PK´s are not a Pattern - the true reason they are unwelcome in MMO

Of course. But not because of PK. Because Trammel provided a Game Advancement.
If they would have implended NPC Monsters on Trammel combensating the danger and difficulty loss from Feluzzia of the now missing PK the exodus would not have happend.

Gamers moved to Trammel because it was easy to become rich. greed!

Enter Trammel Dungeon: same amount of Loot less danger. More successul runs.

Imagine this: Trammel combensating loss of PK danger.

Trammel Dungeon: 2 Lichs, 10 Dragons hardcore always guarding the loot.
Feluzzia Dundeon: 2 Lichs, sometimes PK's showing up.

That would have made Feluzzia a alternative option. But they just made Trammel a loot, get rich party.

Not because of harassment. That was a total secondary reason. My opinion.

 

So you are claiming Ultima Online before Trammel was a failure? If you asked Garriott & Long, and I'm not speaking for them, I've simply listened to a number of interviews where they disagree with you 100%. Ultima Online was such a surprise hit that EA went from ignoring the project to getting involved (aka Trammel). When EA gets involved we all know what happens.

I can prove with numbers, Felucca was a major success, and unlike your false claims, I can back it up with factual numbers. When I say I have a chart, I have a chart. Take a look, absorb the information. It is not made up;
https://web.archive.org/web/20041211125420/http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart2.html



You, sir, are dead wrong. Felucca was a success. A Major success. In fact the only time UO's subscribers ever went DOWN was a bit after Trammel.



Garriott & Long were there during the Felucca days, they know how successful it was first hand. They know what trials existed, they know of the Trammel debacle. They know too much to set that great amount of information aside and ignore it, so with their experience I doubt a Trammel disaster will happen with this game.

I've had this conversation 4 times before, I didn't even need to go get my laptop I simply googled 'razimus ultima online chart'. But like I said before...

I really don't understand why so many would be against a guy that's not even a PK, I'm an Anti-PK PvPer, which is a totally different thing.

 

One word, FREEDOM RPG SANDBOX !!! ( 3 words )

 

Always makes me furious.
They made totally unbalanced difficulty between Fel and Tram. All never state that fact.

Imagine they make a copy of Trammel and say the other world "Easyland" has the same Loot but all monsters are half the danger in this world then Trammel.

Same Exodus!

 

I always laugh at this Chart as a argument. It totally ignores the growth of the Internet Market and overall MMO growth of market. Including that, Trammel failed.

So i agree with you

 

No doubt there are tons of factors. WoW gained millions of subscribers, UO's subs are and always have been peanuts compared to WoW's, because WoW came along at the exact right time, when every middle class household in America had internet access, and this new thing called the "MMORPG" had come along, and people actually knew about it. In 1997 the MMORPG was not common knowledge to console gamers. They were still playing Final Fantasy VII on their Playstation 1. UO didn't have an advertising budget that I know of, I saw exactly zero ads for it except in a few obscure PC game magazines. So extreme nerds knew about it, I heard a rumor it was on the TV show "Beyond 2000", and I did hear UO mentioned once on CNN in 1998 or 1999, the news involved the biggest price tag for a virtual online castle. Tons of factors, UO was the main game in the market, once there were options numbers reflected this in the buyer's subscribing habits. Too many factors to mention, but one factor is crystal clear, Felucca Ultima Online was not a failure at launch, it's entire Felucca term was financially successful from a to z.

 

And to bring it back to the subject:

Trammel made it possible for players to return to "Patterns" - no suprises.


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Ok.

Some perspective from a non-PvPer who was there for the world split, and saw it's initial damage to the community, and why it was ultimately a good thing at a time when none of this was a known quantity or solution.

First off, let me say that the original post by @Myrcello is correct. Adding good PvP helps extend the length and value of the game for players by making a new level of mastery required to keep things interesting.

There's just a few things that are missed in the big picture when you focus on that fact.

1) It isn't an infinite amount of growth just by having PvP.

There is a finite amount of skill the PvP brings to the game. So while it raises the ceiling, it's not like the problem of getting past it goes away. Eventually you understand the mechanics and can play them at the peek level the game allows, even with the seemingly random PvP aspect, there is still a meta that is learned, applied, and grows stale. It happens in real world fighting and games, but a current game example would be Hearthstone. Before that new expansion, people were starting to lose interest because it was a known quantity.

