Considering that every time I make a post with “P”, “v” and “P” somewhere in the title the ensuing comments pile up into three digits, either Scott Kurtz has a lot of fans or there’s a whole lot of people still mad about getting ganked in front of Despise 10 years later. And given the recent comments by Auran on the less than stellar success of their new PvP MMO, it seems a refresher course may be in order on H0w 2 mak3 y0ur playerZ gAnk. So, here is my incredibly humble checklist of how to make your player vs player not morph into player vs company. In other words… a design manifesto cleverly disguised as some incredibly obvious aphorisms! I can speak from experience, of course, having worked on one of the more successful PvP-centric MMOs and, much more importantly, having complained a lot on message boards.
PvP should not be the focus of your entire game. There have been three MMOs where the entire game consisted of player vs player combat: Planetside, WW2 Online, and Fury. Although all of these games are still running, none of them were considered market successes. (That’s not to say that a PvP-only game can’t be successful – but be prepared to consider a niche title a success.) Very few players in an MMO want to be “all gank, all the time”. Even in a game where PvP combat is the primary focus, such as Shadowbane or Eve, other elements of the game (city building, economy, etc) provide context for the persistant-world battling. With that context, your players exist in a world at war. Without that context, your game is a long-running deathmatch. And it’s safe to say other people are probably doing deathmatch better than you are.
PvP should not be a random afterthought. Or if it is, be prepared for it to be an afterthought that few bother with. Gameplay mechanics that may be crucial for the player vs environment game can spell hot death when used against other players, such as crowd control. If you go the path of designing a combat system that works well against AI monsters and raiding, and then retrofit it to a PvP environment, at least establish a framework so that what works against a monster doesn’t necessarily work against a player. However, if you go down that dark pathway, be prepared to hear a lot of complaining from your newly disenfranchised players that you just nerfed into goo. Another problem with “hey, let’s throw in a dueling system” PvP is that, by definition, that system will have little context.
PvP players hate classes. Generally, the strongest advocates of skill-based systems are PvP players. Not much of a surprise, since PvP players tend to also be the more experienced MMO players who feel as though they want to play on “advanced” mode. Class based systems also breed a sense of entitlement and disillusionment, as the players feel as though their class is inferior to everyone else. (Note: in a class-based system game, check the message boards for that class – if there’s not several dozen pages of people complaining their class is underpowered, that’s a good sign that class is wildly overpowered.) Plus there’s always the allure of coming up with a “build” that no one else has (even though everyone else in a skill-based game is playing one of three builds – maybe two) and bragging about it on message boards.
PvP players need classes. The best argument for this is what Damion Schubert has termed tactical transparency. The easiest way to illustrate this in a PvP context: players want to be able to build contingency plans. It’s hard to have a contingency plan in the heat of battle when the best you can determine about an enemy coming over the hill is “uh, he’s big and he is holding some sort of weapon”. Note that you don’t need a class to fit this need so much as a clearly visible role. If your PvP game is in a fantasy environment (note: stop), make sure your casters can’t wear platemail and tote a halberd. There, you just made it easy to identify a caster. Now, to define it further, make it so your healers have to wear a Pope hat to have a strong connection to the divine. Hey, now your players can target healers by looking for the funny hat. You just made gameplay. Also, even if your game does have classes, some means of differentiating player choices within each class is crucial. World of Warcraft’s talent system is a great example of this; a priest can be a good healer, can melt faces in PvP, or can spend points in that other tree no one uses.
PvP players detest grinding. This is something of a trick question as all players detest grinding. However, PvPers will be the loudest of the contingent demanding a shortcut. Be it level grinding, skill grinding, reputation, items, whatever roadblocks you put in the way for players to reach the end of the game in two weeks, people wanting to engage in PvP will demand that, yes, they want to reach the end of the game in two weeks, thank you.
PvP players need some grinding. Without some form of ‘grinding’ – in other words, character persistence and improvement – you have a world without meaning. No one grinds in Counterstrike (unless you count the very real grind of player skill and oh boy are we coming back to that one in a bit). Very few PvP players want no character improvement – what the argument boils down to is that they want a small “ramp-up” time, and then small incremental improvements over time that give their characters a wider set of abilities without making the constantly growing equation of power growth = time invested that is so common in MMOs to date. At any rate, that’s the charitable view. The cynical view is that the average PvP player wants player growth for everyone else capped to 10% to 25% less powerful than they personally are at any given moment.
PvP should not screw new players over. This is the No, You Cannot Be A Juvenile Little Brat rule. For examples of what happens when that rule is broken, consult everyone’s favorite, Ultima Online In The Good Old Days. Another example is “world PvP” in World of Warcraft on PvE servers, which usually consists of a passel of bored level 70s deciding to camp on a low level town owned by the other side and wipe out all the characters. Most games prevent this by making NPCs in low level zones higher level than the attacking players, or simply prevent them from bottom feeding in low level zones entirely. However, it’s pretty clear that Blizzard intended for players to be able to “raid” low level zones – without thinking through the impact that has on precisely the players who (a) cannot actually fight back and (b) are learning how to play the game and (c) deciding if they want to continue paying for said game. Alienating people who have not yet decided if that free month you gave them is enough time to get tired of your player base’s crap? Not a good idea. I mean, clearly, look how badly it’s hurting Blizzard!
PvP should screw over someone. At the same time, without someone bitterly throwing a keyboard against the wall and breaking it yet again thanks to yet another goddamned stupid pickup group not that I would know anything about any of that, PvP combat becomes just a meaningless exchange of particle effects. Part of opting into PvP (and oh, yes, we shall return to that point in a moment as well) should entail the understanding that not only can you lose, you will lose something dear to you. Whether that is as simple as time, or as permanent as item loss or even permadeath (if you’re particularly insane), consequences are part and parcel of meaningful PvP.
“You gotta keep ‘em separated.” Whenever you hear old-school Ultima Online veterans indulge in nerd rage!!!1! over something called ‘Trammel’, they’re talking about geographic PvP separation – in this specific case, the introduction of safe zones into UO. Which pissed off every vocal PvPer playing UO, marked the end of a glorious era of a true shared virtual world, was a horrible sap thrown to skill-less “Trammel newbs”, and, oh, also, stopped the incredible bleeding of customers UO was suffering to the very-much-not-a-shared-virtual-PvP-world Everquest. Although the stereotypical MUD-era “PK switch” doesn’t work very well in an MMO environment, geographical separation does work very well indeed for providing a pure “opt-in” to a PvP-free-fire zone, even a ’soft’ separation as seen in Eve where there’s not a line but more or less likelihood of retaliation by the NPC police force. And if you think seperation/opt-in PvP isn’t a very good idea for whatever reason (purity of your virtual world vision, desire to have a hard core PvP experience, deep and undying hatred of your new players), keep this simple fact in mind – your game will have a geographically based PvP switch. The question you should answer is – will it occur within your game, or by players leaving it for games with other rules systems?
