Player Perspectives (Archived): Seeing Red?
MMORPG.com Player Columnist Jamie Skelton writes this week on the subject of PKers, anti-PKers and carebears, three groups that started their existence in Pre-Trammel Ultima Online and continue today in games like Mortal Online.
Column By Jaime Skelton on October 16, 2009
"In heaven, all the interesting people are missing." - Friedrich Nietzsche
This week, we'll start with a history lesson. Once upon a time, there was a world in which happy-go-lucky gamers lived in fear. The nerf bat was not their tyrant; in fact, it had yet to grow in power. Patch days were dreadful, but sparse enough to endure the wait. Dragons and other beasts were frightening, but could be defeated. No, the worst enemies facing these gamers were their fellow gamers: player-killers. Eventually known as "PKs" or "reds," these players thrilled upon the hunt of player versus player combat, frequently catching many players unaccustomed to such open combat from their fellows with surprise. Two factions then rose up to challenge the PKs. The first were the Anti-PKs, players devoted to the side of "good" who sought out to respond to PK attacks by finding, hunting, and killing known PKers. The second group were tamer creatures in game, but had a vicious bark: they became known as the carebears. This group wanted PvP to be optional, not mandatory; wanted safeguards to prevent griefing and the loss of hours of game time; and, most importantly, wanted the powers that resided over the game to be the hand that offered protection and justice.
The veteran MMO players among you know that I'm referring to the earlier days of Ultima Online (known as "pre-Trammel" among the community - more on that in a bit). One of the first recognized MMOs, Ultima Online was born in 1997 with an unrestricted PvP system combined with a notoriety system to indicate a characters's ill deeds. A few months later, after discovering that griefing was becoming a little too popular a hobby, an additional balancing factor was introduced to PK characters: stat loss. The world persisted, but one of the three factions, the carebears, were still dissatisfied with the open PvP system that put their "hard work" at risk.
Fast forward to April 2000, and Ultima Online introduces "Renaissance," a large update that offered two worlds: Felucca, which offered the same unrestricted PvP players had become accustomed to, and Trammel, a world in which PvP was consensual - as it was officially phrased, no longer being "at the whim of a potential attacker." This date marked a change for Ultima Online, one which is still argued to this day as the possible cause for the noose around UO's neck. The carebears had won, and had paved a path for future MMOs to provide "safe environments" for their players.
;)
PKers may have found a new home.
Like many of you, I've been around since the early days of Ultima Online, pre-Trammel. Though not all UO veterans look upon those days kindly, many remember them wistfully - even those that weren't PKers themselves. Now, that same group of players is experiencing (or at least, searching for) their own renaissance. In Mortal Online's pre-launch community, they have found a shelter.
Mortal Online is like Ultima Online in many respects: It offers a sandbox, non-quest driven, fantasy world with unrestricted PvP. In fact, their PvP system has taken after Ultima Online so much, even the CEO refers to his experiences pre-Trammel as a "red" and how MO's system can be developed around the same principles. Over the development time of Mortal Online, the community has rallied around open PvP more than anything else, and has even embraced, for the most part, a stat loss system that provides sufficient penalty in the eyes of the carebears, and sufficient challenge in the eyes of the reds.
Discussions have risen over on Mortal Online's forums about carebears quite a bit, more than likely out of fear that another Trammel will rise out of the mists and history will be repeated. Many community members have begun to rally already against the "carebears," even though that group is a vocal minority, and even question why anyone would want to play a "blue" when playing red was so profitable. And yet, an interesting perspective caught my eye: an open PvP game, especially as a sandbox, needs carebears.
No need to rub your eyes or reread that last sentence: the suggestion really is that a PvP centered game, without carebears, becomes "shallow and one-sided."
;)
Where would we be without them?
Think of it this way: carebears, on a simple level, make sure that the world is rich in lore, worth exploring, and worth spending time in. The difference between a game that you hook up for an hour long fragfest and an MMO isn't simply the time you spend; it's the world you spend it in. An MMO opens up opportunities for all kinds of players: explorers, achievers, role-players, loot and boss hunters, and PvPers. By taking away the richness of the community, you take away the richness of the world. Carebears exist among all these groups, and while they may try to complicate things by insisting on moral enforcement through game rules rather than in-game communities, they also provide that "something more" beyond looking for the next fight over the hill.
Carebears are the characters that, when you get a chance to kill them, earn you easy loot and the satisfaction of a "pwn." More importantly, carebears are the reason that the anti-PK fact exists at all; for what is an anti-PKer but a PK himself under the guise of good? As the saying goes, "One of irony's greatest accomplishments is that one cannot punish the wrongdoing of another without committing a wrongdoing himself." Or, to provide a silly illustration of the symbiosis, the carebear is the damsel in distress tied up and laying on the railroad tracks, while the PKer plays the part of mustache-twirling villain, and the anti-PKer plays the dashing Dudley Do-Right.
All three groups need each other for the game's survival. Take away the carebear, and the anti-PK loses his mission; take away the anti-PK, and the tide turns red with grief; take away the PKer and - well, we've seen the ending of that story in countless MMOs. If Mortal Online, or any other game seeking to bring back the days of red, cares to see the success and popularity that Ultima Online made in those days, then the balance must be struck carefully between villain, hero, and heroine.
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I like the fact that Mortal Online was sort of featured, obviously a fan.
I do agree that its a triangle that couldn't have any of its parts taken away, it wouldn't function.
Very nice article.
Nice article. I think you're on to something there.
I don't like the assertion that violence is inherently wrong. If I kill a guy who breaks into my house, I've done nothing wrong, if I somehow can stop him without doing so great, but if that doesn't seem an option, he had it comin. Same with the so called "Anti-Pks", their avenging the weak and the innocent is not "wrong" because it is PKing the offender. The day violence is no longer an option plan on becoming its daily doormat.
Not to derail this into a philosophical discussion. I would hate to take about something erudite when we could all be busy flaming each other and typing strings of numbers and letters mashed together.
The point of "Stopping something wrong by doing something wrong is like this." If you kill the killer, you have both commited, in the raw, the same act, ending another life. You have to then underpin that with some sort of justification. In the murderers case, perhaps it is greed, revenge, or simple madness. In your case it may be vengeance, justice or retribution or self-defense. The trick here, is that you have not said anything yet. You have only given a justification, but you can easily ask what makes the items in Column A (the murderers reasons) "Bad" and the items in Column "B" (Your reasons), Good.
So you have to offer some sort of moral system that justifies this dichotomy, but of course, in doing that, you are only going to expose yourself to all of the problems that all moral systems have.
To put it simply, the quote is about the similarity of acts and the great difficulty in saying why an act is okay sometimes and not okay other times.
I do not believe in "open-pvp".
The risk vs reward for PKers is far out of balance.
In reality it is perma death with no chance to come back into the game!
In an mmo it is a red name, loosing an item maybe and a death more on a stats site....
RvR and FvF works and i can not imagine any other system that would do.
There is nothing wrong with PvP in general, but it needs rules that an mmo MUST set!
Pre CU, NGE SWG was a perfect example of the harmony between pvp'ers and carebears... In SWG we needed the carebear crafters for wepons and armor, we needed the dancers and musicians for wound healing, and docs for buffs... Every game should learn from that, make all players dependant on each other to a certain extent.
Nice explanation of the PVP games. It is true they all need each other. Without storylines and quests or missions games really have no purpose.
I am one that PvP does not appeal to so if I try a game out and it is pretty much open PvP I simply don't play it. I guess I don't make a good carebear. :) For me it is just too frustrating trying to do a quest and keep getting killed by those you are an easy target for. My solution for me is don't play the game. If you like the game and you want to play it with the understanding that you will be killed at any given time. Then don't complain just move on or deal with it.
Yes I tried UO as well as a few others and when I did I did not realize they were PvP. When I did and was unable to move forward without guilds or groups or whatever I uninstalled and moved on.
Open PvP in terms of todays audience means that a game niches itself from the start. If the Dev's are ok with that, then more power to them. But that IS the reality, and its not going to change. There are a LOT more of us CareBears than there are those who favor open PvP. Mortal Online, much like Darkfall before it, is going to have limited appeal to those outside of the ganking/griefing set. There are way too many other games to play these days, that don't require me to be constantly looking over my shoulder. That gets way past tiring after awhile.
I understood the quote, I disagree with it. You not believing in the existence of a right or wrong is individual opinion, not empirical data.
...and believe you me, its not a moral code in terms of just rules, but true righteous "lookin out for the next man" and the protection of the rights of the individual that keeps the weak from being devoured by the strong. Your freedom is inherent, but other's respect for it is maintained by the threat of violence.
Yes and for those of us carebears that just plain don't want all that grief we simply aren't going to play it. If I want PvP then I will go to a PvP server or game. It is not my idea of fun. For those that enjoy PvP then they are going to look for games that are PvP driven.
I have been following for some time the new game Aion. I simply have not tried it because I have to shell out $50 to do so. But I do have friends and fellow gamers giving it a try . I don't think I will even worry about it as after you reach a certain level you are in and open PvP enviorment. Like I have said not my idea of fun so I am glad I did not waste my money on it.
An interesting read but I disagree with one point. At the end it was impied that losing the PKers would be a "bad" thing for MMOs. Current games and statistics say otherwise.
WoW has more pve servers than pvp. In addition, the world pvp objectives are typically very underused while the instanced battlegrounds and arenas are widely used. This is evidence to support that people prefer restricted pvp, when they want to do it they will and when they don't they do not want to be bothered by it.
City of Heroes added pvp in 2005 with City of Villains, yet the players have asked for more co-op content than pvp.
Dark Age of Camelot, a game built and balanced around pvp, opened up two ffa pvp servers (red server if you will) and shortly after they were condensed into one due to low populations. The co-op (no pvp) server Gaheris typically has the same or slightly higher pop than Mordred (red server).
Age of Conan implimented a criminal system for people who blatantly PK. Despite the pvp being more open early on, the majority of players didn't like that so a retuning was done.
I played Bounty Bay Online from it's BETA untill the close of the P2P version and for six months of the F2P version. In the P2P version there were verry few PK players, I had an instance with one who targeted me on sea untill I lurede him on land and killed him eight times. I then turned myself in and spent 48 reqal time hours in jail. It was worth it because he quit the game and moved to the newely created F2P server. When YUSHO closed the P2P server I moved to the F2P and found it was populated by a horde of The Kiddie Klown Klub, youngsters who lived for nothing but killing AFK players. BBO's design promoted AFK play, however with the hord of immature children running around looking for those they could kill easily it stoped being fun. My characters were Merchants, Miners, Loggers and Crafters, with the one exception in P2P I never attacked another player with the exception of guild sieges. (My Main was a Merchant-Warrior who did fight in organized events) After six months of putting up with PKs, flame wars, and the exodus of most of my friends who felt the same way as I did, I quit and will never go back to a game I loved and would have played for years had it's enviroment remained as it was in P2P(That kept the kids out) YUSHO's decision to close the P2P server was certainly financialy driven however it ruined the game for many of us older gamers as the F2P degenerated into "The Lord of the Flies"
"take away the PKer and - well, we've seen the ending of that story in countless MMOs."
Yes, the world would be a Utopia and subs would go up. Players would able to play the game without looking over their shoulders all the time. As the immortal Cartman said after they vanquished the exploiting PK, "Now we can finally play the game."
Apparently there are 2 kinds of Carebears, the PvP kind who are comfortable with just stat loss, and the non-PvP kind that want more protections. Which kind of sounds elitist and makes it sound like no matter how many PvPers you get together in a PvP only game, some could still be classified as "Carebears"?
and if there are no Carebears, the anti-PK's would just go back to being the PVPer's they are. And then the game would eventually die. (Assuming it's not a Magnet PVP game attracting PvPers from other games allowing them to die in it's stead. )
So, I guess all are NOT needed?
I'm definitely an anti-pvper. Kicking a 5 year old in the face is about the level of challenge I see most pvpers going for when I play. And that's worse than playing a single player game on easy. You're not really playing the game, your walking through and patting yourself on the back for what amounts to killing an almost dead gray mob. That's what makes most pvpers that lean towards greifing look foolish. Take any one of them, put them into a pve only game, and watch how fast they would be laughed at running around bragging about having just owned a half dead gray con mob. You can see these losers in DAoC all the time. They run in a full group and /emote the crap out of the solo they just ran over. Being incapable of putting up a real fight is the only reason I can find that someone would willingly spend all their time hunting grays. You wouldn't do it in pve so why look like a sad little bully doing it in pvp?
Very nice article.
I agree completely that all three sides must be represented in order for a game to truly shine like UO did...
There was a time when I felt that OSI really had their ruleset right with Ultima Online. At one point, PKing was possible, but you would incur stat loss if you died while red. This kept most players from just running around and killing everyone, but still allowed for the most hardcore of the PKs to continue PKing if they so chose. This made it a bit more liveable for the carebears and really separated the men from the boys in terms of the PKers.
