Scott Jennings: PvP Fail: How PvP Can Break Your Game
MMORPG.com columnist Scott Jennings writes this look at two ways that including PvP in your MMO can end in complete disaster.
Column By Scott Jennings on December 16, 2009
Nothing starts more arguments on MMORPG-focused message boards and blog postings than the topic of Player vs. Player. Call it PvP, RvR, PK, whatever you like, it is the subject that will rouse more passions than any other, bar none. For some reason, some people really like killing other people. And other people really don't like being killed. Go figure!
I've written several blog postings about it myself, as has anyone who's written about MMORPGs for more than fifteen seconds. Invoking PvP is the Godwin's Law of gaming discussions - in any discussion of game design, the longer the thread, the probability that someone will introduce PvP as either the reason for its subject's success or failure approaches 100%.
While this makes message boards alternately interesting and tedious, it does make for interesting considerations from the production side of the fence. So this week, I'll touch specifically on two fairly obvious ways that Player vs. Player can break your game on the wheel of pain, from a game development point of view:
We're Going To Make The Best Damned MMORPG Ever, Because Everyone Else Who Ever Made A MMORPG Is Dumb
A poorly kept secret of game development, as I've mentioned before here, is that game developers usually are game players as well. Not only that, they tend to be fairly hardcore game players. I mean, if they've made game development a career, chances are good they're hardcore by definition. Hardcore players tend to be attracted to player vs. player as a game style, because it's one of the "endgame" play styles in MMORPGs and attractive to players who are bored with AI opponents.
So, you know those message board threads, where the guy who runs a PvPer guild posts all the time, sick about how game developers are clueless zeroes who could never understand the purity of his vision? Yeah, sometimes they make games.
Those games are usually train wrecks, because the developers are so passionate and so sure about their vision that they have no perspective whatsoever. Shadowbane was the primary proof of this concept - a group of developers who cut their teeth on a hardcore PK mud, and spent years bringing that vision to life, in short bursts between postings on message boards about "not playing games to bake bread, but playing them to CRUSH!" (a direct quote from the game's art director, later memorialized in the game's marketing). When Shadowbane finally launched, it was an innovative sandbox-PvP design that was crippled by game-killing bugs, tedious leveling, and exploit-ridden combat. (In a footnote that cannot be touched for irony, most of the founding developers of Shadowbane later moved on to KingsIsle, and the successful tween-friendly and not at all dark and hardcore MMO Wizard 101.) Other games such as Fury and (to a degree that approached self-parody) and Darkfall had similar trajectories - developers affected a boisterous swagger, egged on by manic fans, in postings and interviews which quickly ebbed once the game was released. Surprisingly, the uncompromising purity of vision doesn't survive long when you actually have to deliver on the vision and discover that many of those derided compromises had rationales.
;)
The best way to avoid this is to avoid tunnel vision. Sure, you and your friends that helped found your company may be True Believers, but hire the experienced, shell-shocked, twitchy guy who's worked on a competing PvP game, and listen to his war stories. Experience is out there, and can be learned from. Failing to learn from that means you will most likely make the same mistakes, yet again.
Of course, refusing to compromise on your vision isn't always a disaster. The poster child for this is EVE, a game which has always embraced its calling as the game that defines hardcore space combat PvP. The game has grown steadily, to the point where it is one of the most popular MMORPGs on the market with over 300,000 subscribers, many of whom have made legends, without ever compromising on its initial vision - a virtual sandbox, on a single server, where one player can challenge the universe. Sometimes everyone else IS dumb.
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Jennings and John ,
Absolutely the best writers, in my mind, on this site. Always a good read, as a long-time player in Daoc ( and on Midguard) I felt both of those nerfs keenly. You also might recall when they nerfed Archers overall dps -- Which hurt Hunters far more than any other realm due to our lack of diversity at the time. I remember sitting at near-to-cap level for almost a year.. because there just wasn't any reason to finish on the Hunter.
It seemed like you cited that Shadowbane failed because of their hardcore PvP approach and then went on to state that it failed for every other reason but that. I'm not saying the reasons you gave for for failure were wrong, rather where the connect is between the core gameplay (play to crush, territory control) and the failure.
. Shadowbane was the primary proof of this concept - a group of developers who cut their teeth on a hardcore PK mud, and spent years bringing that vision to life, in short bursts between postings on message boards about "not playing games to bake bread, but playing them to CRUSH!" (a direct quote from the game's art director, later memorialized in the game's marketing). When Shadowbane finally launched, it was an innovative sandbox-PvP design that was crippled by game-killing bugs, tedious leveling, and exploit-ridden combat. (In a footnote that cannot be touched for irony, most of the founding developers of Shadowbane later moved on to KingsIsle, and the successful tween-friendly and not at all dark and hardcore MMO Wizard 101.)
I would love to address these comments. Shadow Bane as a PVP game was a complete success. Yes, it was a horrible launch with bugs, lag and really just a beta, but as a PvP game it did "Crush". there has been nothing like it, build an empire, defend it, make alliances, use politics or watch your Keeps fall.
Leveling was simple, easy, and fast, I have no clue where "tedious" leveling came from, being a vet of the game, it was days to reach max level. The character combos and templates and flavors of the month chars, were awesome. Something new always answered the "it" build.
If Shadow Bane was launched right, polished, and run and supported correctly, we would still be playing the game this very day. It truely was the only PvP game since UO for us PvPers!
Zerackus
Undead Lords
PvP in MMORPG just needs rules
Nowadays you can start calling Counter Strike to full loot open PvP(which is hot now)Roleplaying Game,yes.
Choose Teroside for example,rules are simple ,kill counter-terrorist or save hostages,plant bomb etc,pretty simple but extremely challenging ,depends of the gamers and map ,now friendly fire is ofcourse ON,so you can shoot your fellows too,then XxxHellTurbo666xxX logs into the game and starts shooting people from his own side he RPs "wtfpwn" "yousuck" normal lines what you can see in every MMORPG nowadays,now what happens ,people will vote him out.simple as that.
MMORPGs needs something similar to voteban ,yes.
You just sunk water with that ridiculous statement.
Darkfall is what Shadowbane should of been without the game crippling bugs.
You just sunk water with that ridiculous statement.
Darkfall is what Shadowbane should of been without the game crippling bugs.
How is it ridiculous? Darkfall didn't exist when SB came out, thus his statement that it was (past tense) "the only PvP game since UO for us PvPers" is a reasonable one. If anything I would have clarified the type of PvPer being referred to, which is the group interested in having relatively high material risk (territory, city, items, gear).
Not sure you can lump darkfall as a failed game. Its handling fairly well, almost exactly as expected by developers.
That aside nice writeup. You should link you blog entry about how to make PvP in a game work.
As for shadowbane and darkfall. DF took a lot of lessons from shadowbane.
Stationary cities
No flying classes
no point and click combat
time it took to build up a city vs destroying it so that players would not get frustrated and leave
Don't release buggy
Keep full control over your own game. (not working with publishers and others who demand deadlines and features)
and many many more.
Or sometimes you have a class that is dependent on a core concept that is, um, a bug. Sticking with Dark Age of Camelot, let’s look at the Berserker class. It’s a class that swings two axes at people. This is a simple concept. Swing axes, do damage, fall down because you can’t take that much in return. Pretty much every game has some class like this - the melee glass cannon. Well, one fine day the game server programmer noticed that there was a fairly obvious bug in the way combat was calculated that made “Left Axe”, the Berserker off-hand weapon skill, do entirely too much damage. So… he fixed it. We fix bugs, right? Well, for all the Berserker players who logged in one day and did substantially less damage (in a class focused on... doing damage) it was not right, it was fairly wrong. And no amount of adjustments later fixed it. People got fed up, and left.
Um, just to correct Mr. Jennings, it was not a server programmer that discovered that bug. It was a player of DAOC, a class lead in particular, who argued strongly for weeks with math proofs that there was a bug/problem with "Left Axe". He was told repeatedly by both Mythic and fans he was wrong. Until one day after his incessant urging, it was discovered he was right. He was forever branded with the nick name "Left Axe" after that. Mythic didn't just randomly discover this bug, one of the forum warriors you're disparaging here did.
Other than that, good article!
"Darkfall had similar trajectories - developers affected a boisterous swagger, egged on by manic fans, in postings and interviews which quickly ebbed once the game was released."
1) I have no clue what the blog writer means by the above. DFO PvP is open with full loot and does not feel compromised from any vision on any level. Just a wierd statement above that makes no sense.
2) I never speak in this manner, but the entire blog sounds like one long QQ to me.
It's really very simple. It is "Vision" that creates great PvP. It is compromise that destroys it. UO had awesome PvP and declined with Trammel due to OSI listening to the complaining on the boards. Asherons Call Darktide server owned for PvP. From what I understand, 1 or 2 of the Zek servers also rocked in EQ1. Shadowbane's issues were in code, not in PvP mechanics.
I got nothing from the article.
-CC
Well it trully is hard to get something from an article made by a veritable carebear who gives opinions for games he should never even write about.
Leave the PVP bloggs and articles to someone such as Paragus Rants who actually PLAYED all of them and knows what the heck he's talking about.
Basically, the whole article is about how the balancing act of PVP in MMOs is what brings them down.... as if he's from some different universe where PVE isn't plagued with the same balancing act.
At least that's what I got from it, the article didn't really have a clear direction and felt very forced.
Edit:
I also like the fact that he basically said what I said above, but he forgot to mention that the Arena system in WoW accounts for 5% of population but for a LONG LONG time the entire skill system was balanced solely around arenas. And everyone know's that WoW is the definition of a failed MMORPG. Oh wait...
Last time I played WoW was 3.2 and I have no clue what he's talking about "skills can only be used there", but I do remember a huge outcry for it on the forums. Deathgrip virtually destroyed the mini-game they call PVP.
Yeah... I was disappointed in that too.
"...Player vs. Player. Call it PvP, RvR, PK, whatever you like..."
Um... PvP is not the same as RvR and PK is different again.
And having mentioned PvP and RvR how about PvP games that have trouble because they could not balance the RvR?
You know, the ones where everyone wants to play the 'baddies' and the goodies get tired of getting pwned at 2:1 odds and leave?
That would be population balance? Not class balance?
Regardless of personal experience with PvP in MMOs, the article was a nice read, and got me thinking.
As someone who rarely dabbles in the PvP area myself, I must admit that I've had a constant interest in it. Why I haven't gotten fully into the arena, however, is because I've not felt viable. In my opinion, (a crude one, since I'm still learning about the intricacies of PvP mechanics) a good sense of PvP is when you can take a fresh character and get onto a battlefield and not be crushed by a max-level character who is fully-geared and targeting characters so far below them they just have to twitch to kill them. I've had a bit of this experience games, WoW, AoC, and DaoC being just a few.
Now, again, I'm pretty new to the PvP world, but is this sector of games reserved for the "elite"? If so, should it? I enjoy competition, and I'm not someone who pitches a fit when he loses, but I also don't desire to spend countless hours gearing up and researching builds just to have a chance of winning a fight. Maybe I'm making too much of an exaggeration.
My point is this: Is there a game, or can one be made, where PvP doesn't feel like a separate enitity in a game; one so entiwined with aspects such as PvE that it moves seamlessly between the two? I think if a solution like this can, or has been, found it would make the experience of a game better. But again, this is just my opinion. I'm very open to hearing what avid PvPers have to say on the topic, their experience and how they adapted to the game playstyle.
When all is said and done a scripted AI mobile cannot reach anywhere near the playing skills of an averagely intelligent player. The game has to have a very defined play field, such as chess, for an AI to compete with a human and MMORPGs are not so strictly defined.
So since MMORPGs are by definition for massively amount of people, why would you then spend your time competing with an AI? Isnt a single player game the natural choice for that?
Unfortunately, open PVP in a PVE based game brings out the griefers, and griefers ruin it for everyone else. "Look at me, I'm level 809 and you're level 2...I can keep you dead indefinitely. Hahaha! I Roxor'd u, N00b! Fear my l33ts! Have a nice cry as you quit the game never to return. Gee, where'd everyone go?"
Leveling in Shadowbane was a joke. Go to the right spot, setup one of your high level guildies to auto-kill everything that spawns, come back in a few hours to find your toon at max level. If that's going to be the norm, why do it in the first place - just spawn players at max level. I miss my Confessor, tho.
PVP balance IS hard. Having any form of incapacitation makes the game just plain frustrating, since "you can't do that while stunned". If I can't even use my abilities to defend myself before I'm dead, why am I playing? I can understand getting one-shotted - that's actually expected, as long as I'm not killed from blanket invisibility (rogue "stealth" in MMORPGs is almost always implemented stupidly, but that's a whole other topic). I can't understand standing there letting a guy whittle my health down while I can't do anything.
Balancing range versus melee is probably the toughest challenge. Range attackers are almost always squishy, which means they have to kill a melee attacker before that attacker gets near or it's game over. Melee have to be able to get close or they won't get a chance to kill the squishy. In the real world, the ranged attacker wins simply by getting a decent hit - accuracy guarantees the win. How do you model this into a game fairly without making the win simply based on random number generation or stupid gimmicks like jittery crosshairs or cone of fire blooms?
I think we're in basic agreement. Shadowbane was a fun game for the people that grokked it and wanted free-form PvP - as I said, the basic design was sound. Where it fell down was in execution - players simply weren't willing to put up with the level of bugs and lack of polish. The game never was able to recover from its launch. And by "tedious levelling" - the game was very much not built around PvE, yet required PvE levelling. Monsters in the game were generic, boring bags of semi-mobile XP with little rhyme or reason. Hardcore players didn't care because they got in guild groups and AFK-botted their way to max level. Players not as hardcore got bored and frustrated and left. Thus you had a game with few players, little profitability, and eventual closure.
I tried! Unfortunately my word processor choked on the links at the last moment and I missed that one.
http://www.brokentoys.org/2007/12/10/how-to-make-a-game-with-pvp-done-right/
I disagree. You could spend literally months to build a castle, just to have it destroyed in a day. That is not a good PvP concept for me.
If it takes only a day to destroy it then it should only take marginally more to build it. Otherwise it is not a game but rather a chore.
I am fairly certain the server programmer in question discovered the bug independently.
I have also never been shy about admitting that theorycrafting players generally know more about game mechanics then the people who wrote the actual code, and when on DAOC would often rely on those players (including the one you refer to, if he's who I'm thinking of) to sanity check conclusions drawn from examining code.
Oh, look, this is where I get to list all the PvP-focused games I've played and enjoyed through the years, from Ultima Online to Modern Warfare (not to mention the ones I've, you know, worked on), only to be told that because I haven't spent years in the poster's favorite game/guild/8v8 group that I'm some easily dismissed scrub!
If that is the case, why not build scripts for the AI specific to the mob and its environment (or to use your term, a defined play field.) Since you generally find mobs in a certain area of the game, they could be tailored to fight in different ways, depending on their location and direct surroundings. Would this be possible, or is it an insurmountable endeavor?
If it is possible, then the player would not only have a "capable" and "versatile" mob to fight, but once the player learns the patterns, they will be able to recognize players who do not follow said patterns. Both mob and player would be able to fight intelligently at different levels, but at least the gap of difference between them would be lessened, I think.
I think fighting other players should be a challenge, but one that doesn't completely take you out of the surrounding game experience. Knowing I'm fighting a player vs. a mob is a departure in and of itself aside from the drastic differences in builds/gear that I've seen come with them in today's games.
Hardcore players tend to be attracted to player vs. player as a game style, because it's one of the "endgame" play styles in MMORPGs and attractive to players who are bored with AI opponents.
This imo is what is wrong with "Hardcore PVP" games. They are not end game goal pvp oriented. Far too often, while the endgame is entirely pvp oriented, new players have to deal with older players coming into the new player areas and pking them with little or no chance of retaliation. New players become frustrated and leave causing the player base to stagnate and eventually dissolve as the older players become board with fighting the same people over and over. Level restrictions or pve areas become very necessary as the game matures to keep the influx of new players coming in. DAoC did this very well, and even went the extra step to provide balanced pvp areas for lower level players so they did not have to take their level 14 toon up against a maxed out level 50 toon to enjoy a brake in the monotony of grinding. More games built on their model would make a successful gaming company, again imo.
