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See you in Ultima Online… no, Shadowbane… uh, DAOC… hey, SWG… wait, Horizons…. Vanguard?… Darkfall! YEAH! Totally see you in Darkfall, newb!
It’s nice to know that the rabid hardcore still exist, and still hate you.
So how do these games become more accessible to the drooling masses? Easy! Just implement grinding, level treadmills, restrict any and all competition whatsoever. These systems are intentionally in place to prevent anyone from over-achieving or failing. I recently saw a WoW ad that said “Come join 8 million heroes!” Suddenly every single player is automatically a hero? Essentially, most MMOs are designed so anyone can hop on a game, gain levels and pay $15 US per month for their instant hero status.
These designers don’t want to reward players for their achievements. They just want to make every mouth-breather who logs on think that they’re special, for fear that they’ll quit playing at any sign of disappointment. And even worse, they expect us all to be morons.
Ah, for the days when games violently punched you in the throat and dared you to keep paying them money.
The problem with hardcore PvP games is, as has been often said by myself and others, that while many think they are of the hardcore, few actually are. And while the spectre of being killed repeatedly with no recourse, your home sowed with salt and your guild banners used for tablecloths for the meal of human jerky you kindly donated to may sound nice at first, the bloom tends to fade from the rose when you realize that no, you’re probably never going to be the guys carving the jerky.
Which isn’t to say that Darkfall won’t TOTALLY ROCK YOUR FACE, because honestly I haven’t a clue. But the rhetoric from their fans sure looks familar!
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about 3 years ago
Yes, all we need is harder games. Perhaps the reason why Raph Koster – and the rest of us – are advocating doing whatever you can to widen your addressable market is because games aren’t getting any cheaper to make.
Player skill can certainly be one engagement vector in a successful game, provided those who don’t want to compete in that vector are able to avoid it. Other, more accessible vectors are obviously time and money. More often than not I’ll play a game that offers a combination of money & time vectors as I know I’ll never be able to compete in the skill vector.
I’m not sure why anyone developing a large scale MMO – with all its attendant development costs – would choose to embrace only the skill engagement vector. Developing a game for only the TRUE hardcore isn’t exactly a well-worn path to profitability.
about 3 years ago
I’ve played games for years, starting with the release of EQ. I’ve moved through DAoC, Lineage II, WoW, LoTR and a smattering of other games. I love MMOs. I also like games that are challenging. But I have also gotten to the point where I can’t spend my life in a video game. I’m an adult with relationships, responsibilities and a demanding job. All of the games I’ve played have eventually chosen to make challenging=timesink.
I want a game I can play for 30 minutes or 6 hours and feel like I am accomplishing something. Unfortunately, I think that means I want too much.
about 3 years ago
*boggle*
The writer sounds like the kind of guy who’d be found in the studio audience of the latest Ronco infomercial.
Isn’t Darkfall bordering on vaporware? 5 years of development, and a beta that has been “starting next month” for the past couple of years?
about 3 years ago
I think besides the glowing praise of a game that doesn’t actually exist yet, the important point from the article is actually one you agree with, Mr. Jennings, so I’m not sure why you would be so critical. The point that I’m refering to is that these games have been made more ‘accessible’ by turning them into long, boring grindfests, mostly devoid of any creativity or even our traditional idea of ‘fun’ that we expect from video games.
about 3 years ago
I suspect, from the tone of the article, the author not so much resented long boring grindfests as the fact that everyone can do them.
about 3 years ago
The term vaporware was created soley as a cautionary tale for games like Darkfall.
This game, along with Dark and Light, have promised pvpers exactly what we have been looking for. The problem they seem to have run into along the way is that it’s much easier to talk about what would make a game 12 layers of pvp wonder-kind, than to actually, you know, make one that is.
There is a market for a game that captures the feel of UO circa 97-98. The challenge is in creating a game so good and with grass so green, that the lambs would be willing to lead themselves to the slaughter. As noted, much easier to write about, than to implement.
In your article, you’re dead on about how many people fool themselves into thinking that they are the wolves. The best example of that was Mordred/Andred. Honestly, one of the best times I’ve had in any game ever was the first month of Andred. It was pure unadulterated carnage, and I loved it. Even better was the constant tells we would get after going all pirate on an xp spot. I’m talking tells of pure hate.
It boggled my mind that people would choose to play on a FFA server, get killed, then have the temerity to bitch about it. I knew then that the server would die. Quickly.
As much as I would love a wonderfully constructed, polished, open world style pvp game, I’ve relegated myself to the fact that it probably won’t happen.
about 3 years ago
Hey Scott, regarding all the talk about good lesser known games, can you do a post sometime about some rpgs and mmos that might be very small / independent, that you think deserve a look? I extend that to Brian and others too on their blogs (I even emailed Professor Bartle
) Basically since it’s such a hot topic right now, and these companies already have problems with marketing and getting known, might as well talk about them and help them instead of just saying how tough it is. I’d like to see some of them, but right now have to search though a dozen blogs and comments to try to find names of games. I’ve found a couple so far only.
I know sometime I think last year you posted ‘what i’m playing now’ but maybe more up to date? Or maybe there’s a site I don’t know about that has such reviews.
I will even check them all out I promise!
Unless NCSoft has some rule about you giving publicity
Then just email me 
thanks.
about 3 years ago
The basic problem is simple: The number of people willing to pay to be punching bags for anonymous assholes is very very small. Those of you praying for the return of pre-Rep UO need to keep this in mind: The sheep are not going to be there. The sheep are going to be playing some other game, that doesn’t allow them to be killed, looted, and cut up into jerky, for the unspeakable crime of going to the brit graveyard to kill some undead.
The other problem, which Scott identified, is that something on the order of 10% of the playerbase is good enough (read: has the skill, gear, and time, to get good at the game) to win 50% or more of their fights. As attrition takes out the people who can’t compete, people who were winning 50% of their fights suddenly find they’re winning 20%. Or less. So they quit. If you’re lucky, you end up with some equilibrium where you stop shedding players faster than they’re coming in. If you aren’t so lucky, you end up with a server empty, but for one guy who’s won the game. Then he logs out, because there’s nothing left to fight. (I read this has happened to a few MUDs. No, I don’t have any concrete examples.)
about 3 years ago
very few mmogs have good pvp
about 3 years ago
Ah yes. “Come play our game where only a select few of you will be chosen to be heroes. The rest of you…um…may we have $15 please?”
I too think it would be great to be independently wealthy so that I could create a game where I paid people to not be the hero in my game. I mean, how cool would it be if I could play with thousands of other people, but I was the only hero? Freakin cool, that’s how cool. Oh wait…you say you want a game like that to be profitable? Oh.
about 3 years ago
This game will be a smashing success (unless it costs more than $50,000 to produce).
If I really want to play a player skill based PvP game there are oodles of them that either don’t require a monthly subscription (like BF2) or are part of a subscription that I already have like Xbox live. The only real new aspect of this concept is that there is character persistence and the character may get better. The gear is even less persistent than in a FPS, in most cases if I die in a FPS at least I can respawn and buy a new gun every round.
about 3 years ago
“I suspect, from the tone of the article, the author not so much resented long boring grindfests as the fact that everyone can do them.”
Eh, thats just not what I get out of it. What I get out of it is that the constant dumbing down of these games has created games that are insults to their own players. Where ‘casual player’ got conflated with ‘I want to do the same 3 quests over and over for 70 levels’ I don’t know.
about 3 years ago
mouth-breather
I take offense at that poster’s discrimination against persons with adenoidal and sinus problems.
about 3 years ago
It is a bit distressing to me there seems almost no middle ground to the entire “hardcore” vs. “casual” gameplay discussions. People, like the article’s author, seem to think that all casual gamers are unskilled, “mouth breather”, buffoons. This seems to be a kneejerk, unqualified reaction to the addition of so many additional new customers and a noticeable shift in the market focus, necessary to sustain the industry.
While I think a lot of “old school” gamers are a little worried that the majority of games made will more resemble Barbie Horse Adventures rather than Halo. But is this fear valid? Probably not; rather it sells short the Industry’s ability to adapt to a new market while maintaing its draw to the more “traditional” gamer.
Of course, no matter where the industry goes, it seems we will always have the gankers who love nothing more than the power rush of ganking “less-skilled” players.
about 3 years ago
Mist,
Here’s the relevant quotes: “Just implement grinding, level treadmills, restrict any and all competition whatsoever.”
“They just want to make every mouth-breather who logs on think that they’re special, for fear that they’ll quit playing at any sign of disappointment.”
That ain’t ‘treadmills are bad’; that’s ‘if the game doesn’t let me victimize people, it sucks.’
Once again: hardcore peeps, you will be the assrapee, not the assraper. The only people who willingly allow themselves to be victims are people in jail because the alternatives are worse. Nobody wants to pay for your bullshit power trip.
about 3 years ago
Darkfall’s vaporware.
Yeah, I said it. Eat me.
about 3 years ago
Well, I take exception to “casual player = mouth-breathing retard” considering that me and my guildies were some of the most feared bitches to ever shut down Freeport for an hour a day every day on old Tallon Zek during our lunch breaks at EAC. You can be a lover of teh peeveepee, have decent gaming skills, and be casual too.
That said, I am sure we drove at least a couple of people off the server, if not right out of Everquest, so I really doubt those days will ever come again. SOE at the least and other companies clearly have learned from the EQ and UO (and Shadowbane) examples.
Nonetheless I hope Darkfall DOES rock my face off, but I’m not holding my breath to see the day it comes out.
about 3 years ago
“Just implement grinding, level treadmills, restrict any and all competition whatsoever.”
Grinding and level treadmills and gear supremacy just move the competition from the PVP battlegrounds to more a more social venue: guilds. No, I’m not trying to kill you, but I did run a secret campaign to subtly undermine your status amongst the guild, ultimately resulting in me securing that staff (or the last slot on the raid roster) we were both vying for. PVP is some kinda carebear compared to the internecine guild warfare going on daily.
about 3 years ago
Isn’t this the same hard-code elitist attitude that was so looking forward to Vanguard?
about 3 years ago
Hard-core I meant, /sigh
about 3 years ago
Todd Ogrin understands. Do you? Some people want anti-social behavior to equal advancement in a MMRPG and most of us want social behavior to equal advancement. Can you imagine how unfun a game that uses anti-social behaviors as a means of advancement?
Well, I’m off to play some Counter Strike…
about 3 years ago
D-one has it!
A game can be very competative and player-skill centric, and still be fun … even for those who haven’t got it.
How many people have played the various FPS over the years, enjoyed it immensely, and weren’t in the top 10% wrt skill. I certainly never was that quick with the mouse and strategy, but I enjoyed HL and UT immensely.
There IS a market out there for a different kind of game … one not so based on repetative grind … one that centers around multi-faceted player competition and world building, but done well. No doubt, it wouldn’t be easy. But I’ll bet the 50 million Euro budget of WoW (or whatever it was) could achieve it.
about 3 years ago
The reason people would enjoy a FPS and not a MMORPG based on the same concepts is that the FPS isn’t a persistant world. After the FPS game is over the world resets. Winning one FPS game doesn’t give you a mechanical advantage (gear) over the next FPS game.
about 3 years ago
And yet there were ladders … ladders that did not reset. Rudimentary, true … but persistant all the same.
No doubt the design of such a game would be difficult and perhaps would require discarding many of the tenants of traditional MMO.
about 3 years ago
Well, I was all set to write yet another long post about how this game Darkfall, if it ever achieves more than vaporware status, will share a fate resembling that of Shadowbane. All with references going back to Ultima Online and how in the 1998 – 1999 period, rampant PKing (often called “raping” other players) pissed off/drove off enough paying customers that the PKers screwed-over themselves…but I see that Lum, Soulflame, Isildur and J. have it all covered. I complement you all on your posts, especially Soulflame who said:
“are going to be playing some other game, that doesn’t allow them to be killed, looted, and cut up into jerky, for the unspeakable crime of going to the brit graveyard to kill some undead.”
You got it absolutely right, Soulflame. The problem the PKers either didn’t understand, or more likely just didn’t care about, was that were playing “lets treat other players as my own personal Stop-And-Rob stores”, while the other players were trying to play “lets get together with a few friends and go dungeon crawling”. Those players just wanted to get together with their old buddies online and do some “Dungeons and Dragons style” adventuring, or Ultima style roleplaying, or even just wanted to freakin’ mine some ore and work on their crafts, simply LEFT when another alternative was presented. Which explains why EQ did so well.
If anyone out there in the “InterWebs” is STILL confused, please search this web site for Scott’s post “The Unbearable Darkness of Ultima Online”, or else search Raph Koster’s site for stuff he was saying in 1998, and then look at how that changed years later, especially when PvP was being discussed for Star Wars Galaxies. Heck, even “Designer Dragon” admitted that EQ proved him wrong about the PK switch being commercially unviable.
The weed of rampant PKing in UO bore bitter fruit for the “0Ld $k00L” PKers.
P.S. Yeah, I still exist and I still hate the rabid hardcore back
I’m also proud to have been the person who helped coin the phrase “PvE”, back in the day.
about 3 years ago
Hehe – I like to think of good ‘ol WWII Online as “keeping it real” for the hardcore PvPers and disproving a lot of their precepts
Averaged over our 6 years, the bulk of our exit polling has been hardcore players leaving because it was “too hard”.
The game’s crappy launch has tarred its reputation so that people assume its small stature is because its buggier than anything else out there and I can’t deny we’ve had our wtf patches. Over 6 years. We’ve gotten rid of some of the ludicrous difficulty (like the four key combo to discharge a rifle, lol)
about 3 years ago
Chess has ladders too but I don’t think anyone would consider chess a MMO. Part of the design of a FPS is knowing that any unbalancing content, a BFG perhaps, is going to reset every match. This is not the case of MMOs because of the persistant world. To say that because people like FPS’s they would like an MMO based on that ruleset is to misunderstand MMOs, FPSs or people. Or all of the above.
about 3 years ago
99 called and wanted discussions about ‘lamb’, ‘victim’ and ‘eeeevvvil PeeKaays’ back.
Its time to move on people, all PvPers want is a game where, you know, one could *gasp* PvP without having to endure endless grind and where player actions(aka skill) make more difference than time put in.
about 3 years ago
*sigh*
This guy should get out and try Iraq. Talk about ultimate risk vs reward with everything on the line baby.
Yes, I went there.
about 3 years ago
Ok to the guy who suggested reading Lum’s post “The Unbearable Darkness of Ultima Online”. Thank you. that was a very good read, and a thank you to Lum as well. great post even if it is over 2 yrs old.
about 3 years ago
EvE is about the only hardcore (nearly ffa, corpse looting, etc) pvp MMO I can think of with some success.
And even they’re struggling with the POS stuff to remember what everyone thought was fun about dying repeatedly.
about 3 years ago
“all PvPers want is a game where, you know, one could *gasp* PvP”
I just spent a couple of hours PvPing in Pirates. You want skill-based PvP? Come on down. I’ll be happy to hand your ass to you a few dozen times in identical ships with identical gear.
But I don’t expect many hardcore PvPers to show up, because my game is not designed to let you gank the unwilling. So you’ll be facing people who want to fight you, who are prepared for you, and who will slap you around like a little girl with nothing more than superior skill.
And the ‘hardcore’ don’t want that. They want a 6v1 gangbang outside of Minoc followed by assrape emotes. It’s just, see, the rest of us have all moved on.
about 3 years ago
I played Shadowbane from release until the population crashed drastically after about four months. I think it was the biggest, most heartbreaking disappointment of my MMORPG life.
Shadowbane was doomed at launch. Its PvP model was only one of its many lethal flaws.
Some of them were purely technical, such as the login servers that thought they were firewalls, the game servers that crashed at random when you had more than about 50 people in close proximity (yeah, in a game that promised mass battles), or the never to be sufficiently condemned sb.exe errors, which left you suddenly looking at your desktop while someone/something killed and ate you. The 3D engine was a nightmare; getting stuck on the ends of bridges, clipping through parts of buildings (and getting stuck), falling through the mountain in the undead farming zone (thereby getting stuck), and getting teleported to 0,0 when you flew over a wall (then drowning and losing all of your gear) were regular occurrences. They had no admin tools to speak of, so when Trees of Life randomly deranked, or whole guild towns disappeared, the CSR’s admitted they had no way to look up what rank they had been, and guilds lost millions of gold and weeks of ranking time, not to mention the use of their NPCs. Exploits included not just duping, but one guild discovering the CSR “god mode” switch was in the client, giving themselves CSR powers, and doing things like moving entire cities (and everyone in them) to the bottom of the ocean. If everything else in the game had been wonderful, the technical problems alone would have been enough to kill it.
Then there were the rather bizarre assumptions that the developers made, such as the idea that “function follows form.” They thought if they provided the outward trappings of a quasi-medieval society, such a society would develop to make use of them. Walled towns and siege weapons should cause sieges to happen, no? Well, no … not when the players had telepathic communication, cloaking devices, transporters, phasers, resurrection, and more. A healer/channeler, for instance, with flight, stealth, elemental nukes, etc., was more like an A-10 Warthog aircraft than anything that existed in the medieval world. Form follows function, and we got summoning chains, flying nukers, and the infamous zergball. They also forgot the natural human desire to join the winning side, and to group with others to insure personal safety. Wolfpack thought that perhaps a guild would dominate one server after years of trying; instead, it happened on virtually every server in a matter of months.
There was a lot they apparently didn’t know about basic human nature. They assumed, for instance, that people would prefer to fight others of their own level, with an equal chance of dying and losing their stuff, gold, etc. Sadly, many people who call themselves PvPers are … well, not. If given a choice between a fight they might lose and a fight that’s a guaranteed win, they will go for the latter every time. For those people who did not level up during the first month, during the first race to the top, the game was virtually unplayable. Guilds did not recruit newbies who would need protection but be unable to contribute anything useful. The newbies themselves, no matter how they tried to band together, were helpless in the face of people 30 or more levels above them out to farm them for the few coins in their pockets. The area outside of Khar was a gauntlet of newbie-gankers waiting for fresh prey (and sometimes a few bored people like me, ganking the gray-gankers). When balancing their own short-term gain (gank that little guy for a handful of coins and some vendor trash) versus the long-term good of the game as a whole (let that little guy level up so he’ll be fun to play with later), they went for the short-term every time. With no new players coming in, no new characters being leveled up, to replace the people who left, the game began to die. I remember my last day there … I ran around most of the main continent … everywhere I saw the ruins of abandoned cities, the empty farming zones, the vacant wasteland that had once been the home of adventurers and armies. I saw, however, no people. The world that had existed only weeks before was dead.
Then there were the issues of gear decay, repair costs, and time. I worked out once that for every 10 minutes I spent in PvP, I had to spend the better part of an hour farming gold to pay for my repairs. Great idea, right? Invite people to play a PvP game, then force them to PvE until their brains bleed in order to be able to participate in that PvP. It makes the leveling treadmill look like fun. Or how about a big city raid? An hour getting everyone together, an hour getting to the target, 10 minutes of fighting, and fizzle, down goes the server. See above regarding login servers, etc. And let’s not even get into city maintenance. The amount of farming necessary just for basic building payments (never mind ranking them up or repairing them after a fight) was oppressive. Whole guilds quit over that.
And we can’t forget the live team’s utter contempt for their players, and ham-handed stupidity in administering the game. The “events” that led to equipping one, and only one, guild with siege engines, or giving one, and only one, side in a guild war a free invulnerable, fully-equipped demon city (in both cases, very dominant guilds already) are landmarks in the history of bad game management. Their refusal, until just before I quit, to put in any sort of respec system because people who didn’t want to spend weeks of PvE levelling up new characters if they wanted to change their spec (or the game changed around it) weren’t “hardcore” enough (note: “Pay to Grind” != “Play to Crush”) infuriated the pioneers, who had to learn the game by trial and error and were getting wtfpwned by the people who had their errors to learn from. After the infamous CSR power exploit disaster, they first were going to roll back the affected servers 3 days. When people complained, they changed that to rolling back individual characters by 3 days upon request … so a vast number of people handed all their gold/gear to a friend, requested a rollback, and enjoyed the fruits of company-facilitated duping. They insulted players in the forums, they ignored their own beta testers, and their arrogance alone drove players out of the game. They not only tolerated but condoned griefers whose “fun” came from destroying the fun of others; they told the players to police the game, but gave them no way to do so.
Shadowbane still lives. It has grown back up to almost half as many servers as it had at launch. I’m told they’ve added things like content, they’ve made the costs more reasonable, and one has to assume they’ve added some way in which new players can level without being the endlessly frustrated chew-toys of the gray-gankers. Somehow, they’ve kept it going. Maybe they even made it not suck.
To this day, people (especially the moronic bean-counters who hold the power in the industry) see Shadowbane as a failure of PvP. But it wasn’t. The reasons Shadowbane failed had very little to do with PvP. They had everything to do with bad concepts, bad design, bad coding, bad implementation, bad management, bad customer relations, and a general-purpose failure of common sense. Shadowbane didn’t fail because people didn’t like “Play to Crush”; it failed because they didn’t like “Pay to Crash”.
