It would depend on your definition of entertaining.
I recall some of the big capitalist saying that without great risk there is no excitement/reward. The older MMOs all had a lot more at stake if you lost.
In terms of combat that is arguable. Most of the games today offer a very bland form of combat in order to balance everything. Having unbalance in combat abilities opens up a variety of different possible ways to attack. Most games these days each class is the same effectiveness as the other and as such there is little in terms of what you can do differently. For instance in an older game you could use your environment to your advantage by standing on a roof and shooting your enemies. That kind of thing is not possible anymore. I would also venture to say there was a far larger variety of different effects that actually did something very different. Most of this type of thing had to be taken out of the games for balance purposes. Even if they were just intended for fun originally, but were used in combat.
My definition of entertaining is like the majority of PVPers': gameplay where skill is strongly rewarded, which is deep enough to continually reward skill growth even into the upper echelons of skill.
Games like Starcraft, Battlefield, and League provide exactly that. Players of these games don't require a masochistic death penalty to be excited by the PVP involved, because the risk of simply losing is sufficient.
Combat in these games isn't considered bland by most players. In a balanced, deep PVP game, all decisions matter, and that's an exciting notion.
You seem to confuse the concepts of symmetry and balance. Starcraft is a balanced game, yet each side is veryasymmetric. League's champions are the same way: they have very distinct playstyles (asymmetry) but they're generally balanced (same power level.)
Games which aren't balanced actually involve objectively fewer strategies. When a hero or race is overpowered in LoL or SC, then instead of having a wealth of playstyles and strategic options you have a narrower set of viable strategies.
Your specific example, shooting from a roof, happens liberally in the most recent PVP game I'm playing (Battlefront) so I'm not sure where you're pulling that idea from. Last I checked, many WOW arenas and battlegrounds have high ground from which a ranged character can exert area denial over a melee character. So what you're describing sounds entirely fabricated. Let's discuss reality instead!
The role of game balance in relation to high ground advantage means ensuring no high-ground location is too powerful for its effort. This is done not to limit strategies, but to increase them. Because if a position is easy to reach and incredibly powerful, how many strategies do you think will be employed in that game? Just one.
Whereas there was a recent Battlefront match where the opposing team had 2-3 players on top of a Jawa Sandcrawler's roof the whole match, and that was balanced by the fact that they couldn't see every spot on the map from there and my team was able to focus on suppressing them and completing objectives, which yielded us victory. So even though their position was strong (with equal skill a player up there is going to win any straight-up fight) it was balanced due to its lack of access to the map objectives. The game wouldn't have been better off by making that position overpowered -- it would've turned an otherwise interesting game (where each side employed a distinct strategy) into a shallow game (where everyone only tried to get onto the roof because that's the only viable strategy.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Yes, this is also, to wit, why experienced gamers make charts of the most preferable skill allotments, the most preferable gear acquisitions, the most preferable manners of time consumption. While in many cases it may seem we have many options, quite frankly, many options are, well, stupid. People have studied this in depth for some time, and it's generally classified as some paradox, be it "paradox of choice" or, more contemporarily, "paradox of rationality", wherein it "may actually be the lesser-wise choice is ultimately preferable".
It's fun to have choices. It's fun to be a pretty person with many choices of mates, for example. The rub initiates when you start to realize many, many others have same, or at least similar, choices, and/or that your "ideal solution", of all apparent present solutions, might not be so apparent. So you end up having more and more competition for fewer and fewer resources, inevitably.
And what pvp/pve mmos predated Lineage and AC? Other than UO, please do tell. :eh:
Well, it depends how you label "mmo", and whether "mmo" existed before the term was coined. Meridian 59 is arguably applicable. I personally consider "Neverwinter Nights" the first graphical multiplayer (hundreds potential on a server) fantasy online rpg. I was 17 then and "somehow" spend hundreds over a few months in AOL charges, much to the chagrin of my parents.
So, I'm not including "muds", and I understand "hundreds of participants vs thousands or millions", but technology as it was, graphical-online-multiplayer-rpgs certainly existed before the "term mmo" was invented for advertisement of UO.
edit: man, I was just thinking, it's like pointing out Adam or Noah to someone who only knew of Abraham and Moses )
the term mmoRPG was more of a marketing term when it was coined rather than a technology term. Yes, number of connections mattered, but it was using the term for sales. IMO, mmos were around long before the term mmo. Graphical muds certainly were mmoRPGS in a sense but without the large number of connections.
But this whole line of thinking doesn't matter. This thread is mostly a measuring contest.
