Penalizing PKs / Rewarding Blues Instead of Open PvP Debate

Also What??
Turning On And Off PvP?

So the people that don't want to PvP will have an easier time obtaining items, but would be able to switch back at any point with an advantage??

Give me a break. Don't break the potential of the game already with that nonsense.
You are carebearing the hell out of this game right now because of these people who are too scared to be killed in a game.

Every time i read a topic in these forums I am less and less interested in playing.

 

@Punkte:

This is from the FAQ's that were posted at the start of the Kickstarter -

<i>"But is this the Ultima sequel I?ve been waiting for?

This is NOT an ?Ultima?, as that is a trademark owned by Electronic Arts. Ultima fans know though, that great RPG?s can be played anywhere; on earth, in space, in Britannia and in many other lands. I am creating a new land for Shroud of the Avatar, which will adhere to the design principles that all of my FRPG games adhered to. Please read my series of Developer Blogs, ?What is a Lord British Ultimate RPG?, for more details."</i>

If you aren't familiar with it, this is what RG means by an "ultimate RPG" -

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?topic=lord-britishs-ultimate-rpg

 

Just because I'm comparing this game to Ultima Online does not mean I want it to be an exact clone.
I'm simply saying use the PvP elements from that game. Anything else you want with the story and the skills and the spells and everything is completely up to you. Just use what made UO great, its PvP.

 

@Punkte I don't think you are scaring anyone about getting killed, some don't want to be annoyed with those that will abuse said system and they are putting in a way for those that don't want that play style to enjoy the game. I don't really see an issue with that.

 

The issue is that, that will become abused to... So instead of putting a switch in the game, where people can easily group up switch pvp off, go to the area where people are fighting, switch on and gank everyone...

Leave it open and tweak penalties and rewards. It allows everyone to experience the full effect of the game, no unfair item farming will be going on because everyone is susceptible to getting attacked.

No "botting" in the game if people can be killed.

You guys see it as a bad thing, but instead it adds an unpredictability to the world.

Switch system will ruin the game and add major imbalances..
Your better off creating 2 seperate realms, one pvp and one pve and bar them from transfering over.

 

As of this time, as far as is known, with it always being possible it may change, neither of your preferences are going to be how it is, as this *is* a decided issue to a large degree, per the devs ? https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?topic=growing-concerns-about-single-player&amp;paged=3#post-17110

"I think we?ve been pretty open that on the quest and story side of things, we?re really just focusing on the single player experience and making it a single player experience that can be played with other people around! We?ve also been clear that there will even be parts of the single player quest line that will force you into a single player mode.

If we were just remaking Ultima Online, we would not have brought in a story telling talent like Tracy Hickman. We feel we know what is important to each side of our divided audience and if anything, the single player game people will be getting more dev time total than the online guys in the long run.

The open world is NOT PVP. That rumor is being spread by some trolls in the forums. We?ve been VERY clear that PVP will be consensual and not required. The rewards of PVP will primarily be things that are only valuable to PVP?ers. You will be safe from PK?ers and so will the goods of your house unless you choose to join in."

 

"So the people that don?t want to PvP will have an easier time obtaining items, but would be able to switch back at any point with an advantage??"

1. When you join a PvP guild, you most probably won't be able to switch, but will always be PvP (was stated in several hangouts). So there won't be switching back and forth for those players.

2. Thanks to the matchmaking system, you will probably seldom encounter a PvE guy in game. So you will most probably not have to fight against players, that have an advantages over you, since the matchmaker will put you together with people of a similar game style

3. It's a balance issue. When one playstyle becomes overpowered, you have to adjust it. That's what alpha/beta will be for (and also in the game)

4. Most players looking for a PvE experience in this game are not looking for a WoW clone of any kind and they are quite likely not poisoned by modern MMORPGs (heard noone saying "I want this to be like WoW", yet). I don't now, where this assertions come from. The dual scale map system doesn't look anything like WoW and the game will most likely be played very different.

5. There were many Ultima games before Ultima Online and many people want to enjoy a similar experience like in the old pre Ultima IX days and want to share it with other players, that play a similar gamestyle. PvP was not a part of that. That doesn't mean, that they can't have fun with PvP. So give some incentives by making PvP fun and the PvP players will come all by themselves. And those who don't want to come PvPing shall do as they please. Like Rune said: "I don't really see an issue with that"

6. You died a lot in the older Ultima games. And they were challenging and fun, too.

7. There are many reasons, why some players don't like PvP. And there are tons of other reasons, why other players love PvP. So why do you want to force any of those groups into the playstyle of the other group?

