The PvP Enigma

@Seneth, I never said that full loot was the only way to make death meaningful, but it must be meaningful from the way that people bristle when I bring the subject up. In that, I would guess that full loot would be a very effective way to make death meaningful. By full consent, of course.

 

The problem is that the carebears don't want anything to do with PvP and that it "ruins" the game.

RG himself has stated that if there's an overabundance of PK's in the game then he can adjust the punishment and/or rewards for them or the people that kill PK's.

So why take away a huge aspect of the game that attracts PvPers?

If nobody can settle on a nice middleground for both where pkers can kill when they want and carebears can still do their pve,
then lets just create 2 seperate servers. One being PvP (open world full loot)
The other being consensual pvp (whatever loot u want because i won't be playing on it)

Yea you divide the economy but there u go, both happy, have people interested in it.

Just don't enable transfers so that item price cross contamination happens and powerful groups from the non pvp side come in because they get items alot easier.

Have it seperate and they can choose what they want.

I'd rather have both worlds together and full loot and open world like UO had and just not pking in towns. But carebears will cry over it. I'm sorry but without having open world pvp and no loot. What's the point of being a murderer? I can't raid a dungeon and collect loot now? Because I doubt i'll be able to go in there solo and kill monsters either. Or go in there solo and kill all the people there too.

You guys automatically assume that theres gunna be a huge abundance of pkers day one and no farming capabilities for carebears.

Thats not true, while there will be some, the dungeons will be OVERFLOWING with "Blues."


There's not going to be more murderers in the game then PvEr's. You'll have more blues than reds. You should be able to contact people in game to help with a Murdering problem and add some RP into the game at the same time.

 

@Owain: Your exact words were, and I quote, "which is why full loot is necessary, to give at least annoyance to death, if not meaning."

If this wasn't meant to mean that full loot is necessary to make death meaningful, then I admit that I'm not sure what you were trying to say.

 

@Punkte

It is my hope that selective multiplayer will handle the separation of PvP and PvE players but if it proves just too hard to implement than I for one would fully support a 2-server model. I mean, it would either be that or watch a rather sizable portion of old UO fans abandon the game.

 

How many games with PvP have had full looting implemented? Any shooters? Did Pong? Dr J. vs Larry Bird ? You see my point right? Number of MMO's with full looting? How many have been successful?

Honestly, I don't understand the fascination with looting, its never been a key factor in the history of PvP gaming. Before UO, was there mass looting in games? How about after? If it was such a vital component, then how come most MMO's dont have full loot installed?

Forget looting, we need to figure out why we are even fighting each other, in SotA, in the 1st place. What will the objectives be? The rewards? Its meaning to the story?

I"m not sure many of you are grasping the concept of what PvP is. It can mean many things, including : Jousting, chess, darts and horse racing. If you are competing against someone in SotA via one of those listed, its PvP !

 

@Gunga Din

I think the fact that there has not really been a good full loot pvp MMO since UO is kind of the point. The fact that we want RG to develop another full loot MMO is precisely the reason many of us are backing this project. I didn't ante up $500 to play an MMO set in Care-a-lot.

 

@ND3G : I agree and I did offer up an option to have a PvP Set / Tab for you avatar that could be looted. But it still depends on the gear we will have. If its not basic, I don't see how your gonna make it full loot.

I have no problem with a FFA PvP system. My problem, as u mentioned, is making it a great working system. Hopefully the Devs will develop something you and I will both enjoy.

My main objective is to at least make the PvP, in any model (instanced, warzone, objective based) fun and re-playable.

 

@Gunga Din
Ya. We're pretty much in agreement on this.

I want to see PvP as a strategic battle. I want to see the map look like Civilization or RISK. (Or pick any RvR MMO.) Some battles will redraw the boarders. Some battles will be about the economic and political impact of the newly drawn lines. e.g. when a village belongs to your allies, you grow the village, take on the role of an anti-pk, escort people around, etc. When you lose the village, everything flips.

