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Battlegrounds is the most non-immersive feature to hit MMOs.
Dauzqul
Member RarePosts: 1,982
massive [mas iv] - Extremely large in scale, amount, or degree.
What is massive about 8v8 Instanced PvP? What is massive about replaying the same 3-5 small zones over and over again?
As of now, I feel forced into playing Battlegrounds due to gear incentive. If all rewards were removed from Battlegrounds, how many people do you think would still play them? Would you still play them?
Aren't MMOs supposed to be immersive, surprising, and completely unpredictable? None of these characteristics are present in Battlegrounds. Battlegrounds are redundant - a rinse and repeat gear-grind addiction. Battlegrounds are plastic - a cheap and simple way for developers to add Player Vs. Player.
I remember EverQuest II had an Instanced Arena near the launch of their game. However, it was almost never used. When it was occupied, it was nothing more but a skill-testing experience amung guild mates - the way it should be. It wasn't until they added "Rewards" that the Arenas were played on a daily basis.
I understand that Battlegrounds are helpful to PvE players. Thus, if Battlegrounds must exist, they should only reside on PvE Servers.
Comments
By this I mean wow style, no problem with the persistent style bgs from daoc.
I have already decided I will never again play an instanced battleground in an MMO. The reality is, instanced MMO battlegrounds are vastly inferior to FPS games, so why bother with the low-rent MMO version of them. I've listed in another thread before the MANY areas that a modern FPS is vastly superior to the current implementation of MMO battlegrounds. I won't rehash it here, but MMO battlegrounds are basically stepping back in time to a mid 1990's FPS.
I won't give any more lazy MMO developers who focus on battlegrounds any more money. Open world PVP MMO is the only game I will buy moving forward in the MMO genre. The modern FPS makes MMO battlegrounds look utterly pathetic.
GW2 "built from the ground up with microtransactions in mind"
1) Cash->Gems->Gold->Influence->WvWvWBoosts = PAY2WIN
2) Mystic Chests = Crass in-game cash shop advertisements
I think the same argument could be made for instances in general, not just battlegrounds / warfronts / warzones / arenas.
Why dont we make a poll. I suggest these:
Instances
Inability to attack other players anywhere.
Auction Houses
Fast Travel
Each one of these hit a specific type of player, Achiever, Explorer, Killer, Socializer.
I thought there was a growing popularity for instanced pvp battles. Isee more and more games that allow people individually and in teams fight each other.
I imagine they represent a familiar area where players can learn strategies, and not just contingencies, as they battle other players.
Besides, many games have tried open PvP and unless its an investment to engage someone, madmax-ish mobs of players quickly rule the land, and majority of players quit in droves. When they quit, the mobs end up quitting soon after.
True, open PvP is more realistic, but it requires a great deal of sandbox like defense building to create the temporary security that all players want.
Ask any vet, they dont want to fight every day. They want to go somewhere, enage the enemy, then get the hell out of there to a safe location where they can celebrate, mourn their losses, and heal up.
Stress is only fun in short intervals.
-Blitz
Werewolf Online(R) - Lead Developer
I disagree. Cash shops and esport pvp are the most immersion breaking plagues to hit mmos.
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
I disagree to a point, Instanced PvP i hate, and the one that really gave the the grudge was SW, but battle grounds i like, cause when i hear battlegrounds (or read) i think of DAoC battlegrounds, i know i refrence DAoC a lot but their PvP system is amazing, so every 5 levels you entered a new battleground, and i can think of 4 in general that were LOADED full of people, early lion's den, lvl 5-9, Thidranki, 20-24, Molvik, 35-39, and Leirvik, 40-44, now with these your character had new skills, new abilities, so it was really a way to test your toon, lion's den was just the basics, hey im a warrior, or healer, or stealther. Then Thid was more, ok, now i kinda get a REAL taste for my class, minus the Realm Ability stuff, get better stealth, Better Counter Styles, more suppression or Dps spells, more of a mix, Molvik took that a step further, BUT all the assasins could climb walls, so that changed the entire feel, and leirvik added in some REAL Realm Abilities (kill enemies, get realm points, rank up realm rank, spend points on realm abilities). I HATE instanced PvP, but a level based Battleground is AWESOME, it really allows you to test your toon. Think of it as WvWvW in GW2 but for certain levels, and one small keep in the center, so it's smaller, more action packed, but NOT instanced to where its this 8 vs that 8, over, and over, yes it's the same "map" but never the same "scenario"
The "Youtube Pro": Someone who watches video's on said subject, and obviously has a full understanding of what is being said about such subject.
The good in instances far outweigh the bad. Respawing mobs and static world are the most immersion breaking thing in MMOs imo.
EDIT: By static world I mean that you can save a damsel in distress and she'll be in trouble again the second you turn in the quest.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Nah .. a lot of the FPS are just running and shooting. I would MUCH rather play a BG where i can use different class skills.
In fact, I will go queue a BG now.
I'll agree. Instanced battlegrounds, and to a degree, instances in general damage the virtual world feel of a game, killing immersion.
I won't say that nothing in a game should be instanced, but because they take players out of the world (defeating the purpose of a massive world and playerbase), they should be used very judiciously, instead of being the focus of MMORPGs, which is what they have become in most themepark games.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
Same as others, when I hear Battlegrounds I think of Thid & Molvik. Where did we go wrong?
I miss looking over my shoulder every few mins to see if im about to be ganked, World PvP isnt the same in any game anymore, but I must say its very much alive in DCUO, people drop outta the sky to kill you XD
As for BG's I do agree, but they are the only real source of fast PvP we can get
.