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I feel like the old Warhammer Online had the right Idea with PvP and PvE coexisting. Having open world PvE with a zone in each region locked to PvP with level restrictions in each zone preventing the possibility of high levels ganking lower levels, with groups being created instantaneously for group scenarios and pvp interactions. Each PvP region had objectives to capture that positively effected the controlling faction and promoted constant siege warfare on the places in question.
This made all levels viable for PvP and made it worthwhile, while still maintaining the PvE aspect. The reason Warhammer died is because the graphics, tech systems (load lag, poorly responsive etc.), and improper dev balance made it die a slow death. I believe a game like this with proper backing and development could be the best game possible that most of us would want. This was honestly the best game I've ever played, if the development problems didn't exist it could've been an even better WoW.
I assumed that's about as far back as you would go; it isn't very far. The skilled players will always be the better players regardless of the trivial factors you brought up, i.e. gear, numbers, etc.
The PvP in games pre-dating those that you mentioned arguably had the best PvP in any mmorpg to date, depending on your definition of MMO.
"....but the majority of players interested in PVP continued to get PVP in genres where skill was the focus"
Referring to the above statement what genre are you referring to specifically?
Saying skilled players will always be better (ie they'll always be more skilled) is fairly useless.
It also ignores the core problem with Diluted PVP games: skilled players will often lose.
When a game is decided entirely by skill (Pure PVP), the skilled player always wins.
When a game is sometimes decided by non-skill factors (Diluted PVP), the skilled player won't always win.
Your vague "you missed the best MMORPG PVP" statement cleverly avoids any details. Care to cite specifics?
Chess is considered deep because every decision matters, and so learning which decisions are best at any given moment is quite difficult. Now let's imagine you're able to bring teammates into a chess match, each with a full set of pieces. Suddenly all those very difficult decisions don't matter much, because one vastly more important decision ("how many teammates did I bring?") has been added to the equation.
This is why even if you could name an MMORPG with chess-like depth, if it allowed population imbalances in fights it would nevertheless still be a very shallow, casual game. But that's assuming you could name a MMORPG with combat as deep as Chess -- no such MMORPG exists to my knowledge, and you're really not going to be able to find a MMORPG whose 1v1 combat is even as deep as Starcraft's.
As for my comment, I wasn't talking about a single genre. We've just seen how population dilutes PVP, acting as a trump card which makes all of a game's skill factors vastly less important. So essentially every Pure PVP genre (RTS, FPS, MOBA, Fighting, Racing, etc) is going to be deeper than Diluted PVP.
(And population isn't the only major factor diluting PVP. Progression is the other major way MMORPG PVP is casual, diluted PVP.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I'm seeing a lot of comparisons here between PvP balance between this game and that game but you can't be mixing genres. Balancing PvP in an FPS game is simplicity itself compared to balancing PvP in a class based MMORPG. And let's face it, most MMO's today use the time honoured system of classes.
PvE balance allows classes to have variety, they can be quite different and have a multitude of skills and all of this can be balanced against the PvE part of the game due to classes filling roles. Tanks, Helaers, DPS, CC etc.
Once you put those classes into a PvP situation that all goes out the window. Some classes will be good some will be completely useless and some will be OP. Try balancing the abilities and it throws the PvE balancing out of wack and you now have classes that can't do their role properly in PvE because of PvP balancing. You don't get this is Battlefront, or BF, or CoD or TF2. FPS games just need the guns balanced. Bit more damage, bit less recoil, slightly higher RoF. Done. And I've yet to play any FPS where my gun won't shoot past 30m. They're worlds apart.
If you want to make a case for balanced PvP in MMO's you need to stick to genre. Personaly I don't think you can get balanced PvP in a class based system which is why MMO PvP generally sucks goat balls. If you use a skill based system you just end up with everyone the same spec as in UO. Worst genre EVER for PvP. There have been a few exceptions. DAoC was fun, still unbalanced but the sheer size of the keep battles kinda levelled that out. EVE can be fun as long as it's not too one sided. Still for the most part MMO's are pretty bad at PvP.
There's a reason Devs make MMO's the way they do. They're not stupid, they do the market research and OW FFA PvP just isn't that popular with the masses. That's just the way it is.
Stick to FPS games for decent PvP, it's what I do. If you can find one that hasn't been hacked to pieces, that is.
Well, this also isn't to statistically say that "any sufficiently skilled opponent will 100% win over a lesser-skilled opponent, even all other circumstances be equal". Inevitably, sometimes people will make a "bad decision", and while we may attribute "skill" to a "lessening and lessening chance one might make a misstep", it cannot, will not, ever effectively net some obvious correlation.
