There is no middleground. Really. PvPers and PvErs just have different mindsets in how they play a video game. PvPers in general get the thrill of the competition when directly facing against another human being and beating them in exciting game play.
PvErs don't have to be casuals or non-competitive they just have a different approach to gaming. They aren't infatuated with the idea of winning directly and aren't maybe after that quick "rush" like PvPers tend to have. Not to say you cannot enjoy both PvE and PvP but a person who solely plays PvE or solely plays PvP are often very different personalities.
Trying to add them altogether in one stew creates one sloppy and messy casserole. Ever hear the phase "You can't please everyone?" and it is very true. I believe when designing a game or feature, you have to pick on what sort of player type you want to please. Saying "I want to please everyone." just isn't going to cut it in the larger scope of things.
Allow PVE players to customise their characters and rely upon equipment, level and skills. Even allow classes to behave differently without over reliance on balance.
DO NOT RUIN PVE BY BALANCING IT FOR PVP!
If you enjoy pvp you should not want unfair advantages via equipment, level or skills. I LOVE PVP, and I play shooters... I spend a lot of time in Overwatch, and back in the day I spent a lot of time in Halo and Timesplitters. What did I like about these? NO UNFAIR ADVANTAGES... LEVEL PLAYING FIELD... NO PSEUDO CHEATING!
Keep PVE and PVP separate. If you enjoy MMO PVP you are probably bad at PVP.
2. Flag systems - Default is PVE, player can change to PVP and can attack and be attacked by other PVP players. PVE players cant be attacked. Players that have the same party will team up to kill other PVP players (including guild mates) unless they are party allies. PVP players can attack npc and capture town, castle, nodes, caravans
3. This will lead to spying. Who cares its just a game anyway. Win lose doesn't matter, what matter is more people playing it.
4. PVP matchmaking SPVP GW2 style for hardcore pvp players
Am I missing something here? Isn't this exactly what WoW has?
1. Open World PvP. Yup. You can PvP anywhere in WoW.
2. Flag System. Yup. If you don't want to PvP on a PvE server, just don't flag for it. Once you are flagged, however, you are fair game for faction PvP. NPC can be attacked, essentially wiping out an entire node's NPC population. Yup, you can flip areas, castles, towers to your faction.
3. Spying? Spying in WoW? Say it isn't so.
4. PvP matchmaking. Ya, rated BGs and stuff, but whatever.
Surprisingly, WoW does have PvP and PvE players playing side by side.
TL;DR: Not sure this suggestion breaks any new ground.
Having open world PvE is the right idea, but PvP will ultimately only work if everyone wants to PvP. You cannot have forms of PvE progression in a PvP game, without the ability to actually fight over it.
PVP players can capture towns. PVE players can kills mobs and world boss
1. What's to stop players from switching to PvE, running to the center of an enemy town, flagging themselves, and slaughtering the enemy PvP players?
2. What's the point of capturing towns if you can't enforce rules, taxes, prohibited areas, etc?
its exactly how the Star Wars Galaxies had made the city invasions, was a brilliant idea for rewards and achievements. The guy he didnt explain it all OR he thinks he is the 1st that thought that idea.
fan of SWG, XCOM, Defiance, Global Agenda, Need For Speed, all Star Wars single player games. And waiting the darn STAR CITIZEN
Having open world PvE is the right idea, but PvP will ultimately only work if everyone wants to PvP. You cannot have forms of PvE progression in a PvP game, without the ability to actually fight over it.
PVP players can capture towns. PVE players can kills mobs and world boss
1. What's to stop players from switching to PvE, running to the center of an enemy town, flagging themselves, and slaughtering the enemy PvP players?
2. What's the point of capturing towns if you can't enforce rules, taxes, prohibited areas, etc?
its exactly how the Star Wars Galaxies had made the city invasions, was a brilliant idea for rewards and achievements. The guy he didnt explain it all OR he thinks he is the 1st that thought that idea.
players cant change flag inside a city. problem solved.
and also, pvp caravan give more golds than pve caravan. like pvp get 50 golds and pve caravans get 5 golds. high risk high rewards.
There is no middleground. Really. PvPers and PvErs just have different mindsets in how they play a video game. PvPers in general get the thrill of the competition when directly facing against another human being and beating them in exciting game play.
