Motivating PVP

This is a brainstorming attempt to make PVP fun for PVP players that does not involve wolves and sheep and self serving greed. Only murderers kill people without cause. PvP needs some background purpose to build comradely and pride among the players. This is solely about creating fun settings to encourage PVP players to be more active at it.

1) Guild Wars
Have PVP zones with monuments and while a guild holds it, the entire guild gets a buff. Preferable the buff would be of use to both the PVPers and PVEers in the guild, like increased chance to to get rare gems from drops and etc.

2) Faction wars
A faction may be order/chaos or kingdoms soldiers. Perhaps this could work similar to Guild Wars except there is no need partake in a guild order.

3) Paid mercenaries
Essentially thus is a daily/hourly repeatable quest line, but it could have a reputation dynamic so that once you choose a side, you will likely stay with it.

 

1) on a uo free-shard they feature guild stones that allow you to have a sphere of influence and you can hire your own mercenaries; your guild owns that "area" so it allows you to place "houses" over time this kind of became a way to de-throne other guilds, etc. Which was awesome, it also worked really well in the sense of feeling like you can shape the terrain. I'm like 5/10 on any guild objective, since if it's an open world event, how many players you could have versus how many i could have is a problem, in a winner-take-all-zone-wide-master-buff.

2) faction wars, guilds, chaos v order, etc etc - I think added enough as far as pvp was concerned. Huge considerations to this notion but in the terms and tenses of "actual" faction rewards; things you would want to get from either alignments, armor, gold, blessed items... etc, anything to that effect. And same for Chaos vs Order.

3) Paid mercs, i'd say yes, but I liked the d2 mercs for buffs, Battle orders --- yeah boy!

sub1: Other things you didn't really consider that i'll add here:
"merchant guilds" as they are already somewhat prevelant in UO: and were never seen in full context, and how they would reward you for pvp, or something like this, or even PVE gains, ie: Monster slayer Guild ! or something to that effect. Since, In UO the system was entirely incomplete, and as a player of UO I spent almost a DECADE trying to understand why all of these elements were more or less broken! while still having "MINERS GUILD" "BLACKSMITH GUILD" etc.
sub2: Consideration of what those factions might have as motivators to work together, as in what can be gained, or lost in conquest.
sub3: Any type of particular skill change or whatever because of your alignment, ie: maybe chaos sporting "throw dirt" in place of another skill, more or less like "added perks" to the system
sub4: etc etc, since i'll just re-edit this same post as the thread grows, since apparently being "spammy" is a problem.

 

What if i just want to hunt down murderers? What if people who have killed too often are marked as a murderer? Like In UO? That would motivate me to hunt down bad guys, and PVP. I would like to have a personal choice than a controlled choice.

 

You are a rare hero.

 

thats just my gameplay, that i miss so much!

 

Yes that sounds amazing! The best idea and I mean that. But that's not going to happen it's just something that the majority of players handle. It's a mental thing.

 

Actually, this may very well be the original intent. The moral system really doesn't have much of a purpose without it.

 

Well, getting people to play PvP is one of the big goals of this game. So, for those who think like me... I've always liked scenario fights. A new field becomes a puzzle, figure out the puzzle to try to gain advantage. More paths, more moving parts, places to score, weapons arrays to get working, NPCs to summon or stop...

Of course, the problem there is that you have to keep writing new scenarios, and of course people want their fights to feel "realistic" and "relevant".But the solution to that is to make the devs feel that investing programmer time in new PvP scenes is worthwhile.

But to respond to the brainstorming request from the OP, maybe... a vote system, I want to que PvP, I vote for this field. The system would first try to fill people into battlefields they voted for, and then clean up the stragglers to fill gaps. Something like that. That way people would get to fight in the battlegrounds they most want (the most popular ones anyway), and people won't get left straggling in empty ques. Plus, the devs could monitor not only what people actually fought in, but what they asked to fight in, how popular certain scenes were. They could adjust what you could vote for and how to see just HOW popular certain scenarios were.

Now, giving people an incentive to flag for open world PvP, that I can't provide, because I don't get that mindset. But I'll wave at OWPvP players from a distance as they run past.

 

what happens with tying morality to it happened in UO: blue on red fighting, or anti-pking, caused a lot of blue on blue action, and blue on crim action, merely because being red opened you up to all fighting invitations. so as far as attatching anti-pk to a reward system, it hits a huge problem in that you don't suffer a penalty for participation versus a "red opponent" or a "murderer" opponent.

and no, this wasn't rare, or actually unheard of even on OSI shards.

