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Just
to clarify PVP means anything that negatively affects another player's
toon (death, theft, kidnap, etc.) and not the player themselves. Also, this was posted on /r/MMORPG but there's not a lot of decent answers to fight open PVP griefing so far
So
I've been stuck at home with nothing to do, and been binging a bunch of
MMO design content from Raph Koster, Nerdslayer, MassivelyOP, some MMO
and RPG-focused forums. What initially started from figuring out keeping
and growing an MMO community led to thinking about a hybrid between
action and tab-target combat (AA:U), and if a shooter-tab
target hybrid (The Repopulation or Tabula Rasa) could
work. Add in ability-queue (KotOR) and auto-battle (FFXII
Gambits) for good measure for people not physically able to do twitchy combat. Naturally, this led me to debate with myself
between vertical and horizontal progression, and landing on somewhere in
between being the best option for PVP and PVE without the need to
introduce stat normalization. Abilities and classes came up during the
"debate," of course (SWG's initial and early plans for the
Jedi are interesting, though. Might be a good way to balance magic,
melee, and ranged in a mixed progression game). Job-switching and initial profession archetypes seem to be a good answer (FFXIV/SWG-ish)
This incidentally led me back to sandboxes. Guild or Faction territory control? Region-based or global reputation? Trial and jury system? Should combat and reputation levels always be visible or only consensually between players? Player housing, BDO-style, or instanced housing? Trickle up or trickle down economics? Possible money sinks. How to retain a playerbase without releasing content every few months or every year. Are procedurally generated (which isn't the same as random) and player generated one-time quests good enough after the introductory and profession quests? Can worldbuilding occur without a main quest or NPC dialogue? Can a typical MMO layout (finite ground surrounded by infinite water and arbitrary boundaries) work in a seamless ground-to-space game? Open, zoned, or instanced PVP? Consensual or opt-in world PVP? Can a F2P game survive on a sandbox model without an optional subscription or cash shop?
All these questions led me to one big question that hasn't been solved yet as far as I know of. Can a Sandbox Open PVP MMO be accessible and welcoming enough to PVE and casual players? It can be accessible enough, but can it be welcoming? ArcheAge's criminal system (including trial and jury) is pretty fun as a roleplayer, bur as a casual? Eh, not really. I just lost my progress if I died or I'm wasting time if I get caught. As of right now, I think a majority of open PVP games are partial loot or full loot games, so that's not at all welcoming to a casual audience. However, some of the casual audience seems to be eating up survival games, maybe due to the non-persistent nature of these games? Server wipes and more servers to play on might be a factor. Games with persistency tend to not have heavy PVP elements in them, whatever heavy means to you. I thought about partial loot, but what about casuals who only want to run trade routes and not engage in combat? When they die, they lose all of their progress and have to run back to their caravan, not guaranteeing their goods' safety. Maybe an insurance system like Escape From Tarkov would help. When someone steals from a player-built house, what about the casual home-owner who kept their most-prized weapon at its minimum repair durability? They should have rented an apartment in one of the player-made or developer-made cities (mix of BDO and SWG).
Anyways, I thought that a more strict version of Ultima Online's blue-grey-red reputation system was a good starting point. Trying to solve the issue of griefers and PKers was my top priority here. Sorry pirates and thieves, but trying to bring back a sense of community is important right now. Well, for me anyways. Too many MMOs are glorified single-player RPGs. Don't know if it changed, but I'm always looking for a sandbox MMO to replace or blend the initial vision for Star Wars Galaxies and ArcheAge.
Players who commit a non-consensual action that negatively affects another player's toon lose all of their items upon death. Victims of these actions lose nothing unless they tag themselves as open PVP at a certain NPC or before they log in or something like that. Maybe victims of theft get their items back in the mail in a partial/full loot game when the aggressor dies. If the aggressor had nothing on them other than their equipment, then would losing stuff from their bank on death, losing experience and combat levels, or raising their tax rate on money sinks be an effective deterrent? They'd have to work hard to be where they were at before starting their PK shenanigans. Is that why open PVP games fail at retaining a casual audience? No strong enough repercussions for griefers or protections for victims?
tl;dr Would punishing non-consensual PVP aggressors through "tangible" losses and "rewarding" their victims be a solution to retain a PVE and casual audience while keeping the open PVP community happy? Just trying to solve griefing and PKs.
Answers
PvPers wouldn't play that game and many PvErs wouldn't trust that they'd be safe enough even with all the harsh and complex safeguards so they wouldn't play either.
I've been an advocate for segregation of the the two types of combat for a long time. It's only in games that do it that way that I have ever seen all types of players content with the design.
As to PvP corpse looting, I've never understood the appeal to loot what the other player actually has on him. Would it be less satisfying to get RNG generated loot from another player's corpse of a quality and level dependent on the corpse's level and rank?
I guess I'm not much of a gambler because I don't get any extra buzz for fear of losing my stuff. It's just annoying. Loot reward for the kill I do like but it doesn't need to be the player's actual belongings.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
That's no solution for them. But before they leave the game, if they can't convince the Devs to change that, you can bet your arse they'd go on a full out rampage just for spite.
