"Battleground" PvP to me seems like a really, really, bad idea....

Not talking real money here - in game gold of course

 

When I have traveled that path a few dozen times already I don't want to see anything from the journey except the unexpected, random encounters. The rest is just boring repetition of things I am tired of seeing, like the daily work commute in real life.

Depends on the person. I myself prefer PvP that is instanced and balanced; in fact, except for Planetside 2, I basically only play PvP that is instanced and balanced.

So, for me particularly, the open PvP is not even close to being "good enough", and if that is the only kind of PvP there is a good chance I will, at best, dabble with it a bit and then leave PvP forever. Well, if I even get to trying it, because player looting is an absolute deal breaker for me; so, unless I have a 100% reliable way to opt out of looting (including ransom), I won't be playing PvP anyway.

At the same time I can readily remember quite a few games that were better due to the instancing, such as the early Fallout games. Good games are made to make the best of whichever systems they choose while minimizing the potential issues.

Would UO have been better with instancing? Perhaps yes, perhaps not. It could potentially allow the dev team to provide an even larger map, or more complex NPCs, or better story development inside the instances, etc. When you think about changing such a fundamental aspect of the game you have to think about not only the added disadvantages, but the added advantages, and in the case of instancing much of the advantages lie in allowing more resources to be spent in other areas of the game.

The issue is, "move out of the way" can be achieved by leaving the online game and playing offline, where the player will be able to do everything that would need PvP in the online game. It's likely what I will do if choosing to not engage in PvP has any negative influence in my ability to engage in PvE.

This is the issue with the stick method. Players might decide that the best way to avoid the stick is to just not play, and SotA allows players to get most of what the game has to offer while completely avoiding all player interaction including PvP, which makes this option even more enticing in this game. If a player ever decides that the interaction with the other players doesn't make up for being subjected to "the stick", for all intents and purposes the online game has lost that player, and quite likely it will be permanent.

 

Face it, the way it is now, PvP is nothing more than a Quake-like deathmatch. Even how spells are handled shows this. Spells are nothing more than machine guns and grenade launchers in disguise. There is nothing "magical" or mystical about it. It is firing your weapon over and over until all around you drop dead.

 

SW:TOR had an arena map called HuttBall that contained many elements of a rugby/football, game: a "ball", the ball carrier, deadly traps, and endzones. Each team would score 1 point when the ball carrier crossed the opposing team's goal line. Killing the ball carrier caused the ball to drop. The deceased ball carrier would respawn after a length of time. You needed teamwork to successfully win a match.

Many people, myself included, absolutely loved that map. However, just as many people hated it. The point is - it was an optional component of the game that made it fun for those that enjoyed it. I would like to see something like arenas in SotA but I don't want it to be the only option available. I'm very much also in favor of contested keep/town seiges ( ala DAoC ) with purpose as well as an open murder/justice system.

 

Goodness gracious don't be such a crybaby... it makes it ironically funny that your daily work commute sucks

I must say when I saw battleground pvp, my heart missed a beat, I was seeing WoW all over again and my interest dropped, well what was left dropped... and dropped...

It's funny seeing people defend instancing when its only copying the map for a group of players ; theres not one single advantage in this unless you're trying to save money on cloud upkeep.

I rest my case I must also say the first time I entered a dungeon in WoW, I exclaimed a very heavy wtf... I was totally turned off, left in short notice...

 

Not exactly. I just see it as wasted time. More so because I don't actually like driving (well, driving where I have to obey the speed limit at least); too tedious.

Which is something I don't want to see in games I play. When I play games, I'm paying to be entertained, not to be bored.