Perhaps over 5, 10 or even 100 competitions, a competitor is successful, not because of inherent skill, but because of opponents' short-sightedness in the face of some anomaly. Perhaps it might be said "true skill" comes, not by the benefit of practice, but the ability to manifest and control apparent anomalies. We could see this in the pattern of 50 "experienced" rock-paper-scissor players, executing various strategies, and where, for whatever reason, the "victor" might be one who appeared to opponents "most random".
So when in a game's competition, will you run to the middle of the field, under-geared and otherwise seemingly ill-prepared and run in circles as a diversion, while opponents hesitate for a moment to laugh as "what the heck is this guy doing", chase you down as easy prey and become subject to particularly bad field position? Maintaining the appearance as a weaker opponent "is a strategy", it's why rope-a-dope works. So why should I spend my time getting the "best gear", allotting the "best skills", if I can spend 50% more time "winning", or at least committing to some apparent presentation of winning?
So, we come to a conclusion that a "perfect game" will incorporate some effective method of success by manifesting illusion, and I think we see this alot, even when the mechanics seem rigid, even when the paradox of choice seems to limit viable alternatives. So then we have a new paradox, which is the "perfect perfect game", and if many are "perfect", can any truly be?
edit: I think the person who abridged and thusly badly misquoted Sun Tzu said it best.
Somehow , people forget that in old MMORPG , PVE is part of PVP . The goods are limits and players fight for them . From world boss to leveling spot , people do kill steal , tab and even PK other to get their hands on the goods .
It was chaotic days , you made rivals , enemies and friends .
So what's the point here ? My point is MMORPG used to be PVP type of game even if the game banned PK action . Somehow the new generation miss this type of PVP elements .
I would say "great", they don't have to suffer from this type of pvp elements. If these elements are not fun to people, what is the problem?
Sure, open world pvp can be fun. To me the main problem is balance though. High level players versus low level players, group players versus solo players, raiders versus casuals, larger faction versus lower faction. That's why to me pvp is just more fun in pvp "raids" battlegrounds or warzones or whatever we call them where the game pits equal number of players on both teams against each other.
To me the old style of mmorpg was more sandboxy. About setting the scene and let the players do the roleplay. Today it's getting so linear in some games they barely even qualify as themepark.
Dont get me wrong, i prefer a good themepark. I just prefer the early WOW aproach to themepark than the ESO or SWTOR aproach. I dont need, correction, i dont want the story to evolve around me, i just need a great setting for me to make my own story in. That's what i mainly miss from todays mmorpg's.
It's interesting how a lot of people are talking about balance. I don't see anything about PvP balance in the OPs post. It is simple stated that he things PvE players don't appreciate what PvP brings to their game in an open world PvP like UO. Obviously such and environment was never intended to be balanced. You either build for PvP or you build for PvE things like gathering, crafting, killing monsters, etc. Those who build for PvE are always going to be at a disadvantage to those who build for PvP or those who are a thief class that can steal in most cases. This causes players to develop large groups of protection, live with being ganked, or quit the game. I feel most have shown they will quit the game if there is an alternative. This environment requires some measure of it being forced on players or they will not participate. That means there can't be alternative games where there are just PvE. If such a game is created today it will only have players that want to do the PvP portion. The PvE players won't join in.
Balancing PvP in an FPS game is simplicity itself compared to balancing PvP in a class based MMORPG. And let's face it, most MMO's today use the time honoured system of classes.
The flaws being discussed exist at a more fundamental level than class balance.
Class imbalances CAN be avoided, resulting in good combat. (See also: all the non-MMORPGs which balance themselves around classes, like TF2.)
Population imbalances CAN be avoided. (Battlegrounds and arenas force even teams.)
Progression imbalances CANNOT be avoided. (Progression is fundamental to a game actually being an RPG.)
So it's that last element that means MMORPG PVP will always be flawed at its core (and many MMORPGs also do world PVP, which fails the population factor.)
Class imbalances are trivial and can easily be fixed. If class imbalances were the biggest problem MMORPG PVP had, it'd be in great shape.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I don't mind contesting for resources,mobs but i do mind PKing because in 99% of the cases it is about making yourself an annoying gamer.We had that nonsense in FFXI and they quickly removed it from the game.
If someone wanted to be an asshat and there are plenty of those around,they would simply form a train of mobs and lead them right on top of your group then D/C to logout.Games are and always will be full of people looking to exploit,cheat, or ruin other people's game.So imo the more we can do to erase that atmosphere from our games the better we are for it.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I don't mind contesting for resources,mobs but i do mind PKing because in 99% of the cases it is about making yourself an annoying gamer.We had that nonsense in FFXI and they quickly removed it from the game.