That said, there will never again be anything like what some people remember through their rose-colored glasses as the “golden age” of UO. That was a product of a time that will never exist again. If people wanted to play a major MMORPG, they had to play UO. If they wanted to play UO, they had to be sheep to the predatory PKers’ wolves. There were no other options. That can’t happen again because there are many choices of games, and the people who don’t want to be prey can play any number of them, WoW being foremost among them. Nobody is forced to be unwilling prey anymore, and few will be willing prey. It’s tough, no doubt, for the people whose e-peen size depended so heavily on being able to win fights they had no real chance of losing, but personally I have no sympathy at all.
As for the comparison between FPS games and MMORPGs: A leader board does not persistence make. Whether you are ranked first or last on the leader board has no influence, except perhaps psychological, on your abilities in-game. If I beat you in UT, we still start the next match on exactly equal terms, save for our skill. If I beat you in Shadowbane, now I’ve got your gear and you don’t. All other things being equal, I now hold an advantage. That makes all the difference in the world. Persistent PvP systems tend to fall into positive feedback loops — i.e., the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Or, the buff get buffer and the weak get weaker, as the case may be. Every win increases the chance of future wins; every loss decreases them (which is why players strive to avoid fights that aren’t guaranteed wins). The losers fall further and further behind, they see their chances of catching up, of breaking even, becoming vanishingly small, and they go find something more fun to do. I remember on the Shadowbane forums how someone, almost certainly a company shill, had this eloquent post about how the members of a guild whose city (representing thousands of man-hours of grinding) had been destroyed in an alarm-clock raid might gather together and vow to rebuild, complete with inspiring speeches … but the reality is, people say “I’m not jumping back on that treadmill. **** this ****, I’m going to EQ.”
I’m still waiting for the PvP game of my dreams … the dreams Shadowbane crushed so badly. Perhaps, human nature being what it is, such a game is impossible. But I’m still looking.
about 3 years ago
I love the ‘the reason hardcore PvPers don’t play Puzzle Pirates is because you can’t gank people.’ This, ignoring the fact that Puzzle Pirates is a queer kids game that’s got more in common with Tetris than an anything to do with pirates.
about 3 years ago
The illusion of being a hero is to modern MMOs, as the illusion of being feared is to old pvp free for all MMOs.
about 3 years ago
Puzzle Pirates is also played by heterosexuals, but isildur is speaking of Pirates of the Burning Sea.
about 3 years ago
I see. That wasn’t exactly the connotation I was going for with the queer term anyway, but a few usages of it apply to how Puzzle Pirates might look to an outsider. As for PoBS, no info, so no comment.
about 3 years ago
Regardless, saying no hardcore PvPers will show up to play PoBS because you can’t gank the unwilling is a bit shortsighted, there are (at least what I would call) hardcore PvPers playing both Guild Wars and the WoW Arena system, and those are about as far from grief and gank as I can think of, and about as fair and balanced as you’re going to get. The current WSVG tournaments for the WoW arena are incredibly competitive, and they’re using stock characters with stock gear, and the ingame PvP ladder is not too far from giving away full suits of stock gear at decent rating levels.
If hardcore PvPers don’t show up to play your game, its because theres some other problem with it.
about 3 years ago
If anything SB shows how much potential PvP title has. Despite many flaws that Wanderer pointed out SB held viable player base for over 2 years. That player base weathered down what can be considered worst release, technically deficient client and questionable support and were happy PvPing with no ‘sheep’ left in the game and no content patches whatsoever.
about 3 years ago
Note that I put ‘hardcore’ in ‘scare quotes’ to indicate I was ‘sneering’ at the term. Because the people who want fun competitive PvP are already playing fun competitive PvP, in GW and in WoW and in EVE. The people who want to gank are waiting for the Next Big Failure to come along, to let them grief noobs for a few months before it shrivels up and dies. This is because every sane developer has learned this lesson: griefing and ganking doesn’t just lose you the $15/mo from the person who was griefed. It has a multiplicative effect, creating an environment in your game, and a reputation outside your game, and people tend to steer clear. ‘Play to Crush’ as a selling point and marketing slogan probably lost SB twice the players it ended up bringing them.
Competitive PvPers will show up to PvP in Pirates, because our PvP rocks, because it’s fun and rewards player skill. Griefers will show up and discover there’s not much for them to do, because player skill isn’t what they really want — what they really want is 6v1 gangbangs against weaker opponents. Unsurprisingly, I like the former and detest the latter. And I was never even a victim in UO, so I don’t have that ancient bitterness to explain it. But I did fight an awful lot of evenly-matched PvP battles — with open looting and stat loss — in Kesmai.
about 3 years ago
I can’t say PoBS pvp is worth it, but hey nice to see at least one of their devs read lum’s blog.
about 3 years ago
Sure, there is no example of a successfull competitive game on the market. Quake, street fighter, counter strike, starcraft etc arent competitive games with 20% of the player ruling 80% of the others and they arent successfull and arent played by millions of users daily.
I strongly believe there is room for competitive games on the market, there is even plenty of room, it s just a matter of having games well designed. I played all the games mentioned in your articles but also Asheron’s call darktide for years and i know there is a “hardcore pvp” comunity. Sure it is smaller than the casual gamer community but it should not prevent developers to try and fill this niche.
K.
about 3 years ago
IMO, the problem with “hardcore” games is that most of them are designed to be the gaming equivalent of doing your homework every night. I hardly see why simply enjoying a game should be considered contempt-worthy. Different folks have different definitions of fun, and I think it’s great to have games out there that cater to the range of them. As a working, married adult with a social life and more than one hobby, the idea of considering a game to be good because it requires me to put in huge amounts of time on raiding or PvPing is laughable—but I know that’s the perfect recipe for success for those who want to spend such time on it. It doesn’t mean my way or their way is somehow less worthy; they’re just different.
about 3 years ago
JJC wrote: Chess has ladders too but I don’t think anyone would consider chess a MMO.
I didn’t claim Chess was a MMO, nor was I implying that a FPS is a MMO. Persistence is a component of what is MMO. FPS ladders are persistent. Is it therefore possible to combine the competition of FPS with persistence. Perhaps with a little creative thinking this example of persistence could be expanded to make something that is a lot more MMO like, yet still retain the hyper competitive nature of FPS.
JJC wrote: Part of the design of a FPS is knowing that any unbalancing content, a BFG perhaps, is going to reset every match. This is not the case of MMOs because of the persistant world.
So you’re saying that the concept of a hyper competitive MMO won’t work because of design errors (the BFG)? It certainly is a good caution (for both PvE or PvP game). Careful design and balance is always wise. But it doesn’t sound like a reason to believe that it’s not possible.
JJC wrote: To say that because people like FPS’s they would like an MMO based on that ruleset is to misunderstand MMOs, FPSs or people. Or all of the above.
There are those who enjoy PvP competition. There are those who enjoy the persistence, story and world-building that is MMO. The intersection of these two isn’t a tiny group. There are precious few games that really cater to this group. I’d love to see a capable company fill this market opportunity with a great game.
about 3 years ago
I don’t understand what the hardcore want that is missing in current games. WoW has pvp servers. Want to go gank noobs with 6 buddies? Go to the nearest contested zone. Want to pvp without much time investment levelling up? Level to 19 and play WSG matches. Want to advance your gear through pvp? Go earn and spend your honor and arena points. Want to have the glory and fame of being the best team around? Play arena till your team is #1 and then post on your server and battlegroup forum about how awesome your penis is. Want to have your pvp impact everyone? Go take the world pvp objectives and let everyone know they have you to thank for that 5% damage buff. So what’re you missing?
about 3 years ago
Wanderer wrote: Whether you are ranked first or last on the leader board has no influence, except perhaps psychological, on your abilities in-game. If I beat you in UT, we still start the next match on exactly equal terms, save for our skill.
Well, there is one difference of the boards (at least some of them) you’re neglecting.
If I beat you, you lose the chance to challenge the person or team that was above you, and you’re now open to being challenged by the person or team that was below me.
I’ll admit, the example is rudimentary. But it is persistent, it is there, and it could be expanded on.
about 3 years ago
“There are those who enjoy PvP competition. There are those who enjoy the persistence, story and world-building that is MMO. The intersection of these two isn’t a tiny group. There are precious few games that really cater to this group. I’d love to see a capable company fill this market opportunity with a great game.”
There are those that enjoy pepperoni pizzas. There are those who enjoy the luxurious comfort of overstuffed couches. the intersection of these two is not a tiny group. Clearly some company needs to make overstuffed couches made of pepperoni pizza.
about 3 years ago
“Because the people who want fun competitive PvP are already playing fun competitive PvP, in GW and in WoW and in EVE.”
Have you ever played EVE? It is about as gank-centric and ‘play to crush’ as any game ever has been. A friend of mine has as his signature “All PvP in EVE is consentual; you agree to it when you log on.”
And the only reason more hardcore PvPers don’t play THAT game is because the combat is like watching paint dry.
about 3 years ago
What “hardcore” players dont seem to get and developers dont comment on enough is that if you can actually build up an advantage in a PVP game over time the losers will quit. Even if you find 100,00 hardcore players after a 6 months half will have have to be losers and most of them will quit. And because the winners are now powerful no one wants to replace the losers.
Its not just about what people want like Scott ussually addresses. Its about the world dynamic.
And in games where the advanatage to being a long time player is limited(like Mordred) you have of course have the problem that their is less reason for the winners to stay.
EVE for all its problems with boring travel and questionable choices with expensive death penalties does definetly get 1 thing right. Security zones. You can be a carebear or a hardcore on the same server. Some players only live in the low security. Some only play it safe. Most spend some time in each depending on circumstance or what they want to do on a particular day.
about 3 years ago
JuJutsu wrote: There are those that enjoy pepperoni pizzas. There are those who enjoy the luxurious comfort of overstuffed couches. the intersection of these two is not a tiny group. Clearly some company needs to make overstuffed couches made of pepperoni pizza.
An excellent example of hyperbole.
about 3 years ago
KFS1 is right. If you want hardcore PvP go away from RPGs and head over to WW2O (or WarBirds or Aces High or Targetware or IL-2) and go fight people where there is no ‘grind’ or even level but only your own talent at doing 3d aerial geometry and energy management on the fly (pun intended).
As everyone else has noted though, a challenge is not even vaguely like what the ‘hardcore PvPer’ wants. He just wants to abuse people while they pay for the privilege.
Oh, and you want hardcore? The plural of ‘forum’ is not ‘forumae’ dammit (see the sidebar). It’s ‘fora.’ Pwned by Latin. :p
about 3 years ago
Personally, what I see from hardcore PvPers is that they just want a not-insignificant part of the gameworld that is open, dangerous, theirs to fight over, and not bound by any artificial rules of fairness. They don’t want to chase people out of the entire game, just have their not-too-little personal playground within it. And given how much time, money and effort certain game companies have spent on giving hardcore PvEers (raiders) their personal playgrounds within their worlds, I can see where hardcore PvPers feel slighted in those games.
about 3 years ago
For the FPS analogy, I’ll bring you in to the typical Random FPS Server:
Team 1:
Pubbie 1
Pubbie 2
Pubbie 3
etc etc
Team 2:
Clannie 1
Clannie 2
Clannie 3
Clannie 4
Pubbie 12
Honestly kids, how often do you see people on an FPS server playing a random match go “you know what? This is an unfair team balance. I’ll switch away from ganking morons with my clannies and fight an uphill battle!” Hey, it happens. My tribe did it on our own server, but we recognized that the love of playing with each other meant that on an average public server, we’d end up subconciously stacking the odds in a way that we couldn’t lose.
Why aren’t hardcore pvp MMOs very successful? Because you want me to pay $15 a month to sit around playing against a stacked deck with the only option to stack my deck more to win. Witness EvE, where the appropriate method of breaking a camp is to bring a bigger gate crashing party. Where any “huh, they’re pretty mean” is solved by “let’s bring more guns.” and eventually devolving into system cap reaching ship spam fests.
Meaningful pvp is a fluid term that can only really be balanced in a population capped instanced form. Anything else means I can just bring four times as many people as you have and let that be my skill based system. And I don’t really think the hardcore pvpers want that (though they might not mind if their 8 people roll a solo pvper, at least none of them saw the parallels in daoc during it’s omg8v8omg heights)
about 3 years ago
Why do [b]companies[/b] spend time, money, and effort? To make money?
“I’m not sure why anyone developing a large scale MMO – with all its attendant development costs – would choose to embrace only the skill engagement vector. Developing a game for only the TRUE hardcore isn’t exactly a well-worn path to profitability.”
“This is because every sane developer has learned this lesson: griefing and ganking doesn’t just lose you the $15/mo from the person who was griefed. It has a multiplicative effect, creating an environment in your game, and a reputation outside your game, and people tend to steer clear.”
Lord knows there are lots of options for PvP games. But the ‘hardcore’ is never satisfied. Why? IMO Isildur nailed it “Because the people who want fun competitive PvP are already playing fun competitive PvP, in GW and in WoW and in EVE. The people who want to gank are waiting for the Next Big Failure to come along, to let them grief noobs for a few months before it shrivels up and dies..”
about 3 years ago
In PvP situations, you have to have your winners and your losers. To make the game enjoyable for the hard core PvP crowd, they have to win more than they lose. But in order to do that, you have to have players who lose more than they win. Hands up, who wants to pay $15 per month to be owned all the time? You cannot have a server of nothing but hardcore PvP’ers who win most of the time, there has to be some losers who almost always lose. And that’s the problem. Nobody wants to pay to be the losers.
CS, BFII, UT… these are all great examples of skill based PvP that people enjoy, but they have several major advantages over online MMO’s. You don’t have to pay a monthly fee to play them. You immediately have a team when you log on, rather than having to go looking for one or chance it solo. It’s one factor play-straight PvP only, and not a mix of PvP and character building. As others have said, the game world isn’t persistent. People get more powerful though skill in FPSs, not by items, which would not happen in an MMO (unless you removed all items, in which case what would be the point of having a persistent world?).
And, the most important difference I think is that there is NO PENALTY FOR LOSING in an FPS. The losers don’t really LOSE anything, which the hard-core insist must happen to make MMOG PvP any good. When you lose in an FPS, you get right back in as if nothing had happened. If you want hardcore, you play the ladder and tourneys. But even then all you “lose” is the right to play the next winner, you can still jump into another non-ladder match and play away. No progress is lost at all, no real penalty to speak of. To be on par with modern FPS’s, losers in the perfect PvP MMOG would have to have no penalty for losing, but I’m pretty sure you be hard pressed to find any hard-core MMOG PvP pundit who would agree to that.
In WoW, that is what you have. You have competitive PvP, with others of the same level, with winners and losers, in an environment where you can just jump into the next game. And, surprise surprise, there *is* skill involved. Yet, this author seems to think that is all bad for some reason (probably because everyone has a chance to win).
The hard-core PvP’er thinks there is a market for hard-core PvP and thinks that nobody is trying to fill the niche, but the reality is companies are trying to fill it every day. I can’t name a current MMOG that doesn’t have some form of PvP in it. Some even dedicate entire servers to hard core PvP. Yet the hard-core PvP’er constantly finds fault with each attempt and complains again that nobody is trying to fill the niche.
The only way to satisfy the hard-core PvP crowd is to find sheep who are willing to pay to sacrifice themselves for the hard-core player’s fun and not complain that the game is broken because they are not the ones always winning.
Do that, and only then will you have your perfect PvP MMOG.
about 3 years ago
‘I can’t say PoBS pvp is worth it, but hey nice to see at least one of their devs read lum’s blog.”
I’m old-school biyotch
about 3 years ago
The positive feedback loop in pvp has to change. I’m talking about pvp rewards — skills, gear, whatever — that the winners get which makes it easier for them to win.
This discourages those people like myself in the middle third of pvp skill. I’m good enough to beat the truly horrible players, but not good enough to beat the remotely competent. By the time I’ve got enough skill not to embarrass myself, I’m so far behind in the gear race that I can’t hope to compete.
PvP rewards should be nonconsequential to actual pvp performance.
about 3 years ago
Tuebit, you claimed that ladders some how gave FPS games a persistant type world. I was merely pointing out the flaw in that statement. Since you are still claiming that ladders in FPSs make it persistant that would then make chess a persistant game. Ladders are scoreboards and nothing more. The next game you play the score starts out zero – zero. In a persistant world each game would add on to the next so that losing by twenty would put you down twenty in the next game. This is not the case in a FPS.
FPS games are based around the concept that the playing field is going to be leveled at the end of the match. This allows the designers to make things that wouldn’t fly in a persistant world due to the differences in such a world. You say they could balance the items out, and of course they would, but then it really stops being a FPS because the nature of the design has changed.
Are there people who would enjoy a persistant FPS world? A few. Enough to make it economically viable at the going rate of online games? Not a chance. This gets back to my point about costs and the resturant analogy used in the article. When you are in a 5 star establishment you pay 5 star prices. So the question you must answer is how many people are going to be willing or able to pay 5 star prices to be served up as dinner for the other patrons? Who is going to pay to be the sheep for the wolves? Unlike a FPS, once you get behind you stay behind and nobody is going to pay Spago prices to eat McDonalds.
about 3 years ago
But I think you could add rewards if you also add a competition class system. For instance in amateur auto racing there are various classes you can compete in. In Solo racing you even race street cars as a timed event, and the classes are based on whether you added things like bars to the frame under your car to add stability, etc.
In a game, if you have so much of certain rewards already, you could get bumped up to the next class of competition, and fight others of that level. Perhaps, you could forgo those benefits and go down a level, but maybe the reward system would have diminishing returns to discourage that and encourage people to go up a level once they’ve won enough.
This way players could get rewards but so would everyone else they’re competing against. Though that would break the “resets every time”. But if the classes were narrow enough, would that be good enough?
Not really a tournament, just ranks really.
about 3 years ago
WW2O isn’t an FPS, it has FPS infantry play in it, but its a PvP-only simulation in which infantry are just one part, with armor, air and naval forces. It is “balanced” in the time-honored PvP tradition of rock-paper-scissors. You might come round the corner and find another infantry, or you might come round the corner and find a column of tanks. Heck, the first time you spawn in you might die before you’ve got your bearings to some 5in shell fired from a destroyer off-shore before you clicked “launch”. It’s that hard core.
As for persistence… Its world is a map of Europe (1/2 scale) over which campaigns are fought – lasting from 4-20 weeks. Given that the game is solely PvP, persisting beyond where one side owns the entire continent would be kind of pointless
But its a thorn in the side of the ‘hardcore’, because it is hardcore, not the namby-pampy carebear stuff of WoW and Eve with their healing and their shields etc.
WoW and Eve aren’t “core” – they’re mainstream. WW2OLs PvP make’s Eves look like PvE. You want to kill that enemy tank? You have to put joules of energy into something explosive inside the vehicle. There’s no auto-aim, no guided missiles. You have to see him, you have to get the shot off at him, and you have to actually *put* the round where its going to hurt. Not some targetting system you bought.
about 3 years ago
A couple of things I’d like to mention.
Firstly, and I’m just throwing this out there as a little factlet, on the ‘hardcore’ PvP server for DAoC Europe, cheating was significantly more rife than on other servers. In addition the incidence of ‘go straight to permaban do not pass go, do not collect 200RPs’ cheating such as radar, fly hacks, speed hacks etc was much, much higher than on other servers. The levels of CS intervention for griefing, significant cheating and severe harassment were astronomical – especially given the lower average population and the more relaxed harassment rules in place. Now I’m certainly not claiming that every hardcore PvPer is automatically a cheating scumbag but, when you have a game where you can only really advance by winning against other players (which can be y’know, hard), then many players will go beyond a line that they probably wouldn’t cross in a PvE or PvP-lite game.
Secondly, what is skill? Hardcore PvPers generally mean better twitch reflexes, the ability to mash the right buttons in the right order at the right time. If I’ve spent months networking to get invited to the most productive PvE raids and got better gear as a result or if I’ve made sure that all my friends are playing at the same time as me so your opted 8 man gets rolled repeatedly by me and my 47 friends then guess what? I’ve just outskilled you, adapt or die – now that’s hardcore.
about 3 years ago
I really dont understand the view that the only desire of pvpers is to gank. I agree there is a playerbase that enjoys ganks, but i dont agree thats the whole of people who want pvp. I considered my self a pvper on Uo, but what i miss arn’t ganking, its the rivalrys between players.
I played uo with a group and fondly rember retelling tales of pking, house looting, and later factions. Theres a quality that uo added to pvp (completly accidently) that i can most easly relate to grand theft auto, or oblivion, in that theres times that the random events that unfold tell a great story competly by chance.