There are plenty of roles here for "non pvpers". You can shield a lot of the actions from actual swinging swords at someone...but if the overall battle/quest for the village is lost, you may get expelled.

 

I think the full loot mechanic is simply a cop-out for developers who can't think of any other good motivation for fighting other players and going to war. The primary motivation for real wars has never been to simply loot the gear off the dead soldiers (most of the time the gear is broken, burned, blown to shreds). There are higher motivations than that. Its the conquest of land, the resources of the land, political/religious reason, and such. Going to war costs a nation a lot of money, even the winner finds itself with a large debt to pay off.

I would love to see a game where you PvP for a higher purpose, where PvPing is going to cost you gold/gear even if you win, but the reward for victory is something meaningful beyond "I got your plate mail and reagent bag nyah nyah!" With a good enough story in this game which accounts for multiple players, I think we can get to this point where there is more motivation to PvP than getting loot.

 

@Gunga Din In response to what Full Loot games are successful:

mmorpg.com
Now this is truly Epic! Thank you everyone for getting Darkfall Unholy Wars Greenlit on Steam in just 2 days!!

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/875/view/news/page/1/read/26192/Darkfall-Unholy-Wars-Steam-Greenlight-Program-a-Success.html


If an Indy company can make old style UO work without a kickstarter, why wouldn't the actual maker be able to with a Kickstarter?

 

@Acrylic 300 : Darkfall is built better for PvP. No question about that. If your main objective is PvP, I'm not sure SotA is the best option.

I'm interested in the Housing, Role Playing, Questing and story etc. PvP also interests me, so I'm trying to help make PvP in SotA fun and enjoyable.

My main reason for pledging was not for PvP purposes, I never felt that was going to be the main draw of this game. Did I want a UO2 pre-trammel rule set? Sure. But it wasn't gonna be a game breaker for me if SotA didn't follow that path.

Darkfall starts out with the premise that its PvP oriented. There I would expect it to be more hardcore. Maybe the hardcore PvPers would be better suited playing Darkfall Unholy Wars.

 

The sad thing is, it is based on the full loot system that RG invented. That is the one part of Darkfall that is exactly the same as old style UO. You literally have to pick through all the ransacked items of the corpse exactly the same way you did in the UO model.

Player's rave about the game for this reason.


P.S. I like your idea on duel equipment (2 sets). It's the first I have heard of it and hope you get it implemented on the developer's forums.

 

If your main objective is PvP, I?m not sure SotA is the best option.

@Gunga Din - What do you mean? Isnt it up to the developers to create the game as they find suit their intentions? What if RG want to create a game with a slider that goes from no PvP to a PvP game that fits right in with UO felucca pre-AoS? That game would fit me as a glove. Restrictions towards such a game is developer made, nothing else.

I think SotA would be a perfect "UO2" game that could develop both for the PvE crowd and the old UO followers that look for a UO felucca replacement.

When i talk about UO felucca i talk about the game i played before Age of Shadows february 2003.

I am also interested in housing. I sure like crafting but what is most important is the PvP endgame. That's why i made a pledge and i know i would increase that pledge alot if i knew that we will have a follower to UO here. We have different views on this game and the slider might hopefully make both of us happy. If the game dont deliver on the felucca PvP playstyle i will move on.

I play DF and that game is only combat as i see it, very little sandbox and very far from old UO.

 

@Ara : Agree with you. I'd like a UO Felucca setup too. Hopefully the slider will help to give us that option. Guess its just too early in development to really have an idea of how its gonna play out.

@Acrylic 300 : Thx, yea if we can have the duel equipment setup for PvP purposes, then we could easily incorporate full loot and remove any gear gap.

 

Thought I would add my one cents worth. I like PVP but not Pking. Here are two examples that I encountered that illustrate the difference in my mind.

I was in an open world PVP location hunting some mobs when I spotted a person heading my way, immediately I became wary. Sure enough the person started to attack and I defended myself. Actually I was winning. Unbeknownst to me his friend circled behind me and took me out. It was brilliant and even though I lost it was one of my favorite PVP encounters.

