I don't think PvE and PvP mix too well and games should be designed around one or the other but at the same time if a PvE game decides to add some PvP content as an alternative activity i find things like scenarios and battlegrounds a bit pointless. So i had the idea - which may be already be done somewhere - of duplicate zones.

Say you have a border zone between two factions and when you cross the border line you choose to enter the PvE version or the PvP version. They'd use the same zone data but the PvP one wouldn't have the quests etc instead there'd be a bunch of control points and NPC guards etc. There'd be a lot of NPC activity as well i.e. launching invasions at the various control points, as tweaking the number of faction NPCs would be one way of balancing the numbers of enemy players in the zone.

If the PvE game was dynamic in the sense that individual zones had several states they could switch between e.g. a fort in the middle of the PvE zone could have merchants/guards from either of the two enemy factions then the flag could be set by which side was winning in the PvP zone.

Anyone know any games that do that?

Doubles spendings - doubles programmers' time for everything, AI, balancing, zone design, everything - does not doubles profits, therefore nobody does that or ever will.

Originally posted by Grahor

Doubles spendings - doubles programmers' time for everything, AI, balancing, zone design, everything - does not doubles profits, therefore nobody does that or ever will.

Exactly the opposite. It re-uses almost everything.

Originally posted by tupodawg999

Originally posted by Grahor

Doubles spendings - doubles programmers' time for everything, AI, balancing, zone design, everything - does not doubles profits, therefore nobody does that or ever will.

 

Exactly the opposite. It re-uses almost everything.

When done badly.

Originally posted by Bladestrom

Originally posted by tupodawg999

Originally posted by Grahor

Doubles spendings - doubles programmers' time for everything, AI, balancing, zone design, everything - does not doubles profits, therefore nobody does that or ever will.

 

Exactly the opposite. It re-uses almost everything.

When done badly.

Er, again the exact opposite. If you have a zone that's designed to be used as both a PvP and PvE zone then the better you design it the more gets re-used. If you take one of WAR's PvP zones as an example there's no reason that zone, in terms of the layout, builidings, roads, vegetation, mobs etc couldn't then have either a PvE layer or PvP layer on top.

The best mix of PvE and Pvp I feel goes again, to the DAoC model.

Let each realm have it's own unique PvE series of zones to level up through. At endgame have a seperate set of contested zones dedicated largely for PvP'ing and territory control, optionally with maybe a few monster-populated areas and/or dungeon.

edit: Regarding OP's idea, it could be done easily with phasing I imagine, whether or not it would settle well with players, I don't know.

Its simple really.

You make 2 servers at the beginning, let them play open pvp / pve. Once people pvp they will be filtered out and moved to one server the next day or whatever. Most people who pvp are basically (I'm generalizing sorry) are gankers, and when they are forced to play against other players who like pvp it'll put then on a more even degree. So the gankers would think twice about griefing.

Once you get them all filtered out you'll have people who likes to PvE and PvP on 2 different servers.

Originally posted by Wolfenpride

The best mix of PvE and Pvp I feel goes again, to the DAoC model.

Let each realm have it's own unique PvE series of zones to level up through. At endgame have a seperate set of contested zones dedicated largely for PvP'ing and territory control, optionally with maybe a few monster-populated areas and/or dungeon.

 

edit: Regarding OP's idea, it could be done easily with phasing I imagine, whether or not it would settle well with players, I don't know.

A version of DaoC that was both a PvE and PvP game was kinda what i had in mind. In EQ the PvP and PvE were separate servers. In WAR it ran side by side. In DaoC it was PvE until the contested zones but the game was focused on PvP which a lot of players don't want to be involved with at all. I was thinking you could have both on the same server and in a way that made it seem part of the world and not a separate thing if you used instanced zones. (Although now i think instead of choosing when you hit a zone line it would be better if players had a PvP flag and if it was set then when they entered a contested zone they went to the PvP version of it instead of the PvE instance).

Easier than separate servers, better for the PvPers (because of more total players for buying / selling / crafting etc) but at the same time keeping PvP totally separate from the people who hate it. Also easily prevents certain forms of griefing like corpse camping newbies because the starter zones wouldn't be contested.

The other thing you could do is make levelled instances so people could get into the PvP aspectof the  game quickly i.e level 1-12 PvPers zone into the level 1-12 instance, level 13-24 PvPers zone into the 13-24 instance etc.

If you had a bunch of factions you could have a bunch of contested zones beteen them i.e

faction a startzone -> openzone -> contestedzone -> openzone -> faction b startzone

and then

faction b startzone -> openzone -> contestedzone -> openzone -> faction c startzone

Taking some of the EQ zones as an example http://www.eqtitan.com/eqatlas/santonicamap.html then the Oasis of Marr would be the obvious candidate for the contested zone between the humans in Freeport and the trolls in Grobb. Ideally there's also be an extra one added between Grobb and the Ogres of Oggok. When the trolls and ogres were at war there'd be trolls vs ogres in that instance and trolls vs humans in the oasis of marr instance. If the trolls and ogres were at peace (via PvE quests switching zone states) then the PvP instance of that zone would deactivate and it would be trolls and ogres vs humans in oasis of marr.

I think that could work better than the mixed games i've seen so far..