After playing wow for 2 years, i find i don’t enjoy listening to peoples storys. To try and make a point of all this: Im a gamer that is hoping that some game comes along that combines all the elements of the game to make a pseudo story to PvP
I never really minded being ganked, the suspense I felt trying to place a house with 50 hours of work in my bag was worth it. Nor has any game matched the feeling of having killed a pk that killed you for months, turning is head in, and a nice 2 mill reward. Not that eather of these systems were that great in implementation, but they both had a hand.
about 3 years ago
I think what we’re looking at is a griefer who calls himself a PvP’er. This person isn’t looking for a fair, even PvP fight, or even something remotely resembling it. He wants to be the cock of the walk and beat down everyone who comes around, and if he does lose a fight, he wants to be able to come right back and beat down the winner.
I played UO on Siege Perilous, so I remember what it was like to huddle in a house with the doors locked while 20 reds surrounded the house looking for corners to cast spells on me through. They weren’t looking for a fair fight. If an equal number of blues showed up, they’d scatter and regroup to pick on them one by one. I was in Shadowclan and watched hordes of folks show up at our fort with dragons and min/maxed toons and equipment to beat down a bunch of RP’ers who wanted to have fun. Granted, we fought well and put up a good fight, but they weren’t looking for an even match. They wanted to win.
And that’s what this RedMorgan wants. He wants to be a wolf. Unfortunately, without sheep, wolves starve.
about 3 years ago
It has been pretty well established by experience that non-consensual PvP tends to drive away more players than it attracts from commercial MMOs in the West, for all the reasons noted in this thread. How many more examples do we need?
The obverse of that is *not* necessarily that consensual PvP will attract more players to your game; it depends on the context of the consensual PvP within the game. Bad execution can kill any feature (if you’ll pardon multiple puns).
I’m not even sure that what is wanted is pure combat PvP so much as opportunities to cooperate in competition; as GregC pointed out to me in a conversation not long ago, looking at it as “my guys versus your guys” is probably a better way of viewing it. That doesn’t necessarily have to take the form purely of combat.
Just a thought…
about 3 years ago
Look at all the folks defending their negative-sum games. heh.
Let the good times roll. Let them knock you around.
Let the good times roll. let them make you a clown.
Let them leave you up in the air.
Let them brush your rock-and-roll hair.
Let the good times roll.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=252hW-v_0TA
Your fucking margin doesn’t account for the mass; so, I’m sorry that you have to deal with it in a business-fashion, you fucking, hard-core, indignant, donkey-kongs.
The entertainment industry has to cope with more than you. I’m sure you think your notions are special, but you are quickly becoming a minority, if you weren’t already. Negative-sum games simply drive away players, and in that, consumers.
Your “realistic” or “challenging” mechanics are nothing, but unentertaining to the modern society. So, once again, you must figure out how nerdiness can get you laid, in a business sense. “Am I clever enough to get this person to play? Or, perhaps, can I make a game that you plug into and get return from? Otherwise, you diddle yourself, while ganking. Onanism; plain and simple.
Don’t get me wrong, I love virtual worlds. I simply know that there is a place for them, and not much return of investment; provided:
-you create a large, comfortable, newb environment
-let those newbs attain an end-game that is reasonable and pleasant to a healthy economy (if you have an economy)
-let the newbs talk to each other
The folks who think the hard-core players are still driving the industry will be pressured in the future (or the now); when their player base is composed of those fidgety, fickle, folks who demand instant entertainment.
“Virtual Worlds” will remain a niche, as they always have been; because people want entertainment, not alternate realities. They’re still too scared to step into that abyss.
about 3 years ago
I also find it funny that so many years after UO people still nurture and cherish their favorite misconceptions about PvP. Its time to let it go, you no longer need to ‘protect your playstyle’ and lash out every time PvP is mentioned, nobody going to take away your gazillion of Diku spin-offs. We know PvP is not for you, we heard you first million times you frothed about it. You have to learn to accept fact that there will be things you disagree with and that they will exist regardless of how you feel about it.
about 3 years ago
>>> It has been pretty well established by experience that non-consensual PvP tends to drive away more players than it attracts from commercial MMOs in the West, for all the reasons noted in this thread. How many more examples do we need?
I disagree. What do you have for data? UO example that now over 10 years old? How about counter examples of SB and EvE? You make PvP title with open PvP to appeal to PvPers, you don’t make it to appeal to PvErs. Will it be niche? Yes, but what isn’t compared to WoW?
about 3 years ago
Eve was fun for some years. I was a frigate pilot with a remarkable success ratio. In the Great Northern War, we fought for over seven months, scoring a massive kill ratio overall. And at the end? The people we defeated began planning how they’d get back. Despite losing so badly.
Now, Eve is bleeding long-term players.
There are, of course, reasons for this. The server’s lagged for large scale combat for literally years. I was there when a 200vs250 battle (BoB vs F-E/Allies and Shinra, in P3EN-E) had minimal lag. It then went downhill, and has stayed there.
There has been grind introduced into the combat with starbases. Sitting around for hours in a huge ship shooting a starbase is both essential for a lot of things in Eve, and yawn-inspiring.
And yet only NOW is it starting to decline, with a refusal to address any UI issues, UI bloat from an annoying “heat” mechanic (even for non-users of “heat”), and even more grind in the PvP.
Hardcore PvPers are very loyal. It takes a lot to drive them away. Why do some companies *try*, when the game is partially pitched to them?
Eve’s slow burn success, in the past, is something to look at with interest. (For reference, very few of the old PvPers care about the CS “scandles” because faith in the impartiality of CCP and their CS is near-nonexistant for years among them in any case… oh, that says something too…)
I personally gave up Eve a year ago because yet another font change made it actively painful for me to read. Hint to other games companies: PLEASE check your game on common CRT’s as well as TFT’s.
about 3 years ago
“It has been pretty well established by experience that non-consensual PvP tends to drive away more players than it attracts from commercial MMOs in the West, for all the reasons noted in this thread. How many more examples do we need?”
WoW has plenty of non-consentual PvP, more than half the servers in the US Europe Korea are PvP servers, which are pretty much open, non-consentual PvP in 95% of the areas past level 20, and in everywhere but the capital in the expansion. So you can’t say non-consentual PvP drives away THAT many people, as long as the penalty for death is only a few minutes of your time.
“I’m not even sure that what is wanted is pure combat PvP so much as opportunities to cooperate in competition; as GregC pointed out to me in a conversation not long ago, looking at it as “my guys versus your guys” is probably a better way of viewing it. That doesn’t necessarily have to take the form purely of combat.
Just a thought…”
This part is very much dead on, however. This is why so many of the most hardcore, oldschool, whatever you want to call them, PvPers are playing… Astro Empires right now, either on the side or as their main game. A game with no combat controls, just building and assigning fleets and entirely strategy and resource management and politics.
about 3 years ago
What do they have for data?! jeebus, these are people that make and run games, they have data coming out the wazoo. And once again, its not about PvP it’s about FFA PvP.
about 3 years ago
Full disclosure: I do not PvP. I am no good at it. Therefore, I do not enjoy it. I avoid games that place a strong emphasis on PvP. I tend to quit games that incorporate PvP into their character progression post-release.
I feel that I need to point out a counter example to the “no one wants to be sheep” argument. DAoC. Assuming the three realms are balanced, RvR gives any one person a 66% chance of being on the pwnd end of the stick. Sometimes you are the zergball, but usually you’re the bug. Yes, there are the uber 8-man groups. Or FotM uber stealth build. Or guys that just have godlike ability / coordination / dedication. But for J. Random Player, you will lose more than you win.
Naturally, this is just in the theoretical perfect world of game design. In practice, servers tended to differentiate until one realm ruled the other two with near-impunity. The “losers” migrated to different servers, if not entirely different games.
And on the gripping hand, the punishment for “losing” is much lighter in DAoC than even the lightest “hardcore” PvP standard.
about 3 years ago
Using SB and EvE as examples of commerical success in the current (heck, even just before WoW) market is silly.
They’re niche games. I may LIKE eve (pos mechanics aside), but they’re not leading the charge.
WoW’s the most successful pvp game, but can’t that be from the fact that pvp in wow is meaningless fun? Killing someone doesn’t hurt them in any way, and barely benefits you. The complaint from the initial post seemed to be that WoW wasn’t really a hardcore pvp game, which I’d agree with.
EvE is. EvE has a very small playerbase in the grand scheme of things. They did a great job of growing their name and making a great game, it just lacks mass appeal. I know a lot of people who would play it if it didn’t have 0.4 and lower systems, too. But EvE’s economy would Break on a pve server.
about 3 years ago
Kalain, are you aware of Eve’s subscription numbers? (165K, off a peak of 175k, as last I recall) It’s not WoW, but neither is it niche (Niche is ATITD and Star Sonnata).
And I was fairly good at WoW PvP. I just found it boring.
about 3 years ago
I actually think I have read each of these 72 comments before 30 times each in the past ten years. The arguments are the same, the venom is the same, and the absolute nostaligia of times gone by is the same. Hell I remember EQ and UO with fondness and regret, but my memories very infrequestly conjur up the absolute trash I had to endure. Corpse run, ganking, item loss…
Times change, the industry evolves and the market expands. Good things in my opinion, but the ‘hardcore old school’ vs. the ‘carebear new school’ debate has grown so tired and is more regurgitated than a flys dinner.
about 3 years ago
I appreciate the reply and feedback on this blog, even though not all of it was very constructive.
First off, I was writing my article with disenfranchised MMO players in mind. I know that if you’re looking to make money, another EQ clone or Korean grindfest is the way to go. The intent of the column was to muster up support in the community so we can make a skill-based open PvP game profitable, particularly our champion– Darkfall. I think it’s time for us to grow out of the mind numbing gameplay that is the standard for most games today.
I think it should be noted that many of us don’t support a game that allows us to victimize other players, so much as we want to have an environment of good sport and competition. Some of us remember the meaning of the “game” part of MMORPG and want something more than what amounts to a graphical chat room.
Sorry so many of you took offense to the mouth-breather part! lol
about 3 years ago
I will respond to the OP since trying to wade through all of these would simply be far to difficult. The OP say’s “And while the spectre of being killed repeatedly with no recourse, your home sowed with salt and your guild banners used for tablecloths for the meal of human jerky you kindly donated to may sound nice at first, the bloom tends to fade from the rose when you realize that no, you’re probably never going to be the guys carving the jerky.” The fact of the matter is that there IS recourse in a full pvp and full loot sandbox world like Darkfall. There is NOT in a world like WOW with fast respawn no consequence PVP.
Your options are manyfold. You could respawn, reequip, and kill and loot the player that killed you. You could take out a bounty on his head. You could go to War against his guild and take their city. You could, if you were politically inclined, weasel your way into getting either the player or their whole nation KOS.
The reason that you feel that you are “human jerky” and that there is “no recourse” is because you have been indoctrinated into this WOW clone mentality, where there IS NO RECOURSE. What we as PVP’ers want, is a world in which there is consequences to our actions. It’s not about griefing, it’s not about spawn camping, its about having the option to have recourse against those people doing those things, about having the freedom to decide who we want to kill, when we want to kill them, and how we want to do it.
about 3 years ago
What strikes me is how much elitism has poisoned MMO design. It is a negative force and ultimately drives away customers.
It is pretty easy to take pot-shots at the self-proclaimed (lol) hardcore PvP’er. We know (and did back in the mud days) that wolves only get off killing sheep. Which to refute a post above me.. yes, it IS about griefing.
IMO the core of the issue is this elitist mentality which the genre has catered to and even supported. Worse than in PvP is raiding which in a game like WoW involves devoting an inordinately large amount of developer resources to an insignificantly small percentage of the player population. A major result of this is the validation of an elitist pecking order that was poorly designed years ago.
about 3 years ago
What strikes me is how much elitism has poisoned MMO design. It is a negative force and ultimately drives away customers.
It is pretty easy to take pot-shots at the self-proclaimed (lol) hardcore PvP’er. We know (and did back in the mud days) that wolves only get off killing sheep. Which to refute a post above me.. yes, it IS about griefing.
IMO the core of the issue is this elitist mentality which the genre has catered to and even supported. Worse than in PvP is raiding which in a game like WoW involves devoting an inordinately large amount of developer resources to an insignificantly small percentage of the player population. A major result of this is the validation of an elitist pecking order that was poorly designed years ago.
about 3 years ago
Exactly.
There is a staggering piece of the overall gaming market that grindfest MMORPGs just do not appeal to. Generally gamers play multiplayer games to, you know, compete!
about 3 years ago
“What we as PVP’ers want, is a world in which there is consequences to our actions.”
Such a world exists; its called the Real World. And the consequences of your actions are that most of us don’t show up. And apparently it doesn’t take long for the sheep in wolves clothing to bail out. And then there’s not much money to be made and the people that make games focus on PvP that doesn’t drive away customers.
So who’s left out in the cold? That fraction of PvPers that demand “… the freedom to decide who we want to kill, when we want to kill them, and how we want to do it.”
Tough luck sport, welcome to a world with consequences.
But not to worry, there is RECOURSE! You’ve been indoctrinated into believing that you are an oppressed group. Not so. Your options are manyfold. You can convince a venture capital fund or an Angel Investor, or an entertainment companyto give you millions of dollars to create a game just like you want. Put together a presentation [remember the 10/20/30 rule] and start polishing your elevator spiel.
about 3 years ago
Regardless of where one stands on this issue, it’s an important debate to have. Myself, I think the most important thing to remember here is that an entirely open PvP environment has not yet been tested in the current gaming climate. The closest we have is EVE online (and some private Ultima servers), which is doing well enough, and is certainly a quality game, but I’m certain is hindered by the fact that most gamers want an actual WORLD to walk around in (which is why I quit). I’ll admit that I found the rhetoric of RedMorgan’s column a little on the hostile side, since I think there is a very strong and LEGITIMATE market for games like WoW. I myself find them boring and repetitive, but I can see why many like that sort of game. Obviously they do, since they’ve voted, en masse, with their wallets.
But anyhow, the point I’m trying to make here is that it’s kind of pointless to apply any grand theories to games such as Darkfall (although fun and sometimes even rewarding intellectual exercizes), without first admitting that they are pure conjecture. Personally, I think every gamer should be praying for a successful Darkfall release so we can see how their concept will work. People speak about it just being a place with a few hardcore wolves, and a bunch of sheep who get frustrated and inevitably quit. While that may well happen, I’d like to at least find out if that theory is correct. Personally, I agree with LanMandragon that Darkfall will provide a world where actions have consequences, and where every player will be able to find a way to defend themselves, be it through combat or guile. Regardless, I’m looking forward to seeing Darkfall in action, because, regardless of the outcome, the world of online gaming will be better for it.
about 3 years ago
And yet, judging from the number of people who flock to Darkfall, it’s a style of gameplay that people still do find appealing because it can’t be found anywhere else due to terrible game developer decisions and incredibly whining by the vocal minority who constantly taunt devs with “If this game demands player skill, I won’t buy it”. Of good PvP games, EVE comes close, but the real-time skill progression is a large time sink that I hope Darkfall rectifies. As much as people bemoan the bloodthirsty PK’s of UO, I’ve seen griefing there and I’ve seen griefing in WoW, and the griefing in WoW was 1000x worse because you have absolutely 0 recourse, especially if someone is on your side. If someone camped you, you either spirit rezzed (effectively useless for 10 minutes) or you logged out for a while. What kind of game experience is that? Is it fun spending most of an AV match fighting alone against the enemy while 1/4 or 1/3 of your team is AFK in the cave? Is it fun running the flag in WSG while a hunter runs near you with Aspect of the Pack on typing “lol!” again and again? All the restrictions that game devs put it to ‘prevent griefing’ only work to make griefing more viable than ever.
WoW’s PvP was never fun, WoW’s PvE was never fun. The game as a whole was terrible simply because it totally removed any semblence of skill by simplifying it’s combat system to the point where any idiot could play it effectively. And the worst part is that game developers seem to think we like this style of gameplay! I don’t consider myself skilled playing any of WOW’s classes, or any other classes in other games, because I know what I can and can’t do, and rarely do I have many options at all. In a situation, I either have 1 option, or 0 options. Bo. Ring.
Protip: If you feed someone shit for 10 years, they’ll eventually adopt a taste for shit. Some will eventually forget what real food tastes like and begin to crave shit, and they will swarm through the known metaverse devouring all the shit that is spewed at them. Some will return to shit that they prefer. But it doesn’t change the fact that some of them, when faced with a t-bone steak, will recognize it as superior to the shit, and they will enjoy it. Darkfall, to the hardcore PvPers, is that t-bone steak. For some people, that t-bone is WoW, or EVE, or WAR, or AOC or whatever else is made/popular. The rest will continue to look for their steak.
about 3 years ago
“Tough luck sport, welcome to a world with consequences.”
Well it is tough luck when an industry fails certain consumers. I don’t know why you’re so smug about the fact that a solid base of gamers have been neglected. Enjoy the glory of the Uwe Boll-esque quality of games like Vanguard, while I have nothing to play. Winrar!
about 3 years ago
“Protip:If you feed someone shit for 10 years, theyll eventually adort a taste for shit.”
I’m no expert, and I enjoy the discussions here. But I have to responde to this statement. It is without a doubt the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. The consumer knows when they are being fed shit. If you think people can’t decide what is fun and what isn’t fun, you live in a fantasy world. It doesn’t matter if anyone here likes or hates WOW, but it doesn’t have the numbers it does because people are trained to like the taste of shit. The consumers are having fun with it. You seriously underestimate people if you say they don’t know what they like.
about 3 years ago
I find EvE’s subscriber numbers to be wierd if you play it.
It’s exceedingly common for people to have 3-4 accounts, because “leveling” is one per account, you can’t effectively have a combat character and an industrial alt on the same account.
I will say it’s niche. Niche doesn’t mean 20k players, it just means it’s a small subset of the overall market. Caters to a relatively minor playstyle.
I LIKE eve, I just think it’s not anywhere near a mainstream game even if they did do a wonderful job increasing their playerbase.
about 3 years ago
riiight. That didn’t work in UO, the griefers left the field before the anti’s arrived, or they simply ganked the heck out of the few antis that did show up. The griefers never travelled in small groups, they were always in a mob.
Or, in WoW, you’d beg for help and maybe two people would show up…or, if you liked Southshore/Tarren Mill the folks that did show up just turned the whole zone into a war and made it impossible to actually fight.
Full PvP systems work when things are fair…like in an FPS, where there is no real way to get a permanent inherent advantage other than skill. In an RPG, where character skills and equipment play a role in PvP, there will always be someone stronger and more powerful who will prey on the weaker.
about 3 years ago
Draugh:
Protip: If you feed someone shit for 10 years, they’ll eventually adopt a taste for shit. Some will eventually forget what real food tastes like and begin to crave shit, and they will swarm through the known metaverse devouring all the shit that is spewed at them. Some will return to shit that they prefer. But it doesn’t change the fact that some of them, when faced with a t-bone steak, will recognize it as superior to the shit, and they will enjoy it. Darkfall, to the hardcore PvPers, is that t-bone steak. For some people, that t-bone is WoW, or EVE, or WAR, or AOC or whatever else is made/popular. The rest will continue to look for their steak.
Did you ever know that you’re my hero, and everything I would like to be?
about 3 years ago
“incredibly whining by the vocal minority”
NINE. MILLION. PLAYERS.
kthx. Bye.
about 3 years ago
I believe that there is a viable market for a ffa pvp game that will attract more than people who miss Minoc miner jerky and chanting about azzrape outside the gates of Trinsic. I don’t mean to offend anyone, but simplifying ffa pvp to a wolf v sheep scenario where the sheep leave in droves causing the collapse of a server reveals some ignorance of the actual demographics/politics of pvp servers. You’ll usually have:
1 – pks/pk guilds who level as fast as they can at first to get ahead of the pack and then kill them at their hearts content.
2 – ‘good guys’, usually large guilds/alliances that have a small core of dedicated players who can keep up in level/gear/skill – busy protecting large numbers of followers, who find safety in numbers and zerg tactics a viable alternative to getting slaughtered as soon as they leave town.
3 – ‘visitors’, i.e. people who dip their toe in the ffa server and- after getting ganked by Azzr4p3r and Supafly a few times – decide that if you don’t succeed the first time, then skydiving and ffa pvp are not for you.
4 – ‘pregamers’, i.e. the people who live in the forums of ffa pvp games before they are released (the ‘shadowbane community, the ‘darkfall community’), using them as wishing wells for all the things that they’d like to see in the game of their dreams – and can we please have infernal ponies that fart fire? and viking ninjas? Also, they tend to have a completely distorted idea of how a ffa pvp server actually plays out and tend to outdo each other in outlandish requests for a game as hardcore as possible – asking loudly for permadeath, or possibly for people who break into your house and punch you in the throat every time you get pked in game. Once the game is out most of them become type 3 players and are never heard of again (until a new ffa pvp game is announced and forums are made available).
and last but not least, unfortunately, you have:
5 – players who are very talented at finding bugs and hacks that they can exploit to get ahead, and who actually make it their life’s mission to do so – often starting from closed beta. As long as it’s something moderately annoying like bunnyhopping, jump healing etc., most people deal – but when it’s a gamestopping massive gold dupes like in SB (and I heard that the same dupe bug resurfaced in Vanguard) then other players start leaving.
