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What is your idea of meaningful RvR ?
Ulorik
Member UncommonPosts: 179
I just finished a session of WvWvW over in GW2 and it struck me how shallow RvR in this game really is. Basically my day consisted of running around the map non-stop fliiping towers and depots, then an attack on Stonewatch which we held for an hour or so, before the bigger zerg took it off us. But this is just a neverending sameness without any real purpose to it. Ok I got a couple of the new reward levels, but so what?
What is missing for me in this kind of RvR is a meaningful goal to be pursued, and once achieved should give a lasting reward (not just some 1% temporary stat increase), just flipping objectives without end is not my idea of fun.
WAR (before Fortress removal) had this meaningful goal in capturing the enemy capital and being able to enter the highest level PvE instance with the phattest loot, DaoC to some degree had it with Darkness Falls (although not as long lasting).
What I would love to see in CU is something like a central city / dungeon instance to be conquered as the final goal for all RvR. This should take a few days of consistently good RvR play for the winning real to achieve and not just be based on having the bigger zerg. I know that PvE should not be part of CU, but wouldn't it be nice if this final city/dungeon had a massive raid boss in it, that would drop some nice loot - crafting materials - armour skin with bragging rights - home improvement etc., and need a bit of time to figure out.
So thats just a rough and rumble idea about a possibility for meaningful goals in RvR, what would make it meaningful for you?
Comments
Insteadof making insta rewards for keep taking, i'd try to go for a LOSS of something when you lose a keep instead (or a gain of something for as long as oyu own the keep). I'M pretty sure people would run to defend it. As in DAoC relic keeps, where losing that relic meant you lost bonuses both for PvE and PvP.
So instead of going back n forth to capture empty keeps, as a defender you would run to not lose thoses bonuses, and as attackers, you d have to use strategies, coordination and such to be able to capture a keep.
Since most of mmmorpg players strive for loots, rare equipments, money and stuffs, dont insta reward people that capture keeps, give consequence to keep loss..
Give access to certain places with controls of towns/villages, access to other places by taking keeps, and so on. Each main parts of RvR should give different access/bonuses etc.
Bowbow (kob hunter) Infecto (kob cave shammy) and Thurka (troll warrior) on Merlin/Midgard DAoC
Thurka on WAR
I would love there to be a central region that only can be contested by your realm if you own a certain number of lands/castles/forts/whatever.
Whoever owns that central region/city/whatever has access to either (1) a Darkness Falls type PvE location, (2) Unique resource locations that can be harvested, or (3) Unique crafting structures and buildings that allow you to make things you can't make anywhere else (or recruit NPCs you can't recruit anywhere else, such as dragons, trolls, cyclops, giants, etc. to aid your side).
Maybe have multiple of these types of cities scattered around the land that your team needs to capture, build up and hold in order to take advantage of the content there.
I concur with you guys, so I am not going to repeat with you, but I will say, I am hoping to be able to "recruit monsters" too... and maybe even have them turn on you sometimes...
The biggest thing I am looking forward to, which is something which is hard to code... the experience. The closest thing that the experience relates to is the gameplay The gameplay has to be fluid, dynamic, diverse, rewarding, and most of all, fun. Most of us have a DAoC background and trying to explain it, is hard to do, since I know some people I told about and tried it for a day, but it quit, because it "looked old". People nowadays are stuck on the mindset that graphics everything and if it is not ultra-pretty, they won't even bother.
The biggest component of gameplay that has to be spot on, is the combat system. If it is not up to par with at least DAoC, I fear CU may have some problems. To me, this is imperative, since RvR/PvP is going to be the main focus of the game.
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I think if the combat has a good amount of depth and more than one viable way to be successful within it from a character build, group build, and equipment build approach, that alone will make the RvR not meaningful, per se, but definitely make it enjoyable and worth doing over and over. I also agree with loss as a motivator, as mentioned in a previous post.
Crafting and building can be an essential motivator and help make RVR more meaningful also. If players are allowed to build structures, there is the potential there to fight over desirable locations to build a hold or village upon. Resources, also mentioned, could be something worth fighting over. Access to certain types of ore, stone, wood, etc., that is colored or contributes to both the nature of the equipment and/or its appearance would make one of these resource's centers a desirable location to control - especially in a world with item decay.
Ultimately, I think a number of factors can contribute to making RVR meaningful but I've come to the conclusion that an important aspect of it is there must be real "losers" and "winners" in it, even if the effects of loss or victory are reversible in the short term.
For me, the main ways to make keeps more meaningful is to remove the entire "pre built/npc" keeps.
Rather make keeps PLAYER owned, not npc owned. Allow guilds and such to claim plots of lands which tihey can then build keeps onto. Starting out as a simple wooden style keep and then over-time with more money and resources expanding into a small stone keep, all the way up to a bigger castle-likle keep with inner walls/outer walls, etc.