8. I pledged a lot for that game, too, and I was not looking for a PvP experience, but a story driven game by the creator of the old Ultima saga. I don't know, how you come to the conclusion, that most backers for this game are PvP Ultima Online fans since there are no statistics or official backer surveys.

 

Kill and Loot me PLZ !

 

Umbrae stated it right originally. this is a non-issue. If you don't want to play PvP you won't have to. Also I think they mentioned that there may be some persistent changes made to the dungeons by previous players (like opened doors and being cleared out).

However, I believe they also said the dungeons are hosted on your own session and if somebody else doesn't join you in a particular period of time then you're in it on your own. Correct me if I'm wrong about that, but it seemed as if others could join you, but after a certain period of time nobody else can enter that instance.

 

Alpha can't come soon enough.

 

@ND3G: agreed

back to the topic, I don't agree with blues getting rewarded for their play style. Granted I do think their should be a penalty if you are excessively killing everyone you see, since that would fall under griefing, and they said they want to minimize people just repeatedly killing the same player ect... But I still want it to be a viable option for people that want to play that way.

 

@Isaiah *MGT470*

<blockquote>However, I believe they also said the dungeons are hosted on your own session and if somebody else doesn?t join you in a particular period of time then you?re in it on your own. Correct me if I?m wrong about that, but it seemed as if others could join you, but after a certain period of time nobody else can enter that instance.</blockquote>

Nobody can enter THAT specific instance, but if another player attempts to play the same scenario / dungeon, he would be assigned a new, fresh instance with all the challenges still there.

The reason for that is that going to the dungeon and finding it already cleared out would be frustrating in a way that won't add anything to the game.

@Punkte

Not everyone likes PvP. Even less for non-consensual PvP.

And yeah, if the game forces me to accept non-consensual PvP I will just leave (or, rather, go play offline). Not out of spite, but simply because a game with non-consensual PvP is just not fun for me, so it doesn't make any sense for me to play such a game. The same way you keep saying that not having non-consensual PvP will make the game just not fun for you, so you should readily understand this point of view.

And, just for your information, my definition of "forces to accept non-consensual PvP" includes hiding the desirable / challenging / rewarding PvE content behind a PvP gateway. Thankfully SotA seems to be trying to avoid this; PvP missions and other PvP content should be a great way to advance the character, but everything obtainable in a PvP mission will either be also obtainable by pure PvE means, or else will be something that isn't useful in PvE (cosmetic / prestige PvP rewards, and items only useful for PvP).

 

<i>"So the people that don?t want to PvP will have an easier time obtaining items, but would be able to switch back at any point with an advantage??

Give me a break. Don?t break the potential of the game already with that nonsense.
You are carebearing the hell out of this game right now because of these people who are too scared to be killed in a game."</i> - Punkte

See, this is the part I have never understood. Not that I don't understand the statement, but, the premise that open PvP can not be done well without toggling 100% on.

1.) By 100% all in PvP you automatically remove those players that are not interested in 100% all in PvP.

2.) What part of PvP is broken when it's not all in? The fact that players can prepare for PvP and step in when they are ready? Or is it that there is no access to players that are unprepared?

3.) UO had a skill system that made players make a choice between combat and crafting. Crafters that did opt to not have any combat skills were targets for PK. How many other play styles did UO have that made then PK targets.

For SotA:

1.) the players are sharded out if they are not interested.

2.) If PvP and PvE players can like together without breaking either system it can be done here with this Dev team. UO is not the answer, certainly a good source to reference, but not the answer.

3.) PK's are looking for attacks of opportunity not a straight up fight. Players do not have to choose between crafting or combat. They can be both. PK's will always look for the weakest target. The number of weak targets will be less with just this one change, and there are likely to be more changes that offset the UO skill dynamic.

Moral of the story. Let go of UO, they are building a new system from the ground up. SotA has enough differences already to make old UO PvP days impossible. (Instancing, Crafter/Combat skills, filter separating lower level players from higher level, the list goes on...)

 

I can easily see multiple levels of PvP to attract multiple audiences.

1. Duels, perhaps not even to the death. Contests like this were common in medieval times.

2. Arena matches. Another sporting event, but it has its place.

3. Quests - as mentioned by Lord British. A step up from 1 &amp; 2, but still relatively low impact.

4. Guild War - A little more risky, but not completely wide open.

5. Open PvP, to include the possibility of criminal acts (PKs), which then permits action by Anti-PKs to try to hold them in check. Open PvP anywhere, with repercussions and penalties for illegal acts.

