Myrcellas reading recommendation for PvP

Hello community.

I am seeing so many posts regarding PvP.

I do not want to active participate with it, but i felt that i should ad some higher level of information from real fundamental research on it.

Also if you love games and online games you find it very intresting.

So here are some very good reads about the subjects:

How To Make A Game With 'PvP Done Right

http://brokentoys.org/2007/12/10/how-to-make-a-game-with-pvp-done-right/


Self and Selfishness in Online Games

http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/07312.58121.pdf

Journal of Virtual World Research

http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=analyse%20research%20mmo%20pvp&source=web&cd=39&ved=0CF4QFjAIOB4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.tdl.org%2Fjvwr%2Findex.php%2Fjvwr%2Farticle%2Fdownload%2F353%2F425&ei=_BgKUtL0JonAtAbw5YGoDw&usg=AFQjCNGH52lrvMWU3wp9cUFwn8DRufVUOw

PvP Considerations in MMORPG Game Design

http://hereticalreflections.wordpress.com/2012/06/14/pvp-considerations-in-mmorpg-game-design/



Play 2 Crush - A History of PvP in MMOs - Genre Overview

http://www.alteredgamer.com/pc-gaming/4164-play-2-crush-a-history-of-pvp-in-mmos-genre-overview/



Took me a while to find good information regarding the subject PvP.
Still reading myself on it.


Hope that some will take the time to read and after have less questions and more understanding what the SotA Dev Teams has to deal with regarding PvP

Take care all

Myrcella

P.S: Comments regarding if this was helpful, intresting or not are welcome.
Adding more educational information i suggest is also welcomed.

 

I dont understand why you quote a guy that end his little rant with this statement about PvP-players and i quote:

"PvP players are angry and bitter, and will hate you.This has nothing to do with design. I just thought I should warn you. There’s been enough bad games out there that you have no honeymoon period at all. Sorry".

http://brokentoys.org/2007/12/10/how-to-make-a-game-with-pvp-done-right/

I never hated my opponent and where the bitterness comes from is anybodies guess. This article is not a good one. It is a very shallow description of "PvP-players" He see "PvP- players" not as individuals but a group of players that all act the same.

Then we have this his rant about playerskills which i found amusing. He call it the "the tyranny of the skilled minority." I call it a game that managed to live up to being a game that actually need playerskills and the ones lacking them can improve their skills with practice. It's a challenge which motivates the competitive playerbase. Practice improve your playerskills and UO before AoS is a perfect example of this. Some players learned the game more then others and for putting that time into the game they were rewarded more. Just as it should be.

Then he claims that PvP-players ( yes he claims all PvP players are steeped in same form with same values, LOL) hate grinding. My guild of elite PvP players have grinded more then i could easily claim most players in the MMO world. In DF1 the game that took more grind then any other game i played we grinded so much that we outgrinded the large zergs so much that we managed to get the first tier 3 city on Europe shard even though we had like 1/10 of their numbers. That took some serious grinding.

 

I would agree that some of that article is junk, but he makes some good points as well:
PvP should not be the focus of your entire game.

PvP should not be a random afterthought.

PvP players hate classes. (Obviously you can't stereotype all pvpers, but to a large degree this is true)

 

Thank you for pointing this out.

I removed this link as it does not fit as a neutral approach on the subject. Sorry

 

I would also recommend "HEARTS, CLUBS, DIAMONDS, SPADES: PLAYERS WHO SUIT MUDS"
http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm

This one is quite old, from 1996. It's the paper that introduced the player types used in the Bartle test (Achievers, Explorers, Socializers, Killers). It's focus is on how the different kinds of players interact. Given that "Killers" in that paper are basically PKers, it's an interesting take on how PKing interacts with other play styles.

 

Given the existence of LoL, DotA2, World of Tanks, Team Fortress 2, and other very popular PvP-only games, I disagree with this in a general sense.

This doesn't apply to SotA, though, since one of it's strongest promises is to be a spiritual successor to the single player Ultima games, including the possibility of playing it solo; thus, unless Portalarium wants to throw away everything they promised, this game can't be focused on just PvP.