Furthermore, at that time there were huge guild vs. guild wars that were being declared and big bands of players would storm into the bank of the opposing faction's home city and fight it out. It was epic and incredibly fun. There was still plenty of PvP to go around, but it wasn't a complete gankfest like some recent attempts have become.
I really loved the ruleset at that time... I still don't understand why they had to go and screw it all up by making Candyland (Felucca). It totally ruined the game for me and many others.
Yes and for those of us carebears that just plain don't want all that grief we simply aren't going to play it. If I want PvP then I will go to a PvP server or game. It is not my idea of fun. For those that enjoy PvP then they are going to look for games that are PvP driven.
I have been following for some time the new game Aion. I simply have not tried it because I have to shell out $50 to do so. But I do have friends and fellow gamers giving it a try . I don't think I will even worry about it as after you reach a certain level you are in and open PvP enviorment. Like I have said not my idea of fun so I am glad I did not waste my money on it.
Thats my point exactly. Aion looks like it would be fun, but I'm not going to put up with NCsofts bait and switch. Their PvPvE is simply yet another take on the same, tired old Asian approach to these games. Games with open PvP niche themselves in the west. Thats simply the reality. If Aion had a PvE server I'd be more than happy to give it a try. Absent that, I have other games I can play.
No.
If you are going to call those who don't like open PvP "Carebears", then you must call those who demand it "Griefers". None of this hiding under the guise of PK mealy-mouth one-sided bullshit. You sound like the mainstream media, twisting words to suit your agenda. I LOVED your last article, but this one is so biased it's not funny. People who want to kill anyone anywhere at anytime are "PKers", but people who don't want to be content for others are "carebears"? Let me reverse it for you. Those who want to play the game as delivered are called "game players" while those who want to interrupt other peoples' games should be referred to as "selfish bastards". Words matter. You can't argue semantics when it's the point of the article.
Ying and Yang
Heaven and Hell
Life and Death
You can not have one with out the other, it has been proven time and time again. We have all seen movies where the main character has lived forever. We watched as thay strugel with the moral problems of out living their friends and family, or getting board doing the same things over and over again for centries. In all of these situations we've learned that life has little to no meaning with out death. So although all of us would like to step into an MMO world and forget that we will not be here forever, death needs to be a small part for these game, or atleast the threat of death anyway. Some people have said that thay have never felt so alive until mere inches from death, for the most part its the thrill seekers that say this. In my 12+ years of gaming and 45+ years of what I would like to think as living, I have learned that I like a little thril in my day to day life also. You know we drive our cars to work with the seatbelts on, we wear safty glasses to protect our eyes and countless other items to keep us safe. Gaming is my day to day way of getting a little controled thrill, my way of getting the adrenaline flowing even if its just for a moment or two in a fantasy world. The key here is control, I don't want to feel like I've jumped out of a perfectly good airplain without a parachute. So yes, I beleave that all MMOs need to have some aspect of PVP, but they need some control mechanism to prevent PKers from ruining the game. We need the parachute, but let me freefall as long as possible before opening the canopy.
Too bad your article is pointless. Why exactly does a carebear need a PK or even an Anti-PK? The PK kills him and loots him, wasting his time and effort while providing nothing to him. All an anti-PKer does is act much less efficiently in preventing griefing than a game with restricted or consensual PvP.
The point is that both PK and anti-PKers need carebears much more than they need them. PKers need weak targets to prey on, and anti-PKers need someone to protect to feel morally justified. Carebears really don't need either.
Yeah, we all like PVP at certain times with certain games, but the truth is in the form of a question. "Are the Mobs (in-game) smarter than the humans who play the game.?.. I mean, you never see mobs killing mobs, but you always see players/humans killing players.. so who's smarter i ask you?... Maybe 1 day we'll get npc's killing npc's and npc factions alike, and maybe this will balance the challenging equation i'm asking you and all gamers to contemplate.
thnks
K
I dont really care if theres open pvp, if theres someone standing in the open and hes about your lvl and you wanna go attack him fine, what I hate is where you are a really low lvl and all of the sudden this guy whos at maxed lvl comes up to you kills you in one hit and calls you a noob (ohhh conquer online I hated you for that) but thats when you join a guild, have someone whos maxed lvl in there say this guy just pked me and then watch him getting killed and laugh at him
I like how the author seems to totally have missed the fact that the open PvP UO servers had a much smaller population then their counterparts.
And what killed UO was not any move on the PvP front. It was Everquest. Plain and simple. UO was basically the first MMO, as soon as a better MMO came out they lost.
I also find PvP games to be lazy, the devs can't make enough content to fill a game, so they just throw their hands up and say it's open PvP. Takes a lot less work and development (And money).
Of course most PKers hate being on a server with nothing but other PKers, so as soon as all the "Carebares" have quit the game and they no longer have anyone to grief, they all move on to the next open PvP game.
Jamie missed another PvP modification. It is option available on Lord of the Rings Online. It seems to satisfy the needs of all 3 of the groups defined.
Very good and well written article! I miss my times with Sinners Among Saints [SAS] in UO. Yes, we were a PK guild but more so... a PK family. I find that in games anymore lack in this feeling of belonging. Even in LoTRO where the majority of players are older or atleast act more mature there is a sense of something lacking. Maybe we need the PK's and Anti-PK's to help forge those bond's of brotherhood.
You do realize that all Shards (servers) were open PvP don't you? To claim that EQ killed UO is just idiocy. There was no big noticeable drop in numbers from before -> after EQ launched. Yet you could see a HUGE decline in numbers shortly after the Trammel/Felucia catastrophe.
It's very simple Jamie (you said it yourself already): mmos without PvE are stale things destined for the scrap-heap. Mmos with only PvE work & flourish quite well thank you (LOTRO, most of the WoW servers, ATITD , etc).
Most players are PvEers, this is utterly indisputable, even in gankfest games like EVE. The question is, why do we need cowardly, sociapathic pkscum to destroy games that are built on the foundations (& dollars!) of what we, the dedicated PvEers, do? We don't. They're a pimple on the arse of mmos, the redheaded stepchild everyone wants to slap around the head & shoulders incessantly. Except we don't, which is why they proliferate in games where unsolicited PvP is allowed & where there is almost no tangible penalty for doing so. They force us to play *their* game, rather than the game we want to play, the game we paid for. We should therefore be looking at ways of segregating or eradicating their kind from the face of today's mmorpgs, not finding new & 'creative' ways of ruining the game for the vast majority.
Here's a suggestion: let's start calling the reds 'readheads' (no insult intended to actually bloodnuts ;) & start calling us the Righteous or Social or Altruists, rather than farking carebears. This writing on the wall was vividly plain years ago in D2 when Blizz did nothing to curb the cheating/hacking & allowed pkscum to pwn (& destroy) public games on BNet (we're talking *months* of hard work & fun in hardcore mode, down the drain because one little script kiddie thought he'd ruin your day with a TPPK hack or similar). Now you want to formalise this lunacy of old & make it more mainstream, so as to pander to the current generations of ADD morally bankrupt kiddies & tweenies??? I certainly hope the FBI is getting good profiling on future sociopaths, serial killers & terrorists by data mining pkers in PvP-enabled mmos...at least some good will come of it then!
</rant>
ok, fine time for hard facts.
Trammel came out in May of 2000. UO had 185,000 subs, up 10,000 from the month before.
UO
May 1998 = 90,000
May 1999 = 125,000
May 2000 = 185,000 (Here is Trammel)
May 2001 = 242,000
May 2002 = 225,000
May 2003 = 250,000
May 2004 = 195,000
May 2005 = 157,000 (WoW released)
May 2006 = 135,000
May 2007 = 100,000
May 2008 = 75,000
EQ
May 1998 = Not released
May 1999 = 65,000
May 2000 = 225,000
May 2001 = 375,000
May 2002 = 430,000
May 2003 = 445,000
May 2004 = 420,000
May 2005 = 454,000 (WoW released)
May 2006 = 200,000
May 2007 = 175,000
May 2008 = No data
So we were both wrong. UO continued to grow until 2003. Looks like Trammel not only did not kill the game, it probably helped offset the new MMOs coming out that otherwise would have stolen their "Carebear" market.
The most fun I've ever had in a game was original release UO, before the red grey blue crap and all that followed.
I was not a griefer, but I did play a character who often stole, and that would result in fights sometimes I would win sometimes I would get killed. Sometimes I did kill someone I came across for the heck of it, sometimes that happened to me. Just as everyone would hop on board and loot the dead guy when someone went down. It happened, you planned for it, and it made it exciting.
Now a days there aren't as many respectable gamers, there are a lot of immature gamers who will go into a game just to repeatedly gank and grief the same people until they quit. Those were rare people back in the early days.
So yes you need restrictions, but you don't need to avoid open PvP. You can add the criminal effect where it limits your access to towns (although then you get the alt characters who are used to mule stuff back and forth). You can put on level gaps of who can attack who so the ganking isn't as severe (I would like to see this encompass healing spells too). You can add safe zones, even UO was safe in towns, all a person had to do was call for a guard and the attacker would be slain. You can make an open system that will work because there is a down side of attacking other players.
Yes I realize there are a lot of players out there who don't want excitement. They want to know what's going to happen when and want a quest guide open to know exactly how to get through this quest they've never done before and what the reward will be. There are players who fear a game being based off of skill and knowledge. There are sensitive players who would be effected in real life when their pixels are looted.
But that doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of non pvp centered players who couldn't both survive, find a role, and find fun in an open world PvP system. Or an open realm pvp world.
Well i consider myself a "pvp-ish" carebear^^.
I have played on many games on the pvp servers just because i like to pk..or try to if someone's KSing me or stuff like that.
I don't play PVP servers on games that have FFA PVP but no punishment or close to none for ganking and pking. Maybe moving the char made from lvl 1 to end lvl on a PVE sever to a PVP one.
I mean when i want to do quests or just lvl up so i can use some new shiny item i don't wanna be bothered. And even if I'm attacked then wouldn't be such a big deal if the ganker would be around my lvl...I'd be all for completely FFA ppl with very short pvp ranges lvl wise. It really annoys me when some1 with and end game toon comes and does that. We all know that at endgame there are lots of ppl bored and without severe consequences for PK some of them will always go rampage.
Maybe a good idea would be the higher the lvl gap between the PKer and the victim, the higher the punishment. So you can have at the same time ppl looking for pvp on targets about their own lvl and avoid the moronic PKers at the same time. There will be issues with low lvl twinks...but...oh well....nothing is perfect.
Your argument is completely ridiculous. Comparing PKers in games to real world sociopaths and serial killers is utter lunacy. There is absolutely no proven correlation between player killing in game and real life psychosis. The vast majority of studies on the subject correlate aggressive behavior with any form of violence in video games (including PvE). By that logic, anyone who plays an MMORPG and kills thousands and thousands of NPCs to level is statistically more aggressive than a non-gamer.
RPGs are called role-playing games for a reason. We should be able to play the role of a villain if we so choose. Yet, because of whiners like you, we are not allowed to be anything but just another hero in a sea of identical cookie-cutter clones. Where is the excitement in a game if there is never any real challenge or conflict? Where are the politics when everyone is on the same side? Why is the concept of competition so strongly opposed by so many?
It has come to the point where MMORPGs are so mind-numbingly boring that the vast majority are not worth anyone's time. Games used to be much more exciting for EVERYONE involved because there were real consequences on the line. Carebears (or whatever you want to call them) have drained every ounce of risk and fear out of these games to the point where no one cares if they live or die. Think about it... there are virtually NO consequences for death in most modern MMORPGs. What is the point of even playing in a game like that... where there is no risk and no danger?? I honestly can't see how anyone finds it enjoyable.
Yes, I am asserting that the same players who demanded that there be no PKers are the very same ones who complained about every other difficult element of MMOs until all we were left with were mindless grindfests without consequences... but of course, that is only my opinion.
Just for fun and grins I went and looked at how many people play PvP centric games vs PvE centric games over time. (Please note, the Asian market skews this way to PvP as well)
1997 PvP 100% (75,000) PvE 0% (0) (UO Released)
1998 PvP 100% (125,862) PvE 0% (0) (Lineage 1 Released)
1999 PvP 84% (1,150,000) PvE 16% (211,000) (EQ 1 & AC Released)
2000 PvP 84% (2,236,036) PvE 16% (429,000)
2001 PvP 79% (2,858,069) PvE 21% (782,732) (AC & DAOC)
2002 PvP 74% (3,125,853) PvE 26% (1,123,145) (Runescape, FFXI & AC2)
2003 PvP 70% (4,515,312) PvE 30% (1,930,957) (Shadowbane, EVE, PS, 2nd Life, SWG & Lineage 2)
2004 PvP 59% (4,430,791) PvE 41% (3,024,520) (CoH, EQ2 & WoW)
2005 PvP 34% (4,059,091) PvE 66% (8,001,801)
2006 PvP 20% (2,730,886) PvE 80% (10,790,601) (D&DO)
2007 PvP 15% (2,372,480) PvE 85% (13,528,074) (LotRO & Tabula Rasa)
2008 PvP 14% (2,469,243) PvE 86% (15,118,173)
I understand why www.mmogchart.com included Lineage 1 and 2, both were in the western market, but only a tiny fraction of those subs were in the west, almost all of them were from Asia and it skews the numbers badly. (Even though in the end PvE is still massively large then PvP)
Here is the same data, minus Lineage 1 and 2.
