Levels of PvP = Level Of Involvement

From everything I have read and heard, they are having 3 levels of game play. These are:

• Play Alone
• Play with Friends
• Play with Everyone

Being that PvP involves the action of other players and its not right to control others. I think the level of involvemnt in PvE and PvP should be directly related to your level of involement in the online portion of the game. So if you choose to play alone, or play with others, you get your PvP or PvE.

The levels of PvP tied to how online you are would be:

• Play Alone
  • PvE - Plain and simple
• Play with Friends
  • Voluntary PvP - PvP against friends, or invite other "clans/guilds" to fight together.
• Play with Everyone
  • Full PvP with Full loot. Involving all the consequences for your actions.

And what I mean by consequences are things like; if your going to PK, your basically Role Playing a thiefing murderer, and the system will help you play that role. In other words...

• Murderers are hunted(by deadly roaming rangers in woods and by guards in towns)
• They have bounties on their heads are "free" kills for normals.
• Vendors do not wish to sell to them
• Quest givers do not wish to seek their help(conversly, some quest givers may find the normals a nuisance and wish to seek the Pk'ers help-I wouldnt mind this, but on a limited basis, afterall, the "bad guys" are supposed to lose)

I really dont like the idea that everyone would need to suffer because some people dont want to truely "Role Play". I think this, would solve the problem. Who knows, maybe this is already how its going to be. I hope.

 

I hope they don't do it this way - and doubt they will - because it would mean that you can't interact with strangers and meet new people without the risk of Full PvP.

I would suggest that it's best to have "Play with no-one/friends/everyone" be completely independent of the PvP slider. For example, I'd like to be able to set things up the way they were for guildwar style play in UO - Everyone is visible, but you can only PvP with friends/chosen guilds.

 

I believe a few devs have already shot down that proposal a few months ago, in the chat, for this exact reason. OPO is for meeting new players, and removing that possibility from strict PvE players isn't something they condone.

 

I think that would be the point. If you want to "meet" good people, then you wouldnt go hang out in the forest where it's open PvP. And anyone that PKs you isnts a friend you would take into friends only mode. There is really no down side to it. The non-PvP people have TWO game mode options to choose from. The Open PvP players must get one too.

 

Please no.
I want PvP. I don't want PK.

 

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/selective-multiplayer-rpg.2662/

 

There is absolutely zero reason why they would make the "play with everyone" setting a free for all. It would completely screw up the possibility of having safe, exciting, story driven adventures with people you've never met before. Part of the purpose of the "play with everyone" setting is so you can have those Ultima-esque adventures with new people instead of by yourself, or with your friend who just got married and has no time to play anymore.


You'll end up meeting up with new people who you think are great new friends that you can adventure with at a later time... right up until they stab you in the back while you're heading back to town after you've just helped them complete a quest.

 

To OP, you are going about it the wrong way by suggesting the none hardcore players should be shut off from the larger scale community interaction that is offered through the Open Mode. Work out with other pvp style players what you will or will not sacrifice to make the pvp slider part of the game fun, but try to do that with out alienating those who are mostly pve only and/or pvpers with different expectations.

PVE players will be able to "play with everyone" same as the Pk, only difference is you will never see each other unless you choose to, seems like the best way to go about it.

 

I'm going to play devil's advocate for PKs. I wasn't a PK in my time in UO, but I did see the role they played in making UO a very interesting game. External threats require people to work together and even depend on one another; it brings particpants closer or even requires interaction that wouldn't otherwise happen.

A NEED for good: Guilds provided protection, brotherhood, and were really needed to play UO without constant threat of PK deaths. The importance of guilds and relationships were deepened because of the threat of PKs. A new kind of PvPer, anti-PKs (or Bounty Hunters) started to show up. I love to PvP and am extremely compeitive but found it much more rewarding to help protect guilds and play a good character than to prey on blues. In fact preying on reds was a lot more challenging and in addition to receiving bounties it was common for anti-PKs to be on retainers from guilds. I had thousands of players on my ICQ and was always alerted when someone was whacking miners at Minoc or Cove, doing level 2 shame runs, or camping a noobie guild house.

The awnser to griefing: Imaging you are farming for a rare spawn or piggy backing your hard earned ore home and someone keeps tagging it over and over or steals your ore. They are 'friendly' so you can't attack them, and they know it, so they taunt you and grief you. In UO this was never an issue, if you felt them too much to bear, you could persuade them via e bolts or that poisoned kyrss you had been saving. Modern game strcuture such as wow often defines our enemies and prevents us from attacking those the game views as friendly, this loss of freedom creates it's own problems.