Cant be sooo hard to think these ,lets take wow for example becos pretty much everyone knows something about it.
now theres character classes like priest ,hunter,serialkiller,mage,paladin
skills of the serialkiller,you can kill everybody in the game,no matter what ,you dont need any reason to do so ,why,well,becose you are serialkiller??woo imagine that!you cant speak ,you cant write to any chat,even serialkillers dont talk with each other,you cant visit any cities,no NPC talks to you etc..
Darkfall example ,you kill people who are not hostile to you,first you will lose your race chat,then global chat ,and after all what you have done you will lose all your chats and ability to use any vendors and you cant speak to NPCs anymore,and theres no way to come back,only way is reroll,or something like that.
just something what came into my mind.
Found the article to be interesting and very ironic.
I have been a casual darkfall player since NA launch. As you may know a major expansion was released last week. Having a rare day off today I decided to check the official forums this morning for the first time maybe ever just to see what the expansion reactions were like.
Sure enough it was full of raving lunatic's threatening to quit because polearms were "nerfed" last week. I really have no opinion on the matter but the way you directly addressed this type of thing in your article was so funny to me. You also pointed something else out perfectly. All the hardcore players in Darkfall have been using polearms since launch. Sure enough though if you look at the official forums these said lunatic's will scream bloody murder if you bring that up.
Thx again for the article. Relieved my headache from reading those forums lol. I'm thinking one of forum warriors is going to track me down in this thread and post some kind of polearm diatribe!
Cheers.
I agree with you about the stuns. It frustrates me to no end that I can't even use the character I love to compete against a class who can keep me unconscious until I succumb to my wounds.
In regards to ranged attacks, I also agree with you. My problem with ranged classes is that ranged attacks in and of themselves are an advantage. I would like to see a game where everyone can make use of said advantage, but have it situational. I sigh every time a hunter pops out of nowhere and kills me before I can get up to him with my melee class. That isn't very fun if I can't use some form of ranged counter-attack, or at least take some cover!
I think an answer can be found in the departure from class-based systems. Sure, keep the idea of archetypes in the game to give a vision of what skills do what and how to get them, but allow people to create a balance between melee and ranged. To give a console title as an example (game mechanics aside), Demon's Souls allowed players to use both ranged and melee attacks according to their stats and equipment choice. The game has character archetypes, but not ones that completely defined your character's play style for you. Please correct me if I'm wrong, as that may have been a poor example.
love the article.
as a non-pvper (carebear) I am quite anti PVP for several reasons first many of the PVPers ive meet seem to be well... jerks
immature, wanting to proof how big their manhood is even if it means killing vastly weak and unarmed players, some just like caussing other players pain.
game developers do tend to seem to create games in isolation "reinventing the wheel" as it were,, some things need to be the same or similar almost standardized like resizeable windows in the UI (suprising how many games havent included this 20th century advancement)
as a "carebear" i tend to follow these pvp rules
1. for the most part I want to be able to choose when I participate in PVP encounters that measn if im farming or mining im not wanting to have to worry about being ganked. i dont want the game play GIMPED to try to force me to PVP.
2. I want different extreems to the PVP areas some being non-lethal so that i can "test the waters" or get some expirence fighting PVPers without the all or nothing risk.
3. I prefer areas or battle lines or neutral zones where I know that PVP occures there. i dont mind if these areas change or fluxuate like areas of control.
4. as a casual player I want to be able to be effective enough to survive long enough to be able to enjoy PVP. if im gonna travel for 2 hours and end up dieing in the first 5 seconds or that the enemy is so advanced there effectivly immune to anything I do that I wont bother showing up.
I was going to use EVE for my example since its very hard core PVP and your effectivly not safe anywhere and non-PVPers are 2nd class citizens and they are the ONLY viable scifi MMO operating you either tough out a meger existance or you leave the game,, I have encountered many EVE refugees I thought STO was gonna make EVE into a ghost town but its obvious that STO is not up to the task.
anyone ever make a casual player friendly version of EVE let me know (though i do hope they do a better job of adding content to their solar systems and planets)
You know I've always wondered why developers don't make PvPvE games that separate PvP skills/stats/items from PvE ones more often (if ever?). Sure it'd be more time consuming but would help alleviate problems with balancing for PvP screwing up PvE or vice versa. In essence the it'd be more time consuming thing would balance itself out because you wouldn't be performing a high wire act trying to not break one or the other.
Anyway, good read. And you should have known that if you weren't going to boast about the wonders of PvP in your article then you know you suck, are a carebear, know nothing of MMOs, hate your mom and whatever...
I think we're in basic agreement. Shadowbane was a fun game for the people that grokked it and wanted free-form PvP - as I said, the basic design was sound. Where it fell down was in execution - players simply weren't willing to put up with the level of bugs and lack of polish. The game never was able to recover from its launch. And by "tedious levelling" - the game was very much not built around PvE, yet required PvE levelling. Monsters in the game were generic, boring bags of semi-mobile XP with little rhyme or reason. Hardcore players didn't care because they got in guild groups and AFK-botted their way to max level. Players not as hardcore got bored and frustrated and left. Thus you had a game with few players, little profitability, and eventual closure.
funny mentioning this since darkfall just revamped their whole pve AI to make it more of a challenge and enjoyable.
That was just one big whinefest.
Don't like pvp, don't do it. or don't play the game. It's really that simple.
I dislike questing, should I cry about it in every other thread too?
dont like pvp,dont´t do it,or don´t play the game called real life.It´s really not that simple
theres rules and reasons for PvP in real life and there should be rules and reasons for PvP in virtual life.
One reason you cannot make games for both PvErs and PvPers. For eve to cater to you as a gamer it would basically ruin the whole fundamentals of the game.
One of the things I like about eve though is the way they cater to Non Pvpers and Pvpers. Empire space is nice and you can enjoy the game there a lone. But you get into 0.0 and that is where the good mining, production and high ends NPCS and high end paying missions are. In my opinion they are risking more so they deserve bigger payouts. Also if you flipped this around the PvP in eve would simply not work since everyone would huddle empire space.
This is opposed to something like darkfall, where it does not cater to you at all. Or games like lotro or wow where PvP is a soccer (football for those across the pond) tournament.
Alas, that's my impression of the most vocal and militant members of the PvP community.
Real life is FFA PvP with full looting, you know. There's a reason why you don't usually get ganked when you're down at the mall.
There are consequences in the real world for being a jerk...or, as we call them in the real world, after they've faced sanctions for being a jerk, a criminal.
Online games, though, are like online fora: no one knows you're a dog. Anonymity allows for a lot of behaviors that would otherwise be kept in that deep dark place.
The other problem with PvP is that you've got the supreme irony of other maniacal PvPers being your content. Which means that being a jerk will eventually kill your fun.
I remember in SWG there was this guy who claimed to be a big roleplayer, who was an Imperial, yet he couched his role playing in terms of "I'm going to crush your guild". The problem is that guilds are a game construct, not something that exists in the world of Star Wars. What guild or player association a player is in shouldn't make a difference as far as role play is concerned. So it was obvious that he was working out some RL issues with others online...Darth Sidious could feel his anger, I"m sure.
So this guy was undermining his own play experience by being such a rancorous person...he was pissing off his content, his fellow PvPers.
THAT makes PvP an interesting dynamic in a game. The fact that you can have your fun as a gankaholic asshat for only a short period of time before your prey leaves.
Which is why FFA PvP isn't much of a long term business model for an MMO.
Darkfall Online has done an exceptional job of combining PvE and PvP in to one game. It does not feel detached in the least. There are no levels in DFO, as it is a skill based game where skills increase upon use of them. A new player in DFO would have a tough time alone in PvP for sure, but in a guild, with a group, even a newbie can make a difference and end up the winner if they play smart.
Per other comments in this thread, DFO has no stuns or memorize type spells. PvP and PvE go hand in hand are PvP is the most skill based of any game I've played, except UO, but with some more time, DFO may top that as well.
re Polearm debate on DFO forums, it is pretty funny, but they aren't entirely wrong. There was a polearm balance done months ago that felt pretty good; but I don't use PA's so no idea if the complaining has merit or not. I do know that the developer of DFO, AV, plays its own game and makes these decisions based upon their in-game experience, and not just by the level of whining on message boards, which by the way, is the real historical problem with PvP in MMO's. Developers typically lose control to the suits at the top of the corporate entity they are owned by. Fortunately, AV doesn't have this problem to contend with.
Re generalizations about the type of folks that love PvP, I can understand where it comes from. There are some real lunatics that are PvPrs; but they get all the attention. The majority are mature and rarely even use message boards, so they just aren't as vocal. Also, PvPrs hardly have a cornerstone on being jerks. I've seen players use the lack of open PvP to be real asshats in PvE games as well. It's not about PvE or PvP, but about people and the Internet. In my guild of 100 on Darkfall, there isn't 1 jerk as we mutually understand the term, among them.
-CC
DF was the first time since UO i have run into the friendly PK. These are an odd group but they will kill you and loot you but when you go to retrieve your body they will normally hand you back your noob weapon and other gear you need but they don't(which they kept others from ninja looting) and give you a few tips.
Its normally a very good experience.
I am posting way to much in this thread.
Also in regards to PvP and RP. It is normally the best way to RP. Non full loot, ffa rping normally just breaks down into little unconnected drama clubs. UO FFA PvP Allow us to make our own rules and stay united as a community. We would fight each other and not loot, but loot non RPers and griefers. Story lines actually had more consistency to them. Plus it normally drove off the thin skinned RPers who were really good at ruining rp worse then the gankers.
Eventually - maybe in another five or six years - all the other MMOs will catch up to UO.
I lol'ed, as it were. He talked about forum warriors rushing to the attack in the article and then was promptly swarmed by forum warriors the minute his article went up. It was nice to see people emphasising his point for him.
He's no spring chicken to the forum fight either. He is just as much as a forum fighter as the rest of us, probably more.
To Jennings, Posters, and All.
If you couldnt handle Shadowbanes hardcore system then dont bitch about it, theres a lot of people who will say its among the most original, entertaining MMO's released.
dont like pvp,dont´t do it,or don´t play the game called real life.It´s really not that simple
theres rules and reasons for PvP in real life and there should be rules and reasons for PvP in virtual life.
lol, I'm trying to read what you typed but its difficult.
He had a point, there's a lot of people who would rather "gank" then "quest" to level up/skill up...but most games don't allow us to do that (DFO and UO I guess in a way)
In the end they just need to make 2 server types always - Hardcore PvP which has no carebear rules AT ALL, full loot, or full bag loot (which means equipment stays) and then of course your classic PvE server with the normal rules.
Wait...have I missed something or the author is blaming pvp and pvp oriented gamers for all evil in this world ?
I smell a conspiracy theory equal that one about 9/11 inside job.
Shadowbane was a great game with good PVP and easy leveling.
lol, I'm trying to read what you typed but its difficult.
He had a point, there's a lot of people who would rather "gank" then "quest" to level up/skill up...but most games don't allow us to do that (DFO and UO I guess in a way)
In the end they just need to make 2 server types always - Hardcore PvP which has no carebear rules AT ALL, full loot, or full bag loot (which means equipment stays) and then of course your classic PvE server with the normal rules.
The point is,there is no PvP rules
I try to explain this with my lvl1 english (talent in kindness)
theres PvE servers where you cant attack opposite side(kills virtual reality straight in 1 second)
and theres PvP server where you can attack opposite side,they just removed rule from their PvE rules but didnt give anything as substitute.
For example in wow PvP servers are perfect becose theres reason to kill people from opposite side,in matter of fact its more than a reason ,its best part of wows roleplaying cos you might actually really hate that opposite faction.
then theres this allmost new thing called full loot open PvPRPG where you can kill everybody,without a reason or with reason,so when you are PvP player or PvE player,then you are both at the same time,which is very good thing,but now,those rules,theres no rules for this kind of action at the moment.
when they say wiihuu we are full PvP without rules ,its like saying we make war without a reason.
so now on im going to say that Counter Strike is best Full loot PvP RP game in the market at the moment.
Hullo! Nice article. Unapologetic carebear here. (What can I say? I have low tolerance for idiots and asshats, and lord, does PvP bring those out in force.)
Look, I don't mind what you guys do to balance PvP. Over there. Away from me. If it can avoid breaking PvE, I am totally all for it. But when things happen specifically because of PvP that squash a character utterly in PvE... well, I get annoyed.
Anyone play City of Villains? I've never before flat dropped a character to remake them again... until that game. God help stalkers. I'm sure whatever specifically-specced stalker could do a good bit of damage in the VERY LIMITED available PvP and be asshats, but they were subpar at best in PvE unless you were terribly careful. And then the nerf came.
PvE and PvP are two utterly different ballgames. Kudos on WoW for eventually realizing that. I like the "This changes for PvP, not PvE" solution. Best of both worlds, I'll deal with the weird bugs.
was "those" people you and your multiple personalities, because i have never heard ANYONE say that about shadowbane LOL.
Wow somebody sure slapped that article together in a hurry! Here's a tip start more than 20 minutes before your deadline so your throughts are cohesive. Also try to substantiate your claims with facts and source material. You almost had a good article on your hands here.
PvP-focused players are insistent on this - if a class is overpowered, everyone uses it, they use it to kill them, this is bad, and it should stop. Now. Or they’ll leave. And take their entire guild... Of thousands.
LOL this is so true, so true! I've read it so many times on so many boards. All those PvP whiners.. gosh.
I love the way Turbine did PvP or to be precise PvMP in LOTRO. You stay the hell out of my game (PvE) and I'll stay the hell out of your game (Ettenmoors for PvMP). Looove it this way. Separate chat channels, separate everything, almost like 2 different games with exception that you can go to that OTHER game with PvP rules if you want to but not the other way around. Keep those PvPers in their cage, if I want to go PvP, I'll go visit their cage. Otherwise they'd be like dogs in other open PvP games - annoying as hell. Very good solution.
No griefing, no crying in world channel, everything is so nice and quiet, if you disable OOC channel of course. There is another thing - raiding. That one brings a lot of idiots in as well. Not as many as PvP though but still. So, many people prefer to stay away from their "chat" in OOC channel. Funny thing is that they are like a virus, they migrate from one spot to the other. After realising that everyone disabled OOC they've occupied GLFF channel used to find a group. PvPers are in a lot of cases same as raiders - annoying as hell. I guess its just a nature of a player no matter what age their are. They are just being themselves - annoying as hell. I wonder what kind of people they are in a real life. Something make me believe they are not far from what they are in games.
I don't think its the play field, but more that creatures are defined much different than humans. DF is the perfect example where the mobs are defined very similar to humans, with the ability to produce ranged, melee, and magic attacks.
SHADOWBANE was the MOST AWESOME and i hope and pray for a SHADOWBANE 2.
create unique one of a kind characters, jack of all trades or "spec" build
level up quickly
risk/ reward with inventory loot (not equipped items)
incredible daily group and multi group PvP
build a city
burn and destroy a city
...what other game allows you to "peak" or "steal" from another players inventory? ..but if you got caught.. jajajaja
lots of bugs,,, but that was one hella fun PvP game.
Aracaoix-Rogue-Barbarian-Medium Armor-Throwing Axes
The bitter truth is that you can't have true balance unless everyone has access to the same items/power etc. Balance is needed in PVP or everyone will just flock to the most powerful be that class/side/build whatever.
The second thing to swallow is the fact that you can't mix PVE and PVP. It simply can't happen as you will NEVER achieve balance. WOW has made this mistake and has lost a ton of players over the last couple years. They have nerfed PVE so much due to PVP that they had to dumb down the PVE content to compensate. It's really pathetic.
Diversity in classes/powers etc does not work in PVP. About the only true MMOFPS is Planetside. Great game, full PVP, tons of fun. The problem? Flavor of the Day. People flock to which ever side is overpowered that day. Thus making the game one sided to a degree even though there are 3 factions.
Replay ability of PVP games is also a downfall. True PVP games usually consist of the same thing done over and over again.