But not too separated. At the same time, there should be encouragement to actually enter what I’ve been known to call ‘Gankytown’ (if only so I can intone “MASTER BLASTER RULES GANKYTOWN”) (note: when designing PvP systems, it often helps to indulge your inner 14 year old). Both to give the battle-hardened denizens someone new to slaughter, but also, and more seriously, giving new players a taste of battle so they can discover whether or not they have a taste for it. The best way to do this is to place optional, but valuable rewards for new players (and only new players, preferably through the mechanism of quests or other one-time-only reward systems) that encourage them to get into the fight against other new players from opposing sides after the same thing. Continuing this progress through to “battlegrounds” where hopefully even-matched players compete against one another, and players discover that losing a PvP match doesn’t actually cause massive internal bleeding, and more importantly start to make contacts among other interested players and guilds. Guild Wars tends to do this pretty well with its PvP minigames, as does World of Warcraft (though the low level WoW battlegrounds tend to be dominated by specialist twinks in a sort of PvP minigame, which can alienate the truly new player). Other possible carrots include valuable raw materials for crafting and, in level grind games, greatly expedited experience gain vs. other players (which worked very well for Dark Age of Camelot).
In the endless player skill argument, you should assume your players don’t have any. I’m tempted just to leave that sentence as is. However, the player-skill vs character-skill argument is, in the sense of this discussion, almost a red herring. Does your game have twitchy gameplay? Is player growth simply gated by whomever has the most time or cash on eBay to spend? Are your rules so arcane and so often patched that your players have to level up their Google skill just to get an accurate spell list off your website? No matter what gates exist, there will be some. And there will be those who are better at working those gates than others. It’s what I call the tyranny of the skilled minority. A given small percentage – be it 10% or 20% or whatever – will win any contest consistently, when faced with the less skilled 80% or 90%. There’s not much you can do about this, save be aware of it, and more importantly, ensure that losing isn’t too painful a proposition. Note that this directly contradicts with the rule that “PvP should screw over someone.” Congratulations on the realization that no matter where you step, the mine will go off directly under your foot.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t reward those players who do. Players should always feel as though PvP combat is more than just a random dice roll weighted by what level their Panzerelf Warden ground up to. Even if a player is consistently losing to the skilled minority when they are matched up with them, if they feel that in a fair fight they had a chance of winning, the pain of that loss is lessened considerably. If the player feels as though given enough practice and skill they can turn the tables, they’re motivated to do so (and also possibly pay for a new keyboard). If a player feels as though they had no chance because the Emotionally Distressed Wizardling class just pushed a button that vaporized all players within 500 feet, that motivation usually expresses itself as “finding another game”.
PvP players are angry and bitter, and will hate you. This has nothing to do with design. I just thought I should warn you. There’s been enough bad games out there that you have no honeymoon period at all. Sorry.
#1 by Jaguar on December 11th, 2007
As a 10 year veteran of PvP I have to disagree with the class thing.
After a while of playing these games you gain a bit of experience. In skill based systems like UO or AC you more or less could figure out that the guy who is running at you full blast with a giant halberd in his hands isn’t there to heal his party (or he could be but that’s it’s own 80-90% unskilled rule above).
As someone else mentioned, in most modern games I can look at a class and instantly know what they are capable of. I know whether or not my class can take their class.
An example brought up was WOW’s talent system. There are many visual indications across many classes that more or less let you know what they are. You see a Paladin with a two hander and charging up Seal of Command it doesn’t take a genius to figure out they’re Retribution. Or the same Paladin sitting back healing others and not loosing much mana is probably going to be a Holy paladin. Much less the more obvious examples of the mighty Moon Chicken or the moving Shadow…
I’d also like to add that PvPers need a reason to fight. Consequences are a good step towards that goal, but the main purpose for consequences is to avoid the endless zerg that you experience in modern games. If you die a million times in WOW to a guy it means nothing. You can just keep coming right back over and over and over and over until it becomes a battle of willpower (or stupidity if you prefer) of who will back down first.
A real reason to fight, however, is prime. In AC1 you had fights over territory. In a game with a (near) endless grind, XP spots were a commodity that was fought over. Guilds would carve out territory out of the land and declare it theirs. In Shadowbane you had town sieging. Artificial reasons to fight (such as keeps in DAoC) for the “glory” of your faction (which as a FFA PvPer I’d be just as content to murder my faction as I am the enemy) fall short of that goal. There are no personal investments or “incentives” rather for a guild to do them.
On a last note, I have to completely laugh at the people still being mad 10 years later after being ganked by Despise. It is so amazingly true. Every beta test I’ve been in has the “carebear army” ready to try to remove any vestiges of any form of PvP out of any game citing what happened in UO without fail.
#2 by J. on December 11th, 2007
“After a while of playing these games you gain a bit of experience.”
Maybe you do, but most players will not. Maybe that means you win a lot more than most, but that’s not any fun for most. Fact: UO did end up having classes, they were just things like “tank mage” and “dex monkey” and changed periodically with the patches.
#3 by Scorpio on December 11th, 2007
“PvP players are angry and bitter, and will hate you.”
I agree to an extent. It is in MMO front as it is everywhere that the selected few make the biggest noise. It is just the MMO designers job to find the valuable opinions.
While there is no formula for creating the perfect PvP game (or it would’ve been made already) It is more important to adjust the PvP to match the design of the game and the vision of the creators. This way the immersion of PvP remains and can be tuned without ruining it.
In my experience the level grind or skill grind whatever it might be in the game is a lot more tolerable when the option of PvP remains at all times. I love the battlegrounds in DAoC. Even if WoW basically offers the same framework for this, WoW PvP has never felt like PvP for me. First of all I dislike instanced PvP. There’s no feeling of continuity only grinding mentality (1000 more honor for new shiny cap…). I’m sad to see that more and more MMO designers choose this as the primary form of PvP in their games. Probably because it is the easiest to implement and balance.
If any MMO designers happen to read this I have only a few humble requests for you.
1) Do not let equipment take control over skill of player
Equipping for PvP should not take up more of the week than actually playing the PvP
This was a HUGE problem in the beginning of WoW.
2) Don’t let instanced PvP take control over continuous PvP areas
If the PvP is detached from the game world it will just be a minigame in a PvE game. Best example I can think of is WoW. PvP has absolutely no effect on the game world and world PvP is almost nonexistent since it doesn’t offer any rewards (lose-lose situation)
3) Do not let player skill take over character skill
What I mean here is that only give the player control to command the character they play not to control the character itself. This is a thin red line I know, but where I’d draw the line is having the character do the combat instead of letting the player do the combat. For example aiming shots/strikes.
4) Last but not the least. make it possible for smaller groups (to an extent) to beat larger groups if they have more skill. In DAoC this is achieved by numerous types of crowd control. I know everyone complained/still complain about CC in DAoC, but it is none the less the soul of the PvP there since it gives this chance.
Just remember, you cannot please everyone.
#4 by Sullee on December 11th, 2007
The big issue for me is what I call the “Blood of Heroes” idea: Fairness is very important.
I think a lot of the points made touch on this. At it’s core PvP is about competition and in the US at least fairness is pretty important. For example, the rules that dictate how a game is played are often much fewer than those rules designed to preserve competition by keeping the game fair. Consider the volumes of rules on valid equipment, who can play, who can referee, where the game will be played, etc. Next recognize that all of that very well could apply to a little league baseball game.
