Thievery and Ignoring Players

@Silent Strider I think it is possible that we might see many people in SotA that will flag themselves for PvP even though they won't join a PvP guild or any kind of battle all the time. Some people will think they are experienced enough and want to experience the full potential of the game. It most likely won't be newbies, but I do believe if they provide incentive to do so, there will be a player base that isn't necessarily into PvP that still accepts being a target.

I remember there came a point when I was a 2x GM in UO when I thought I was tough enough to handle myself against anybody. Thankfully I didn't seek out danger because I had a lot to learn. However you could have been 7x GM in UO, and not have the PvP skills and lose to a 4x GM in combat easily. So when people get close to maxed out in skills I'm certain they will be more likely to flag for PvP permanently. It's an ego thing. Also flagging yourself for PvP doesn't necessarily mean you may be attacked every minute of game play. A guy might go a while before getting in a fight because it's only PKs that attack the innocent. Think about that for a second. It won't be people in PvP guilds that attack innocents because they might not want to get murder counts or whatever. Also those occasional battles might cause some people to want revenge, and they might become pulled into the full PvP experience like I was in UO. I joined an order guild, and later we started a chaos guild and really learned to PvP. I got hooked on PvP from a few guild sparing sessions. So PvP can create more PvP.

>>>>Well the point is at some point I expect even the timid will become bold enough to try it out. Since they can turn it off it would be like testing the waters. If they get comfortable because they don't get killed every second but the element of heightened danger is fun (and it also has an ego factor because you can say I flag for PvP and I'm cool lol) ... they'll continue, and I suspect once you're use to the rush/excitement how can you feel satisfied turning it off any more?

 

You're forgetting that ALL of the players will authenticate against only one server. There won't be shards. We are use to having shards where all the users are split up between many different servers. So even if only 10% of players flag for PvP that might be a minority.... but if there are 2Mil players that's 100,000 players flagged for PvP. Judging by the number of people who want PvP it may even be higher than 10%, and also we may have more than 2 million players. Even with the 24,539 Backers we currently have today... that's about 2,450 PvPers at 10% of the population. So keep that in mind. Also see my post above... This isn't Trammel where you have to chose a land to live in... you can go to between PvP and PvE at will ANYWHERE in the world... so it won't be a trammel experience.

 

I do agree that players will trickle from the PvE to the PvP modes, but I see another aspect of SotA as being essential for this: SotA offers a kind of safety net.

More specifically, players in SotA don't need to permanently commit to being PvP targets. They can go back and forth between PvP and PvE as they wish. As such, the first step of flagging oneself for PvP is a far less scary one, since the player can step back to the "safety" of PvE any time he wants.

 

I am sorry too then, brother. For -almost- insulting.

 

It's important to remember that the PvE content is more than JUST a safety net and holding pool for potential but not yet willing new PvP players. In most online games available today, the PvE content is a big draw in and of itself, it provides something to do to gain skill, wealth, and skill advancement. Therefore, allowing for a PvE community that doesn't have to PvP at all unless it wants to will increase player membership, and give the PvPers who want some variety something else to do, and that process will result in even more players available for the PvP pool. So ultimately, letting the people who really DON'T want to PvP(ever, at all, not cause they are scared or timid, but just cause they don't) NOT PvP will result in better PvP.

 

@MalakBrightpalm you hit the nail on the head with that. Some people who never will PvP will still pay their money to Portalarium and make a better game for the rest of us. Also like I said before many people will choose to PvP eventually, and since it's one server we can expect quite a few people.

 

This is the beauty of the instanced model where players are grouped based on their interests. It should be able to pick every PvP loving player and bring them together, instead of having them spread around and mixed with PvE players like almost every other game does.

PvP, and specially world PvP, needs a critical mass. Where PvE can happen with few players, PvP absolutely needs a fairly high number of players in order to sustain itself. By putting all PvP players together that critical mass only needs to be met once for the whole game, instead of once per shard, where the PvE players mixed in might prevent that critical mass being met even if the game as a whole had more than enough PvPers.

 

If only we could stop the endless argument that seems to want the PvE players to help make up that critical mass, I think the slider idea will work perfectly to provide both the PvP players with a nice risky environment and the PvE players to not worry about being ganked. It would be nice if we could talk about something other than "why everyone should have to do it my way".

 

I'm not religious - but "amen." We have way too many threads that follow that exact format IMO.
I'd ignore them altogether if they weren't almost always peppered with good PoVs and ideas.

 

Who is saying that PvP players want PvE players to make up a critical mass of any kind? I'm not saying that, certainly. I don't want anyone in open PvP who doesn't want to be in open PvP. I think there will be plenty of people who chose to flag themselves, but the only way we'll know for sure is during the Alpha/Beta tests. Let's compare notes then.

 

I'm mainly saying that PvP needs critical mass, which is a fact. Without enough players available for PvP activity to naturally occur, it tends to just die down, specially open PvP (consensual, arena-like PvP can be more resilient because this kind of PvP can survive with scheduled fights and formal queue systems).