PvErs don't have to be casuals or non-competitive they just have a different approach to gaming. They aren't infatuated with the idea of winning directly and aren't maybe after that quick "rush" like PvPers tend to have. Not to say you cannot enjoy both PvE and PvP but a person who solely plays PvE or solely plays PvP are often very different personalities.
Trying to add them altogether in one stew creates one sloppy and messy casserole. Ever hear the phase "You can't please everyone?" and it is very true. I believe when designing a game or feature, you have to pick on what sort of player type you want to please. Saying "I want to please everyone." just isn't going to cut it in the larger scope of things.
/my two cents
I am not convinced that you can't do it, but it certainly is very hard.
PvP and PvP both need to be equally fun in a mixed game, and the game needs to be equally fun for all players, not just a few. That is the hardest part.
The second hardest part is that you need totally new mechanics for it to work. First of all the same strategy needs to be valid against humans and mobs, that either means that your AI need to act like a real human or that taunts works at players as well as mobs. Secondly, you need all fights to be challenging, you can't let another player autowin a fight because he is 10 levels over or have tier 99 gear.
Thirdly, you need a way to discourage zerging.
I think the main reason that most MMOers think PvP suck is because unlike an FPS game most fights are neither fun nor challenging in a MMO. Level, gear and zerging usually means a fight is over before it is started. But MMORPGs need some progression while still keeping combat fun and unpredictable.
Making a battlefield MMOFPS with no progression would be easy and probably sell great but it wouldn't be a MMORPG.
My opinion is that it is possible to mix PvE and PvP but if you can't solve the problems I stated above it is not worth trying, you will waste resources you can better spend on the gameplay you actually do good and get a far worse game for the majority of the players.
I think most people that play MMOs enjoy PvP in other genres, like FPS, RTS or similar and that means it is possible to make them enjoy PvP in MMOs as well. But just because something is possible doesn't make it easy or cheap, we could already put humans on Mars but it have been too expensive and risky.
There is no middleground. Really. PvPers and PvErs just have different mindsets in how they play a video game. PvPers in general get the thrill of the competition when directly facing against another human being and beating them in exciting game play.
PvErs don't have to be casuals or non-competitive they just have a different approach to gaming. They aren't infatuated with the idea of winning directly and aren't maybe after that quick "rush" like PvPers tend to have. Not to say you cannot enjoy both PvE and PvP but a person who solely plays PvE or solely plays PvP are often very different personalities.
Trying to add them altogether in one stew creates one sloppy and messy casserole. Ever hear the phase "You can't please everyone?" and it is very true. I believe when designing a game or feature, you have to pick on what sort of player type you want to please. Saying "I want to please everyone." just isn't going to cut it in the larger scope of things.
/my two cents
I am not convinced that you can't do it, but it certainly is very hard.
PvP and PvP both need to be equally fun in a mixed game, and the game needs to be equally fun for all players, not just a few. That is the hardest part.
The second hardest part is that you need totally new mechanics for it to work. First of all the same strategy needs to be valid against humans and mobs, that either means that your AI need to act like a real human or that taunts works at players as well as mobs. Secondly, you need all fights to be challenging, you can't let another player autowin a fight because he is 10 levels over or have tier 99 gear.
Thirdly, you need a way to discourage zerging.
I think the main reason that most MMOers think PvP suck is because unlike an FPS game most fights are neither fun nor challenging in a MMO. Level, gear and zerging usually means a fight is over before it is started. But MMORPGs need some progression while still keeping combat fun and unpredictable.
Making a battlefield MMOFPS with no progression would be easy and probably sell great but it wouldn't be a MMORPG.
My opinion is that it is possible to mix PvE and PvP but if you can't solve the problems I stated above it is not worth trying, you will waste resources you can better spend on the gameplay you actually do good and get a far worse game for the majority of the players.
I think most people that play MMOs enjoy PvP in other genres, like FPS, RTS or similar and that means it is possible to make them enjoy PvP in MMOs as well. But just because something is possible doesn't make it easy or cheap, we could already put humans on Mars but it have been too expensive and risky.
PVP and PVE players have many in commons. in fact, they can be the same person.
Look at me it depends on my mood. When i want to do PVP, i prefer a balanced game. Where i can win and i can lose to the better players. PVP should reward the losing player as well for participating.
When i play PVE, most of the time its casual. mobs must be easy that i can defeat it. Meanwhile, boss monster a little bit hard so i can enjoy it with groups.