There are enough people of types 1, 2 and – again, unfortunately – 5 to make a ffa pvp game financially viable (although niche) as long as it avoids the pitfalls that kill pvp servers:
A. Game-breaking exploitable bugs.
You can design the most fun game in the universe, but if a very small number of players finds a bug that gives them an insane advantage on everyone else, and it doesn’t get fixed fairly quickly, people will leave. There’s no bug/hack free game, but there’s a limit of tolerance past which people will take their custom elsewhere.
B. Lack of turf worth holding/conquering/defending/destroying
This is what killed Andred/Mordred in my opinion. You can camp bridges or run around the map hoping to meet someone you don’t like only for so long before what’s on TV becomes more interesting. FFA pvp players like to be territorial and are passionate about games where they can fight over turf. Especially “good guys” guilds. See how different it is from your black and white picture of ‘sheep v wolf’? See also how this kind of gamestyle is NOT catered for by W0W-style pvp (and mind you I’m not slamming it, I like arenas, but WoW pvp and ffa pvp are like apples and oranges). SB had it right on this regard, they had excellent understanding of what people want about territory, unfortunately it was implemented so badly that people left because of (A).
There are other things that will tick people off, such as poorly thought out death consequences (either too light or too heavy), being unable to talk mad shit in tells, shout, ooc, etc. to all and sundry, skill/class balancing and so on, but I think that what I listed above as A and B are the main causes of ffa pvp servers’ untimely death.
Darkfall is already going to avoid B by design, if they avoid A I think that there will enough people to make it successful (even if way less than for mainstream pve/lite pvp games).
about 3 years ago
I think this is a very interesting debate even though some people seem caught in the past.
When I first saw Darkfall’s list of features I thought “WHOW! FINALY!” but that feeling sombered somewhat after reading up on the game’s history and rumors of being near vaporware. 10/10 for vision 1/10 for execution.
I think much of the debate so far has been people defending their PvP-lite gamegrinds and how the PvP centric games are not economicaly viable. Personaly I started laughing when Jessica used the term “non consensual pvp”. It just seems so constructed and artificial, sorry.
PvP centric MMOG might be considered a niche product, thats fine. But there is no reason why it shouldnt be economicaly viable. The problem that seems to be festering in the MMOG genre right now is poor technical planing and poor management. After 10 years the technical solutions and server stability issues should have been resolved. I dont care about top notch graphics so much as I care about gameplay and sound technical solutions.
The genre needs to get a kick in the ass out of the WoW-ditch and start making new games with depth and meaning. We need to get more games with different aproaches to gameplay and character development. A game developers main goal should always be to make the best possible game, not the game that brings in the most $. Because if your game ends up being great, you might still make the big buck.
I’m crossing my fingers and toes for Darkfall being released, but I’m not holding my breath. I just wish more companies could think outside the box and try to focus on making good games first, instead of following the holy $.
about 3 years ago
Not gonna happen. No money in it, and any public corporation in the US is required by law to focus on giving their shareholders the highest rate of return on their investments.
Now, if some insanely wealthy private individual decided to blow money on a losing investment over a long period of time, a non-standard game might get published, but that’s highly unlikely.
about 3 years ago
Sorry for the upcoming numbered lists, I work as a tech writer and it’s destroyed me – I can only think in lists now.
I believe that there is a viable market for a FFA PvP game, that will attract more than just the few nostalgics who miss Minoc miner jerky. The reduction of ffa pvp to a wolf vs sheep scenario where the sheep leave in droves causing the server to collapse ignores the actual demographics/politics of a ffa pvp server.
You’ll usually have:
1 – pks/pk guilds who level as fast as they can to get ahead of the pack, so that they can turn around and peekay it when they max out.
2 – “good guys”, usually large guilds/alliances that have a small core of dedicated players trying to keep up in level/gear with (1) – protecting large numbers of less effective followers, who find safety in numbers, zerg tactics and the warm, fuzzy feeling of being the guys in white hats a viable alternative to getting slaughtered while on their own.
3 – “visitors”, i.e. people who dip their toe in the ffa pvp server and decide – after getting ganked by Azzr4p3r and Supafly at the town gates – that if you don’t succeed the first time, then skydiving and ffa pvp are not for you.
4 – “pregamers”, i.e. people who take permanent residence in the forums of ffa pvp games before their release (the “shadowbane community”, the “darkfall community”), using them as wishing wells for all the things that they’d like to see in the game of their dreams – and can we have infernal ponies that fart fire? And underwater viking ninjas? They don’t seem to have a clear idea of how ffa pvp actually works, because they outdo each other in outlandish requests for a game as hardcore as possible, where death in pvp results in permadeath of your character, or possibly where masked men break into your house and punch your grandmother every time you lose a fight. Once the game is eventually released, they quickly become type 3 players and disappear – until a new ffa pvp game is announced and makes its forums available to the public.
5 – the enemy no. 1 of any game, i.e. the guys who make it their life’s mission in finding out any possible bug/hack/exploit that will give them an advantage.
Even after 3 and 4 have left, you should still have enough players of type 1, 2 and – unfortunately – 5 to make a ffa pvp game financially viable.
So what kills ffa pvp servers? I think that there are two major culprits (but I can’t resist putting them in another list! Somebody help me):
A – Gamebreaking bugs/hacks/exploits
No game is bug free, especially at release – but while most players will grudgingly put up – or sometimes enthousiastically embrace – minor stuff like bunnyhopping, perching on “unreachable” roofs, etc. they’ll tend to cancel their subscription if their enemy suddenly seems able to dupe insane amounts of gold or teleport their towns underwater.
B – No turf worth defending or conquering
FFA PvP players are very territorial, for the simple reason that fighting over turf is more fun, and for longer, than running around the world at random in the hope that you’ll meet someone you don’t like with their pants down. This is what killed Andred/Morded, probably. It’s also what ensured the long-standing success of AC1 Darktide, where guilds clashed for town control. Shadowbane had the right idea, but it was brought down by (A).
There are other things that will tick players off, such as balance issues, or not being able to talk mad shit to their adversaries, or death penalties that are too light/too heavy, but I believe that it’s mainly (A) and (B) that make ffa pvp servers wither and die – rather than the exodus of the gankees. If there are turf wars and not too many bugs, you should have enough players even after that. Darkfall already promises (B) by design, if they can make the game solid enough to avoid (A) they have a good chance of making a financially viable game, never mind that it’s niche.
about 3 years ago
“Not gonna happen. No money in it, and any public corporation in the US is required by law to focus on giving their shareholders the highest rate of return on their investments.
Now, if some insanely wealthy private individual decided to blow money on a losing investment over a long period of time, a non-standard game might get published, but that’s highly unlikely.”
I guess that might be the core problem in the gaming industry right now, same as Hollywood. Creativity is spurned and suppressed if falls outside the industry “standard”. And it falls to outside forces to broaden and redefine the “standard” time and time again. While the mainstream industry only exploits something that has already been successfully (financialy) done.
From a business standpoint I can understand the risk vs reward argument. But from a game developers viewpoint it must be a nightmare. Rehashing the same old shit with zero room for creativity must be depressing (unless the job pays so well it doesnt matter).
Hopefully someone will have the balls and the means to try new things in fun new ways before I die of utter boredom.
about 3 years ago
I am totally going to rock your face.
about 3 years ago
We can keep the “hardcore pvpers” out of our games by designing around them. They will test your design and technology to the limit therefore they need be cut out, segregated, or treated as a marketing afterthought when market saturation is achieved. It’s their own fault after all, they’re asking for too much.
It’s a real challenge to create a game that can handle every play-style within its’ context. When a group of game developers decide they’re going to make a violent MMOG (most are) they make the conscious decision of not allowing their users to challenge each other freely. It has little to do with the users themselves.
So we can keep blaming players for design and technology shortcomings and instantly labeling – (therefore limiting) games trying to cater to a wider audience as “hardcore”. But how is that progressive?
about 3 years ago
From Raph Koster’s post about a managing director at an investment bank at the casual gaming conference…
“Why the interest? Because it looks like these are games that draw recurring revenue from mass audiences, as opposed to drawing recurring revenue from hardcore audiences or no revenue from mass audiences. And costs are low. He specifically says that the Holy Grail is not World of Warcraft, because it’s too small and based on subscriptions.
Heydon’s slides are available here (PDF). One slide claims that in 2007 there were over $135m raised for this sort of project, and he lists some of the ones that raised the most money. Even scarier, he projects almost a half a billion dollars in acquisitions happening in 2007. Yikes.
So what’s the Holy Grail in his opinion?
MySpace YouTube Maple Story Skype Habbo Hotel = 100 million users.”
The suits with the big bucks don’t want another WoW because it’s too small? Recurring revenue from hardcore audiences [not just FFA PvP types but also the hardcore PvE players] isn’t enough? The FFA PvP market that some claim is economically viable turns out to be a rounding error to the suits.
Your best hope is with a rapidly advancing technology that drives costs way down so that you get the ‘long tail’ of small niche games. I may be forced to join you; I’d rather get ganked by Azzr4p3r than check into Habbo Hotel
about 3 years ago
“MySpace YouTube Maple Story Skype Habbo Hotel = 100 million users.”
This is getting stupid. That’s pretty much not a video game, thats like comparing apples and oranges. Maybe its good though, people can go making their social spaces, based on the outstanding lie of the Second Life success story, and other people can make big expensive violent games about being the snot out of other things and each other. Considering the movie industry is dominated by large, expensive, violent movies, I really doubt that market is going to dry up in video game entertainment.
about 3 years ago
“What we as PVP’ers want, is a world in which there is consequences to our actions. ”
But not so keen on having to deal with the consequences of 200 other people’s actions.
The basic premise of “core” PvP is that consequence = control. ShadowBane, some have argued, allowed entirely too much consequence – burn your house down and salt the earth it stood on so you can never restore it. Eve, some argue, allows tedious consequence – if the enemy blows up your ship, agrinding you ago.
There is a place for hard-to-mid core PvP, but those MMO games are going to be smaller, more elitist, more specialized. Many people think they can point to the success of PvP shoebox games as proof of market potential. CS, UT, etc, have a very localized, in-your face, quick-rebound type of personal impact. “I can pwn j00″ that evaporates as you scale it up. What sells BF1942 is that you can be Rambo. When you start to scale up the numbers – like OFP or RO – interest begins to dwindle.
The fundamental issue is that in PvE, every one can be a hero. But in PvP your players become your content. When you have 8 players in a server, you get your turn at being the consumer rather than the consumed fairly frequently. Scale it up to the 200-500 player battles in something like BattleGround Europe and the time each player spends as content increases.
SWG has some pretty hardcore, consequential PvP. But it also manifested “Time as Content” in the form of its dancing, musician and doctor classes. I was always impressed by the number of people who actually did play those classes, despite a dearth of content for them. However, clearly what they enjoyed was the positive interaction with other players. In short – their time as content was content to them.
Unfortunately, in PvP, time as content generally means getting your butt whipped, trying to escape with your tail between your legs, seeing your corpse looted, being camped or ganked, etc.
PvPers desire persistence, but they don’t like being persisted upon. Call it “ganking”, call it “camping”. Those are manifestations of persistence the cures to which seem to be just as unpalletable to the PvPer as the problems themselves.
about 3 years ago
I don’t know why people keep using Shadowbane as an example. It had graphics straight out of the 1980s, and client bugs that made the game entirely and completely unplayable.
EVE is a much better model. EVE showed that if you make the game world large enough, AKA very, very large, you can prevent the wolves from starving each other out.
about 3 years ago
I think it’s often a mistake to assume that an open-pvp game results in nothing but a bloody grief-fest. That’s not what most pvp fans are looking for. If Darkfall had nothing to offer but perpetual fighting, I wouldn’t be a fan. Content such as crafting and quests can all be enriched by allowing players to do as they please.
I briefly played 9Dragons, mostly because I love old kung fu movies. The gameplay was on par with every other MMO and the community had some really great people in it. So there was some enjoyable content, but I was awfully dissatisfied with it. With restricted pvp, there was no player driven content. The world was incredibly 2D without that extra dimension of human drama.
I think most advocates of skill based pvp games really want is a rich world where players fill in the content that the devs can never provide. You really can’t have that unless you give players the freedom to struggle with each other.
about 3 years ago
“But there is no reason why it shouldnt be economicaly viable.”
They want fast food prices and celebrity chef quality.
And in a related post, the number 2 guys quit after a few months because they can’t keep up with the sniping and ganking in a world that punishes death harshly. They quit after a year or so if the game is soft on death. It’s just not a style that lasts because it is a defensive style and the game rewards offense and offense only. If the 5 guys are too good at their job, the 2′s quit quickly too.
about 3 years ago
Mist – Well, not entirely. In Eve-China, one group of wolves has essentially “won”. And BoB are..dominant, whatever the goons say, in Eve-Online proper. This is after massive amounts of fixed infrastructure which involves long sieges have been introduced.
This says something about massive fixed infrastructure in a PvP game, I think.
about 3 years ago
In EVE china, almost everyone just wanted to farm 0.0 space, for whatever reason. Most of the players had no interest in PvP, so a dictatorship which quashed any organized PvPers was established. It wasn’t that there was a group of wolves at all, there was just a whole lot of sheep who would blindly follow anyone who had guns and wasn’t a pirate. The masses of casual farmers got exactly what they wanted despite it being a mostly FFA PvP game.
As for the Tranquility server, BoB hasn’t gained any ground since the Titan nerf, and their pets have taken significant losses.
about 3 years ago
I think Red Morgan won this thread with:
“I know that if you’re looking to make money, another EQ clone or Korean grindfest is the way to go.”
Problem with many developers today that it is *all* about money and nothing about games… It saddens me to see that a lot of you will shit in a box and release it if it what brings most money. That is fine, but don’t condescend and try to talk down people that still care about gaming, ones that try new things like open PvP titles, instead of cloning DIKU. Even if it fails, we failed while FOLLOWING OUR DREAM while you chose to sell your ambition for few extra bucks.
about 3 years ago
The same crap from the same naysers over and over again. Freedom to do what you want is key. Not the false “freedom” that other devs spew from their pie wholes. Not everyone is a “hero” in an MMO or in the world, so why center the game around a bunch of people who cant achieve at life and therefor must have a virtual world to achieve. Leave the low lifes with WoW and allow those of us who want to play a fun game have Darkfall.
The ability to mold the world because of what you do, even if its just a smmmmalllllll molding is what makes Darkfall the game of choice for many. People have been telling devs for years that freedom is the key. Not to the point of complete stupidity, but Im sure those of you who are intelligent understand the concept of freedom I speak of.
I really do hope that Darkfall forces at least a few of the idiots out there to focus on a fun MMO and not just a lame grindfest. Though I wont be leaving Darkfall until they shut the servers down….
=P
about 3 years ago
Interesting to go through all the different views here.
However, I was surprised that the name “Darktide” comes up only once in a discussion about the functionality of an open PvP environment.
I have been playing MMO’s for well over 10 years now. In all my days I have never seen human instinct fall so into place in a virtual society as in Asheron’s Call Darktide. Most people assume that when players are given free choice the game will dive into chaos and be ruled by roaming bands of PKs who slaughter all insight.
Was Darktide like this? Of course not. If game developers balance their game well, the players will balance themselves. Just like in the offline world, darktide was host to both the good and the bad. And until the developers became negligent in their duties and let things get out of hand (XP chains, duping etc.) we saw the ideal balance of PKs and Anti’s.
If the developers create a game that truly lends itself to the personality of the gamer AND makes gameplay viable as either a good guy or a bad guy, there is no reason that open PvP in an MMO cannot be acheived in a commercially successful game.
about 3 years ago
The endless debate, yet most seemingly lost in the sea of their own desires.
To date, most games require countless hours of wasted youth in pursuit of the “sword of poon.” That almightly thing that makes them stand out and be recognized by all others that you have no real life. Of course, the time-consumed player becomes out-raged and disgusted when thousands of others start showing up with their equally impressive “staff of mack daddy carnage” relegating our hardcore uber-man equal status.
Cheers to Darkfall for ending the time sink. No classes, no leveling, no restrictions on skills learned = no limits! For once, a game that can be enjoyed from shrink-wrap and not one that requires 16 on-line days to reach max level. It promises a game that is balanced around killing PCs and provides current dreams of equal footing. My chess board looks like yours, the characters equal in power on both sides but I doubt you can beat me – in MMO form. A gamers Game. I think i like it.
While i am sure the devs have created an environment of equality, the one remaining question – is there a reason to play. Did they build in some objective, provide rewards or is it even possible. I think so, but will they go there?
Take Second Life. Yep, you can earn real-life dollars for your online play. That is a gaming model with sustainability. Craft your life away and earn some real jack. Conquer land and sell it. That could be a huge windfall in a game the size of real-life Germany. Without some purspose, whats the point?
I sure hope Darkfall delivers on its promise but I fear there will be nothing worth fighting for.
about 3 years ago
Well, I commend this thread on being fairly level headed compared to some other pk vs anti-pk discussions.
But I must say I can almost see the froth in the corner of the mouth of some of the more casual, pve inclinded people in this thread. It’s always puzzled me how ‘carebears’ get so riled up about pk, as if they take offense to its very exisitence, as if people who like this sort of stuff must be some kind of sadistic monster.
I acquired my thirst for blood in the text based days of MUDs and those games were really about skill. I loved the competition, the existence of consequence (loss/gain of equipment), and even though it took me years to get good or in the top 10% or whatever I still loved it. For darkfall I expect to be killed and full looted many times, smack talked, and still thoroughly enjoy the game. Why? Because it makes victory that much sweeter.
Gianna on point and witty like your comic.
about 3 years ago
“Just like in the offline world, darktide was host to both the good and the bad.”
Unfortunately the bad camped the n00b spawning points. I’m not sure where the good hung out. If Darktide was the ‘ideal balance’ you can have it.
I hope Darkfall isn’t vaporware. It’ll be interesting to hear why another FFA PvP didn’t work.
“The reasons Shadowbane failed had very little to do with PvP. They had everything to do with bad concepts, bad design, bad coding, bad implementation, bad management, bad customer relations, and a general-purpose failure of common sense.”
[Asheron's Call] “And until the developers became negligent in their duties and let things get out of hand (XP chains, duping etc.) we saw the ideal balance of PKs and Anti’s.”
about 3 years ago
Some of you guys are dumb. It’s not THAT Darkfall isn’t out, it’s not even about Darkfall, really. The whole inspiration is from the idea that someone decided to say “Fuck the system, we’re going to do it OUR way” and make a truly next gen game. Better graphics does NOT make a next gen game. Customization, challenges, intricacy, streamline gameplay, and innovation make next gen games. THAT is why Darkfall is next gen. Get your heads out of your asses.
about 3 years ago
[Jujutsu says: "Unfortunately the bad camped the n00b spawning points. I’m not sure where the good hung out. If Darktide was the ‘ideal balance’ you can have it."
After the flaws in Asheron's Call's XP chain system were exposed, a great many people exploited it and became very powerful. Naturally, the "bad guys" are more likely to be on the front of any trend in exploiting. Because the devs never stepped in to slow down the rise to power of a small group of people, the balance was destroyed.
Look at a good balance of power in a MMO being similar to the real world. Where good and bad both exist in conflict, but one never completely wins. What happens in most MMOs, is that one side gains too much strength and the other side slowly dwindles until nothing exists but lesser degrees of the more powerful side.
As long as players are given free choice in a game, and developers make sure "ultimate power" is not resting solely with one group, a good balance will exist.
about 3 years ago
The open-PvP aspect of Darkfall is getting all the attention, and frankly it annoys me. This is not a PvP game, it is simply a game with no artificial restrictions on player conduct. The two are not synonymous (and I expect a lot of ‘hard-core’ gankers to be disappointed). When the world around you can and will make you dead fast and often, you develop a taste for allies, even if you’re fully capable of killing those around you; and when healing is a scarce commodity, you gain a corresponding distaste for unnecessary combat. (Has anyone else here played Armageddon MUD?) By all descriptions, Darkfall is supplying a rich and deadly world which easily rivals any single-player RPG, and PvE gameplay will be as much a factor as PvP.
In fact, I’m going to take that a step further. Describing Darkfall using a three-letter abbreviation with a ‘v’ in the middle is wrong. The game is not designed around some one-dimensional “versus” model; Darkfall is built around scarcity of resources. Competition follows naturally, but so does cooperation. There are hints that this can even involve complex cooperation with the “environment.” In fact, if I were to draw out one supposition on the core motivation behind this game’s design from the developers’ statements I’ve read, it would be that they are trying their damnedest to make P and E synonymous without selling either one short.
I have no plans to attack other players, certainly not faction-aligned ones. I dearly appreciate the opportunity to defend myself against those who walk a different path. I want the challenge of the unexpected. I want to be kept on my toes, and forced to hone my combat abilities… as I explore, harvest, and craft.
And as a side note: calling 5 years a long development cycle, crying vaporware? Am I the only person who remembers when Morrowind was first announced?
about 3 years ago
6 years, you mean. Darkfall development started in August 2001.
about 3 years ago
Check it out, the Darkfall forum folks have arrived. Hiya!
about 3 years ago
I fondly remember when I defended my next MMO of choice against people pointing out potential flaws in the system or players (mostly the latter’s habit of abusing systems). Back when I could take a dev’s word in a press release before even a beta started getting leaked around, and firmly believe every word.
