PVP and mmorpg.com hands-on article

Nadia

kinda wish the news discussion sent people to the appropiate game forum but oh well

 

DC Universe Hands-On Report

www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/350/feature/2692/page/1

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The game itself is actually PvP focused with PvE seeming to stand in as a necessary evil. But plans for fun quest and adventure will play a role in your characters development … PvP is the focus of the game for action and fun, not just for advancement.

The game has plans to put a grief protection system in place. For example, if you are a higher level villain who decides to spend lots of time in uptown Metropolis killing lowbies, eventually you will draw the attention of more powerful NPCs to help quell your little rebellion.

 

 

the game is sounding more PVP centric than I expected

I still want to try the game but I'm normally not a big fan of PVP

Nadia

saw this Dev commentary at the DCUO Source forums

dcuosource.com/index.php/topic,29.15.html

I assume that the start of this discussion was based on my PvP post at myspace.com/dcuo. Believe you me, PvP ain't something you can fit into one post, let alone one forum thread, but I did want to talk about the 'consensual' part of DCUO's PvP.

As with many design choices, you have to decide what bests serves your product, not just your game. I don't mean the business side of things (though that obviously impacts certain decisions). Instead, I refer to the experience as a whole and the audiences it serves.

Some people don't like getting ganked while they're playing. Others like the sense of danger. And players from both groups seek immersion and some level of 'realism' as it applies to the fictional world. We'd like for all of them to have fun in DCUO.

So, for the first group, we have PvE servers where you only fight another player when you choose to (e.g. duels, PvP content). Consensual here means you have to use a specific feature or game space to PvP. You have to actively choose to do it.

For the second group, we have PvP servers where heroes and villains can go toe-to-toe (we haven't talked about the specific rules for this yet). Consensual in this case means you've chosen to be on a PvP server and to be subject to the rules of engagement that apply there. You've chosen to live in a more dangerous world.

As to immersion and realism, well, that's an interesting topic with conflict between heroes and villains. They do fight eachother, but their battles are over different things than the warring factions or nations from other games. Usually villains do something wrong and heroes rush to stop them. In some cases, the hunt eachother out, but usually their conflict arises from an event.

Because of this, it isn't necessarily, to my mind, more immersive or realistic to have heroes and villains attack each other on sight. It IS, however, very comic-worthy to have them clash when banks are robbed, bombings are threatened, or good must be done.

In the coming months, we'll talk more about exactly how that translates into DCUO's gameplay. But for now, it's safe to say, you get to choose and change your level of PvP play based on what you find fun.