Once upon a time....
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
There has to be some kind of artificial blocker that prevents it from happening be it guards, or some kind of magical aura of protection, whatever, before you'll get the casuals and PVE players to come in and actually enjoy it. DAOC had separate areas for PVE and PVP. I see nothing wrong with this, but it does "break" the rule set out for free will.
Otherwise you're just going to have to accept that the game is very niche and will not likely have a large population and most definitely will not have casual pve players.
Eve Online is an example with multiple counters.
So it's very possible to avoid pvp all together in Eve. However Eve is unique in the way it's constructed and you're not likely going to have much of that possibility in a fantasy style game or any ground based game for that matter, if that's what you are leaning toward.
@Ancient_Exile if it's not realism you're going for and simply role playing then why do these actions require player to player interaction? Thievery, murder, or any negative action could be player to npc like in a single player game, but with the same consequences. Want to be a thief? Learn to pickpocket merchants and take the risk of being jailed, killed, or exiled. Feel like killing a banker? Do it and lose faction standing. All kinds of possibilities that anyone would be fine with having in their game.
Don't get me wrong I love pvp MMOs, but I just don't think it's possible to combine open world pvp and casual pve players while actually expecting many to stick around.
Sorry. I meant to write that it's not just for the added realism factor.
there is also a short answer..
They both amount to "Aww hell naw"
There were still individual differences based on gear, skill unlocks and of course experience but nothing like the lowbee ganking nightmare scenarios seen in WOW and other crap PvP games - the games that PvP phobes think of when they think about PvP and try to figure out penalties to stop asshats.
It's a waste of time to try to resolve a problem in what is already the shittiest type of PvP around.
It's like some of you guys haven't played good, fair PvP in the games that do it right yet you spend hours trying to fix the games with PvP so shitty that they're best just ignored.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
This is part of the conundrum I talked about above. You either need to accept its a possibility or create rules around it.
Your idea around it is removing this gap, well in my experience this doesn't work. Rise of Agon all but eliminated character progression making it possible to reach what vets considered "fully viable" in a couple weeks. The result was that the skill level of the player still mattered more so new players were still getting killed easily. They ended up needing to tweak the alignment system and added in some safe areas to try to deter it still.
The problem is people stopped going out into the world if they didn't need to progress. Soon many quit because they were bored. There was still plenty of things people could do like collect materials for a house, collect house items, gear dropped and wore out so people needed to harvest and farm materials, but it wasn't enough, it wasn't the main driving force people needed or wanted to get out into the world. That was character progression.
In hindsight they should have kept the long progression and only introduced the safe areas. People would have been out in the world gaining skills and the more powerful they got the further into the danger areas they would have went.
"There were still individual differences based on gear, skill unlocks"
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
1) The penalties for piracy are really harsh. Most ports in the world won't accept you. You're free for everyone else to attack without them facing any piracy penalties, and indeed, they'll win a bounty if they sink you. And if you want to get rid of your red name and not be a pirate anymore, you'll likely have to spend hours at sea in which you're fair game for anyone else to attack.
2) Being a successful pirate almost requires you to be a whale. There are so many things working against you that if you're not a whale, it's going to be very hard to be a pirate for all that long without going broke. So that means that there aren't very many pirates at a time.
3) Pirates can't hide. Players have a command to list everyone online in their zone. Non-pirates can hide from this list. Pirates can't. If you're a pirate, everyone in your zone knows that you're there. They don't necessarily know exactly where you are, but they know that you're there.
4) It's nearly impossible to catch someone who is actively trying not to get caught. If a level 60 pirate attacks a level 30 player who is playing defensively, that usually won't end with the pirate winning. It will usually end with the low level player escaping and then the pirate being unable to attack him again for an extended period of time. Pirates may prefer to attack botters, as they aren't able to fight back effectively.
5) While most of the oceans are intermittently open to PVP, there are safe zones. Everywhere on land is safe from non-consensual PVP, as is most of Europe (basically, the starting areas).
I am playing a Multi-Player online Role-Playing gacha game called Raid: Shadow Legends at the moment. I suppose I enjoy it a bit because it feels like my choices matter a little more than in most or even the majority of MMORPGs. I've been trying to play DDO a bit, but I'm not really all that into it. I've tried pretty much every popular MMORPG out there that I've felt like I might have any desire to play. But I either didn't like them that all much or got sick and tired of them eventually.
After first attack on any innocent person ( one that has not attacked or is in enemy faction) is permanently made red to all and perma-death forever.
Anything less is always going to be easily worked/gamed around to be made so that it is not worth the effort for normal pve players to put up with any type of loot/loss in games.
You want to play like a pirate,thief,murderer? Then take the consequences that that brings for real. Makes zero sense to have rules protect people that want to play by breaking all the rules...let me put bounty or hire people to track them down and when they die that's it...no coming back for that character.
How many people that claim they want to "role-play" bad guys will that game attract???