Myrcellas reading recommendation for PvP

When I wrote that post, I laughed about the very unlikely possibility that I would meet the author. Its a bit of a smack in the face to see that one of my favorite devs was the author. Still, you handled it very well, and I appreciate that. I still remember raising my "Chapel of Lum" on multiple UO servers over the years (not dedicated to you exactly, but to the ideal that you embody), and yet here I am bashing your work. While I do maintain some of my criticisms of your article, I would like to take back my enthusiastically retaliative tone. My opinion of the guard system was that it made cities safe, which was enough for me, perhaps because at the time that is all I knew. Ofc, having your house stolen was a terrible fate, but it was not so unknown that people couldn't defend against such thievery. As many players that did quit over losing a valuable plot, and as much as you may regret letting all those said players go (I don't blame you, for the record), pulling a house heist is a golden memory for me in UO that no game will ever recreate. So between that, the accessibility of thieving, and the freedom to enact childhood vengeance, I suppose I owe you some thanks! Still, I apologize for my heat towards your article (normally, I withhold such comments on a forum, but I never imagined I would hear from the author).

 

No worries, it's a very heated subject (and the article you quoted had its own fair level of venom).

 

I don't think so. Not because players can't take on whatever "challenge" being in the same game world as PKers and thieves brings; for the most part, I believe they can, if they really must. But for many players the risk, or the consequences, of this kind of confrontation against other players kills the fun in the game, and if the player isn't having fun he has no reason to play the game.

 

That made me laugh as well. I knew it was him all along but others didn't. Sorry (not sorry) for putting you on blast @Lum... I know you can handle yourself though. *grins* But glad you've cleared up not just that post, but some other concerns as well in this thread.

 

Yeah i agree this is also accurate but i'm pretty sure many that never thought of the idea playing the same game as PK:s would actually try just that if the PK killing wasnt as rampant as they were in UO pre statloss times.

With a risk but a way smaller one i think many would accept such a game. Could actually bring a new dimention to their gameplay they never experienced before. A thrill to their gameplay they never met before.

 

I've said this many times, but games have simply evolved a ton because demographics changed.
Think of who would have access to a computer and play MUDs. Or who would play D&D or an Ultima game when they came out.
The most obvious new groups are "jock" games and female gamers. Social gaming in general (from L0L to Farmville) has exploded because very different and diverse groups are on the internet and playing games.

Killers in early games were known for anti-social behavior. But that was before there even was a concept of competitive team play. A PK in UO was usually out to ruin someone's day. But that's not at all how a sports team plays. And it's why people who's impression of PvP is completely different it you think of it as a team game being played against someone who has the capacity to outplay you, using the same rules.

Socializers in early games didn't make much sense. There wasn't really a "game" for them. UO stumbled on the crafting / RP / emergent game play almost by accident and few other games captured this. It's also worth noting that this aspect of the game almost never works without a reasonable male/female ratio.

 

I disagree. Socializers jumped into MUDs and then MMOs because it was just an extension of what they were doing in chat rooms anyway. Instead of being a name in one room, they became a character with a virtual presence. Emotes became actions that actually could affect the characters next to them. Their chat rooms became actual rooms with a virtual relationship to the other rooms. They may not have explored the rest of game to the fullest, but they were happy conversing in the town square with the usual gang and whichever of the other players happened to stop by to take a rest, heal up, rearrange equipment or simply wind down for the day.

 

Ya, I probably misspoke about "early game". I agree. Those are more of a chat room than a game.

But most MMOs are really not like this. The issue is MMOs slice the world into instances and the RP angle is left out.

 

I have never run into an MMO where socializers weren't a part of it. It may not have been all they did in the game, but whether it was role-playing, chatting, or both, they were always around somewhere.

In SWTOR, for example, the Imperial space station always had people in the center bar area socializing and most definitely RPing. As you visited the banking kiosks you eventually recognized the names from the nearby conversations because they were there _a_lot_.

They may do more playing of the 'game' than they used to in the MUDs and MOOs, but to many people the socialization is a huge draw.

 

Being a socializer isn't really about RP, but rather about interacting with other people without attempting to force the socializer's will onto them. RP can be a part in this, sure, but isn't the only outlet for that.

As such, you don't really need much of a game to attract pure socializers; you merely need a game environment where players can interact in consensual ways.

BTW, RPers can often find ways to RP even when the game doesn't really offer support. Heck, there are RPers that roleplay on chat rooms, without any game to back it.