Though I never got to the point of naming myself after final fantasy characters and flaming people on random blogs.
about 3 years ago
All i will say to you al lis this. If you look at DFO, and see nothing but FFA PVP..you completely missed the point of the project.
While it does in fact include this feature, it is NOT what the game is designed for. It is a piece of the game, not the whole thing. The game is infact more based upon a world at war than it is based upon mindless killing. When i say war..that probably automatically makes you think “well then you just mean large scale PVP”. This is also a misconception. When i say War.. i mean War. I mean attrition, politics, terrain and weather knowledge, skill, armaments, preparedness, strategy, BAD LUCK, espionage, assassination, trade routes, supplies, convoys, REASONS TO FIGHT.
DFO is not at all trying to say “grab the best sword you can and whack a neighbor”. Atleast that’s not how i see it. It’s trying to say “the world is alive, with conflict, with struggles, with tangible, “meaningful” rewards” , but it is not trying to tell you how to approach it. I nfact, if the game is as large as we are told, there is the possibility of there being a “shire” for all those who want to RP the peaceful life in the plains of where ever…the untouched garden so to speak. It may eventually be found and torched… but that is a game “living” instead of a game stagnant.
I will also say this. I would gladly play DFO if it wasn’t a PVP game… simply because even PvE requires me to practice and learn how to fight, and my success is still based on my own skills and wit. No, it’s not the same as a person, but it’s damn sure not the same as WoW either. It’s boring to beable to predetermine every single action the NPC will do, and also to have allyour attacks decided for you. THAT is my problem with games like WoW and it’s Kin. It’s not that i’m a huge PVP buff as i am a huge “i’d rather know i earned it” buff. My own personal strengths AND weaknesses should mean something. My character shouldn’t be the only thing that learns and grows.
example: If i started out the game as some kid with a stick playing “swordsmen”, and let’s say my personal conception of swordsmanship made me acctually play at that level, i should have the opportunity of growing fro mthat point, to a competant soldier. It would MEAN something to me to have started off as someone who barely knew how to hit a moving target, to someone who may not be the best, but could hold his own in a small scale fight of mediocre combatants. It wouldn’t be my memorization of macro key patterns and class based weaknesses that would win the day, but my own daring, risk taking and judgement in a battle. The only thing that should determine how good i am in combat should be me.
On the topic of gear, I don’t mind gear, better equipment should be better. However… in WoW.. levels and gear mean EVERYTHING, skill means ..”meh”. Some of you may recall “the time when i beat this guy who had…” but your missing my point. If you beat someone with better gear than you, you are probably more skilled AND the difference wasn’t that large gear wise. In WoW ..a levle 10 WILL NOT beat a level 50 … period. There is no way. The game is designed to allow the people with levels and gear to be completely out of the league of the lower, and so they are FORCED to grind and PvE ..not given the choice to. If you want to consider FFA PVP griefing, then you have to also consider allowing people that are completely indestructable to go to palces that no one but other completely indestructable (compared to the place) people can fight them greifing. It’s not only griefing, it’s griefing you have absolutely no control over. My point is… it’s not the mode of play that is the “problem” it is the implimentation of that mode of play. i’d rather be the kid with the stick in DFO going up against a fully armored veteran knight, than be the level 10 with the steel sword going up against the flaming demonic armored warlock in WoW. Why? Because in DFO i might acctually beable to ATLEAST embarrass the knight. Win? Probably not..but getting a few decent “clangs” in on him, doing very little damage if any, and weaving out of the way of a few strikes is a hell of alot better than “auto lock on, F1, target eleminated”.
Some of you say that “no one wants to be the sheep”. Well WoW makes you a sheep that can become a wolf. I “paid to be a sheep” because i didn’t want to sit there and mind numbingly raise to the artificial, level based stature of a wolf. I played WoW since beta/stress test, and left quite awhile ago. Games changed alot, but it’s still “grind to be the best… or be absolutely useless to everyone”. DFO will have sheep…but the sheep won’t be based on levels. They will be based on skills, decisions, opportunity, communication, charisma, you know… more human things than “my numbers are of higher numerical value than yours *snort*”. Some “lone wolf” might prey on some traveling wanderer, and based on him POSSIBLY avoiding an attack and saying “DAMN that was close…” the lone wolf might acctually laugh and like the guy. Who knows? Maybe he’ll LOOK like a penniless wanderer and be a great veteran warrior who absolutely hands you your ass in the nicest most respectful way possible. Another possibility you will not find in a game like WoW.
You can assume that people will do nothing but swing virtual sharp or heavy objects at each other, but i tnhe end, you may find that while some will, others will earn each others respect, will find unique and interestings ways to survive, will have fun and laugh about a thrilling chase through the woods and almost getting ganked, or they might even ACCEPT their defeats because they can’t blame it on auto execited number crunching.
about 3 years ago
The entire concept of PvP has long since been plagued (as it is here) by the actions done in UO.
Ever since, whenever PvP in any fashion has reared it’s head and the eventual question on a new game’s forums is asked, “Will there be FFA PvP?” it is met with resistance of untold ignorance. The “classic” anti-PvP arguements are brought forward, from the “l33t d3wds” to the tried and tested, “PvP raped my mother, and killed my father…” arguement. Yet further still the people, ignorant as ever, will go on. They tell us to just go play a FPS (it’s the same thing, right?) or better still that games like Shadowbane failed so clearly PvP was to blame since that’s what the game was about.
I haven’t seen a “l33t d3wd” in years. Seriously.
If all I wanted was mindless slaughter then I would go play an FPS. I want more (which is consequently the problem with most of the current MMOs…all they give you is mindless slaughter).
Whether or not a game is PvP oriented, PvE oriented, or PvZ oriented if the game is a buggy pile of garbage no one will want to play it. If the devs on a game make the game into a pile of garbage then people will quit that game.
I have a question for you Jessica Mulligan:
If non-consensual PvP drives more players away than consensual PvP why are there so many populated PvP servers in WOW? Clearly there is an option for a purely 100% consensual PvP, yet the PvP servers do quite well despite them offering non-consensual PvP? I mean “by experience” this should be entirely false, and the PvP servers should barely be needed no? Or is this more of your usual anti-PvP preaching? What did we do to you in UO to scar you so lol…
On a lasting note, I completely agree with the hero comment in the Warcry article.
Heroes do not sit and cry and whine about getting killed.
Heroes do not whine on forums and out of the game trying to influence the devs to change the game.
Heroes do not give up and go seeking magically coded barriers and “factions” to be safe.
Heroes do not beg for their items back.
Heroes do not attempt to barter for their lives in the face of danger.
Heroes do not ignore the call for help because they may be at risk.
Heroes do not exalt in their meaningless tasks.
Heroes do not do not use cheap words as a substitute for action.
Heroes do not give up in the face of adversity.
Any scripted bot or programmed character can defeat the silly AI creatures in any game. The gold farmers will tell you that.
Any player can stand up in the face of adversity and danger of the notorious player killers of a game.
The only thing stopping them is themselves.
about 3 years ago
I see two basic options in MMOs that directly reflect real life.
1) You can have a happy life and acheive a good deal, but you have very little choice and are given a specific path to follow.
2) You MAY have a great time, or you MAY suffer. However, in either case you have complete control over your fate and what choices you make.
Many people currently choose option one, simply because they want to hit the max level, they want uber armor and such. They don’t really care that the developers don’t let them do whatever they want and restrict them to a very linear progression.
Others would rather decide for ourselves what we should do. While I love PvP, I definately don’t need it. I just can’t stand being restricted to only attack who the developers think I should. Or to only choose configurations (classes) that the developers make available to me.
If you are content to follow a preset path in online worls, then go ahead. I for one would rather choose my progression myself.
about 3 years ago
PvP in Darkfall will not be the mayhem many expect it to be, this is for several reasons:
A) For every greifer out there, there is at least one person who despises greifers and will go out of his way to greif a greifer in order to deal justice, these are anti-PKs and will be more common than you think. Greifers are the great minority even in the hardcore PvP community reguardless of all of the internet tough guy acts in the Darkfall forums.
B) In Darkfall, a fresh noob will supposedly have 100HP while a seasoned veteren supposedly gets to around 200HP max. This allows small groups of newbies to defeat more powerful greifers, which will make ganking noob hangouts a group affair. Greifers gathering in groups attract anti PKs, therein is the paradox of ganking in a balanced environment. Yes, most noobs will be ganked several times, but few will be chain ganked into oblivion.
C) Allignment, killing too much of your own race makes you red which in turn gives your race incentive to kill you (positive allignment boost) and makes guards aggressive, which will disallow the use of major cities to you. So while you might see a Human sneak into Alfar or Ork noob zones to gank, a human will rarely sit and gank human newbies because it’s a waste of allignment, there is no reward and a signifigant penalty.
D) The world is huge. Touching back on what I just said, it is very doubtful that a Human will sit around in Human territory to kill noobs because if you’re going to kill the same race and take the allignment hit you might as well be getting a reward for it. This does not hold true for other races, who give positive allignment upon killing them. But this is mitigated by the fact that the gameworld is supposedly the size of Germany. Very few people will walk out into enemy territory simply for a few cheap kills and lulz, and large groups of gankers draw lots of attention which means that enemy anti-PKs will be heading out to nail em and send them back to Mercia or wherever they came from.
E) Full loot. Why kill a noob who will drop essentially nothing due to being in the equivilant of Planetside’s spawn pajama armour when he has the chance to group up with other noobs and taking your full steel plate and sword of deflowering 2? Risk V.S. Reward applies even in an FFAPVP environment.
Greifers may be a great many things, but very few of them are outright stupid. When you stack up all of the penalties and risks of noob ganking (allignment hits, risk of losing gear, getting camped by anti PKs, ect, ect) verses the rewards of noob ganking (hate tells), you quickly see just why ganking for the sake of ganking simply isn’t a wise choice in DFO based on the information available. PKing might be profitable, but PKing implies that you are killing someone who does have a chance, and will be carrying decent equipent and some money unlike a noob.
about 3 years ago
Well said, Kilmoran.
I like to consider myself a hardcore PvP’er. That doesn’t mean I’m an uber leet PK God either. In fact I tend to lose more fights than I win. Makes winning all the more sweet if you ask me. It’s fighting I love more than the winning though. The actual conflict, win or lose, is where the rush comes from.
I also find social interaction in the PvP games I’ve played to be much better than in any of the PvE games I’ve played. In Shadowbane… for all of it’s issues… it’s the social aspect that keeps me coming back. I want to support the people I play with, my guild, and I actually start to miss them when I’ve been away for while. In EQ way back when the extent of my guild’s social interactions was BSin’ in /gu chat. Other than that the vast majority of my adventures were solo.
I see alot of people posting about how the evil PK’ers ultimately ruined it for themselves in UO and other games by chasing off everyone else. “Damnit man! All I want to do is crawl this dungeon in peace!” Didn’t you know the game allowed other players to attack you at will when you started playing it? If so why weren’t you prepared for that inevitable encounter, at least mentally? That’s what really boggles MY mind.
Finally back to what Kilmoran wrote. It really seems like the vast majority of people only know of DFO as a FFA PvP title that has been in development for way too long. Hopefully Kil’s very informative post will prompt some of you to do some more indepth research of your own rather than simply form half informed opinions.
about 3 years ago
Great responses. The first years of darktide really disprove many of the fears implied here as many non PK guilds survived and thrived until the XP chain exploits took hold. It was a blast to play, never really felt like much of a grind and the player politics were as immersive as it gets.
I think many of you miss the point.. this isnt 1997-8. There are so many players to fill each niche.. that games like Darkfall (assuming it actually releases.. ) will have plenty of consumers.
about 3 years ago
“Well it is tough luck when an industry fails certain consumers. I don’t know why you’re so smug about the fact that a solid base of gamers have been neglected. Enjoy the glory of the Uwe Boll-esque quality of games like Vanguard, while I have nothing to play. Winrar!”
I agree.
What company out there wants my dollar? Clearly, no one at the moment. And no one gets my dollar.
Only one on the horizon? Darkfall. And that’s a real shame for this industry at the moment. Whether Darkfall is eventually a success or failure, Darkfall is a good thing for this industry.
about 3 years ago
“The same crap from the same naysers over and over again. Freedom to do what you want is key. Not the false “freedom” that other devs spew from their pie wholes. Not everyone is a “hero” in an MMO or in the world, so why center the game around a bunch of people who cant achieve at life and therefor must have a virtual world to achieve. Leave the low lifes with WoW and allow those of us who want to play a fun game have Darkfall.”
Brandulfr, you are a complete moron. I have known quite a few hard core pvpers, and they are mostly people who still live with mommy and daddy and drive POS cars, or they have a one bedroom apartment that they use solely for the purpose of engaging in their online fantasies and eating pizza. It’s pricks like you who don’t have a life. I’m a programmer and I’d bet my left testicle that I make at least 40k a year more than you. And I didn’t get where i am by living in an online fantasy…I get up and go to work every day. I have a life. and I manage to play some online games when I have spare time. I would gladly compare my achievements to yours any time.
about 3 years ago
Everyone knows that all internet d00ds who are “A programmer making more money than you LoL!” are really 16 yera olds who took a highschool class in programming.
And as your the one bedroom apartment thing, most of the truly hardcore PvPers following DFO are mid 20′s middle americans who own land. But who’s counting right? Why dont you just go back to “programming” and leave the games discussion to us losers living in studio apartments.
about 3 years ago
on August 3, 2007 at 11:46 am Ulcis wrote:
“I see alot of people posting about how the evil PK’ers ultimately ruined it for themselves in UO and other games by chasing off everyone else. “Damnit man! All I want to do is crawl this dungeon in peace!” Didn’t you know the game allowed other players to attack you at will when you started playing it? If so why weren’t you prepared for that inevitable encounter, at least mentally? That’s what really boggles MY mind.”
_What boggles my mind, Ulcis, is that although you’ve probably read the article that this comes from:
“Amazingly for Ultima Online, and in retrospect thankfully for the health of the industry, many paid for quite a while. Much of this was because it really was the only game in town.”
you apparently still haven’t gotten some of the key points:
1.) UO was practically the only game in town, so far as a graphical MMORPG went. It was, in fact, the only one that most people had ever heard of.
2.) To answer your question, no, a lot of people who bought it (like the girlfriend who bought it for me as a college graduation present) had no idea that UO was FULL of the kind of crap that Osium, apparent guild leader of TheMercs, clearly states in a post from (ironically enough) the Darkfall Online General Discussion Forum:
“UO The PK Paradise.
When UO beta started in summer ’97 it was unlike anything anyone else had ever seen before. Sure there had been NwN and DSO and M59 but these were small scale and ultimately they were just not comparable. It was total fuckin’ mayhem, PK guilds roamed the countryside killing everyone and everything. Inner Circle, ToC and TheMercs were big PK guilds in beta. We would sit outside Trinsic and slay everything. Then there was the utterly hilarious and highly publicized “Moongate Massacre” a story unto itself. Heading into retail, these guilds went to separate servers, but we were no longer alone, the growing number of pkilling guilds was staggering. On any server you went to you had “Those guys”, the guys you just didn’t frack with period cause they were a whole lot of bad news. Those of you paying attention are noticing a trend. You had two styles of player, Wolves and Sheep. The Wolves grew, previous sheep realized they too were wolves and cast off their fuzzy outerwear to become killers like us, Covetous Crew is just such an example.
UO The Wild Wild West.
UO fit every possible connotation the wild wild west can conjure, with the exception of bad teeth and six shooters. Anything went, exploitation, bugs, you name it and it was just part of the learning curve. While the number of Wolves began to grow, so too did the number of Sheep. The relentless murder of these people just never ended, for the killer, this was great. We’ve never had it as good as those early days, and we never will again.
UO The Education.
UO was an education, for players and developers. The collective pent up frustration from the millions of people murdered in UO had to be released somewhere, that somewhere was called Everquest. Developers attribute UO’s early success directly to the fact it was the only game of its kind. It had no competition. People had no choice.”
I think Osium drescribes the history pretty well. To sum up:
1.) Yes Ulcis, a lot of people who bought the game and tried to play just wanted to do something like what they did in their tabletop AD&D games. Some of them actually wanted to roleplay within the Ultima series backstory.
2.) Many folks who bought the game (for themselves, their friends or their kids) had no idea that other players could slaughter you at will, loot everything you owned, then curse your ghost for S&G’s. I’m quite sure most of them had no idea of what Osium descibed, and what Lum makes clear here: http://brokentoys.org/2004/12/18/the-unbearable-darkness-of-ultima-online/
3.) Even if they did, UO was the only game in town. You wanted to play an MMORPG? You were stuck with UO. Despite that fact, UO still hemmoraged players like an aterial wound showering blood…so much so that Raph Koster kept trying different systems to bring things under control without using a PK switch.
4.) When Everquest did hit the scene, a lot of people who indeed “Damnit man! All I want to do is crawl this dungeon in peace!” flocked to it, despite the fact that EQ was a black hole of painful grinding so bad that you could literally get housework done while resting to get your hit points back, because it had the PK switch. By cancelling their UO account and playing in EQ, they gave a big middle finger to the PKers, bug-exploiters and other griefers who had ruined their gaming experience, leaving the rest of UO to continue in Sim Lord of the Flies. Despite the impact Dark Age of Camelot, an excellent game with RvR, had on EQ’s population numbers, EQ remained the biggest Western MMORPG until the “NINE MILLION PLAYERS” monster that is WoW arrived.
5.) So yeah, “PK’ers ultimately ruined it for themselves in UO and other games by chasing off everyone else.” You betcha.
Will Darkfall finally be the holy grail of PvP? Will it even get published? Who knows? I know this, just as lots of the “old-school” PKers from UO have never forgotten the pre-Trammel days, neither will millions of players who quit UO because they
“want to do is crawl this dungeon in peace!” … which is why I think you can count on them to stay away from Darkfall.
about 3 years ago
From the Warcry developer blog, “Written by Tasos Flambouras (Ass. Producer, Darkfall).”
Yes, I know they’re known semi-colloquially as “ass prods” but I don’t think I’d willingly advertise that.
Hahahahahahahah. Vaporware. They have no publisher and only lunatic Internet mandate. They will never ship.
about 3 years ago
And as for those folks who will post and complain that my statement “PKers, bug-exploiters and other griefers who had ruined their gaming experience, leaving the rest of UO to continue in Sim Lord of the Flies.” is untrue or overblown, allow me to quote from the Games Politics Forums:
“georox07-08-2007, 04:52 PM
I was one hell of a griefer on Ultima Online. I’d lure people to places, open gates next to moongates that led inside my house as 20 of my friend mages would tear them a few new ones, we’d loot em dry, ban em from house, so on. I’d scam to. Hardcore. Looking back on things, I was a complete asshole on Ultima Online, those where the days. I’m a lot better on other MMOs, guess its just how the community works and the people I played with.”
Thanks to guys like the above, if Darkfall Online is released, it will wind up very much a niche game, despite the best intentions of the hardcore PvPers who very much don’t intend to grief. The 3% who do make it their life’s work to ruin wide-open games for other people have a negative impact on player retention FAR greater than their actual numbers.
If you Darkfall guys want to prevent that, you’re going to have to somehow find a way to make Raph Koster’s failed hope of “player policing” actually work.
Good luck, y’all….
about 3 years ago
Also.. for those people who out right assaulted Red Morgan because he spoke of people paying to be heroes, i’d like to bring this to Light.
Not one person in WoW is a Hero. No one? Why? Because your all equal. There are people who stand out ,and are more reknown and such, but “hero” is a strong term for a champion of the sports like PVP of WoW. You don’t go on an “adventure” .. you go on a plot line that’s laid out ofr your i na very specific and linear way. Oh yes, you can go to different areas..but if you aren’t “this level through this level” you cna’t do them, thus you only have a handful (Well in WoW’s case..quite a few) quests to choose form, most of which have nothing to do with anything.
At the end of the day, your sitting atop your flying mount with your level 70 gear….right next to everyone else atop their flying mounts in their level 70 gear. You aren’t a hero, your the end of the road. You wait for more content, or repeat content you’ve already done. You PVP for absolutely no real reason. You don’t do anything for anyone buy yourself or your guild, and the latter is barely covered.
I don’t pay for a game to be the hero. I pay for the game to hopefully be individual or make an impact, what ever that becomes should be up to me. Notorious, Praised, completely unknown… while i can get all of those in WoW to an extent, they are all meaningless in games such as that. Heroes are rememberd and known for their actions, not the time they spent doing the same thing to get gear that is designed for you to get. Hell, if I ever had a Hero in WoW….someone i looked up to, it would be someone beating down the people with gear, with pretty mcuh standard gear and nothing but guts and uncanny skill. Still yet, my adoration would be mild if that much, because he would only be the master of nerds, willing to dedicate his life to macro keyed combat and memorization of class abilities and build counters.