Hey, know what? Make travel from point A to point B a mini-game that requires true skill, that will mercilessly kill in a heartbeat any player that doesn't dedicate his full attention to it (even a max level character with BIS gear in every slot), and it would become acceptable for me

You don't see an advantage. It's different from an advantage not existing. Different players, different preferences, all that. And the fact the most popular PvP games are heavily instanced do speak a lot about how many players do like instancing

The exact reason why I never bothered running dungeons in MMOs before WoW, and only started to run them somewhat regularly when WoW introduced instanced dungeons (and started to chain run some two dozen per week after LFD was implemented, best thing ever invented for MMOs )

Where you see outside interference in a dungeon run as something positive, I see it as something negative, potentially a deal breaker. In MMOs I like the possibility of interacting with others, but I certainly don't want to be subject to such interaction (and outside interference) all the time, specially if it means competition (and potentially wasted preparation time) for the big mob in a dungeon.

Exception made for GW2, though. The way it handles rewards for taking part in the fights, awarding each and every player as if he had killed the big bad alone — which means there is no competition, just cooperation — makes the whole thing fun even when you are swarmed by other players joining the fight.

 

Hey lookie you have a bit of ANTI-PK or commonly called "you'll eat your socks" in you

 

I also enjoy that map and, IMO is one of the best 'new' creations for the MMO genre that I have seen in some time, combining a MMO battleground with a sport theme.

There has probably been other variations similar to it in the past but for SWTOR it worked really well and to me was fresh.

I think there is still a lot of untried and untested mashups for this genre to be made, as well as drawn from other MMO games and games like GTA.

I don't think Portalarium should devote any more time on this effort and that focus should be on trying to make the rest of the core game as good as previous Ultimas.

Dueling is obviously a important asset for SOTA but not so much team battling... - save that for the fortress control areas.

 

Here's yo problem. You're tired of seeing things. So you want a game that brings everything to you on a plate. If they let YOU make the game, it would probably ALL be instanced.
And all of that is because you're just tired and bored IRL. Or boring? Or both?

 

If PvP is instanced, only available in gated consensual areas where players must flag first and not a part of the main world in which every other player is then it is nothing more than a sideshow, I've just described PvP in the majority of other games and it's not fun unless you are elite and hardcore which means newcomers often try it but despise it quickly.

Don't assume that I am wanting to slay everyone and strip players who would never dare step out in a dangerous area otherwise, that's not it. I want there to be some areas where player killers are willing to roam and non-pvpers are willing to risk the chance of death for potential rewards, such as better rewards, better loot etc.

**** Some of the best friends in game I have EVER made started out as my victims, we ran into each other a lot, eventually talked, they learned from me and I guided them to better defend themselves. I did not mine with my player killer(though I also had many crafters who got killed by them), I gathered my materials and items from the corpses of others while roleplaying my PK. That sounds bad but my ICQ was full of former victims turned friends in UO, PLEASE don't be so quick to shun open world non-consensual fighting.

 

The majority of people who oppose open PvP have never experienced it, at least not in Ultima Online. Several of the players here grew up in the era of World of Warcraft. Players who have more experience seem to veer toward the side of open PvP. As you stated one of the reasons is because battlegrounds are often occupied by players who are near their end game. In Ultima Online everyone PvP'd, there was no option. This meant that miners were even capable of PvP, they managed to often escape or had a limited amount of magery to recall if things got hairy.

Modern thinking is that if you are a crafter you are a crafter. There is no exception and you should never have to PvP. This is the easy way out of the situation, rather than learn and adopt simply ban it via the game ruleset!

Video games are becoming easier and catering to casual players. This is because companies are more interested in profit than the quality of their product. It is a sad realization, but completely logical. A company's first and foremost interest is profitability this concept applies to Shroud of the Avatar as well. Ultima was fresh, exciting, and new; it was the dawn of a new era of not only gaming but technology. The internet was fairly new and I knew several players in Ultima Online who were on dialup. Ultima Online had tremendous novelty value.

The entire MMORPG experience is beginning to become less complex and devolve. Look at the number of shallow, free-to-play Korean games getting made. Most of these are rehashed garbage, but people buy it up. Runes of Magic for example offers nothing new, it is a rehash of World of Warcraft. However, players eat it up and spend money on the game. This money adds the incentive to continue creating games easy to make and low caliber. The idea behind it all being to invest as little time to create a shallow RPG experience for the biggest profit possible. At least World of Warcraft had uniqueness in its first rendition, albeit still a ploy by Blizzard to cash in on the MMORPG market.