MMO's need to be PVE centric and simply allow duels. Balance the game on PVE and let the PVP settle as it may. Stop trying to cater to BOTH sides and stop trying to quite the Forum complainers. Make your game the way you want it and be done with it. Nerf bats are never a good idea.
Great read.
While it is true that some HC PVP games do well I have to wonder how well they might do if they allowed players to choose a PVEplay style. Better..be able to toggle between the two.
I played MUDS in the late 70s and noticed a huge difference in the success of these games based on how PVE/PVP was handled. One, Dragonmud, was open pk...kill, loot the player...in many cases just to grief them. The mud had some great areas but never seemed to be able to attract a large following. Contrast this with Aardwolf where a player, and if desired, a guild ,could choose between the 2. FYI, Muds, as a general rule, were free due to licence restrictions on the base code.
Dragonmud failed but Aardwolf had a base of over 6000 (huge for a mud) and recieved enough donations from players to keep expanding and buy equipment and even a T1 line. Everyone was happy. It is still going strong (er) today.
Before I get called a carebear...I was in 2 guilds, both Pk (without the loot player option). Light, a pk but also helpful and NOT a lowbie ganker and before I left, Dominion, which was pretty hard core PK.
The bottom line is MMOs are in business to make money. If they do, they suceed. If they don't they are soon just a memory.
Uncommon sense!
It would make sense to allow both the pvp and pve optional as it would result in a much larger player base. One that would see a some migration of newer pve players to pvp as they got more comfortable with the game.
This approach benifits all players because the larger player base means more profit and keeps the game viable. If you love X game I would think you would want it to do as well as possible....maybe even take the crown from WOW? The fact that some players choose a casual pve existance will never hurt the pvp lovers. They can either be gone if the game doesn't meet thier needs or be a contributer in what keeps a game going....money.
At the very least there should be a restriction that prevents griefing. A new player getting crushed by a player having a large level advantage, so much so they can't even hit them, isn't fun.
There is a forum on Aion where one particularly stauch PVP ONLY. leave if you don't like it turns out to have just over 250 kills. Not bad cept this same player has fewer abyss point than a player with 4 kills. All these kills were players of far lower level players. This is not good for the game. New players leave...with thier subscription fees, friends and, sometimes guilds . They also warn friendsof the poor balance etc. Not good. Certainly not profitable.
MMORPG PvEPvP FPS game with rules which suits for everybody,introduced by blizzard in StarCraft Online.
I allmost hope that history repeats itself
PvP failure has been the very reason I've quit every MMORPG I've ever played. Here's a list of failures that frustrated me to the point of no return -
1. PvE Areas That Allow Unrestricted PvP - This is an attempt by the developers to please the sociopaths by letting them 'gank' players of the opposing faction. Ultimately, this feature frustrates far more people than it pleases.
2. PvP Rewards That Are Better Than PvE Rewards - Once players get to the top, this kind of system makes it almost impossible to compete against them. Players that join the game later than others are at an instant disadvantage.
3. Rock-Paper-Scissors Type Classes And Overbalancing - Instead of letting the players create their character, the game developers do it for them. Always losing to a specific class simply because it's 'better' than yours removes every bit of creativity from the game.
4. "Must Have" Gear And Gear Based Combat - PvP should be about strategy and skill, not play time and gear collection. Losing to someone because they had that 'uber epic' that took them 6 months to farm only makes me want to quit.
5. Rewards For Being In A Specific Guild - This simply makes it impossible for some people to compete properly. Why would I want to play a game where my community standing has a huge impact on my ability to have fun? Again, this is a huge disadvantage for players that join the game later than others.
6. Grinding - PvE is understandable, boring PvE isn't. Korean grindfests need to die, yesterday. I want to PvP, not PvPvEvEvEvEvE...
7. Massive, Unbalanced PvP - There's nothing like spending months of your time working on a character that isn't even noticed in a PvP battle. The side with the most players wins! Yay...
8. Pay-2-Win - Cash shops are bad, mmmkay?
9. Being Spread Too Thin - This problem has single handedly killed several MMOs. Too many servers, too many objectives, not enough focus. Where is everyone?
10. Static PvP - Not being able to evoke real change in a game sucks. This isn't necessarily a deal-breaker, but it will certainly shorten the amount of time I'm willing to spend playing.
11. Twitch Based PvP - Button-mashing zergfests that result in 2 second life spans have no place in an RPG. It's not that I don't enjoy that kind of combat, it's just that it never mixes properly with RPG style game play.
I know I'm never going to play an MMORPG that I'll enjoy. Most people like the 'problems' I've listed here and aren't going to play anything that might actually be a challenge for them. I guess MMOs are just glorified chat rooms after all...
All I could think of when I read the first blue titled section was; Pirates of the Burning Seas.
I swear that's exactly how the game came about! LOL!
I've always got a kick out of those that swear up and down how they are the biggest, baddest Pvp'er's around and then; to use (pre-CU) SWG as an example, attack the other factions fort's at O-dark thirty when you know no defender's are online. And THEN crow about their big Pvp victory! Hahahaha
Good article, and sums up a lot of what I think myself quite nicely. As much as us hardcore vets like some PVP I think most MMos would benefit from ditching it completely.
If you are going to make a niche game then making it PVP centric is fine, but imagining an open-world, sandbox PVP title that will be a huge hit is I think very, very, very unlikely. So rather than ruin your great PVE game because 'everyone' claims you need PVP why not just focus on making a great PVE game?
Personally, I thought the article was freaking hilarious:
" I’ve got no answer for what the designer was thinking on this one and I worked on this game."
"I haven’t even touched on the fact that hardcore PvP players tend, as a stereotype, to be very unique and special snowflakes when it comes to customer service issues"
I also thought the reference to Godwins Law was particularly funny, quite simply because its true. Especially in MMO forums.
However, he does make some good, if not obvious, points about how balancing is a constant struggle and no matter what you do with the best of intentions, you will end up upsetting someone.
I'm what one would term a "casual" PvPer. I play Fallen Earth and I haven't really even gotten involved in the PvP content there; I'm still busy exploring the vast world. I've been playing that game since launch and I finally have a character up to about level 20, a guild that I enjoy, and a sense that I'm "ready" to at least start looking at the PvP options in the game.
I played Everquest, and loved it, and that was about as complete of a PvE experience as you could get - I played back when it first came out and you needed a "balanced" group to do most of the content. I kinda liked it in a way; you had to meet and interact with people in a way that is somehow missing from games like WoW where you basically solo to the endgame and then do "raids..."
One of my favorite games, however, was Warhammer Online. I played it, my wife played it, we loved it. It felt easy to get into the PvP and you were usually fighting on a "team" of people - I'm not really into the one vs. one arena-style combats of WoW. I'm much more "into" team style PvP, like in Warhammer Online when I could hop online on a Saturday night and get a team of 23 other people to follow me through the world capturing flags, taking keeps, and fighting other large bands. THAT is fun to me. Not so much the arena style combat which reminds me more of teenage size comparisons than an actual intellectual or enjoyable gaming experience. (If I want that, I can log on to a FPS and be in awe as the 13 year olds around me show me just how much my reflexes have degraded at my tender age of 30... ;) )
I think Warhammer Online had a GREAT idea with poor implementation. The problem with that game wasn't simply the fact that it was based around PvP - that was actually what I loved about it. (I also liked DAOC, for the record.) The problems were balance, server stability, problems with the game engine, complete lack of a "fun" end game, and a system completely designed around there BEING an intelligent non-AI enemy to fight. The PvE in Warhammer was okay, nothing fantastic, I enjoyed the "lore book" that gave information on the world as you played the game but... most people played Warhammer Online because it was a fun, fast way to get into a TEAM based PvP environment.
If they manage to recapture that, if they manage to merge the servers together to a point where I can actually logon at, say, midnight during the week and find more than 10 active players online doing anything - I'll happily resubscribe.
I don't think the problem is PvP itself, Mr. Jennings. I think the problem is that nobody has quite found the right way to implement it in a system that is fun and fair for everyone AT THE START - which necessitates a lot of balancing, nerfs, buffs... things that, as you say, make players feel like their time investment means little or nothing. Warhammer Online came very close in a lot of ways - it would be interesting to see that game running on a single server/shard like "EVE" or "Fallen Earth" where there were always plenty of people in any tier to fight, with a year or two worth of class fixes and balances behind it. Warhammer Online was an absolute BLAST when it was good - when you were in a good group, during prime-time, I still think that game offered more sheer team-based PvP fun than any other game that came before or after it.
What killed it wasn't PvP at all. What killed it was a horrible implementation of PvP and then a complete lack of people to... well, PvP with once they all left. There are many PvE games that fail in just as spectacular of ways - I don't think I even need to start mentioning them as I'm sure you know quite a few more off the top of your head than I.
There is a place for the casual PvPer out there - usually from what I've found, they're more mature gamers - a lot of people from the military and former military members seem to love team-based PvP games as well, perhaps for obvious reasons. The "hardcore" PvPers are, in fact, a smaller audience than these more casual PvPers. People like my wife and I who never log on to a forum and scream that our class is unbalanced, but we did very much enjoy logging on as our squig herders and shooting poison arrows into the avatars of our enemy - enemies that were made much more real for us knowing that it was a team of other living, breathing opponents fighting us and not just a computer generated AI.
There are two main reasons that PvP centric mmorpg's fail and lose subscribers.
It's two reasons that the ones that scream the loudest of their innocence are the most guilty ones, FACT!
2 Reasons:
1. Gank fest preying on new players because they are simply bored, or scared of a real match.
2. The MAIN reason: PvP is nothing more than a scriptfest. Over 10 years ago only a very small minority used hack programs or back in those days Macro programs to automate game functions for them to give them an unfair edge.
Nowadays it's no longer about macro programs it's all about scripting programs and who can write the best scripts. Scripting software is 10 times faster than any macro programs and is more complex naturally.
Scripting programs can be programmed to do what macro programs could never do with such ease.
Argue all you want but those 2 reasons are based on actual FACT not fiction. For you that post that your INNOCENT if you are a diehard PvPer you'll just prove that you are that much guilty, so goodluck.
In what universe do you live in? Apparently not the real one.
Not only is it entirely possible, but most of science and metascience would entirely disagree.
What do you mean by scripting?
I don't use macros, or scripts, and I am always in the top level of PvP (winning, with one of the highest scores)
Sometimes I use macros or even scripts if it's Darkfall (autoloot) but rarely, and that is NOT the reason I'm the most powerful. My quick reflexes, agile mind, and studious "training" (knowledge of game mechanics and combat systems) is why.
They'll prove it because you make a non-provable blanket assessment and if they even try to rebut they are guilty simply because you say so?
wow, you ARE powerful!
edit: I don't doubt that there are people who use scripts or macros. But to say that everyone dedicated to pvp play does is going to earn you the "screenshot or it never happened" award.
The reason why PvP ever has to fail is because the illusion that balance is needed.
Champions Online is a mess because they listened to the DUMBEST and LOUDEST of their community from BOTH sides of a USELESS conversation. Caps aside; if they'd have followed the Champions Pen and Paper model more, and listened less to the scorned mmorpg community and more to the video game community over all. They'd not be in the mess they're in.
The game's good as it stands now.
But in beta when the shift of the argument and numbers tweaking moved toward the direction it ended up taking. It was painful to watch.
PvP in a mmorpg should be the basis of all mmorpgs simply due to the nature of the beast. Should is always be log in, spam attacks, die, spawn, spam attacks, die, spawn? No, and it's that loop developers are stuck in that causes everything they touch to fail.
Interaction and story are more important than any stat, bit of coding, or balance number crunchers for pvp and a successful community.
Agreed. Some of the most fun I've had while playing MMOs was the first 9 months of Shadowbane. It wasn't exciting enough to keep me much longer, but I still had a blast playing because the open feeling and the variety of character building made every log in an unique experience.
In what universe do you live in? Apparently not the real one.
Not only is it entirely possible, but most of science and metascience would entirely disagree.
Please name one MMO that is PVP centric where there is perfect balance of diverse classes and been a success.
The only way to achieve balance is to have the same stuff available to all (Pretty much any FPS). Again the ONLY MMOFPS is Planetside and it is as closed to balanced as it comes. However the NC are deemed the most powerful and thus is the most popular and pretty much wins any fight unless outnumbered greatly.
Please name one MMO that has balanced PVE with PVP and been a success with it. Please.
It might not be balanced, but I'd say if $$ is a factor in 'success' World of Warcraft defeats every argument you people try to make. It has pvp, it has pve, and yeah it's lost tons of players but it's kept tons and gained tons.
It's pvp system is optional. But there's plenty of pvp servers that are very active and even the pve servers have active bg and arena communities.
Short change it if you want.
Doesn't change the fact it's a successful pve game with pvp in it.
Everquest.. Ultima Online.. City of Heroes / Villains Same boat. Might you have heard of them? PvP has been more than footnote in each of their successes.
Add me to the list of people who take issue with Jennings saying that Darkfall failed because of bugs and the like. All bugs were very quickly addressed, and while balancing is still taking place in the game (it's difficult with so many factors such as availability of reagents and resources, damage mods, player skill, etc), it's the most intuitive, interactive, and complete PvP system available in an MMORPG. Also, Aventurine just recently released a major patch/expansion for free to all it's subscribers. How could the game be failing if they can afford to create 700 more Mb of content and distribute it for free?
For the majority of players who had actually followed the game before launch, Darkfall was a resounding success, completely fulfilling its promises. Most of those people are still playing today.
I also take issue with him saying that "every game has a class-system". Darkfall and Eve clearly don't. How can I take this guy seriously when he doesn't even know what a class-system is? A class system in MMORPGs is a system in which, upon creation of your character or at some specified point thereafter, you are forced down a certain path in terms of playstyle which cannot be broken from but by relinquishing all previously learned abilities of that path (respecing) or by creating a new character. This is not the case in Eve or in Darkfall. How could he not understand this?
Now you can choose to devote more time to developing your character towards a certain playstyle in Eve and Darkfall, but that does not make it a class system.
Please name one MMO that has balanced PVE with PVP and been a success with it. Please.
It might not be balanced, but I'd say if $$ is a factor in 'success' World of Warcraft defeats every argument you people try to make. It has pvp, it has pve, and yeah it's lost tons of players but it's kept tons and gained tons.
It's pvp system is optional. But there's plenty of pvp servers that are very active and even the pve servers have active bg and arena communities.
Short change it if you want.
Doesn't change the fact it's a successful pve game with pvp in it.
Everquest.. Ultima Online.. City of Heroes / Villains Same boat. Might you have heard of them? PvP has been more than footnote in each of their successes.
Are you F'ing kidding me. WOW? You're joking right. PVP in wow is a total joke. The PVE side of the game has been nerfed too death due to the Arena. WOW is a casual game now. The END Content is so dumbed down from WOTLK to present that it is not even funny. A full guild of retards playing on 386DX2's could beat the content. My guild cleared all of WOTLK a MONTH after hitting lvl 70. I quit because of it. It was simply too damn simple. I also played on a PVP server. AGAIN - PVP IN WOW IS A JOKE! Arena is a joke, the team that is the FOTM wins. There is no balance.
EQ? Played EQ for 5 years. PVP might be in it now, but when I played it was NOT. I quit after POP so who knows. UO? What is that again? Never played, it's not popular so who cares.
COH/COV - HAHAHAHA not what I would call a real MMO. Maybe a kids game.
The truth is that PVP and PVE can't exist on the same platform. If you want PVP you need a PVP only game centered on PVP. You simply can't BALANCE PVP and PVE on the same server. If you think for a second that WOW is anywhere near balanced for both PVE/PVP then you need to go smoke another blunt. They dumbed down PVE so much now it's not even funny. Unless you're in a T1 guild or ever been in one then you have no clue.
As I noted in the blog article I linked to from the (intentionally argumentative) assertion, skill-based systems tend towards player-created classes instead of developer-created classes, have the same balancing issues of class-based systems along with higher complexity and ease of players to make non-optimal/non-functional skill builds.
Sigh, once more into the breach:
[quote]
Of course, refusing to compromise on your vision isn't always a disaster. The poster child for this is EVE, a game which has always embraced its calling as the game that defines hardcore space combat PvP. The game has grown steadily, to the point where it is one of the most popular MMORPGs on the market with over 300,000 subscribers, many of whom have made legends, without ever compromising on its initial vision - a virtual sandbox, on a single server, where one player can challenge the universe. Sometimes everyone else IS dumb.
