Couple new pieces of mine up on MMORPG.com this week:
I went up to Edmonton, Canada last month as part of a Bioware press event. I learned that Canada is a very cold place, and also some things about Mass Effect 2.
I also wrote a column about PvP, which one or two of you may have opinions about.
{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }
Sorry you had to visit our city during our record breaking cold spell.
We were officially the second coldest spot on the planet after Siberia, and they only beat us by a few degrees.
PvP done right adds new dimensions to gameplay and increases playability.
Companies usually only get bits and pieces of it implemented properly though.
For all of its failings, Warhammer had a pretty decent ruleset.
Rules I have learned as a player
1. Stay away from any game that lets max level characters camp newbs. Newb meaning unable to harm the aggressor in any way.
2. Stay away from any game that does not give you a safe spot where you can get away from the action and rebuild.
3. Stay away from any game that does not segregate PvP into level ranges or attempt to balance the competitors factions.
4. Stay away from any game that only has two factions as one will invariably dominate and kick the crap out of the weaker one.
5. Always always play the FOTM overpowered class and avoid the useless ones. Melt faces and crush your enemies while you can, and the Dev’s won’t change things until it gets massively imbalanced. Heck, some devs won’t EVER change things and will allow the overpowered class to exist for years.
6.Implementing game balance is hard. Really hard. Usually ranged classes will rule and should be considered first.
Stuff I’d like to see implemented
1. Buffs for the weaker side to help balance things out
2. Ability to lock down opponents forcing 1v1 or 6v6 battles and prevent zerging.
3. Skills/Classes that are balanced ARITHMETICALLY, not just by opinion.
4. Give classes abilities to counter (or reduce) other classes damage types. Let them use one at a time, on timers. Think of it as paper rock scissors with an I win button, that your opponent has too.
5. Remove artificial level based damage modifiers. 50 Level 1′s should be able to take down 1 Level 50.
6. Ranged classes should have some sort of drawback, be it longer “aim” times and/or the ability to miss shots. They should dominate a ranged foe and be owned by a nearby enemy.
7. Include full loot/pickpocket and totally open pvp in your game, but sandbox it to specific regions so that the Wolves can prey on…. other Wolves.
It’s the designers job to ensure a fair playing field and to setup a risk vs reward ruleset that allows people to opt out or in and to reward and encourage players to particiapte.
See, now if we had known you were coming, we could have had a “Lum FanClub/Stalker” meeting outside of Bioware’s office…
Davide, I do believe most of your points describe Eve…
Lum initiates the PvP argument again: Sysiphus was a piker.
Alright, I’ll post my replies over there. *fume*
Whoa, you were there last week? I’m surprised you didn’t flash feeze immediately after leaving the airport.
That’s not cool, man.
What WoW class ability works differently in arenas? That second to the last paragraph there seems completely pulled out of thin air, Blizzard never started doing anything of the sort.
I like the highly intellectual responses on MMORPG.com, which blame Mr. Jennings for writing a “badly researched” Captain-Obvious article when what they want to say is they disagree with his conclusions.
In fact, it’s a great article, and I recognize a few of the names in the comments and I’m glad to see them squirm.
Didn’t the 3.3 patch disable a number of abilities in arenas?
@Scott: Any ability with a cooldown over 15 minutes was previously disallowed. They lowered it so any ability with a 10 minute or greater cooldown is disallowed. Also, some debuffs have a shorter duration in PvP than they do in PvE.
So, I’d say you were correct to one extent or another.
@Mist: following up on my reply to Scott, as an example, the warlock spell Fear has a duration of 20 seconds in PvE but only 10 seconds in PvP. Also, each successive cast lasts half as long until the 4th cast where it no longers work at all. After 15 seconds of not being on the target it resets and goes back up to a 10 second duration. I believe that lowering of duration and diminishing returns is true for all crowd control spells that last over 10 seconds in PvE.
I’m not going to reply to the MMORPG article. Numerous posters there have pointed out that Scott Jennings is just a whining carebear that doesn’t know diddly-squat about PvP. I’ve been hornswoggled by a poser!
