The one thing that would encourage me to go to a pvp server or event is if it is faction-based or in some other way tied to a general theme without allowing anyone to attack anyone else just because they feel like it. I will play, and have played, pvp in multiple games where there was a cause - where it is us against them on a more global basis. Kill players to repel an Albion invasion or to defeat the Horde works for me. Kill players because I want a few extra copper pieces or experience, or rankings does not. That just feels to me like an amoral society based on murder and robbery.
In pve events I tend to prefer situations where player actions cannot be directly aimed at other players. Rewards for the most efficient people at competing with the environment rather than competing *directly* with eachother. As in first 10 characters to level-cap on a temporary server or first 10 characters to a specified level under a "permadeath" ruleset.
As much as I regularly complain about competitive (contentious) play, that's because of the way it has 'worked' (or rather hasn't) in the past.
I would love it if there were some decent fair and healthy competitive play and your suggestions are good.
The tricky thing is, in an open world, to still make it elective: To invite people to compete, not force them to.
I'll think on it.
If you want many/most/some/all paying customers to voluntarily participate in conflict between players, then design those conflict systems so the loser doesn't feel like a victim, especially not as an individual.
Once you take away the victimization feeling(s), players are more likely to participate.
I think PvE'ers should spar with PvP'ers at some point. Maybe even in a seperate arena server match, and then maybe in a timed quest run PvE team vs PvP team, see who gets it done first without interference, and then PvE vs PvP team WITH interference from each side.
the thing I have said/heard from both sides from established PvP'ers and PvE'ers after they spar is "I can do THAT?" both of them.
I think it's important not to narrow your scope too quickly on a topic as broad as this.
Using terms like 'area' or 'flag' or status is.. limiting. It limits the potential implementations very quickly.
I'll give you a broad term, stellarmind: action channeling.
Essentially, that means for many game loops, the paying customer interacting with the game client is playing the game.
Those actions ( keystrokes, mouse clicks ) , can be channeled towards a particular game loop. The most common simple example would be combat; Acquire a target/assist, kill, loot, repeat.
Action channeling is the start of the customer-involved phase of the design, regardless of the context of the resulting system, PvE or PvP.
The distinction between a PvE action and a PvP action doesn't always have to involve another paying customer directly. That's the important bit.
Meaningful conflict (in the in-game, thematic, internally consistent or lore-appriate sense) can be indirect.
If you're willing to accept that indirect premise of the exercise/argument, then you can cast a much broader net regarding potential solutions, systems, and implementations.
Those are the systems that can involve every paying customer on the server, indirectly.
However, if you want to narrow the solutions, systems and implementations to directly, well.. meh. :)
Not really much to discuss, as history has demonstrated dozens of times with dozens of MMOs that feature this style of play, already.
Ranked tournaments even on PvE servers. With different combat/pvp modes. Decorate up an area outside of a city or create some sort of fair or festival zone where monthly or quarlerly tournaments can occur. People can spectate or participate.
Maybe actually have GM's host these in game events/fairs with the tournaments as part of it... Hand out unique prizes.
Foster a community within the game world.
...Aaah the good old days in mmo's.
I would participate in a pve competition if I ran into it, but I wouldnt normally seek it out unless it was something spectacular.
I really like the idea of zone or world events rather than out and out competitions; something where the world had a bite back at the players on mass. An invasion of some kind or maybe a titan was let loose or the underworld decided it liked the look of the overworld more and went for it. Im not fussed about rankings, for me its the fun of the participation.
Competitive pve and pvp..
PVP -- What I noticed from competitive pvp is you get people who play better with an organized team and then you give them even better weapons and armor to compete with the same people... Never really understood that... I was lucky enough to be on the side of getting better gear... after awhile it just gets ridiculous were there are only a few other teams that give you a run for your money....
PVE -- That could be interesting.... and could have some very cool events with this... However, I feel that people would just ruin this... The guilds with the best gear could team up and demolish the other side... I think it is tough thing to balance if you let organized teams sign up...
In saying that I would love it if we had things but I would actually like it to be competitive and not a blowout....
chenzeme said:I would participate in a pve competition if I ran into it, but I wouldnt normally seek it out unless it was something spectacular.
I really like the idea of zone or world events rather than out and out competitions; something where the world had a bite back at the players on mass. An invasion of some kind or maybe a titan was let loose or the underworld decided it liked the look of the overworld more and went for it. Im not fussed about rankings, for me its the fun of the participation.
Again, imho, that's a bit narrow.
Take all the game loops. whatever they are. Let's presume combat and crafting, for the moment.
How can you use those loops to indirectly compete with other players in the world?
Let's just take the idea of NPC guilds to start, along with factions and kingdoms.
If each race gets a starting area, then there are at least 3 kingdoms. Possibly as many as 9, but at least three.
There's at least four roles, but in general, you could probably expect there is a military guild for non-magic, theives guild for rogues, mage tower, and priest temples.
So, four for classes.
Now add deities, and you've got a bunch more.
For the sake of this theorycrafting exercise, lets say we have (at least) 3 kingdoms, 9 races, 4 NPC guilds, and 3 deities.
Each of the gameplay loops should (if designed well) allow players to either supply to or consume from any of those (at least) 19 distinct in-game entities.
The mechanisms to do that could be, on the supply side: donations, sacrifice, and production.