[\quote]
Scott, I'm sorry, but you have been totally, utterly misled on this. Eve Online's actual number of players is a small fraction of their account numbers. Let me be completely clear on this (deep breath). The MAJORITY of Eve's active accounts are SECOND, THIRD, AND EVEN FOURTH, FIFTH, AND SIXTH ALT ACCOUNTS.
Whew. Seriously, virtually no one plays Eve long-term without having at least a second and often a third paid account (you can play multiple Eve instances on one comp, that's definitely a contributing factor btw). I've personally played with long-termers who had 5 active paid alt accounts, there were some others with 4 paid, there were a significant number with 3 paid alts accounts, and the number of players with 1 and 2 paid alt accounts were - a LOT of the ones I met.
Truth is, the game environment just about demands it, because you can only train 1 character per account at one time, and your character must have training to use - well, anything at all, really. Because you can only gain training at a certain pace, a player with just 1 account is stuck in the space mud compared to a player who has other paid accounts on which they've trained a pure PvP character, a master miner, a manufacturer, etc. Training other chars on the same account means you have to stop training your primary char - and that's a serious issue when your primary needs to put 11 days of solid training to get over just ONE of the 20 or so humps he has to surmount to play with the cool kids.
And CCP just LOVES that fact about their game. Seriously, CCP has every motivation not to make a game where 1 person can make 1 account and just go play all happy on a level playing field with everyone else. They've a niche (meaning tiny) market, their game environment is filled with hardcore players (and a lot of metagaming griefers), both of which mean mainstream sub numbers aren't going to happen. AND their client can multibox on 1 computer pretty easily.
So OF COURSE they're going to sell all of the alt accounts they possibly can - it's the only way to really grow their income from the property! Their "Double your fun!" specials (where buying a second paid account is only 50 bucks for 6 months) is pretty much proof of that. What other game company has a "hey, we're cool with multiboxing!" promotion going on? lol.
FYI, in my personal opinion, that's pretty much a soulless and evil way to run a gaming company. But that's what they have to work with, and I also don't personally care, as I don't play Eve anymore.
But for god's sake, I wish reporters like you would check into the facts before spouting off about the "astounding success" of Eve Online "omgspacegamesandboxwith300ksubstheymustRULE!!!11!!!!1". They are not a 300k subscriber game. In my guesstimation (calculated completely in my butt from the number of players I've known and the number of alts they had), they've got around 1/4 of those numbers of long-term players.
Oh, and please by all means, feel free to debunk my from-my-butt statistics. Ask CCP to release the numbers of actual subscribers, instead of the number of paid accounts. I don't really care, but no other game company "plays the players" the way they do, so I am academically interested in the numbers.
[quote]
Or sometimes you have a class that is dependent on a core concept that is, um, a bug. Sticking with Dark Age of Camelot, let’s look at the Berserker class. It’s a class that swings two axes at people. This is a simple concept. Swing axes, do damage, fall down because you can’t take that much in return. Pretty much every game has some class like this - the melee glass cannon. Well, one fine day the game server programmer noticed that there was a fairly obvious bug in the way combat was calculated that made “Left Axe”, the Berserker off-hand weapon skill, do entirely too much damage. So… he fixed it. We fix bugs, right? Well, for all the Berserker players who logged in one day and did substantially less damage (in a class focused on... doing damage) it was not right, it was fairly wrong. And no amount of adjustments later fixed it. People got fed up, and left.
[/quote] crap, how do you quote parts of the article? blarg
This one's a classic. This is why you unfortunately have to make people use and obey a cumbersome change management system. It's not that everyone would do something like this, so a CM leash is a necessity. It's that sooner or later SOMEONE will, and cost everyone bigtime, like in terms of their jobs :(
so you dont like eve, well you know, last time i checked nobody was actually forced to play the game, and seriously, what is so special about claiming to have so many active subscriptions, and while some people do have more than one account, its hardly the prevalent state of affairs no matter how much you might wish it to be the case
Pvp in eve may be fundamental, but its not game breaking, it has consequences, and its not always consensual.
What is so hard to believe about the figure anyway, when other games claim to have millions, eve isnt even claiming to have 1 million! and yet somehow that is less believable.. hate the game all you want, not everyone can cope with a sandbox environment after all, but for those that do, everything else pales by comparison.
Oh, and any evidence you have that everyone in eve has at least a dozen accounts each, will be read with some amusement, we may even laugh
I still don't see how this applies to Darkfall. Perhaps to Eve, because you are more forced to focus on specific areas. Even so, I fervently disagree with calling it a "class-system" because, well, there is not a series of classes, player defined or otherwise. It's misleading and disingenuous to call games that may have a player base who create their own ideas of classes based on certain skillsets games that have "class-systems". This is a class-system the same way a stick you pick up off the ground is a baseball bat.
Balancing in games with no class system is done among skills individually; not even skill sets, let alone classes. Often, balancing has just as much to do with items (usually more often) than with skills. How you can pin this balancing on a class system is beyond me.
I was a Shadowbane player, this guy obviously NEVER played ShadowBane. It was not fail by any means. There are hundreds awaiting its return Via Emulator team. There were more races/classes than i feel like listing. Endless toon builds. It was all pvp, group or solo. And it was not tedius to finish a toon, 1-2 days tops. This guy is extremely ignorent of that game IMO. When the Emulator server opens i advise EVERYONE to go try it, PM me ill show you the ropes and you'll throw rocks at any other game. None of us can find another game we enjoy. So to you sir, i say you fail. SBEmu Link: http://community.shadowbaneemulator.com/forums/index.php if it was fail why do so many desire it back?
Im just saying hi to all the DF players that post often in mmorpg.com
And the reason why shadowbane died had nothing to do with the pvp, but because of the bugs, you had to point and click to move around and it had too mcuh grind. While in DF, you cans teal city, in shadow bane, you had to destroy the whole base and reconstruct it with your clan money.
Personally, thats why i left shadow bane, too mcuh grind.
Wootin, it may surprise you to know that a LOT of people don't have multiple accounts. I have played EVE since June of 2004, and I only acquired a second account this past February. That's 4 and 2/3 years with only one account, and I count myself as having done just fine.
It is ridiculous that a carebear columnist is allowed to slander a game like Darkfall. Darkfall is doing very well and the game is only getting better. Just because you aren’t a fan of PvP doesn’t mean you need to trash it and games that are based off it. Just because Darkfall isn’t a WoW killer doesn’t mean they are doing well. EVE is another great example of a game based on PvP that has done very well. Don’t cite facts that are not true.
Ok so about SB being a grind....ummm hotzones with r5 mobs drop like 2mil in 30 minutes.....a tree if you dont have a thief costs 3mil. To whoever said on page 1 of this post it tooks months to build a city....then why when they reset server were there cities up in a day? SB is the furthest thing from a grind that you will find, get max level in less than a day. Final point i have is about point and click combat....u make hotkeys....is it just me or is that obvious? I will never again play a game as awesome as SB. If you people are interested in it follow the link a couple of comments above and readup. As for the article....you obviously never played SB and are a carebear.
Sorry, but if you can honestly mention Shadowbane and "pvp fail" in the same freaking article, then you have absolutly no idea what you are talking about. All it means is that you were one of the people too ignorant to understand Shadowbane, who left without giving it a decent try because of the steep learning curve and unforgiving world.
Shadowbane did NOT fail, it was by far the best mmo foundation ever laid. Shadowbane was a groundbreaking success in every single aspect other than graphics and engine quality. Shadowbane did not fail, the people in charge of Shadowbane failed.
We are but a handful of months away from Shadowbane's relaunch now, and it will be better than ever. Maybe now that people are finally starting to realize the absolute pointlessness of modern day cookie cutter mmos, they will give a REAL mmo a second chance.
Please name one MMO that is PVP centric where there is perfect balance of diverse classes and been a success.
The only way to achieve balance is to have the same stuff available to all (Pretty much any FPS). Again the ONLY MMOFPS is Planetside and it is as closed to balanced as it comes. However the NC are deemed the most powerful and thus is the most popular and pretty much wins any fight unless outnumbered greatly.
They are not MMOs, but fighting games can be reasonably balanced even though different characters have various over-the-top and overpowered abilities. I actually think the "all powers the same" method of balancing is a trap that developers can fall into, and they then try to achieve this by over-nerfing. It is okay to have overpowered abilities because lets be honest--that's why people play the game. They want to do something dramatic and ridiculously powerful. The key is not to let every character have access to every overpowered ability, and to string people along with some just semi-okay abilities as you space out their levelling to the really good stuff.
Again, witness something like BlazBlue or most modern fighting games. Many characters have "cheap" moves, and yet on the whole they are still rather balanced.
So I know I might get some flak for this, but it's worth mentioning.
Jenning's articles are, indeed, thought-provoking. It is his job, whether you disagree with him or not, to create an article based on his years of experience and, just as important, his clearly voiced opinions. This voice has spurred many debates over the years, and will no doubt spur even more in his future writings. And yet, as much as you can question the voice, you can never question the experience behind it. This man is an MMO legend, and it's good to have him here.
Scott, you're my MMO hero. Some are Carebears, others are hardcore PvPers, I'm just a follower of Lum the Mad.
#K
Excellent article. What wasn't touched was that all of the balancing and re-balancing around PvP usually ends up causing even more damage to the PvE aspect of the game. I know the article wasn't about PvE, but nearly every MMO with PvP has a rather significant PvE portion.
Maybe I'm a bit jaded, but after having played numerous MMOs over the years I've come to the conclusion that balanced PvP in an MMO is inherently impossible. When you have so many factors such as character level, class skills/builds, gear, and a myriad of other variables that have a large influence on the outcome on PvP fights before skill even makes an entrance to the scene.
Personally I stick to RTS and FPS games when I want real, balanced, and truly skill based PvP gaming.
How did I know this article would bring out all the Darkfall fanboys to pile on Lum? Of course, anytime people criticize their precious and don't bow down to their God King Tasos, the fanboys start with their usual antics and rantings.
Nice article overall, Lum. I enjoy your writing here and on your blog. Keep up the good work.
If Shadowbane had better graphics and was bug free it would have more players than EVE Online. In fact, it sold more copies than DAoC did at release. That's gotta same something.
As for Darkfall, I made the prediction a few days ago that it will become the next best thing and possibly hit a million subs or more. With its current growth spurt that may come true in less time than I predicted (5 years). The only thing that will hold it back is if the developers react to slow to the growth.
It's posts like these that demonstrate MMO players to be the worst class of gamers out there. No wonder most MMO forums are a complete trainwreck chock full of sociopaths.
Wow dude, I read that and wow. You should just stop talking, stop posting, just stop period. Your perspective is the cause of the entropic regression of MMORPG's. You are why skilled developers still consider MMO's to be in their infancy.
For all you developers, if you basically don't listen to Scott's lies, and realize he is playing you so he can keep his job, your game will most likely be wildly successful.
Well, this article disappoints.
It mainly talks about class balancing and I wouldn't say it has provoked much thought.
What it has provoked is a bunch of Darkfall, EvE and Shadowbane fanbois to show up to defend their game in accordance with what was said in the second paragraph:
"Invoking PvP is the Godwin's Law of gaming discussions - in any discussion of game design, the longer the thread, the probability that someone will introduce PvP as either the reason for its subject's success or failure approaches 100%."
But other than that?
There's not a lot of interesting discussion going on.
The article just talks about PvP balance as if it's one on one and that other elements of the game don't factor in much.
There were a few other things touched on (should you listen to fanbois on the forums? How much damage can they do?) but these were by-passed.
And it did seem like the article was rushed.
Next week - how about something on the progress of the GSU and Aion?
I played Shadowbane for longer than i can remember it was a sad day when it closed. SB was the most original MMo to come out ever. It was 1 part game 1 part political masterpiece. I can remember having to forge alliance, Deflect enemy lies being told, Defending jerk off GL's just to keep the nation standing. the nation/guild I was in was threatened many of times with WE WILL WIPE YOU OFF THE MAP, but because of the political aspect of game I could well be a politician and create half truths to keep multiple enemies from joining our foes.
I had true enemies in SB I hated them so much I smiled every time i killed them/took one of their towns, but in truth and many of them knows this I considered them friends as well. Without them SB would of been Dull.
Play to Crush
I miss you SB
Xan of CoVE
Vindication for life
It was a good post, but a bit lengthy. All I got from it were things any PVP'r already knows. I did appreciate the DAoC references because it's still to this day the most thorough pvp experience I've had, but again, I already knew all that.
Something I've always thought about over the years is the way class balancing seems to be done. You always see the roller coaster of big nerfs to X and big buffs to X. I wonder what it'll be like when an OP class and/or spec is acknowledged, and instead of nerfing they try to bring the rest in-line.
/shrug
And for the record, post-nerf locks were still a fantastic class. The sheer utility on it was astounding, it just took a different type of player.
I'm confused. You listed multiple successful PvP games citing unique examples that could have just as easily been PvE problems. Yet somehow PvP breaks games?
Shadowbane, Darfkall, & Age of Camelot are/were awesome PvP games. The only reason Shadowbane & DAoC aren't particularly active anymore is because they are painfully dated. Darkfall is quite successful considering its a hardcore game designed by an independent developer, and continues to grow in scope and success each patch... much like its spaceship consort, Eve... and we all know how successful Eve is.
Next time title your article "how Nerfing can break your game". That was your point, and somehow you simply decided to attribute it to the evil PvPers.
Finally someone with the grapes to stand up and tell the truth about the sacred cow PVP. Scott Jennings you are my hero.
The problem with PVP today is that it is a shell with in the game. Instead of creating rich engaging progressive content, for the PVP part you create a shell where you pit players against each other and then let them create the dynamic. Problem is players are real people and typically want to win at the expense of other real players all the time. You can not control real players in the PVP shell. That being said game balance will always be a never ending struggle with that system. Newer games like Warhammer Online and Aion give you this great start in an engaging world only to find that soon down your road of destiny you HAVE to grind PVP to progress. So you end up feeling like you have been tricked into it, and you kind of have been. Honestly where PVP is concerned it almost seems like it should be a separate game with in the MMO, with out classes but only choices to make as you go in. IMO that is why the old shooter PVP games worked cause if you made bad choices in weapons and armor/vehicles, you could learn from it and make better choices. Once you grind up a MMORPG class your pretty much stuck with the choices that class has and often even altering those choices has penalty in the form if game currency with in a game.
A lot of us are waiting for a real new good quality PVE focused game. Unfortunately the cheaper development scheme of partial content then to the PVP shell has become the rule. I have gone back to WoW [where at least there is enough content so you can avoid the PVP mosh pits] for the 3rd time. The next time I quite[unless they(hopefully) get really smart] , it might even break me of my MMO addiction. I see no hope on the horizon of future games for a long term relationship with one, but I keep looking at least for now.
Oh the irony, of yet another Mythic dev trying to tell the industry how to correctly make games. Or rather how to 'not fail'.
I think the industry is far too young, and full of far too many flops to really start talking about the wisdom of making an MMO. People are already bored with the most successful method of making an MMO (the EQ model), and PvP is still a very young system (in regards to MMOs). It would be foolish to think that PvP is unwanted and pointless, given that the majority of games nowadays have some aspect of PvP in them. It goes a long way towards adding replayability, and when done right it's just plain fun.
Honestly, every decent MMO developer is basically in the same boat atm. They know players want a chance, but no one seems to really know what that change is, or how they will make it. There are current attempts to come up with the next big change, but we'll all have to wait and see as to what that eventually becomes, and whether or not it will be powerful enough to carry the genre forward.
The article had some decent points, but some very short-sighted examples. There was some sound advice in there, but not enough to really bring anything to the table. PvP games are holding their own, they aren't huge successes, but they aren't all failures either. Keep in mind that even WoW has pvp, it may not be it's focus, but it has it's place.
What exactly makes Darkfall a hardcore game ?
i´ll take that as WoW is Britney Spears and Darkfall is Berzerker
You know that you go to red when you kill innocent people in darkfall for example,good good all good.