Keeps once built should open up the land around them to allow other players to build structures there, housing, shops, etc. The guild leader (or the people he gives access to) can then setup a city-managing system. Just think of how most RTS games work. Where you can plop down buildings and strategic structures or the Sim City games where you can "zone" an area to allow residental buidings or commerical (IE shops) and plop down your own specific buidlings.
The guild leader (or those he allows) can do these functions, bascially working to "build" their city up, deciding where they place walls, where towers and other guard posts go, stables and other things that can provide a service in their city then they zone off areas that allow other people to build there (houses, shops, etc).
Player homes/shops also over-time as they get more money and funds can upgrade their places.
This to me would make keeps, and the buildings in/around them vitally WAY more important then any keep or structure in any other pvp game. People have tangible connections to them now,t hey know the other people in their cities, and also because of this nature when they come across other keeps/cities (friendly) they'll understand that those are other peoples homesand important aspects, and if they are under siege they understand what is at stake.
Vice versa, if your town falls it creates a much more meaningful penalty and it hurts to lose, but at the same time when you come back from it, re-build, or re-capture your city back (if the enemy realm takes it over) it will make that victory all the more sweeter.
Also on top of this, another key thing to me is VARIETY.
Variety is the spice of life, you need to provide people with different things to do. One aspect in many pvp games (IE GW2) that gets old is just how both meaningless it felt to "flip" keeps, because they just constnatly change hands. There wasn't a ton of other things to do in pvp.
There needs to be other things in RVR that can affect things. Such as resource points where specific resources are (you cant' find anywhere else) which creates a conflict for control. Among supply routes (player ran, no NPC caravans) where the crafters have to transport their resources by and enemy realms can kill/capture the caravan (thus player protection will be welcomed as well as ambushing becoming apart of the RVR conflict).
Providing variety in RVR is one of the key things that I think will help make or break the game, so players don't get into a sense of "repetition" with igameplay and can switch things up in regards to what they are doing.
@Stiler & @Oldskoo,
Yes, yes, and yelling on the top of his lungs "YES!!!"
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Beautiful idea !
Even more so if the game mechanics allowed for these structures to be held and developed over a longer time, lets say even weeks. The longer such a structure had beeen held, the longer it should take to conquer or destroy it again, this way we would have the "loss-motivator" in the game.
Much of the problem with GW 2 comes from the facts that you don't know your enemies on a personal level (names are hidden) and they change every few days. There's no real penalty for losing or reward for winning. If you lose all your keeps, just wait and they'll be reset a few days later. They even took out the relic-like orbs because they were too lazy to fix various exploits players came up with to take them.
So you create meaningful RvR by:
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Meaningful.......the most misused word on forums since "overpowered".
Why do people persist in this odd assertion that anything in a virtual world can and/or must have meaning?
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Becaue when you tie meaningful thing sto pvp you create reasons to do it, along owith consequences for losing.
Without meaningful attachments to pvp, loses, gains, etc become worth less, and things don't carry nearly as much weight. People end up betting bored and move on.
The more depth and meaningful interaction within the game systems ties players to what happens, makes them care about winning/losing. If you lose/gain things you care more then if you simply lose/win nothing and just instantly respawn.
Crafters supplying everything.
Resource nodes in contested areas supplying crafting materials.
Keeps and forts potentially providing benefits to not only harvesting resource nodes, but also providing a means to protect them, thus providing combatants with a very real reason to not only defend theirs, but to capture others.
In this system, there doesn't need to be an arbitrary, superficial system in place to encourage RvR.
It's interdependency at it's best. Don't mess with a RvRer's ability to get geared up. They will fight like demons.
Also, holding control points that matter to the defense of your realm and resources (and deny the same to your enemies) could add something entirely divorced from any silly point progression. It's REAL incentive, not just for you, but your realm.
How is none of this meaningful?
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/PerfArt
Because otherwise you will burn out quickly in game. In a PvE centred game your endgame / raiding / guild progress is what provides the longterm motivation over weeks and months, in a RvR centred game you have to replace this with something else giving you a reason to play over many months.
I think we all want this game to do well as a "spiritual successor" to DaoC and as most of us have played this stuff for many years, we might have a few ideas what keep players motivated in the long run.
Example: WHO, you hear that enemies are moving on a keep!
response....excellent..in ten minutes we will head over their to take it
Totally agree. I made an overly long post on the same subject here:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/380868/On-Player-Only-Construction.html
This whole argument about PvP having meaning makes me think that a lot of people don't actually enjoy PvPing and as a result they need some 'meaningufulness' to it to give them purpose or motivation to play (the dungeon/raid carrot analogy was spot on imo). When I play shooters and RTS, I don't have any need to have a meaning behind what I am doing. I find it fun to blow people up and to outsmart people in a 1v1 game in SC2. The reason why I play is because it is fun and it is competitive and I can improve. Is it so hard to have the same thing for MMOs too? Why does PvP always have to have meaning? Can't it just be competitive and fun?