If someone wanted to be an asshat and there are plenty of those around,they would simply form a train of mobs and lead them right on top of your group then D/C to logout.Games are and always will be full of people looking to exploit,cheat, or ruin other people's game.So imo the more we can do to erase that atmosphere from our games the better we are for it.
This is exactly right on. I don't play any game to have other players ruin my experience. Doing so just makes me not want to play such a game and then one has to ask how that is good for gaming in general? If someone wants to play a game that offers just pvp...more power to them. I won't and I should be expected to do so.
Well, this also isn't to statistically say that "any sufficiently skilled opponent will 100% win over a lesser-skilled opponent, even all other circumstances be equal". Inevitably, sometimes people will make a "bad decision", and while we may attribute "skill" to a "lessening and lessening chance one might make a misstep", it cannot, will not, ever effectively net some obvious correlation.
Perhaps over 5, 10 or even 100 competitions, a competitor is successful, not because of inherent skill, but because of opponents' short-sightedness in the face of some anomaly. Perhaps it might be said "true skill" comes, not by the benefit of practice, but the ability to manifest and control apparent anomalies. We could see this in the pattern of 50 "experienced" rock-paper-scissor players, executing various strategies, and where, for whatever reason, the "victor" might be one who appeared to opponents "most random".
So when in a game's competition, will you run to the middle of the field, under-geared and otherwise seemingly ill-prepared and run in circles as a diversion, while opponents hesitate for a moment to laugh as "what the heck is this guy doing", chase you down as easy prey and become subject to particularly bad field position? Maintaining the appearance as a weaker opponent "is a strategy", it's why rope-a-dope works. So why should I spend my time getting the "best gear", allotting the "best skills", if I can spend 50% more time "winning", or at least committing to some apparent presentation of winning?
So, we come to a conclusion that a "perfect game" will incorporate some effective method of success by manifesting illusion, and I think we see this alot, even when the mechanics seem rigid, even when the paradox of choice seems to limit viable alternatives. So then we have a new paradox, which is the "perfect perfect game", and if many are "perfect", can any truly be?
edit: I think the person who abridged and thusly badly misquoted Sun Tzu said it best.
In that 1 round out of 10 where the winning player makes a bunch of mistakes and loses, why would you consider that player the skilled player? In that round obviously he wasn't the skilled player. Doesn't matter that he won the other 9 rounds, he wasn't the skilled player in the round he lost.
Skill is decision-making and execution. It definitely comes by practice. Not sure why you think it wouldn't.
"Apparent anomalies" is what someone inexperienced might see it as because they can't understand the gameplay pattern, but while it's perceived as an anomaly, it's not at all.
Not sure what you meant by the middle bit, but most great PVP games do involve deception of some kind ("all war is deception" as Sun Tzu said.*
*Though it's awkward to have read through to end of your post and realized you also kinda quoted Sun Tzu.)
It's a little silly to bring "perfect" games into this, as it's a silly concept to begin with (games are patterns which will eventually be mastered, at which point they're no longer interesting and you play something new.) The improvements and flaws I'm pointing out are a long way from making a game perfect, they're actually some of the most basic mistakes to avoid (basically: "Don't let shallow things trump deep things, since it ruins your game's depth.")
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I think the OP has a point to an extent and it depending on what old school MMO you played. For example in games like UO and Shadowbane PvP was most of the game, however in games like EQ PvP wasn't nearly as popular.
Me personally (and I am an old school MMO player), I like both PvE and PvP but I favor PvE over PvP for end game mostly because after a while I find PvP repetitive.
It was just leveraging shallow or non-skill advantages over your opponent (be a higher level, with better gear, with more teammates, and/or gank them while they're PVEing.)
A narrow niche of unskilled players found it appealing that it was PVP they could actually win, but the majority of players interested in PVP continued to get PVP in genres where skill was the focus (because if you aren't winning because you're more skilled than someone, what's the point?)
Its called ouwitting your opponents, winning by any means possible, because at the end of the day, theres winners and also rans.
Difference between fighting a war or playing a team sport.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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It was just leveraging shallow or non-skill advantages over your opponent (be a higher level, with better gear, with more teammates, and/or gank them while they're PVEing.)
A narrow niche of unskilled players found it appealing that it was PVP they could actually win, but the majority of players interested in PVP continued to get PVP in genres where skill was the focus (because if you aren't winning because you're more skilled than someone, what's the point?)
Its called ouwitting your opponents, winning by any means possible, because at the end of the day, theres winners and also rans.
Difference between fighting a war or playing a team sport.
