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bcbully
Member EpicPosts: 11,843
I for one embrace this progressive move! By moving in step with the mmorpg genre towards more player vs player conflict, mmorpg.com has position itself as an early adopter of the competitive forum. More forums will follow suite.
What does this say about the changing mindset of the mmorpg community? I believe it says PvP conflict is what the community wants.
Let me give two recent examples of this. First, Guild Wars 2 vs The Secret World. While The Secret World focused on story and traditional PvE content, Guild Wars 2 developed a mmorpg with a heavy PvP focus. The community chose heavy PvP focus. Guild Wars 2 flourished selling millions while The Secret World floundered
Second, The Elder Scrolls Online vs Wildstar. While Wildstar has focused on large scale "challenging" PvE content, The Elder Scrolls Online dedicated more than 1/3 of its game world to PvP, with future plans of bringing PvP to the entire game world by way of the Justice System. The community once again chose heavy PvP focus. Wildstar is struggling to turn a quarterly profit, while The Elder Scrolls Online has sold millions of copies and continues to sell well.
If you were a AAA developer who has decided to make an mmorpg or an aspiring mmorpg website, what would you do? Embrace PvP?
What does this say about the changing mindset of the mmorpg community? I believe it says PvP conflict is what the community wants.
Let me give two recent examples of this. First, Guild Wars 2 vs The Secret World. While The Secret World focused on story and traditional PvE content, Guild Wars 2 developed a mmorpg with a heavy PvP focus. The community chose heavy PvP focus. Guild Wars 2 flourished selling millions while The Secret World floundered
Second, The Elder Scrolls Online vs Wildstar. While Wildstar has focused on large scale "challenging" PvE content, The Elder Scrolls Online dedicated more than 1/3 of its game world to PvP, with future plans of bringing PvP to the entire game world by way of the Justice System. The community once again chose heavy PvP focus. Wildstar is struggling to turn a quarterly profit, while The Elder Scrolls Online has sold millions of copies and continues to sell well.
If you were a AAA developer who has decided to make an mmorpg or an aspiring mmorpg website, what would you do? Embrace PvP?
Post edited by bcbully on
Comments
Personally I like both in my games.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Lets look at you first example.
Gw2 vs tsw.
Gw2 medieval fantasy, buy 2 play from the start, easy entry level.
TSW modern day, started pay 2 play, moved to buy to play, challenging.
No where did I mention pvp. Pvp is there, but no required to play.
Second example
teso vs wild star
both started pay to play. The elder scrolls has a storied history in gaming. Wild star is a new ip.
Pvp is an extension of the game in teso, and I am unsure in wild star.
Teso is available on consoles as a b2p model.
How can you say that the success of these games is based on pvp? Look at the pvp games as of late. Those with that being the primary purpose.
Where are they?
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There were SO MANY differences between the games you are trying to compare other than pvp or not.
Just like there are SO MANY differences between the types of PVP that people enjoy and are in all the games out there. FFA pvp is by far the lowest liked type of pvp ever. GW 2 with that type of pvp would be a totally different game.
Some people will never pvp period, but the vast majority of players will play pvp games on their terms, but it is their terms, which is why it is different for each person, and each game.
Trying to lump people into these broad categories will never really work. Why you cannot just say why this game worked but that one didn't. GW2 for an example, i am sure that there are many people on both sides of that game. Some never pvp at all and never will. Others, that is the only thing they like about the game.
Each type of game comes with it's own market. And those markets will never ( or rarely if ever) meet up enough that you can get them all to play the same games. Just never going to make some one that really only wants to pvp like pve and the other way around for pve crowd.
Which is why your last question has been pretty well answered by most dev's for years as we do both and try to meet in the middle if we want our game to draw as many people as possible. Or we go the niche route and totaly give up some large groups as never going to even look at the game we make. The latter has, so far, never done well at all.
Niche markets are pretty vocal, and loyal, and deadly vicious if you try to change . But not large. And once you embrace that niche. You really can never try to grow out of it.
GW2 is similar with a better setting (fantasy vs. horror) and familiarity (guild wars vs. new IP.)
PVP may have been a factor, but it definitely isn't the primary driver of success for these games.
So if you wanted to plan for success you'd make a non-innovative MMORPG: you'd choose fantasy for your setting, avoid a cartoony aesthetic, and choose a well known IP. This mildly irritating video goes into more details about non-innovative games doing well, including many of the sales numbers showing it to be the case.
MMORPG PVP is casual PVP, and really isn't anywhere close to as popular as pure PVP games (RTS, FPS, fighting, MOBA, etc) where only skill determines the victor. So while I'd certainly include PVP in any MMORPG for the casual players interested in that, I definitely wouldn't have high expectations of it.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Seems to me most people only like pvp when losing is relatively painless (and losing includes losing time so in an RPG players don't like getting attacked when they're doing pve stuff). So a FFA pvp RPG is never likely to work imo. A fantasy mmoFPS built solely around pvp doesn't have that problem.