1997 PvP 100% (75,000) PvE 0% (0)
1998 PvP 100% (125,862) PvE 0% (0)
1999 PvP 42% (150,000) PvE 58% (211,000)
2000 PvP 35% (235,000) PvE 65% (429,000)
2001 PvP 25% (256,200) PvE 75% (782,732)
2002 PvP 18% (250,000) PvE 82% (1,123,145)
2003 PvP 15% (344,992) PvE 85% (1,930,957)
2004 PvP 8% (280,219) PvE 92% (3,024,520)
2005 PvP 3% (240,367) PvE 97% (8,001,801)
2006 PvP 3% (286,413) PvE 97% (10,790,601)
2007 PvP 2% (309,747) PvE 98% (13,528,074)
2008 PvP 3% (406,510) PvE 97% (15,118,173)
What I take from this is that PvP does much better in Asia then in the West, and that there are a LOT more people who at least like a choice about PvP rather then being forced into open PvP. That and PvP in the west has been fighting over the same 300,000 - 400,000 subs for years now, while PvE is growing rapidly.
I.E. as someone else already said. Make your game Open PvP and you are going to be relegated to a nitch market in the west.
In a game that offers FFA PvP the holy trinity of carebear, PK, Anti-PK is just as important as the PvE trinity Of tank, dps and healer.
That is pretty much what the author is stating. She is not saying all games need PK or that all PvE are carebears. The author was just using terms everyone knows like a real gamer would do as well.
Without non-PvP focused players a FFA PvP game is just a FPS. It is not a MMO with a thriving community. A FFA PvP game requires all three play styles to be able to sustain itself.
Nobody cares about your individual anti-PvP agenda. Stay on topic and discuss what the Author was actually talking about.
In PvE the Tank provides agro control and damage soaking, The Healer provides the healing needed to keep everyone alive and the DPS provides the damage output to kill the monsters.
That's why that is called the Holy Trinity.
In PvP the Anti-PK provides some very limited protection to the Carebear allowing them to play the game. The Carebear provides the Anti-PK with a reason to exist. What does the PK provide?
What does the PK do for the Carebear? Sure if there were no PKs the Anti-PK would have no reason to exist. But in the PvE trinity all 3 provide something the other two need.
(Too Long Did Not Read Version)
Carbears get less NOTHING from PKs.
Imo you are sorely mistaken. Carebears in most games with open pvp are the crafters/gatherers/rare mob killers or whatever nets them profit in the end. As in, carebears want to make profit with minimized risk. Of course in open pvp care bears will have more risk than in close pvp, but in open pvp (if well implemented) carebears should be in for more profit than in closed pvp.
Lets say people can be looted if they die. If this is the case, all the PKers provide the carebears with a constant stream of customers for newly crafted items for instance. If items slowly decay on player death with no or limited repair options, carebears will again profit from more item sales.
Imo, if you play for instance WoW and just do it for the endgame raids, you might aswell play some single player game with multiplayer options for cooperative mode. You are not in fact playing an MMO in a world where actions matter. Where is the room for the roles in mmoRpg if all everyone does is the same ? Is it not more fun to have the role of a business man where you have to manage the risk of getting robbed by hiring an amount of bodyguards (another role) suiting the amount of risk you deem yourself in, as opposed to playing a business man where success aka profit in the long run is a given thing, because time invested = more profit no matter if are a complete idiot at what you do.
So the reason a Carebear should play in FFA PvP is so he can make more money.... So the only role for Carebears in FFA PvP is crafting. Gotcha.
BTW, almost no Carebear wants that role. Wheee I get to spend a hour hiring guards, spend a hour or two walking around the land collecting mats. Then back to the city where I can make the items for another hour or so. WOW what a thrilling game session, that sure beats questing or doing a dungeon crawl.
Oh and the guards... I'm sure they wont eat the bulk of your profits, or if they don't what are the odd's they will just rob you anyway?
Sorry the Carebear role you are talking about is so slim as to almost not exist. All you have done is pointed out how much the PKers and Anti-PKers need Carebears, but have still not given a reason they need the PKers.
(Oh sure I am sure out of every 1,000 or so Carbear players 1 will find that fun. After all look at all the accountants in the world)
I disagree, the carebears do get something from the pks, they get excitement! and high dose of adrenilan rush ..... something they cant get from a normal mob.
I was there and hated pks so much i went anti pk. I got revenge..... I was in a guild that would set traps for pks just to kill them,was so much fun letting that lone miner mined away while we sat and waited for the pks to show up only for us to come out of hiding and slaughter him sending him to days of stat loss lol.
So i do think the article was right on the money they all 3 need each other to make a good pvp game flow correctly. And what does the carebear get without the pks? boring mind numbing grinding been there for many years now. Sure they get peace and no worries of being pked, but they also miss that rush.
I feel carebears while most of my friends are just that are missing a huge part of the reason we play games online together. It's the fight of human mind and skill vs human mind and skill.
The article was spot on and for thoughs of you that did not get it, you obviously were not there to experience it first hand.
Ironically, all you are saying is that you were not having fun playing in a FFA PvP game so you became a Anti-PK.
So what the game gave you was it made you change from your preferred play style of the time (Carebear) and made you become a Anti-PK.
Once more. PKers need Carebears, Anti-PKers need Carebears. But Carebears do not need PKers.
What about some of us players who enjoy living in the "wild west" atmosphere? Always having to look over your shoulder is what makes the game fun for some people.
MO is trying to tap a market that has more potential to grow I believe. Everyone who plays a MMOG today didn't play in 1997 when UO was released, the market obviously grew. This wild wild west version of an MMO has been tried in Darkfall (was is successful?), obviously it was poorly done. Hopefully MO can get it right.
The guild I belong to, Shadowclan, has been waiting years for a quality game. We were huge in UO, huge in Shadowbane, as well as DAOC, and maybe we will get to enjoy MO - if the developers can work some magic and make a quality game.
I guess my point of view stems from the fact that I would much hope for something sandbox like to be more mainstream because there is imo so much more potential in a game where players get to form the world and evolving a storyline on their own than there is in a themepark like WoW. Games like WoWs biggest problem is to me that there is basicly no content other than what developers put in, meaning that there is a finish line, which players will eventually reach making the game boring because you to do the exact same instance over and over again till the next time developers dish out an expansion or patch with extra dungeons.
This is something that a well done sandbox will not suffer from. If players can impact the game world enough while the game world has a real world like economy, the game will evolve on its own, with alliances, politics and what not.
In this case I will certainly maintain that the carebear needs the PKer and the anti-PKer. Take the economy in EvE (which I like and is supposed to be one of the strong points of the game), in this sort of economy practically everything can be crafted by players, and most things are actually only craftable by players. The normal economy rules of supply and demand rules this market, which makes it possible for people to have a lot of carebear roles regarding market/logistics/crafting/resource gathering. These roles make a lot of sense because the economy is thriving. Part of having a thriving economy is having people continually buy stuff. Continually buying stuff will not happen if someone can get the BiS and never worry about gear again. This type of world kills any sort of realistic economy. This in turn means that the carebear roles I mentioned above does not make for a viable career option in the world because they cant make any money.
The carebear types who like doing "instances" for loot for example, will have no reason to do this once they have the best gear from the hardest currently implemented instance in a game like WoW. In a game like EvE which has a real economy carebears in the best spaceship with the best items equipped still have a reason to do their "instances" because it will net them profit in terms of money. Money they would not have made if noone ever lost their items, because there would then not be enough buyers who wanted the carebears hard earned loot.
I realise that my current train of argument relies on the fact that I think a working economy is one of the most important factors in an MMO because it provides a very simple goal other than getting BiS from the hardest instance and waiting around till expansion day. It gives you the goal of getting more money by however means suits you. Theres a reason why Bill Gates and Donald Trump still go to work everyday even though they could retire themselves, their children and their whole damn family without any of them ever needing to worry about money. The reason is that having money allows you to shape the world around you, and the more you have the greater impact you can have on the said world. Which in turn parses well over to games; the struggle to get to the top of the world is the most fun on the journey there, not when you actually reach the top. Aka. its not fun to sit on BiS and have nothing to do. On the other hand in an EvE type game you will not reach the top meaning the game can potentially entertain you for a lot longer than any other game.
Take Donald Trump and Bill Gates again, these dudes are higher on the ladder towards world domination than both you and I (I should think that even though I dont know you ofc), but they still find it fun to make more money by being good at what they do.
Btw, I wont argue that it necessarily is PKers you need, you could have PvE mobs/bosses/whatever be very hard and pair that with item decay / loss on death to achieve the same effect regarding working economy. But this would mean exactly the same for the carebear as having PKers: They cant just go about their business with no risk.
I am by the way sorry about the long long throngs of letters I output to this thread. I am not yet very proficient in forum speak.
I do think some people are reading a little too broadly on a topic that's specific to unrestricted PvP sandbox games, although I suppose the sentence "All three groups need each other for the game's survival." doesn't help. A poor choice of words on my part, perhaps, but I think the needs of the carebears for the other groups depends largely on what the carebear's reason for being in the game is.
I've never been that far on the side of the carebear-camp to quite understand why carebears would still want to play an open PvP game - but they're still out there, and both anti-PKs and PKs need them to keep the game from going stale. I do think, as someone mentioned earlier, profit is a big thing for some of them - some players do honestly enjoy coming into a game and making a financial empire. A PvP game - especially one heavy on crafting, as MO seems to be inclined toward - definitely feeds their pockets, and feeds them well. What's a carebear crafter going to do with that kind of gear?
I think it's clear, looking at numbers, that carebears are making increasing migrations away from PvP games because they now have the options to do so. That's why games in the style of Mortal Online need to offer them carrots that will make them want to come play. For some people, that's graphics, story, roleplay, exploring, etc - all those great things a sandbox can offer. The carebear may not need the PvPers as much as they need the carebear, and that's where the game has to step in.
Also keep in mind that the community break down is a lot more complex than this; there's lines crossed between all groups, and many players belong to more than one camp, but in varying degrees.
Your argument is completely ridiculous. Comparing PKers in games to real world sociopaths and serial killers is utter lunacy. There is absolutely no proven correlation between player killing in game and real life psychosis. The vast majority of studies on the subject correlate aggressive behavior with any form of violence in video games (including PvE). By that logic, anyone who plays an MMORPG and kills thousands and thousands of NPCs to level is statistically more aggressive than a non-gamer.
RPGs are called role-playing games for a reason. We should be able to play the role of a villain if we so choose. Yet, because of whiners like you, we are not allowed to be anything but just another hero in a sea of identical cookie-cutter clones. Where is the excitement in a game if there is never any real challenge or conflict? Where are the politics when everyone is on the same side? Why is the concept of competition so strongly opposed by so many?
It has come to the point where MMORPGs are so mind-numbingly boring that the vast majority are not worth anyone's time. Games used to be much more exciting for EVERYONE involved because there were real consequences on the line. Carebears (or whatever you want to call them) have drained every ounce of risk and fear out of these games to the point where no one cares if they live or die. Think about it... there are virtually NO consequences for death in most modern MMORPGs. What is the point of even playing in a game like that... where there is no risk and no danger?? I honestly can't see how anyone finds it enjoyable.
Yes, I am asserting that the same players who demanded that there be no PKers are the very same ones who complained about every other difficult element of MMOs until all we were left with were mindless grindfests without consequences... but of course, that is only my opinion.
I was clearly talking about non-consentual pkscum, NOT consenting PvP. And read my entire post again (except for the last paragraph, which was clearly tongue-in-cheek, hence the </rant> ;-p). I'm talking about the griefers & pkscum who have become prevalent in any PvP game, not just mmos, because 'there is no honour among thieves' & all that shit.
Repeat after me boyz n girlz: PK <> PvP. PK <> PvP. PK <> PvP.
It is THEY who have ruined honourable PvP dueling & fair play, NOT us 'carebears'. And we're the only ones that seem to farking care lol!!! And the stronger the PvE objector/PvP proponent, the more likely they're just lying pkscum in reality I find.
If mmo devs had half a brain & stood back from the trees & looked at the forest with some simple data mining & analysis, they'd see what most of the rest of us see as plain as the noses on our faces:
1. Most mmo players are PvEers
2. PvP must be consentual, as anything else leads to major griefing, ganking & general asshattery
3. PvP, if universal, must be structured so there are real & lasting penalties commensurate with the crime. No pker would ever get away with the shit they pull in RL for very long. Sure, mmos are not simulations, but the time ppl spend is very real & precious to a lot of us. UO did this fairly well 10+ years ago, with player run laws. Why have we gone off the beaten path into free-for-all chaos since???
