The PvP Thread

I recommend you to read his interview at Ultima Codex. The link is in the end of this post!

(...)

UC: Yeah, and that way, if someone is griefing you, you can get on his case at the pub afterward, just like ?dude, seriously, what was that??

RG: Well, and also?it?s easier to harp on someone you know. And in fact the way we?re doing PvP is kind of interesting too. Now, again, this is not implemented, so this is our plan for PvP. So, our plans for PvP are?neither of the two extremes that I?m going to describe, and then I?ll discuss the middle ground that we?re taking.

You know, UO was completely open PvP. The great joy was that?it was completely open PvP! You could go attack anybody you wanted. The great tragedy was that?it was completely open PvP, which meant that ? generally speaking ? people preyed on the newbies, which actually worked against the success of the game in many ways. But, you know, it was lost of fun if you were the guy perpetrating it.

(...)

http://sota.ultimacodex.com/interview-with-richard-garriott/

 

As far as PvP goes, for myself and the hubby, it's a non-starter. If there is to be work spent on PvP systems, great! But there are reams of options for PvPers out there, that can easily be included in any game, that don't require the slaughter of uninvolved bystanders.

One obvious solution, besides the rather cliched idea of "training grounds" or arenas, would be to implement a Faction vs Faction system, perhaps. For example, you join the Brotherhood of Black Knives because they have a cool storyline about being paid assassins? Maybe they just have a really fabulous cloak that you simply must have? Either way, great! Join them! But it flags you as the enemy of the Warriors of Vigilance and Peace who object to the wholesale slaughter of innocent herbalists, bakers and castle mice, and hunt the Black Knives wherever they are. Thus, we open up world PvP while still allowing consent and developing stories for the players to feel more involved within the world at the same time!

All the arguments for open PvP fail to answer one question (truthfully). Why do many PvPers want to kill non PvPers? If it's for the dynamic combat, surely arenas, tournaments and faction combat will serve equally well. I strongly doubt that it's for any sense of immersion among many (because most "ganks" I've been aware of had absolutely no attempt to RP in them, but were, in fact, merely an excuse to try to ruin someone elses day for a feeling of power. There simply are no good reasons to implement involuntary combat with today's technology. And there are many, many, MANY exceptional writers out there who would love to build history and lore for factions, groups, guilds, bands within the SOTA world to allow such combat to take place without inflicting it upon an unwilling demographic.

 

I'll try to answer your question, although I didn't play a strict PvP character, and instead played a PvP thief who picked fights with other players.

Assuming that open PvP is meant to focus on those who PK (there were other types of open PvPers in UO including notos, PvP thieves, order/chaos, etc.), many of them utilized PKing as a way of funding their PvP play style. Often times, it proved easier to acquire resources that way than it did to compete with others for the most lucrative spawns, making the risk and practice worthwhile.

For some it was easier and more entertaining to try and kill a player which was much better "prey" than any creature in game could be (many players considered the AI in UO to be boring). The idea of competition with something that would at least provide a better challenge in terms of escape is what drew many players to that style (also, the loot).

For others, it was the grief factor, and it is this behavior that has created the most tension between those who do and don't want open PvP. The issue is that the PvPer kills another player when there is little to gain from doing so except the duress of the person behind the screen. This is the power trip that many players refer to.

Hopefully this covers most of the reasons that a player might engage in non-consensual PvP and can help frame the discussion properly. From my perspective, the major goal of any restricted PvP system should be to combat only the third reason for engaging in non-consensual PvP: bringing duress to the player behind the screen. This is particularly difficult because the first and second reasons for engaging can indeed bring duress to a player, but it is certainly not the primary goal or the only significant reason for doing so, unlike the third reason.

To that end, I suspect that my previous post in this thread meets the requirements relatively well.

 

If conensual pvp is implemented and there will never be free open World pvp just leave PvP out of the game. Restricting PvP to arenas and areas is like making a game in a game. Just look at WoW and similar games that have devided PvP PvM and crafting. The players are divided and you could actually just have created 3 seperate games.

Being forced to pvp in arenas where you are restricted to a confined Place removes the thrill of the battle and the chance that something new happens.
For example being attacked by a troll while you are fighting someone else.