I completely agree here. PvP added without proper planning is not only prone to be bad PvP, it can also harm the rest of the game.

Not really sure. Many of the most popular PvP games nowadays have well delineated classes; the caveat, though, is that those games typically allow players to easily change classes, and handle progression mostly at the account level. Thus, the player can have class variety without commitment to specific classes.

 

Myrcella I think this is great work. However, I wouldn't have deleted the link - maybe just have another section that people can keep updating. The two sections would be research-oriented vs. opinion-based. Or something better than that! I think opinion-based articles are also interesting to read.

 

I also agree with this.

 

Well but actually my intention was more going into the research area. Well can´t stop the train rolling.

 

I really should have read more of the articles before starting to reply. @Ara, you are reading more in that article you criticized than actually is there.

Given the article's focus on creating PvP games, that warning is about the players not giving a second chance for the game to prove itself ("no honeymoon period at all") and potentially hating the developer. Also keep in mind that the article was written back in 2007, when the first wave of WoW copycats, including a few bad games whose publishers thought that just making PvP the focus of the game would guarantee a more dedicated player base, had just hit the market.

Actually he does say that skilled players should be rewarded more in the paragraph just below the one you pointed.

His argument, though, is that the game can't afford to alienate "bad" players, given that they are the vast majority of the player base. And he is not suggesting equal rewards; rather, he is suggesting that losing shouldn't be too painful, in order to not drive away the 80% or so of the player base that can't compete with the top PvPers. Seems like a very sensible recommendation.

BTW, the "tyranny of the skilled minority" is very real. There is a huge gap between an average player and the top players, with an average player having no chance, at all, of ever winning against a top player (unless the combat depends more on luck than skill, but that would drive skilled players away and be bad for the game as a whole). Someone at Portalarium (I can't remember if it was RG or Chriss) even acknowledged that it was a real problem with UO, given that losing in UO could be very painful indeed, and contributed to UO's problem with player retention.

Actually, he says that all players, both PvP and PvE, dislike grinding, with grinding defined as the artificial barriers put there in order to prevent players from getting to the end game in a MMO in just two weeks (remember, 2007, MMOs where the player can get to the level cap in less than two weeks were the exception rather than the norm). You shouldn't read too much into the generalization, though; he is not accusing every player of disliking grind, but merely warning potential developers that grind is typically disliked by the player base. Also, in the next paragraph, he does point that players like grinding in the sense that it prevents other players from instantly catching up - which you just proved in your reply

 

Old, but extremely valid.

http://www.gamerdna.com/quizzes/bartle-test-of-gamer-psychology/

 

The brokentoys article is written by none other than Lum the Mad... who's working at Portalarium now. The irony isn't lost upon me either... lol That article was written about 6 years ago... I doubt his views have changed much although his tone probably has. He does raise some valid points although over generalizations are common place when discussing PvPers and Non-PvPers.

You've just got to remember that back in the "glory days" of UO, it was the "only" MMO around, and people were "forced" to live with each other, regardless of playstyle. Once more game options became available, people that did not enjoy the constant ganking or looting moved to another game. I played during those "glory days" and afterwards for a while and tbh, I didn't get ganked as often as some people make it out to be.

You just had to be mindful of your surroundings.

 

The issue seems to be that many players would rather play a mediocre game where ganking is completely impossible than a great game with occasional ganking. When the game features meaningful penalties for defeat I include myself among those players (when death has very light, or no, penalties I just suicide when attacked, rez, and continue playing as if nothing had happened).

 

Are you saying because you can't freely gank someone the game is mediocre? Or because there is no meaningful death?

I read but try to stay out of PvP threads because I believe before we can begin to discuss PvP, we first need to know how Combat and Death works. Since we still don't have that information, we shouldn't be making any assumptions.

 

What do you think about the readings. Not the one i deleted. The rest of it?

 

Not at all.

