NON PK, Non-murder, PVP Ideas.

--I have two ideas to share, and hope ya'll will share more. My premise is that I came to hate the highly structured PVP battlegrounds in WOW and SWTOR; played with strangers and generating much monotony.
1) "Battleground" areas in the open world. Somehow you could sign up your guild or group and "reserve" a battleground area in the open world. A time would be set for the battle to begin, and possibly a timer to determine the duration of the battle. --The two opposing forces would gather at that location and when the time came the battle could commence. That's the basis of the PVP, scorekeeping is another thing. --Once the battle commences the area is "locked" preventing others from joining in.
2) BATTLECHESS On a Giant Chessboard like was in Magencia (edit) This would require two teams of 8 avatars each (pawns would be NPC since it would be hard to get 32 avatars) The player whose avatar was King would control order (edited) the moves for his side. If an NPC pawn is attacked it automatically loses, if NPC pawn attacks, it automatically wins. --However, when avatar pieces attack other avatar pieces, the outcome is not certain. If the attacker wins, they get the square and the deposed avatar departs. If defender wins, they get to keep the square. --If Bishop, Queen, Rook are ranged fighters they can cast one spell/fire one bolt before proceeding to the defenders square. The defender can cast a ranged spell/attack immediately upon being attacked, but the "fight" then is in melee range. --Knights cannot attack until in melee range of the defender's square. --When the King is in check, IF the attacking piece is adjacent to the King and the attacking piece is not "protected" by another piece, then King can fight the attacker, and possibly win, keeping his square. Otherwise, the King cannot move into check.
--ADDED EDIT: If you are say the King's Rook, when you are ordered to attack you actually attack (with your avatar, not a chessboard piece) and the defending avatar defends.

 

I don't generally have a problem with battleground style PvP. But I think many will agree that it's a side game that doesn't fit all that well into an RPG. If PvP is going to be meaningful in an RPG, it should affect the persistent state of the world. Otherwise, I should just play LoL or some other game. Ultimately, this is why drained people out of GuildWars2...the PvP was well designed, but meaningless. Don't get me wrong, it's fun. And in a grind to win game, I'd rather grind BGs than kill the same mobs over and over, do quests, or solve jumping puzzles. But in this case, it's really about opportunity costs and extrinsic rewards (i.e. if I don't get some kind of loot dumped on me, it had to compete on "fun" with LoL or GTA or w/e).

The much more immersive solution is one hinted at in the stretch goals. Fights over resource hexes / control points and guild fights for castles / towns. None of these things requires a PK / karma mechanic at all. And all work even with people who don't directly get involved with PvP.

 

If the king controls the whole board, the other players sit and do nothing? I don't think people would enjoy that very much. That being said, I certainly support competitive aspects to the game that don't involve PKing.

You could have groups competing to find and slay certain monsters in a timed hunt.

 

On the whole BattleChess thing, I'd love it as a minigame or something in a tavern (hey, I loved that you could play chess/checkers in game! , but having played chess often in real life, can you imagine how long and kinda boring that would be if players were forced to stand there waiting for actual legal chess rules for combat?

If I wanna kill you, I wanna run up and smack you upside the head with a giant mace, not roll my d20s to see if my dexterity is high enough first.

 

--The King commands the movement, but the player controlling the "piece" takes it from there. Example King orders Queen's Bishop to Attack Knight. Queen's Bishop takes it from there.

 

One of the more interesting threads I've found that touches this subject;

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...mping-and-battlefield-stuff.7225/#post-122344

I thought it was relevant here as it had some elements close to our Mingo's intent.

I'm a battlefield kind of guy and I like what's been hinted at by Darkstarr and the Team about fighting over and controlling resources. I'm not sure there's any idea just how they will accomplish this yet, but I for one wish battles to be more than just 5 guys hitting another 5 guys in the head. I'm thinking more like 50 vs 50...limit...
I heard in one of the video chats Lord British speaking of breaking the battle into surrounding hexes to relive the server of an overload in player participants, but I didn't hear anything about what the numbers were to be when this would happen. Did I miss something?

5 guys is a brawl, 30 to 50 is a force and I believe that the SotA Development Team needs to aim higher than what I've been hearing...
Epic PvE or PvP always means a scene to be remembered and a scene to be a publicity tool in attracting more players.
Epic PvP = Epic Battles and I feel that the fight for that description is as yet to be seen...
~Time Lord~

 

Hopefully you don't have the Bishop AFK, or worse trolling by not moving the piece, during the game.

 

Yes, a board full of well armed anxious players, across from another party of well armed anxious players.

What could possibly go wrong.

 

--Ah! I think you begin to see! Indeed on a full size chessboard, with actual battle thrown in to to mix of regular chess! Somehow I think it would be possible to find 16 chess-players to take part.

 

I love the idea of staged battles. This hex reservation idea may have legs my friend. While i would not enjoy the chess game event myself (i won't name names, but a certain soon-t0-be designer/developer at Origin wanted to split the UO map up into something resembling a Risk board back before they were hired), but perhaps we could come up with a system here that would support the players staging such an event if they wished.

At risk of a tangent, i just checked in on GW2 recently at midnight PST and there was a queue to get into WvW there. While those large scale battles may not be everyone's cup-o-tea it is apparently still a popular activity.