 

Risk is killing the fun of the game ? This is not my little pony. Risk is what makes a game exciting and fun. This quote of yours now completely shows up your intentions, you want a completely safe game where you will farm all the day without even any bit of risk, which is boring. What's next ? What's going to happen when you farm everything to the max ? Duel now ? No sorry, dueling is not fun. You see the situation of WoW, when farming is done people start to duel. Then get bored and leave the game, then Blizzard makes another expansion to keep them in game. Is this what you want ? Unlimited amounts of expansions like EA did to UO ? This is not a sustainable option for the future. If you let everyone farm to the max safely, the game is simply over. This is an online game where you need social interactions either you become friends or become enemies or just stay neutral. But there should always be a risk, otherwise the game will simply end in a few months when everyone has discovered everything possible. Unless you are in intention of selling ingame items for real money, farming all the day is boring and killing the game. This is not a single player game, there will sure be conflicts between players (like PKing) you can't just keep everyone happy. This "pure safety" option can keep people a few months happy, then everyone gets bored and there follows the series of expansions. We are talking about consequences of killing an innocent but you don't even listen. You just keep talking about safety and fun.

If RPers can pretend everything, then why would they play RPGs instead ? God, produce a bit logical arguments. We can't just pretend having killed a player while we can actually kill.

 

@Artariel, not to worry. There is no danger of risk killing SotA. That is the biggest red herring argument on the boards. SotA includes some of the most extensive risk management mechanisms seen in any game I'm aware of. It not only has a single player online option, but if that weren't enough, you can close yourself off in a hermetically sealed gaming environment, and play SotA single player OFFLINE. I'm not sure where this argument is coming from, but it is unfounded.

 

@Atariel
While most of your opinions mirror my own (especially regarding risk, WoW being unsustainable, and leveling), I would watch how you address people (and I apologize in advance for playing mod). If I were Silent Strider, I would have to use a decent degree of self-control to respond to your post without getting edgy.

 

The Achiever/Killer in me is why I care so much about rules and balance. I like to win. But human opponents are smart. They can out think me - not just my character. So they'll min/max or otherwise constantly evolve their strategy.

In some ways, PvP is zero sum, i.e. if something exists which conceivably makes someone stronger, it necessarily makes me weaker. This is why I'll lobby hard for many kinds of "progression" to be cosmetic or otherwise not effect PvP balance. If I feel pressure to min/max in order to stay competitive, I'm having to rule out huge chunks of the game as inefficient.

If you're playing dungeons and dragons with a group of friends, despite the hundreds of rule books, you barley need them. Everything you do can be balanced through the dungeon master anyway. A computer game is balanced and arbitrated by piles of numbers, mechanics, and systems.

 

I'm a bit too old, and thick skinned, to get edgy just from a response like that (though I can get sarcastic). Besides, Atariel's response seems to be fueled by an unfortunately common, though ultimately flawed, point of view: he seems to assume that everyone will get to enjoy, and even prefer, the same activities he himself prefer, if only they are exposed to those activities. He also doesn't seem to understand the roleplayer mindset, at least as far as it applies to effectively roleplaying instead of simply playing a game.

Do prepare for a wall of text, though

You sincerely either misread, or misrepresented, what I've written. And your opinion seems to be somewhat biased.

I was not talking about risk per see, but about the risk of unwanted confrontation with other persons. Also, I was not saying that this risk kills the fun for everyone, but rather for a certain part of the player base. Many players dislike this kind of non-consensual confrontation with other persons, even through the proxy of game avatars, which is likely why PvE servers are usually more popular than PvP servers in the games that offer that choice, and why there are so few games that force open, non-consensual PvP (though this changes according to culture; this kind of confront, of non-consensual PvP, seems to be far more popular in Asia, excluding Japan, and in Latin America, than it is in the US).

Unrelated to what I said in my previous post, but nonetheless relevant to what you affirmed, saying that risk is what makes a game fun is a gross simplification. Though risk is one of the reasons people find games fun, it's not the only one, and not even a universal source of fun; there are persons that dislike risk as a whole. Heck, the two best selling PC games of all time are the original The Sims and it's sequel Sims 2, two games that are virtually without risk and don't even have a combat system; not to mention that most of the best selling games every year, for all platforms, incorporate features to allow players to opt out of most of the risk.

You might also be mixing challenge and risk. Challenge can be had without risk; look at Super Meat Boy, for example, a game that is devilishly challenging, while not having any risk because failure has no consequences.