4. If we pay to play PvE, then that's what we want to play - not someone's else's antisocial griefing match! And we certainly don't want to be dragged down to their level. or they've won their little grief game. pkk == pk with an extra letter in the end.
Only GW has got all of these elements right to date. Take a leaf mmo makers.
And I got my kicks plenty from playing hardcore D2 back in the day. Nothing in any PvP mmo comes close today. Nothing. Try building/playing & equipping a char for months, only to have it all taken away, sometimes without even seeing the perp, in the blink of an eye! Lag & bugs were bad enough, but for Blizz to basically turn a blind eye to most of this was unforgiveable. Tell me I don't know about risk *guffaw*.
In any case, you sound like a 'respectable' PvPer, not out to urinate on anyone's parade just for the sake of it.. But ofr everyone of you, there are literally 100s if not 1000s of kiddies, antisocial wankers & other types of malcontents, who take out their life's problems on the majority of us who want to play PvE/coop, because that means only we are responsible for our failures & our own risk/fun/reward is in our own hands, as it should be. Here endeth the carebear lesson ;).
Those figures are nowhere near accurate or meaningful. Just because a game has PvP (even open PvP), does NOT mean most of the players are there to PvP/PK others. A lot of us in the early days of UO & EQ (even M59 before that), right up to EVE today, were/are in it to build communities, for the teamplay, coop & social aspects & to help others with the game.
If you were able to take a true statistical snapshot of how many PvPers there are in any one mainstream western mmo ever, I would be almost certain the number never went over 10%, & only a fraction of that for pkscum. (Not counting Asian-specific mmos of course, which I don't play for this very reason, though I have tried a few).
So, why do we even bother with PvP to satiate the vast minority of adrenaline junkies out there? Beats me. Let them play fps gankfests like camperstrike or whatnot & leave the rest of us to build safe & fun virtual worlds & communities I say! :)
No it wouldn't. The risk would/could stil be calculated, & you could always do something else in most cases if you didn't want to take that risk. A pkscum coming out of nowhere, twinked up to the eyeballs with 1-shot kill equipment, most certainly is NOT a risk you can anticipate, mitigate or control in any way, while you're harvesting crafting components say, or already down to 1/4 life fighting some tough mobs. In my experience, 1% of PvPers out there are 'honourable' duelers & consentual PvPers. Thanks WoW for helping to drop that figure a few percentage points in the last 5 years! ;-p
As a fairly vocal carebear of the modern UO, I agree with the article up a point. Pure PvP-enabled will generally push people away who aren't having success (it's hard to maintain the illusion of success against a good trash-talker). Pure PvE will push away people who get bored once they've beaten everything once and know they can do it again. Having options is very healthy and one should not underestimate the value of the moral affirmation of choosing anew each day how you want to live in the world.
However, seeing the world as a triad of playstyles (PK/anti-PK/carebear) requires the carebear to spend time "being the mongbat" - and in UO this is done by placing rewards in PvP areas so that if I will not risk being pwned on the battlefield, I'll be pwned in the game's economy. It works up to a point, but the problem is that people who cannot be lured or threatened across the line can not only run away to a non-PvP area, they can also run away to another game, so there's a limit to how much arm-twisting can be done. And I feel that's where the article's model starts to break down.
Leave the carebears feeling like second-class citizens and they start to leave. Give the PKers nothing but other hardened PKers and they lose the sense of power that motivates them. Throw them both a bone and either the fur flies like wet cats tied up in a bag or they start to behave like completely separate communities playing separate games, subdividing again into even finer subcultures. It's a difficult balancing act.
No it wouldn't. The risk would/could stil be calculated, & you could always do something else in most cases if you didn't want to take that risk. A pkscum coming out of nowhere, twinked up to the eyeballs with 1-shot kill equipment, most certainly is NOT a risk you can anticipate, mitigate or control in any way, while you're harvesting crafting components say, or already down to 1/4 life fighting some tough mobs. In my experience, 1% of PvPers out there are 'honourable' duelers & consentual PvPers. Thanks WoW for helping to drop that figure a few percentage points in the last 5 years! ;-p
Risk cant always be calculated. It can in most of todays games, but there is no reason that it should be so other than that carebears want to know they are able to succeed on a venture even before they undertake said adventure.
You could have a game where a dungeon didnt feature the same boss/mobs everytime, and where the different bosses/mobs didnt do exactly the same tactics everytime. Not knowing what the boss is going to do to you and what attacks he will do could very much be tuned to mean that sometimes people would need to try and escape due to getting a too hard boss, and even though realising you cant take this particular boss with this particular group, you might still be certain to loose 1-2 of your party unless you execute your escape flawlessly. Of course players could then do a dungeon where the difficulty range was so small that they could do all varieties of the bosses/mobs in the dungeon, but this should of course yield so little reward that you will seriously consider doing the harder dungeons even though you might cash in a loss in profit instead of a win.
Also I dont agree that you cant manage the risk of a ganker. If the penalty for being ganked is too high for you, you should either stay away from where you get ganked, or gather likeminded individuals into a guild/make alliances or whatever and make a place for yourselves and your friends within the game world, where some of your friends get a kick out killing the potential gankers that enter your territory, and you thereby get to gather resources or whatever in this territory reasonably free of danger. Of course you can still get ganked, but this ganker should then be running a big risk of running into your big friends who will tear him a new one.
Things like this require a sandbox though. Your only option in a game like WoW is to get a full party with you while you run around gathering herbs. Thats just not something thats gonna happen ever. It could only happen if WoW suddenly decided herbs/whatever were really important, and at the same time made you face harsh penalties for being ganked. People would certainly help each other out to avoid this more in this case.
I have a strict vision on this topic. And I believe I am thus classified as a "Carebear". You see, I am all for PvP. But am against PK. A subtle, yet important difference there.
PvP can be fun. Why? Consent. Either though mutual "Duel" agreements, "raising the flag", clan wars or just entering designated Player Combat areas. Why is it fun? Because when you die, you know why. You know who is to blame, you know exactly what the reasons are that made you find yourself face down in a ditch, debuffed, looted and possibly liptoned. Were it your opponent's skills/spells/gear, lag, your going AFK, or just missing a button press. You died, and you have no-one to blame but yourself.
PK, however. Can happen even during PvP. You see, I count "griefing" into PK. That being... camping the hospital building to kill you as soon as you walk out the door, for instance. But also, it can be for no reason but "kicks". You are, looting some rare stuff that you need, and I mean NEED, in a hard to reach spot. There's plenty for everyone who are there. And this guy walks up and kills you when you are "stunned" in the looting mechanic (whatever that may be, animation, pop-up window, etc). He did it for kicks. Ok, sure, he might say it's because he wanted more. But I did say there was plenty. Or then when you are AFK. Getting a fresh drink, answering the door, letting the dog out, whatever it may be, however short time. You may come back and find yourself dead.
Bad? Yes. Why? Because you grow frustrated. Why? Because you are not to blame. Someone else is. You go frustrated, even angry that for some ridiculous reason, you just lost some very rare loot, a lot of experience points, stats. Or just got set back by half a map. Happens too often, you leave. You payed to have fun, you play to have fun, and thus help others have fun too, with you. You did not pay, to let others leech fun off you. To be the butt end of their jokes or actions.
So, with that said. And been through a number of MMO's and their PvP systems. I have to say that PvP in an MMO works only IF, it is designed in from the start. Accomodated, merged. Not forced, not illogical. But goes with the lore and the systems. A part of the game, not a slapped on feature like it is in the grand majority of games. This has caused me to develop a view that the BEST PvP is to be had in games that only FOR PvP. Sadly, such games are more often than not, shooters. Now I love some FPS mayhem like any other bloke. I can spend just as much time playing round and round, campaign after campaign, in any multiplayer shooter, as I can spend looting rats, and doing fetch quests. They just tend to lack the depth of story that MMO's do. So, I as a Carebear. Am destined to forever swing between games, like a perpetual pendulum of indecision, trying to find a fix for the current addiction of the hour.
I'd like to add this small paragraph to explain exactly just why MMO's aren't really suited for PvP. It's a system that, in some form, every MMO out today has. There are a few that are coming out, using a new system, better suited for PvP. The system I am talking about, are levels. What a shooter has, and what makes it so much more appealing for PvP, is just how level the playing field is. The winner in a fight is chosen by the conditions. Their weapons for the environment, their numbers for that of the enemy. Their willingness to work together and communication. In an MMO, a winner, is more often than not, chosen by your level. In PvE, the level system is one of the best. It adds a feel of progression. But in PvP, all it does is unreasonably tip the balance to the side with players who ground (I do believe this is the past form for grind) or just played more, to each superiority through a mathematical system that simply adds to a player's total health pool and damage dealt. For some reason, the higher level you are, the more sharper your sword becomes. Why is that? No, really. A sword, is a sword, is a sword.
*ding ding ding* we have a winner. excellent summary.
*ding ding ding* we have a winner. excellent summary.
Best post ever.
Both of these paragraphs I agree on, without agreeing that PvP isnt suited for MMOs. FPS or the is way better for matching your skills against another player because as you say theres no difference in gear or levels. This is the reason why a real good sandbox game imo should not feature what most people think of when we say levels. Take EvE online for example, in this game you will surely gain advantages due to having been in the game a long time and trained a lot of skills. These do make the playing field uneven, but not to the point where they make player skill not matter. A player who brings the wrong setup to the fight will loose even if he has far superior skills trained on his character, and his opponent brought the right setup. Also being the equivalent of epic equipped lvl 80 in EvE doesnt mean that 2-3 well coordinated lvl 10s who brought the right setup and gear to take you down cant do so.
Im saying that PvP as a skill match against another human doesnt suit the average MMO, but some MMOs could(and do) very much feature character skill progression that makes for an RPG sort of feel, without making you need to jump on the 10 hour grind a day epics train if you want to stand a chance of killing even the worst noob who has done that train already and therefore is sitting on BiS items.
Do you know what kind of feeling I have while reading these posts ? Its like just walking in your kitchen and you see the toothfairy drinking coffee with Santa
Never In my dreams have I believed that there are "pure carebears" who hate pvp from all of their heart .
First time when I decided to play a pvp game , I decided to be a Pk from the start. To my surprise , I was not the only one who had this "unique and brilliant " idea.
I literarily grew up on games where you get Ganked on a daily basis. On games where every time you see another player aproaching , you were getting ready to unleash all your powers as fast and as hard as possible , every meeting with an Unknown player , pumped your blood , and most of the time they were really just passing by and not planning to Pk you.
When both sides are red , they aren't PKers anymore , they are PVPers .
The reason why PKers cant exist without Carebears is because You cant be a red unless you kill someone who did not want to engage in combat. If all carebears dissapear , the game pretty much will be a PVP only game . (look at darkfall)
I'm still shocked after reading what you guys wrote , but in a game like Mortal Online , carebears can take lots of profit after reds , thanks to the cool crafting system , there will be lots of carebears crafters , who will gather resources and craft items that most of the people will surely buy , thanks to the PKer who killed and full looted them. Not to mention that playing a PvE only game , is just like kicking a sandbag and telling everybody how cool you were while beating the shit out of it....there's no fun in killing some random mob who has no brain . Even if he is a raidboss...he is still just an NPC....there's no pride in killing it...
While fighting players , they will use strategies , they will try to outsmart you , outwit and cheat you , its far more satisfying to know you WON when somebody LOST. Not just a WoW game where everybody wins and your like "oh we defeated the raidboss yet again...hooray for us......"
I am a carebear, yet I spend most of my time playing in PVP servers/games.
Why? I like surprises. Pure PVE servers lack any real challenge as anyone can beat the limited AI in any computer game. The only thing that makes it bearable is if there's a chance for an encounter with a PK'er who I'll have to either evade, out think or actually beat to complete the pve objective.
But its a tricky balance. I don't want to become total prey, so a game needs to be designed in a manner that lets me survive by being large enough to get lost in, and have some mechanics that permit me a chance to flee or fight.
DAOC had a good mechanic I've not seen in other games, if a player was in a PVE encounter and another player attacked, the person fighting the npc would have their health restored back to 100%. I would have preferred that the npc aggro would have also been reset, but at least at 100% it gave a person a chance to use his defensive skills to escape until they were better prepared to fight.
I play EVE because it affords me the ability to control my pvp encounters to some extent (though I still die), and ets me join in the PVP when I wish.
I avoid Darkfall because I think there's far less chance for me to prosper and not enough pve content to make it worth my while.
I don't want to spend my life crafting btw, just no interest. I enjoy advancing my characters skills and overcoming higher level content.
So yes, pker's are necessary to keep the game exciting, and I guess at times I cross over into the anti-pk camp when I'm looking for fun.