Now game developers have missed this entirely. A part of PvP play is finding the imbalances the desiger\dev let slip through and exploiting them. Maybe the idea has grown from pinball where any bump that doesn’t tilt is good play but in MMO PvP, if they implemented it then it is legal. And the devs have obliged by implementing some pretty absurd imbalances.
Worse devs are very slow to plug these holes or even admit they exist. Usually, by the time the bug is fixed it is being very widely exploited and many bemoan the nerf (because wanting fair play is secondary to wanting to be overpowered).
#5 by Corwin Loa on December 11th, 2007
All of this PVP talk just makes me wish we’d see an Everquest Discord server again.
#6 by theliel on December 11th, 2007
I think the main reason why Space games are so popular for PvP and why they work is because of The Ship.
The Ship fills the same place as The Sidekick – It’s a seperate character from the protagonist, but it enables them to Do stuff.
From a Gamey perspective it allows you to have instant “I know what that does” recognition, to be able to loose and take a significant loss (MY SHIP!) but still be you, because ships are chracters, but they are supporting characters, the ship is not you.
I think this would work in a Pirate game as well, for the same reason.
And I think if you combined it with abilities or skills tied to a captian + ship designed for specific role you could get quite a nice game going.
I.E. character with scouty/avoidy abilities piloting a heavy cruiser in order to do convoy raiding vs. the guy with lots of killy type powers in a smaller frigate to do the same thing. variation, same role, same effect, newbs can look and see OMG! CRuiser! or OMG! Frigate! and have a general sort of idea what each does (just like OMG! GUy in plate! or OMG! Guy with daggers in cloak and leather!) but being in the ship doesn’t lock you in.
Also, if you go with ‘powers’ or ’skills’ or ‘abilities’ for the captian then you remove some of the Christmass Tree Effect (CTE) from the equiation, you reserve somet things which cannot be lost to PvP, and then clearly deliniate what CAN be lost.
But i 100% agree with “PvP should not be the focus of your entire game.” in that you can have the bestest most awesum systems in the world but unless there is a reason to have the collosol mega epic conflicts then..meh.
The way I see it you need something for the Lone Wolf or Guy and His Buddies to fight for, something for the mid-sized guys to fight for and something for The Playahs to do. In y our classic ‘pirate’ game that would be piracy and/pirate hunting/trading, then privatering and/or large scale piracy/raiding and then The Nation game (i.e. running the colonial powers, or at least part of them).
man…i totally miss what PotBS could have been before they went back to levels and instances and stuff.
anyway, yha, the ship thing.
#7 by heartless_ on December 11th, 2007
Why is everyone associating “classes” with “rock, paper, scissors”. That is not the point of classes, roles, or archtypes. The point of defining a role for a player, instead of giving them a free-for-all skill tree, is to promote structure and strategy. Without structure, there is no strategy, without strategy there is no basis for anyone to even start talking about “player skill”.
I think Mr. Lum clearly pointed out what happens when the skill system is open ended in a PvP game: everyone plays a Tank Mage. Humans are notorious for discovering the best solution or copying those that have discovered it. An MMOG is no fun when everyone is the same, and as pointed out, FPS games tend to do death matches in a much better way.
Also, Lum points out that PvP fans normally hate classes. But there is one thing that PvP fans hate worse than that, randomness. Yet, here we have obvious PvP fans arguing that they want every fight to be a random encounter, because it promotes “skill”. I can’t see a PvP fan that cares about balance, being a fan of any sort of randomness.
#8 by Bonedead on December 11th, 2007
As someone who feels naturally better than everyone else, I have to automatically assume that everyone in these comments sucks compared to me. Since they suck, that means so do their ideas on PvP. I saw some guy say classes aren’t bad, some guy (guild wars dude) say no grind plz sir, and of course everyone else that doesn’t matter. Anyways, my point is that they’re all wrong.
It’s people like me who are right. Sorry, that’s just the way it is.
The reason people like me PvP, and this goes for all ages, is simply because we’re better. We know we’re better. We know if we happen to die that we will usually come back to life, but we will also know what we should have done to not die, because there should ALWAYS be something you can do to not die. Most people who claim to be PvPers just like playing team sports. I liked playing soccer, because I could win for the team, and I usually did.
That’s why I’ve wasted so much time playing FPSes, I can win even if my team loses. I was a late arrival to UO and just played on free servers for the most part. I didn’t even have characters with GM skills (fuck grinding, unless I can exploit it!) but I would still kill the most feared people. I would pull some bullshit and ruin their day. Maybe I just bought every animal at the vendor and said all kill and lagged the dude out, maybe I Llama bombed his ass, maybe I found a FS wand right next to a paralyze wand. The point is, I ruined peoples days for fun.
That’s the point of PvPing. Making people quit, making people mad, making yourself feel better.
P.S. I love you Mr. Jennings.
#9 by Kconvey on December 11th, 2007
Little problem with that.
I was part of the orginal page a GM every time you are pked campaign in UO. Thing is Pker’s tended to be young and it was not at all hard to get them to use foul language. Usually all it took was going out with nothing to loot.
Not only did we manage to tie up support for hours in early UO. We got ALOT of pker’s banned.
So to you this was acceptable pvp.
This is a major problem with pvp, if you let it control the game, either pvper or non pvper’s will drive the other out without fail.
#10 by Soulflame on December 11th, 2007
Two problems with persistent PvP MMOGs.
1. Power curve. It’s bad enough that player skill is a curve for people to master. Toss on a power curve from items, and character skills, and you have a mountain that most people won’t bother to overcome.
2. The poster that made comment #58. That’s who’s going to be playing your game. That’s who you have to code around. That’s going to be, in the end, who causes a lot of people to stop playing your game.
#11 by Dartwick on December 11th, 2007
There is a type of PVP no one has yet made a game for that I think would be successful.
-Balance//design classes for PVP then make a big full PVE world to fit the combat mechanics.
-Allow FFA PVP nearly everywhere but keep a record of it that everyone can see. Link this record to all characters on an account. The record could also be sorted by factions/guilds/etc.
-GIVE NO REWARDS FOR PVP except coin that hasnt been banked yet.
I think a world with open PVP but also with accountability would be a big success.
There are a lot of players who would love a chance to be a good guy or or would choose to be factional in an FFA world if it was an option.
One of the main reasons players never actually police PVP worlds them selves is that there is no way to keep track of who is what in all MMOs that dont have preset sides.
EVE is the only game that aproaches this but the jump gate focus of the game is a mechanic deigned mainly to help gankers.
#12 by isildur on December 11th, 2007
I’ve thought a lot about desiging a PvP game, mostly because I sort of stumbled into the realization that designing a PvP game was, in fact, what I was doing.
I think there are only three truly distinct MMO PvP rules — as opposed to ‘how to make a game’ rules. Yeah, you need a combat system that isn’t stupid, and game balance, and some way for the 90% of players who are not The Best to enjoy your game right along with the 10% of players who are The Best. But I think all that stuff goes without saying.
My three rules are: PvP needs to matter to your game world; PvP needs to involve a significant degree of player skill; PvP needs to be inclusive, not exclusive.
If PvP doesn’t matter to the game world, then I might as well be playing TF2, which is great non-persistent PvP. The more it matters, the more involving it will be, even if the actual mechanics of the PvP are ridiculous, broken, or stupid. Players care a lot more about the consequences than the mechanics.