Nowadays i play PVP in GW2 (SPVP,WVW) very casually. i dont care losing, because i get reward too when losing. What matters is, i see a community, i see other players, its not dead game, like archeage, there is no other players 90% of time.
The problem with most in discussions such as these is they assume there are only PVE'rs and PVP'rs, when that isn't the case at all. Just because someone likes PVP, doesn't mean they like open world unlimited PVP. Just because someone prefers PVE doesn't mean they wouldn't mind dabbling in some PVP once in a while. There are games that cater mostly to PVE and some to PVP, there is still plenty of room for middle ground games.
PVP and PVE players have many in commons. in fact, they can be the same person.
Look at me it depends on my mood. When i want to do PVP, i prefer a balanced game. Where i can win and i can lose to the better players. PVP should reward the losing player as well for participating.
When i play PVE, most of the time its casual. mobs must be easy that i can defeat it. Meanwhile, boss monster a little bit hard so i can enjoy it with groups.
Nowadays i play PVP in GW2 (SPVP,WVW) very casually. i dont care losing, because i get reward too when losing. What matters is, i see a community, i see other players, its not dead game, like archeage, there is no other players 90% of time.
Yeah, I PvP as well but we are far away from the majority of players.
But GW2 does not have open world PvP. Actually, if it had PvP servers it would work better there then in most MMOs since the downleveling mechanics and low gear dependance would make the combat better then in most MMOs but they would still have to add PvP content.
The whole idea that you randomly go out and kill players for little reason sucks, even faction based PvP still needs plenty of work to actually make fun PvP. The whole idea that you can slap a PvP server on top of PvE games is just terrible.
PVP and PVE players have many in commons. in fact, they can be the same person.
Look at me it depends on my mood. When i want to do PVP, i prefer a balanced game. Where i can win and i can lose to the better players. PVP should reward the losing player as well for participating.
When i play PVE, most of the time its casual. mobs must be easy that i can defeat it. Meanwhile, boss monster a little bit hard so i can enjoy it with groups.
Nowadays i play PVP in GW2 (SPVP,WVW) very casually. i dont care losing, because i get reward too when losing. What matters is, i see a community, i see other players, its not dead game, like archeage, there is no other players 90% of time.
Yeah, I PvP as well but we are far away from the majority of players.
But GW2 does not have open world PvP. Actually, if it had PvP servers it would work better there then in most MMOs since the downleveling mechanics and low gear dependance would make the combat better then in most MMOs but they would still have to add PvP content.
The whole idea that you randomly go out and kill players for little reason sucks, even faction based PvP still needs plenty of work to actually make fun PvP. The whole idea that you can slap a PvP server on top of PvE games is just terrible.
I personally think the worst case scenario is split servers. I figure many who spend time doing both PVP and PVE feel that way. It splinters the player base, creates a stupid stigma between players (as we see in this thread), leads to merge after merge. And usually means the PVP portion will be a no man's land with a toxic community (which is where many probably get their idea of MMO PVP as seen in this thread)...
With options like Flags, PVP zones, etc.. there's no real reason to splinter the player base and the games are usually better for avoiding it. (UO, DAOC, SWG, ESO, EVE, MXO) etc... All of what i view as the best MMORPGs avoided split servers and had both PVE and PVP options.
The best guilds I've been in have also been made up of both types of players.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I personally think the worst case scenario is split servers. I figure many who spend time doing both PVP and PVE feel that way. It splinters the player base, creates a stupid stigma between players (as we see in this thread), leads to merge after merge. And usually means the PVP portion will be a no man's land with a toxic community (which is where many probably get their idea of MMO PVP as seen in this thread)...
With options like Flags, PVP zones, etc.. there's no real reason to splinter the player base and the games are usually better for avoiding it. (UO, DAOC, SWG, ESO, EVE, MXO) etc... All of what i view as the best MMORPGs avoided split servers and had both PVE and PVP options.
The best guilds I've been in have also been made up of both types of players.
The flags as we said earlier generally works poorly, people flag on and off so they can stand in PvE and wait for a mob to beat down your life only to switch the flag and jump you at the just right/wrong moment. And we have discussed solutions for that earlier but they are no optimal solution.
PvP zones also have your already stated problem: They still split the community, the same can be said about instanced PvP.
