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Is Free For All PvP a Myth? - MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Is Free For All PvP a Myth? - MMORPG.com
This week our own Tim Eisen wonders if FFA PVP is unsustainable while mining EVE and Star Wars Galaxies for clues to a more sustainable PVP experience.
Comments
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
With factions you will get larger battles and if you do it right you will get the faction pride that made DaoC so fun and it is way easier to get the PvE people OP talks about into a game where they belong to a larger faction.
I don't see any FFA PvP ever reaching a million players, none so far have even gotten half that.
How many factions a game should have is a different matter and it depends a bit on the game, 3 or 5 would be my choice.
I think you get more pride from clan/guild vs clan/guild.
I don't think today's audiences have much "faction" pride. I recall in Aion that people on the same side were griefing their own people. Not much prided there.
You get more pride in smaller organizations that actually work together.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Apart from the French revolution which was started for the Lulz's after they all got over hyped on cake or something, bit vague on the history, but there was cake, definitely cake.
My point is FFA PvP still has to have a point, a reason to gel the community, if it does not it is doomed as it will be a shallow experience driven by the lowest of low social animal, Eve does manage some of this well and at the same time not so well in other areas, but yeah it kind of works and why Eve has lasted so long.
I personnel opinion is people screaming they want FFA pvp full loots, are in fact their own worst enemy as every game they get, or pressure to be more FFA full loots and Tbag of the month pics, end up in a nihilistic self absorbed death spiral, and whole groups wander the internet chasing the dragon, but always killing in the end the thing they were searching for.
Ironic much?
DAoC had some of that but even what they had was too abstract and limited to relic ownership. The whole realm got either defensive or offensive buffs depending on relic ownership. This helped everyone including PVErs doing PVE content.
But what if it had other benefits? A bump-up in the loot table? Better gold drops? Faster crafting? Better resource gathering? In other words what if it affected everything you did? You could even include temporary extra bonuses for participating directly in the events that trigger those faction-wide bonuses
And how about making those events less "all or nothing" and more gradual in their effect depending on achieving a variety of both PVE and PVP goals.
Those are just some ideas but the ability to provide incentives for a realm or faction to work together is there without needing to just align yourself for abstract RP reasons.
Of course my cynical side says that developers minds are less likely to go there when they have to spend half their time adding things that are easy to monetize. It's a lot easier and far more profitable when you're in the business of nickles and dimes to sell individuals limited time XP buffs than have the same thing be triggered for everyone by in game events.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
insanely addictive.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I also liked GW2, WvW when I did it for map completion which was an enjoyable challenge.
SWG did a good job with zones and flagging.
Lineage 2, I stayed with this game for a long time because they had a good escape mechanism with blessed escape scrolls, which meant you could fight if you wanted to or instantly port to the nearest town if an assassin tried to kill you while you were grinding mobs, but if you didn't have decent gear you could still be one shotted.
I liked Eve because you were pretty safe once you learned the ropes, yes you took calculated chances sometimes but that was the nature of the game.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Still, I do agree that PvP need a point that isn't "kill everyone weaker and steal their stuff".
There is one element I think you need to add to your list: a self-balancing mechanism.
Open world pvp almost always ends up with a numbers / power imbalance, so I believe games should have some mechanisms in place so that things eventually balance out. It might be NPC guarded bases. It might be keeps with difficult-to-overcome defences. It might be 3+ factions (allowing smaller sides to work together). It could be something more elaborate, like Delving of Fror in the Ettenmoors, or Land of the Dead in WAR - zones that only the winning side can access that contain desired loot, thus encouraging the dominant side to split, resulting in a power shift.
- Must have PvEer. It had me, the Patron Saint of PvE. I played PS1 as a Healer. I would deploy an AMS (the spawn point), then spawn with basic armour and basic weapons and healing and repair tools.
- A Crafted Economy. I considered hacking a Terminal in an enemy base to be crafting or driving an ANT as resource harvesting.
- Rare Resources. Again the ANT.
- Hauling resources. See ANT.
- Safe Spaces. See Towers and Sanctuaries.
- Flat Skill. It had.
- Espionage. It had. With a Cool Down Timer on faction Switching.
I played it like and RPG, even though it was technically an MMOFPS or and MMOARPG.I suppose the only problems it had is gone before most of you were born and not F2P.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
I think you only have to play one game with pvp that is free for all to realise that. Of course what counts as truly FFA is not the same for every gamer. It is what I call 'West Side Story PvP', the smaller side runs away or dies. Without elements of teamplay and co-dependency the game is just a short lived brawl.
No, because they sustain the PvP players. Look at EVE and it's the PvE guys, the miners and builders that make the ships and modules, the ammo etc that the PvP players need so they can happily go around killing people.
It was they same in DAoC and SWG. The crafters made the best gear and sold it to the PvP players. Unless your PvP player is prepared to also PvE and do all that themselves then you need PvE players to do it.