If PvP doesn’t involve player skill, then it’s just a matter of invested time or luck. If I can macro my way to being a great PvPer, then victories are hollow and meaningless; worse, defeats are frustrating and futile, because I’m not learning anything new from them (aside from ‘grind more noob’). WoW’s ‘resilience’ stat is a perfect example of this; while there’s certainly skill involved in WoW PvP, there’s also a stat that’s only available on PvP reward gear that, if you don’t have it, you simply lose PvP battles. What I learn from my arena team’s 2-8 record: get better gear, noobs.
If PvP isn’t inclusive, you’ve just spent a lot of design, code, and content time on a mechanic few people will care to use. New players need more than a reason to enter PvP areas of the game; they need some ability to be useful participants. Eve’s tackler swarms of frigates are a great example of inclusive PvP; DAoC’s insta-kill frontiers are a terrible example of inclusive PvP. When I started DAoC, the conventional wisdom was that you needed to be level 45 to go to the frontiers. By the time I was approaching 45, the goalposts had moved to 50. And then they moved to 50 + realm ranks. At any given moment, my PvP experience was ’show up and die’ — and this experience was mandated by game mechanics that actually prevented me from hitting or damaging targets only a few levels higher than me. I never tire of telling the story of when a friend and I, at level 35, came across a paladin who had, by my estimation, double-digit hitpoints remaining. He’d just barely won a fight. My friend and I attacked him. Not only did we fail to kill him, but he trivially killed both of us and wandered off with more hp than when we arrived.
That’s basically the only PvP-specific rules I believe truly matter. If you create a PvP mechanic that matters to your persistent world, that players feel they can master, and that encourages new participants by giving them useful roles to play — you win.
#13 by isildur on December 11th, 2007
theliel,
“man…i totally miss what PotBS could have been before they went back to levels and instances and stuff.”
I must assume, from this comment (and its context), that you’ve read the words ‘level’ and ‘instance’ somewhere in relation to my game and totally failed to parse what they meant, or investigate how they’re being used in any way.
#14 by Mist on December 11th, 2007
I think one thing you missed should be “Players don’t mind dying once in a while, they mind dying every time they step outside of town.’
#15 by theliel on December 11th, 2007
@ 63 -> I greatly over simplified gameplay elements for the sake of Hyperbole, but I do not think I was being incorrect. Changes were made to the game’s premise. Fairly Radical changes.
You and yours were full on up front about the changes, why it was done and what the New (at the time) plan was. Unlike just about any other game I have followed, Flying Lab has been 100% (ok, 98%) on top of informing the community about what they were offering, how design goals and reality met each other and hashed something out and how that affected the game.
That said, I was originally hoping for Eve with Pirates (though I really didn’t know it at the time, what with originally stumbling upon Flying Lab for the Cthulu game. oh…turns out I learned about PotBS before I learned of EVE. funny)
After the changes I was hoping for Pirates!; the MMO (which, as I oh-so-gently had to remind myself, all battles were instanced, so what the hell was I fussing about)
Yes I am sad that the game changed. I also understand that I and the 10 other guys who would’ve paid for the original game would not have allowed you and yours to eat.
I understand the underlying logic for all the changes, and I do agree with a host of them. I just disagree with some others and for some reason that’s enough for me to go “not my thing” and wander off.
I am in fact in a pretty niche market , and I understand that it will be quite some time before I see a game that works the way I would like it to (as the market has to grow enough and the barrier to development has to lower a goodly amount as well). And I will most likely be after something far different by that time.
#16 by Unpro on December 11th, 2007
What about EVE? its got an awesome PVP system, do what you want. PVP can technically happen anywhere but in systems (its a space games, theres solar systems) that has certain security statuses are patrolled by near invincible npcs, where as others only have protection in certain spots, or no spots at all.
Its got a decent reward system, the winner receives a ‘killmail’ with information that is used to brag with. Then there is the booty, unlike WOW when you blow up in EVE you lose whatever blew up, some of it goes with your ship, some is left with your remains.
As for skill development and ebay-ability, it is based on real-time. You turn a skill on and it will train for 15 or 20 minutes then finish, you dont have to kill anything if you don’t want to. However, to get the good stuff you have to train for days, weeks, months, some even for an entire year. That makes the game really relaxing for those who don’t want to, or dont generally have time to grind.
As for Ebaying characters, you can and it is done very often, but the usefullness of your character lies in how well the skills are trained, and how you fit your ship. A 2 week player has little or no chance to beat a 2 year player, but the difference between a year and a year and a half are simply player’s intelligence and knowledge of the modules (equipment). Sure you can google fitting (setups) for your ships and look them up on forums, but the truly amazing fittings are never recorded (for obvious reasons).
PVP, however big a part it may be to me, can not exist without the PVE nerds. Ships can’t blow up if they aren’t made by the miners and the builders, yet ships wont be needed if they are not blown up in PVP, its a perfect circle.
Although there is a subtle class system (which depends one which ships you can fly), it isnt static, anyone can train anything (as long as they have prereqs) so theres no limit to what you do.
If you can’t tell i’m an avid EVE-player, its my mmo. Its by no means perfect, but i feel it has great balance between those who like seeing things blow up, and those who like creating things.
-Matt (if you do play and I lock you, be prepared to lose your ship)
#17 by Freakazoid on December 11th, 2007
Just to be clear: This is not a supporting argument that classes are better for pvp. This IS a supporting argument that you failed to balance your skill system.
It is not impossible to have a skill system that is good all around. However, it comes with a heavy stigma with developers that it is far harder to balance than classes. Seeing as I haven’t found an MMO where classes were even close to balanced, I think skill systems will remain as a stupid backwards taboo among developers who will look for any excuse not to utilize one.
#18 by EchoPoint on December 11th, 2007
Bonedead is my new hero.
That is either one of the most amazing uses of sarcasm in recent history, or Bonedead is a textbook example of why normal people think PvP is for the incurably juvenile.
Either way…I’m in awe.
#19 by Jaguar on December 12th, 2007
I was very unimpressed with EVE’s PvP system as a whole. As a semi-active member in the “greater” BOB vs. GoonSwarm conflict it was simply lack luster by comparison to most games. Mostly due to the system to system hop. Having to travel for 3 hours to get to enemy territory only to have everyone warp away the minute they see you on local chat got old really, really fast to speak nothing of the big game of “Who can crash the server first.”
As for #67 I completely agree.
Look at a system like UO. UO basically redid their system left and right forcing people to constantly either reroll (IE: Re-Macro) or completely change their system. One month it was halberds and spell casting. Next it’s Two-Handed Axes. Then it was Maces. Then it was Archery. Then it was Spellcasting and Wrestling with Archery. Then it was Dex Monkeys. Then it was Lumberjacks…
In a system like AC1, there really wasn’t much of that. You had mages, archers, and melee types from start to finish. While yes, certainly, they did fluctuate in power from time to time all the elements and crazy builds were there despite certain types being perceived as more powerful than others (IE: “Og”).
#20 by johnnyatom on December 12th, 2007
I look forward to Webzen’s PVP- oriented offerings in Huxley and APB….very different genres..but a PVP basis…to see if your rules can be broken
#21 by Bonedead on December 12th, 2007
In response to #68: I’m not sure which it was. A bit of both I suppose.