Example Xxxsuperhell666xxX Ork ,goes for some hunting,he finds friendly orks crafting,he slays them because he hates orks and he knows they cant win and then he turns to red.now one of the victims gets his equipment from bank and starts chasing Xxxsuperhell666xxX ,but when he finds him this Xxxsuperhell666xxX is friendly again,because he hired some target dummy from opposite side so you will be the murderer if you attack him.
So what makes Darkfall hardcore??it has good massive battles and you can attack opposite race people with hate and anger in your mind,but what makes it hardcore?
in darkfall you can be harcore babykiller without consequences,and thats pretty far from hardcore to me.
What you described is a newb problem in darkfall. If you are in a clan, being red dont mean shit. Being red only stop you from going back to capital city, buying stuff from some of your aligned npc's, you cant do any quests and you cant bind on capital alignment stone. Thats about it. Once you leave the newb part, you join a clan and those problem are all gone. So you dont trust anyone that is not in your clan because even blue can kill you. Thats how DF hardcore pvp is. Like in real life, dont talk to strangers. Darkfall teach you that, but instead, they teach you to kill the strangers if you have the possibility or run away from them.
you know what i found funny with your post, you compar it with wow while in wow, you cant even kill your ally's. In DF you can. In wow, you cant team up with the enemy race. In Df you can. in wow, you can trust anyone. And you can tell who are the bad and who are with you since the bad one names are in yellow on top of their heads. The good one names are green.And lol, WOW pvp is like the new NHL 2010. An E-sport. Where is the next pvp gear season 5 is coming out? LOL
I loved the article but not every PvPer dislike balancing. I loved every skill balance update they did for Guild Wars. And it was very much PvP focused game. And I played that game with passionate PvP focus.
I agree that devs should figure out themselves why the game might be broken - they should not listen to the forum warriors as mentioned in this article. I welcome balance updates if the devs know what they are doing.
WAR's release showed how hard balancing is even to an experienced company. The balance in the first month was... horrible. It seemed like they hardly tested the game at all.
Lum The Mad is a "carebear columnist" and not a fan of Pvp?
ROFL
Other than completely missing the point of his article, it would appear that you are lookin' to defend Darkfall against an imagined threat. I think that's one of the reasons the Darkfall community gets the rep it has.
FYI...if you had played an MMO prior to 2002 odds are you'd know who Lum the Mad is, but do yourself a favor, go ahead and google him. Perhaps with some perspective you might re-read the article, and realize the point of view from which he is writing.
If Shadow Bane was launched right, polished, and run and supported correctly, we would still be playing the game this very day. It truely was the only PvP game since UO for us PvPers!
You had me up till this statement. Shadowbane failed cause there just was not enough PvE. all you PVP fanatics can say all you want but without PvE well, PvP games die out. PvE games done right live forever. Just admit it and maybe we get some some more decent mmo's that cover both rather then half ass shit.
What you described is a newb problem in darkfall. If you are in a clan, being red dont mean shit. Being red only stop you from going back to capital city, buying stuff from some of your aligned npc's, you cant do any quests and you cant bind on capital alignment stone. Thats about it. Once you leave the newb part, you join a clan and those problem are all gone. So you dont trust anyone that is not in your clan because even blue can kill you. Thats how DF hardcore pvp is. Like in real life, dont talk to strangers. Darkfall teach you that, but instead, they teach you to kill the strangers if you have the possibility or run away from them.
you know what i found funny with your post, you compar it with wow while in wow, you cant even kill your ally's. In DF you can. In wow, you cant team up with the enemy race. In Df you can. in wow, you can trust anyone. And you can tell who are the bad and who are with you since the bad one names are in yellow on top of their heads. The good one names are green.And lol, WOW pvp is like the new NHL 2010. An E-sport. Where is the next pvp gear season 5 is coming out? LOL
so if i join to a clan which is full of these so called "newbs" then magically they are hardcore ?
and in this pvp game me thinks (someone correct if im wrong) when someone is red to me ,means that i can attack him without losing alignment or getting attacked by towers,dunno why you didnt mention those.which is big part of PvP from the beginning.
What game is in screenshot in page1??
You're just angry b/c he showed how pvp can completely ruin a game. Go back to your hole...
So basically I got Pvp devs should also focus on other areas of a game, Pvp balancing is hard.
Awesome.
Can I get those 5 minutes of my life back?
While I have been a gamer most of my life, I came onto the MMO scene pretty late, around the release of WoW. For the longest time I was pretty content with the game, but after a while I saw it for the theme park it really was. I began hearing about the glory days of UO and I feel like I missed a very important and fun part of MMORPG history.
I'm not some 1337 PvP d00d, hell I'm terrible at PvP, but I would of much rather be subjected to the PvP rules of pre-trammel UO, than have to sit through another theme park carebear ranch ever again. Wheres the risk?
That should be pretty obvious. It's a full loot FFA PvP game, the same as UO or Eve. I don't care if there are rules that govern it, it is what it is. If you wanna get into some retarded debate on the definition of hardcore pick another huckleberry... fact of the matter is you knew exactly what I was referring to otherwise you wouldn't have presented me with a scenario. If you got a personal grudge against Darkfall thats your problem.
What game is in screenshot at page 1 of the article?
Shadowbane.
Jennings please do more research next time or atleast write about your own experience...well the topic is nice but what ever you wrote is so perspective that i was like wtf !
Eve isn't full loot. It can be full loss if you don't take precautions but it's not full loot.
I can't say she/he need more research... War/Daoc story is real. Mythic tryed so many times to balance the game, and so many people got angry at them for that exact reason... MANY of my friends got frustrated about the balancing issues in WAR... Now Daoc is still in balancing process... something like 8years after launch ?? last patch (1.100) still have balancing in it...
Nice article BTW!
(They'll never learn lol)
I dont think you gave Shadowbane a fair shot, using it as an example of a PvP game that didnt work is complete BS, it ran for 6 yrs. and has a dedicated playerbase, yea SB may not be for everyone, it is afterall a harsh PvP enviroment. but to say that it failed as a PvP game? well thats just pure horeshit.
QFT all the way. The only potentially unsolvable problem that I see is that Rock-Paper-Scissors is intended to solve the problem of "flat" abilities - a sword does the same damage as a club, making the choice meaningless for the player. The RPS model gives each player choice an advantage and makes the player use their skill to employ it, while also giving the other player the opportunity to use their choice and skill to avoid / counter the disadvantage.
Obviously, this creates a system where balance is absolutely crucial to gameplay, and any imperfection in your system is going to harm someone's play. But imho, to date it's the best system employed, and any failings on the part of the developer are both forgiveable (nobody's perfect) and fixable.
An article by a whinning carebear imo :)
No risk of loseing things = no challange , resources should be limited to make mining , PvE and more of the carebear activity inteesting. For me , this is the perfect mmo formula, this way you have a reason to kill and cant go serialkiller beacese if you do you'll make enemies, who have a habbit of uniting against you.
In that kind of mmo , you have to adopt, make friends, join guilds simply socialise... If you are not playing for that , than go play an RPG , why spoil the fun of other people by whinning?
Pardon my english it's not my first language.
Shadowbane WAS the best PVP system. It's class system was extremely open ended. Instead of having 3 "trees" everyone could alot their points in a way that was 'flavor of the day' or in a unique way and still be viable. The community was pretty tight even if there was some hardcore inter-personal politics on each server that just added to the drama.
Shadowbane's downfall was it's grind and it's look aged like dairy. What variety there was in game play and number crunching, just wasn't there in personalization or look. If they'd have looked at equipment variety and kept innovating the maps and sub-game enhancements. We'd still be talking about it today.
It may have not have gotten 30 million subscriptions, but we'd still hear about it.
Honestly, playing as Alpha the minotaur on Mourning for a good 9 months I can say it was defiantly one of the best pvp experiences I've had with a mmorpg. I can share a variety of stories that are way more interesting than.. "Bobby wasn't geared for this instance but we pwned it anyway."
I mean I was there when the Blood Axe Clan's giant city got SWAMPED by the Brotherhood. ;)
I was there when UHC stormed the BoD's city and I had to switch sides because old guildies were protecting their city fervidly against people using exploits and I knew about it.
Stacking aside, still one of the best mmorpg experiences I think anyone could have had.
As I noted in the blog article I linked to from the (intentionally argumentative) assertion, skill-based systems tend towards player-created classes instead of developer-created classes, have the same balancing issues of class-based systems along with higher complexity and ease of players to make non-optimal/non-functional skill builds.
Indeed. In Eve, your "class" is determined by whatever ship/weapons you've trained and outfitted. You cannot "equip" anything other than what you have trained, so effectively, the ship and armament (both of which have bonuses that complement each other) create your class, which is really identical to anyone else with the same ship and armament. A true classless system allows anyone to use anything at any time with results that vary according to their skill (at least, in an RPG game). This is analogous to real life, where anyone can physically operate anything from a butterknife to a tank, but the results will vary depending on your knowledge and personal characteristics.
It might not be balanced, but I'd say if $$ is a factor in 'success' World of Warcraft defeats every argument you people try to make. It has pvp, it has pve, and yeah it's lost tons of players but it's kept tons and gained tons.
It's pvp system is optional. But there's plenty of pvp servers that are very active and even the pve servers have active bg and arena communities.
Short change it if you want.
Doesn't change the fact it's a successful pve game with pvp in it.
Everquest.. Ultima Online.. City of Heroes / Villains Same boat. Might you have heard of them? PvP has been more than footnote in each of their successes.
Are you F'ing kidding me. WOW? You're joking right. PVP in wow is a total joke. The PVE side of the game has been nerfed too death due to the Arena. WOW is a casual game now. The END Content is so dumbed down from WOTLK to present that it is not even funny. A full guild of retards playing on 386DX2's could beat the content. My guild cleared all of WOTLK a MONTH after hitting lvl 70. I quit because of it. It was simply too damn simple. I also played on a PVP server. AGAIN - PVP IN WOW IS A JOKE! Arena is a joke, the team that is the FOTM wins. There is no balance.
EQ? Played EQ for 5 years. PVP might be in it now, but when I played it was NOT. I quit after POP so who knows. UO? What is that again? Never played, it's not popular so who cares.
COH/COV - HAHAHAHA not what I would call a real MMO. Maybe a kids game.
The truth is that PVP and PVE can't exist on the same platform. If you want PVP you need a PVP only game centered on PVP. You simply can't BALANCE PVP and PVE on the same server. If you think for a second that WOW is anywhere near balanced for both PVE/PVP then you need to go smoke another blunt. They dumbed down PVE so much now it's not even funny. Unless you're in a T1 guild or ever been in one then you have no clue.
Look kids, this is what happens when you drink and play on the internet. For whatever reason science has yet to reveal to us; the substance makes you limber enough to put your foot in your mouth.
The truth is, those games exist.. NOW with successful and fun pvp elements alongside pve. You may not be good at it. You may not like it. Still, people play the games and enjoy them while the companies post profit. MMORPGs require massive players online interacting with one another in roles. If you want your cushiony pve to be untainted follow this path: click on start / Game / Solitaire. Careful now, some of the games have 'Internet' in their title and that means you could possibly play checkers with someone online. There is a chance you will lose. If you're prone to crying like a little bitch because you lost at a 'game' while on the 'internet' STEER clear. Sit at home and play with yourself like a good Mama's boy.
No it wouldn't at all. I spent a year playing just 1 char, so I'm right in that statistic with you. And many of the newer people I met only had 1 account as well. But - and this is where my point lies - Scott and most others quote CCP's account numbers as if they were subscriber numbers. This leads to the impression that CCP has 300k PEOPLE playing Eve, and this is absolutely false in my experience. Seriously, I witnessed a mind-boggling amount of multiple account players compared to any other MMO I've played.
And there's the fact that CCP absolutely, happily encourages this for the sake of maximizing their revenue from their customer base. They are the only MMO developer I have ever seen advertise promotions for buying multiple accounts, which btw pretty much proves you can't go by their account numbers to determine subscriber numbers. (FYI, I do this kind of analysis for work. Where people are allowed to have multiple logins, you need to match evidence like IPs to account names to get an idea of how many actual people are logging in. In this case, payment information -> accounts would work better though).
However, as I said, all this is fine with me. I don't play Eve anymore, and therefore - I don't really care about the game at all. Sorry ;)
But I do take issue with seeing subscriber numbers that I KNOW are wrong quoted in an article, especially when they're used to back up a really shiny impression of the game. The number of accounts shows how successful CCP is, but it's the number of actual players that shows how successful Eve Online is. That's why I think it's absolutely appropriate for me to post about this, and as I said, I'd welcome seeing actual subscriber numbers from CCP instead of just the (misleading) number of accounts.
There are some valid points in this thread. Though nobody mentioned my personal number 1 problem:
---> 99,9% of the developer teams/publishers don't have enough resources to actually create a masterpiece in PvP and PvE. Either PvE is somewhere between "sucks" and "non-existant", like in EvE, or PvP is somewhere between "sidekick" and "minigame", like in Lord of the Rings Online.
So if I want to coop, roleplay and have a laid back fun time together-> LotRO
And if I want to hunt and compete-> EvE
You don't go to a bowling alley if you want to dance, right?
M
I can't say she/he need more research... War/Daoc story is real. Mythic tryed so many times to balance the game, and so many people got angry at them for that exact reason... MANY of my friends got frustrated about the balancing issues in WAR... ...
WAR was always going to have 'balancing' issues - because it was an RvR game and had no kind of population balance for RvR.
You can't really balance your PvP when there is also a massive population imbalance in RvR... well, you can...but players won't see it. Let's face it, if you are outnumbered 2:1 or 3:1 even if your class IS overpowered you probably will still think you are nerfed because you die all the time. And if the Devs then nerf you further (because of what they see on other servers) you will feel totally victimised.
Mythic never even had a plan on the population balance except hoping it would "sort itself out" (if you really like I can provide the links to Mark Jacobs saying that).
That is absolutely fatal in a game that relies heavily on RvR. It won't sort itself out. Players will flock to one side or the other.
So, even if the PvP in WAR had been totally balanced (class wise) it was always going to fail because of the complete lack of balance in RvR. PvP and RvR are different even if they interact and are co-dependent.
I'm sorry Scott, being a PVP oriented player since the early days of UO I must respectfully disagree with a few of your assessments.
Bugs, exploits, bugs, asian zergs, bugs, lack of budget, keycloning, and bugs are what truly killed Shadowbane. The game was around for six years, roughly half that time it was pay to play. I enjoyed the hell out of it and on average had up to four accounts running when it was pay to play. I also never had trouble finding more than enough people to nation up with and have some damn good wars with. When I consider it outlasted games like Matrix Online and Tabula Rasa, and was more lively than other pvp games PVP games such as AOC and Warhammer Online, I feel Shadowbane didn't fair all that badly. Especially since it was created in the early days of MMOs and the game authors didn't have much previous game experience to draw from.
Also there have been some damn fine arguments that it was the arrival and popularity of EQ being the main reason Trammel came about. (Personally I feel it was a bit of both).
Though SB is still one of my all time favorites, I doubt you were there in the beginning. Because lag, crashes to desktop, and exploits made the large scale massive battle unplayable for most people. Still love the game and the overall concepts more than most things I have played, and good post!
Shadowbane was a great game. It still remains one of my faveourite mmos of all time. But its execution was horrible.
The concept of building your city and using a mix of politics and force to defend it sounds good on paper, but didnt work out too well in game. It was tough for a new city with a fresh guild, or a smaller guild joining a small alliance to actually keep their city for very long due to the massive zerg alliances basically taking over the entire continent across virtually all the servers. It ended up toward the end being more about who you were allied with rather than how good your group set ups were or how mobilized your guild was. You could have the perfect group make up, everyone communicating on guild vent and all of your raid being great players, but much like warhammer has proven recently, the zerg conquers all no matter what. One ironic thing I always noticed was that the huge zerg ended up being really organised with loads of holy based groups (sentinels debuffing and nuking backed up by nuker healer crusaders and prelates) so the gap widened even further.