I think a lot of people still don't get that some older games never intended balance of that nature. You were good a what you practiced. A blacksmith, her gatherer, or miner wasn't going to be able to stand up to a person who trained specifically for PvP. That is pretty much how it is in real life as well. A game like UO was never about PvP. That was just one aspect of it. One that had a large impact because players lost hours of work when people killed them and stole their items. It seems people these days are so single minded. They can only envision a game that is about combat and thus all things have to be about combat and combat balance.
MMOs are in the sad state they are in today because of PvE players. They don't want an MMO. They want an open world RPG with a multiplayer lobby.
PvE players just whine, they got their own servers to be away from PvP players. What was next? I want my own gathering nodes! Shared taggging! Shared loot! Remove the open world content that requires me to party with strangers!
PvE players are just spoiled children. They killed community and politics.
These just generalizations but it is true for most.
It sounds like you are a PVP spoiled child with your stupid and completely baseless generalization of PVE players!
Go play ESO and GW2 where the people in the world actually want to fight. Instead of killing people who just want to play the game. Forcing pve players to put up with pvp is a formula for failure. Which is why they separated them.
It was just leveraging shallow or non-skill advantages over your opponent (be a higher level, with better gear, with more teammates, and/or gank them while they're PVEing.)
A narrow niche of unskilled players found it appealing that it was PVP they could actually win, but the majority of players interested in PVP continued to get PVP in genres where skill was the focus (because if you aren't winning because you're more skilled than someone, what's the point?)
But is it really a niche? Why are survival games so popular then, if most pvp players dislike "shallow" pvp??
I think a lot of people still don't get that some older games never intended balance of that nature. You were good a what you practiced. A blacksmith, her gatherer, or miner wasn't going to be able to stand up to a person who trained specifically for PvP. That is pretty much how it is in real life as well. A game like UO was never about PvP. That was just one aspect of it. One that had a large impact because players lost hours of work when people killed them and stole their items. It seems people these days are so single minded. They can only envision a game that is about combat and thus all things have to be about combat and combat balance.
You can't really establish legitimacy for that type of PVP by citing a mere handful of titles whose success was mostly related to their PVE content (as you yourself admit.)
It also wasn't an "older game" thing, as MMORPGs aren't even that old a genre (after MOBAs they're probably the second youngest major genre.) Tons of pre-MMORPG PVP games like Archon, MULE, Star Control 2, and Street Fighter 2 were dramatically more successful with level playing fields.
This didn't mean Chun Li played the same as Zangief. Plenty of playstyle variety existed in Street Fighter.
An even better example is in Star Control where your Earthling ship was mostly doomed against a full-health Ur-Quan ship, but the game was balanced by Fleet Points. So your Earthling ship only cost 11 points and the Ur-Quan cost 30, and if you managed to deal 50% damage to the Ur-Quan ship before dying you'd have come out ahead. And in this particular matchup the Earthling ship -- though usually doomed -- was well-equipped to do that much damage on average before being taken out (it had point defense lasers which were a hard counter to Ur-Quan's fighters, and could sometimes knock out the Ur-Quan's maingun shots too.)
Realism isn't a priority in game design. Fun is. It's great when a feature can be both fun and realistic, but fun is always the leading element. So 'it's like real life' isn't a compelling argument except in simulation games, which MMORPGs aren't.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I think a lot of people still don't get that some older games never intended balance of that nature. You were good a what you practiced. A blacksmith, her gatherer, or miner wasn't going to be able to stand up to a person who trained specifically for PvP. That is pretty much how it is in real life as well. A game like UO was never about PvP. That was just one aspect of it. One that had a large impact because players lost hours of work when people killed them and stole their items. It seems people these days are so single minded. They can only envision a game that is about combat and thus all things have to be about combat and combat balance.
You can't really establish legitimacy for that type of PVP by citing a mere handful of titles whose success was mostly related to their PVE content (as you yourself admit.)
It also wasn't an "older game" thing, as MMORPGs aren't even that old a genre (after MOBAs they're probably the second youngest major genre.) Tons of pre-MMORPG PVP games like Archon, MULE, Star Control 2, and Street Fighter 2 were dramatically more successful with level playing fields.
This didn't mean Chun Li played the same as Zangief. Plenty of playstyle variety existed in Street Fighter.
An even better example is in Star Control where your Earthling ship was mostly doomed against a full-health Ur-Quan ship, but the game was balanced by Fleet Points. So your Earthling ship only cost 11 points and the Ur-Quan cost 30, and if you managed to deal 50% damage to the Ur-Quan ship before dying you'd have come out ahead. And in this particular matchup the Earthling ship -- though usually doomed -- was well-equipped to do that much damage on average before being taken out (it had point defense lasers which were a hard counter to Ur-Quan's fighters, and could sometimes knock out the Ur-Quan's maingun shots too.)
