The PvP Thread

Well there is a distinct difference between PvP and PKing. PvP tends to be a form that is open for all, while PKing is Sheep vs Wolves (let's be honest, that's what it is).

The problem with PKing has always been the lack of risk. The PKs generally have nothing to fear, and run around like loose cannons spoiling the game for those who don't want to PvP, and certainly don't want to be sheep.

On the other side of the coin, without PKs, games such as these lose that something special. The fear that your life is actually in your hands and at any moment something other than AI monsters will be chasing you down. That is what makes the game so appealing to non PKs, but not the rampant PKing.

How do you fix that? That's the hard part. Perhaps a massive stat loss system for PKs, that becomes no statloss when very far away from cities, towns or even event areas.

Pks do not like to become weak...

 

In NWN, I always played on full PVP servers. The NWN servers I played on usually had 40-60 players on them and people could always choose to go somewhere else where PVP was disabled.

I think if given the choice to enable (or filter in) PVP players, and some opportunities through quests, I think this could provide a good environment for those that like it.

Those that want to PK people who want to don't want or like PVP are on par with rapists and murders who obviously don't understand the harm they cause to other people. This only adds fuel to the video games cause violence argument and will end up forcing everyone's hand.

 

I think PVP can work just fine and here is why. Given that this is going to be one shard and you are only going to see a couple (10-20) relevant people at any given time any ways (remember this is NOT an MMO) it is a pretty simple matter to ensure that PKers only see other PKers or those who are open to being PK'd. For those who have no interest in PvP you will never see them and they will never see you. You were never going to see the vast majority of people playing online any ways so it really isn't an issue.

There could be 20,000+ people playing at any given time so I highly doubt there will be any problem finding enough PvP friendly players to interact with.

 

I'm a roleplayer, and bought into "Shroud" on the basis that it will be a roleplaying game. I understand some people like PVP; I will only note the gankers all like the ganking, not being the ganked. So even if I were into PVP, why am I entering into a game to spoil someone else's fun by definition.

This would be a deal-breaker for me, if the only way I could play the game is offline. So as to not get in the way of someone else's fun, I would go so far as to suggest separate servers for PVP and non-PVP worlds.

 

Yes, this is a very complication topic, and now the idea of Friendly Fire has been brought up. We have a lot of different types of players and I sit a little on both sides. Here is something <i>I</i> would like to see:

Single Player Offline: For the offline players with no FF or online components.

Single Player Online: Same as offline except you will see online components. Player can enter PVP via Quests which would be scene based. You are able to see other people in towns, but will not be able to interact with them and will not be seen by other online modes. Other mode players' houses and shops can be seen. Friends that allow you, can be taken as NPC companions in your party.

Friends Play Online: Same as SPO except other players in your social group will appear in your game. They will populate your world as NPCs (if they allow, conversation would be companion based) when they are offline or otherwise engaged in OPO. Friends being used as NPCs can "drop in" when they are available and want to join you. FF can be turned on and off based on voting from the other online members of your party. Newly joining members must agree to existing FF settings when they join.

Open Play Online: Fully online with other players being populated in your world by full matchmaking. I would like settings for a bunch of different things like PVP, Playstyles, etc., and a way to see how those flags change the number of people I could interact with. A PVP setting will filter out players so opposing choices don't populate each others world except during PVP Quests. PVP On flag should enable FF because no good RP PVP game is good without FF.

OPO PVP is its own animal. I personally would like this to be a full loot system and full FF. There would also need to be a cooldown timer for turning off PVP, so people don't just jump someone and switch modes. Once you have FF or PVP damage, you should not be able to switch modes for 24 hours. If you go offline after triggering this damage, you appear as an NPC in the games of those involved. If FF your character will chill out and apologize to the group and for PVP your NPC will become hostile and can be killed. After 24 hours, you can "go into hiding" but you avoid hit and runs.

Would kind be neat if someone is "killed" they never appear in the games of people that witnessed it, but they haven't gone into how death is going to be handled. This would require making multiple or remaking characters for those that want to role-play permanent deaths or what not. Maybe even a flag for perm death that makes your next death permanent requiring you to make a new character. This would be pretty revolutionary because I have never seen that in another game. Where a character death in a game is permanent even without forcing that player to stop playing: they just get matched with other people and I never see them again.

