Broken Toys

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 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?

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

Is this the part where someone spills their glass of water on the floor?

Ah… good times.

“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.

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