I do agree that drafting PvE players into the PvP isn't a good idea, BTW. PvE players mixed with the PvP players, specially when limits on the number of players exist, can make that critical mass not be reached even when there should be enough PvP players to spark up PvP action.

(Which I do believe is one of the problems plaguing WoW in it's attempts to bring back world PvP; last time I played that game it was very common for the two factions, even on PvP servers, to simply ignore one another, with the end result being little to no PvP activity, and I was playing on a fairly balanced and high population server. Seems to me like too many players, in PvP servers, weren't actually interested in engaging in PvP, dulling the conflict.)

SotA, though, shouldn't have any problem with this, thanks to the instancing being used to group up PvP players.

 

I disagree with your premise then, that it is PvE players that are needed to make up that critical mass. Coming into any game, there will be a percentage of player who will want PvE, a percentage who will be hard core RP, and a percentage who will be casual PvP, and a different percentage who will be hard core PvP. PvE players rarely suddenly convert to hard core PvP players, and hard core PvP players typically remain hard core PvP players.

What is needed is a critical mass of players in total. Right now we have a little less than 25000 contributors. Upon release, how many players might we have? A lot of that will depend on SotA marketing, and word of mouth advertising following release. What if we get 4 times the number of players when the game starts, or 100,000 players. That is a LOT of players, and if only 1% of them opt for open PvP, that is still 1000 players. The actual number might be 10%, but we won't have a good feel for that until the Alpha/Beta tests.

After release, if SotA gets a reputation for being a strong PvP game, that number could expand quite a bit. That makes it important for us as game developers/supporters to make the best game possible, not only in PvE where admittedly most SotA players will operate, but also in PvP.

The larger the total SotA audience, the better off everyone will be.

 

IMHO we aren't really disagreeing, we just are having some miscommunication issues.

Never said that. I only said that critical mass is needed, so bringing more PvP players together is essential for PvP to thrive. SotA will do this with the instancing mechanics, without any need of forcing PvE players to participate.

Actually, what is needed is a critical mass of players together that are interested in PvP. If the game does a very good job in bringing together the players that are interested in PvP, then your scenario, where the total number of players is what matters, becomes reality - and SotA seems poised to achieve that.

Players not interested in PvP mixed together with the PvPers can dampen the whole effort, though, which is one of the reasons why I always agreed with you that forcing PvE players into PvP is a bad idea. They don't really contribute to the PvP and tend to cool down things. It's like adding water to some liquid fuel, past a certain point the fuel stops being burnable altogether; in the same light, even with open PvP rules, if you keep adding PvE players among the PvP ones, past a certain point PvP stops happening simply because most players aren't interested in it.

Besides, in my own specific case, I can only actually engage in PvP if I'm quite sure all other players involved effectively want to engage in PvP. Whenever PvE players are forced into PvP this ceases being true, so I stop engaging in PvP altogether.

Given the instancing model, I completely agree with this. Having the game bring together players with similar interests makes total number of players more important than the way player interests are distributed.

 

I think who MalakBrightpalm was talking about when they were referred to people who think PvE players need to make up PvP critical mass (at least how I perceived it anyway) are the people that have this idea that it's all or nothing - that it must be open PvP free-for-all or the game is doomed. There's definitely a count on statements from various people who state that almost verbatim or paraphrased in just about every PvP thread I've seen- which is probably why there was no direct quote from anyone specifically. I even think I even recall seeing some threaten to take their ball and go home over it.

They are of course entitled to their opinion just as anyone else is; I just fail to see how the consensual/optional PvP is any type of deal breaker with the matching system that Portalarium has proposed. It's gotten trite for me and that's why I agreed with their statement.

Owain & Silent Strider: I've seen you both around enough to know that description doesn't fit either of you.

 

This doesn't matter since there is going to be only one single server. The critical mass that matters for PvP is the number of active PvP players it takes to have enough PvP encounters to make it an enjoyable experience. Has nothing to do with the number of PvE players. It does have something to do with the number of PvE players that eventually turn PvP.

 

I don't understand how Ignore works.
So if I get killed by a PK and call in Owain and the PK just turns around and clicks Ignore on him and they continue to do that to anyone who attacks them that means PK heaven for them.
Are we sure this is a good system?

 

EXACTLY!!! This is why the ignore option MUST be greyed out and totally unavailable for any players who flag themselves for PvP. An ignore feature totally ruins PvP. PvE it makes sense to have this feature though.

 

That's a very good point. The only way I see to counteract those types of situations would be for the anti-PK to know they've been ignored - then you ignore them in turn. Not very elegant.

I'm sure someone can come up with something better.

 

Is it even confirmed that thieveing is in? I might have missed something here, but I haven't seen it at least.

 

LOL and there it is.

I'd like to add to that not only should it be greyed out - any existing PvE ban list should also be completely ignored when you're PvP. This might not be an obvious sequitur to everyone.