 

it's all about liberty:

liberty to steal, liberty to kill (even inside town) and so on. The "computer game" part should NOT interfere in my decisions. What holds me from killing this poor peasant beside me it's not the fact that "I can't click on him" but "if I do atack him, guards would come, other people would come, I'd be outcast..

and, in the middle of a forest, where no one is seeing, I should definitely be able to make my own decision, whether me and my group kill or not this hunter and steal all of his games

 

suggestion
If someone kills you or you see it happening, there will be blood or fingerprints left behind, you can take this to the town or city justice section, if more than X of these come in there is a APB on that individual, traveling wagons on the map COULD be the Law, if they catch the killer, person is jailed, maybe they can bribe their way out, maybe they can tunnel/escape if they find the loose brick or floor tile, else they will be released from prison in 60 minutes online time.
Same with theft
The criminal flag would only reset after capture/release.

That gives the pker an element of risk &amp; the pked an element of justice. Some sort of Justice system

 

For open world, fully lootable, attack anybody, this game can capitalize the **** out of the market. Look at what is out there, and compare to classic uo. Is there even a comparison anymore? Darkfall is nothing but HAX and nobody wants to deal with ADVENTUREINES BS.

Even though this game is not set out to be what everyone wants it to be (another UO) everyone who was pre-trammel UO has had a void in their pvp. This game to me looks like something that is being built like Diablo 3 but better.

Both audiences CAN be hit and if the dev's decide to do away with it, it can then be just a decent Ultima game at best. What I want to see is that all things are being considered. My favorite part of these ultima series games was being able to fight the npcs and break the story and you had the freedom to do this at your will. That feeling is also fulfilled with the open world pvp aspect which my gaming history was built upon. That in itself should ALSO be considered in your character's outcome/timeline/shape from the game itself.

The pvp aspect can be split into categories. They can co-exist online like Asherons Call did. They had 6 ******** servers (which STILL could be flagged for pvp and pk... less people doing it, but still could find a fight) and 1 open world kill anything that moves open world pvp server. The options are limitless.

 

Every time someone says "If you don't want to get PKed, stay out of this area" or "don't do that" or "don't carry that", you are removing an element of gameplay for many players. This gameplay, which is apparently meant for ALL players winds up getting reserved exclusively for those that want to PvP.

If you want to PvP fine, but you'd better find a way to do it without trying to elevate PvP above other modes of play or restricting how non-PvPers wish to play.

BTW, I played UO from launch and for more than a decade afterwards. I didn't PvP unless forced into it and never enjoyed it. Still, I think that UO had a uniquely desirable environment for RP. It was one of the only games where one could have a rich experience without the need for combat of any kind.

The thing I and many of my fellows players didn't like was that entire areas were blocked off from us because they were full of PvPers and we had no desire to engage in that type of play.

 

You really have 3 kinds of PvP:

1) Fighting over nodes, spawn, and scarce resources. I used to think this was really important. And I know there's an extremely vocal minority that think this is a must have. But while this worked 10 years ago, there simply aren't games today with hundreds of thousands of players (let alone millions) where this is a prominent part of the game. I'm not oppose to trying it somewhere, but I wouldn't bet the game on this. The market has simply moved away.

2) Instanced / scenario / battleground PvP. I realize some immersion is lost and the RP gets a bit strained, but frankly I enjoy this and it's really popular. WoW gets a lot of things wrong, most notably rewarding better (or more active) PvPers with better gear, which only increases the gap. The sandbox should be like an e-sport where everyone has the same set of tools to work with. LoL or GW2 are better examples.

3) Large scale open world territory fights (sieges). The fight is over some objective (e.g. a castle) which becomes owned by a guild / faction / server, switching hands based on the outcome. All of my best MMO memories are here. And really, this is what keeps people playing long after the rest of the game has been conquered in some way. I?d rather not see it put in the game until it really works though, because I?ve never seen anything kill a game faster than getting this wrong.

 

@silver fist Now everyone wants this to be UO? Really? I'm pretty sure a lot of us are here because of the older Ultimas not because of UO.

 

I think that completely open PvP (and looting) is the ideal for the kind of open world demanded by RP, but a lot of people seem to overlook the logical consequences of open PVP in an RP game. Namely, that murdering another player or NPC is an extremely character defining act that is near to irreversible and has an obvious slew of consequences.
1. Murderous outlaws cannot enter lawful areas without being immediately set upon, if not by law enforcement, then by vigilantes.
2. Other players and NPCs interacting with murderous outlaws in any favorable way (which obviously includes trading) makes them an accomplice which itself brings down a slew of consequences. This means that a murderer's house that is placed in lawful areas would be condemned and their access to items stored in lawful areas frozen.
3. There is no 24-hour period after which you go back about your business as normal. Murdering someone has a permanent effect on your character. It would require some seriously good-deedery and repentance for a murderer to prove that they have changed their ways.