On the consume side, it would be the players availing themselves of services, products, and rewards, provided by the NPCs belonging to those (at least) 19 distinct in-game entities.
However, if you want indirect PvP, then all the actions to supply add to the power of those varying entities.
It could mean that if you supply your kingdom enough, it expands. It literally expands in the game world. Patrols, outposts, roads, buildings, infrastructure, all of it.
All the mining, harvesting, lumber, food, tools, weapons, furniture, loot, consumables, armor, weapons, animal parts, every single thing that players gain, if supplied to an entity, increases its power.
The consequences of that should be tangible and temporarily persistent.
What that means is, it's not permanent, but it does last for a tunable period of time that is reasonable given the amount of player time invested.
The real fun starts when you give players the choice to take their action channels, and direct them towards affecting other players, indirectly, during those other players game loops.
This means, if players were inclined, for example, to outfit humanoids that are in the same land as the current kingdom, it could shift the balance of power such that the kingdom would shrink.
Or, if they supply food, environments, and shelter/homes/dens for animals that are in the same land, those animals would grow in power and range.
The "monsters" or enemies, or whatever other entity group would then provide services, goods, and rewards to players that support(ed) them.
This provides tangible meaningful rewards for time spent, from all game loops. It gives players a long term goal to work towards, while, the entire time, they are also competing against other players, indirectly.
When you add in direct feedback to the game loops themselves, then you see how players will participate.
Again, this means things like Players providing support via donations, sacrifice, and production to whatever entity group they choose.
If they choose to support groups that are currently (or by default, initially) hunted by some other players, those players would find themselves affected by changes in the game world, from those other players actions, indirectly.
What vjek just described is nothing more than an extension of the faction system as it existed in EQ, with correlation to things like spawn tables and the presence or absence of in-world art assets that can be dynamically populated. Really not hard to do, and doesn't require instancing to pull off :)
Bravo, vjek.
Yep, can be added to any similar existing game too, just requires modifiers to be added to NPCs that affect the range of all existing values (stats, gear, abilities, resource pools, skills), if you want to extend it down to adding or subtracting power in that way.
Ultimately, if desired, you could make it so that spawning of NPCs by allied players could be done dynamically in areas where non-allied PCs are consuming those NPC "enemies" as content for a given game loop.
You can also extend such a system to temporary, yet persistent, adjustment of zones/land for resource generation and consumption, with corresponding ripple effects or trickle down effects for in-region or surrounding spawns and entity power consequences.
The part I really think would be great is if you required all lower tiers to be supported (first and on-going), in order to enable the higher tiers for indirect PvP. That would keep players supplying and consuming the lower tiers of content indefinitely. Standing, fame, stature, renown and similar would then act as social currency amplifiers in support of indirect PvP.
stellarmind said: i'm curious to know if there are any pvers that would do a competitive mode and what it would be. before i doodle pve here... things for pvpers: team death match capture the flag domination things for pvers: timed runs dungeon runs ramping difficulty dungeon runs tower defense locations things that are frustrating(for ranking): gear disparity- for pve and pvp i think gear should be completely flat across the board. seasons- i would much prefer to see a rotation of locations per season rather than gear upgrades. tbh mmos don't really make good use of the world. they could literally section vistas for these game modes cheating- scripts are the bane of all competitive fun. macros are borderline there. now for tournaments this is where it gets spicy for both pve and pvp. competing teams could choose and ban 'map pools' much like starcraft maybe even ban 1 class or 2. so a group of pvers that just want to be competitive in speed running don't have to compete in a tower defense. what would be the incentive to seasonal competitive pve and pvp? ENABLES FLYING MOUNTS FOR THAT LOCATION LULZ. okay maybe not that but a cool pet or something like INSTA TELEPORTATION TO THAT PLACE FOR THE NEXT SEASON. even winning the match or participation should net some goodies like a bonus acclimation to that specific location or gathering materials etc etc. what would you like to see for competitive game modes albeit pvp or pve?
Everything you've mentioned here falls into the category of "Things that Reduce Immersion" for me. I really have zero interest in competitive aspects of MMORPGs.
Just my 2c.
:o
forget to add that flying mounts, instant ques and teleportation for rewards is sarcasm >.<
i can respect the desire not to have competitive stuff.
would it be satisfactory to only have ranked gameplay on the pvp server then?
i am totally down for that hehe.
anything to increase pvp population into a tight violatile cauldron of drama >=D
:o
forget to add that flying mounts, instant ques and teleportation for rewards is sarcasm >.<
i can respect the desire not to have competitive stuff.
would it be satisfactory to only have ranked gameplay on the pvp server then?
i am totally down for that hehe.
anything to increase pvp population into a tight violatile cauldron of drama >=D
the only major problem with players gear/stats being base across the board or even or even just set to an arbitrary amount means that some classes will be inharintly better than others. This was a problem in wow with some PVP and challenge mode dungeons back in MoP.
When classes are locked at a specific ilvl some classes fair much better than others at that item level. One example being gear dependant classes, such as warrior, or crit dependant classes like BM Hunter. This would end up pigeonholing players into taking the best of the best selection. and disreguard most player skill, utility, etc that the class might normally bring.
and sure you could just make your own group to run these things, but you are still going to hit a glass ceiling based soley on your class rather that your individual ability, much sooner than you would if you could have the appropriate gear and stats