As for the pve side, yes it was very tedious levelling if you were solo. If you were a perma flying nuker like a warlock or fury, you could simply dual box with your strength based bard (so he could carry all your stuff :P ) complete with track and stealth then round up and aoe nuke the hell out of big groups of mobs at a time. If you were some poor melee or rogue class new to the game and a member of an npc guild, it took forever. Most of the time youd get into a little cave somewhere with the rock exploit and have your high level druid friends to sit and macro some aoe for a few hours, with the rest of us killing any stragglers and if allowed, looting.
It also had nothing really substantial outside of pvp, and even that was mainly high level sieges and mine fights. before that it was either random city defending or getting tracked, ganked and looted by level cap vampire fotm classes who only attacked when you were at low health with a mob on you. There wasnt any actual crafting in the traditional sense as in everyone having a trade skill, there wasnt any good pve encounters apart from tracking rune droppers or finding named, and even that was easy to do since websites listed their co-ordinates.
lol, all these replies to the blog and you all missed the most important bit on what makes or break a PvP focus game. It's right there at the end. It's what he wrote last: TRAMMEL.
UO Trammeled and is still around today. Shadowbane did not and is gone. Darkfall will survive or close depending on how they handle their Trammel. WAR launched with Trammel so did AION. WOW went overboard with their Trammel that their PvP is concidered "TEH SUCK" . Even EVE confronted it's Trammel, but being EVE did it differently from everybody else.
So what is TRAMMEL? basicly it's the dev's response to the "gank them till they quit" crowd. Trammel is the "new subscription/revenue source protection patch v. gank them till they quit crowd." If you let this crowd run free you will soon have no new players. No new subscription equals no growth and most likely shrinkage and eventually have to close down.
The "hardcore purest" hate Trammel, but the Dev's need it. Because with out it the game will fail. To be a viable business venture the Dev's must Trammel. Now Trammel does not guarantee success because of other issues discussed in this thread but with out Trammel it's a guarantee failure.
i loved for someone else to recognize the effects of nerfs on player retention. i cant even count how many games ive left without ever looking back bcz of nerfs. reading forum posts regarding op claims bcz ppl cant play their class and constantly fail makes me laugh scornfully.
in most cases, devs have the balance right at the start but bcz a melee char wants to be able to pwn a mage and cant, they cry tears of OP in the forums rather than understand that melee cant solo a mage and to play to their strengths rather than have every class be a cookie cutter. im oversimplifying here and i add that caveat so ppl dont start saying "well i can solo a mage..." blah blah blah, good players are good players regardless of the game.
but what the author didnt touch on, and i believe to be even more devastating than a nerf, are the pvp rules themselves. in subscription games, there are generally not micro transactions with game changing items where you can buy your way out of fail and become OP for the unreasonable price of $xxs.xx. in those situations, what im about to say does not apply ( but thats changing now too, just fyi to devs, ill nvr buy a subscription to a game that also has a cash shop, (sorry soe, u fail hard, thanks for fucking up gaming). but in f2p models with item shops, and where 'open pvp' exists, you have your casual players trying to have fun, but get griefed constantly by those who are stealing mommies credit card. i dont have the luxury of swiping cash from my parents for a few years now, but i am one of those. if you have a few bucks, you can buy your way to the 'next' level. and i love to kill peeps.
at the same time im lol'ing bcz i killed the same guy for the 4th time in an hour, im also aware that the guy im killing may not log in the next day...or ever again, thus reducing the pool of victims and new players. some games put a level requirement on open pvp, but this is just a delay tactic for the inevitable.
what im suggesting here is not that open pvp be removed. i hate limitations on pvp as do most gamers. what i am suggesting is that game changing items be removed from cash shops so everyone can be competitive. or allow those items to be easily obtained thru in-game economies or quests that dont require 3 months of fail gaming to obtain. i understand the need to feed the devs through income generating virtual items, but to use runes of magic as an example, wings came out costing 400 diamonds at item release. a diamond on the us servers at that time cost roughly $20.00usd for 500. the benny to wings is it allowed you to add 6 more stats than the guy who didnt spend 20 bucks. thats game changing when i can load stamina equating to mass hp gain on those wings and have my mage take hits from uber melee characters. money should not equal power like that. it simply makes f2p a misnomer and those games should be renamed p2bc (pay to be competitive). and yes, i bought those damned wings.
And what about people how just don't want to compete? I QFT the trammel post.
In a game with good PvP AND good PvE there need to be places for people that don't WANT to PvP, people that would let you live even if you were on 5% health and running... I don't know any game that delievers there. I'd choose two games with clear focus over a bad hybrid any day...
M
Very good article, kind of makes me think of Mortal Online in their attitude in development, "game crushing bugs", and the attitude on the forums. Just chalk it up to another Shadowbane, though I think they will outlive their utility far sooner than Shadowbane did. The game is basically unplayable for an "MMO", unless "MMO" means 3 people on your screen.
the original authors topic was regarding pvp, not those who wish to sightsee. i understand thats a market too, but not for discussion in a pvp thread. with no pvp there is no motivation to be better being as most games dont really have challenging pve. at least not solo pve. anyway, if you dont like to fight, you need to be choosing carebear servers when available, or change your game choice entirely if not available.
Only true pvp game lightyears ahead of shadowbane and uo(carebare i say) was asheron's call Darktide best hardcore pvp ever in mmo.
While this may be (in fact I'm fairly sure it's not) the answer you like, it is the correct one: the measure of a success for an MMO is financial. Whether a game has 300,000 subscribers or 30 very dedicated multiboxers, the income for the developer is the same. You may of course not want to play such a game, and if many agree with you, their subscriber numbers will reflect that.
Personally, I've always felt that the core issue with PvP is that more than half the players will feel like they're not winning most of the time, get frustrated, and quit. A fellow player is a very tough difficulty curve - there's a reason why real life fighter pilots get to be an ace at 5 kills and this is a big deal. In a game about accumulation, another human brain can be insurmountable barrier that kills the difficulty curve and undermines the flow. Everything else is just fallout from this core problem.
How is it ridiculous? Darkfall didn't exist when SB came out, thus his statement that it was (past tense) "the only PvP game since UO for us PvPers" is a reasonable one. If anything I would have clarified the type of PvPer being referred to, which is the group interested in having relatively high material risk (territory, city, items, gear).
I really don't think that comment was serious :p
Though SB is still one of my all time favorites, I doubt you were there in the beginning. Because lag, crashes to desktop, and exploits made the large scale massive battle unplayable for most people. Still love the game and the overall concepts more than most things I have played, and good post!
I was only there in the beginning actually. Beta'd with Bone Dog and went axe barb mino right off the bat. Then bow aracoix scout. While I had some lag issues I didn't really have the same problems most people did. It made me wonder if the servers were near Washington, DC. My loc.
Add Mortal Online to the list
In my opinion isn't that PvP fail but that free PvP is mostly boring. Games that haven't pure PvP but organized form of it, such as DAoC or RF Online, are mostly enjoyable and playable. And a PvP or RvR (RvRvR) game that has some ideas from classic PvE games (the mostrly boring genre) such as dungeons with great rewards can fail because gamer that can play a lot have a little (sarcastic) more benefits than "evening" players.
A PvP or RvR/RvRvR game must can playable from all gamers so no dungeons, an epic armour, epic weapons (both weapons and armour must be questable) and... this is the game. BTW people must (not can but must) have some rewards from PvP or RvR/RvRvR and i think that the Mythic's idea about Realm Points and Realm Abilities can be the best solution ever. Or other kind of rewards, but not weapons and/or armour pieces.
QFT. Add to that the MMO mentality that fight must end up in a kill.
Take a competitive market game like EvE. You win some, you lose some but you are hardly ever "killed" as such, you rather surrender and find success other way. This applies to a degree to EvE spaceship combat too. Yet still, sucess is measured by a mass of kill mails.
Unless the PvP proponets come here and gloat about how they kept losing but it was so much fun or how they hunted this one guy whole day until he finally escaped and how exciting it was we won't have real fun PvP game.
Yup, you're right, it's not an answer I like, but not for any personal agenda on my part. It's because this is MMORPG.com, not Bloomberg.com. Isn't the measure of the success of a game to players its popularity with other players, not it's financials? I mean, who wants to be told a game is a huge success only to excitedly log in to play with all of those other people and find - 30 multiboxers with 10,000 accounts each?
The problem I see is that with other games you can just shrug off the minute numbers of multiboxers who sell themselves on getting multiple accounts and assume subscriptions = players. But Eve is different. CCP actively sells as many multiple accounts as it can, so there's (in my unscientific observation) huge numbers of multiboxer accounts. So my point is, that throws the measure of "success" out of whack for this particular game.
'Nuff said, I won't beat this scrapped spaceship any longer. Thanks for your reply though, and it was definitely an interesting article to read.
Let me clear something up for all you 'hardcore' players out there.
Hardcore game play means there is real risk involved in PvP. Many games have hard core PvP and I have no issue with them whatsoever. Why? Because they're fair and balanced.
Unbalanced, open, hardcore PvP is what's called a 'gankfest'. It's only enjoyable by sociopaths and people with severe anger issues. Games that employ this type of play always fail to deliver lasting, enjoyable PvP. Why? Because once you run out of people to gank, there's nothing left to do.
The irony of all this is, that because these trolls can't learn to keep their mouths shut, games will eventually be devoid of the very things they find enjoyable.
Hmm, allow me to offer a counter-observation. When I logged into Planetside as a total noob from the EQ1 / Morrowind RPG world, I knew that I didn't know nuthin', and I anticipated learning the hard way. And boy, did I get my butt kicked. Over and over again lol.
But, I wasn't alone. I was fighting with a lot of other people to accomplish an objective, and my side wasn't always losing. I could see other people who were the same color as me losing too, but also winning. Because of that, no no matter how hard I got pwnt, I felt like it was MY fault, not my opponents. I wasn't good enough to do what the people around me were doing.
But, having so many others around meant that I could focus on my own gameplay and get better. It wasn't catastrophic when I got killed, because 100 other people were there fighting too. And I did get better, eventually holding an average 3/2 K/D ratio - not an ace by any means, but I was generally effective and useful to my side. And I still didn't mind getting killed even in a 1 on 1, because knowing that I was competent only meant that the other person was better and deserved respect for his win.
Now contrast this with most other games' PvP, where it's all about setting yourself and your personal buddies up to gank one or small groups of opponents. I get P.O'd when I get ganked by someone camping the frickin' newbie zone, and not at myself. I regard it as THEIR fault that I wasn't able to put up a good fight or even win, because heck, I'm in a loincloth with a newbie leafblade, y'know?
So that's totally lame to me, and I do then exactly what you say - quit the game and go look elsewhere.
Yup, you're right, it's not an answer I like, but not for any personal agenda on my part. It's because this is MMORPG.com, not Bloomberg.com. Isn't the measure of the success of a game to players its popularity with other players, not it's financials? I mean, who wants to be told a game is a huge success only to excitedly log in to play with all of those other people and find - 30 multiboxers with 10,000 accounts each?
The problem I see is that with other games you can just shrug off the minute numbers of multiboxers who sell themselves on getting multiple accounts and assume subscriptions = players. But Eve is different. CCP actively sells as many multiple accounts as it can, so there's (in my unscientific observation) huge numbers of multiboxer accounts. So my point is, that throws the measure of "success" out of whack for this particular game.
'Nuff said, I won't beat this scrapped spaceship any longer. Thanks for your reply though, and it was definitely an interesting article to read.
Not a chance in hell. Sorry, I like ALOT of folks on this site and (there are a handful that I'd bury on my friend's land or feed to hogs) but I'd much rather play a game like EvE with 30 multi-boxers and have fun than play WoW with 11 million individuals (which that isn't the case there either) and be bored out of my mind with the gameplay.
The only thing that a product having alot of users means to me when talking software is that it isn't complicated to use. It's easy. It's accessible. It requires little planning or thought to master. It has a very shallow learning curve. Human beings all too often take the path of less resistance.
WoW is that path, EvE is not.
Checkers is that path, chess is not.
Now, I will agree that a hefty number of sales does speak to the quality of the product, but not in relation to other products that may be equally good but require more thought to use. WoW is a solid game. No argument from me. That said, you can't ask the question "is it better than EvE" and use the resulting answer as a measure FOR ANYONE ON THIS PLANET other than the guy you just asked. We all like different things in varying degrees.
11 million people (or so) love playing WoW. If WoW was the only choice for playing an MMO I'd find another hobby, and I've been playing MMOs since 1997. *shrug*
Shadowbane was a amazing game for what it did good, and that was pvp. The game allowed freedom to really come up with amazing templates and to defeat 1v3+ odds if you knew your game. One player could make a real impact there. I can remember times where I would kill guild master before they could place a bane stone or while they were planting a tree and come out with more enjoyment then any game since or prior.
It was a true griefers wet dream I admit but as I fit that format I enjoyed it. The game's freedom out weighted its flaws.
Darstar
Kieffer
Gyois
Hing4life
This whole article sounds to me like somebody who got killed in PvP and wants more PvE.
PvP games take way more to balance out than a PvE game. Patches need to come a lot quicker and frequently than PvE games. To many bugs can be game breaking, expecially when the other player has a bug in their favor. The over powered classes need to be delt with quickly. The rate of patching and fixing things in PvP games is what kills them, not the brand of PvP the game brings to the table. WAR is the best example of this. Choppy gameplay and a product that felt unfinnished. It's not the quality of PvP it's the little things that kill it.
Shadowbane had one thing no other game to date has had - CREATIVE FREEDOM!! Players and guilds had to think, lol what an amazing concept!!!
It was not another boring, uncreative cookie cutter game. Every single game to date is really just a clone of UO. Copy and paste+some new technolgies, a different name, a few different races, dumb down the pvp, dumb down charactor selection, ect ect BORING!!!!
Shadowbane's devolopers were creative thinkers far ahead of the uncreative boring cookie cutter developers putting out more of the same dumbed down crap coming out to-date.
Shadowbane had 1000’s of character combinations. Not all the mindless cookie cutter toons that all the other boring uncreative MMO’s offer.
The small scale combat was amazing complex, there were probably close to 100 different spec groups for small scale pvp 40 vs 40 ish. Not all the mindless keyboard spamming that all the other boring uncreative MMO’s offer.
The large scale combat (100 vs 100 with some as large as 400 vs 400)) was intense with many smaller battles raging around it. Other MMO’s other nothing that even comes close to Shadowbane sieges. They offer safe boring same scale combat with very little for tactics involved, because at the core the character’s them self’s are boring uncreative cookie cutter toons.
Shadowbane is a one of a kind game and was yrs ahead of its time.
At some point in the future another team of truly creative developers will make a sandbox like SB that works at release.
SB had over 100k paying customers and was in the top 10 games sold the yr of its release. That was a first for an MMO at the time.
The player base IS there, but the company with the balls and creative thinking is missing.
Your article is several things like all the other MMO's out their right now safe, cookie cutter, boring and uncreative.
What did you copy and paste then change a few names?
Before you write another rag like this, try being open minded and objective.
Pelton
Eve isn't full loot. It can be full loss if you don't take precautions but it's not full loot.
Same thing considering the point being discussed. You lose everything when you die.
I found this interesting, and the posts about Shadowbane PvP, and the posts from someone who mentioned that they like their PvE and PvP separate.
So the perfect game could have let's say 2 continents or something like that. One continent is a safe zone all PvE with storyline/quests, dungeons, rep grind, raids, etc. The other continent is where you can have open pvp with small scale and mass scale pvp battles, create and destroy cities, etc. The game doesn't attempt to balance classes for PvP, and doesn't really try to balance them for PvE either (just making sure that each basic role can perform their job with the right equipment perhaps).
Both continents would have mobs and ways to craft, bank, auction, etc. Death penalty for the PvP continent is the possibility of losing items in your inventory and damage to equipment, and death penalty in the PvE continent is losing experience points, and getting damage to equipment.
Four basic classes or one template class that can be developed in thousands of different ways. Absolutely no instanced PvP. The incentive for playing on the PvE side of the world would be for the storyline, quests, raiding, dungeons, pets/mounts from rep grinds, safety, etc. and the incentive for playing on the PvP side of the world would be for fun and for the thrill of PvP. PvE and PvP separated, but in the same game so if you get bored of dungeons you can go and kill other players, and if you get bored of killing other players you can go raid a dragon or try to get a new mount, so it would keep players interested for a long time.