None of this is unfair or unbalancing. On the contrary it's the realistic world that UO never achieved. If you want to RP a murderer, get in line, but it's absurd to complain that you're murderer has to suffer the consequences of his actions. It's a RP game!

 

Great post RiminiVant, what we need is more of this type brainstorming. There are a few other great suggestions out there but you really have to dig hard to find them.


Just asking for forced none-consensual pvp with stories of how much fun it was back in the day is not productive, and better loot in pk zones is an un-imaginative dull incentive. Not to mention, most ultima fans do not want shining baubles to be a driving in game force.

The game would benefit alot from suggestions from both camps, what type penalties and incentives could be used to make the risks acceptable, and at the same time, not drive away a large part of what could be the community, be it those who do not like pk, or those who do.



I apologize for just throwing this post out with out coming up with my own cool plan.

 

"2. Other players and NPCs interacting with murderous outlaws in any favorable way (which obviously includes trading) makes them an accomplice which itself brings down a slew of consequences."

Absolutely!

"3. There is no 24-hour period after which you go back about your business as normal. Murdering someone has a permanent effect on your character. It would require some seriously good-deedery and repentance for a murderer to prove that they have changed their ways."

In a game that accentuates Virtues, I also agree with this. Actions should have consequences, and murder should have serious consequences.

 

Please note, this comment has nothing to do with UO and is my view for how to creating a great role playing experience.

When I choose the option to play with random players, please allow me to kill them and loot their remains. That is all.

If I have the power to kill and loot village NPCs I should have the ability to kill and loot any player.

Please keep this RPG balanced and not make it 'care bear mode'. People need to realize that RG makes games for role players, not for 'I wana role play but I think this part is not fun' players.

Heck just on reddit someone asked for farming to be seasonal and RG said that made sense and will see to it if the seasons goal is reached. Why would he put that type of depth in an RPG but not allow the role of evil players to exist?

This is something the worlds best DM &amp; RPG Developer, Richard Garriott, would never say, "Um yes, you can murder, ****, and pillage .... but only over there." It would be an insult to his legacy.

 

The thrill of a real world, with real actions and consequences was what made UO my favorite game. The guard system was great on uo... to counter gankfest griefers just need an indepth bounty system where its just as much lucrative to form bigger raids on pk gangs. the bounty system on uo never quite got there but you can imagine if those huge hundreds of thousands bountys were say evenly shared to all the players in raid hunting the pks.. im sure there are ways to make the playerbase easily outnumber murderers and thieves via rewards.

making pvp non consensual is the first step in creating a feeling of a real world with an sense of danger not felt since &lt; 2000 in any game.

 

I dont see why you would remove murderers/thieves altogether, why not just make more, if not ALOT of drawbacks .. short of stat/skill loss dieing


Some ideas

- give bounty hunting huge incentives!

- a skill in tracking murderers to a general area, possibly raised by speaking to npcs

- town crier gives away the location of repeated murders few minutes after happening as to be able to counter gank

- not being able to recall/teleport from an area for a short amount of time after commiting an offence

- if you have been murdered by someone, a free shot at revenge without a murder count

- and make like 100 other things that makes being murderer a head ache but please leave guards in town and anything go's outside XD

 

@fry z not everyone plays games for a sense of real world danger, a lot play for a release. And not everyone wants to sense that real world danger. Making PVP non consensual is the first step to chasing away a lot of the player base since only the side in favor of PVP is getting what they want.

what you are basically saying is you should be able to ruin someone else's game even if they don't want it.

 

@rune_74 - The problem with that, is SotA becomes one of the 10 a penny MMORPGs out there. The thing that everyone who played UO found, was PKs brought the element of fear into a game.

I remember telling my sister about the game and years later, when she bought it, she tiptoed between two cities expecting PKs at any moment. Little did she know, she was in trammel. once she found out, the fear vanished and part of the game with it.

What is needed is a sensible approach that gives risk over reward, while stopping PKs ruining the game for everyone but means if you want that rare items, you must got to areas that PvP is open.

You still need to somehow make it so PKs cacn't live in those areas exploiting rares, but need to dedicate their time there finding, crafting, farming..in effect not being Pks.

 

That's a very good point RiminiVant - This is a RP game above everything else. I have to agree that you go out and kill, steal or break "laws" and to an extent associate with those people, expect to be lynched, attacked, mobbed, avoided until such a repentance has been paid and not just a day or so after the deed. Complete quests that involve "doing good" - Helping old grannies cross the road etc.

This could lead to villages/ towns/ cities where such "reprobates" run wild creating the "no-go area's" for new players (provided they are made aware before they enter said area's).