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Misconceptions and the people use them (part1)
Clever_Glove
Member Posts: 996
"Regardless of what game devs would have you believe, PvP is NEVER about two equal sides seeing who really IS the best PvPer out there. Its all about some higher level character PKing a lower level character, often times over and over. PvP in a game means that someone can repeatedly abuse a Player vs Player system and INTENTIONALLY ruin someone else's fun just so they can get their
jollies. PvP is never about skill, its about being a bully. Period." - Sarnath http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion/load/forums/loadforum/51/loadthread/29717/setstart/1/loadclass/35
I think this a very common misconception among MMORPG players. Its also completely untrue. PvP and greifing are NOT related. Ill explain why.
What is PvP?
Player vs Player. It's that's. Rather than killing a AI your choosing to compete against another human. While this sounds scary, let's consider some other PvP activities.
Chess, Football, Soccer, Darts, Ping Pong, Poker (free for all PvP), Racing, Golf, X-Prize, getting a Job, Promotions, Hot Dog eating contests, getting a good parking spot and the list goes on.
You compete with others either directly or indirectly nearly every day. If you try to win a game of Parcheesi is it to grief someone? You are trying to ruin someone shopping experience if you take a good shopping spot? Are sports based on nothing more than hurting other people? Of course, not.
I can understand people that enjoy a constant and steady gameplay experience from living in chaotic world, but that hardly means those that choice to compete are out to cause others unnecessary pain.
Directly Indirect
"I think you been camping the same mob for to long and are going brain numb, selecting a parking space isn't PvP" You say.
Let's look at a simple example. Hockey is direct competition. You must prevent a person from getting the urinal deodorizer into the net by knocking out there teeth. Golf is indirect competition, you can't physically block your opponent from scoring, but you are competition with other.
If you have two people you'll get some form of competition, its human nature. Even "A Tale in the Desert" has indirect competition. There is only one person that can be number one at something, just like the parking space, once its taken, its gone.
People that can't deal with indirection competition well are people that say things like "Well I have a life, so I can't be level XX in YYYY time" or "The game is better before people get high level"
Nothing can be done about this, you will have to grow enough personally to release what other people achieve has no effect on what you can achieve.
Direct-ions
While some stumble over indirection competition, Most will not consider that PvP. PvP is when you make a direct action that will have an effect (negative or positive) on someone else. For example: You land on their piece and move them back to home, you pick up their money in the pot, You pop them in the head, so they fall over and you can take the ball to score, and so on.
You play a game, it has rules. If you play poker you can expect you lose a hand. Yes, youre expected to not like it, if you can't stand to lose, don't play. Much is the same with all sports and other directly competitive events.
Game have rules, playing with the scope of the rules is not causing hardship on others. No one likes to lose however, we dont demand the rules be changed when our team loses a sporting game?
Going Felucca
PvP has had a rocky start. 1st gen games allowed PvP to be shallow, even overly profitable. Little more that people ganking n00bs as they stepped out of town, then talked smack. This has created the direct mental link in peoples mind that PvP means pain. Its to bad Pavlon was before MMORPGs, Im sure he would have gotten a equally accurate result.
However, blaming PvP for grief is like blaming theft on stores. After all if stores didn't have things to steal people wouldn't be thieves.
Do you correct the problem by banning stores? Or by dealing with thieves in a negative manner?
What can be done?
Many games have come up with new innovative ideas on how to get the benefits from direct competitions without the grief elements. However is outside the scope of this post, and I've briefly addressed this previously:
I'll speak more on this in upcomming posts.
Summery
Competition exists all around us, it brings out the best and the worst in people. The same is true with PvP. However greifing and PvP are not the same, they are completely different. To say those that want to PvP just want to kill people unfairly is to say all Chess players will try to win by poking out your eyes, then calling your mother names.
People wanting to compete directly with other players is natural, this desire is not the same as being an asshole.
To be Contunied...
Also see:
Dispelling the myth of "hardcore"
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion.cfm?load=forums&loadClass=35&loadForum=51&loadThread=12156
-=-=-=-=-
MMORPG's are like a first love, your compare every new relationship in the future to it. And even if a new game is better, it'll never be the same.