If you play and pay for WoW to be a “hero” … i feel very sorry for what you feel is worthy of being called a hero. A hero shouldn’ be someone you can count amongst millions of others.
about 3 years ago
“The 3% who do make it their life’s work to ruin wide-open games for other people have a negative impact on player retention FAR greater than their actual numbers.
If you Darkfall guys want to prevent that, you’re going to have to somehow find a way to make Raph Koster’s failed hope of “player policing” actually work.
Good luck, y’all….”
WoW has griefers that do nothing but waste their time getting cheap laughs off the weak. It may not be as flexible, but see that’s a double edged sword. No, you cna’t trick people into portal to get gand raped in a house in WoW… but you can make it so that they cannot possibly do anything to stop you period in any way shape or form besides waiting for someone high enough to assist them. Atleast in the case of DFO… if your tricked or ganged, it’s generally because of your own decisinos or bad luck. You can possibly survive it though, where as in WoW there is no hope but to be somewhere else or to wait for someone to help you. YOU can’t fix your own problems.
about 3 years ago
I’m getting a horrid sense of deja vu here. This is the Shadowbane experience all over again: A bunch of people who have never played the game – because it isn’t available yet to anyone but the developers – are extolling it’s virtues based completely on statements by the developers. The paeans would have one believe that the game will be so good that it will deliver prostitutes to the very door of the noble players wise enough to subscribe.
One wonders; will the disappointment at the launch of Darkfall be of similar proportions to Shadowbane? Will the delivery be high-class call girls or $20 a pop skanks?
Only time will tell but, based on history, I’m leaning more towards Andy Jackson than Bill McKinley.
about 3 years ago
on August 4, 2007 at 2:09 am Kilmoran wrote:
___________________________________
“Not one person in WoW is a Hero. No one? Why? Because your all equal. There are people who stand out ,and are more reknown and such, but “hero” is a strong term for a champion of the sports like PVP of WoW”
Dude, I’m supposed to become a hero? Damn, I just thought I was logging onto these new-fangled MMORPG’s to have…I dunno, fun. Crap. If I’m supposed to go become a real hero, I’d better get my spreading duff off of this chair, out from in front of the computer and go volunteer my time to a worthy cause and be a real hero!
In all seriousness, my heroes are not professional sports players. And they’re not members of the fighting 101st keyboardests either, regardless of how hardcore they may be. My standards for heroes are a little higher. I’ll log into these games (in the rare spare time that I have) to have fun. If I want to be a real hero, I’ll spend lots of time with my family being a good husband and a damn good father. In my obviously not so humble opinion, the world needs more focus on real heroes and less focus and overpaid sport jocks.
about 3 years ago
Shadowbane had a publisher. And lasted at least two months before the shine wore off and the uberguilds disbanded.
Yeah, assuming Darkfall will ship (it won’t) then that’s probably a fair standard to hold it to. As for the fans, the vague ideas in their head are without a doubt going to be more appealing than anything Darkfall’s creators could make. If they don’t cause mass orgasmic reactions on the first day of beta, they’re sunk, and a lot of people will be humiliated.
about 3 years ago
Darkfall is much like pursuing a dream. It might or might not be real someday, but its better than the alternative of denying this niche as anything more than a dying hope, a rogue developer’s intricate fantasy and nothing more.
The golden years of UO are fresher in my mind than years of EQ-esque gameplay that have been the trend of this decade.
about 3 years ago
Dude. I was there for Shadowbane. Trust me when I say, it’s only good before it ships. The sudden stop at the end sucks worse than any nightmare, and you’ll spend a long time thereafter trying to brush off the association.
about 3 years ago
You all just wait and see, Darkfall will be released, and when it comes.. IT WILL FUCKING PWN.
All who are saying the pvp system wont work are just afraid of getting assraped by a skilful player. And those who quote this and tries to prove it wrong are just the persons i’m talking about.
“I’m not looking for a game, i’m looking for a world”
about 3 years ago
I was there for SB too, from the beginning of Chaos to the end of Entropy. 90% of the time it was a total drag to play, but those golden moments were what counted for me. I’d rather be playing a shitfest like Shadowbane then face the polished grind to maxlevel and the endless dungeon crawls for epic loot.
If you’re right, what will become of the MMO industry? A market doomed to tunnel-visioned developers and assembly line games? Another console sports market? We need epic designs and epic design failures to keep the status quo in check and the perspective balanced.
about 3 years ago
Ok.. reading through this has shown me that most of the negative feedback on Darkfall is from people who know nothing about the game itself.. good job. For one thing Darkfall will not just appeal to “Hardcore PvP’ers”. If Darkfall lives up to what it says it will have a extensive crafting system giving people *and there are ALOT of said people* the ability to craft and merchant. They can stay inside the safety of the main cities and should those cities fall under attack there are BANKS to store valuables in that cannot be looted. Lets look at the PvP wolf and sheep analogy shall we. While WoW does not allow you to lose anything when being pk’d it does allow for camping in the extreme and super high level players coming by and one hit killing you. They still have tons of players and they practically force you to move into an open pvp area by making most areas level 25 contested.
Next lets look at the full loot supposed turnoff of the game. It has been officially announced that armor and weapons WILL NOT severely impact the power of your character. Developing skills and player skill will be the main determining factors. Yes thats right that means that when you use spears alot.. and you get killed and they steal your uber flaming spear of doom you can go to your local blacksmith and buy a regular old steel spear and still be a very deadly force. It also has an extensive race based player killing system. Ally killing will turn you into guard dog food and enemy killing will get you rewarded but there is a catch. With an advertised scaled landmass the size of Germany it would be very out of the way to be Mahirim *a wolf-like race in the game* and travel allllllll the way to the human territory just to kill some frail humans. If you do make the trip you can expect to be hunted like a dog by the humans and to die.. and get fully looted then you will either ressurect in a nearby ressurection location *This mechanic is unknown to me* or be spawn back in your home territory. If you happen to ressurect close by.. guess what your an enemy the city guards kill you on sight.. so no weapons and armor for you!
Next lets look at the newb friendly factor of the game. You start off in home territory surrounded by allies. Remember folks killing an ally will quickly turn you into guard food which means.. no armor.. no weapons.. yeah your an awsome pk’er naked. You start up learn the basics go out killing your skills level up you get better earn some gold equip your self with some nicer armor even if the effects are minimal. Since the pvp in this game is the way it is.. most people will be sticking together instead of soloing which is the obvious thing to do. And if you are in a gank situation and you get killed big deal.. monsters are full drop too. Go out with some cheap armor and kill a monster or two and your back in action. Even further guilds have a ONE MILLION slot limit to players allowed in. They will always be wanting new players to expand their power in either military fodder.. craftsman.. sailors… businessmen… political men.. so I can guarantee the “no noobs allowed” policy will only apply to a select few guilds.
Now lets look at the I keep getting wtf pwned in pvp. Darkfall pvp is not focused on single player fighting. Sure there will be some one on one action and like any other game that doesn’t completely rely on gear… the more skilled opponent will win. The game will give you plenty of ways to run and hide. In trees behind rocks.. in tall grass. The combat is contact based.. so while your running there won’t be you running behind a corner and all of a sudden that fireball that was on your tail turns the corner and kills you. They can pot shot you as you run.. but hitting a moving target is skills based.. if they are good they will hit you possibly kill you if not.. you’ll get away. Theres also the added feature of stamina. Running after you opponent spamming the attack button won’t be too intelligent. You will need to catch them.. and back them into a corner to guarantee the kill. Guilds also come into play here.. obviously you will be with a guild that is of the same race or alliance as you meaning help will arrive. This is not going to be a game where one guy can take on four people at once and beat the crap outta them. Numbers will matter.. common sense will be needed.. this game will focus on the big picture and the pvp worth doing will come in sieges and guilds warring against each other over lands and towns.
Next aspect to focus on Role-Playing. This game will draw the role-playing crowd to it. They will be fairly safe staying in their main city and have a multitude of options to role-play as much as they want. With a crafting system that allows for new items to be made BY players there is no end to the possibilities of the roleplaying you can do. Being able to customize armor with color.. what material its made from and how it functions can play into alot of role-playing that other games only dream of for now *mmo-wise*.
This game will have a multitude of players and not just the orgasms from killing you players. You will see role-players, merchants, crafters, political leaders, pvp’ers, city builders, and oddly enough a large amount of people who want an online game that they can literally explore. I hope this gives alot of you a better vision of what this game should be and is said to be. Whether it lives up to its word is beyond me.. but if it does this is how it will be. To the rest of you.. please.. please research the game a little before you jump to conclusions some of the things you say are agreeable and some of the things you say are downright retarded.
about 3 years ago
Ok.. reading through this has shown me that most of the negative feedback on Darkfall is from people who know nothing about the game itself.. good job.
I know it’s been kicking around for about seven years now, the team has no publisher and no clear means to even support it, and constantly pushes back its beta testing. That’s more than enough to connect the dots. The fact that its design sounds like the holy grail makes it more likely to remain just as intangible and unrealized — or, if by some miracle it is realized, it won’t be what you or anyone else really wanted.
If you’re right, what will become of the MMO industry? A market doomed to tunnel-visioned developers and assembly line games? Another console sports market? We need epic designs and epic design failures to keep the status quo in check and the perspective balanced.
We already have both. Millions are being spent all the time on projects that never see the light of day, because they’re canceled internally. Occasionally, they even get out the door, like Auto Assault. Darkfall’s just a bit of the yeasty leavings from the great design brew vat that spilled on the grating and fights from trickling down the drain.
In conclusion, just because you think you want it, doesn’t make you any more deserving of what you get. Unless it’s nothing, and then you can thank heaven that’s all you got.
about 3 years ago
Well said Delvonshi. Totaly agree with you.
about 3 years ago
“the team has no publisher and no clear means to even support it”
from DF developer journal: “One big internal debate for example is whether we publish this game ourselves or if we agree to work with one of several publishers, or accept a number of compromises between the two, based on business model, territory and a number of other factors that need to be carefully weighed. We’re prepared for any eventuality, and we do have several options but the final decision is critical.”
avertunine is a detachment from a larger company (or something similar) and seems they have enough funds to publish the game on their own, i can’t say it for sure and you can’t say it is not true but developer’s words counts for sure more then ours.
in conclusion as delvonshi already said :”please research the game a little before you jump to conclusions some of the things you say are agreeable and some of the things you say are downright retarded.”
about 3 years ago
Unless the company is a “detachment” from a company that is an established game publisher, that makes no difference. Distribution, customer support and billing are not typical functions of a game developer, but they are essential, especially for the kind of game they want to make. This isn’t about just having money, it’s the business acumen and wherewithal to make money and sustain the organization necessary for this sort of enterprise.
I already did the research.
Developer words and intentions are only valuable for the sake of tripping them up later, after their best laid plans go awry. Until they deliver the game and you can play it, they are merely words. And my assertion still stands. We’ll see who’s wrong eventually.
Please note that nothing about my criticisms has anything to do with the intended design. Surely the die-hard fans of this game realize that for the latest attempt at this sort of game to work, everything has to be firing on all cylinders. The margin for error is very, very low.
about 3 years ago
“merely words” indeed…as ours! this is what i was tryin to say, why all this criticisms? the discussion was on the pvp contents of the game, i see no reason to debate on if and when the game is coming out but just if it will have success or not/is good to move away from grindgames/etc, and if the game is comin out or not we are the last who can tell it…well i wanted to write somthin more but i forgot what…here is gettin late an i’m spleepy:P
sorry for bad enghlish,g.night:D
about 3 years ago
The developers of this game are spending time on making sure when this game comes out in beta it will be as close to a finished product as can be. The beta will let all those players discover and abuse the exploits they missed thereby allowing them to be corrected. When and if the game launches all these fans WILL buy a copy and at least 75% of what we’ve been told is easily possible and if 75% of it is in the game more than likely I and others will buy that next month and you know what will happen with all that money from the subscriptions.. The developers have shown that they have a solid ideal for the game and are working to make that ideal a reality. I have no doubt that any features missing will be added or changed for fairness.
WoW’s problem.. their most major of problems is that they listen to the community too much. OMG L337M@N pwned me this is not what I was promised! NERF NERF! So what does WoW do.. they nerf it. Hell if anything is PROOF of this its rogues.. Back on topic.. the developers have shown in their responses they do not want to handle customers in this way. They want the game to be fun and fair while still holding the exact ideal they put forth. Its a hard as hell task to get this but the games been in development for 7 years. And another game followed the same way.. Morrowind.. and come to think of it.. the two sound awfully alike :O.
Alot of people have just given up hope of anything besides a cookie cutter korean mmo or a EQ clone. The games that have tried this route.. some have been pretty successful.. and others have failed.. mostly due to poor execution and bugs to the extreme. If they have several offers from publishers it means that they have a business model that is feasable and will make money.. publishers don’t tend to jump the gun on risky models.
And as a final note WoW only had 3 releases of what it would be like before it came out.. Darkfall is up to 4. Its not so much that I am at the point where OMG SOMETHING SOMEWHERE SAVE ME.. its more that Darkfall has more than enough showing it will be on the scene and doing what it claims to do.
about 3 years ago
Morrowind was made by an experienced development company. It was in fact the third in a series.
If a MMO is only 75 percent complete, that 25 percent will likely drag it down for the rest of its life, as its player base adapts to the incompleteness and becomes increasingly incapable of coping with the unmaking and remaking required to add to the existing game world post-launch.
You are spouting well-rehearsed rhetoric, backed up by best intentions and thin hopes. Darkfall’s developers have given you nothing more than promises that you want to believe just because you think you want it, so very badly, and for no other reason than that.
Stow the proselytizing. If Darkfall was really that great, it wouldn’t need the likes of you to defend it. All I did was warn you, based on the benefit of my experience. These are the good times right now, before anything must be proven. When the proof comes, the dreams go away.
We’ll all be watching to see what happens. When it does, we’ll see who was right.
about 3 years ago
“Dude, I’m supposed to become a hero? Damn, I just thought I was logging onto these new-fangled MMORPG’s to have…I dunno, fun. Crap. If I’m supposed to go become a real hero, I’d better get my spreading duff off of this chair, out from in front of the computer and go volunteer my time to a worthy cause and be a real hero!
In all seriousness, my heroes are not professional sports players. And they’re not members of the fighting 101st keyboardests either, regardless of how hardcore they may be. My standards for heroes are a little higher. I’ll log into these games (in the rare spare time that I have) to have fun. If I want to be a real hero, I’ll spend lots of time with my family being a good husband and a damn good father. In my obviously not so humble opinion, the world needs more focus on real heroes and less focus and overpaid sport jocks.”
Glad you understand my point even if you decided to change it to me being wrong. Even though i used a video game as a reference to someone else saying “we should be heroes if we are paying”, my point was exactly your point, a hero is based on their actions more than the appearance and the “right” they have to the title. You should be easily able to extropolate that to your point.
about 3 years ago
“I’m getting a horrid sense of deja vu here. This is the Shadowbane experience all over again: A bunch of people who have never played the game – because it isn’t available yet to anyone but the developers – are extolling it’s virtues based completely on statements by the developers. The paeans would have one believe that the game will be so good that it will deliver prostitutes to the very door of the noble players wise enough to subscribe.”
Yes your right, alot of us people who follow darkfall are using the ideals as reference against the MMORPG standards. I’d much rather think of what could be than not have fun in what is. Been doing it most my life (While keeping track of what is mind you) and is why i have certain talents i am growing in college to the very end we debate, to bring ideas and entertainment back to the forefront of the gaming industry (if possible in the industry at the time i’m able to contribute). Hopeful, absolutely, but so is every future job oriented goal that you care about.
about 3 years ago
PVP was once considered the acronym for Player-vs-Player combat. Now perhaps the issue is that players are considering PVP as an illusionary term to describe what that want when confronting other players in combat online. All situations where you pit yourself against another live player in a competitive situation it’s considered PVP. Now how you describe hard-core PVP in this blog isn’t a matter of an undesirable situation, rather a condition of someone who has dedicated themselves to perfecting whatever playstyle suits their needs. This competitive player will want to be the “best” and in doing so creates an archetype for other players to base their skill level and enjoyment factor on.
Just to establish a foundation for my beliefs in this issue I will say that I was once one of those hard-core Ultima Online players on Catskills server back when it kicked off. I wasn’t the most skilled player nor was I the best at single PVP. So in order to be good at what I did, I specialized in certain skills that supported a team, rather then myself. Back when Origin gave you 700 skill points to gain, it could truely limit a players capabilities. So I found likeminded hunters who enjoyed setting ambushes and chasing down miners just for the enjoyment of it. As a team we were better than any single player could be, so in return, the situation required others to unite to be better than we were. In time, people left and situations change, noone will be on top forever. I still remember those fights and that game as one of the most enjoyable ever.
To move on to the next best PVP game on the market, in my opinion, would be Eve Online. Single corporations used to dominate the game in 2003. I was part of a pirate corporation on release day for nearly a year. Nothing really worked right in the game mechanics but it was still incredible to lose everything and fight your way back to the top. I still play Eve to this day, I’ve seen Alliances formed, Alliances fall and things change. BoB set a milestone in the last two years, accomplishing the largest empire seen in Eve yet, but there are other alliances out there destroying their empire piece by piece. Promoting competition is a sure way of keeping the game fresh and interesting.
Darkfall has the potential of being most open-ended PVP game being released in gaming history. Beyond the crys of vaporware and beta, most hard-core PVP players are already forming alliances in preparation for Darkfalls release. Single players or small guilds will find themselves outmatched within a year for competitive PVP. So they will adapt and overcome if they truely enjoy the game, otherwise they will quit the game because it doesnt fit their playstyle. If every game released catered to everyone. There would only be one game ever released. Darkfall provides a unique oppertunity for a player to be “skilled”. Twitch combat, similar to Mount and Blade allow the few to fight the many. If I can’t beat you, Ill call my guild, if we can’t beat you Ill call my alliance. One way or another a hard-core PVP player is going to try to win. If they can’t win, they will go back to the drawing board and figure out a tactic that works. That is what makes a player hard-core or not, figuring out what works to beat you, and using it. If you made it this far in my spiel, congratulations. Love ya.
about 3 years ago
” … you get killed and they steal your uber flaming spear of doom you can go to your local blacksmith and buy a regular old steel spear and still be a very deadly force.”
So being recently dead and nekkid won’t stop you from being a very deadly force.
… killing an ally will quickly turn you into guard food which means.. no armor.. no weapons.. yeah your an awsome pk’er naked.”
So being recently dead and nekkid will stop you from being a very deadly force.
about 3 years ago
I think Tasos is onto something when he writes that;
“So we can keep blaming players for design and technology shortcomings and instantly labeling – (therefore limiting) games trying to cater to a wider audience as “hardcore”. But how is that progressive?”
I remember playing WoW for the first time with a friend he yelled;
“How do I win this game ?”
Not the most serious at the time, he still raised an interresting question.
How do you win a MMO ?
Does level 70 and epix make you a winner ? For some perhaps but other would say that to be able successfully achiving a common goal with friends (virtual or not) or the thrill of emersing yourself in a story.
I belive false limitations in a MMO for the sake of game balance is bad for MMOs. If the game is designed right, there will be no need for tuning. The players themselves will be the “tuning” device.
If DF implement their “freedom but with concequence” approach to PvP, they is taking a big step towards the freedom we really want and stepping away from the limits we thought we wanted. I belive it is a step in the right direction.
about 3 years ago
on August 6, 2007 at 11:23 am JJC wrote:
” … you get killed and they steal your uber flaming spear of doom you can go to your local blacksmith and buy a regular old steel spear and still be a very deadly force.”
So being recently dead and nekkid won’t stop you from being a very deadly force.
Xris: Well, you are not nekkid anymore after you have visited the blacksmith and bought your armor and weapons. Thus Loosing your uberweapon will not hurt you as much you might fear.
… killing an ally will quickly turn you into guard food which means.. no armor.. no weapons.. yeah your an awsome pk’er naked.”
So being recently dead and nekkid will stop you from being a very deadly force.
Xris: Aye, because the blacksmith is kicking your a** instead of selling you stuff, you stay dead, nekkid or both.
about 3 years ago
If the uber weapon doesn’t make that much of a difference then it isn’t an uberweapon. Are they giving the blacksmiths the same attack skills as a guard? What happened to the game appealing to RP types?
The problem here is that people are saying that death will and won’t hurt. Game mechanics, as we all know too well, can and will be abused. You can’t program a game that is both hard on death and easy on death at the same time. It’s like trying to have a standard coin come up both heads and tails at the same time. Sure, someone will count the coin landing on edge in a one in a billion chance but that’s more fantasy than reality.