I do agree that a game that have a variety of players is most fun but all the players deserves equally good quality of the content. Usually the PvP crowd get the crap even if we seen other games where the opposite is true (like WAR).
That is why I feel a guild war mechanics is the best instead, guild declare war with a time limit and get objectives to fulfill (like kill 50 players from the other guild, successfully attack the other guilds keep or whatever) and the guild fulfilling the objective gets a bonus, the loser loses reputation. All your guldmembers will be permanently PvP flagged with the enemy guild but if you don't want any PvP you just stay away from guilds that PvP.
You could make it more advanced by only allowing guilds with certain reputation to war eachother and show the other guilds membership number, people who been online the last month and average level before you accept the war.
The best way to combine them has been around for 15 years: you have large areas free from PVP and some areas with it. Story wise it works if you think of it as war zones.
If you want PVP everywhere you don't really want to play PVP war games, you want a murder simulator.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
The best way to combine them has been around for 15 years: you have large areas free from PVP and some areas with it. Story wise it works if you think of it as war zones.
If you want PVP everywhere you don't really want to play PVP war games, you want a murder simulator.
Funny enough have that never been popular with either the PvE or the PvP crowd.
I agree about your second point though, full free for all PvP is a murder simulator that will get very few players, but comparing your favored system with the worst possible is making things easy for you.
Full open world PvP (everyone always are PvP flagged) only works large scale if you do a Battlefield or CoD styled MMOFPS with zero or close to zero progression. And even there would you need faction based PvP/RvR for it to work.
Well, there might be other ways to get it to work as well but nothing that ever been tried, we have discussed it in earlier threads and some ideas seems possible but incredible hard and no-one have been even close so far.
The best way to combine them has been around for 15 years: you have large areas free from PVP and some areas with it. Story wise it works if you think of it as war zones.
If you want PVP everywhere you don't really want to play PVP war games, you want a murder simulator.
Funny enough have that never been popular with either the PvE or the PvP crowd.
DAoC, GW2 and ESO would beg to differ.
Flagging systems just feel silly and artificially gamy to me while PVP zones make much more sense because wars, are typically contained to specific locations while the rest of the world carries on in its more or less civilized fashion.
And don't even get me started on time limited team vs. team PVP. That's fine for Mobas and other games not trying to simulate a whole world experience but that's just reducing PVP to a sport.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
I personally think the worst case scenario is split servers. I figure many who spend time doing both PVP and PVE feel that way. It splinters the player base, creates a stupid stigma between players (as we see in this thread), leads to merge after merge. And usually means the PVP portion will be a no man's land with a toxic community (which is where many probably get their idea of MMO PVP as seen in this thread)...
With options like Flags, PVP zones, etc.. there's no real reason to splinter the player base and the games are usually better for avoiding it. (UO, DAOC, SWG, ESO, EVE, MXO) etc... All of what i view as the best MMORPGs avoided split servers and had both PVE and PVP options.
The best guilds I've been in have also been made up of both types of players.
The flags as we said earlier generally works poorly, people flag on and off so they can stand in PvE and wait for a mob to beat down your life only to switch the flag and jump you at the just right/wrong moment. And we have discussed solutions for that earlier but they are no optimal solution.
PvP zones also have your already stated problem: They still split the community, the same can be said about instanced PvP.
I do agree that a game that have a variety of players is most fun but all the players deserves equally good quality of the content. Usually the PvP crowd get the crap even if we seen other games where the opposite is true (like WAR).
That is why I feel a guild war mechanics is the best instead, guild declare war with a time limit and get objectives to fulfill (like kill 50 players from the other guild, successfully attack the other guilds keep or whatever) and the guild fulfilling the objective gets a bonus, the loser loses reputation. All your guldmembers will be permanently PvP flagged with the enemy guild but if you don't want any PvP you just stay away from guilds that PvP.
You could make it more advanced by only allowing guilds with certain reputation to war eachother and show the other guilds membership number, people who been online the last month and average level before you accept the war.
The flag issue is easily remedied by timers (which worked fine in SWG). There was no instant ability to unflag.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
As others have pointed out - the best way is to keep PvP players in PvP games and PvE players in PvE games.
I've been saying this for ages. But it is not as simple as saying there is a distinctive PvP crowd and a PvE crowd. Yes there are people that only like PvE games and some others that like only PvP games. But there are also many people who like both, but they don't like to see them featuring in the same game.