I knew I was being funny (in some people’s eyes) when I was typing it, but there was a bit of seriousness in it. I’d like to think everyone deep down is incurably juvenile, it’s just that being an asshole (to assholes like me) is such a popular defense mechanism, most of them don’t even know it.
What I don’t get about PvP and the whole carebear/pker fight is, obviously, on the side of the carebears. One guy up top said something about dying once in a while is okay but every time you leave town is too much. I don’t get it. I’ve had to deal with dying every time I left town a lot, but that’s the thing, I dealt with it. I didn’t let it discourage me.
I was trying to explain pkers to my girlfriend yesterday and what I came up with is that everyone starts out a carebear. Even if they claim to be a pker. I remember losing a whole lot throughout my gaming career, but I didn’t run home and cry to momma. I wanted to kick that guy’s fucking ass.
I can remember times when I would just run out to the same PKs and die, over and over and over again. They would eventually leave or let me pass, they knew I wasn’t a threat (at the moment), and then I’d go kill a few mobs and get some loot. Sell the loot, buy some explosion potions, and then go attack the assholes who no longer saw me as worth killing.
I think I’ve made my point but in case I’m too random a motherfucker for people to understand, I’ll try and recap. Carebears only want to be heroes and if they die then the game is too hard. Wow, you really can’t say it without seeming like you wanna fight. Just think of Mortal Kombat. It’s a game, you fight people in it, and if you suck then you lose. If you lose you don’t quit, you want to beat your friend or your brother so they’ll stop talking shit. I don’t know, maybe PKers are just people who grew up with competition and brothers.
Message to the carebears who get discouraged by losing in pvp: don’t quit, get mad, learn to play.
Still <3 Mr. Jennings, sorry for using your comments as my own personal message board.
#22 by Jeremy Dalberg on December 12th, 2007
I probably qualify as a carebear, because I don’t like open PvP – like, at all. If I’m doing something else – PvE, or crafting, or whatever – I don’t want someone to come along and change the rules of the game on me. When I want to pwn noobs, I don’t want some idiot AI critter stumbling in to my carefully-laid ambush. I compartmentalize, that’s all, and games that don’t let me compartmentalize aren’t games I play.
#23 by Corwin Loa on December 12th, 2007
@66 Unpro
As much as I enjoy Eve, the bar of entry is too much to draw in many hardcore PVPers. Due to this it will always be a niche game. Entering a PVP game at a permanent disadvantage isn’t enjoyable. Just to catch up to the average player involves 7 months; you can be PVPing in any other game and caught up in way under that amount of time. Eve is a great game, but being crippled because you found out about it years later then other people is not enjoyable.
Eve is the shining example of a grind, but instead of playtime you just grind out IRL time and in-game cash.
It is kind of sad really, because many of the other aspect of PVP are quite balanced and enjoyable, and they have a team that actually cares about and caters to the PVP crowd.
#24 by Brian! on December 12th, 2007
Great comments!
There were a couple mentions of the “tank-mage” syndrome on skill-based systems. This can be pretty easily solved by a dynamic adjustment to the effectiveness of a skill. Meaning: If every player in the world takes up, say, swords then the general offense/defense of the ability is weakened. So the one guy with skills in axes rules the battleground. The idea is that if enough people are using a skill, then the general populace knows how to defend against it better. Yet the skill that is rarely ever used, well, that is going to take any warrior by a bit of surprise.
A system like this could be taken further where skills are adjusted by geographical location. Also, armor types and their defense could be adjusted by location as well. Thus emulating the idea that a visiting samurai warrior in england might have a slight better defense as none of the brits are currently schooled in the common weaknesses of the armor.
Digressing to another topic, in UO you lost your stuff – which ALWAYS sucked. Yet at the same time it was all reasonably replaceable. In fact, when housing came around I helped a player (who was a 62 year old lady) set up a “store” where she basically just gave away anything someone might need and all the supplies were stocked by donations. It became a place where players commonly came after jumped at the crossroads to get some replacement equipment. Players made the system work for them – and the store became an instant hit as a fun place to meet people and it encouraged lots of natural role-play, something lacking from modern MMOs.
For character vs. character PvP the biggest thing is to allow the players who do get ganked the feeling of justice, in my opinion. Something lacking in just about every game. Bounties are one way. Perhaps haunting your attacker as a ghost could be fun. It is a path worth examining.
Finally, one aspect of PvP that is completely overlooked is the ability to allow players to be the monsters in the PvE land. I talked to a few people years ago at GDC about this and we found a number of exploits, but really most are easily solved. Explaining how it would all work is a bit outside of this thread, but if you spend a while thinking about it, the idea of players being monsters offers: Interesting PvP combat, the exhilaration that the upcoming encounter might not be something you expect, and a bit of relief of the grind when those orcs you have been taking out so easily suddenly become an intelligent opponent.
#25 by Todd Ogrin on December 12th, 2007
“Then it was Spellcasting and Wrestling with Archery.”
I was on the Wrestling with Archery team in high school. You have no idea how hard it is to draw a bow and hit a target at 90 meters while pinned to the mat.
#26 by Jeremy Dalberg on December 12th, 2007
“the exhilaration that the upcoming encounter might not be something you expect, ”
That is exactly what I DON’T like about open PvP – and what a lot of players don’t like about it. I hate surprises.
#27 by JuJutsu on December 12th, 2007
“You have no idea how hard it is to draw a bow and hit a target at 90 meters while pinned to the mat.”
That’s why you have to use it in conjunction with spellcasting; magic solves all sorts of problems
#28 by Mist on December 12th, 2007
People also play Tank Mages because they are fun, or because being kited in melee sucks in X game (where X is just about every game that’s not WoW) or because if you don’t wear plate or have some kind of magical protection you die too fast.
Tank Mage-itis is more of a symptom of other problems than a cause. WoW has a Tank Mage, the Elemental Shaman, and not everyone plays it for PvP, though it is fairly popular. People played them in UO because movement in melee combat was too laggy, and because you could die in two hits if you weren’t heavily tanked.
#29 by Skinny G on December 12th, 2007
If u like pvp play fury its bloody godly.
#30 by Dartwick on December 13th, 2007
“What about EVE….”
EVE is almost awesome – except…….
1 its boring 99% of the time.
2 99% of the action is ambushes(which dont surprise anyone) at zone points.
You dont have to fight non-stop to have fun PVP but you need variety and and you cant have zone points be the focus of your game.
#31 by niclam on December 13th, 2007
This article made me smile and cry at the same time.
Thank you.
#32 by Monika T`Sarn on December 14th, 2007
PvP needs motivation, it needs rewards. Getting these right seems to be a major problem. Its most obvious in pvp servers for pve games, like EQ2 or Vanguard pvp – not enough reward for doing pvp, so why bother at all. Why bother playing …
On the other hand, it seems you can go to far – WoW has such nice but hard to get pvp rewards that it turns the game into a repetetive grind.