I think when we cacoon the game expierence too much you lose a lot of elements of risk, reward, and never get the oppurtunity to really create a community that supports one another. If I had to oppurtunity to 'PK' most people in general chat in WoW don't think anyone would bat an eye. Consequces deepends game maturity. Freedom solves a lot of little 'what is fair' issue by letting the players decide, letting them draw the lines, and giving them the ability to deal out consequences. In most of my UO experience when a PK or griefer became too much, people would band together to thwart him or her, it was never terribly unbearable.

That being said I recognize the economic reality of gaming today. I'm afraid nothing will be as realistic and 'free' as UO and still maintain an invested, ample customer base so we may not see such a robust expierence. Allowing people the freedom to do bad to others gives the need for people to be good, to defend others and band together, but I realize that that strong learning curve in UO couldn't be competitive in a more mature onilne gaming market; People endured the hardships of Ultima Online because of lack of options, I don't think we'll ever truely exprience the same risk/reward feelings we had associated with early UO.

However, the 3 tier system gives people the ability to opt out, but still gives the ability of a free world, which is around the best comprimise.

 

Regarding this way of dealing with PKing, I think one thing hasn't really been said yet. Though it is a very smart and social way of dealing with the matter (and what are MMOs if not socializing places), what happens is the gameplay experience is very asymetrical ; The gatherer/crafter who gets repeatedly PKed is seldom part of the strike team that gets to "punish" the PK. In the same regard, the PK getting stomped by an organized team is not likely to end up saying : "well done guys, I really had it coming".

So what really happens in terms of gaming experience is a crafter got part of his evening ruined by getting PKed and stolen from, and a PK had part of his evening ruined by getting "unfairly" ganked. This is pretty much a lose-lose scenario, though it is very realistic and has certainly led to people meeting each other and actually organizing something they couldn't have done alone.

My point there is : the gameplay experience is very different from the social experience, and I personnally think (apparently same as you and many others) that the UO way of saying "everything is allowed, players will find their own balance" is not the right way to do it. A compromise between incentives to socialize and gaming experiences that avoid frustrations (on all sides) must be found.

edit : spelling, grammar

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but...they've already said that PvP would be consentual in dev chats. Several times.

 

This was a devil's advocate post, so it's meant to highlight a one sided view, so I will retorte in like form:

If you remember correctly murderer's had significant stat loss from a death, so I don't think it's fair to say it would be the same. The PK would be out of comission for days if not weeks, this could be made more dramatic in SoTA by adjusting the amount of stat loss. In life we have the ability to harm others, we don't because we believe in our own form of fairness and the consquences are dire. On the shard I played on the most greifed by PKs were miners. In SoTA you can just mine in Play Alone mode. In UO miners would have been solo players, but instead ended up joining large crafters guilds who would pay a few anti-PKs to respond to attacks. Since this fee was spread accross hundreds of memebers it was very small to each member, and usually was coached in the form of resources they were already gathering. When a miner or crafter was attacked we'd get an icq with a location and recall their, drop the guy, who would be out of comission for a week or so, and return the ore. It involved a minor set back for the miner/crafter. It created a guild relationship between miner/crafter that otherwise wouldn't have existed, it created a game play between PvPers and crafters that otherwise wouldn't have existed, and it created a risk/reward dynamic for all involved.

Unfotunately in video gaming people do like to grief, the worst kind like to grief these crafting/miner type of players who would rather not particpate in PvP. Assume there is no ability to attack one another. You are mining in a cave and a 'friendly' person attacks and orc, brings him into the cave, and hides. Since this is your crafter and you wanted to save all the room you could for ore, you have no weapons besides your pick axe. You try to run but he blocks you with his character. You die. You come back, lure the orc out, let it kill you, res again then start mining again. Little do you know he's still hiding in the cave, your bag gets too heavy, you put the ore on the ground and leap frog it to the smelter. Once you put it down it disappears. You know he has taken it. He now can laugh at you and mock you and you can't do anything about it. In a world where players draw the line and make the consequences you could just kill this kid, take his stuff and move on. Or you could tell your guild, someone with a PK for just these kinds of special people could come and rip him apart for you and everyone is happy again.

UO was a lot more cutthroat, but you didn't see the kind of general chat you see in WoW, because people couldn't be blantent jerks without consequences, because the game structure didn't protect them.