I love both PvE and PvP games, but even so, I don't like the 2 styles mixed together because they devalue each style strong points. That's why some of my favorite games are so extreme, EQ for PvE and Darkfall for PvP.
Funny enough have that never been popular with either the PvE or the PvP crowd.
DAoC, GW2 and ESO would beg to differ.
Flagging systems just feel silly and artificially gamy to me while PVP zones make much more sense because wars, are typically contained to specific locations while the rest of the world carries on in its more or less civilized fashion.
And don't even get me started on time limited team vs. team PVP. That's fine for Mobas and other games not trying to simulate a whole world experience but that's just reducing PVP to a sport.
Those games have separate instanced "massive" PvP just like Wows battlegrounds even if it is at a larger scale. But fine, if you mean that it works acceptable.
With zoned PvP one usually think that some or many regular zones have PvP, the RvR of games like DaoC and GW2 give you specific PvP based missions just for the zones. It is rare that someone enters a zone like that for PvE reasons.
Separate PvP from PvE on the same server but different places do exist in more then a few games but it still split ups the playerbase pretty badly and while it isn't the disaster of a regular PvP server I think it can be done better.
Funny enough have that never been popular with either the PvE or the PvP crowd.
DAoC, GW2 and ESO would beg to differ.
Flagging systems just feel silly and artificially gamy to me while PVP zones make much more sense because wars, are typically contained to specific locations while the rest of the world carries on in its more or less civilized fashion.
And don't even get me started on time limited team vs. team PVP. That's fine for Mobas and other games not trying to simulate a whole world experience but that's just reducing PVP to a sport.
Those games have separate instanced "massive" PvP just like Wows battlegrounds even if it is at a larger scale. But fine, if you mean that it works acceptable.
With zoned PvP one usually think that some or many regular zones have PvP, the RvR of games like DaoC and GW2 give you specific PvP based missions just for the zones. It is rare that someone enters a zone like that for PvE reasons.
Separate PvP from PvE on the same server but different places do exist in more then a few games but it still split ups the playerbase pretty badly and while it isn't the disaster of a regular PvP server I think it can be done better.
Nothing like BGs. They were and are 24/7 persistent and that's an important part of the attraction and what separates them from WOW BGs. ESO has timeframes (1 week, 1 month) for keeping score and getting certain rewards based on that but if you happen to be in Cyrodiil when the clock ticks all that you will notice is that you have mail with those campaign rewards - everything else continues just as it was a minute ago.
DAoC did have a few quests (not that it had many quests to begin with lol) that sent you to the frontiers and even ESO has some reasons for the mostly PVE players to go there for at least a short time since there are a few abilities that are useful in even the highest tier trial raids (Warhorn more than any other) that can only be unlocked through PVP.
As for doing it better... yeah I'm all for that. Still waiting
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
hehe I remember spies in SWG, made the game more fun. Pay the crafter or entertainer 1 mil credits to spy for you.The whole "Blue name opposing faction and neutral" thing was a good mechanic as well.
I just think people like easy kills these days without having to actually "think" so a system like that would cause major tears. But it's better than an empty game like most of these OWPvP games eventually become after people become bored.
Absurd argument. In fact LoL has more players than all these games combined.
LoL is in a completely different genre. MOBAs =/= MMOs
Most instanced multiplayer games have as much or even less players than mobas per instance. So I do not see what is the great difference. Well, if you call only the open world games MMOs, you are right, but this is not the case.
MMOs require two things to be defined as such: meaningful progression and an open world. Neither is found in LoL.
I agree that heavily instanced 'lobby' games like Vindictus should not be called MMORPGs, but instead MORPGs (multiplayer online role playing games).
Absurd argument. In fact LoL has more players than all these games combined.
LoL is in a completely different genre. MOBAs =/= MMOs
Most instanced multiplayer games have as much or even less players than mobas per instance. So I do not see what is the great difference. Well, if you call only the open world games MMOs, you are right, but this is not the case.
MMOs require two things to be defined as such: meaningful progression and an open world. Neither is found in LoL.
I agree that heavily instanced 'lobby' games like Vindictus should not be called MMORPGs, but instead MORPGs (multiplayer online role playing games).