Lastly, PvP is not the only source of challenge or risk. There are games aplenty that offer high challenge in a PvE environment, and for those that want risk many games offer that option, such as the Diablo series with the Hardcore mode (die and your character is deleted) or the Ironman mode many strategy games offer (no saving and reloading, the game automatically saves when closed, so if the player messes up he has to start anew).

If by "risk" you mean PvP, then I don't have to ask for this. Ways to completely avoid PvP have been promised since early in the Kickstarter drive, in the shape of both an offline mode and the selective multiplayer concept (more info at https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=3955), as well as the often repeated promise that all PvP in SotA will be consensual. BTW, by Portalarium own estimates, roughly half the SotA player base is PvE players, so they have strong reasons to cater to the interests of those players.

Do note, however, that SotA plans to have ways for a player to always be available for PvP if that is what he desires, and thus also attempts to cater to players that like open PvP. And I'm completely fine with that; I want as many players to find their fun in SotA as possible, just without ruining the fun of other players that don't share the same particular play style.

Interesting fact: Burning Crusade, with flying mounts and easier access to better rewarding instanced PvP, is basically the expansion that killed open world PvP in WoW. It also marks the greatest player base increase in WoW story.

Also, roughly 60% of the player base, according to all the third party census sites, opt to play in servers where non-consensual PvP is restricted. Not to mention the way most of the largest PvP servers became so unbalanced that open world PvP became mostly non-existent in them.

Seems to me like the lack of open, non-consensual PvP is not the issue for WoW. Besides, anyone that is following WoW since it's beta should know that Blizzard originally planned and advertised WoW as a game where open world PvP would be a central part, with PvE servers added for what they thought would be a minority of players choosing to avoid the PvP, and despite that PvE servers proved more popular than PvP ones.

Engagement - which includes fun - is the single most important thing in a game. It's the main reason most players play a game, and if lacking will certainly drive most players away.

And, sincerely, knowing that whoever ruined my fun has been punished, has had consequences for his actions, means nothing. Not for me, and likely not for a large number of players. Why even play a game that allows my fun to be ruined? Why should I become content for other players in a way that only brings me frustration while there are other games where I won't have that kind of frustration? Or, in the case of SotA, while I can just play the same game in a different multiplayer mode that guarantees that I won't be unwitting content for PKers?

To draw a real world comparison, would you rather not have you car stolen, or have your car stolen but with the criminals suffering the consequences?

If you can walk, why drive?

Oh, you would be surprised. But the point you seem to be missing is that roleplay is consensual; when done in a group, it's a group of players that have agreed on a set of rules, a scenario, and other details of their "game", and choose to uphold those choices even when the rules of the underlying game doesn't force them to.

 

Remember to keep it civil folks...

 

I see what you did there..

 

However this all plays out, i truly hope we have fun in all our many diverse ways. Also happy hunting whatever you fellow peoples decide to hunt Important thing is to stand together at beginning, it may take some time to find your place in SOTA.

 

Going on another direction, but still (somewhat) related to the thread, one thing that, for me at least, seems quite clear is that players on different sides of the "PvP divide" usually can't truly understand the motivations of the other side.

And I include myself in that number. While I can try to comprehend, on a purely intellectual level, what drives someone to expose himself to open PvP, or to hunt for other players and impose non-consensual PvP on them, I can't really understand those feelings because non-consensual PvP is an almost foreign concept for me. While I acknowledge that many people like that play style - I have close friends that do enjoy it, after all - I could never see anything I, personally, could find enjoyable in that kind of experience, despite having played quite a few games with non-consensual PvP.

And, from forum posts and the reactions of my friends, I believe that is mutual. It seems to be fairly hard for those that legitimately enjoy open PvP to understand why some players really can't get to like open PvP, and even then that understanding seems to be limited due to the fact those PvP players don't feel the same about the things that might make someone avoid open PvP.

Sometimes, on those threads, I feel like I'm trying to explain to a blind person the concept of colors. And I'm fairly sure that is a mutual feeling.

This is one aspect where the wide range of opinions on a number of topics inside the Portalarium team should really help. With devs across the whole spectrum in some topics, which I believe includes PvP, there should be different persons there that can actually understand the point of view of most players, and help make sure that whichever way they decide to go is at least acceptable for each different player "camp".

BTW, @FireLotus, sorry if I posted anything inappropriate or against the forum rules earlier.

 

If only we could get the various opposed camps of PLAYERS to accept that the game can survive and even thrive without the need to cater to one specific group (theirs) and to see that NOT catering to their camp isn't the same as actively catering to the other camps.