Shroud of the Avatar differs in a few ways from the traditional MMORPG experience, it is possible to play completely offline. I am not interested in the more shallow online experience at the moment. I will be satisfied playing a high quality game similar to the earlier Ultimas in the series. I lost hope with their announcement that all of PvP is consensual. The developers need to spend some significant time making the single player experience as fruitful as possible. It should be unique, fun, and engaging and be a spiritual successor to the earlier Ultima games.

 

Open world PvP is fully possible in SotA. The term non consensual PvP is a misdirection of words. There is no such thing in this day and age of gaming. We either will play the game or we will not.

The consent in SotA is not at log in.

SotA is using a meta server and not tons of separate servers. So if there are only 100,000 players with 10% of them open PvP that's 10,000 players that have flagged to be PvP all the time.

Now plug in any number of player ratios you wish: 1,000,000 players and 50% are open PvP = 500,000 PvPers at any given time.

The level of "non - consensual" PvP is there, and it's by choice.

 

Go back through the old PvP threads and see what people said previously. I see what you're saying here, but as a PvPer myself I think this current system is best for sota.

There is the blessing of the oracle that allows for being flagged PvP in the whole world even regular cities. There will be PvP zones and quests as well. PvP is optional, and I found the limited PvP in tje game so far quite fun. I'm looking forward to the Blessing of the Oracle but for now I'm satisfied.

I think you will find the vast majority of PvPers who are on these forums already accept this system. Looting has been the real debate.


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The reason the optional PvP is going to work is due to the fact SotA has only one server. That means everybody is in one world.

If there are 300,000 players and only 10% of the people flag for PvP, then we would have 30,000 PvPers... That is the size of an entire shard.


I won't be responding because I'm taking a break from these threads for a few weeks, but there are plenty of PvP threads with all my thoughts on it and I have nothing new to say. The previous paragraph makes SotA different than the other games so just keep that in mind.

Sent from my Galaxy S5 using Tapatalk.

 

Well, from reading the forums, seems like plenty of people opposing open PvP are UO veterans that disliked the PvP situation back then, at least before Trammel.

Others, like myself, are MMO and video game veterans that, while without any experience in UO PvP, did have experience in open PvP games.

Don't fall into the same trap many PvP proponents fall, of thinking that players that experience open PvP get to like it in the end. That is surely not true for everyone. My gut feeling, in fact, is that while some players get to love open PvP, most players tend to dislike open PvP when they try it.

People play games to have fun. If a situation does not contribute to that, then yes, banning it through the ruleset is the right choice.

The open PvP is fun for you, but certainly not for everyone. Allowing those that are absolutely against PvP to opt out makes for a game with a stronger appeal.

I believe you are misrepresenting things here. It's not that all games are becoming easier; rather, when gaming became an accepted (and cheaper) hobby, a huge number of people that have no interest in actually challenging gameplay decided to give games a try. Those are players that will simply pass on any game that attempts to force them into a challenge like the games of old did, so a large number of games was developed to cater to this new public, games that are easier on the players.

The challenging games are still out there. They simply aren't the most numerous, or the biggest budget games, anymore, simply because the non-hardcore public was proven vastly larger than the hardcore public. As is the case in about every hobby, I might add.

Even if a company is more interested in quality than profits, it must choose a budget that the projected player base will support. Thus, while it's not hard to find truly challenging games, the chance of seeing an AAA-budget game that does not have an easy mode are slim (though it does happen occasionally with very strong franchises, specially those that grew from early hardcore games).

Keep in mind that game difficulty has nothing, at all, to do with whether PvP is consensual or not, though. I like challenge enough that I play most modern games with self-imposed handicaps to bring them to an acceptably high difficulty level, but I will never again play non-consensual PvP.