Realism isn't a priority in game design. Fun is. It's great when a feature can be both fun and realistic, but fun is always the leading element. So 'it's like real life' isn't a compelling argument except in simulation games, which MMORPGs aren't.
I generally agree with you. I am just pointing out there the type of games the OP is talking about have little to do with balance or fair play.
PvP was only one of the many things you could do in those type of games. You could also spend all your time building houses, stealing from people (thief), collecting ore/herbs/wood (gatherer), and PvE combat (fighting monsters or animals (hunter)).
I believe that PvE players in such an environment can have a good time even if they are victimized by a small group. The issue is that most PvE players would leave the game on a jerk reaction when their emotions flare. Because of this such a game can only be successful if there are no other options for said player.
With that said I don't think such a game would ever be anything be niche in any time period. Not too many people want real frustration to deal with in a game.
I believe it is a lot more interesting then what you get in most balanced games today though. There isn't just combat classes/roles. There are real consequences for not joining with others to protect yourself. Most PvP games now you die and then respawn immediately to try again with no penalty. Without any risk the fun of the reward is vastly diminished.
I'm not advocating for this type of game, but having been involved in one I can see the OPs side of things.
Comments
Games like Starcraft, Battlefield, and League provide exactly that. Players of these games don't require a masochistic death penalty to be excited by the PVP involved, because the risk of simply losing is sufficient.
Combat in these games isn't considered bland by most players. In a balanced, deep PVP game, all decisions matter, and that's an exciting notion.
You seem to confuse the concepts of symmetry and balance. Starcraft is a balanced game, yet each side is very asymmetric. League's champions are the same way: they have very distinct playstyles (asymmetry) but they're generally balanced (same power level.)
Games which aren't balanced actually involve objectively fewer strategies. When a hero or race is overpowered in LoL or SC, then instead of having a wealth of playstyles and strategic options you have a narrower set of viable strategies.
Your specific example, shooting from a roof, happens liberally in the most recent PVP game I'm playing (Battlefront) so I'm not sure where you're pulling that idea from. Last I checked, many WOW arenas and battlegrounds have high ground from which a ranged character can exert area denial over a melee character. So what you're describing sounds entirely fabricated. Let's discuss reality instead!
The role of game balance in relation to high ground advantage means ensuring no high-ground location is too powerful for its effort. This is done not to limit strategies, but to increase them. Because if a position is easy to reach and incredibly powerful, how many strategies do you think will be employed in that game? Just one.
Whereas there was a recent Battlefront match where the opposing team had 2-3 players on top of a Jawa Sandcrawler's roof the whole match, and that was balanced by the fact that they couldn't see every spot on the map from there and my team was able to focus on suppressing them and completing objectives, which yielded us victory. So even though their position was strong (with equal skill a player up there is going to win any straight-up fight) it was balanced due to its lack of access to the map objectives. The game wouldn't have been better off by making that position overpowered -- it would've turned an otherwise interesting game (where each side employed a distinct strategy) into a shallow game (where everyone only tried to get onto the roof because that's the only viable strategy.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It's fun to have choices. It's fun to be a pretty person with many choices of mates, for example. The rub initiates when you start to realize many, many others have same, or at least similar, choices, and/or that your "ideal solution", of all apparent present solutions, might not be so apparent. So you end up having more and more competition for fewer and fewer resources, inevitably.
the term mmoRPG was more of a marketing term when it was coined rather than a technology term. Yes, number of connections mattered, but it was using the term for sales. IMO, mmos were around long before the term mmo. Graphical muds certainly were mmoRPGS in a sense but without the large number of connections.
But this whole line of thinking doesn't matter. This thread is mostly a measuring contest.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
This made all levels viable for PvP and made it worthwhile, while still maintaining the PvE aspect. The reason Warhammer died is because the graphics, tech systems (load lag, poorly responsive etc.), and improper dev balance made it die a slow death. I believe a game like this with proper backing and development could be the best game possible that most of us would want. This was honestly the best game I've ever played, if the development problems didn't exist it could've been an even better WoW.
Saying skilled players will always be better (ie they'll always be more skilled) is fairly useless.
It also ignores the core problem with Diluted PVP games: skilled players will often lose.
- When a game is decided entirely by skill (Pure PVP), the skilled player always wins.
- When a game is sometimes decided by non-skill factors (Diluted PVP), the skilled player won't always win.
