When LB needed our opinion on PvP in 2012

... on Stratics (Link below) I gave him my following point of view on PK/PVP:
http://stratics.com/community/threads/lord-british-needs-your-opinion-on-pvp.282184/

I'd like to give a brief overview of my personal experience as a newbie and later stage of my character and personal developmenet in UO. I won't talk about my personal end game, since PKs were no issue when my character and my personal way of playing were finalized.

I started to play UO in December 1997, when Dread Lords were still roaming. Even though I died frequently the PKs didn't bother me much, and here is why:

1. Other people helped out with lost gear
2. I didn't need much gear anyways to play as a new character
3. Most "blue" players you could trust (Old notoriety system)
4. The monsters dropped very good amounts of gold and gear for a new character and they didnt drop it randomly but always
5. NPC gear was pretty cheap
6. Several new players together could wipe a decently skilled player killer
7. NPC towns had everything you needed as a newbie
8. What ever NPCs didnt have was provided by other players advertising or the close to town player houses and their vendors
9. Good monster spawns around npc towns (Britain graveyard as an example)
10. Ability to make my own gear to a certain extend inside and close to the protected player town (Leather, wood, chicken feathers

Of those 10 points for me the most important were

Nr. 4 + Nr. 5 ie Monsters provide enough money to attain good gear without having to farm for hours. Many people, players, no matter how old, mature or how many MMO's they played do not like to lose hours worth of playtime each time they die during their learning curve and especially early on (Nevertheless UO offered many means of escaping and gave you a secure bank). So by ensuring that "loot" is "easy" to replace with good drops and cheap items (the quality might not be the best), this experience is not a total negative point but part of this world/game.

If I recall right, you could split a Slime in UO into 8 clones, giving you lots of loot and +-900 gold total, enough to buy a full chain set + weapons and regs.

During my later playign stage, lets call it young adult if my newbie stage would be comparable of being a teenager, PKs were much more anyoing, since I actually had more "to lose". This didnt just meant gear I was wearing being more expensive, also I would hunt much further away from secure environments and thus also having gathered more items of value which I would lose. What were my issues:

1. I did not know how to defend myself let alone how to stay alife

This might sound stupid, but there in 1998 were no way to learn pvp as a non player killer ie Dread Lord. You could not fight your guild friends and learn (No guild system yet). Thus I didn't really know when to heal, when to run and how to strike back. Later on I learned how to do it but interestingly many players did not see it as mandatory to be able to learn to defend, attack or flee even later in the game when guild systems were etablished. In UO you were able to out heal damage even against un even odds.

So what would I do for a futur game:

1. What UO had back in the day (Secure towns, easy loot for newbs)
2. A solid notoriety system with draw backs for players chosing to be cutthroats but not to harsh
3. If there is a virtue system why not use it. I never understood why the different shrines of UO had no meaning. It could have been part of every character that per virtue he can gain points by doing certain tasks giving him possibilities like (Just examples!):

If you pray of the shrine of Justice near Yew, you can get points and you raise your status/affiliation to it. Reaching 100 in the Justice Virtue points gives you +2 damage vs player killers. Nothing too dramatic, still nice. You can lose those points though since they will rott away if you do not follow the virtue regularely or if you do evil deeds. If you follow the same system with the shrine of Sacrifice, you can die once by another player but you will keep your gear you had on you when praying at the shrine the next time. On death you lose points again, making you to regain your points. if you die without 100 you will lose your gear. You can only have one Virtue high. Murderers only get the virtue of chaos.

So a player can also deceide if gear is the most important for him or not.

I could write on for ever , really important is that gear does matter much early on, that there are secure ways to learn the game BUT not secure in the sense that I am detached from the rest of the game world, means of escape (recall) and maybe even a way to keep your gear on death at least once every few hours. Oh and Player skill dependant pvp and not tab target.



PS: I forgot overhead ingame text from speaking. even if 3D, if you cant talk directly to someone in game, the atmospehere and the options of peacful confrontations are lost. Chat boxes are the worst.

PPS: The for me biggest reason for people quitting UO early back in the days were the stat/skill/house breakin and duping bugs, giving parts of the population a huge leap forward of character development on resources, making them half gods early on, destroying everything that moved. The same thing happened in the only game that had similar free mechanics, Darkfall. While there might always be a gap between veterans and new players, the first months of a game create the fundamental player base. Like in RL online games, and especially MMO's need a large middel class, else the social environment will fail.

About PvP:

I played from '97 to 2000. During those 3 years PvP got faster with every larger patch. I personaly found this not optimal since a lot of players are not the "fps" type of crowd but rather the "chess" player type of people.

What I want to say is, if you have a pvp system which offers action and reaction to player behaviour during an engagement, even to the extent, that you can think 3 steps forward while countering your opponents action you have a great system. Quick systems mostly are based on "FPS" type of logic of quickly "fragging". Also a good PvP system that is based on player skill ie using the characters options and gear to its max extend, will also offer someone the possiblity to battle several opponents of lesser "skill" or "character advancement" at the same time without it being comparable to a level difference like in WoW.