Scott: “Didn’t the 3.3 patch disable a number of abilities in arenas?”
No. No ability that wasn’t previously disabled in arena, since arena was created, was disabled in 3.3.
The old rule was: ‘any ability with a cooldown longer than 15 minutes is disabled in arena.’
However, due to limited attempts becoming the norm in high end PvE encounters, they started lowering cooldowns on things like Druid Battle Res, Warlock soulstone, Reincarnate, etc down to 15 or 10 minutes. So what they did was just take every long cooldown ability in the game, put it down to 15 or 10 minutes, from what was 20, 30, or even 60 minutes before, and then changed the original rule to anything >= 10 minutes. No new abilities got banned, the rule just had to be changed to reflect the new cooldowns of previously banned abilities.
@Drey PvP diminishing returns on CC were implemented about 4.5 years ago.
From reading the comments, clearly you are are know-nothing Carebear who has never played a PvP MMO.
I think it’s a matter of implementation as much as pvp being automatically worse than pve.
In WoW people follow loot. When at times pvp has been seen as an accessible source of great loot people have gone that direction. (I’m not just talking about the Alterac Valley heyday, for a time Warsong Gulch was the place to be).
If Blizzard’s secret mmo project turns out to be a pvp game (which is distinctly possible given the company’s history and the need to make it not WoW) we may see what happens when a pvp game is launched that is accessible, polished and immersive.
Shadowbane failed for reasons you’ve explained which are implementation reasons not pvp is niche reasons.
@Stabs
I don’t know what type of budget they had to make Shadowbane, but you don’t blow a mainstream-level budget on a project that caters to a niche market.
I did play the game, but long after its prime (when it was free to play), and it was dead. Also it was a complete waste of time. The map had a certain number of cities allowed in each region, and the number had long been filled up. That meant you were forced to join a city that already existed, and my first experience of the game was being screwed over by guild politics at a level way, way, way above me. Maybe my experience may have been atypical, but it hardly encouraged me to continue playing it. I left after a month or two.
I also remember a comment here that mentioned the astronomical grinding levels that Shadowbane involved if you did manage to have a city. And once your city got baned, you had to start over. Who’d want to deal with that?
There are either a lot more Darkfall fans than I ever knew about, or they all post at MMORPG.com. Copiously.
@Xanthippe
And they all hate MMORPG.com, because they think it caters to WoW fans. And WoW fans hate it because they think the site hates WoW. And all these wonderful castes of gamers post there assiduously.
I like the fanbois in MMORPG.com that sing praises about failed games because they are the masters of the l33t expl0its and want everybody else to be in the recieving end of their ego boosts. Vetarnias, say it like it is. Is obvious to everybody involved.
Other than that, nice article.
I would not necessarily put it that way. For some games, yes. But the worst offenders were often WoW fanbois who never struck me as the guys who would use “l33t expl0its”. What I see far more often — and it’s gotten endemic — is jaded players who are still waiting for the next MMO just around the bend, in the hope that it’s not going to be like the 27 games they’ve already played and ditched, and you know they’ll line up to pre-order it (not to mention praise it on the forums, months before release, out of the desire for a self-fulfilling prophesy) even though that’s going to be precisely like those 27 games they can’t bear the sight of anymore.
@Vetarnias
“I don’t know what type of budget they had to make Shadowbane, but you don’t blow a mainstream-level budget on a project that caters to a niche market.”
PVP in MMOs is a niche market in the same way that MMOs as a whole were a niche market not so many years back – because none were made to a standard that was accessible, polished, user friendly, ect. until WoW came out and showed everyone how it could be. Stabs is absolutely right in that the problem with PVP in MMOs has been design and implementation, not a fundamental failure of concept. I think this is pretty well made self evident that player vs player is fundamental part of most gaming – be it chess or halo.
That said, you’re absolutely right that no one will invest a AAA budget into a PVP MMO – but that’s because it’s a risky avenue without proven successful design. Big budget games are always iterations, not pioneers – or they wouldn’t have the support to be big budget games.