And you must be carefull to reward the right things – this is where DAoC went wrong. You get realm points, money and xp for killing people. So thats what people do, they grind realm points – those pesky relics, keeps and towers just get in the way of farming each other. Eventually what was a great inclusive RvR game was turned into an elitist 8 vs 8 circlejerk. You actually get bitched at for assisting another groups of your realm in the frontiers ! I think this could have been prevented by rewarding the acual war goals more then personal kills, allthough I bet players would have eventually ruined it by setting up a rotation where they farm each others keeps peacefully.
#33 by Bonedead on December 14th, 2007
In response to #82 Monika T’Sam:
I think a bigger problem for DAoC was the clustering. Having level 50s on all 3 sides of the same “server”(cluster) and being able to switch and not having realm pride, that really hurt the game.
#34 by Lancelot-OCT on December 16th, 2007
Blizzard has done a fine job of opening up the market and bringing a whole new crowd of folks that dont know what UO or AC or even EQ is. Just like you can characterize every member’s expectations of today’’s non-WOW crowd by the game that broke their cherry these WOW folks will be the biggest proponets of stable launches with endless PVE in the years to come.
It’s become us and them , further anything that’s been designed for us that want PVP does lousy in comparison. That lousyness reasonably should shrink the market of investors willing to back the next great PVP game hope.
I think it’s done , the best games in our genre have already been made.. the future MMO’s will be PVE with a PVP afterthought. By the time the next one comes we’ll all have arthritis in our hands from the abuse we’ve put them thru.
Lum thanks for being our voice with all the great articles over all these years.
#35 by Bloodlance on December 17th, 2007
UO was ruined
AO launch was bad and ruined it for some people, thus ruining it for a lot of people.
SB was ruined by problems from the developer side.
Planetside was ruined by new addon mechs/bfr:s (was so obvious, but they still made the patch, idiot devs(sony l2dev).
EQs … game that only fits for NA players. … thus i dont have to say more. AND no you dont get a cookie with your game, try /pizza instead.
DAoC , great game, but atlantis ruined the game and HC old school realms/servers rule again. Thus you made those servers like 5 years too late.
WoW, good game to use your spare time with friends, PvE and PvP(arena) is ok but still i feel like they could of made so much more with the resources they have.
Warhammer online , sadly a WoW clone.
Conan , hoping for a good game with a good release (promising).
#36 by Bloodlance on December 17th, 2007
AND if you do a PvE and PvP game in one game, put seperate talent trees to PvE and PvP.
#37 by harl on December 17th, 2007
@ianB
Please do not comment on EVE’s skill system. Your comment shows that you have no clue how the game works.
1. New people are very useful in PvP.
2. Older players do not have a skill advantage. New players can catch up on depth. They cannot catch up on breadth. Most skills can be maxed out in less than 30 days. Maxing out medium projectile for example only takes x number of months. At which point the newb is exactly as good with them as the 4 year player. The advantage the 4 year player has is that they’ve also train medium hybrids and so they can also use those. However those medium hybrid skills in no way help when using medium projectile. So age grants breadth but not a significant amount of depth.
#38 by Noodulz on December 18th, 2007
There will never be a “perfect” pvp game, and most of the complaining is just a result of unrealistic expectations clashing with reality. I used to play the PvP games heavily, but now I’d rather just play a good ol’ shoot the other guy in the face before he shoots you in the face FPS game.
Every game I’ve played that has pvp it boils down to:
1) Everyone has to find out “the” pvp class, and play that one.
2) Everyone has to find out every single exploit, and exploit them to no end.
3) Everyone has to have every top item in the game for pvp, if they don’t they probably will never even attempt to pvp until they get it.
Really, it’s just plain kind of sad. I just like to kill stuff, fuck all the nonsense. If the other guy wins because he is “the” pvp class with “the” top gear and using “all the” exploits, well grats! The sad part is when they believe this equates to having any clue what they’re actually doing in the game, which is an entirely different story.
#39 by trooper76 on December 18th, 2007
Can we please get over the nonsense of trying to compare PvP from games like Planetside and WW2OL to games like EQ, WoW, UO etc?
PS and ww2OL failed because of implementation not because of design. They ARE PVP, player skill games. WoW, EQ etc. are PVE, grind based games. Frankly you will probably NEVER have successful PvP in games like WoW and EQ unless you can completely seperate the PvE and PvP players from each other.
Comparing the two types of game is simply apples to oranges. Really the best comparison for ww2ol is a really big, complicated, persistant version of Counter-Strike. There is simply no other purpose than to kill the other team, or help your teammates do that better. That’s it. When there is no grey area PvP works.
However the wannabe MMOLG’s – EQ, WoW etc. are really a single player expierence you share with other people on your server…with a dash of co-op thrown in for those who like that. You don’t really require other people to play the game, because the bulk of people playing these games are PvEr’s which is really just single-player gaming in a social environment.
#40 by Hades on December 21st, 2007
UO:
Failed as a PVP game because the fastest way to make money was to kill other players, and money was needed to buy spell components, arrows, etc. Needing to farm players killed UO pvp period.
AC1:
Good pvp system with a large world. Failed to catch on with the PVP crowd due to levels, gear, and limited respawn location issues.
EQ:
Had fun on Sullon Zek, but levels meant too much.
DAOC:
Fun but levels meant too much, keeps were taken too easily, and relics really didn’t mean much. No matter what you did, you really didn’t impact the world.
Shadowbane:
PVP was fun, but leveling and farming gold was boring as hell. Ultimately though taking 1-2 months to build your city only to have it destroyed by a zerg in 1 day killed it by driving off small-medium sized guilds.
SWG:
PVP was ok when it first came out, but the downtime is what killed it for me.
WoW:
Your PVP ability was directly related to your level and your gear. If levels were equal, then gear usually determined the victor. Getting gear is a massive grind, no thanks.
CoV/CoH:
PVP is very fun, but the leveling to get there is absolutely horrible.
GW:
Had a good community that was very competitive when all PVPr’s had access to all skills/gear. Community died a slow death when people were forced to PVE to the endgame to get the stuff they needed to PVP. Lesson learned, GW2 will separate the PVP and PVE games and will be a smashing success.
Fury:
Prior to the Dec 14th patch PVP was fast paced and relatively balanced. Their mistake was not listening to their community, releasing the game too early without enough content, releasing with 0 community tools/ladders, etc, and their skill balancer not playing their own game.
Now if you want to make a good PVP based game, it requires the following:
1.
Low barrier to entry, and being easy to pickup and put down when needed without feeling like you are obligated to play daily.
I would go with a skill/skillpoint system rather than levels, and let people invest in the skills they want. I would base advancement off the # of player kills.
2.
Voice chat capability
3.
Guild/Clan support
—In game recruitment ability
—An in game leader board
—Basic clan management tools
—Optional stuff (custom titles, etc)
4.
Diverse PVP Content
Arena Type PVP:
—Beginner level tournaments
—Intermediate level tournaments
—Advanced level tournaments
—Observer mode
GvsG Mode:
—Allow guilds to custom design their own guild halls and fight against other guilds. Lower ranked guilds fight in their guild halls against higher ranked guilds.
World/Realm PVP:
—1 or more big zones with some objectives that make the battle more than a zerg vs zerg.