What's important is to keep the number of pker's down to a managable level. You accomplish this by making the lifestyle hard and only pursued by the truly dedicated and skilled pker's, and not every pk wanna be that comes along.
I recall in Lineage 1 Pure Reds would drop most if not all of their gear if they died and could visit only one city. As such few chose such a lifestyle and those that did were truly great at their craft. It kept their numbers reasonable and you didn't find a red on every corner. (and people loved to hunt them for any gear they might have)
People in this article seem to forget why "carebears" were needed in UO; Crafting. Unlike modern-day mmo's where crafting is an optional sidetrack it was a neccessity for UO to work, people crafted gear and sold it, crafted gear was much better than monster drops (even at low levels). This is what pretty much every modern mmo lacks, there's no sense of a living world as everything is monster drops and combat is enforced as the only way to play.
A FFA-PvP mmorpg needs a player-driven economy and meaningful crafting to work, that's also what made it so much more fun.
I find most of MMORPGs on the market dull and boring. Why ? Mostly because there is no challenge there, no real community abd no true risk so you don't experience there real emotions.
The era of theme parks destroyed it all, the MMOs are build now mostly around single player experience and making you to feel like a hero saving the world. On the top of that you have your pve raids and meaningless RvR battles with no real risk or rewards. You don't really shape the world or even leave a mere footprint in it.
There is no place in this setting for PK. "He killed me ?! ME ?! ! The Saviour of the world, The Slayer of The Demon of Doom ? That's not possible ! I am immortal and invincible !" People don't like to face a fact that they have been defeated and someone just took their stuff.
You believe that full loot pvp sandbox games destroy your game experience so you demand no loot, extremely restricted pvp and plenty of quests and pve content so you can "enjoy" yourself.
Then after ten years you wake up in the dead end. You play boring, clones set in different theme parks where you can't change anything or leave a real mark behind you. You grind through levels, gear, complete quests with plot worse then in Warhammer series books and kill mobs which AI will never be half as good as in single player games and will never be as smart as another human being.
When you reach the top: the max level and the ultimate gear you cry that there is NO end game, there is nothing to do and no reason to play until a new expansion. The expansion which introduce more quests, gear and levels to grind....You asked for it people and you deserve what you got.
I personally hope that sooner or later we will see on the market a true MMORPG: a sandbox with freedom of actions and consequences of them, where you will be able to build a place you can call your virtual home, whatever it will be a house or a kingdom. A place where political, economical and ideological alliances will shift and dynamically shape the world map. A place where the history and the plot will be written by the best actors and competitors: players themselves.
If its real emotion and thrills that you seek, might I suggest blood sport? It has the ultimate challenge, coupled with the ultimate penalty. Games on the other hand are ment to be entertainment. Now that means different things to different people. But I've spent MUCH more than enough time in the types of FFA sandbox games that some people rave about. The reality is that given the excuse(no in all too many games, encouragement) WAY too many people will become total bastards. Being the target of others ganking/griefing is NOT something I'm willing to pay money for these days.
The gaming population has also moved on from those days. The fact is there are a lot more of us CareBears these days, than there are people willing to tolerate(enjoy) ganking/griefing in the west. Look at the number of PvE vs PvP servers in WoW, and the fact that more than half(closer to 2/3) of Eve's player base stays in high sec, as just two of many examples. Games that are designed for FFA/full loot automatically niche themselves(in other words limit their profit potential). Those two realities(coupled with human nature) explain the much larger number of PvE games that exist. Its not something I see changing anytime soon.
One final note. Never is a LONG time. I suspect that given some of the recent advancements, we can expect that AI will become ever more effective. Some of its past research paths have proven disappointing, but some of the current approaches show much more promise. That combined with the ever increasing understanding of how the human brain itself operates, will make the next 20 years rather "interesting".
Fantasy world... open PvP... true sandbox... no levels... no quests... crafting-based... no instances.
Good times.
See you in 20 years then Wraithone.
There are mechanisms to achieve a law and order: time flagging, stat lose after death for criminals, cutting off reds from access to civilized places. Sure you will always have a group of community running rampart as reds. Leave them be. In a game where you can easily lose your gear, being hunted provides you with thrill and flavour. In the opposition to grind based games you can replace lost gear quite easily, even if the lose hurts a bit.
If you get repetitively killed over and over again, it means you do something wrong. Stop going back to the same place all the time or at least bring some friends and get some aniti-PK hounds after your killers. The world is huge, if you can't confront your enemies, move to different place or find some allies. I believe that's the main problem with you wannabe heroes: you hate to admit that you are a mere human and you can achieve everything alone. You need to cooperate, build a community around you to protect your law & order and what is yours. Just another example of the main issue of MMO games "I want to play a MMO game and being able to achieve everything by myself".
If you don't feel anything while playing computer games then you are wasting your time with this hobby. Games are meant to be entertainment, but you won't achieve it without triggering emotions in players: taste of victory, satisfaction from an achieved goal, excitement, fear and a feeling of being a part of community.
Next has to be experience and character progression and I don't mean by that magical numbers above your head. I mean personal experience, being a part of player driven world, knowledge about politics, history, player/clan relations. That's real progression and that what bonds you with your character, not your uber sword dropped from a bear after 40000000 hours of raiding the same boring, scripted dungeon where hardly anything can go different.
Theme park games with their scripted pve experience and scripted quests give you the same experience as to anybody else. There is nothing unique about it, as there is nothing unique about your cookie cutter character from narrow set of classes.
Sure I am not living in denial, the number of people who like interacting/competing with mindless/soulless AI in static world full of already told for hundred times stories is much higher then people who like open, dynamic game worlds. Just another example of retardation in the game genre and introducing another type of "fast food" products.
But right now on the MMO market there is nothing left, all stories has been told multiple times. I can hardly see any MMO after WoW which achieve something which we can call a success or an innovation. I don't even talk about numbers of subs.
The niche for a full loot, full pvp sandbox MMORPG is there and as long developers will fill their sandbox with enough toys and sand they will find a loyal playerbase.
Saying that I would love to see the MMO genre to evolve in something new. Preferably a hybrid with a rich theme park like lore, a sandbox freedom, FPS player skill oriented combat and economy / strategy games depth. For that I am willing to wait 20 years, however I hope to see it the next year.
What law is there in MMORPGs except the GMs and the game design?
The most you can hope for from the "city guards" or "Sheriffs" in most MMORPGs is a quest or two, or a mindless attack on a member of the opposing faction or a wild beast. How realistic is it for there to be no penalties for PKing?
Perhaps a bounty and jail system like Oblivion could be implemented? Or players who take the role of guards or enforcers, as happened in UO?
The problem with totally open PKing is that it is not realistic for a level 70 person to be able to walk up behind a level 2 person in the middle of a crowded city and stab them in front of the guards.
That is not carebearism. That is common sense. Even ancient societies had laws and law enforcers. I can think of very few MMOs with systems that provide that sort of protection, particularly in cities and towns.
Now, what happens outside of the eyesight of the cities, towns, and guards? That might be a different matter...
It is wrong to kill someone for breaking into your house. We live in a civilized society that offers alternatives to murder. If your life is directly threatened, and you have no alternatives, then it can be justifiable to murder someone who is trying to murder you.
The ends do not justify the means.
Crafting and PvE is made just about a hundred times more interesting if the resources available are contested by other players and factions via PvP. This creates a metagame, which elevates the entire gaming experience.
For this reason, carebears benefit from the system as well. Just look at EVE. Most people there are carebears.
kool.
It is wrong to kill someone for breaking into your house. We live in a civilized society that offers alternatives to murder. If your life is directly threatened, and you have no alternatives, then it can be justifiable to murder someone who is trying to murder you.
The ends do not justify the means.
No. It is NOT wrong to kill someone who is breaking into your home. They have already demonstrated hostile intent by their actions. Taking counter actions is simply defense of oneself and family. A *civilized* society would expect and demand such. Its only drones and their masters who insist that everyone(except the master classes enforcers) be unarmed and helpless. But you are quite right, in that ends do not justify the means used to achieve them. Which is richly ironic when one applies that to coercive government... PvP is generally a bad idea in most MMO's. It is usually slapped on to appease the PK crowd, and thus increase the demographic the game appeals to. Which of course is one reason that MMO PvP is generally a bad idea, as it ends up being rather poorly implimented. I quite enjoy many FPS games, because they are designed from the very start as PvP games. As for the current crop of FFA/full loot games, its too little, far too late. The majority of the audience has moved on to other types of games.
Said CareBears tend to stay in high sec and never leave. PvP is engaged in by those in low and no sec. Or those at war with other corporations(or flagged). Then of course, there are those insane enough to try ganking in high sec. Concord ALWAYS has the final say in that.
The evolution of Concord is a fascinating example of the endless arms race between the gankers/griefers and the Dev's. At each step along that path, the gankers/griefered howled that it would be the very end of the game! Which is nonsense, as CCP is only protecting its business model. But the howls of outraged gankers/griefers is such SWEET music to my furry CareBear ears. 
No. It is NOT wrong to kill someone who is breaking into your home. They have already demonstrated hostile intent by their actions. Taking counter actions is simply defense of oneself and family. A *civilized* society would expect and demand such. Its only drones and their masters who insist that everyone(except the master classes enforcers) be unarmed and helpless. But you are quite right, in that ends do not justify the means used to achieve them. Which is richly ironic when one applies that to coercive government... PvP is generally a bad idea in most MMO's. It is usually slapped on to appease the PK crowd, and thus increase the demographic the game appeals to. Which of course is one reason that MMO PvP is generally a bad idea, as it ends up being rather poorly implimented. I quite enjoy many FPS games, because they are designed from the very start as PvP games. As for the current crop of FFA/full loot games, its too little, far too late. The majority of the audience has moved on to other types of games.
You are so wrong and I take it from your statement you live either in the USA or one of the old school Sharia law countries. In said countries where I assume you live, it might be the norm to shoot someone breaking in.Yyes its legal, but that does not make shooting a robber a thing you're expected to do in a civilized society. Unless you want to exclude pretty much all countries in Europe from "civilized society", because in most EU countries (I havnt done research so I dont know if its all of them) you are not allowed to use force thats excessive when compared to the crime being comitted against you. Meaning that you WILL go to jail if you kill or even shoot at someone who is trying to rob you, if you have no reason to believe your life is in danger.
Overall to me as I would expect from most people with what I would regard as a modern humane view on others, this should be the correct way for society to work. If you need to be allowed to shoot someone who only wants some of your earthly belongings without endangering your own existence, then you probably live in a place that is not very civilized because way too many people havent got a chance to succeed in life and there fore resorts to robbery.
In conclusion, yes its fine to shoot a robber if you want to have a wild west country, but seeing as you brought "civilized" into the discussion, then no, its not fine. It belongs in the past because a civilized country gives all its citizens no matter what their social background is a chance to succeed in life, and even takes proper care of those who fail while trying, so that we dont end up in a wild west state where half the citizens are robbing others just to get food on the table.
Hold, friend. Please don't go around pointing fingers at the rest of us just because you found yourself an troll. For the record, there are very few places in the USA where you can shoot somebody who is breaking and entering your home and get off scot-free.
It is certainly not the norm, and very rarely legal to use excessive force on somebody who has illegally entered your home. Laws normally dictate that your life or safety or that of other people (not your belongings) have to be actively at risk, and that you haven't any other reasonable options.
EDIT: FYI - here are some examples of laws:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Doctrine_in_the_United_States
Thanks for putting that straight ! I'm always happy to be enlightened. I live in the EU and admit to not knowing everything about the rest of the world, but this just makes it less sensible to me that someone I think is an american would argue a civilized society would expect me to shoot a robber when not even all american states allows it !
Always good to see your generalist views of others being shamed when they are in fact to general and arent always true.
To be fair, Wraithone lives in one of the 13 US states where there are very lenient laws to this effect.
In his state, the law says:
"...person is justified in threatening or using force against another when ... he or she reasonably believes that force is necessary to defend himself or a third person against such other's imminent use of unlawful force. However, that person is justified in using force intended or likely to cause death or serious bodily injury only if he or she reasonably believes that force is necessary to prevent death or serious bodily injury to himself or a third person"
There you have it. Shooting somebody can be legal, but even in the most lenient states, there are pretty stringent requirements for the situation to get that severe.
No. It is NOT wrong to kill someone who is breaking into your home. They have already demonstrated hostile intent by their actions. Taking counter actions is simply defense of oneself and family. A *civilized* society would expect and demand such. Its only drones and their masters who insist that everyone(except the master classes enforcers) be unarmed and helpless. But you are quite right, in that ends do not justify the means used to achieve them. Which is richly ironic when one applies that to coercive government... PvP is generally a bad idea in most MMO's. It is usually slapped on to appease the PK crowd, and thus increase the demographic the game appeals to. Which of course is one reason that MMO PvP is generally a bad idea, as it ends up being rather poorly implimented. I quite enjoy many FPS games, because they are designed from the very start as PvP games. As for the current crop of FFA/full loot games, its too little, far too late. The majority of the audience has moved on to other types of games.