I loved UO for its freedom and i played on both sides of the fence. My miner had some fighting skills to be able to survive long enough to get back in Town or i asked my friend to guard me and we could just chat for a few hours.

 

Consensual PvP, whether it's guild based, faction based, zone based or quest based, does not stop PvPers from doing what they want to do - PvP. They'll likely get better competition, better quality of fighting and stronger "buzz" when they win.

Non-consensual PvP, on the other hand, in any format, can and does prevent non-PvPers from doing what they want to do, whether that's role playing, story telling, PvE content or gather/crafting. It restricts freedom from many players for the sake of a few players.

Even if I am a PvPer, why should I have any right to exclude everyone elses playing style except for my own? We can both have what we want, PvP AND Non-PvP, but only if the capacity for forcing one side to participate is strictly controlled. I want SOTA to succeed, to prosper, and not just be a short-term nostalgia trip to the "beginning of UO". An open, chaotic, free-for-all would be great for all of about three weeks, then the press (and the casual players hit by the organized murder ganks) would have a field day tearing this product apart for it's glorious failings.

 

I'm fine with even restricted PVP so long as the combat takes place in the world itself, I think one of the worst trends in gaming is being able to press a hotkey and be queued up for an Arena system, and then instantly being taken back to where you were after. It makes the Arena feel alive the whole rest of the game feel stagnant.

 

@DamoclesXV, Thanks for the link. I really like LB vision for pvp. I hope he includes many different quests besides the cops and robbers versions that will allow you to pvp.

 

@DamoclesXV, I like RG's idea. But, when you're free to be attacked, you should be free to attack others.

Otherwise people like doomkitten will show up with her 'hubby' and evaluate their chances first. If they think they can take you they'll wait for you to be at a disadvantage before attacking, say more people show up. If they don't, they'll just leave and go about their business.

If people show up in your general vicinity when you're on a smuggling run, they're fair game.

 

Always amazing and little funy reading NON-PvPlayers talking about PvP. Really !

 

I missed the early days and only saw the fel vs trammel play. Let me tell you though, once I went to fel I had the best times ever. Yes, it sucked to be griefed in the dungeons, but the first time my thief disarmed a player and stole their weapons... weee. good times.

The fact is, open world pvp only works when there aren't any specialized, high value loot. If the loot takes more than a few hours to get or costs a ton of gold to buy, people are going to feel jipped when it gets ripped off. I always felt that UO's downfall started once loot started selling for real world cash. Because you were no longer stealing valueless virtual crap, you were then stealing virtual crap with some twisted real world value. This is why sieges will never destroy player homes, it cost real world money through the tax system to maintain.

I did have some good times doing rvr in DAOC and I attempted my fair share of griefing on WOW's PVP servers, but nothing, and I mean nothing, beat the fun of UO pvp.

Bring it on!

 

@Abydos - the only way to fully explore a subject and possibly come to a solution to satisfy all parties is to look at it from all sides. Let's try to be constructive and work together so everyone can enjoy SOTA *AND* have SOTA be a wildly popular success.

 

Bowen and SomeDude have it right. It should be an optional, but all-or-nothing experience.

Personally, I'm somewhere in the middle between carebare and hardcore PVPer. I did enjoy the experience in vanilla UO of getting ganked early on, but I enjoyed it exactly once. After that, it simply grew aggravating. Plus, we aren't talking about a player base of UO anymore, we're talking about a new, online-offline hybrid game with a fully fleshed out single player story.

I don't want to be attacked at any time unless it's part of the plot. For those of you that want that, that's great - there should be a PVP or Non-PVP option at character creation, as mentioned above, so that everyone can get the experience they want. It shouldn't be able to be toggled on and off, and there should be consequences of your actions. Blatant murder deserves, for instance, execution by the King's Guard, and so forth. So if you're caught, you lose all your items or some such.

Possibly not the best solution, but it's better than no penalty at all. Griefers need grief, too

 

@Abydos: Some of those non-PvPs have quite a number of years of first hand experience with both sides of PvP. There is a difference between understanding what goes on inside someone's head and understanding the larger issue. So I'm glad you find it amusing.

 

Flashburn: Excellent points! I fully agree!