—World wide recognition
—Observer mode
5. Gamewide recognition
Guilds and Individuals
—PVP titles based off K:D Ratio
—PVP titles based on W-L Records
—PVP titles based on global rankings
—Web based PVP ladder/ranking site
6. Gear
I would have item decay
I would not give gear more than a 5% boost to the overall power of a character, but I would have lots of cool looking skins for different types of gear.
I would make all gear craftable with basic gear available on NPC vendors for gold, and advanced gear available via NPC vendors using gold and salvage rewards at the end of each PVP match.
7. PVE – Optional
Add in a PVE story arch for people to play if they want, and their rewards would be gold/salvage that they could use to make new gear.
People don’t understand how close Guild Wars came to being a runaway PVP hit. They had a good formula with a decent PVE game, and they launched with a huge PVP following from the FPS/MMORPG genres. They then lost that community by forcing you to have to play each new character to the end game in order to prepare it for PVP. That was their basic mistake.
The other mistake they made was not having more types of rankings, and organized play at a 4v4 and 1v1 level. Some of that they added in much later, but by then they had lost most of their PVP audience.
So if I were making a PVP game, I would follow the Guild Wars model with the changes I mentioned above. The MMORPG PVE grind model with PVP as an afterthought is a dinosaur, and CORPG’s like GW that support both PVP and PVE well could easily capture the market by catering to both Hardcore and Casual gamers.
#41 by House of Dexter on December 28th, 2007
Wow…some really good comments…especially liked Bonedead and Brian! #74 post
I’ll start off I’m a carebear by nature…I tend to play PvE games over PvP…though I deep down want a good PvP game…They have all come up lacking in one department or another…
Most things that make a good PvE game…make PvP horrendous…
For PvP to work you need world ownership. There needs to be a hook for you to love your world and to defend it, otherwise it’s just a minigame…
-Classes, Levels, and Items…yeah work in PvE…sucks in PvP…it becomes a race to max level and best gear…where in PvE you just need to level as fast as your friends…
-in PvE everyone is a hero…in PvP some are just ****s….
-Crowd Control sucks in PvP…
-There is no way for the community to police the world, a point Brian makes “For character vs. character PvP the biggest thing is to allow the players who do get ganked the feeling of justice, in my opinion. Something lacking in just about every game. Bounties are one way. Perhaps haunting your attacker as a ghost could be fun. It is a path worth examining.” There is no real consequence to the person who just wants to be a ****head…Bounties are not enough…You need some type of character lockout. Maybe a combination of Bounty and Lockout…the more Bounties on your head…the longer the lockout…
Waiting for that PvP game that just grabs me
#42 by vajuras on January 6th, 2008
At first I didnt really agree with some key points in the article but after more reflection I pretty much agree with all of it. I updated my blog with my thoughts on this article. To sum up my blog entry, I had a problem with “PVPers need Classes” because of course- we don’t have any in many FPS games (like Unreal Tournament). But I get what you were saying here- that our current role should be clearly visible. Which can be conveyed via various visual/audio cues.
#43 by Parasite on January 25th, 2008
As former Avid player of Shadowbane, and no other mmorpg, as well as a PvPer at heart, I have to say that Shadowbane had it right to a point. An entire world where you could find PvP anywhere you went after you moved off of Nub Isle. Unfortunately at launch it was way to pve centered. To reach the end game for the individual player you needed to spend way to much time pveing for levels and gold to the point of having to farm to equip yourself even after reaching the level cap.
City seiging is was and is a great tool for instanced pvp unfortunately you run into the pve grind again as the cost to build a city is enormous as well as the cost of sieging a city.
Having clearly defined classes worked well in Sb as it allowed people to be able to set priorities in pvp. Even though the game has had over its tenure many FoTM toons there was always a balance in player skill, for example from personal experience having played most of my time in sb as a fury class caster which was over and underpowered through my life span int he game my skill (player skill that is) level allowed me to be competitive with whatever the overpowered class was at the time.
In my humble opinion the biggest thing that hurt Shadowbane was stability. once you got more then say 70 people in one spot at the same time the game would lag up horribly. This would negatively effect the entire server not just those involved in the battle. So the carebears were unhappy and the pvpers were unhappy.
A successful pvp game will cater not only t the hard core pvper but also to the pvp lite player, the person who enjoys pvp but also likes a certain amount of pve.
#44 by Chris on February 17th, 2008
Granted this was obviously written by a gamer, please don’t compare a MMOFPS (Planetside, WW2 Online, etc.) to a MMORPG (Shadowbane, Eve Online, etc.). They have two different approaches to an internet game and last I checked, FPS and RPG were different genres.
The main advantage I enjoy about a PvP oriented game (no not an ActionRPG, aka Guild Wars and Fury), is the ability to go PvE when you want and not actually need to raid the boss to death. You feel much more casual and adventurous knowing that since PvE is not the big part of the game and that you CAN go take on that boss on your own and get some cool gear.
I have a feeling that today would be different if Shadowbane was not released with technical issues. Seeing as how MMORPGS are much, much more mainstream now; we won’t be seeing PvP/Sandbox oriented ones anytime soon (look at SWG turned to). Atleast, until the mainstream gains more experience and becomes bored of the tedious PvEing, and actually see the advantage of an unpredictable target.
Then again, the population is lazy, which is why the non-lazy are a niche in the market. Look at FPSs, they are going back and forth, between their complexity its hilarious. I feel like the newest Halo and Call of Duty games have not added anything more to the FPS genre than Quake or UT99 did. The RTS genre are the only ones actually gaining any new innovations as of late, maybe it’s because most likely a more intelligent person (sorry to generalize here) would play an RTS, whereas an A.D.D child would go play a FPS like Call of Duty, and nothing tactical as of RS6, GR, or even Battlefield.
Ahhh… these video game genres really need to shape up.
#45 by coppertopper on April 30th, 2008
Isldur – “If PvP doesn’t matter to the game world, then I might as well be playing TF2, which is great non-persistent PvP. ”
^^^^^^^
I would call that The Golden Rule of MMO PVP. Without the game adhering to the Golden Rule, it is just a PvE game.
DAOC largely obeyed the Golden Rule – when a relic was threatened, people would leave raids at times to come to the realms defense. And early evenings weren’t as much about prime raiding time as taking a keep or two and opening ports to the other realms home frontier territories.
#46 by matt capitao on July 25th, 2008
pretty sure DAOC is still the best implemetation of PVP and RVR that i have ever seen in any game.
nothing else even comes close
#47 by kfsone on September 17th, 2008
Scott Rigby’s talk left me wondering how you can do PvP without continually defeating 50% of people’s intrinsic needs.
Or reminded me that I wonder that.
Larry Melon pointed out WW2OL’s fundamental flaw – they (not guilty!) shipped shit in a box. Granted, they were furthered hammered by a major breach of contract by their ISP the first 3 days and had to relocate their equipment to a different coloc and ISP which tied up people and cash resources that could otherwise have been spent on developing the game – but still the day 1 game was buggy and horribly hampered by a simulation-centric focus vs a gameplay focus.
So people tend to not want to use it as any kind of example.
But it has been around for 7 years, defying the traditional MMO subscription curve. It’s rife with lessons in How Not To Develop/Run an MMO, like any of its competitors – but: 7 continuous years and a pending Chinese franchise; many former WWIIOL devs are in significant positions at other MMOs. It all adds up to the fact that the concept and product, and those of us working on the product today, clearly have /something/ of value to say particularly for anyone wanting to understand PvP.