This actually is more or less what happened on free-shards people would just re-roll chars to just be "blue" so they could wait for the opportunity to go "red"

As far as playing it or basing it on morality, if 5vs1 doesn't have a play on morality, I'd be pretty upset.

As far as queued pvp scenarios, sure, why not, they've been tried, tested, and true. Really, and honestly, The incentive for UO pvp for me was typically loot, and the rush, or a crash.

For other games, it's merely a gear grind. That said, incentives to pvp more or less have to be there. Nobody will pvp for nothing, at least... most won't

 

Im all for the red vs blue scenario, when you turned red in UO you basically became hunted which gave players the ability to dish out what had been served. If you red and somone kills you, no biggie they were a murderer anyhow, now with that being said if you went out and killed off too many reds you yourself became red. there was a time span of being good inbetween to lose the red status. Or even on earlier UO you had to go the ankh and say "i must consder my sins" a few times to go at least grey (in betwen red and blue, greys could be attacked by anyone, so you werent fully safe) Also i like how in UO if you decided to attack somone it said this will flag you PVP, and it was awhile before you could unflag from it, also another way to regulate PVP. Me personally as a PVPr i hunted "reds", yes i was a murderer also but i knew when to stop before i went to far. Then I also had a character that didnt care whether he was red or not (my ultimate hunter) So i would say for PVP there is a color coordinate Red or Blue, since PVE will not be involved in PVP, they cannot attack anyone.

 

now with that being said if you went out and killed off too many reds you yourself became red

-false

 

Great information guys.

 

I see no reason whey the Red Blue system couldn't be add even if its not the current thinking .. Its just a way to align Good or Evil .. It could also be used to help RPers..

 

negative, anti-pkers need oracle confirmation and declaration, that way they can't horde like last game, treated as faction, murderer treated as faction, then you can actually have virtue rewards

the logic is also that it's annoying blue players can hide amongst blue players and more or less "bait" players that said if you're going to "crusade" reds, reds should at least have the aforementioned knowledge of a cobra in the flock of sheep, to plan accordingly ;}

and lets not forget that they can suffer penalties as well such as problems with "blue on blue healing" etc etc etc,

throwing this out there and screaming it loud since, it will only take a matter of 20 minutes of open world pvp for people to realize anti pks made more then pks on average, waiting for another blue to mis-flag or go crim :}

 

True Graylake21, I was thinking of the Hue of a name or Hue when you hover over the Player ,, Not as a per-ma Faction but if a pvp event was created it would be a toggle to help with organization of the event ... but now that Im thinking of it ... that type of event could use another color like green and orange or sometihng ... Im still hoping for blue good Red Pk..

 

i just think playing on the meta, of the meta, would give another paradigm where an anti-pk has to be worried about blues just as much, if not as much as a red; not pooping on your ideas; tbh, i loved how it was in UO; it's just rather apparent with time, that system of blues really got abused, plenty of reds falling victims to some type of "blue on blue" super truces lol

or tbh, blue on red healing, just as annoying

 

I will be happy with any improvements to the current set of motivations as implemented today. The blue and red sounds very cool.

Teamwork in PVP is important to me. I am not a super hero type, so I enjoy playing in groups.

There is one thing I really liked about Wintergrasp in WoW. Whichever a faction won last would get an increase chance of a specific drop through the game for all members of that faction regardless of whether they participated. It seemed to be quite effective at motivating people to play it. I know when I played, that was very motivating that I was helping to secure the perk for my faction (when we won). There were other motivations in Wintergrasp as well including an exclusive vendor, abundant resources, quests and achievements. But what I cared about was the faction wide perk. Even when I did not battle, I counted on my faction to secure it.

 

The giant problem with making PvP fun for people in MMOs is as far as I'm concerned largely the fact that it requires too many motivations to overlap in a single player.

MMO PvP requires a lot of dedication, because you have to invest the time to create a powerful character, keep the character stocked up, and make sure you're there when good fights are to be had. It also requires a lot of sociability, because even the most reviled of PKs needs some friends to be a real threat. It also requires a more "Art of War" view of conflict, since in open world combat most fights are decided by who's better prepared and positioned, not by who actually fights better.