The best hope for Darkfall is for it to never make it to beta that way it will always be perfect.
about 3 years ago
Death will hurt but not be unbearable, is the point most people try to make. WoW is an example of too little penalty. The game doesn’t penalize foolish mistakes, but it shouldn’t due to it’s model. In WoW, I think the DP is fine, but the mechanics wouldn’t tolerate anything else. EVE I think is an example of too much, because bigger ships are extremely pricy, and you can lose weeks of real-time progression after a death. So dying hurts a fair fair bit. Full loot is a death penalty that you can control as a player by being prepared with gear at your house/bank, or by having contacts with a crafter. If you have a suit of armor waiting for you, then it might be as little as 30-60 seconds to rearm (depending on how long it takes to get to a bank/house). So I don’t get locked out of fighting for X minutes because it’s “set that way”, neither do I just get to jump back into the fight mindlessly.
When you consider the social web that will exist in a game like this, it’s easy to see how Full Loot is really not that bad. Inherently, Darkfall style sandbox games are moving beyond “items = progression” and more towards a ” conflict = progression” which I think is infinitely more satisfying in the long run. Dungeon delving can be fun for a while, but I think that the community of MMO players is beginning to get tired of it. Precious few people I raided with said they enjoyed the content. It was more of a “place to be” and “thing to do” rather than something truly enjoyable as an experience itself. The first time I fought Rag, it was fun. 30th time, no so much. Same with Nef, C’thun, pretty much everything: you did it, celebrated a guild first, possibly a server first, and then you just kinda forgot about it. It made the game stale quickly. Most of the people I raided with were married, they spent time with their kids and stuff while they raided. Or watched TV. I also saw some of the nicest people turn very nasty over what essentially was some 1′s and 0′s in a server somewhere. I just think that in a game based around player-conflict, so much of that drama and effort could be spent telling an epic story of struggle and bloodshed. Who wouldn’t get interested in a story involving 2 rival guild leaders commanding their warriors to destroy eachother? Even such a simple scenario could have it’s heros and villains.
I think that we do need to start breaking free of the item-based games, and start becoming more innovative with our game ideas. Warhammer, Darkfall, and Age of Conan seem to both be warming up to the conflict side of gaming, which I feel is a good step in the right direction. It gives players other means to distinguish themselves, and also cuts down on the “clone-syndrome” which is big in EQ type games. Being a raiding Druid in WoW, I never felt particularly “progressed” when confronted with a legion of Druids who looked like me. I felt slightly unique because at that time, Druids were rarer than 4 leaf clovers, but I still looked exactly like the few that remained. I also didn’t enjoy the raid/pray style of gameplay (glad they introduced tokens, they need to do that with everything imo) that determined what I got. Further I didn’t find the constant progression level “fun” at all. I got my gear, and wondered “K, now what?” What do I do with all the gear that I spent months collecting? Apparently I was to use it to…get more. And then shard it.
If there wasn’t any new content, I didn’t even log on, except to maybe farm something up, make potions fro the guild. There was a general “lack” of things to do when you got to the end of the game. Sure I could PvP, but the BG’s got old after maybe 2-3 runs, and I ever felt a sense of competition against people who had absolutely no chance against my team. In something like this, Darkfall-style games could be great, because there would always be enemies to fight, cities to siege, monsters to take down, etc. A lot of broad options, makes me interested.
In any case…
I finished my T1, got my T2, then got my T3 started, before TBC came out. Then I found mid-60′s greens and blues that were better. So all my effort was for nothing, replaced over a few weeks of grind. As a Druid it was worth it for the improved skills/talents, and the itemization that somewhat supported my preferred role as a caster DPS’er with heals, which is how I imagined a Druid to be, but I just felt that WoW was too limiting in it’s approach. I’m looking for a game that offers up far more freedom, and a lot more complexity to the classes. Every once in a while I get an idea of how to make Druids a little more fun, or fix Shamans, or just generally improve WoW. It ticks me because much of WoW’s failings are fairly superficial, yet they don’t get fixed or addressed. Til something better rolls around, I’ll continue to play WoW, but the novelty is fast wearing thin. Warhammer looks good, Darkfall looks good, and I’m sure other games will come out that look good too. Ultimately, I’ll go to whatevers best. I can see Darkfall keeping my money for a long time if it delivers on it’s ideas (I dream of being a Druidic Mahirim, or perhaps an evil, insane Alfar mage!), and I could see getting Warhammer, because I love their Greenskins style, and particularly, I like the portrayal and backdrop of Chaos.
The main issue is that we should support these style games, even if they do fail, because they show us what we can do potentially with games online. Darkfall has had it’s issues in the past, like missed beta dates, but every game usually goes through some pushbacks and delays. Warhammer got pushed back, AoC did too. It’s natural.
about 3 years ago
“If a MMO is only 75 percent complete, that 25 percent will likely drag it down for the rest of its life, as its player base adapts to the incompleteness and becomes increasingly incapable of coping with the unmaking and remaking required to add to the existing game world post-launch.”
Oh ..you mean like WoW… or SWG… or EQ 2?
about 3 years ago
Oh ..you mean like WoW… or SWG… or EQ 2?
The light dawns.
about 3 years ago
I’m getting a horrid sense of deja vu here. This is the Shadowbane experience all over again: A bunch of people who have never played the game – because it isn’t available yet to anyone but the developers – are extolling it’s virtues based completely on statements by the developers. The paeans would have one believe that the game will be so good that it will deliver prostitutes to the very door of the noble players wise enough to subscribe.
The ideal of Shadowbane, Darkfall, and any other future PvP projects will continue to be fawned over until someone makes it a realization. Will Darkfall do this? I don’t know, no one really does, we haven’t got a chance to play the game yet. However the ideal, that hope, will continue to live on till someone gets it right.
Every game since UO has progressively gotten worse for us PvPers.
At first we at least got seperate FFA servers that we could go PvP on and leave the “carebears” (the common term for non PvPers) to their own servers. However for a long while now FFA servers are slowly becoming non-existent. They favor this “faction” style PvP ever since EQ2 came out with their race wars servers (later made bigger by DAoC).
I don’t personally understand this, because almost invariably the PvP server (FFA or faction) are usually almost always one of the highest pop servers in all the games. While granted, the total of the other servers combined surely outweighs the one FFA (or PvP) server it’s always a decent chunk of people playing there.
It’s very simple, really.
We want the freedom to choose those we call friends and those we call enemies.
We want a game that isn’t buggy and exploitable.
We want an system where fights are challenging and not simply a mindless grind to level 3000.
We want an environment where there are consequences to one’s actions.
We want PvP that’s more than just mindless slaughter.
Until we get this game, the PKs and PvPers alike will always be searching for a game like this. Most new games that come out will try to mimic and clone the success of WOW. These games will never offer what we want out of a game. Looking at the new line up of MMOs coming out Darkfall is probably one of the best options we’ve gotten in a long time.
Whether or not Darkfall is “vaporware” (it’s not) or turns out to be exactly everything we didn’t hope it will be…
…the dream of the ideal PvP game will continue on.
about 3 years ago
That “we” is a demonstrably small group of people, and getting smaller all the time.
Your depth of longing for an unrealized form of entertainment is inconsequential. You will not get what you want just because you want it. The deck has always been stacked against you. Your only hope is to abandon anticipation of that which you say you want the most.
In other news, Team Fortress 2 looks pretty damned cool. Fury could be good, too, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to ship.
about 3 years ago
The initial interest in a PvP server is frequently high, but inevitably the server swings to the lowest population. Why? Because there aren’t enough people who are interested in being punching bags for the top 10% players.
Take Mordred. It was so popular on rollout that Mythic opened Andred. Something like a year later, Andred was shut down. Currently, Mordred’s peak population hovers around 400, which is a far cry from the roughly 7000 peak population that DAoC is currently sitting at. The only reason why Mordred is even that high is because of the tireless efforts of the Mordred TL to bring people to it, and a recent resurgence of “8v8″ rerolling on Mordred.
Open PvP systems are not popular with players in an MMOG context. Accept it. Move on. This isn’t a case of “wait for the right game, where assraping will be made fun for the sheep.” That will never happen. As for an MMOG made for PvPers, it will not be resoundingly popular if made FFA. EVE’s the closest example of what you are talking about, and even that game isn’t truly FFA, as a large portion of the game is protected.
about 3 years ago
Ah the wonderful ignorance flares as always. The depraved opinions of madmen as they can not grasp the simple concepts of why those of us who like FFA will always like FFA and will always want it.
First, to simply write us off due to numbers is ridiculous. I mean literally certifiably insane.
Everyone’s favorite topic to bring up is WOW as the perfect success for every game hence forth. 9 million players can not be wrong, right?
One little problem, however. WOW is completely driven by raiding and raiding guilds. Before Burning Crusade was launched, only 3% of the game population had ever even seen Naxxaramas (the top end dungeon at the time). Continuing to today, only a small portion of the game’s populace has ever been within The Black Temple. Yet consistently and constantly content is released for individuals at the upper echelons of the game, even though a vast majority will never reach or even see such content…or by the time they do, the content will be so dated that it’s a non-factor (like their new expansion).
Of course then WOW is also the perfect example of why non-consensual PvP is not nearly viewed as bad as you would have others believe. For example, according to Warcraft Census (a plug in that tallies up the people on each server by a series of /who commands) nearly 50% of of WOW’s characters are on PvP servers (3.1M out of 6.8M total visible).
(Source: http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php)
WOW has clearly opened up the market to numerous new individuals. To presume that none of these would try or even attempt a more harsher gaming environment is also an absurd conclusion. It’d be just as absurd as me trying to say all of WOW’s PvP population would want to play in a FFA enviornment. Of course they wouldn’t.
However the “gateway” game has sucked them in, and in some cases, new games will take them further. None of this new generation of gamers has ever had the chance to even try FFA PvP…and the forbidden allure of the type may be very tempting to some of them (I know some absurdly competitive people from WOW that are/were looking for more yet never played a MMO previously).
Second, anyone who has taken basic economics will tell you that when there is a demand for a good or service then someone will almost invariably try to fill the supply for such a good or service.
However, to use a metaphor, if you go in to buy shoes and someone tries to sell you a pair of cardboard boxes with string to tie to your feet you aren’t going to really pay for said boxes. More importantly, if after buying the shoes they try to give you the boxes you won’t continue to pay for such services.
For whatever psychological reasons you guys invariably seem to misunderstand, repeatedly, thread after thread, game after game, forum after forum is that we want a good game. Just because a game totes FFA PvP doesn’t mean it’s a good game. No one wants to play a game where players are hacking the server, causing it to crash, or duping insane amounts of money (Shadowbane). No one wants to play a game where death is meaningless and there’s nothing to fight for (Asheron’s Call 2). No one wants to play a game where 3rd party programs make your UI more sophisticated than a F-16 fighter jet and play the game for you (Asheron’s Call 1).
Frankly, I got bored fighting AI scripted monsters that follow the all too simplistic IF-THEN-ELSE. There is no challenge in fighting these pre-programmed opponents. Even their limited list of random variables is easily discovered and conquered. Here is a tip: In every game to date every mob does a melee attack. They might cast spells, or shoot a bit from range, but you close that distance and they will start to melee you. If you are prepared for melee and are strong against it…you will be successful in any game.
I will not insult you (which is usually not the case from your side of the arguement…) and presume you play to conquer the AI. I really have no idea nor care to know why you play these MMO games. I play to kill other people. You play for any possible numerous reasons. The difference is, I don’t hold you in contempt for it and were the situations reverse I’d see no reason why there shouldn’t be a game where you are protected and not forced to PvP. That is, perhaps, the one thing that has always bugged me most about you anti-PvPers.
I have no desire to “ass-rape” the sheepish noobs. The fact you take it as such simply shows your gilded nature and belies any sense of objectivity (amazing word, that) that you have.
I play FFA games and servers for a simple reason. What you are willing to tolerate, I am not. I don’t tolerate stupid encounters that are easy to figure out. I don’t swing my [Harsh Language 2] or my [Shaking Fist 1] at people, I simply kill them. The freedom to act as I see fit is not something I am willing to compromise or relinquish be it in a game or in day to day life.
Perhaps that is the fundamental difference that I’ve always not understood? That fundamentally I am the same person that I am day to day as I am when I am in a game. Perhaps it’s the fact that you want to be something that you aren’t day to day that clashes so fiercely these last 10 years? Hrm. Things to ponder, I suppose.
about 3 years ago
Insane isn’t saying that the numbers aren’t there. That is actually quite sane since any MMORPG is going to have to make a profit. What you are looking for is the holy grail. You want to find it. You believe you need it. You believe it exists. That doesn’t make it so. An unhackable game doesn’t exist. Something to fight over, resources or whatever, does long term harm to the game because people who don’t have that resource and can’t get that resource and need that resource will quit. Very few want to play on a slanted playing field going uphill. Even fewer are willing to pay for it. Even fewer are willing to pay for it very long.
There seems to be this belief that you are a better person, or customer, because you prefer to play a game a certain way. You said so yourself when you say that you are fundamentally the same person in game and out. This is simply untrue unless there is some sort of reward on your head offered by the FBI or local police agency. You claim that you don’t hold people in contempt because of the way they play and this is disproven by the entire tone and nature of your response. You do hold people in contempt when you call their analysis insane. You label their analysis of the continual failure of a PVP game to be some sort of mental defect.
Economics does state that where there is a demand there is always someone willing to sell it to you for a price. The last part of this basic principal you left off, either intentionally or unintentionally, is the most important part of that statement. It’s entirely possible to have a demand for a service while the price exludes anyone from willingly supply that demand. Just because a demand exists doesn’t mean there is going to be a supplier. The problem is that people expect to pay MMORPG prices, 16 bucks a month or whatever is the market rate, for a niche game which would be charging much more than that. People, no matter how hardcore, aren’t going to pay that often enough because of the alternatives such as WoW or any number of FPS games.
PVP isn’t special. The people who play it aren’t special. To pretend it is anything other than being part of a larger picture will always make the expectation of the game higher than the game can ever be. What you are asking for and expecting is an unreachable standard. Repeating the same thing over and over again, which is the exact point of this article, while expecting different results is a definition of insanity. Many of us have found games that we enjoy for a while because we are able to detach. Things to ponder, I suppose.
about 3 years ago
“If the uber weapon doesn’t make that much of a difference then it isn’t an uberweapon. Are they giving the blacksmiths the same attack skills as a guard? What happened to the game appealing to RP types?
The problem here is that people are saying that death will and won’t hurt. Game mechanics, as we all know too well, can and will be abused. You can’t program a game that is both hard on death and easy on death at the same time. It’s like trying to have a standard coin come up both heads and tails at the same time. Sure, someone will count the coin landing on edge in a one in a billion chance but that’s more fantasy than reality.
The best hope for Darkfall is for it to never make it to beta that way it will always be perfect.”
If an uber weapon does make a difference statistically, but doesn’t make an unskilled player a god amungst men, then it is still an “uber weapon” in a novices hand. You can have them be powerful (comparibly) weapons without making them so pwoerful that skill cannot over come them. this is the “difference” that acctualyl matters. Better equipment should be better… but if i can evade the attacks, or block thme, or other wise barely be hit compared to the assult i throw back, i should beable to win.
Secondly, yes you can make a game that’s both hard on death and not. It’s called preparation. If you are PREPARED to die, death is not nearly as harsh on you then if you think you will never die, or aren’t prepared to lose what you have. In this way, YOU decide how hard it is on yourself instead of the game dictating it either way. Of course, you have to be able to prepare as well but that we can’t speculate o nthe ease or difficulty of.
about 3 years ago
“That “we” is a demonstrably small group of people, and getting smaller all the time.
Your depth of longing for an unrealized form of entertainment is inconsequential. You will not get what you want just because you want it. The deck has always been stacked against you. Your only hope is to abandon anticipation of that which you say you want the most.
In other news, Team Fortress 2 looks pretty damned cool. Fury could be good, too, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to ship.”
I’ve playd the beta for Fury…Fury is HORRIBLE to me. It’s nto because it’s unfinsihed or anything like that. My qualms with it come from tis’ base system (something they’d have to over hau lthe entire game to fix). They have you running around full tilt like Quake and al lthat…. but every single attack is a macro key (1,2,3…ect) and you auto lock o nto your targets. Basically… it plays like WoW means GW. There is no POINT in running aroudn quake style if every attack is auto locked on and has no chance of missing. The way the game moves (fast paced “FPS style action”) and the way the game plays (press 4 2 4 and if your hurt press 5, make sure you lock on to attack again…) contradict each other to the extreme. Other than that i like the idea behind it, but the way they decided to go about combat was a horrible decisino to me.
Where as i’m sure some one will pull “DFO could turn out like that” on me, from the movies iv’e seen of it already, i can assure you that isn’t the case. Secondly, with mroe detailed portayals of the combat, i can assure you once again it isn’t the case unless they straight up lie, which i can’t predict either way.
about 3 years ago
“The initial interest in a PvP server is frequently high, but inevitably the server swings to the lowest population. Why? Because there aren’t enough people who are interested in being punching bags for the top 10% players.”
Ok… then how about designing the game so the lowest 10% have any chance what so ever to beat the top 10% instead of designing the top 10% to be untouhable to the lowest 10% , then see what happens. Here’s my point. If you play a game where you cna’t even SCRATCH harm, or other wise do anything what so ever against the top 10% …yeah…why bother staying? However, if you found that a few lucky hits from your newbie gear and experience did acctually harm the Ultimate Black Dragon Lord of Grief, you might acctually start dreaming that one day you may even beable to beat them.
There’s a difference between starting with absolutely no hope, and starting with a glimmer of hope. it makes all the difference in the world to know “Hey… i nicked the top player on the server once”. In reality, even the best swordsmen/marksmen CAN be defeated by an absolute novice. Whether it’s an accident,luck, or jsut circumstance isn’t the issue, it’s the fact that there is a chance. People play the lottery right? Gamble? All that is the fact that they CAN win, not that they will win (for those not addicted).
The reason why PVP servers fill up so quick i tnhe begining is in fact, that hope. The reason they drain off is in fact, that hopelessness.
about 3 years ago
Reading your last post, JJC, i have to say that perhaps i am i nthe wrong argument now that you point that out. I, personally, am not merely a PVP advocate. I don’t mind it at all, all i want is a reason to fight with my buddies. Whether that is PVP, PVE, PVEVP, RVR, what ever acronym you want to use..all the above… it doesn’t matter to me as long as certian criteria are met.
1. Combat is based off of player skill. A game does not have to be PVP to add this requirement. If there was an MMORPG that played like say… Dynasty Warriors (Wel lthere is, but it’s not in america or Europe or anything), where for the most part, the combat is based on your abiltiy translated through the character (to an extent i nthis particular game) that is what i’m talking about.
2. There is a real reason to fight. Be it your survival (no i don’t mean just winning against gankers), the growth of your army/empire, the defense or your land/territory/ little hermit shack, it doesn’t matter what the reason is (Though personally i’d hope that it would be multifauceted so many peopel can have different reasons) as long as there is acctually a “virtual” point to doing so.
3. Gear and equipment is an advantage, but not the end all be all decision. I am so sick and tired of losing in 1 single attack that has no possible chance of missing ,when my attacks will NEVER hit and if they do will do absolutely no damage at all. That is the most retarded thing to ever be in any game that wants to consider anything it does “pvp”. Even the freaking monsters that are over powered to “challenge you” can be killed by your “insignificant” weapons.
4. If it is PVE oriented, TRY to make the AI atleast adaptable if not “intellegent” in it’s reactions to you. If i ever see an AI behavior where they spot/smell/ empathically feel your presence and thus acctually set up an ambush, wait, and spring it on you (not merely SPAWN in an ambush), i will forever remember that development team. And don’t say it’s impossible. AI already detects you in a meriad of ways, from that point ,the only difficulty is making it so the AI is away of mroe than JUST the player (I.E. the environment and other creatures liek tiself). It could be alittle “telepathic” in how they all synergetically move and act, but that’s nto the point ,the point is if they can literally ambush you, they can ltierally be a challenge without tweaking the stats to make the difference “clear”.
5. Give reasons NOT to fight. This is probably the most difficutl thing. Crafting and skills liek that are the easiest to imagine, but things like durability making you wait is nto the funnest way to impliment this. However, if you take DFO isntead of WoW into this light..you can repair your weapon/armor a few times, but eventually it WILL break and not be repairable. This means you prepare, or your suffer the consequences. This means you are more cautious until you are prepared. This means you have reason (though small) not to fight. The reason why it’s important is that reasons not to just go out and kil land die makes the world more robust.
Let’s say for instance it takes time (bad idea but go with it) to repair things. If you don’t have any spare, you have to wait around town .There you might find someone farming the crops or hanging otu at a bar simply to chill for a moment. This whole thing, 3 simple guys jsut doing what they do, might spawn one of the most elusive things i’ve seen in MMO’s without ti being on a general chat channel. A localized conversation. PERHAPS even about the GAME they are playing??? Reason why ihave ANY hope for this happening is simply and utterly because there is a REASON they have stopped killing/dying for that moment (aside fro mthe guy chilling, but in a skill based game you may not feel like fighting al lthe tiem as ti isn’t easy).