Your vague "you missed the best MMORPG PVP" statement cleverly avoids any details. Care to cite specifics?Chess is considered deep because every decision matters, and so learning which decisions are best at any given moment is quite difficult. Now let's imagine you're able to bring teammates into a chess match, each with a full set of pieces. Suddenly all those very difficult decisions don't matter much, because one vastly more important decision ("how many teammates did I bring?") has been added to the equation.
This is why even if you could name an MMORPG with chess-like depth, if it allowed population imbalances in fights it would nevertheless still be a very shallow, casual game. But that's assuming you could name a MMORPG with combat as deep as Chess -- no such MMORPG exists to my knowledge, and you're really not going to be able to find a MMORPG whose 1v1 combat is even as deep as Starcraft's.
As for my comment, I wasn't talking about a single genre. We've just seen how population dilutes PVP, acting as a trump card which makes all of a game's skill factors vastly less important. So essentially every Pure PVP genre (RTS, FPS, MOBA, Fighting, Racing, etc) is going to be deeper than Diluted PVP.
(And population isn't the only major factor diluting PVP. Progression is the other major way MMORPG PVP is casual, diluted PVP.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
PvE balance allows classes to have variety, they can be quite different and have a multitude of skills and all of this can be balanced against the PvE part of the game due to classes filling roles. Tanks, Helaers, DPS, CC etc.
Once you put those classes into a PvP situation that all goes out the window. Some classes will be good some will be completely useless and some will be OP. Try balancing the abilities and it throws the PvE balancing out of wack and you now have classes that can't do their role properly in PvE because of PvP balancing. You don't get this is Battlefront, or BF, or CoD or TF2. FPS games just need the guns balanced. Bit more damage, bit less recoil, slightly higher RoF. Done. And I've yet to play any FPS where my gun won't shoot past 30m. They're worlds apart.
If you want to make a case for balanced PvP in MMO's you need to stick to genre. Personaly I don't think you can get balanced PvP in a class based system which is why MMO PvP generally sucks goat balls. If you use a skill based system you just end up with everyone the same spec as in UO. Worst genre EVER for PvP. There have been a few exceptions. DAoC was fun, still unbalanced but the sheer size of the keep battles kinda levelled that out. EVE can be fun as long as it's not too one sided. Still for the most part MMO's are pretty bad at PvP.
There's a reason Devs make MMO's the way they do. They're not stupid, they do the market research and OW FFA PvP just isn't that popular with the masses. That's just the way it is.
Stick to FPS games for decent PvP, it's what I do. If you can find one that hasn't been hacked to pieces, that is.
Perhaps over 5, 10 or even 100 competitions, a competitor is successful, not because of inherent skill, but because of opponents' short-sightedness in the face of some anomaly. Perhaps it might be said "true skill" comes, not by the benefit of practice, but the ability to manifest and control apparent anomalies. We could see this in the pattern of 50 "experienced" rock-paper-scissor players, executing various strategies, and where, for whatever reason, the "victor" might be one who appeared to opponents "most random".
So when in a game's competition, will you run to the middle of the field, under-geared and otherwise seemingly ill-prepared and run in circles as a diversion, while opponents hesitate for a moment to laugh as "what the heck is this guy doing", chase you down as easy prey and become subject to particularly bad field position? Maintaining the appearance as a weaker opponent "is a strategy", it's why rope-a-dope works. So why should I spend my time getting the "best gear", allotting the "best skills", if I can spend 50% more time "winning", or at least committing to some apparent presentation of winning?
So, we come to a conclusion that a "perfect game" will incorporate some effective method of success by manifesting illusion, and I think we see this alot, even when the mechanics seem rigid, even when the paradox of choice seems to limit viable alternatives. So then we have a new paradox, which is the "perfect perfect game", and if many are "perfect", can any truly be?
edit: I think the person who abridged and thusly badly misquoted Sun Tzu said it best.
That's why to me pvp is just more fun in pvp "raids" battlegrounds or warzones or whatever we call them where the game pits equal number of players on both teams against each other.
To me the old style of mmorpg was more sandboxy. About setting the scene and let the players do the roleplay. Today it's getting so linear in some games they barely even qualify as themepark.
Dont get me wrong, i prefer a good themepark. I just prefer the early WOW aproach to themepark than the ESO or SWTOR aproach. I dont need, correction, i dont want the story to evolve around me, i just need a great setting for me to make my own story in. That's what i mainly miss from todays mmorpg's.
- Class imbalances CAN be avoided, resulting in good combat. (See also: all the non-MMORPGs which balance themselves around classes, like TF2.)