Bartle: A: 93% E: 55% S:3% K: 50% The Test. Learn what it means here.
Comments
Well here we go again. The eternal argument about PVP and griefing.
You can quote all the articles you want, compare it to RL, and even call on divine powers, BUT when a game has PVP that is unrestricted Griefing will occur.
Its human nature to try to be the best in any activity and people will use any means they can get away with. Look at the steroid scandle that is going on in sports. People will destroy their health just so they can win.
In mmo games you have people who use exploits, 3rd party programs, duping items, bots, etc. Players will use every tool they can find to get ahead of everyone else. PVP is just another tool that is used.
To say that PVP has nothing to do with griefing is just plain wrong.
MMORPG playing is for fun.. Like kb4lu sayd it's in human nature to be the best.. thats true.. Most people don't think by themselves.. Do I screw peoples gameplay now?
It's just simple people like to be the best in everything. They want to prove it. They pick always the weak .. I can say that's the same in RL. Look at school the weakest kid at school will be screwed by the tough guys.. Also in games it's like to proove urselff to people.. "O look me I go kill him, he looks weak" that's always the same.. PvP will always stay the same.. Or they should make area's so you can be aware of the PvP system. so you can level easly when you want to.. thats everything that can be usefull in any other game.. not 1 whole server (like WoW) but restricted area's that are pvp ..
You will not shake us off,
above or below..
You will not shake us off,
above or below..
He didn't say that pvp and griefing are unrelated.
Just that not all pvp = griefing.
Thats like saying:
Elvis is dead
so all dead people must be Elvis
Logical fallaci
KAos_nyrb
Griefing is nothing more than one person ruining another person's gaming experiance.
PvP CAN fit into that mold. Just like 'pulling' could. Or simply bad mouthing someone in a public place.
There are all sorts of ways to grief someone.
But PvP, in and of itself, is NOT griefing.
i think the problem is 'griefiing' is poorly defined by alot of people. Some people seem to think 'griefing' is not having a fair one on one fight. Lets stay with the RL examples, so lets say you played basketball or soccer, do you honestly expect every opponent you go up against in these sports will only take you one on one because tahts only fair? Of course not, theyre going to trap you, or steer you into the direction of their 'help' defender. Thats if they have the help in close proximity which is all by random circumstance. It could easily be the opponent that has the help wing man running the floor or field with him against one defender. Or it could be a one on one matchup all depending on circumstance.
AGain, the problem is some people tend to define 'griefing' as anything bad happening to them they think is unfair. Not all sports situations are fair, not everything in life is fair, everything comes around and goes around. So lets define griefing, 'Griefing' is the act of purposely trying to ruiin someone elses enjoyment. Basically picking on someone and harrassing them to make them angry or quit. That includes corpse camping, noobie-killing, etc., etc. Some people here try and shape the term to be defined as anyting they dont like, so everything about PvP must conform to their personal preferences no matter how unrealistic they are in an open environment. When/if you put in artifical mechanics to force everything to be one way it is no longer 'open'.
The problem is PvP isnt for everyone, 'open' PvP definitely isnt for everyone, and it all depends on how thick your skin is in being able to handle virtual death. Many people will look at a cheap death as a lesson learned, others will take that cheap death and complain and whine about it, and expect everything to be changed to prevent that from ever happening again or they wont play. Obviously the latter person handles cheap virtual death much worse than the first one does, and thats exactly why PvP or open PvP isnt for everyone. Like it or not, there will always be some unfairness in PvP, unless its Mortal Combat or some other game full of artificial mechanics to force 1 on 1 competition, there will always be advantages and disadvantages a person will have given the situation. So if your into 1 on 1 there are sports like Tennis, or games like Mortal Combat, or even mmorpg's with the /duel option, but we all know they arent anything like true team sports, or a open PvP game.
Anyhow the main problem is people needing to inflate their own egos goes both ways. And in this case i think there are alot more truths to the facts that PvP IS more 'difficult' than PvE in games due to understanding AI patterns, whereas every human being can improvise and learn from their mistakes so its always different. So those that PvE take exception to their style being made out to be inferior to PvP even though its true in the context of 'challenge', if you can be somewhat unbias about it. So these people tend to exxagerate what 'griefing' is and redefine the term to fit what they want it to mean. And then pretend to criticize PvP games for their idea of 'griefing' when they dont seem to know what it truly means.