I know it kind of sounds like what a lot of games attempt, but I think a game that had a separate, but deep PvP and PvE experience would work well. Am I on the right track? Does this sound like it could work?
NO matter how creative SB is/was, (and I agree it was a great game) it doesn't change the fact it was a financial failure for reasons unrelated to its creativity and in the end, that's the only yardstick that really matters. (esp in the context of the original article)
Aeroangel could be on the right tract. I have not the biggest fan of meaningless pvp but if a game could recapture the thrill of old DAoC multifaction rvr I would at the very least give it a look. I just want a purpose for the pvp other than to ruin someones days until they unistall
Good read. Hit on some important issues. PvP is one of my passions. It's a heck of a lot of fun to go up against other MMO players online. They're smarter, faster and more unpredictable than NPCs. Team PvP is my absolute favourite thing to do in an MMO. It's also nice end-game while waiting for the next expansion. So, having a decent PvP system really adds a lot to your game.
Man you're so right about the nerfs. The last game I left has turned into a ghost town on most servers because of a massive pvp revamp that had one main focus: NERF
Assassins had their attacks nerfed. Those with hold powers had their holds nerfed. Slow powers were weakened to the point that they weren't noticeable. Buffs were nerfed, as were all heals. Travel powers? Heh. Some were switched off all together. That's more than just a nerf lol; that's extinction. Others were drastically nerfed all around.
On top of all that, even activating an attack would cause you to suffer a movement penalty. So, throwing an immobilize on someone would actually hold the caster lol. It was the height of absurdity.
And to make matters worse, the game had just introduced crafted power enhancements. Recipes for these sets were rare and expensive. Getting a whole set of enhancments would give your character some nice perks. They were generally small, but every little bit helps in PvP ^_^. When the powers were nerfed and/or switched off, all the shiny new enhancements that people had just searched the world (or paid a bundle) for were rendered useless.
Wow, did the forums erupt. This wasn't just your usual, "hey man, don't nerf one of my powers." When I left the game, the complaints about the PvP revamp were 300 pages long. That's pages, btw, not posts. Look above to see why so many people were so passionate. They pretty much screwed everyone.
Why would they do this? Apparently to cater to people who like standing still and button mashing for 3 minutes until someone, mercifully, dies. No strategy, no custom pvp builds, no 3D movement, no holds, no stealth attacks, no traps, no arial combat, no team cooperation...zilch, nadda. Just button mash. Why did they say they wanted to do this? Well, I guess some of the button mashers thought that the pvp game was too complicated...too difficult to master. Oh, and they wondered why a doctor couldn't win a one-on-one battle with an assassin 0_o. So, everyone enjoying their pvp, their powers, their builds and their enhancements was thrown under the bus to cater to the button masher(s) and/or doctors that wanted to kill ninjas.
The result? Most of my pvp friends quit. Not thousands though lol (that was a funny comment). Now I'm told that all the servers I used to play on are ghost towns. I hope the button mashers enjoy the game while it lasts, and that the PvE folks can find someone to group with, which apparently is becoming more and more difficult.
Oh and to the devs that read these threads: 300 pages of "wth man, you ruined your whole game" might contain some valuable insights -_^.
If the player base IS there, how come SB still closed after going F2P? How come PvP-oriented MMOs haven't been as successful as PvE-oriented MMOs and even in titles like EvE where PvP is very possible do the bulk of players stay in secure, non-FFA PvP areas?
It's because PvP isn't for the majority of players, especially FFA PvP. I know there is a theory that the perfect PvP game would revolutionise the genre, but it requires the 'perfect' game and that isn't realistic.
SB had some good ideas that were extremely poorly executed. The sb.exe notification that occurred every time the game crashed was notorious. It's nice that SB had a good game in theory, but the execution was awful.
The player life cycle of PvP MMOs often ends up looking like:
1) Pre-launch: much epeen waving about how people will be uber and crush all that oppose them.
2) Launch: Guilds and individuals scramble to get in and advance more quickly than those around them in order to hold more PvP power.
3) A Little While Post-Launch: Many players complain that the PvP isn't what they imagined in their heads - that it isn't the perfect PvP MMO. This will be a mix of launch bugs, player over-expectation and probably exploits that haven't yet been ironed out. The sheep start to leave.
4) A Little Bit Longer Post-Launch: Patches start stamping out both real and perceived power imbalances. Players who didn't get to use those imbalances complain. Those who did get to use them also complain, but are also smug at already benefiting from them. The sheep continue to leave, as do some of the wolves who find out they aren't ever going to be alpha wolf.
5) Longer After Post-Launch: The dust has settled a bit, the wolves realise most of the sheep have gone and there are only other wolves to fight. There probably aren't enough wolves to make the title financially viable; the devs start work on making the title more attractive to non-hardcore PvPers.
This isn't a cycle that is going to break in the foreseeable future.
I hate Shadowbane for the sole reason that it has made me quit MMOs. I can't seem to find another to challenge me the way SB did, in & out of the game with its fast-paced PvP rush, builds, group templates, strategies & backstabbing politics. 2 good things remain; i can say I had the best gaming time of my life & now that it's over i can spend some (my wife's words) quality time with the family.
PvP is the volatile point for any MMO.
First off the devs have to decide is the game balanced around pvp, pve (solo) or pve (raid). You can NOT balance the classes and game with all three. Sorry Blizzard, not gonna happen no matter how much you tweak and nerf. Pick ONE and balance according to that. City of Heroes, for example, is balanced (pvp or otherwise) with respect to team vs teams. They pretty much expect that you'll be grouped with at least 3 other people, so they balance accordingly. DAoC balances more towards pvp, as that is the primary focus of the game is it's RvR.
It also depends on the type of maket you're going for. Western games tend to prefer pve and only light pvp. Eastern gamers are the opposite. Not saying all Westerners are "carebears" and Easterners are "gankers", just the majority tends to fall into the previous catagories. Make a game that's hardcore pvp and you'll alienate a lot of Western gamers.
The pvp also needs to be relavant to the game and (are you listening Blizzard?) have a point. DAoC does pvp rather well in this respect as there are not only the usual personal ranks, but capturing keeps and relics actually benefits everyone. Unlike WoW where if Horde wins AV 100 times, that does absolutely nothing for the guy questing in EPL.
NO matter how creative SB is/was, (and I agree it was a great game) it doesn't change the fact it was a financial failure for reasons unrelated to its creativity and in the end, that's the only yardstick that really matters. (esp in the context of the original article)
So sad, but so, so true.
That's life though I guess......
In regards to the links related to Eve I'd like to point a few things out. While interesting to read the entire story about the Goonswarm vs. BOB doesn't provide any insight about actual gameplay or its quality at all. It shows some griefers who trick people to pay a fee to join their guild and rip them off, they take advantage of someone in the BOB guild and get their log in and passwords and steal their items. That happens in every game, and it does nothing to show off EVE. In fact its a turn off.
Creative directors and their designers make up the vision, not just anyone... well unless you are at Valve. A rule of thumb is that you HAVE to be passionate about the vision or else you have games with NO vision. The publisher and producers are there to complain about if that vision will not reach a wider audience. IF we are just going for the largest target audience, then ALL games will be the same casual experiences. PvP is at its core, user generated content. You can reach end game and quit because there is nothing to do... which is where PvP becomes a necessity. User generated content, it keeps players active while new content is being developed. Any system done horribly can break a game, not just pvp.
Interesting article but it got me mixed a bit, it is as if it started in one direction and on page two was on completely another direction without any clear transition...
I'll have to read it again.
---
Ultimately, all I know is that I am not capable of playing an MMORPG that does not feature PvP in some shape or Form which is tied with the Overall seting in some way.
For example, WoW, a PVE Design, I would never been able to play it more than a week if it were not for its PvP servers and the battlegrounds....
I went to the early 40 man raids, once or twice, until I got to finish em once or Twice, but that is it, I had no inclination returning over and over and over and over like many people seemed to be doing. Albeit I understand why they did it, to complete a certain tier of Gear set..even that prospect was not enough for me so I can become a sheep or a rat in a maze trying to get to the cheese.
So, I got my gear through that which gave me Fun...Battlegrounds, and playing in a PvP server it actually made sense to get PvP in priority..since out there in the open..PvP gear is what is going to help you against the enemy. PVE gear under the context of a PvP server is really inconsequential in my view.
Anyways feels like we are diverting from the topic.
I started playing MMORPG's with Ultima Online and PvP was an Equal part of its Experience as PVE, and I can say a tid bit more too, since playing an MMORPG is also about Interacting with other people it is about the Multiplayer Experience of Adveturing and playing with other people not just amongst other people, and it so happens that not all people actually want to befriend you, some want to kill you therefore PvP is more present and relevant to an MMORPG.
As such without PvP an MMORPG is simply incomplete, and its experience handicaped...besides..I could play an RPG game like Diablo or Dragon Age Origins...KOTOR, Oblivion, etc...if I wanted a pure NPC, PvE experience, I do not have to pay a sub to do that, and nor should anyone else with half a brain.
I'll disagree with one point from the article and agree on another.
Those games are usually train wrecks, because the developers are so passionate and so sure about their vision that they have no perspective whatsoever..... Other games such as Fury and (to a degree that approached self-parody) and Darkfall had similar trajectories - developers affected a boisterous swagger, egged on by manic fans, in postings and interviews which quickly ebbed once the game was released.
I don't play Darkfall now and only played for a month after they first opened up sales.
But I don't think the pvp was ruined by lack of perspective. It simply interacted poorly with certain game design features. Eg. open pvp with full looting is fine, but if gear is hard to acquire it means that new players run around naked for fear of losing all their hard work every time they ganked - and their nudity just means they get ganked more frequently and easily. I believe the devs eventually cottoned onto this and addressed it by making gold easier to acquire. Just a shame it took them so long.
Darkfall's pvp rules also suffered from a stupefying array of exploits. That for me, is what killed my interest. Playing in a brutal free-for-all mmo is one thing. Playing in a brutal mmo where the winner is he who exploits the rules most deftly... no thanks.
Especially in class-based games (note: every single game is class-based, all of them), it is the forum warrior’s job to minimize the power that their class has, complain about the unwarranted power that every other class has, and mobilize the game’s community to address this imbalance NOW NOW NOW NOW. PvP-focused players are insistent on this - if a class is overpowered, everyone uses it, they use it to kill them, this is bad, and it should stop. Now. Or they’ll leave. And take their entire guild... Of thousands.
Listening to this is death. Not recognizing that your users are trying to “play” you is death. This is because - wait for it - players don’t like nerfs.
A good example of this would be the recently released Fallen Earth. Two of its factions took a major nerf, years before the game was released and before they even started Alpha testing.
The two factions in question (Lightbringers and CHOTA) were already the smallest according to interest polls on the FE forums. Both factions specialty was mutations. Originally, mutations were a significant part of the game design and their plans for them were really very interesting. Had they kept to that original vision, I think the mutations element would have attracted a lot of players. But the forum members planning to play other factions (the guns'n'ammo crowd) huffed and puffed and the FE devs "toned mutations down".
This is a game with a complex pvp faction wheel - and two of the factions relatively close to each other on this wheel took a major kick in the nads. Now they're left with a speciality in melee combat and one of them gets better healing. It should be noted that healing is also greatly toned down in FE compared to other mmos and this is a game with a lot of guns, i.e. ranged combat.
I'd say FE is a case where tunnel vision and sticking to the original plan would have been a good thing.
Cant be sooo hard to think these ,lets take wow for example becos pretty much everyone knows something about it.
now theres character classes like priest ,hunter,serialkiller,mage,paladin
skills of the serialkiller,you can kill everybody in the game,no matter what ,you dont need any reason to do so ,why,well,becose you are serialkiller??woo imagine that!you cant speak ,you cant write to any chat,even serialkillers dont talk with each other,you cant visit any cities,no NPC talks to you etc..
Darkfall example ,you kill people who are not hostile to you,first you will lose your race chat,then global chat ,and after all what you have done you will lose all your chats and ability to use any vendors and you cant speak to NPCs anymore,and theres no way to come back,only way is reroll,or something like that.
just something what came into my mind.
Umm...No, lets not punish pvping/pking, or you might end up with Mortal Online.
I agree with you.
Now PM me your template for Darstar. :P
That was a UA Bird Scout, right? You and I had a fight that lasted about 20 minutes one night if I'm right about your toon. It was a really nice build.
This is actually the sad truth.
SB was so good and so evil it litterally made me hate every single MMO I've played since.
"How PvP Can Break Your Game"
This column is about games that are PvP from level 1 to the top, and how it is not trivial to implement PvP properly. Yet reading the title I thought it'd be about something else: games with an identity crisis, those who can't figure out whether they are PvP or PvE?
Like Fallen Earth for instance, with PvP constantly getting in the way of PvE, and abilities being nerfed for PvP purpose and affecting PvE where their effect is different. Or something closer to home, Aion for instance, where you quest/grind in PvE 'till level 20, then are subjected to non-consensual PvP since all the zone past 20 are shared between factions. Or that those who only care about the PvP aspect needing to be subjected to weeks or months of PvE before they can play the way they like. Don't these things break a game too? I don't know, as far as I'm concerned, the MIXING of PvE and PvP is what can break things (at least for one of the sides among the playerbase), just stick to one one the other.
PvP can easily break a game because the group of people who only care about PvP , and want few, or no restrictions on it is relatively small. It is also hard to please, and tends to chase off other players. Trying to cater to the hardcore PVP crowd exclusively is possible, but it's hard to get the number of subscribers required to keep an MMO profitable. PvP can indirectly break a game for hardcore PvPers by making the game too inhospitable to gain a healthy population.
On the other side of the scale you have the pure PvE players, who never engage in PvP activities, and don't want any PvP imposed on them. This is a fairly large group of people. Big enough, that MMOs without any PvP can be profitable, and introducing any PvP mechanics whatsoever may do more harm than good due to balancing issues.
However, most people are somewhere in between the extremes. People who prefer to PvP most of the time, may want to engage in more relaxing and purely social experiences like dungeon crawling once in a while. Likewise, players who prefer not watching their backs all the time, may want to try out their fancy new weapons and spells against other players after spending months building the perfect character. Of course, the easy answer is that if you want to have a completely different gaming experience, play a different game for a while, but people get attached to their characters, and is it really that hard to have both?
The answer to this is, yes, of course, but I'm surprised more games haven't adopted the tier system of PvP seen in EVE. The concept is simple enough. Have some starting areas with no pvp to help players settle in and learn the game. Then divide the rest of the world into NPC controlled areas and player controlled areas. Let the NPC controlled areas have faction based PvP, and varying degrees of NPC protection, while the player controlled areas have no restrictions on PvP. The size of areas with different rulesets can be adjusted based on how much of the playerbase actually plays in them regularly.
What is important is to make it possible for different kind of players to play the same game on the same server. PvP minded players need the "carebears" to keep subscription numbers up, and as potential
victimsopponents if they stick around long enough to want to explore the more competitive aspects of the game. A lot of PvE minded players want PvP as something to do once they are confident they are ready for it, but don't want nasty PKs stalking them during "regular gameplay".Of course, such a game won't cater to the pure PvE players, but the NPC controlled areas wouldn't be any worse than, say, WoW PvP servers. It also won't cater to the pure PvP players, as they'll be upset with having large areas of the game off-limits to their preferred play-style. Still, a tiered system seems the best way, in my opinion, to cater to the huge amount of players who fall in between the extremes. It would have to be balanced around PvP, but that's not a problem in itself as long as it's done from the start and difficulty of PvE encounters are scaled to fit the players rather than the other way around. It would also need incentives to move from safe tiers to riskier ones (safer areas have lower quality resources etc), while still having a game where everything you don't want to do feels optional.
Anyway, I'm done rambling. :p Introducing more PvP in a PvE focused game is likely to lose you customers, while introducing enough PvE in a PvP focused game to make the game interesting for a wide audience... without losing the hardcore pvp crowd that make up the core playerbase, should be possible using a tiered system. EVE is on the right track, but lacks interesting PvE. The only other games I know of that are trying something similar are Dawntide and Earthrise, but in its current state of beta Dawntide has neither interesting PvP nor PvE gameplay, and noone who can talk about it knows much about how Earthrise is coming along.