There are ultimately very few players who enjoy all of these aspects simultaneously. A lot of players enjoy them separately.


People might bust out Civilization of they want the thrill of crushing an opponent in an utterly unfair fight after clever politics have given them a huge advantage.

People might load up League of Legends if they want to face an enemy team on even footing and have it out on prowess at controlling their character alone.

People might play a game like SotA purely to fill their need to create and customize a character without having any interest in having that character be viable in highly competitive PvP.


So as far as I'm concerned, the challenge of enticing people into PvP in an MMO is really not one of "What can we dangle in front of them to make them give in and join the fight", in fact, I can't think of a single MMO where that is a successful strategy, since it just makes people feel like they are being forced into content they don't enjoy. I think it's much more a challenge of "How can we make PvP appealing within the bounds of why players play the game in the first place?"

For example, since a ton of people play an MMO simply because they enjoy leveling up and gearing out a character of their creation, those people tend to shy away from open world PvP purely because it usually isn't a means to character advancement, but rather requires a fully maxed out character to really participate in.

A lot of people also enjoy MMOs because they are a wide open social space where you are never alone, even if you aren't playing with a discrete group of friends at the moment, and those people again tend to avoid open world PvP simply because it tends to be heavily based around guild membership and running with an organized team at specific times.

A lot of players are very heavily into creating an identity for their character, both through roleplaying and through mechanics, and these people often disregard PvP because they don't want to use the pre-set builds that are considered to be most powerful and have become doctrinal to fighting among players.


These are the kinds of issues that I think need examining, and where realistic solutions to making open world PvP more appealing to all players can be found. Simply giving huge rewards to PvPers doesn't make people enjoy PvP, it just makes them feel like the game is shitting on them for not enjoying it.

 

I don't necessarily disagree with that opinion. As far as the investment, and the return. Does PVP encompass a lot of in game elements? That part is obvious, what a pvper has to consider more often then not is an 8 or so variable equation, and whether or not his fruit of labor is worth it. The cooperative element of guilds, etc always put a thorn in the side of even the best, when you realize conditional warfare or open-pvp gives you a huge disadvantage to the guild playing like a roman turtle, or a british firing squad.

that said, I don't disagree or huge rewards feeling more like a pittance in most circumstances in lieu of anything tangible or real; but I won't argue the system of rewards is difficult because those rewards can interfere in other systems (hence seven variables). Now tangibly if pvpers are their own bracket of player hunting their own bracket of player, the game play doesn't feel much better since if there is a gamed advantage of pvp (named gear) players of the same gear will have relatively the same damage, and the same builds.

That said, flavor of the month pvp is nothing new, but not very creative. Coming up with a system that would satisfy all sides is a difficult one, bare in mind in game, you can more or less dodge other players entirely, so if there are no "seemingly open zones" or no seemingly open world for people to "murder players" it kind of hinders the progress of the idea of open-world pvp entirely.

Instanced gaming has an interesting paradigm over a single static world; a single static world like ultima allowed for a lot of "world pvp" where as an instanced world makes it a lot harder to take a bite into a sandwich that wasn't intended for you.

That said --- I think there are plenty of options when it comes to those variables that would defer people from enjoying it.

as far as moba pvp comparison; moba pvp doesn't touch the thrill of UO pvp, as far as "skill" goes, I don't need a game to have skill gains but, as far as what may define a game may be just how you get to satisfy your blood-lust. We have monsters, we have instances, we have the potential to indirectly create inherent static zones. And thereby indirectly create very LARGE inherent static zones, that would act similarly in function to another fictional world we left.

Just saying --- If you reward a pvper consumables, he'll use them, you give him armor, he will use them, give them weapons, they will use them, if they are competitive. Another huge aspect to the equation is power-gaming motivations. How far will you go for a +1 advantage?

 

@Aetrion that is a great response with some good points. SOTA is indeed challenging because it is probably more of a PVE game and I certainly don't want to motivate PVE focused players to PVP. In this thread, I am really asking the question of how to motivate players who like PVP to PVP and enjoy it. The key point you made is obviously that the motivations are different.

There is a need to get multiple players to play at the same time. Assuming that a PVP player might wait in a zone for up to 5 minutes for action to occur before getting boared and that there are 288 5-minute periods in a day, how will SOTA motivate people play in the same time periods and for what cause will those players participate?