The guy who’s waiting on his armor may go to the bar and see the guy, ask him what’s up. The guy at the bar could tell him that he’s jsut relaxing after the great battle of Tiny Valley. The guy who’s armor got damaged could have been heading there and got ambushed, so he COULD then see if this guy is friend or foe on his side of the battle by continuing the conversation. Blah blah blah… ect ect. Point is, in a game with reasons to fight and reasons nto to fight, the dynamics MAY be very diverse…. because that is the reality we as humans live in (reasons to fight, reasons not to fight).
Note: I never said that this could just be 3 guys who dont’ say a word to each other, or they won’t start talking about sports or this hot chick they know. All i said was that having a “world” going on instead of merely “get me 3 bottles og goat milk” quests, might provoke the community to be a community broader than their guilds and parties and personal friends. I’ll tell you this, i don’t talk to anyone in MMOs, because i have NOTHING to say to them. I don’t beg for groups, i don’t beg for raids, i don’t ask for anything, i do it myself and with my friends or it doesn’t get done. There is no reason to speak to anyone ,because there is nothing i can’t find out without them. if i’m playing, i’m fighting, because there’s nthing else to do. The fight is pointless, but i have to if i want to progress. I can’t stop, or i’m useless as far as the game is concerned. That is the reality of current MMO’s. Crafting is no exception either. If someone is gonna force feed me materials, that’s even more boring than getting them myself. And for what purpose? Unless i’m i na guild AND i’m high enough to do anything, i’m making pure junk.
Any how, to conclude. I’m not discussing PVP so mcuh as i am discussing DFO in general and why i’d rather wait for it, i nvain or not, than pretend i’m happy doing nothing even seemingly important in the current slew of MMORPGs. Is what i do in ANY game important? No, but atleast it can feel that way.
about 3 years ago
1 – Everyone says that but it’s not really true. Most players don’t have “skill” so targeting them as customer base is a questionable tactic. Everyone likes to think they have skill but what they desire and what they are will be two different things. Besides, being able to mash buttons in the right order isn’t really skill. Being able not to lag still isn’t skill. Until we are playing this on the Wii, the skill my character has in swinging an axe isn’t going to match up with my abilities in pressing a button.
2 – The problem with this one is that once a group obtains a majority of power people join them rather than fight against them. The big group takes them in because they need the numbers and the desire to crush the competition out of existence is a factor. Without the game resetting the advantages, the reasons to fight, every once in a while there is nothing left to fight over because everyone is on the same side or all the advantages are already gained. If they reset then the need to fight over them is also suspect because you will lose them no matter how much power you have ingame. Persistent worlds with persistent advantages aren’t good for the long term health of the game.
3 – If you power up the weapons and gear needed to kill overpowered monsters you overpower those items that then make it impossible for players to kill each other when one is using overpowered goods and the other is not. Once gear becomes an advantage it becomes an overpowering advantage just on the nature of bonuses. Someone small is still small no matter how large the bonus because the other player has equal opportunity to get exactly the same bonus and usually much, much more. After all, who is going to play a game where starter gear is all you need to beat the best in the game?
4 – Ain’t enough horses in the world to make that happen. Modern AI can crush most boxes out there today. Even home brewed PC’s still get beat up by modern AI. To do this on a MMORPG scale? Ain’t enough horses in the world.
5 – That is the hardest thing about PK games. Right now most games out there reward to excess the random PKer. The gank squads and everyone else who PKs because they are on a PK world. Daggerfall, given the nature of the death penalty, does this in spades. Rewarding actions that are PK in nature, defender types, just don’t happen. Games are built on offense, not defense, and the moment I come up with a method to make defending as rewarding as attacking I’m going to patent the idea and lease it out to everyone.
If there is one idea I could take behind the barn and bury it so the world never sees it again is that of player skill. The reason for this is fairly simple – There is no real skill in playing games. Every time someone mentions player skill it comes down to how quickly they can identify and react to targets. Each one of these can be done better and faster by a machine. How quickly you can decide to attack is the only factor. The rest can be decided and reacted to quicker by a macro. By the time it takes you to see the target, let alone push a button to react to it, a macro will have beaten you to it. For example, lets say that you had to press 1-4 depending on the type of monster. The reaction time of a macro is going to have you beat senseless. More often than not player skill comes down to how many mechanical aides they can run rather than any actual ability on their part. Button mashing isn’t skill and the notion of player skill just needs to go away. Forever.
about 3 years ago
Is this the part where someone spills their glass of water on the floor?
Ah… good times.
about 3 years ago
on August 7, 2007 at 6:29 pm Trevor Talbert wrote:
“Is this the part where someone spills their glass of water on the floor?
Ah… good times”
I sense an intriguing question, but I don’t understand the reference Trevor.
about 3 years ago
“1 – Everyone says that but it’s not really true. Most players don’t have “skill” so targeting them as customer base is a questionable tactic. Everyone likes to think they have skill but what they desire and what they are will be two different things. Besides, being able to mash buttons in the right order isn’t really skill. Being able not to lag still isn’t skill. Until we are playing this on the Wii, the skill my character has in swinging an axe isn’t going to match up with my abilities in pressing a button.
2 – The problem with this one is that once a group obtains a majority of power people join them rather than fight against them. The big group takes them in because they need the numbers and the desire to crush the competition out of existence is a factor. Without the game resetting the advantages, the reasons to fight, every once in a while there is nothing left to fight over because everyone is on the same side or all the advantages are already gained. If they reset then the need to fight over them is also suspect because you will lose them no matter how much power you have ingame. Persistent worlds with persistent advantages aren’t good for the long term health of the game.
3 – If you power up the weapons and gear needed to kill overpowered monsters you overpower those items that then make it impossible for players to kill each other when one is using overpowered goods and the other is not. Once gear becomes an advantage it becomes an overpowering advantage just on the nature of bonuses. Someone small is still small no matter how large the bonus because the other player has equal opportunity to get exactly the same bonus and usually much, much more. After all, who is going to play a game where starter gear is all you need to beat the best in the game?
4 – Ain’t enough horses in the world to make that happen. Modern AI can crush most boxes out there today. Even home brewed PC’s still get beat up by modern AI. To do this on a MMORPG scale? Ain’t enough horses in the world.
5 – That is the hardest thing about PK games. Right now most games out there reward to excess the random PKer. The gank squads and everyone else who PKs because they are on a PK world. Daggerfall, given the nature of the death penalty, does this in spades. Rewarding actions that are PK in nature, defender types, just don’t happen. Games are built on offense, not defense, and the moment I come up with a method to make defending as rewarding as attacking I’m going to patent the idea and lease it out to everyone.
If there is one idea I could take behind the barn and bury it so the world never sees it again is that of player skill. The reason for this is fairly simple – There is no real skill in playing games. Every time someone mentions player skill it comes down to how quickly they can identify and react to targets. Each one of these can be done better and faster by a machine. How quickly you can decide to attack is the only factor. The rest can be decided and reacted to quicker by a macro. By the time it takes you to see the target, let alone push a button to react to it, a macro will have beaten you to it. For example, lets say that you had to press 1-4 depending on the type of monster. The reaction time of a macro is going to have you beat senseless. More often than not player skill comes down to how many mechanical aides they can run rather than any actual ability on their part. Button mashing isn’t skill and the notion of player skill just needs to go away. Forever.”
Everyone says that what i want to see in a game is skill? Didn’t know i was popular enough for everyone to know what i say. You mistook my meaning. It was a list of things that i would like to see, but let’s still go with your points.
1. It’s not pressing the button that makes it “skill based” to me. Obviously pressing a butto ndoesn’t require any skill. However, judging distance and momentum does, and being able to acctually evade an attack does, atleast more so than the battle taking place without you completely. Not everyone is comfortable with this, i understand that, but that’s why this was based on my desires. Still the point remains, this is one aspect, and combat should always have some sort of skill or learning curve, it should have never been automatic to begi nwith in a grahpical game world. In DnD … rolling and stuff is fine, but it should have never been that way in a graphical game.
2. I have personally never seen a game that has no competition in it what so ever if it is a competative game .There are people who enjoy being the uderdog (Even entire guilds dedicated to this style of play) as well as just people who don’t care aobut what everyone else is doing. You are stereotyping way too broadly if you think there will be no way to maintain a reason to fight in a game. There are plenty of games that have reasons to fight that have endured for long periods of time.
3. I don’t know where you got “powering u pthe weapons” from my post, but i never said that. I said that better gear is an advantage (steel is better than copper) but it shouldn’t come down to just what your wearing, but how you use it too. Starter gear vs top teir gear is a loss no contest. Veteran warrior in starter gear vs complete novice in top teir gear should NOT be a no contest situation. That was my point. It shouldn’t be EASY for the veteran to win against that, but he should have a chance, and a fairly good one, depending o nhow the fight goes. Even if it takes the veteran 50 hits to kil lthe novice, and the novice 5 hits to kil lthe veteran, the point remains that the veteran CAN still win, based on his knowledge of the game and how to fight, and not based on his gear. Same with a novice in novice gear, they have a CHANCE, but not a guarantee to win.
4. I assume WoW is not modern AI because i have never felt threatened that my “box” would be “crushed” by WoW AI. Give an example of “modern AI” if you would.
5. Defense is a type of fighting…. you missed the point here. I’m talknig about a meaningful existence without combat. Hardcore crafters are one of the types of players who’d enjoy this, RPers are another type. All i’m talking about isthe world being mroe than jsut a battle field. This is nto hard to impliment, it just is considered a waste of time to bother implimenting it by most companies. Arguably, depending on who you are, it is, but having more robustness toyuor game, if possible, can’t hurt as long as it doesn’t tax the game. If it isn’t used, then dont’ develope it further, if it is used, then make it grow, jsut like everything else. There is a reason crafting and such is popular, and it’s not completely based on competative intentions. Some people just enjoy it (Alot of people from SWG loved that aspect of the game, combat oriented gear or not). Having content that is meant for you to not necessarily have to fight to enjoy is easily something i’m sure devs have found to be popular, after all, that’s one of the main diferences between a “hardcore PVP” game and a “standard MMO” the difference here is i’m suggesting it also be placed in a game considered “hardcore pvp”.
As far as your feelnig aobut “player skill” you have a very skewed view i believe. Consider this…. the whole point of letting the players react for themselves.. is so that they can acctually test their own reactions ISNTEAD OF having the computer do it for them. You yourself was talking aobut how AI is “crushing” computers… mechanical “brain” may react faster than me, but it’s also FAR more limited than i am. I can bet you that if there was a way that i could have free from combat (Even if it jsut is evade and click combat) vs the computer playing your character for you, i would win. The reason why i assume this isn’t because of some baddassness ihave up my sleeve, it’s because the computer is set to think in a very limtied way, where as i can do something “foolish” to the computers ability and gain the advantage. For instance, i could do something crazy like… HIDE (and i mean really hide, nto inviso hide) and the computer would msot likely have no idea how to find me. Then i could , if we were near a high ledge, PUSH (a DFO related command btw) you off said cliff…what would the computer do? You could say it’s programmed to reacted to being pushed off a cliff, but you know, that’s a big stretch.
My example is not fair, and it’s not meant to be. The whole point of it is to point out 2 simpel actions “hiding and pushing someone in a proper situation” is nto something you wil lsee a computer do for you, it is something you will do yourself. That is the essense of “player skill”, it’s your choices and actions and reactions that set the pace of the battle as well as, for the most part, the conclusion of it. If the computer is handling all of the important parts… then there is no point in you playing at all. If that was the case, i could just program WoW to do everything for me (that’s what gold farmers do) and be content. That is nto my nature, i want my actions to have consequences (my mistakes, my triumphs, my slowness, my quickness) not to be predetermined by a statistical variable roll.
about 3 years ago
Sorry about the spelling by the way… really wish there was a way to edit after a post (preview doesn’t count)
about 3 years ago
What you are looking for is the holy grail.
I am looking for anything at this point but have preferences that if are not met I simply (and others) will not continue to pay for such services. PvP has become such an after-thought in games today that it is unbearable at best.
You want to find it. You believe you need it. You believe it exists. That doesn’t make it so.
I am a gamer, same as everyone else. I am here to have fun. If a game ceases to be fun, or a game ceases to deliver what I want, or never delivered it all in the first place, I will stop playing it. It’s very simple really. Everyone likes to come up with half-cocked, over-thought reasons why PvPers leave FFA games and servers. However, that too is very simple. The game simply isn’t fun because it doesn’t deliver what they want. No one is going to continue pay for a service (entertainment) if it ceases to function (no longer entertaining).
An unhackable game doesn’t exist.
There’s a difference between a game being unhackable and a company doing nothing about the hacks. You almost never hear of the situations that went down in Shadowbane, where you had regular players hacking into the server farm in order to cause crashes or otherwise in most other games. It’s rediculous to think that anyone would continue to pay for such things. Is your credit card information safe? Is your personal information safe? It’s ludicrous if you expect ANYONE to put up with that…
Something to fight over, resources or whatever, does long term harm to the game because people who don’t have that resource and can’t get that resource and need that resource will quit.
This is an assumption of what will happen rather than what actually does happen. To draw a parallel to what you are trying to say imagine a PvE server with too few mobs. Say one mob every five minutes and you have 20 people trying to go after the mob. How many of those 20 will play the game very long if they have to level up to level 50 trying to fight for this one mob?
Ironically you make my point for me here. Bad games will not be played by anyone. If you put resources to be fought over in a game, there better be enough of them for people to fight over and not give a game breaking advantage. Take for example AC1. A lot of guilds held and controlled access to dungeons within the game. This didn’t stop people from leveling or advancing their character, instead it merely limited away a section of the world that they could not enter without there being a fight. It’s a healthy balance of owning a resource (an XP dungeon) while not breaking the game.
Very few want to play on a slanted playing field going uphill. Even fewer are willing to pay for it. Even fewer are willing to pay for it very long.
This too is another wild claim that has little to no actual facts behind it. As already noted by others, every major FFA project swells at release like a balloon and then deflates. You assume it’s because of an uphill battle, when in fact it usually has to deal with the quality of the game and what it offers in the form of entertainment for those playing it.
You claim that you don’t hold people in contempt because of the way they play and this is disproven by the entire tone and nature of your response. You do hold people in contempt when you call their analysis insane. You label their analysis of the continual failure of a PVP game to be some sort of mental defect.
Yes, I believe people who really believe the blatant lies, falsehoods, and assumptions taken as fact as real they are mentally defective. Just the same, if they want to play PvE servers thumbs up. One of my co-workers (who refuses to play PvP) has found this discussion wholly amusing in fact that anyone would want to tell anyone else what they should and should not enjoy.
…because of the alternatives such as WoW or any number of FPS games.
The alternatives do not provide the services we desire. FPS games also easily fall short because they do not have the lasting meaning to them and are little more than glorified, meaningless bloodshed for the sake of bloodshed. While certainly amusing, they simply are found lacking.
Unfortunately what you fail to mention in your little “alternatives” is that no MMO can really be compared to one another. You could try, but you will almost invariably come up with lacking variables to be compared that simply can not be compared. That one little kink in your analysis is what will get you every time. If a new game comes out and charges $20 a month, I am not going to go “Well WOW offers me a game for $15 a month…” I quit WOW. I do not like WOW. I wouldn’t be in the market for a new game if I did still like WOW.
PVP isn’t special.
And yet it is. By your arguement, PvP should have been phased out or forgotten about long ago, yet it’s still the vibrant topic it is today that it has been for the last 10 years. The first great game gave us a taste of what we wanted. To expect us to simply settle for anything less is simply not going to happen.
And yet for such a non-special topic the next generation of MMOs coming out sure do seem to be focused on it so. Besides Darkfall you have the infamous Age of Conan and even more widely known (and anticipated) Warhammer Age of Reckoning. Games where PvP is not only so strongly encouraged within the basic system of leveling itself (faster to level in PvP than PvE in WAR so they claim) that the only resistance is that of the other little gaming niche…those who refuse to PvP at all!
Faction PvP honestly does not interest me much, however. I find it makes people mindlessly slaughter one another in mock competition where the great rule of “If you’re red, you’re dead” rules high. I prefer a more refined environment where your actions have consequences. Thankfully, I’ll have that option with Darkfall (or perhaps even all three!).
Ironic, isn’t it? After all these 10 years of flame wars and heated discussion that vaunted arguement about how “PvErs always outnumber the PvPers” is slowly becoming more and more the opposite. Enjoy it while it lasts. Remember to keep telling yourself in a few years when every game is featuring PvP in some form or another that…
…PvP is nothing special
about 3 years ago
When the services you offer are an ill-defined list of features that are wholly unrealistic it’s not surprising that you can’t find an alternative that makes you happy. It’s funny that you claim that people aren’t willing to pay to play a game where they are the sheep while stating that you aren’t willing to pay for a game that you no longer find fun. My proof to the former is your response to the latter.
If you find “red is dead” boring you are going to be so gloriously disillusioned with Daggerfall that words fail when it comes to predicting it. Most of the people supporting it on the forums see this ideal as the way it should be. It’s far less refined PvP than faction based. You will also find that “actions have consequences” usually runs one way. It’s usually “actions have consequences for the other guy but not me.” This shows up when discussing death rules. They always talk about what they are going to get when they loot someone else. Never the realities of the other way around. In fact, the death rules serve more to protect the powerful than it does to help the little guy.
So you found 3 games that focus on PvP, each with a different standard for PvP. WAR is faction v. faction which you don’t like so we can skip it. Conan has a single player mode in which you can level up which precludes PvP with consequences since they can escape to single player mode to re-equip. It’s also a Vista title. Daggerfall which should come out sometime before the second coming, they hope. If these are your champions for PvP they seem poorly equipped to meet your standards.
Every game that has come out in the past 10 years has included some level of PvP. Every game that has come out in the last 10,000 years has included some level of PvP. This is what I mean by it not being special. It’s nothing new and to treat it like it’s new and some sort of secret is disingenuous to say the least. Perhaps I’ll write one that treats the fact that people like to play games against each other, or in factions called teams, and call the book “The Secret” unless that name is already taken.
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1 – Judging distance, shaking off an attacker by pushing buttons are all things done faster and better by macros and bots.
2 – Eve Online is quickly headed down that route. While there is a dedicated bunch of greifers, even they know they are losing the war and it’s not going to last long. Think about that for a minute too. The only group that stands a chance of fending off an overwhelming majority is a bunch of griefers. Everyone else folds into BoB or quits.
3 – If a Vet in starter gear can beat a newbie in uber gear, in a full loot game, he has uber gear and a tactical advantage for the next newbie he fights. There is an old DnD adage that goes “what do you get when you have a fighter with a ring of regeneration going up against 50 orcs each with a vorpal sword? A fighter with 50 vorpal swords.”
4 – You don’t find modern AI in online games because modern online games don’t use it. Gal Civ 2 can stress equipment fairly well. All AI decisions must come from the servers. Lets say that I’m wrong and modern AI single player game only uses 10% of a PC total power. This means that you are going to need 1 CPU for every 10 customers just to handle the AI. This doesn’t factor in the tracking of multiple AI’s, tracking of anything for that matter, which goes up exponentially. Modern AI means alot of processing power and trying to do that for tens of thousands of people at the same time is just a lag inducing nightmare. With a real time twitch based combat system? It’s just deadly. Something that predicts behavior and reacts to it? Doesn’t happen in offline games that I know about.
5 – Defense is a type of fighting but it isn’t reward in the same manner as attacking. As for making a system that rewards crafting as it would reward PvP, well, that won’t happen. People who pride themselves in PvP wouldn’t stand to be outleveled by a crafter. Crafters aren’t going to put up with gank squads and won’t live in a world that isn’t completely safe.
It’s not about letting the AI fight for you. It’s about letting the AI do all of the grunt work such as aiming and trying to figure out distance. The computer already knows how far apart X is from Y because it needs to know this to show it graphically. While you are guessing how far apart those two objects are and trying to figure out the proper firing position my bot would have already done that and you would feel the effects of my fire long before you fired your first shot. There is a reason that Aimbots in FPS are banned. Because player “skill” can’t beat it. Same truth in online games. Anything that requires the twitch skill can be done better and faster by a bot than a player. The reason that the game AI doesn’t take advantage of this is back to the horses. I’ve got more free resources.
The pushing off a cliff example favors the bot. Who is going to have a faster reaction time, you or the bot? If stopping that action comes down to how fast commands can be issued the human is going to lose. You aren’t playing against a bot either, you are playing against a bot aided human. So not only is he going to be as sneaky as you his reaction times are going to be better. Not to mention your hiding is something he is going to know about because he might forget where you last were, the bot is not. It’s going to know where you were last and if you left that area because, again, the player might miss the visual but the bot is going to know about it because the computer is going to know about it. You might be able to hide behind a rock or a tree and the player won’t see you. But he will know the last time you were seen by the computer was near that tree or rock. This is the burden faced by game makers. What works in real life doesn’t work in games because most of real life situations like these depends on incomplete knowledge. The speed and range of the target, last location, and just human error. All of those things don’t exist online. Until you are doing the actions that your avatar is undertaking, there is no such thing as player skill in any meaningful context.
about 3 years ago
OK, at this point everyone has had their say, and I think I’ve been tolerant enough of the Invasion of the Darkfall Forums.