In UO I could fight two opponents of similar character stats, skills and gear with me killing both just because of the huge impact that experience brought.

When I look back I actually wonder if you guys created UO pvp by accident in the sense that player skill and creativity made a big difference in engagements.

Also, tab target is the worst. When you melee be at the enemy, if you swing wrongly you might hit your friends so watch out. For ranged damage like magic and archery it would be nice to have it fully FPS style, but then I think that is not feasable with ping and connection differences. I personaly wouldnt give totaly up on that though, possible mechanic:

Look at the enemy or mob you want to shoot your arrows on, center him on the screen so his name is shown up, start to draw your arrow. A round circle is shown on the middle of the screen similar to a cross hair, as long as the mob is inside the circle you can let it go and the arrow will hit him (similar to a tab target). This means if it is a player who moves around quickly, you need to follow him with your target circle, and keep him in, if he should hide behing a tree or rock the moment you release, the arrow or the magic projectily will not hit.

So a system like this offers the possiblity for ranged combat to mark your target at the same time it will still need "more skill" then conventional tab target, by moving with the target and keeping him in the target circle till release.

I absolutely loved the fact that casting could be disturbed and I think that definityl needs to be in. You could also have archery disturbed ie the circle disapearing or at least a chance of it being disturbed.

For melee I think the best system I have seen so far in any game, and I am absolutely sure it would work in an MMO, is the PS3 game Dark Souls, where you can side step, lunch forward, jump back, block, different attack variations who had pros and drawbacks. In a melee PvP fight this could absolutely rock to out play your enemies, also stamina makes a important role like in Ultima Online.

Most important and as a final word: the more player skill is necessary the better (no tab target). Also gear like in UO has to make less an impact as it does in other MMO's. And if PvP is not too fast, more people can learn and get decent.

​

Lets have a nice discussion.

 

Hello mate. Thank you for sharing that post. it was a very nice read! I believe you hit spot-on in several parts of your post. I fully agree that gear should not play a role in PvP, except perhaps -imho- of what kind of damage you do (slashing/cutting/perforating/etc). What I reluctant about at first was having the combat be that much player-skill based -Im not against it, I actually love the notion of involving combat system ala Mount & Blade- but then I thought: yea...M&B could work actually and its early enough in the development to have a chance to be implemented.

I do agree on the tab-targeting system. Most of the times implemented in most MMOs it was implemented badly and as a melee it meant you could end up spamming tab just because the client selected another mob/player which is very far away, while you have another one right infront of you already dropping your health, OR lots and lots of running around.

Note/Suggestion: Just something that popped in my mind about tab-targeting: If the game is to follow tab targeting I would suggest that the range of the weapon you use (melee/ranged) should limit the range of foes you can tab target. For example. If I am melee and press tab continuously and I have 2 mobs/players near me and one far, switch between the ones close. If I am using ranged weapons then (and only then) allow tab targeting to extend to larger distances.

By the way there is a about Virtues and PvP, if you want to contribute. So far most PvPrs think its just another open PvP/full loot discussion, but its more about what you describe.

 

UO - 1998 to 2001 or something like that.

The excitement of UO back then is what I look for in every mmo I have tried since. UO worked back then for all of the reasons you listed and some more. For me Trammel was the beginging of the end. Felucca became a dead world and Trammel just wasn't as much fun.

I'm not sure we know how the "Shroud" slider will work or at least I don't understand it. If pvp flagging and areas are optional I hope there are reasons for me to go there. I don't want to be a PK but I do like to have an option of attacking someone who I feel have wronged me.

 

Thanks for this post, it's a good read.

Your idea of shrines that could be used to counter loss of items on death is excellent.

I also value the idea of having x number of items drop on death based on your level and the items value.

Example: You have a godly +25 fire damage Bow with a value of 10 gold and you know if you die at your current level of 30 you will lose 7 items. To protect your Bow valued at 10 gold, you have, at all times 7 items worth 11 gold in your inventory to prevent it from dropping on death.

This type of system protects people who take care, but still rewards pk's and there is always a chance of really nice loot should you pk someone who's careless.

I'm counting on decent pvp loot rules, otherwise, what is the difference between this mmo and the plethora of other cookie cutter ones already available? Without decent pvp loot rules this won't be another Ultima online!

 

Let me just say .....BRAVO good sir BRAVO! *standing ovation*


Pretty much everything you say is dead on ...I hope they listen. The best good vs. evil system I have ever played in a game was in Ultima Online. I was a Great Lord for a while, until I realized most of the GLs I knew were bigger scumbags than their Dreadlord counterparts (this realization finally sunk in after a kind GL stole my entire fortune, a pile of 10k out of my little house, and it had taken me an eternity to earn it).....so I went red, and thus as they say, a legend was born.

I hope they also consider (I know they won't) the old UO housing system in which you had to use a physical key to get in your door, so careful consideration had to be taken when entering your home, and carrying your key. It added such a sense of danger and excitement to the game ...one that really hasn't been matched since.