Huh, no. Rather, it's just that the most visible games are the ones that cater to most players — and most players nowadays don't want deep virtual worlds, but simpler experiences that they can pick up and put down whenever they want. The deep, complex MMOs are still out there, still being made; they are just the minority, both in number and in budget.

There is also the issue of the old player base growing up. Regardless of how much I enjoyed deeper MMOs in the past, nowadays any MMO I play needs to be something I can play in mostly 30-minutes chunks, with only one or two weekly gaming sessions where I can guarantee more than an hour of uninterrupted gameplay (and for which I often can't guarantee the starting time, which means organized raiding or dungeon running is exceptionally hard for me). While my case is a bit extreme, many of the old MMO players simply can't give the same dedication to the game they could when younger due to conflicting real life responsibilities, which means either the game needs to accommodate their needs or will lose them as players.

 

There were far fewer gamers when I first embarked upon my journey into Ultima Online. I pre-purchased the game and played on the Abyss server, which I found to be tremendous fun. It was chaotic, a PK fest, and open loot was everywhere. This was an enjoyable experience combining elements of a role-playing game with those of an "action" or "FPS" game. Those naysayers, who cannot fathom games which combine the elements of different genres must have never played Borderlands or DoTA, which both combine elements of different genres to provide for a rich gaming experience.

Most players who have engaged in open PvP enjoy it, there are several examples. EVE Online and DoTA are two of the largest MMORPGs in existence and they provide such an experience. This is because the majority of players enjoy competing against other players. A single player RPG is capable of providing every other element, with the exception of competing against other players online or participating in quests together. The purpose of playing online in many games that combine both elements of online and offline play do so for that sole purpose -- to provide the opportunity to engage in competition against fellow players. These games have "strong" appeal, stronger than any other game on the market.

I meant games that are similar to World of Warcraft when I mentioned MMORPGS, whose user base is dwindling. The only thing I misrepresented was the number of players who enjoy casual games. It appears that competitive games are gaining popularity and many developers are beginning to notice. Many new games, such as Archage, are taking advantage of that concept.

I think the most popular games such as Farmville and Call of Duty are "easier" to play. I do not expect a spiritual successor to Ultima to be casual, if I want to play a casual game I will go play Farmville or Call of Duty. There are plenty of "casual" games out there. Anyone who does not enjoy a challenge should probably look elsewhere, Ultimas have always been challenging. I still haven't finished Ultima 4 without assistance from a FAQ or strategy guide.

It is really unfortunate for you that you cannot contribute as much time as you once did to video games. We all have "real life" responsibilities, when I play a video game I want a world I can be immersed in. The immersion helps keep my mind off things like work and bills. I want a place that I can "escape" to for a few minutes and forget about the outside world. This is what gaming is about for me and what it has always been about. A good RPG is not casual; it is deep, complex, and is a world unto itself.

 

I love it when people use the "most" with some sort of authority into what people enjoy...or even better that those that say otherwise never experienced it.

Seems very self serving to the argument at hand. I agree some people really relish the excitement they find in pvp...others do not...it's personal preference and nothing to do with anything other then that. I don't see this game as "casual" just because someone chooses not to participate in PVP.

 

I agree with you, I don't think the term "most" should be thrown around as frequently as it is. I find it interesting that the argument for opponents of PvP use that term so often. There are several successful games with open PvP is the point I intended to convey, that is a fact.

I am brought out of the game when I see a message displayed on my screen along the lines of, "You cannot attack that player because [insert nonsensical phrase here]." I do find it quite shallow and appears to be an easy means to satisfy some of the players.

 

As much as I find it incredibly shallow if you can only find enjoyment with attacking whoever you want, even if they don't want to "play" with you. I think it is an easy way to satisfy peoples play styles that don't have to feed others.

 

I shouldn't have to ask for permission before making a decision in a video game. I remember that in every Ultima game I could take anything and attack anyone who I felt like attacking. This is what made Ultima so awesome, the fact that you could do anything. My definition of shallow is obviously different than yours, but there is just something that I detest about the lack of freedom every MMORPG has offered since the early days of Ultima Online.

 

beautiful