This is why i think my idea would work. Zero pve no levels its all about pvp. As a newbie the tutorial would have you learning the classes by fighting other players. Then when you ready to pick your class you go out into the world battling monsters and player's to get gear drops that make you better. Of course you have player controlled factions. And they could form alliances with each other.
One of the problems with FFA PvP games is that they try to place too many artificial restrictions, rules, penalties, and such in the games. Developers have been trying to make people play FFA PvP a certain way, and that's just not the right way to run FFA PvP games.
The right way to run successful FFA PvP games is by giving players the freedom to make their own rules, and the freedom to create their own politics & drama. It's the difference between nation building and having an all out civil war and letting people decide their own fate and make their own future.
Turbine didn't impose rules & restrictions on players, they didn't force factions or realms, nor did they designate safe zones. So players took charge ingame, and created their own politics, organically.
You would swear your allegiance to a Monarch (like joining a guild). Different Monarchs would align themselves, and they naturally formed 3 factions. The rPK's who would attack anybody and everybody, they are always at war with all guilds. The Anti-PK's who are against random pk's and are trying to keep peace in a chaotic world. And the Honor PK's, your sort of Neutrals, who won't randomly pk you but they are guild-first people, you can land on their kos list if you attack them first. They also aren't shy to attack anybody who encroach on their hunting grounds.
The game didn't create these politics/factions, players did. The game was very much guild-first, it was always your guild vs other guilds. This formed a strong bond between patrons & vassals, stronger than DAOC's realm pride. You fought over hunting grounds, Monarchs would claim towns and people would patrols these towns, fighting raiding parties. There was really nothing to fight over other than your allegiance pride, because you didn't want to lose the town or dungeon you claimed and look bad. It's human nature to not want to suck in a PvP game.
The system worked because players had the freedom. I can only wish more people were there during AC Darktide's prime years between 1999-2002. It's too bad they closed the game down this year, and never built a true AC1 successor. Would've loved to play an Asheron's Call on upgraded engine/graphics.
Found a couple of youtube videos that explained AC Darktide better, for those interested:
Played: EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-LOTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO-BDO
Waiting For: CU & Vanilla WoW
MAGA
More to the point, why would PvEers need PvP? Just kidding. Obviously. PvEers love providing a "target rich environment" for PvPers. It just really makes the day to be ganked again and again, corpsed camped and griefed. Sterling.
Snark aside, Tim is right. Most PvP games encourage disrespect for PvE players. So that PvP players come to think of them as "carebears", lowly creatures who get what they deserve for being so silly as to PvE in a PvP game. I'd go so far as to say that PvPers really hate PvEers because, as you say, they think PvEers ruin every PvP game with their carebear ways.
The only way to change this dynamic is to make PvE players essential. Not as a target, but as a contributor to the success of the PvPer, which is what some of Tim's points attempt to create. Making PvEers so valuable that taking out your adversaries crafters will cripple them, making it imperative that PvP forces protect them from raids, cover them when they gather and protect them when they go to market.
Actions have consequences, something PvPers never seem to get. If you drive all the PvE players away, the developer starves and the game dies.
In a PvP only game, you have the same dynamic. You create a horde guild and repeatedly kill all the other players in the game, driving them away; the developer starves and the game dies.
Recently on a new PvP game's forum, a poster wrote, "This is a red-meat game. We PvPers are going to drown in blood. If you carebears aren't prepared to die, repeatedly, leave now." I admired this post for its crisp compacted expression of mayhem and disdain. And for being a perfect representation of PvP's self-defeating attitude.
I remember this one thread on the forum from a user named Combat Biscuit in which she was ganked in the Cantina while buffing someone one too many times. She decided to leave the game over it.
While most hardened PvP vets would laugh this off as carebearish, I feel that pve players were what made the game great. They tended to be the more social of the bunch; and focused on QOL things that kept other players happy. Sure some PvP players had their buff bots, but the pve roleplayers made the game world seem more friendly. Walking into the Cantina in Mos Eisley was like walking into the Cheers bar. To this day I have not seen anything like it in any other game. Is it possible again? YES! just check out the emu. Some of the regulars have built a really strong community over the years.
mechanic which does a good job of making sure PVE players are needed.
The length of the windows (timers) your citadels and stations can be attacked are based on a system rating which is largely calculated from indexes which are raised through mining and ratting.
PVEers are asked to keep the overall index up over 6.0 which reduces the attack window to 4 hours a day. (The minimum)
Systems with a low value might be vulnerable 18 hours a day or more. As these indexes decay daily very regular PVE activity must be done to keep them from slipping.
It's a great strategic element in null sec and why even strong PVP alliances are almost always willing to recruit a strong contingent of PVEers as they'd rather spend their evenings blowing stuff up.
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