to win. If you give the attacked player time to react the battle is evened out again.

In my idea on duels you can even call your guildmate xxdeathkillerxx and let him fight in your place. ;) 

The point is that players can't kill each other.   Only mutually make each other suffer, meaning it becomes a contest of who cares more about the fight. 

For instance the PvE-er might end up giving up because they want to be at a raid without debuffs later.   Or they might keep fighting to keep gear and force the attacker to give up.

The PvPer might give up because they want to get into more than one fight in a night, and don't want to have to fight through the debuffs.

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the design is pretty much taking the idea of the "gentlemenly duel".   By designing the mechanics of PvP to be the person who cares the most about the fight, and willing to suffer the most will win.

Essentially to have FFA for gentlemen, I felt that for someone to attack they needed to care enough to sacrifice future game play reguardless of if they win or not  and further more reguardless of a reward of some kind.

Losing attacker:  the initial Attacker gives up.

Make self lootable:  Or suffer a debuff for the next X amount of time.

Take an Hour: Both fighters care enough that they're willing to have hours upon hours of a debuff.