@Lum – give me an edit button you dirty carebear ^^
@Raelyf
I agree, but I’d have to see how much it cost to make a game just ten years ago, in comparison to today. If you still could get away with making an isometric MMO in the style of UO (and I mean something a little more sophisticated than, say, what Haven & Hearth is doing, which in itself is quite fine but would be even better if it didn’t have such a crappy community full of 12-year-old griefers) and be financially successful at it, maybe you’d get more full-PvP games. If, however, you have to go with the latest in “Boob Dynamics” technology because that’s how you think you can get gamers, then you won’t ever get a full PvP game made by a major studio or that won’t take six years to be released.
The rabid PvP gamers who blindly seek such games are also to blame. Their UO nostalgia, or their endless praise for the borefest that is EVE, is seriously getting on my nerves, and they’re otherwise so predictable in their lemming-like movements. To wit: Those who rushed to pre-order Mortal Online, with no indication that the game would ever be ready by the time Star Vault said it would be, just so they could have access to the closed beta that came with the pre-order. Their Leetnesses would not tolerate being left out of beta while others would get an advantage by learning every trick, so in they rushed. Never mind that this is a repugnant selling technique, especially for a game like this where advance knowledge means everything (whatever happened to the time when beta actually was for testing?), those players should have retained something from Darkfall’s release. But no, Their Leetnesses must be first. Idiots.
PVP can be done corretly however it can not be done correctly using the same tired model that has been used in every single fantasy game since EQ1. Developers rather churn out the same product we have played with new paint and some bells and whistles.
>
How about a game without some arcane tread mill grind to the mythical end game, that would be a nice change however no one in the MMO business particallly fantasy is willing or able to think outside the same tired model we have been stuck with for the last 12+ years. A PVP game can not have players widely seperated in power do to level or gear. That is fail.
EVE doesnt have classes – it has multiple outfit choices.
Agreeing with Raelyf and Vetarnias that budgetary problems and player expectations are killing most chances of pvp centric mmos these days, or really most niche products. For that matter, in the subscription markets what games have launched in the last half decade that have had a positive ROI? Could only be a tiny percentage at best.
If the larger pve market rarely can make a good go of it, certainly a niche market game is going to have a harder time. At least in my world, execution is king and most indie studios seem to be swinging and missing there no matter what their target market is. Some exceptions must exist of course, but sadly none in the pvp market.
As for the advice given on the mmorpg article, it all seems quite solid. But it also seems to apply equally well even if your players will mostly be bouncing on gumdrops in rainbow land.
Ahh Lummy… Once more into the fire. Gotta love those comments though.
Good point, MMO players would LOVE anything that is superior to WoW. Although we are talking about PvP games, so I’ll stick with my theory.
“Remove artificial level based damage modifiers. 50 Level 1’s should be able to take down 1 Level 50.”
It would take calculus to show why satisfying both maxims here is theoretically possible but completely impractical. Not to mention, it doesn’t satisfy the underlying issue of the Level 50 still being able to pick fights he knows in advance he won’t lose.
“How many of us are present?”
“49, sir.”
“And what level is he?”
“50, sir.”
“…”
“We’re boned, aren’t we sir?”
But, to make a more practical contribution, I think the core conflict between PvP and PvE, from the side of the designer, is that the goals of each directly conflict. PvE is about intentionally creating an uneven playing field, full of weaker and stronger monsters, gear, abilities, etc., starting the player at one end of said field and giving them the privilege of marching through to the other. In PvP, an even playing field is necessary for the majority of people to feel comfortable playing.
Having PvE with an even playing field is a challenge as there’s no progression in the traditional, expected senses. Saying that everyone effectively starts at max level would be a hard sell to management (not impossible, though, given examples like Guild Wars).
I’m sure that eventually WoW and TF2 will converge somewhere, and there will be much rejoicing. But, for now, PvP is a secondary focus of the former type of game and the sole focus of the latter.