Take all those factors and throw them at another game and tell me it would produce 7 years of stable income? Heck, take just day 1-3 with the ISP providing 10Mb instead of the 10Gb they were billing for at launch, followed by 3 years fighting a $3M legal battle with them and apply that to /most/ 2000-2004 MMO launches and what would happen?
Those of us who joined the team and the things the team learned (much of which the industry as a whole has /also/ learned in those /same/ 7 years) have managed to increase revenues and profitability little by little. The fact we haven’t turned it into a success, or a mini-wow or major growth comes largely comes down to the launch and the resulting stigma it tarred the product with.
I honestly believe that WW2OL could pull off some kind of mini-eve or micro-eve style recovery if the imminent China franchise takes off and brings in even a relatively small surplus: there are a hell of a lot of licensable middleware options that my predecessors simply didn’t have access to that would allow us to reduce costs and better expose the PvP element that has actually been the life-support of the project and team. That’s what has kept me on the team for these last 5 years.
I’m seriously considering asking Scott and Damion to consider doing a “Why the f**k is WWIIOL not dead already?” session with me next year as a platform for getting across the message “hey, PvP really has some staying power”. It’s just not a well enough explored domain and having worked for part of the problem I’d love to try and be part of the solution encouraging MMO devs and suites to rethink the very negative spin we (WWIIOL) helped give PvP…
Oh and Hi Copper
(For Da Beerz?)
#48 by Keybounce on February 15th, 2009
First, I want to apologize for bumping an old post, and I hope that this is seen.
Isildur had a very good observation:
Fundamentally, you don’t PvP because the enemy P is the goal. You want something in the enemy territory — some sort of E (environment) in there that you want. Then the PvP comes because the enemy P are defending their E from you.
Pirates of the Burning Sea has just this set up — you have enemy controlled ports that you want to take over. You are fundamentally attacking the ports, or attacking the enemy players to defend your ports. And the ports aren’t just “pixels on the map” — controlling ports gives your side resources and the advantage in the economic game. The realization that you could let it go “way out of balance”, until one side dominates the map, was a stroke of genius — there was no need to put in-game stuff to balance the sides or stop a run-away. Instead, let the run-away happen, and then let “off-screen politicians” rebalance the world and start the fight again.
Now, granted, I’m horribly simplifying. I’m also way out of date — I followed the forums during beta, but once the game went live, you had to have an account to participate. (Hi there, this is “BehindCurtain”, if I remember my forum name correctly from way over there).
But this is the key fundamental point. If your goal in PvP is just to take out enemy P for no reason, it’s pointless, and it’s “My mob’s bigger than your mob”. You don’t engage in a 50/50 PvP battle if you can help it — you go for battles where you have the advantage.
Take a good look at almost every board war game, from Titan to SPI WW2 games. Heck, look at Steve Jackson’s UltraCorps (online wargame). You always want to fight with such overwhelming forces that you don’t get significantly hurt, and can keep on charging.
That means, fundamentally, that initiating a PvP battle needs to be the choice of the defense, not the attacker; there has to be some sort of home-field advantage; and the attacker ultimately doesn’t want to get into PvP.
If the attacker wants to get into PvP, then you’re back to “I want the bigger force, I want to steamroll you, and go past you to the real prize”. That’s the fail — your goal is the ports, the cities, the NPC leader, etc.
If the attacker can succeed as a really weak noob, then the game lacks believability — it needs a strong attacker to have a chance. That means that to stop the strong attacker, you either need for the defense to have strong people, or you need some sort of home-field advantage. If you don’t have the “home field advantage”, then the slightest gain for one side turns into a run-away; with the “home field advantage”, there’s a way for the map to go back-and-forth for a while before it falls over.
Now, there is one other point of PvP that I didn’t see mentioned. PvE fountains resources from the mobs you kill; PvP either has no resources fountained, or destroys resources, in almost every game I’ve seen. (No, I don’t consider WoW PvP gear to be fountaining.). If you have a game with a lot of PvP, you have to have a way for the PvP to generate resources. Now figure out how to do that without being gameable.
The player-skill comment is a big issue. Should someone with a relatively beginning character and a lot of player skill be able to take out a high-end character with average player skill? Is this an online role-playing game, where you start by playing a weak, beginning toon, and later on are playing a mean, lean, clobbering machine? Or is this an online roll playing game, where skill plus RNG is the only factor, and it doesn’t matter if your toon is supposed to be a massively destructive force of nature if you’re a slow, bumbling player with no “twitch-factor” response in your fingers?
Now consider that you might be playing on much slower equipment, that doesn’t have hardware acceleration for a lot of stuff. You know, like a level 10 druid trying to go into Moonglade only to find yourself killed before your screen even gets off the “Loading …” page.
If player skill really makes the difference, then how much does better computer equipment make player skill meaningless?
If player skill is supposed to be the difference, then consider the other things that make a difference:
0. Some classes are designed to do high DPS. If this dominates the PvP, then no other class need bother to apply.
1. Sometimes a “first-strike” attack gives you so much advantage that you win. Then it’s back to whoever has the best twitch and equipment.
2. Players tend to have abilities that monsters/npc’s don’t have. In some games, it’s a very rapid attack. Think rapid-fire bows, or moonstrike spam. If your game doesn’t keep players versus mob attacks under control, then it probably doesn’t keep player versus player attacks under control either. This leads to PvP attacks being very fast, very short, and your game becomes “Ambush and assassinate”. Again, it’s twitch. There’s no time to think, no time to plan, no time to react — so you, the player, have to be on edge constantly. Heck, if all the mobs in the area have to get close to attack me, and won’t fight or fire from a distance, then a design that lets other players fire from long distance means that I have to constantly be worried about long-distance attacks from nowhere.
That’s not fun. I don’t want to play where I’m constantly worried about being ambushed by someone that I can’t see. I don’t mind a game where I can get into a fair fight where I have a chance to defend myself, but again, the attacker doesn’t want to get me into a fair fight.
So, you either need incentives so that the attackers want to get into a fair fight with other P’s, and you need the fights to NOT be twitch fests, or you want incentives so that the attackers want to avoid the P’s and go after the E’s, and defending P’s want to stop the attacking P’s from taking the E’s.
If you want a good PvP fight game, then being attacked by an E or attacked by a P should not be different. PotBS and Puzzle Pirates both have this — the enemy ship has to engage your ship, and has the same fighting ability (the ship’s firing rate, cannons, etc) whether it’s a player or NPC. Heck, there’s no real “DPS” difference, unless your player skill (YPP) or toon ability (PotBS) lets you reload guns faster.
#49 by Jerry on March 5th, 2009
QFT.
AC1 had classes, too:
Item/Life Mage with Sword/Bow/Dagger/Unarmed/Axe/Mace/Spear
Item/Life Mage with War Magic
Item/Life Mage with Creature Magic (IIRC, the infamous “Og spec”)
Gimp (any character missing Item Magic, Life Magic, or both)
I’m willing to bet even Darkfall will end up with “classes” somehow: combinations of skills that provide some sort of synergy and little to no “fluff” skills in order to maximize the efficiency of the skill-up grind.