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
My thoughts on RVR:
Are you in the RVR zone to
1. farm mats and kill other side trying to farm the same?
2. do something to gain a faction bonus, and kill the other side trying to do the same?
3. gain advancement or gear by killing enemy faction?
I think the big thing to aviod is making the reason to be there as a PVE activity. That just turns into both sides doing the PVE and *avoiding* PVP. Should a PVP system be based on avoiding PVP? To me I don't think so.
disclaimed: I suck at PVP and avoid it usually, but have been studying it. I find it sort of fun except random open-world PKs that usually only piss me off.
SKYeXile
TRF - GM - GW2, PS2, WAR, AION, Rift, WoW, WOT....etc...
Future Crew - High Council. Planetside 1 & 2.
Each to their own...if thats your idea of months of entertainment with a game your welcome. I certainly need more then that.
I enjoy RTS games, I enjoy fps games, but MMO's are vastly different.
The MAIN point of many mmo games is that they are set in a presistant online world. Now if you just throw people into it and put no mechanics in place to promote pvp and give reasons behind it , it can quickly get reeptitive.
UO was a great game, my favorite mmo, PVP in it had a meaning behind it. you had reds, anti pkers, guild warfare, you lost everything on you when you died, there was meaning behind it.
Then you have WoW pvp with little to no reasoning behind it (in terms of mechanics). outside of Battlefields in the "open world" the pvp in WoW (at least at the start) got OLD fast, because there was no REASON for it, outside of fighting for hto esake of fighting, there was zero depth to it, you lost nothing, gained nothing, it was like playing rock em sockem robots.
The more depth you give to pvp, the longer lasting it is, it creates variety that impacts and ripples with affects throughotut he world.
One thing that I don't think has been mentioned here that I think helps add to the success of RvR in DAoC was pride. A lot of different things come together for the overall experience, but I think pride is also one of the things DAoC did very well. One of my favorite things that I think is lacking in most current gen MMO's is the announcements of Who killed Who, Who took what keep and claimed it etc.
Kill spam was a part of personal pride. Who didn't want to go out with a PBAE bomb group and get all that kill spam? I'm sure some of you remember Mistwraith kill spam, and just being in awe at times. Or even just going out as a solo shadowblade/infiltrator/nightshade and hoping to get 2 kill spams in a row (or sometimes, just one, if you were like me), showing that you may have been able to take on two players at once and win. Or even getting a kill on a person well known as a good soloer.
There was also group/guild pride. Since you could see player names in kill spam, you know what guilds were out and tearing things up. Xarrio/Maluv kill spam? Crap LA is out. Ghetto/Holajr (i think thats right) kill spam? Dammit, FreeRPs. Lets just sit in MPK or the milegate and just camp. Won't get anything done.
Guild pride came from not only the kill spam on an individual level, but being able to take and claim keeps for your guild. "SuchandSuchGuild has taken control of Caer Sursbrooke" etc. Even the zerg groups were a way to gain pride (of course not everyone agrees, I never liked zerging, but I'm sure some people enjoyed that true army vs army feel, even if some smaller groups had to get destroyed in the process).
Finally, realm pride with the ability to capture relics. I still to this day have never been apart of a relic capture, but I could imagine its probably pretty intense, and pretty damn awesome to be able to take a relic. Not to mention the other realm constantly being taunted with their relic sitting under your control, giving you some sort of bonus.
Obviously, there is more too pride than just that, but that was definitely part of it, and something that doesn't seem to be done anymore in current MMOs. While WoW shows the name of the characters you are fighting, you never actually really see who gets the kill. Maybe if you have a special addon to announce your kills, but only to yourself (or whoever is running the addon). There is no real guild/group pride that I can think of, other than stomping a BG as a premade. But even then, that is instanced, and there are no real spectators and everyone else in your faction is oblivious to anything you just did. And faction pride is limited to very minor skirmishes that happen on the clock, in Tol Barad and Wintergrasp (and these are pretty one sided, guaranteeing a victory for the attacking side half the time).
Again, I feel this is just part of what made me want to RvR, and made it meaningful. Acknowledging my achievements and showing them off as they happened was awesome, felt great, and was a huge incentive to keep trying to repeat it or even one up it. It was like a drug.
One thing that WAR did very well was to have the leaderbords and the statues of the leaders in the capital city.
One way to make this a more permanent achievement could be a sort of "war chronicle" ingame, perhaps in a library of your capital where all the weekly/monthly achievements are recorded for posterity. (Wall of fame?)
But daoc did have things right
Short turn over for df all be it the main purpose was for pve leveling and without pve leveling df will have to have a purpose EVERYONE wants to go there for not just crafters but clearing the instance might be enough ?
Ozek - DAOC
Niix - Other games that sucked