The Mobas have progression system. What do you mean by meaningful, as I do not find any meaning in the most so called MMOs, where you get level/gear to fight something, and then you get rank like in the Mobas. Well, there are very few games where the PvP and the PvE have some multiplayer long term point and limited effect on the world. None of these above actually.
Progression doesn't matter in MOBAs. If an e-sports superstar starts from scratch in their favourite MOBA, they're still going to be an e-sports superstar and carry their entire team.
Not being able to do that (having at least some progression tied to your account) is MEANINGFUL progression.
Comments
PvErs don't have to be casuals or non-competitive they just have a different approach to gaming. They aren't infatuated with the idea of winning directly and aren't maybe after that quick "rush" like PvPers tend to have. Not to say you cannot enjoy both PvE and PvP but a person who solely plays PvE or solely plays PvP are often very different personalities.
Trying to add them altogether in one stew creates one sloppy and messy casserole. Ever hear the phase "You can't please everyone?" and it is very true. I believe when designing a game or feature, you have to pick on what sort of player type you want to please. Saying "I want to please everyone." just isn't going to cut it in the larger scope of things.
/my two cents
Allow PVE players to customise their characters and rely upon equipment, level and skills. Even allow classes to behave differently without over reliance on balance.
DO NOT RUIN PVE BY BALANCING IT FOR PVP!
If you enjoy pvp you should not want unfair advantages via equipment, level or skills. I LOVE PVP, and I play shooters... I spend a lot of time in Overwatch, and back in the day I spent a lot of time in Halo and Timesplitters. What did I like about these? NO UNFAIR ADVANTAGES... LEVEL PLAYING FIELD... NO PSEUDO CHEATING!
Keep PVE and PVP separate. If you enjoy MMO PVP you are probably bad at PVP.
1. Open World PvP. Yup. You can PvP anywhere in WoW.
2. Flag System. Yup. If you don't want to PvP on a PvE server, just don't flag for it. Once you are flagged, however, you are fair game for faction PvP. NPC can be attacked, essentially wiping out an entire node's NPC population. Yup, you can flip areas, castles, towers to your faction.
3. Spying? Spying in WoW? Say it isn't so.
4. PvP matchmaking. Ya, rated BGs and stuff, but whatever.
Surprisingly, WoW does have PvP and PvE players playing side by side.
TL;DR: Not sure this suggestion breaks any new ground.
and also, pvp caravan give more golds than pve caravan. like pvp get 50 golds and pve caravans get 5 golds. high risk high rewards.
PvP and PvP both need to be equally fun in a mixed game, and the game needs to be equally fun for all players, not just a few. That is the hardest part.
The second hardest part is that you need totally new mechanics for it to work.
First of all the same strategy needs to be valid against humans and mobs, that either means that your AI need to act like a real human or that taunts works at players as well as mobs.
Secondly, you need all fights to be challenging, you can't let another player autowin a fight because he is 10 levels over or have tier 99 gear.
Thirdly, you need a way to discourage zerging.
I think the main reason that most MMOers think PvP suck is because unlike an FPS game most fights are neither fun nor challenging in a MMO. Level, gear and zerging usually means a fight is over before it is started. But MMORPGs need some progression while still keeping combat fun and unpredictable.
Making a battlefield MMOFPS with no progression would be easy and probably sell great but it wouldn't be a MMORPG.
My opinion is that it is possible to mix PvE and PvP but if you can't solve the problems I stated above it is not worth trying, you will waste resources you can better spend on the gameplay you actually do good and get a far worse game for the majority of the players.
I think most people that play MMOs enjoy PvP in other genres, like FPS, RTS or similar and that means it is possible to make them enjoy PvP in MMOs as well. But just because something is possible doesn't make it easy or cheap, we could already put humans on Mars but it have been too expensive and risky.
Look at me it depends on my mood. When i want to do PVP, i prefer a balanced game. Where i can win and i can lose to the better players. PVP should reward the losing player as well for participating.
When i play PVE, most of the time its casual. mobs must be easy that i can defeat it. Meanwhile, boss monster a little bit hard so i can enjoy it with groups.
Nowadays i play PVP in GW2 (SPVP,WVW) very casually. i dont care losing, because i get reward too when losing. What matters is, i see a community, i see other players, its not dead game, like archeage, there is no other players 90% of time.