The "Youtube Pro": Someone who watches video's on said subject, and obviously has a full understanding of what is being said about such subject.
Let's put it this way: Anything that involves waiting in a queue and then being teleported to an instance is immersion-breaking. This goes for battlegrounds AND the LFG tool. Both have their reasons for existing, but both are HORRIBLE for immersion and community-bulding.
I'm with you. Unfortunately the trend isn't going to change any time soon.
Look at upcoming games like TERA where the whole political system revolves around the arena and open world PvP will mean nothing.
The only game out there that I consider truely "massive" is Eve. One server, no instances, no arenas / battlegrounds and you're not completely safe unless you're docked.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
I don't want to be "immersed in a virtual world" either. I want large scale wars that are not in a sterile predictable environment with predetermined sides and an arbitrary objective that has no meaning outside the battlegrounds.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
Agreed & amen.
Single worse mmorpg pvp aspect ever (together with Arenas and similar pvp in a can scenarios).
Devs can easily build insta-pvp solutions on a more natural, open and massive scale like WvWvW in gw2 or what Illum was supposed to bring in Swtor, sadly both games (and most others) still feel the need to fulfill that "battleground obligation" in addition.
edit: WAR was a tragic example: a world full of RVR areas and still adding a range of battlegrounds with great rewards to soak up half of the pvp' ing player base ... how silly was that? :- /
I guess they are all convinced that us players really expect them. V_V
Problem with BG's? If they aren't rewarding enough noone will play them so they will always be very worthwhile and subsequently locking up a big chunk of the player base in repetitive, instanced pvp. Players will then cry for more and more rewards to justify their mindnumbing grind.
It's a cheap, repetitive, unimmersive and unnatural form of pvp for mmorpgs and I would welcome the day when developers finally get that.
In regards to Swtor I wish Bioware would have developed Ilum before they went and put resources and time into battlegrounds instead of what they did; adding the massive, more open kind of pvp as an afterthought ... (and failing badly at it).
edit: one of the great aspects of EVE: it doesn't have BG's, thank god. (Except for the yearly alliance tournament that is).
My brand new bloggity blog.
yeah i also get a feeling from playing various MMOS that players enjoy battlegrounds, i myself enjoy them on ocassion. Even though i am mostly PVE guy. Battlegrounds are popular and i don't see them going anywhere in future.
The use of instances is the worst imo (and I hate arenas, and am tired of scenarios also). EQ ramped it up, and WoW took it and ran with it. It is ok in very small doses, but those instances are places where mechanics could easily make them not needed.
Seems most dungeons/content where you see other people are getting rare, wheres the massive multiplayer in that, feels more like a co-op. It so bad now that my wish list is often just for someone to make a mmo with 50% of the dungeons open, which about seems like a pipe dream.
Sure their are bad things with open dungeons, just as their are with scenarios and the boring repeat factor....Open dungeons just seem more alive, dangerous (can be from other players-train or whatever also)...I miss the days of say old EQ, like Karnors Castle, and "train to zone!"...It can be annoying, but in my case, you don't know what you got till its gone...Instances make me snooze.
While I do enjoy arena style gameplay, I agree that instances just defeat the point of an MMO. There is nothing massive about having 10 people in a instance. Hell, there's nothing massive about having 50 people in an instance. Shooters can support up to 64 people maybe even more.
MMOs need big numbers to be considered massive. What a lot of people forget for some reason is that the first two Ms do NOT stand for Massive Multiplayer. It is massiveLY multiplayer. Therefore, the first M does not equal many players. It mean many players in one place.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
I think the argument suggesting that battlegrounds themselves are un-fun or bad for MMOs has been fairly well disproven by the majority and by the major success of MMOs such as WoW. There is plenty of reason to dislike instanced pvp without resorting to hyperbole of how terrible something is because you say so. Both open world and instance pvp have a place in MMOs.
The issue I believe is the difference in how pvp is rewarded and the entire pvp gear grind. It is a vicious grind circle that is really unfun to me. You need pvp gear to have an advantage over your opponents. But your same opponents are accumulating the same gear at the same rate. So you have to maximimize your gear-getting rate to get any sort of advantage over your opponent. So you have to use the MOST EFFECIENT WAY TO OBTAIN PVP GEAR. Which means you have to play instance battlegrounds, because the pvp rewards for open pvp are just non-existant.
So you are stuck competing and going head to head against people over and over again in these instanced battlegrounds. Is this because everyone plays nice in the battlegrounds and there's a significant reduction in open world pvp griefing and other things that players MIGHT stop subscribing over?
Either way... I blame the rewards systems and pvp gear grind before I blame the instanced pvp itself. SWTOR WZs were great fun until you started to get into the pvp gear grind. They need pvp for people who... just want to pvp.
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
Im glad to see people are finally seeing how game-breaking instances and instanced-pvp is.
I've called it years ago, I said by the time the genre has run its course, we will be paying a subscription just to play a fps disguised as a "mmo"
There is no immersion anymore, no sense of danger from world pvp, no thought by devs on HOW to make it work. I am no game developer, but it seems that it is easier to re-hash an old gfx engine and pump out instanced content than it is to write your own engine, or utilize one in an open world format.
I agree as well. Battlegrounds are the most boring type of PVP, and boring type of MMO entertainment.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Battlegrounds don't bother me or affect my level of immersion in a game at all. So I don't agree.
That isn't to say i don't enjoy Open World PvP. Just the argument never held any water whatsoever with me.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.