AGain, PvP games arent for everyone, 'open' PvP games are for even less. The upside of PvE games is that they dont involve the stress or paranoia open PvP games do, so people can casually focus on killing the monster, sit down and chat, w/o having to worry about a PK near them. And thats the big difference in preference. People into PvP get a thrill out of the paranoia, it makes things more dangerous, challenging, and mean more. Whereas PvE people seem to enjoy the casualness and the expected alot more than the unexpected.
There's been a lot of these discussions lately. I understand where your post is coming from Glove, but I think you are seeing the "honorable" side of PvP as the common side. Fact is it's less common to find a PvP'er that's honorable in the way they act. I think special rules, like the ones in this post:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion.cfm/load/forums/loadforum/51/loadthread/30769/setstart/1/loadclass/35
Will be about the only way to make it decent and keep people from griefing others.
Just my 2cp... Peace
Tacklebury --}>>>
Explorer 93%
Achiever 53%
Socializer 33%
Killer 20%
Tacklebury --}>>>
LOL.
Those players show more dedications then I do for a soloing viable game.
But the bottom line, as long as you enforce anything on players, you lose players. If anything is better then soloing toward solo uberness, you will lose soloers. Enforce raiding or PvPing or tradeskilling, if you enforce something on the players, you lose a significant amount of players, period.
I dont care if PvP is honorable, fine or whatever, I dont care if Raiding is nice, this is not the game I wanna play, so as long as it is optional and I can entirely avoid it(without been more ghetto(then someone doing it) in the others aspects of the game), sure, why not, you enforce it in anyway, I walk away. An option to PvP is nice, an obligation is making me take my leaves.
See, Rome: Total War make the RTS optional, thereby they win a customer like me that highly dislike that aspect but love game based turn strategy, I aint backward, in fact, I finish 3 games while someone doing those battles finish 1. Will I do the RTS, forget it, I dont like that, but I play the game nonetheless and finish it and let my generals do it. This is a possible solution for Rome: Total war, MMORPGs will have to work others solutions but to similar ending, someone that PvP or Raid is someone that love that, not someone that need to do it but dont like it(for been a better grouper or soloers), this is what they need to understand. Solo PvE uberness belong to soloers and to nobody else, unless the else is equally sharing it uberness, then 2 roads for the same results, or 2 roads for very differents results, either work.
- "Solo is, will always be, the main market. A MMORPG that succeed with little or no solo appeal is doing great considering they are ignoring the main player base.''
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
How much pvp upsets somebody differs from person to person, if your just killed but lose nothing it does not matter but if your consecutivly killed then the game can become very boring. If a person is killed by a player and just been looted and lost the sword they worked the gold up to buy then it would be very differcult to take lightly.
A game may have an arena where players can duel it out but the majority of pvp ers will attack in a group or somebody alot lower level then them to make sure they win. Thers no challenge in this it is just a way of getting what they want. People are cowardly and need to get off on killing your charater, my suggestion is to find a game that has pvp you like or none or do what I do lv up and pick them off.
Do not hate me for wearing, saying , doing something. Hate me for being me
Nice post, Glove. I'll have more to say later when I have more time to pick it apart
For now I am just going to say this. I see PvE players consistently say each type of game is fine, play what you like (personally, I play both). Too often (not always) I see MMORPG PvP players display some need to try to portray their preferred game as somehow superior, tougher, more challenging, more mature, more manly ... you pick the terms - it always winds up about the same - they want to paint themselves as being superior because they play PvP. That's a bit weird if you ask me. This forces me to wonder what need, beyond gaming, these people are trying to fulfill.
By the same token you see the PvE players say just make both types of games so everyone is happy, while the PvP players can't accept that - they aren't happy to leave it out of any game. It really seems to bother many PvPers that so many people thoroughly enjoy non-PvP games. Makes you wonder.
And you overly analogize games to RL. I don't need games to duplicate RL. I already have a RL. Games are to provide an interesting, entertaining alternative experience and escape.