But GW2 does not have open world PvP. Actually, if it had PvP servers it would work better there then in most MMOs since the downleveling mechanics and low gear dependance would make the combat better then in most MMOs but they would still have to add PvP content.
The whole idea that you randomly go out and kill players for little reason sucks, even faction based PvP still needs plenty of work to actually make fun PvP. The whole idea that you can slap a PvP server on top of PvE games is just terrible.
With options like Flags, PVP zones, etc.. there's no real reason to splinter the player base and the games are usually better for avoiding it. (UO, DAOC, SWG, ESO, EVE, MXO) etc... All of what i view as the best MMORPGs avoided split servers and had both PVE and PVP options.
The best guilds I've been in have also been made up of both types of players.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
PvE and wait for a mob to beat down your life only to switch the flag and jump you at the just right/wrong moment. And we have discussed solutions for that earlier but they are no optimal solution.
PvP zones also have your already stated problem: They still split the community, the same can be said about instanced PvP.
I do agree that a game that have a variety of players is most fun but all the players deserves equally good quality of the content. Usually the PvP crowd get the crap even if we seen other games where the opposite is true (like WAR).
That is why I feel a guild war mechanics is the best instead, guild declare war with a time limit and get objectives to fulfill (like kill 50 players from the other guild, successfully attack the other guilds keep or whatever) and the guild fulfilling the objective gets a bonus, the loser loses reputation. All your guldmembers will be permanently PvP flagged with the enemy guild but if you don't want any PvP you just stay away from guilds that PvP.
You could make it more advanced by only allowing guilds with certain reputation to war eachother and show the other guilds membership number, people who been online the last month and average level before you accept the war.
If you want PVP everywhere you don't really want to play PVP war games, you want a murder simulator.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I agree about your second point though, full free for all PvP is a murder simulator that will get very few players, but comparing your favored system with the worst possible is making things easy for you.
Full open world PvP (everyone always are PvP flagged) only works large scale if you do a Battlefield or CoD styled MMOFPS with zero or close to zero progression. And even there would you need faction based PvP/RvR for it to work.
Well, there might be other ways to get it to work as well but nothing that ever been tried, we have discussed it in earlier threads and some ideas seems possible but incredible hard and no-one have been even close so far.
Flagging systems just feel silly and artificially gamy to me while PVP zones make much more sense because wars, are typically contained to specific locations while the rest of the world carries on in its more or less civilized fashion.
And don't even get me started on time limited team vs. team PVP. That's fine for Mobas and other games not trying to simulate a whole world experience but that's just reducing PVP to a sport.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
But it is not as simple as saying there is a distinctive PvP crowd and a PvE crowd.
Yes there are people that only like PvE games and some others that like only PvP games.
But there are also many people who like both, but they don't like to see them featuring in the same game.
I love both PvE and PvP games, but even so, I don't like the 2 styles mixed together because they devalue each style strong points.
That's why some of my favorite games are so extreme, EQ for PvE and Darkfall for PvP.
With zoned PvP one usually think that some or many regular zones have PvP, the RvR of games like DaoC and GW2 give you specific PvP based missions just for the zones. It is rare that someone enters a zone like that for PvE reasons.
Separate PvP from PvE on the same server but different places do exist in more then a few games but it still split ups the playerbase pretty badly and while it isn't the disaster of a regular PvP server I think it can be done better.
DAoC did have a few quests (not that it had many quests to begin with lol) that sent you to the frontiers and even ESO has some reasons for the mostly PVE players to go there for at least a short time since there are a few abilities that are useful in even the highest tier trial raids (Warhorn more than any other) that can only be unlocked through PVP.
As for doing it better... yeah I'm all for that. Still waiting
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I just think people like easy kills these days without having to actually "think" so a system like that would cause major tears. But it's better than an empty game like most of these OWPvP games eventually become after people become bored.
PVP games are not really popular. PVE rules the MMO gender. End of story.
So yeah, PVE with PVP, looks good to me. As long as you can flag.
What are the most popular mmo games?
Final Fantasy XIV
The Secret World
Elder Scrolls Online
None of them are open PVP. Sorry but the market doesn't lie.
And look at the future releases..
From MMORPG.com.
I agree that heavily instanced 'lobby' games like Vindictus should not be called MMORPGs, but instead MORPGs (multiplayer online role playing games).
Not being able to do that (having at least some progression tied to your account) is MEANINGFUL progression.