You are so wrong and I take it from your statement you live either in the USA or one of the old school Sharia law countries. In said countries where I assume you live, it might be the norm to shoot someone breaking in.Yyes its legal, but that does not make shooting a robber a thing you're expected to do in a civilized society. Unless you want to exclude pretty much all countries in Europe from "civilized society", because in most EU countries (I havnt done research so I dont know if its all of them) you are not allowed to use force thats excessive when compared to the crime being comitted against you. Meaning that you WILL go to jail if you kill or even shoot at someone who is trying to rob you, if you have no reason to believe your life is in danger.
Overall to me as I would expect from most people with what I would regard as a modern humane view on others, this should be the correct way for society to work. If you need to be allowed to shoot someone who only wants some of your earthly belongings without endangering your own existence, then you probably live in a place that is not very civilized because way too many people havent got a chance to succeed in life and there fore resorts to robbery.
In conclusion, yes its fine to shoot a robber if you want to have a wild west country, but seeing as you brought "civilized" into the discussion, then no, its not fine. It belongs in the past because a civilized country gives all its citizens no matter what their social background is a chance to succeed in life, and even takes proper care of those who fail while trying, so that we dont end up in a wild west state where half the citizens are robbing others just to get food on the table.
I'm always amused by the pathetic attitudes of the *subjects* of the various European countries. You've all been so totally conditioned by your ruling classes to be Good Citizens, that you really don't understand the first thing about basic human rights. Thankfully, many of our Founders/Framers understood those basic rights. Sadly, those have been badly eroded in all too many places by the American version of your ruling class. I'd hardly term what passes for government(and hence the society that such breeds) in many such places to be *civilized'. In a civilized society, the individual and their rights *and* responsibilities are the central focus. Quite unlike far too many collectivist systems that place much more value on the abstract known as "society", rather than the individuals involved.
I note how you attempt to frame the argument above. A reasonable person(phrase of art) would be justified in assuming hostile intent on the part of those breaking into ones home. How far one goes in that defense would depend on the situation. But it naturally *would* include the option of killing them if it was warranted. It doesn't matter what tragic story one can tell about their background and current circumstances. The fact remains that they took actions that placed others life in potential danger. They should thereby expect the consequences.
Trust someone from Chicago to agree with a Good Subject from one of the European countries... Its too bad that so many of the eastern Peoples Republics have long since forgotten the original intent of the Founders/Framers in regards to personal defense and other basic human rights. I doubt that this will mean anything to one such, but perhaps others would like the facts, rather than collectivist spin. What is even more amusing is that one of the foremost scholars on the subject is also from your city. His name is John Lott. He wrote a fascinating book on the subject of guns and crime. It turns out that the reality is rather different from the distortions that those who favor victim disarmament have attempted to spread.
www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/493636.html
They might also be interested in the recent supreme court decision on the subject of the second amendment.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
With that having been said, lets move this to private if you wish. We now return you to your regular MMO discussion.
If a criminal dares to risk being caught and he is ready to meet with the consequences, why not ? As long the guard system is not a joke let him to have that opportunity to strike even in a relative safe zone of a city.
Levels ? You don't build a full pvp game build around levels. Especially if a level one character has 200 HP and level seventy 10 000 HP. It is as wrong as implementing full loot in a game where you have to grind your gear for months.
Stop thinking throught World of Warcraft prizmat, standards brought by that game and its clones seriously hinder your creativity and imagination people. No wonder half of you can't understand who somebody can enjoy games with full pvp and full loot.
As much it is matter of taste, there is a lot of people fed up with the present model of MMORPG games: static theme parks. There your actions don't matter, they don't affect anything except score boards. People are tired of character progression and whole gameplay build around grinding levels and gear. They know that whatever new theme park will show up on the horizon, it won't offer anything else and no persistent end game. Those people wait for a breeze of a fresh air and theme parks are not longer able to surprise nor innovate.
The PKs may need the carebears, but the carebears don't need the PKs.
The article is mostly about a PK'er who is understanding that there wont be easy bullying in mortals online because the carebears will never go there since there are like 200 other games they can go to. And the author don't like that thought.
The problem with PK'ers is that most of them don't really want to look for an exiting fight. They want to hurt other people who can't defend themselves. They are in fact just bullies, cowards that don't deserve any satisfaction.
And that is where the author is quite wrong. The anti PK'ers are not looking to bully someone else, they are looking for a real fight! That's what makes them better people than the reds.
Seriously I love the idea that "red" players will be bored to hell even in mortal online because there will be no easy targets to kill. They don't deserve that fun seriously. They deserve to sit down and be whupped by people who really know how to PvP.
You couldn't be more wrong here, PKs poor pvpers ? What games are you playing ? A WoW clone ?
Stop playing games where you stand no chance to escape or fight back and then we will talk again. In fact I would say it is easier to grief in WoW then in any well design full pvp and full loot game. WoW is a PK zone for cowards and people who like to bully others with no risk.
In most of well design sandbox games I played, I had completely different experience. With penalties for criminals, being a PK is even more adrenaline pumping. In Lineage you had a chance to drop your items, in UO you had your criminal timer when you had a hard time to access any civilized place and stat lose if you got yourself killed in that process.
Sure some of PKers kill everything what moves, but most of them are mini maxers who know a lot about the game and are really good pvpers and know how to calculate risk.
Maybe for you carebears don't need PK'ers, but for me a sandbox without real risk/reward ratio is almost as bland as rest of MMOs. I don't see myself a PKer, more often I am hunted then I hunt, but still I know how to defend myself, avoid them or run. If necessary I can deal with a fact that guy killed me and got in 5 minutes what I was working for a last hour. They just add that additional flavour to a game, especially if by risking more ( roaming away from the safe civilization ) as a non PKer you get higher rewards, for example: access to better resources nodes, rare drops etc.
You are so wrong and I take it from your statement you live either in the USA or one of the old school Sharia law countries. In said countries where I assume you live, it might be the norm to shoot someone breaking in.Yyes its legal, but that does not make shooting a robber a thing you're expected to do in a civilized society. Unless you want to exclude pretty much all countries in Europe from "civilized society", because in most EU countries (I havnt done research so I dont know if its all of them) you are not allowed to use force thats excessive when compared to the crime being comitted against you. Meaning that you WILL go to jail if you kill or even shoot at someone who is trying to rob you, if you have no reason to believe your life is in danger.
Overall to me as I would expect from most people with what I would regard as a modern humane view on others, this should be the correct way for society to work. If you need to be allowed to shoot someone who only wants some of your earthly belongings without endangering your own existence, then you probably live in a place that is not very civilized because way too many people havent got a chance to succeed in life and there fore resorts to robbery.
In conclusion, yes its fine to shoot a robber if you want to have a wild west country, but seeing as you brought "civilized" into the discussion, then no, its not fine. It belongs in the past because a civilized country gives all its citizens no matter what their social background is a chance to succeed in life, and even takes proper care of those who fail while trying, so that we dont end up in a wild west state where half the citizens are robbing others just to get food on the table.
I'm always amused by the pathetic attitudes of the *subjects* of the various European countries. You've all been so totally conditioned by your ruling classes to be Good Citizens, that you really don't understand the first thing about basic human rights. Thankfully, many of our Founders/Framers understood those basic rights. Sadly, those have been badly eroded in all too many places by the American version of your ruling class. I'd hardly term what passes for government(and hence the society that such breeds) in many such places to be *civilized'. In a civilized society, the individual and their rights *and* responsibilities are the central focus. Quite unlike far too many collectivist systems that place much more value on the abstract known as "society", rather than the individuals involved.
I note how you attempt to frame the argument above. A reasonable person(phrase of art) would be justified in assuming hostile intent on the part of those breaking into ones home. How far one goes in that defense would depend on the situation. But it naturally *would* include the option of killing them if it was warranted. It doesn't matter what tragic story one can tell about their background and current circumstances. The fact remains that they took actions that placed others life in potential danger. They should thereby expect the consequences.
If you want to troll, you need to be more subtle.
Zzulu, has it dawned on you that my response was anything but trolling? It was a reasoned response to what I consider an appalling attitude. If more people spoke up in the face of such ignorance, we wouldn't be in our current sorry situation. If anyone is trolling here it is you. Lets get back to MMO's, shall we?.
All I can say is way to get completely off the topic for many of the previous posts. This article is about a game NOT real life situations. Please take the off topic stuff to another thread and stop polluting this one.
Another great article, keep up the good work. Using the words "griefer" and "carebear" carry too many negative connotations so I will avoid using them. I will use the term reds and builders respectively instead.
The entire point of the article is that the games that feature the pk aspect of a MMO like Mortal and Darkfall immediately condemn themselves to a small niche audience. The problem is, as I see it, many of these reds start their gaming life in FPS games where death is meaningless, when they move to a situation where it isn't they continue to play the same way. Unless a game can implement significant rules to control the natural inclination of these reds to kill other players indiscriminately, they won't attract the builders.
The problem is that the size of the groups are really not proportionate either. The builders are obviously far larger than any of the other groups. The anti-red group is always the smallest because there are usually few advantages to doing so. I was part of an anti red group in UO. The sad thing was that the leader and many of my good friends eventually turned red because it was far more profitable to do so. Eve is another example of this, being a bounty hunter is probably the worst profession you can choose in the game, just no profit in it at all. Eve's problem is that the area where the pirate prey called low sec is without doubt the least populated area in the game because of too much risk for too little gain. Eve's advantage it has it's own version of Trammel with the empire region.
I have yet to see a game come up with a solution to this conundrum. Mortal Online has a better ruleset than Darkfall, but still is reluctant to put in the restrictions needed to attract a significant population of the builders, hence again the small niche status of the game.
For a game to be successful in this genre, it must attract all three groups. There is huge risk in doing so, which is why no game to date has attempted such. Eve is probably the best example of trying to balance these populations, but it too has major issues in this area, ie, there is just no incentive to hunt pirates beyond the fun of doing so.
One thing makes me wonder. If there is more builders/carebears then PKers and all that bad, sadistic PKers are bad in fair pvp cowards, why carebears have such a problem with giving them a taste of their own medicine. If is so few people who enjoy open pvp, what stands on your way to claim your rights to a point of interest by force ? How hard is it to cooperate with other carebears, gather a group, jump out of a saze zone, get what you want from the wilderness ( resources, money, quest etc ) and come back to safety. Stop thinking about yourself so highly and pretend to be a lonely hero in a game there is no place for them.
Is that hard to interact and cooperate with people in MMO game in order to achieve a common goal ?
Well everyone has to remember back in UO days, all you had was...UO. So it was inevitable that they would split the game into between PvP and PvE .
Now today there's multiple MMOs each catering for multiple crowds, especially for the carebear crowd. I'd even go as far as saying PvP in it's full unrestricted glory is NICHE, just like UO was NICHE. I'd even wager if you want your MMO to cater for the mainstream, look at the carebear needs first, because that's your mainstream crowd right there.
So if a game launch and it's free for all PvP with full looting, it does not take a genius to know this game is not going to be bigger than UO. How big was UO anyway? Only a really hardcore crowd actually like this type of play without consequences and rules.
Now unlike UO days, players now have a CHOICE. Don't like pvp and looting? Play another MMO..done. The real challenge for games such as Darkfall and MO is , what do you do if only a tiny % of the market actually WANTS a game like that? I actually love the idea of Darkfall, the mechanics of it, but i don't like the unrestricted PvP..hence i'll never play the game. It's not Darkfall's fault, i got lots of options, but ultimately i think people overestimate how many players actually LIKE games where everything is down to the playerbase to control...
A developer has the choice to stick it out with their hardcore crowd and maybe never grow beyond 100k subs, or pull in some of the carebear crowd by adding restrictions and rules. At some stage it WILL come down to money.....
I can only reply to this through the way pvp evolved in UO. At first it was usually solo pvpers attacking others, but the reds eventually found it safer to group and they would usually only fight when they had superior numbers or their opponents were involved with a pve battle also. UO's portal system made it very hard to locate the groups of reds also. Being anti red was a far harder job than being a red.
I agree completely,
The whole article went sour for me when she started talking about how creating two worlds was a bad thing. If the game had made two servers, one PvP and one no PvP then the PK'ers would have no one to pick on and yah the game would suck for them because they had nothign to do LOL. So what? I am not paying money so that I can increase the enjoyment of people whose enjoyment is derived mostly or solely from being a douche in-game lol. I come in contact with enough douchebags in real life.
So that is when the article went sour; when she implied that it is a bad thing for the people uninterested in unrestricted PvP(ie Pking) to have their own world. Why? Because the Pk'ers would have nothign to do, and this would be unfortunate LOL... right so force people uninterested in that bullocks to play on the same servers... there is a reason this is not popular in games nowadays and never will be. Because it does not fly, and will not. Darkfall and games like that will always barely cover expenses because the game devs could not be bothered to create interesting ways to have PvP instead of unrestricted gangfests.