What I meant is that many players will leave any game, even a great one, if they are exposed to even a little ganking. Which is what I believe happened with UO during it's "glory days"; even though it seemed to be a quite good game, and by all accounts it was possible to avoid most PvP by simply taking appropriate precautions, seems like a lot of players can't tolerate any PvP-related ganking at all.

As for the meaningful death bit, that one is about how I handle non-consensual PvP. I don't care much about being attacked by other players per see (though I typically will refuse to even defend myself), but I do care a lot about suffering setbacks due to being attacked by other players. So, if the consequences for being attacked and defeated are merely a minor annoyance, I might stay in the game despite the non-consensual PvP; but, if another player can actually set me back without my consent, then I will leave the game, no matter how good it otherwise is.

 

You can see a chart in the Bartle paper (http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm) about how the increased amount of one type of player can affect the number of other types. One of the effects of having more Killers is the decrease in the amount of the three other types (Explorers, Achievers, Socializers).

As someone said above, there are other games to play out there if you don't enjoy the one you're in, so if a developer wants to have a more populous game they need to try to appease each group, preferably without disenchanting the others.

 

*applauds the civil conversation and great feedback so far in this thread *

Now this is the type of PvP discussion I love. What is helpful to us is finding out WHY players find their particular style of PvP meaningful and engaging. No judgement or criticism of other play styles, but what makes PvP fun and rewarding for YOU.

 

I agree with FireLotus, an unusually civil debate given the subject!

Yes, I wrote the piece linked/de-linked, and yes, it is very much an opinion piece. As people who have read my prior writings know, I labor under the delusion that I have a sense of humor, and much of my writing is designed to be both thought-provoking and humorous. Given that I spent a good part of my career working on a PvP-centric MMO (Dark Age of Camelot) and that prior to that my MMO of choice was Ultima Online, where I was a founding member of a fairly well-known PvP guild on Great Lakes, well, I do have one or two opinions on the subject.

Before I go too much further, since we are dealing with some potentially contentious subjects: these are my opinions. I stand by them because I am pretty awesome, but they should not be taken as "how PvP in SoTA will work" because that's not up to me, that's up to the project leads. I'm the guy who makes NPCs chatter at the moment.

Let me hit some of the topics brought up individually:

When I said "PvP players will hate you" - the you in that sentence was not referring to a fellow player, but to the game developer. And if you believe that some of the more hardcore of PvP players don't hate the developers of the game they play, you should count your blessings as to the flames you have dodged. PvP players are extremely passionate - I know, being one - and that passion does not always express itself in a good way. Thus my warning. As someone else stated,

He is entirely correct in my focus, and apologies if that was not clear.

To a point, I agree with you. As I said in the same piece, a little further down, "if a player is consistently losing to the skilled minority when they are matched up with them, if they feel that in a fair fight they had a chance of winning, the pain of that loss is lessened considerably." What I refer to in the part you took exception to was the simple fact that in any typical PvP game, given motivation and the willingness to sink time into the endeavor, 10% of players will win 80% of matches. This isn't opinion, it's simple fact (easily proven via metrics/leaderboards). And what this implies is that the vast majority of players will lose a PvP match, and the challenge is to (a) not discourage them entirely from playing because of this and (b) make the path to joining that 10% clear and obvious. Again, this isn't written from the aspect of a player saying "PvP sucks/PvP rocks", but from a game developer specifically writing an opinion piece on "how do you make a game with fun PvP?"

A simple question: did you enjoy the process, or did you do it for the benefits that said grinding brought you?

Anyway, again, a great discussion!

 

To be honest, I haven't read them. Not because I don't want to but because I've already lived through all those stages and seen it enough first hand but I can imagine there are some interesting tidbits in there.

Aaahhh now I understand and aye, you are correct. It's basically what I've been saying too. There is a fine line between realistic death consequences (having to find your corpse and loot, restocking, etc) or just having a minor setback.

But again, we must wait for more concrete information on how Combat and Death works... then we can all get the ball rolling on PvP consequences and rewards.