Here is the simple fact why PVP is a niche concept of like few thousands nerds.. while most normal ppl try to have FUN in real games.
If there is a Winner in PVP - then there is also a looser. In fact there is a 50/50 margin so ....
Its not fun loosing...and ppl dont pay for it....
Its fun winning and ppl will pay for it... until THEY become the loosers .... And the fact of the matter is that half of the ENTIRE gaming population are loosers when it comes to PVP games. Maybe that is the main reason why games like AOC - WAR - even AION are now loosing 60, 70, 80 ! of their playerbase every month ?...
It is interesting that the author mentioned Trammel at the very end of his article. Trammel is such an interesting point in the history of pvp that I think a lot of people truly missed its significance in the direction of MMORPGs.
I was a counselor in Ultima Online during the time, and I was one of the major posters on the official Ultima Online boards back then, so I was actively engaged in the conversations that were going back and forth in the arguments about pvp back then. I was playing a unique character in the game, a grandmaster shepherd named little sarbonn who was constantly walking around the most dangerous places, constantly getting killed by pkers as part of the "adventures" he used to experience.
When Trammel came in the headlights of EA/Origin back then, we had just gone through a Christmas holiday season that had practically changed the very nature of the game. The game went from an adventure where there were pkers and very dangerous spots to what had to be a cesspool of activity of new players who joined the game and created a new "griefer" dynamic in the game unseen before in such numbers. It wasn't just pkers that were out of hand, but thieves and scammers were pretty much going nuts in the game at this time. You couldn't walk through a normal part of the game without being accosted by a steady stream of suicidal thieves that had absolutely nothing to lose by stealing anything you might be silly enough to be carrying around with you at the time. At the same time, there were griefer/pkers who were then infiltrating player communities to find out where people were going to be hanging out and then launching armies of pkers on people who were getting together for a fun day in the game. If you ventured to walk outside the safety of the front gates, expect to be assaulted, murdered and pretty much have your fun ruined for you unless you were one of the unique people who played actually looking for that sort of thing (those types of players weren't going to be introducing themselves into the game for at least another year, about the time that Trammel came on line, coincidentally).
Anyway, when Trammel was announed, a lot of people had been on the boards talking about quitting. And people did. Everquest was the new kid on the block, and the reality that you could leave and go somewhere that might be a lot more fun without the hassle seemed somewhat attractive. The fact that it was first person was attracting people as well.
But when Trammel came online, it was a realization that this was how the devs were going to respond to harassment in the game. In the past, it used to be a player community that responded in force, but those players were giving up and leaving the game for other avenues because it no longer seemed worth trying to save anymore. In the past, I remember groups of fighters getting together to go after a pk army, and we had some major battles. Now, people pretty much said you were on your own. So people started leaving.
When Trammel launched, it attracted a few of the people who though it might be fun to stick around and see the world in a totally different light (with no pk or thief danger) and then slowly, people started to realize how easy the world really was to exist in when there was no player danger. So people started to slowly leave the game. The allure of hidden areas was gone because no one could keep you away from them now. All you had to worry about now was the AI, and it was usually easy to get around. There were no more people hidden in dungeons waiting to strike. Sadly enough, taking away the danger also took away the player base.
Sure, they could go to the evil lands (Felucca) but why go there when you didn't have to? And that was the rub. No one was going to risk life and limb when they didn't have to. And there was nothing interesting enough in the game where there was safety. People started to realize that there really wasn't anything else going on in the game other than the sandbox that we were filling in beforehand. There were no quests. It was a pretty empty existence. So people left.
That is how Trammel killed the game.
Unfortunately, pvp has never really been the same since. Part of what made pvp so unique in UO was that it was open and could happen at any time. There's a little bit of that in WoW if you play on a pvp server, but it's just not the same. Many people play on safe servers, so the pvp is by choice, and it keeps the game somewhat carebearified, for lack of better terms.
I don't think we're ever really going to have great pvp in games again because no game has made it seem worth it so far. DAOC was a great game for its time, and I loved the crap out of that game. But it didn't mean anything. You didn't win anything other than bragging rights. They tried to update that with Warhammer, but it still didn't mean anything, and it was so obvious how much of a lack there was in pve content that the pvp content made it hard to play through the rest of the game. Aion has showed that the allure of such a game just isn't there yet.
Anyway, just some thoughts.
Sarbon, no offense but how did that kill the game as opposed to save it? You mentioned that people seriously were considering leaving to EQ en masse, couldn't play the game due to griefing players, seemed to have gotten fatigued from trying to constantly mount defenses against those griefing players in game. You say that it was "great" pvp on the one hand, yet describe something which would have been impossible to do anything but react to PvP. It's this contradiction which makes little sense, not just in UO but in all PvP games.
I started playing EVE, and it's very obvious that despite the hardcore PvP rep, PvP is little more impactful to players than a game like WoW. One time in a chat channel some regulars and I went out once to try pirating in lowsec, and it took about an hour going through tens of systems just to find some action. Just about every form of PvP in EVE is opt in, by choosing to travel to specific regions, or signing up for militia. EVE would simply not survive without its own trammel in empire space, because it's very easy for experienced players to kill newbies in seconds, over and over again.
I think you are letting nostalgia affect your judgement. No trammel and UO would have been a footnote in history.
That's the same comments I have been hearing from devs and players alike for years. Lum, as usual, has a unique perspective on things.
http://www.shadowbaneemulator.com/
Awesome!
I liked your Post, you made some nice points and my feeling is the same as yours.
I never PKed anyone in UO, but I did PvP lots, actually my style is RP-PvP, allong with my Guild, we created a Vibrant Community in Serpent's Hold (Atlantic Shard), upkeeping many alliances and friendships with many other guilds and their people. And fighting in at least 3 major wars vs PK's, during the five years we played, that is to say, we did PvP quite frequently as well with other Guilds as part of the Role Playing community too, with player made Plot Lines and Adventures, this was the passionate Dynamic of UO.
The beauty of UO was exactly what you did, playing as a Shepherd, a blacksmith, a tailor, a merchant, and only that was possible in UO, not everyone had to be a Fighter not everyone had to be a non fighter, and all together formed a community which was a mirror of what would actually happen in RL.
You actually lived the Life of your character as you saw fit, and that life was varied could evolve and change allong the way depending on what new avenues the player wished to explore...but the tools to do so were there too in a mechanic way.
PK's were 10-15% of the population, another good thing UO had was of course its players, when you went out in the wilderness you would not always be attacked, actually 7 out of 10 people you met would be friendly in various degrees, players had values and used their judgment, today players use no judgment at all...
When Trammel came it simply changed the dynamics of it all, the UO lost its adventure became more of a Sims Online type of game rather, the alliances were all of the sudden not relevant or needed...Trammel was a Utopia in comparison, and the Utopian way of life did not last for long people became bored and left to discover new horizons in other MMORPG's.
In the Atlantic Shard we were able to minimise the impact by having several community leaders sit down together, and we came up with what we called the Territorial War Project (TWP), and established spheres of influence for every Player village or City, as well as Communities based out of NPC cities, and then played out the Intrigue with Declarations of War and Conquest, Diplomacy and negotiations, this prolonged many people's continued existance in the server and specially in the RP community as well as introduced many new players in to Role Play and this type of Fun.
Yet, even that had it course because in the end, it was just not the same Dynamic, even if a few brilliant and passionate individuals would pull the strings behind the scenes and stimulate or guide a bit events as these unfolded, there was no more the unpredictability that one find is reality and was there before Trammel...and even the organizers in time had their fill as well, and with every new generation replacing the old the quality thinned.
So yes, all in all Trammel hurt the Experience, and killed that game for many. And it is really sad, because UO still till today had the best combination of features and mechanics Lore and Playebase to actually be the most successful Role Play PvP oriented game there ever has been.
A PvP game that stimulated Creative Construction and was not only about Destruction (see Darkfall).
But UO had it own Empire Space, it was the NPC towns, no one could be attacked in them, except if you were at War with another guild or part of the early Factions (Order vs Chaos). And on top of it, Guild wars were two way confirmations, you could not just declare war to a guild in an instant and gank its crafters in the town, like people do in Darkfall.
Everyone flourished from these towns and moved outwards the same as in EVE everyone flourished first in Empire space and then moved outwards in to 0.0
The only reason why we got trammel was because EA bought Origin and Richard Garriot was no longer part of the scene, most probably someone made a meeting in front of the board of directors with their financial plan of what changes had to be done to UO in order to attract more people to it and make more profit than it was making before...The Virtual World that was UO seased to exist and instead it became a game.
However..this is like trying to turn a society of citizens in to a society of robots, it just does not work specially if people have other choices...Sony repeated the same mistake with NGE.
How PVE can break a game;
First of all, balancing game play for those who like to be antisocial and play alone, and providing a challenging (yet winable / exploitable) end game experience for large groups of highly aggressive raiders.
Secondly, expansions bring about new tiers of gear that if you're not one of the thousands looking for the same set, you won't be able to join en masse the previously discussed end-game content.
Exploits and bots, bored individuals just pick and pick at any constant in the coding to take advantage of.
Cybersex predators, need I discuss more.
And finally, whining. So you didn't get your drop.. So you didn't come out on top of the dps chart.. So you were afk and the group got wiped.. Don't worry in PvE /ignore is the only way to settle these things. Therefore alienating you from the social network you've spent weeks trying to impress with your infinite-stasis of knowledge regarding drops, spawn camping, crafting prowess, and general ability to type LoL whenever a guild leader says something remotely clever.
PvE's been ruining the mmorpg experience by removing player interaction on a meaningful level since it's conception.
I think you're seeing my post to be a lot more nostalgiac than it was meant to be. I was just reporting an observation as I saw it at the time. My opinion isn't that the decision to bring in Trammel was necessarily a bad one, but it was one that used a broadsword method to remove a tumor. It NEEDED to be done, but it wasn't necessarily the right move that SHOULD have been done. The game was suffering a lot, and it needed something, but no matter how much input was given on the boards, the decision was made by people who didn't really seem to be listening to the players, but were listening to the boardroom execs talking about how they could stave off the incoming competition.
What was lost in Trammel was something the game had developed by Hobbesian purposes. People got together in the past and became parts of communities because it was beneficial to all. When Trammel came along, the need to band together was gone forever. You didn't need those other people, so the idea of community involvement died as well.
I was a counselor on Atlantic at the time. I was a senior member in organizing a lot of events on the shard (in several different guises) but I started to notice how much harder it was to organize anything after Trammel came along. People actually started coming along and disrupting player made quest events because they realized no one could stop them from doing so (the members used to police the events because in the past they could physically remove you from an event by killing you). The game slowly changed, and that's what led to its demise, amongst other things. It was sad to see it go.
But don't think that didn't mean there weren't problems before Trammel. Oh, there were lots of them. And Trammel wasn't like an NGE kind of thing. The devs put it in to help the game, and I believe they had every great intention involved, which is why it was so sad to see the next year of the game after Trammel because it sputtered on and then became something completely different.
But UO had it own Empire Space, it was the NPC towns, no one could be attacked in them, except if you were at War with another guild or part of the early Factions (Order vs Chaos). And on top of it, Guild wars were two way confirmations, you could not just declare war to a guild in an instant and gank its crafters in the town, like people do in Darkfall.
Everyone flourished from these towns and moved outwards the same as in EVE everyone flourished first in Empire space and then moved outwards in to 0.0
The only reason why we got trammel was because EA bought Origin and Richard Garriot was no longer part of the scene, most probably someone made a meeting in front of the board of directors with their financial plan of what changes had to be done to UO in order to attract more people to it and make more profit than it was making before...The Virtual World that was UO seased to exist and instead it became a game.
However..this is like trying to turn a society of citizens in to a society of robots, it just does not work specially if people have other choices...Sony repeated the same mistake with NGE.
Not everyone actually moves to 0.0 though. If anything I would argue that the bulk the activity is still in NPC space with occasional forays to lowsec for most people.
My outsider's guess is that in UO, NPC towns simply weren't enough. Citizens weren't enough to protect their own rights. It's the same in EVE-without concord, most of us miners and mission runners would be unable to protect ourselves against the flood of pirates and pvpers. I understand your point very well, but the question is why then did people feel the need to quit if safe havens existed, and it was possible to minimize griefing or pvp contact in them?
I think you're seeing my post to be a lot more nostalgiac than it was meant to be. I was just reporting an observation as I saw it at the time. My opinion isn't that the decision to bring in Trammel was necessarily a bad one, but it was one that used a broadsword method to remove a tumor. It NEEDED to be done, but it wasn't necessarily the right move that SHOULD have been done. The game was suffering a lot, and it needed something, but no matter how much input was given on the boards, the decision was made by people who didn't really seem to be listening to the players, but were listening to the boardroom execs talking about how they could stave off the incoming competition.
What was lost in Trammel was something the game had developed by Hobbesian purposes. People got together in the past and became parts of communities because it was beneficial to all. When Trammel came along, the need to band together was gone forever. You didn't need those other people, so the idea of community involvement died as well.
I was a counselor on Atlantic at the time. I was a senior member in organizing a lot of events on the shard (in several different guises) but I started to notice how much harder it was to organize anything after Trammel came along. People actually started coming along and disrupting player made quest events because they realized no one could stop them from doing so (the members used to police the events because in the past they could physically remove you from an event by killing you). The game slowly changed, and that's what led to its demise, amongst other things. It was sad to see it go.
But don't think that didn't mean there weren't problems before Trammel. Oh, there were lots of them. And Trammel wasn't like an NGE kind of thing. The devs put it in to help the game, and I believe they had every great intention involved, which is why it was so sad to see the next year of the game after Trammel because it sputtered on and then became something completely different.
I see what you are saying with this, but it sounds like it was a done deal either way.
If EVE forced everyone to mine or do a lot of business outside concord, you would probably see the same thing happen. Miners would have to band together with PvPers just to exist. However the advantage in such is always with the pirates or griefers. The people with something to defend are at a disavantage to the people who do things for the lulz.
Eventually players would get fatigued.
I'd be interested actually to see the proposed player suggestions that would have been preferrable to trammel. I think they might be relevant to Lum's article and might shed some light on it being possible to have unbroken PvP.
I feel that the PvE centered games can't have balanced PvP because of their ineherent need of CLASSES.
Without different classes (with very distinct abilities) it's very hard to produce good quality compelling PvE. The myriad of abilities make it hard to balance class vs class, let alone class combos.
A wise friend once told me: "PvP can't be fair until there's but one class".
As for the freedom to PvP vs "100% safe areas", why the heck do people want to mix these two different player profiles is something I can't quite understand.
In fact even within the PvP crowd there are sub-segments that hate eachother: total loss vs no loss, full loot vs no loot, etc.
We [old school PvPers longing for sandboxes] have to admit that we are indeed a minority in a world full of "casual players" BUT developers should remind themselves that we also have $15/month to spend on a game designed for us.
While we require as many, if not more, game features as a standard PvE centered game, the reduced content requirement (i.e. dungeon design) alone justifies the development - even if you only get 100K subs, that's still 20Mill/year.
Excellent article and spot on - I've always said PVP divides and/or destroys a community, never builds it - introduce it into your game and expect it to either fail miserably or remain a niche for its lifespan. EVE Online may have numbers starting to approach 'interesting' but its taken a LONG time to get them and those numbers would swell 10 fold if it were to introduce a seperate shard for PVE.
I have to agree, it is when developers cave in to certain whiners and crybabies on their forums that usually leads to great PvP being destroyed. I don't think it's the developers sticking true to their vision that is the problem at all.
Look at Trammel.... and how that basically ruined PvP in UO....
Maybe it would get a lot more subscriptions, but that isn't what they are trying to achieve. A PvE only EVE shard would not be EVE Online, it would be a completely different game.
Take Darkfall for example, the population keep growing, and Aventurine has made it clear they will never, ever, ever, ever make a PvE only server, or will never, ever, ever add complete safe zones.