- Population imbalances CAN be avoided. (Battlegrounds and arenas force even teams.)
- Progression imbalances CANNOT be avoided. (Progression is fundamental to a game actually being an RPG.)
So it's that last element that means MMORPG PVP will always be flawed at its core (and many MMORPGs also do world PVP, which fails the population factor.)Class imbalances are trivial and can easily be fixed. If class imbalances were the biggest problem MMORPG PVP had, it'd be in great shape.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
If someone wanted to be an asshat and there are plenty of those around,they would simply form a train of mobs and lead them right on top of your group then D/C to logout.Games are and always will be full of people looking to exploit,cheat, or ruin other people's game.So imo the more we can do to erase that atmosphere from our games the better we are for it.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
This is exactly right on. I don't play any game to have other players ruin my experience. Doing so just makes me not want to play such a game and then one has to ask how that is good for gaming in general?
If someone wants to play a game that offers just pvp...more power to them. I won't and I should be expected to do so.
Let's party like it is 1863!
In that 1 round out of 10 where the winning player makes a bunch of mistakes and loses, why would you consider that player the skilled player? In that round obviously he wasn't the skilled player. Doesn't matter that he won the other 9 rounds, he wasn't the skilled player in the round he lost.
Skill is decision-making and execution. It definitely comes by practice. Not sure why you think it wouldn't.
"Apparent anomalies" is what someone inexperienced might see it as because they can't understand the gameplay pattern, but while it's perceived as an anomaly, it's not at all.
Not sure what you meant by the middle bit, but most great PVP games do involve deception of some kind ("all war is deception" as Sun Tzu said.*
*Though it's awkward to have read through to end of your post and realized you also kinda quoted Sun Tzu.)
It's a little silly to bring "perfect" games into this, as it's a silly concept to begin with (games are patterns which will eventually be mastered, at which point they're no longer interesting and you play something new.) The improvements and flaws I'm pointing out are a long way from making a game perfect, they're actually some of the most basic mistakes to avoid (basically: "Don't let shallow things trump deep things, since it ruins your game's depth.")
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Me personally (and I am an old school MMO player), I like both PvE and PvP but I favor PvE over PvP for end game mostly because after a while I find PvP repetitive.
Difference between fighting a war or playing a team sport.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
It sounds like you are a PVP spoiled child with your stupid and completely baseless generalization of PVE players!
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
"EVE is likely the best MMORPG that you've never really understood or played" - Kyleran
You can't really establish legitimacy for that type of PVP by citing a mere handful of titles whose success was mostly related to their PVE content (as you yourself admit.)
It also wasn't an "older game" thing, as MMORPGs aren't even that old a genre (after MOBAs they're probably the second youngest major genre.) Tons of pre-MMORPG PVP games like Archon, MULE, Star Control 2, and Street Fighter 2 were dramatically more successful with level playing fields.
This didn't mean Chun Li played the same as Zangief. Plenty of playstyle variety existed in Street Fighter.
An even better example is in Star Control where your Earthling ship was mostly doomed against a full-health Ur-Quan ship, but the game was balanced by Fleet Points. So your Earthling ship only cost 11 points and the Ur-Quan cost 30, and if you managed to deal 50% damage to the Ur-Quan ship before dying you'd have come out ahead. And in this particular matchup the Earthling ship -- though usually doomed -- was well-equipped to do that much damage on average before being taken out (it had point defense lasers which were a hard counter to Ur-Quan's fighters, and could sometimes knock out the Ur-Quan's maingun shots too.)
Realism isn't a priority in game design. Fun is. It's great when a feature can be both fun and realistic, but fun is always the leading element. So 'it's like real life' isn't a compelling argument except in simulation games, which MMORPGs aren't.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
PvP was only one of the many things you could do in those type of games. You could also spend all your time building houses, stealing from people (thief), collecting ore/herbs/wood (gatherer), and PvE combat (fighting monsters or animals (hunter)).
I believe that PvE players in such an environment can have a good time even if they are victimized by a small group. The issue is that most PvE players would leave the game on a jerk reaction when their emotions flare. Because of this such a game can only be successful if there are no other options for said player.
With that said I don't think such a game would ever be anything be niche in any time period. Not too many people want real frustration to deal with in a game.
I believe it is a lot more interesting then what you get in most balanced games today though. There isn't just combat classes/roles. There are real consequences for not joining with others to protect yourself. Most PvP games now you die and then respawn immediately to try again with no penalty. Without any risk the fun of the reward is vastly diminished.
I'm not advocating for this type of game, but having been involved in one I can see the OPs side of things.