FF11 had some really great ways for players to play against one another and derive benefit from it, not just stats or numbers, or a big epeen ego. Other games do as well. "Carebears" will always play these games and games like MO will feel the sting if their sad games rely solely on sandbox PvP.
I found the article and her consistent use of a rediculous term like "carebear" a sad attempt at shock value and to warm up to the epeeners, who-sadly- number so many on the interwebs. I think she plugged MO a lot and tried to make PK'ers feel that their epeening antics are OK. In a world where the big bully on the block(America) is giving us a real life version of PK'ing, I would like to think we do not need to promote that filth in the video games we play for fun.
I agree completely,
The whole article...
I agree with you both in that when open world pvp is around the lowest group of society tend to get the most fun out of a game at the expense of others. I personally enjoy pvp a lot, but I also like to do other things and not worry about some jerk just waiting for me to have a weak moment and come and finish me off after fighting something else. So I just avoid games that have pvp that I feel will just be more hassel then enjoyment, unless I want to join those that kill the helpless.
I personally enjoyed eve-onlines type of pvp systems. The world seemed safe if you were in empire space or in space controled by your alliance. It also had a lot of risk that helped get your heart rate up as you are traveling through space and see hostiles in the area. It also got lot of cooperation between players if they wanted to do things safely out in the dangerous areas.
Since when do true carebears need PKers?
Take away the PKers and the carebears are happy. They play the game and go on.
It is the PKers who need the carebears. Not only do they need a target rich environment, but they feed off the chaos and havoc they create amongst the carebears. No carebears to cry and whine = sheer boredom for the PK/Griefer.
Most Pkers in MMO's are not into the challenge of a good and fair fight, for those folks who enjoy "the sport" are already playing Medal of Honor, Counterstrike and so on.
No, PKers see themselves as the lions preying on the wilderbeasts. But get this, wilderbeasts do just fine where there are no lions, but lions die out really fast when the prey is gone. Sure, the wilderbeast population might explode and then many die due to starvation, but in the end, there still will be wilderbeasts.
A carebear MMO can function just fine without PVP (PKers or not).
PKers cannot function without the targets... I mean... carebears.
I agree with you both in that when open world pvp is around the lowest group of society tend to get the most fun out of a game at the expense of others. I personally enjoy pvp a lot, but I also like to do other things and not worry about some jerk just waiting for me to have a weak moment and come and finish me off after fighting something else. So I just avoid games that have pvp that I feel will just be more hassel then enjoyment, unless I want to join those that kill the helpless.
I personally enjoyed eve-onlines type of pvp systems. The world seemed safe if you were in empire space or in space controled by your alliance. It also had a lot of risk that helped get your heart rate up as you are traveling through space and see hostiles in the area. It also got lot of cooperation between players if they wanted to do things safely out in the dangerous areas.
this bullshit needs to stop
lowest group of society?
some people enjoy killing, ruining someone elses good time in video games because they are professionals etc..etc.. can't do it in real life
you know, the same reason some of you fruitcakes roleplay with "women" (other guys) in video games... well they're roleplaying out a killer.. right because everyones arguement is that all games are about roleplaying (nfl madden 2010 too)
so get over this lowest group of society crap, its not all teenagers, its not all scumbags living with their parents playing for 14 hours straight....
you are all so self righteous its not even funny
I agree with you both in that when open world pvp is around the lowest group of society tend to get the most fun out of a game at the expense of others. I personally enjoy pvp a lot, but I also like to do other things and not worry about some jerk just waiting for me to have a weak moment and come and finish me off after fighting something else. So I just avoid games that have pvp that I feel will just be more hassel then enjoyment, unless I want to join those that kill the helpless.
I personally enjoyed eve-onlines type of pvp systems. The world seemed safe if you were in empire space or in space controled by your alliance. It also had a lot of risk that helped get your heart rate up as you are traveling through space and see hostiles in the area. It also got lot of cooperation between players if they wanted to do things safely out in the dangerous areas.
this bullshit needs to stop
lowest group of society?
some people enjoy killing, ruining someone elses good time in video games because they are professionals etc..etc.. can't do it in real life
you know, the same reason some of you fruitcakes roleplay with "women" (other guys) in video games... well they're roleplaying out a killer.. right because everyones arguement is that all games are about roleplaying (nfl madden 2010 too)
so get over this lowest group of society crap, its not all teenagers, its not all scumbags living with their parents playing for 14 hours straight....
you are all so self righteous its not even funny
Actually they can do that in RL... they are called Criminals....
Anyways, I do agree with you that it is not just the teens, for anyone has the power to be an asshat.
The fact is, it depends on the game. In PVP based games, whining about getting Pked is juvenile. After all, what part of PVP did the player not get?
However, bullying and griefing (PVP game or not) can cross the line as to what an entire playerbase deems acceptable, and at that point, those folks who choose to engage in such behavior will be labelled as the "Dregs of Society" or the "lowest of the low."
In this case, the PKers have no one to blame but themselves, and they should understand that is the "cost of doing business" just as getting gunned down by the cops or going to jail is for criminals.
And yes, most societies see criminals as being the lowest of the low, except, maybe in the US, where Lawyers and Politicians are hated more.
Yes, "lowest group of society". Sociopaths might be a better term. Anyone who sets out to ruin someone else's fun and considers it their own fun to do so, regardless of what their social position is in real life, is a sociopath. We call them "griefers" in the online world; certainly you've heard that term. If, in real life, someone were to just randomly beat you senseless, they would be thrown in jail if they were caught. Since they can't ruin someone's day in real life, they should be allowed to do it in a game? In what universe does this make sense? There's nothing wrong with open-PVP at all, but do not expect everyone to play in it without some rule of law, just as nobody would want to live in an area of the world without rule of law. Oh and I agree with the "fruitcakes" remark - that's just odd. :p
I do hate to bring it up, but Runescape up until fairly recently did a very good job creating a symbiotic relationship betweeing PKing and Crafting.
As a Crafter, I never had to enter the PKing zone (the wilderness) unless I chose to. Yet the PKers and anti-PKers went through crafted items like mad. It created a vibrant, dynamic encomy for crafted goods where crafters actually profited from their trade at almost all levels of the game.
However, in their attempt to quash real world trading Jagex, the makers of Runescape, basically changed the game completely, and this balance was destroyed. Jagex has been trying to pick up the pieces ever since.
While Runescape sucks at a lot of things (graphics, actual gameplay), they did do some fundamental things regarding in-game dynamics and mechanics very well that made for a great sense of community (although the community itself was often rather suspect as well). I have always said that a person could make a very successful living by following some of their successful examples and adding other techniques proven successful by other games.
If you made a technologically up-to-date Runescape (i.e., lose the browser dependence), with some semblance of an end-game; more quests; reduce the never-before-seen-grinding on 24 separate skills... but keep the cross-realm/server interactivity; reinstated the "lose everything on death but get nice rewards" PvP, leaving it optional, you could have very near the perfect game.
Or so I would think.
EDIT: I'd like to add that part of the old world RS economy was the fact that there were a decent number of players buying in-game items/coins with Real World Money. The reason PKers/Duelers had so much cash to spend on crafted items was that they bought in-game currency.
I think this can be addressed by a game have more atificial injections of currency for in-game PKs. Gold farmers were, in essence, an artificial injection of in-game currency because, as far as the game was concerned, players got currency for nothing in-game. They paid cash in the real world.
Agreed. The only good thing about runescape's skill system is the fact very few hit max levels, hence endgame-content isn't really required in the same sense as other games.
Also, more quests? To be fair, runescape probably have the best quests in the mmorpg-world at the moment (say what you will about the game, but the quests are actually enjoyable). There's also quite many to do and unlike most games it can take you hours to complete the quests.
Excellent points. Its not only that though. Most gankers/griefers would do rather poorly in a total PvP system. What they count on(no, what they must have) is unwilling/inexperienced targets. Put most of them in to a game with real PvP type players, and they would soon leave. We CareBears would do just fine without them. If I want PvP I'll go play UT3, Quake4 or Section 8. Games that have been designed from the ground up to be PvP.
Excellent points. Its not only that though. Most gankers/griefers would do rather poorly in a total PvP system. What they count on(no, what they must have) is unwilling/inexperienced targets. Put most of them in to a game with real PvP type players, and they would soon leave. We CareBears would do just fine without them. If I want PvP I'll go play UT3, Quake4 or Section 8. Games that have been designed from the ground up to be PvP.
Good mmo's are designed for pvp too.
Good mmo's are designed for pvp too.
Then I've yet to see a good one. I've played almost all of the major and many of the minor MMO's over the years. I've yet to see one that does PvP anything like as well as the FPS games I mentioned. Thats hardly surprising when one notes the differences in the game types. That having been said, I see no real point in MMO PvP. Its much too prone to ganking/griefing, and none of the counter systems that have been dreamed up over the years have done much to counter that.
The reason here is simple. Developers have tried to make it "fair". "Fair" here meaning no punishment for the PKers for playing that end of their game. But no matter what you do, if the system is fair to the PKers, then they will continue to PK, and everyone else will continue to trickle out of said game.
And again, you see no real point to MMO PvP (justifiable so) because games aren't designed to make PvP important to the game world. Lets face it, most of these "MMO's" are not much more than single player games with multiplayer functionality. They are not true social worlds, only social in communication and club membership. But the "social" does not extend into the game worlds, and has no meaning to that world. These worlds are dead backdrops. Nothing more. You can't affect them, and they can't affect you. They are only there to support the level grind.
Carebear who needs pks. I find myself joining and liking open world pvp games, even though, once I'm in them, I don't find myself pking often. At first I thought it was because UO came out in middleschool and early highschool and the only 'cool' excuse you could have for playing a fantasy online game was killing other players listening to bad metal.
Now its because I like games that don't limit me arbitrarily. I know games out now are for the lowest common denominator, and so they have to make them easy with no consequences etc, but the nice thing about open pvp is the part it plays in sandbox games.
When you really want crafting, trading, carting/hauling, locations etc to be important, you need open pvp. Without it, noone ever looses their gear, so you have things like arbitrary NO TRADE etc, where for some reason most of the things you own will disintigrate if you hand it to someone else. These kind of arbitrary rules move the game more towards a mario-esque experience. They're damn fun (note I'm playing EQ2), but I also like to play games where the way I Play is the important thing, not how long I play (since in a rails based game the only variable is how far down the tracks you are).
What people have difficulty getting right is the consequence for pvp. If you make it too low, you end up with an FPS where everyone just kills everyone else, a gank/grief fest everyone here is complaining about. You make it high enough, its a high risk game, but with big wins for those that decide to PK. Those who live outside society should have a difficult time doing so, just as they do in real life. As a combat character, it should be much easier to guard a caravan for money than hide in a bush, attack them and hope that a swarm of people don't blob you to get the little bonus they'd get from killing a criminal.
Don't limit my options like I need training wheels. I mean that for open-pvp too; make pvp the ONLY viable option and you are limiting me as well.
>>
All three groups need each other for the game's survival. Take away the carebear, and the anti-PK loses his mission; take away the anti-PK, and the tide turns red with grief; take away the PKer and - well, we've seen the ending of that story in countless MMOs. If Mortal Online, or any other game seeking to bring back the days of red, cares to see the success and popularity that Ultima Online made in those days, then the balance must be struck carefully between villain, hero, and heroine.
<<
Utterly wrong. It is the PvPers that destroy games, not your insultingly termed "carebears". Every PvP-centric MMO ever has gone down the drain thanks to PvPers for three simple reasons.
1. They are 10% or so of the game population.
2. They grief the other 90% out of the game unless stopped by the developers.
3. 10% of the population is not enough to keep the servers up, especially since many of the cowards then jump to a different game because all of their "carebears" are gone and they haven't the huevos to fight other PvPrs.
Eve Online is a perfect example of this. The lowsec wannabe "pirates" do not dare go into 0.0 where they could fight real PvPers. Instead they sit all day long camping a gate (the fixed spawn point entering in the zone), or fly around hoping to scan down some mission runner's area so they can jump them while the missioner is already engaged by NPCs. Or they go steal miner's ore from their cans to try to taunt the miner into fighting them with nothing for guns (mining lasers cannot be fired at other ships). Real brave, and the sole reason why people don't leave 0.0 to go explore and fight in lowsec, eventually moving on to 0.0 space - the griefers are camping the way there.
Now put those same people into a game where people are trying to play their characters in the game - "charbears" if you will. They will fight if it's right for their char, but otherwise, they're engaged in learning the game, exploring, building things, and generally having fun. Here comes the PvP griefer, exploiting anything they can to screw up the game for someone who is trying to actually play it.
Here's a true story of my first PvP experience ever, on the first PvP server in EQ1. I logged in for the very first time and BAM - a 5th level one-shotted my 1st level char with a sword. I logged in again - BAM the same thing. This utter @sshat had nothing better to do with his time than stand at the newbie spawn spot and kill brand new characters for the 2 copper and lint in their pockets. Seriously.