To all of the anti-PVP crowd; there are plenty of care bear mmorpg's out there - pick one and enjoy! Hopefully this one does not turn out to be one of those.

 

Freedom for all ! Like a real RPG.

FREEDOM !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

How about compromising with PvP and non-PvP players.

Allow players to toggle PvP on/off in towns.
Give PvPers cosmetic rewards for their choice. Ability to hack up slain players. I'd like to collect heads.

 

Ultima Online was the first Ultima series i played and it was the most dedicated game i ever played.

What i loved about the game is its PvP system.
I loved being PKed because that only made me want to become better, stronger and train my character to become to max out all my skills so i can compete and PVP against others.

God how much i miss duels in dungeons and PVP tournaments.

I am praying that this game will become what Ultima Online was.

I honestly think that Richard Garriot is making a big mistake by not making this game an MMO and also making it a zoom in and out type of style.

it should continue to be UO / Diablo type of game.

What made UO so great was having real people in a virtual world that had a mind of their own.

Where they had plans to PK you after you hunt for 10 hours or to save you from a PK.
Where you think you are the best at PVP you could actually prove it by Dueling.

But the best part was the ability to actually time your combos and this was so unique that no matter how good you are, timing spells and weapon hits was key to success in PVP.

If you play any RPG today its all delayed LAG, you can be in one spot on the server wheres on your PC your already in town and you character will just bounce off to town once lag free's up.

If development team is reading this, please consider a lot of other peoples
request and make this a proper PVP game, thats what is funding your game and will make it outlast UO in the future.

ErazeR (Oceania Shard)

 

Now that we are aware that you CAN NOT bring your single player character into the online world, we can toss out any idea of people hacking items/skills/etc to exploit online.

That being said, we can state that PvP will only be happening in the online realm (go fig!) and now we turn to WHERE and WHEN PvP will take place. This leads to:

<strong>Specific PvP Points of Interest</strong>
These could be towns, forts, mines, dungeons, docks... etc. When you are in the world map and happen to see a (DEVS - more noticeable please) fire/smoke effect from a PoI or a new symbol for combat (a pair of red swords crossed?) you will know that if you enter that PoI you will be able to freely attack other people.

How do you know who is "good" or "bad"? Your reputation proceeds you is the best way I can put it and it seems the systems are being put in place for this. The next path is being able to identify who is what and this would probably be the Blue/Grey/Red/Green/Orange system with added word of mouth from forums/newspapers/bulletin/bounty boards in game. Since these places are Open PvP, the matchmaking would grab ANYONE and EVERYONE that has entered that PoI and put them into the same area (there might be multiple instances of a PoI depending on player capacity of course).

This opens up lots of avenues for creating towns that players want to run but also defend from other players, the possibility of rare items/resources in certain dungeons that can be controlled by players but also have evil NPCs vying for that strategic location as well.

Hardcore PvPers should find this refreshing, competitive and worth it in the long run and folks that don't wish to PvP will still be able to go about doing what they enjoy doing.

 

ErazeR rings a bell. Oceania Murderers Guild [OMG] ?

Good times

 

I started playing UO in March of 1999 and have been playing it off and on ever since. No other game has captured the wonder and excitement I felt when playing this game and that was because of the threat of more powerful people, both benevolent and malevolent, being out there willing to both help and kill me.

I remember the first time I was Pked, some guy on a horse with a red name ran up to me and froze me in place. My heart started beating and before I knew it was being hit by a kryss with deadly poison on it and my screen faded to black and white. From that moment on I was hooked and wanted to become powerful enough that I could fight these terrible murderers and protect other players from their evil rampage!

Having the ability to dole out player justice to "evil players" or become one of those dastardly killers yourself is a huge draw for many players and helps make the game more immersive. So many of the new "MMO's" have an artificial feel to them because there are so many restrictions placed on you. You can't choose to be a thief, or a murderer, or build your own player village, etc. More freedom = a more "realistic" and immersive experience.

If this game hopes to capture the old magic of UO it needs to have the open world PvP that so many of us love. Give the players safe havens like the old towns of Vesper, Moonglow, etc, but if people want to venture out into the dungeons of the world there should be a threat of violence hanging over their head, just like there would be in a medieval world.

VOTE YES TO OPEN WORLD PVP!