This permits an environment not only for players new to PvP to try their hand in the playing style at differing levels of difficulty, but also permits full PvP for those who are willing to accept the additional risk, including crafters or other noncombatants who wish to savor the additional danger. This permits everyone to 'dial their own level of pain', so to speak.

I fail to see why we should have a 'one size fits all' PvP environment, given the dynamic grouping server mechanism SotA proposes.

 

@Owain

I hear what you're saying. But with the important caveat. Some PvP needs to matter. GW2 mechanically had good PvP. The castle sieges basically worked. You could force people to choose which castle they wanted more. Getting a castle or objective pushed the next one so the battle lines moved. But my guild of 100+ people had quit and were playing LoL in a month. Because ultimately there was no reason to hold the castle. You got a small number of some kinds of tokens for the win...but those tokens didn't even give you anything useful.

Castles really meant nothing to an individual guild, so there wasn't real ownership. The only real explorable content unlocked was logging the point of interest in the castle once for the achievement. There were no real economic benefits other than a small boost to crafting (for the whole server) which meant an extra 1% chance to skill up during the last hour of the week.

Basically:
Killers played a few times but would rather just play LoL
Achievers saw no rewards
Explorers just wanted to be in the castle once for the unlock...and they flipped a ton so this was easy, especially with the way the maps reset
Socializers left because everyone else did.

 

@PrimeRib, once the novelty wore off, the KGB quit GW2 for much the same reasons. Right now, we are in Darkfall, and we are having good success. I tried Darkfall again, and was reminded why I disliked Darkfall the first time around (horrible interface, in my opinion), so I will be concentrating as a developer on making SotA a better game. And hopefully, PvP in SotA will be meaningful, for everyone's sake.

 

@PrimeRib

I don't play GW2's WvW anymore because, on my server, it's terribly broken due to player behavior.

Whenever my server starts the week winning, players start showing up, players of the opposite servers stop appearing, and we basically steamroll everyone else for the rest of the week.

Whenever my server starts the week losing, players stop showing, and we lose by a really large margin.

There's no fair fight. It's either a boring steamroll over the opposition or a frustrating and hopeless struggle against overpowering odds, with no middle ground. And it feels to me like the other servers we have been paired against typically behave the same way, there is about 12 hours of actually good PvP at the start of the week, and after that the losers typically give up for the remaining 6? days.

BTW, given that I don't mix PvP with PvE, when I get in the WvW maps to do "PvE" content (map completion, jumping puzzles) I flat out refuse to help with the PvP fight - I don't even fight back when attacked - and when I get there to do PvP I completely ignore anything PvE or achievement related. I might be the exception, but this is how I roll, I really dislike mixing PvP with PvE.

 

In a game like gw2, just like the real world, 1% of the people are actually leaders, 10% are soldiers who are willing to do amazing things for the right leaver, and the rest are sheep just wanting to get taken care of. So when a strong leader logs in, if he can find a few good people to take something, the sheep all zerg after him because it's now the easiest way for free loot. All of a sudden you go from losing badly, to having WvW queues.

The problem with GW2 is that they didn't make the castles matter enough to the 1 and 10%ers. The strong guilds just left the game.

I had a lot of fun in the early betas when you had a lot of strong guilds fighting each other and caring about the outcome. But this just evaporated when the game came out.

As I said, mechanically the siegeing was fine. It's just that no one cared. They should have used the title / gear skin progression from sPvP in WvW. Then the "soldiers" would have stuck around for that.

 

my two cents... The less rules and regulations the better. Let PvP regulate itself since it's optional. If a guy is a killer make him/her identifiable by making him red or something. We see wanted signs for criminals so it makes sense we would recognize a local murderer. Other than that leave it alone.

 

@PrimeRib

In the case of GW2 I believe it's a more prosaic explanation: the "sheep" don't even bother getting into WvW if they don't think they have a real chance of winning.

Since launch, with a few exceptions, I logged daily into the game, even if I would not actually play that day, to get the guild points for logging and to take a look at the WvW score. Since the matches became weekly I haven't seen the first placed server overthrown even once after the first 12 hours of the match. Without fail whoever started winning ended winning, and the potential points lead of the winning server seems to increase as the week goes by. The only reason for this I can devise is that players of the losing servers simply give up, and very fast at that.

This is one of the potential problems with faction based PvP. Many, perhaps most, players want to win more than they want to play, so they just don't play if they don't think they can win. Related to this, if players can win without playing - for example, by deserting the losing faction and joining the winning one - many players will do that rather than attempting to win through gameplay.