Even after I skillfully evaded his next attack, got out of his sight around a tree and used my racial hide to go invisible on him and thus evaded his bullcrap spawncamping - beating him with nothing but pure SKILL in playing my char, mind you - do you think I was all happy and pleased and wanted to keep playing?
HELL NO. If the developers of the game are happy with that kind of bullsh8 happening, I am not happy with the developers of the game and will not pay them my money. I sat down, logged off and said "Good luck paying for the server all by yourselves, @sshats".
Here's another example - my beloved Planetside, a 100% PvP game where you can shoot everyone that isn't the same color as you. There shouldn't be any reason or need to grief or exploit, right? 'Cause it's 100% PvP. But still, about 10% of the population found exploits to pad their killcounts at the expense of the actual gameplay for everyone else. In a 100% PvP game where all you do is shoot other PvPers! But that just wasn't enough for the @sshats in the crowd, they had to be exploiting schmucks and ruin the fun for others with hotdropping, wallhumping, and haxing.
Bottom line - the so-called "unafraid" PvPers are the ones that kill PvP games with their need to be cowardly griefers and exploiters. Kick those lowlives out of the game, and you'll see your "carebears" out there playing as the game was intended to be played, including fighting wars.
For evidence, I refer you to Eve Online's Eve University, a massive carebear corp if there ever was one, intended to coddle up new players until they are ready to play the game on their own. Their war record and killboard tells the tale of how wussy and tame they are.
I'm still amazed on how many ppl call ganking PVP. Actually not ganking, but low lvl PKs. As i said i would mind if some1 around my lvl would try or even succed to PK me...that might make the game interesting....PKing a newbie with an high lvl toon on the other hand....
Whaaat? Most so called "carebears" in Eve are in high security space. Where resources are not won by combat, they're just there for the taking.
Question, are YOU a crafting carebear who enjoys the thrill of being hunted by PKers while you try to harvest? No? then don't speak for others, you're obviously just trying to tell a big lie here.
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While this is not a review of Mortal Online, this article gives a very favourable impression of it. I am interested in that MMO myself, but it has had some severe problems as can be seen if you go to the forums for MO here.
I've noticed that. The graphics in the video looked great. Its too bad they are so badly limiting the demographic they appeal to. Lets hope we don't have another Dark Fail on our hands here.
Whaaat? Most so called "carebears" in Eve are in high security space. Where resources are not won by combat, they're just there for the taking.
Question, are YOU a crafting carebear who enjoys the thrill of being hunted by PKers while you try to harvest? No? then don't speak for others, you're obviously just trying to tell a big lie here.
You're confusing "carebears" with "casual players who never get to the endgame".
The production/trading/transporting/mining/maintenance/logistics in lowsec is a lot more impressive and interesting than empire auction houses, and A LOT more important. The carebears down in 0.0 are plenty.
Also, I've never had problems avoiding PKers so I can't say I've ever been part of the massive carebear slaughter every other carebear seems to always be a part of. I wonder if most casual carebears have ever even played a PvP centric game with loss upon death.
Lineage 2 Is a good game with Full pvp . You barely see any reds , and they have lots of different pvp systems that makes the game quite enjoyable ( castle siege , fortress siege , clan hall siege ( yes they all 3 are sieges , but they are completely different , normal pvp , olympiad etc )
And Mortal Online wont do the same mistakes as Darkfall. Once you become red , you are flagged as murderer for the next 20 hours IN-GAME , and also every time you die , if you are Red , you will lose skils. 4% , 8% , 10% (is the max capacity for losing skils).
I sayed , EVERY time you Die , if you Are red . Dont take this as "Every time you die or , When you become red "
I actually think that full PvP is a really great options for a MMO. I always wanted to role-play a Thief/Murderer , but few games gave me this opportunity . Mortal Online will give it , and I dont really care If I get back to Skils : 0 as long as I get to play the way I want. If you cant suffer the consequences , then dont become a PK . Reds should be the elite of PvP , the daredevils of the game, Not a bunch of 12 years old kids , ganking on everybody and wasting people's time and efforts.
Well it's an interesting point of view but I think it's more an excuse of lazy design that has created this rift.
Asking for balance in MMOs these days would be like seeing realistic scenario in game trailers or simply put like asking for non scantly clad babes with buns bigger than the baker running around in the snow weilding armour and swords as if they were attatched between the thin chain holding those buns in place.
I'm plain bored we the choices out there for MMOs and your articles proves that you are either one of three groups, yet there is a fourth and fifth group just waiting for a decent MMO to play.
I don't need to go into the particulars as I'm certain there are more group types undiscovered. Until something changes I've gone back to single player games and hope that someone out there developing has some brains to realise this pathetic attitude to designing.
With regards to a balanced PVP environment the best game I ever played was and still is Dragonrealms by the good people at Simultronics. Having just come off a long stint on a much more hack and slash based game Medievia, I was looking for a more calm natured game, and Dragonrealms happened to be in open beta at the time - on AOL of all things.
For those wondering WTF - yes these are real games, yes they are _text based_, and yes they are still around and doing well - as well as a non-graphical MMO can do nowadays I suppose.
Back to Dragonrealms though - this game had a lot going for it in terms of balance. First off, it had what might be considered an early version of EVE Online's system security rating. If you were in good standing with the law and inside one of the major cities, even an attempt by another player at PKing you would garner a quick reaction from the city guards who would haul them off to jail or if they resisted put a spear in their gut. It was very unlikely a player could get away with murder in a city without being murdered by the guards in return. This is something I think is desired in many MMOs - in reality a lot of players want a semblence of the real world in their MMO play experience. If someone tries to steal your stuff there should be consequences, if someone tries to kill you there should be even greater consequences. There should be some basic laws and some enforcement of those laws, and this has to be pretty much automated in a game - even the most avid anti-PKers don't want to spend all their time doing law enforcement in a virtual world. On the flip side, players also want a sense of danger, which Dragonrealms provided - wander out of the major cities and you're in a lawless land, you can get robbed and killed, or be the one doing the robbing and killing. In this manner the "carebears" could have their world and the PKers their world, and the two were able to mix to a degree with well known and well understood consequences for both sides.
As if the above mechanics weren't enough to cater to all sides, Dragonrealms had the ultimate in "carebear" classes, the Empath. Empaths are the standard healing class that you'll find in any MMO, but with a twist. Mechanically quite distinct, the Empath had to transfer the wounds of the injured to their own body first before they could heal the wounds away. And when I say wounds I mean wounds - the gash on the left arm, the severed foot, the paralyzed spinal cord, the crossbow bolt in the tongue (no joke!) - not just the bucket of missing hitpoints. The damage system in this game is amazingly detailed to say the least but I digress (again). What made the Empath truly special was the restriction that in order to use Empathic powers the Empath must _completely shun all violence_. Give a rabid sewer rat so much as a papercut and you would be looking at something like a real-time day without your healing capabilities without aid from fellow Empaths to share the burden of the spiritual trauma.
This restriction had far-reaching consequences for how gameplay would unfold. Any players in the game involved in combat would eventually become injured, and therefore would eventually end up at the Empath's door (yes you could obtain healing in other manners such as paying NPCs or obtaining potions, etc, but these methods were always more difficult, more costly, or less effective than an Empath visit). So everyone needed an Empath friend, and thus the ultimate "carebear" class had everyone knocking at their door to heal them - and what better way to requisition the services of the one class restricted to non-combat than to offer your own combat abilities to them should the need arise?
It became a social taboo to attack any city-bound Empath (one who stayed mostly to the main cities providing their services to the injured in the local hospitals) to the point that even an attempted PK on one would garner a widespread reaction. Sometimes an annoying character might show up and disrupt the usual goings-on of a hospital area by being as annoying as possible without triggering the city guards, but this could be dealt with easily by two high-ranking empaths agreeing to call the hospital staff and have the offender ejected and barred entry for a time - another excellent anti-griefing mechanic.
At the same time Empaths were not entirely barred from PVP or dungeon crawling experiences, one could train in shields and other defensive abilities and march into battle at the rear, healing the wounded and sending them back to work - with the understanding that you better be able to run fast if the combantants on your side fell, else risk a (rightfully deserved) shank in the ribs. Bottom line, as a city Empath unless you openly pissed someone off no one in their right mind would try to PK you just for the sake of griefing unless they wanted to meet a quick death at the hands of the guards or become infamous among the anti-PKers, and as a combat Empath you could get a taste of PVP with the understanding that you forfeit some of your "immunity".
This symbiosis made the "triangle" discussed in the OP balance out - essentially there were still PKers, anti-PKers, and in the end the "carebear" Empaths cleaned up the mess and advanced in their class for doing so. An extremely well done system and something I have been dying to see the likes of in a graphical MMO, but so far no luck. It has never made sense to me that as a healing class, in any game, you gain access to your more powerful healing abilities by doing what is in my mind the most ironic thing possible - killing tons and tons of mobs. Dragonrealms was probably one of two games I've played where there was a legitamate way to play and enjoy the game without the need for combat, and by far the best on execution. Simulatronics has been working on Hero's Journey for ages now with no announced release date but I'm still hopeful that it will come and when it does it will have some aspect of this perserved in it.
/completely agree. I am hoping to any gods that may exist that this type of PvE stays in Mortal Online:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYVoeimLcnc
That is EXACTLY what fighting PvE monsters should be like.
here here
Open PVP mean "hunt he nubie and greif himm until he unsubs.
No thanks.
RvR pvp is only way to go.
CoH had great mob AI. Some of the new Lotro ranged mobs are a real pain. AI is getting better but casual players don't want a challenge they just want the reward. Virtually no MMO pays attention to anything casual players do not want, so its eye candy and easy mode firmly on. When was the last time in any MMO release, or review you heard them talk about mob AI? Yet programming and computing power have come on immensely, marketing for casual mentality means will still have mobs that act like a sitting duck.
Thats only to be expected in a market economy. In general, one gets more of what one rewards. Mass numbers of people keep flocking to such games, which results in them being profitable...Which results in more such games... It cycles back on itself. Only a niche market exists for difficult games. That niche seems to grow a bit smaller every year. Given the ever climbing costs of making these games, I can't see it changing any time soon.
I love what people say here: all PKers are cowards and incompetent pvpers who attack you when you are in disadvantage and they have numbers with them.
Next you bring the Eve Online example to show that even in full loot, FFA pvp game 10 % of players population stays in pvp zone and 90 % doesn't leave safe zone almost at all.
10 % of population terrorizes 90 % of population ? How hard is to organize yourself and develop pack behaviour ?
Don't forget that most of you claim that almost all of competent pvers are on the carebears side...
Can you people be more hypocritical ?
Stop being delusional and in fact I would say that MMO community asked for it. You support MMO games with "character progression" which most of you understand as level progression where is margin space for player skill.
That's perfect environment for your stereotypical pvp community where you can kill and grief people without risk. Levels, huge gear dependency, lack of FPS mechanics vertical not horizontal character development don't go well with open pvp. What decides about combat outcome are level, gear and stats and far behind them is your personal skill.
Well, as with many such, you seem to have a problem keeping details in mind. Most gankers/griefers *are* cowards, and need to have either many levels and/or the advantage of numbers for their attacks. But such bozos hardly make up all PvP types. Or even a good sized fraction. The statistics in Eve are closer to 50-60% stay in high sec. I doubt you've ever played Eve very much.
Some players do hunt gate campers/pirates. But because the game is so spread out, such operations can be difficult. As for the rest of your diatribe, WoW has dealt with that problem on its PvE realms. There is a server side flag that has to be up for you to even be attacked.
Don't even slightly agree.
"Carebears" don't need PK'ers, and if there aren't PK'ers, then they also don't need anti-PK'ers.
This was proven in Trammel UO. The carebears stayed on the Trammel server, leaving nothing but PK'ers/anti PK'ers for Felucca. Suddenly PK'ing wasn't fun anymore without the gank factor the "CB's" provided.
But as anyone can see with PVE-centric games doing well and most PvP games hobbling along, "Care Bears" are just fine by themselves, and make devs good money.
Replace "carebear" with "player" when you read it and it makes more sense. Overall this is garbage and the definition of carebear obviously changes depending on who is using the word.
With specific reference to EVE, virtually everything that all players use is player created. PvP combat generates the vast majority of the demand for the products of PvE activity - PvE consumption is negligible in comparison. Without PvP, the economy would be a minute fraction of its current size. So the "carebears" get the PKers money. In turn, "carebears" occasionally suffer some loss - and why should they not? The EVE Market is PvP just as much as a space battle is. Indeed, some market operations have dwarfed the largest space battles in terms of value lost.
It is not a perfect system, but it does at least show that there is a possible answer to your question. When there are lots of huge battles occuring in EVE, it is good for the miners, as the demand for the ores they mine rises, so they make more money. But in turn this means that the miners of Alliance 'A' are a valuable and vulnerable target for the PvPers of Alliance 'B'.