In the tier system this creates 3 options for the kind of character:

1) Go at it completely alone in Play Alone, with zero risk and full reward, with no social interaction until they switch modes
2) Go at it just with friends in Play with Friends, and assuming your friends don't murder you, with zero risk and full reward, with preferred social interaction until they switch modes
3) Go at it with Everyone and particpate in this dymatic, stimulated with risk (which is totally optional and provides the same reward)[/quote]

 

I hadn't really heard anything definitive either way, but work has been busy and I haven't been super diligent about keeping track. This will no doubt be a point of contention for a lot of PvPers and PvEers alike so I could understand their hestitation to draw a line in the sand so early.

 

Well, yes and no. PvP isn't designed yet and any given interview/roundtable about PvP involving Lord British usually goes like : "We want wilderness to be dangerous. As long as everyone knows the danger is there, then the danger is fine. Newbies WILL be protected. The game will be playable for those who don't to EVER get PKed".

Does that mean that if you want to avoid getting PKed you will have to avoid some zones ? Or to avoid leaving town altogether ? And the way I see it, the PvP slider that was mentionned is the same thing as the "safe roads" LB talked about in a post : only a convenient metaphore to refer to all the game designs concerning PvP (I used to think like many people that the slider was a way to choose who you get to interact with but I now think this was wrong).

Bottom line : noone knows, not even the devs (which should rather be a reason to rejoyce than to get scared of what many people are claiming WILL be in the game).

edit : this is in response to Koldar, forgot to quote him :/

 

The devs have said from the very beginning that PvP will be by consent only, and that they'd try to temp us into doing it.

I suppose people are trying to get the devs to consider changing that.

 

Thanks for that. Do you have clarification on whether 'consent' means players will have knowledge of which areas are free PvP, pose threats, etc, and are thereby consenting to possible PvP or threat thereof by joining these areas? It still seems unclear to me.

 

I knew I wasn't crazy...i just can't find the reference video where it is stated.

I think that since SotA is not a stereotypical MMO, it wraps many things in mystery. From listening to dev chats, I'm guessing there are fundamental differences in the definitions of PvP and PvE between how players think it will be implemented and how the devs are planning to implement it. Hopefully the devs will have an update that will clear up a lot of this.

 

I have no idea. I suspect the details do not yet exist.

 

I don't think you quite understood my previous post. It was specifically aimed at making people think twice about this very sentence ; from a gameplay perspective not "everyone is happy again".

Though it may be very satisfying to know that the PK who "ruined" the crafter's play session got his own play session "ruined", it doesn't change the fact that both players probably got frustrated at some point in their gaming experience.

And I think my quote from you underlines very well the kind of ideas that people consider obvious when they are not in an environment that is completely designed. A good way to think about what you're trying to achieve with a game is to think about which emotions you WANT the player to feel, and which emotions you DON'T WANT the player to feel.

In the case of UO and many old-school games (and some more recent games), frustration or anger were certainly a common reaction to the design of the game and it was perfectly fine, because it was a choice by the devs (not always a conscious choice but a choice nevertheless).

So, in a way, the question about SOTA's multiplayer is not so much : "should we allow anyone to attack anyone else on sight ?", but rather : "how do we make an aggression from an enemy become a challenge from an adversary ?" (because if you succeed with that, all of a sudden a great majority of the players are interested in PVPing as they are very less likely to get frustrated).

To say it maybe a bit clearer : don't think about the gameplay mechanics so soon, think about the design, about the intention of the game.

(when re-readin my post, i get the feeling we are not really listening to each other, but hey, I spent some time writing this, I'll post it anyway )

 

Just about any hangout where Chris answers a PvP question. Easier to hunt for them by reading the recaps on http://forsakenvirtues.com.

Not much helpful, for me at least. It basically means that the only way for me to play as I would prefer is to intentionally hamper, directly or indirectly, other player's ability to play, which is something that tends to kill all the fun I could have in a game. This would drive me away from the game quite fast, and in fact is a big part of why I ignored UO and only started playing MMOs when ones without open PvP started to appear.

And how many instead simply gave up on the game, cancelled their accounts, and moved on? PK activity was the #1 reason people left UO back then, as confirmed by devs involved with the game in interviews and even here on the SotA homepage (though it unfortunately was in the chat, not the forums; someone referenced those answers in a post back then, but I'm not sure it survived the transition from the old to the new forums).