Another encounter that I do not remember fondly was when I was a low level character doing quests. I was in a small village talking to a quest giving when suddenly I died. A high level character was hanging around the village and would kill a person as soon as they began the dialog with a NPC. Several of us tried to take him out but we couldn?t. I was about to log off when a couple of high level characters came along and got rid of the guy. The person who was attacking low level characters after when they were talking to NPC created the perfect reason why people started to dislike PVP.

To me PVP should have some reason, be it holding a fort (or something else); being in a guild war, being a paid assassin or a common murder. Now the last two are tricky. If a person just kills someone then there should be some repercussions. Do it in a city and you become wanted and if you are captured you suffer some penalties. Do it out on the road and perhaps other people (NPC and players) start getting strange feelings that you are not to be trusted. Maybe common NPC stop having dealings with you and you have to find others like yourself.

I like the idea of full loot if equipment is just that; equipment. Sure some might be magical but those pieces quickly wear out. The more magical the piece is the faster it wears away. Second, everyone can only carry so much stuff. Weight limits or some type of space limit should be implemented.

 

I'm a multiple year veteran PVP/PKer from Eve Online, for those who are not aware, Eve is a space MMO which has the largest single server population in the world. Eve is also a full loot game and is very successful.

I come to SotA not expecting an experience similar to Eve obviously, as SotA is not a hardcore PVP game designed from the ground up, whereas Eve Online is. For what little PVP is likely to be incorporated into SotA, I do hope they at least emulate some of the better elements of PVP theory available in games such as Eve Online.

Personally I'd like to see a slider where I can send it one way to remove PVE'rs from my game entirely, and send it the other way to invade the games of the particularly whiny PVEONLYFOREVERONE!!!!!11NAZI crybabies I've seen in this thread and others. Sadly I don't see this happening.

 

@mamolian - Could please link me to any of threads where these players - "particularly whiny PVEONLYFOREVERONE!!!!!11NAZI crybabies" asked for no PvP to be included in the game?

Thanks

 

@Phredicon If you read through half of the threads on the front page of this PVP subforum you will find many such responses from the "PVEONLYFOREVERONE!!!!!!11NAZI" crew. I'll let you do your own research on this topic.

They come in the form of absolutely bat feces crazy solutions to solve the problem of PVPer players occupying the same space as they do in an online world. They come in the form of vicious responses to straw men arguments made by PVP players as can be seen by the full loot and real Nazi WW2 theme in this thread.

Like I said, do your own research and they will not be difficult to find.

I'm not expecting a PVP masterpiece out of SotA, I'm hoping for SOME PVP elements which I hope will be worth exploring. Nothing more.

 

@Mamolian

I have seen the opposite. Being in this community since the early days of the Kickstarter, I have seen this PVP/PVE argument started by a segment of the community that wanted to force PVP on everyone: for their own good, for the economy, for proper risk, whatever, etc. These arguments were intended to create disagreement and argument, which they did and it incited many people who do not want to PVP or have parts of the game excluded from them to speak out.

Yes these arguments were heated and people from both sides stepped over the edge. However, I have seen arguments to exclude all PVE components, but never anyone on the PVE side denying people the ability to PVP. They only wanted to not be forced into it.

I understand the confusion. There have been orchestrated campaigns to incite the PVE members of this community, and it worked until Portalarium started addressing PVP/PVE mechanics and the behavior in the community.

I would also caution you as this statement:

<blockquote>particularly whiny PVEONLYFOREVERONE!!!!!11NAZI crybabies</blockquote>

Is against the forum rules as you are specifically insulting a segment of the community. If you feel others have broken this rule against you, please contact Portalarium rather than lash out in kind.

 

I have played Eve and I will admit that their security rating system is good. A security rating type system could work for SotA as well. I think there would need to be safe routes (maybe longer distance) to get to dungeons, towns and other areas that not everyone would want to PVP in. And people with low security ratings would need routes where they could get into cities. These routes could be through secret passages or sewer systems. And maybe if the guards catch the low security rated person some sort of penalty is given and/or perhaps the person is just ejected from the town.