2) Adding difficulty doesn't only add it to the end.

When you up the difficulty of the game in this way, it ups it across the board, for new players and old players alike. While it extends the life of the game for people who've reached the limits available by only PvE type play, it also ups the required skill for someone who just entered the game. Good games are easy to learn, and hard to master. This gives more value to the second point, at the same time destroying the first point.

So why does it not show up right away? Because when everyone is starting at zero, we all ramp up equally. Very quickly, however, new players will be permanently behind everyone else unless they put a lot of effort before even playing into figuring out that game's meta. As such, new players go somewhere else, and the game dies from lack of fresh blood, as opposed to retention of old blood.

3) Most people aren't going to even achieve the skill cap of PvE.

Sorry guys. This is the truth. As a dad of two, with a full time + job, my own side projects, and an attempt to occasionally watch Game of Thrones, there will only be so much time for me to get involved. As gaming has skewed towards an average age in the mid 30s, I'm not alone here. I love my hard games as much as anyone, but only occasionally. Occasional game genres do not make good MMO/SMO/what ever acronym they want to go with. To have the people in it, the game has to on some grounds split the difference.

With that in mind, I might max out a character. I might hit the final wall of the game and find it too boring to keep playing. Odds are, I won't really. Not before new content comes out to play with. Which brings us to point 3.

4) Not everyone finds combat the part that's engaging.


I'm more into exploring and lore with a hint of adventure. Combat is a deal breaker for me if it's bad, but it doesn't have to be the main focus of the game. The other stuff is just as, and in some cases, more important. Combat is a means to that end that adds some extra spice to the game. Maxing out combat is less compelling to me than finding a new area to explore, skill to master, or puzzle to solve. In the PvP side of things, this is why player built towns are important. It takes that PvP element the combat crowd likes and gives it to everyone else. Their lore and areas make new things to explore, and figure out, and will often keep changing.

Combat could come or go for these people, and they wouldn't care.

5) More difficulty presumes people can afford it.

This is kind of a rehash of point two, but it's important enough to bring up. Remember when I said "I don't have a lot of time"... I mean that. When you gank me for fun, you're not taking my stuff, or setting me back 1/2 an hour of play time, you can cost me a whole week of progress and ruin the one moment I get to relax. Whether I want to risk that real world time and frustration should be up to me. I might want to go out looking for a fight to blow off steam, or I might need the time to relax, unwind, and just explore something new to occupy my mind. Trying to force the game down one path for everyone only cuts into the audience.

Why do you care if the audience isn't going to PvP? This game is going to try. Some of the quests are going to poke at PvE'rs and get them to stick their neck out and give it a shot. It is only a net gain for you, even if they're not 100% of the time a target.

6) There's a difference between difficult and impossible.

Again, a bit similar to another point (point 2), but for most people on the receiving end of a PK, it's not difficult. It's impossible. The person doing the jumping has selected their area, has their plan, and is tailored for the fight about to go down. The person who is being attacked is most likely not. The person initiating the attack has probably had the luxury of sizing up the fight and deciding if they feel up to it, or if they want to pass. The other person doesn't.

Which means, when you get attacked it's by someone who's already run the numbers and said "I got this." You're likely not going to make it. They might come back with friends, but probably not, and you've probably moved on anyway. To that victim, it wasn't a difficult moment for them, it was an impossible one. And impossible ones aren't fun. They're the opposite of that.

-

The solution:

The solution is exactly what SotA is doing. Optional PvP with match making. For most people with PvP you will probably not see a lot of non-pvp people out there. I will be in my own little corner of it and we simply won't notice each other. You'll be surrounded by other PvP people, and will quickly forget that we're here. I honestly don't know what threads like this are trying to gain in this game.

I know, we all have fond, rose colored memories of UO. We forget the inventory purges to keep lag down, or the time you walked out of a dungeon to see 13 reds pop out of hiding, or the fact that nothing was locked down in houses originally and we could loot like crazy (want that back? I mean I used the bank and made out like CRAZY when someone forgot to lock something), making the tents you could buy worthless. It was, however, a unique point in time. The whole game was an experiment. You couldn't say anything was done wrong, because it was the only way it had been done. Things got better, things got more focused. It changed, and it wasn't my game anymore. That's OK. I, honestly, left when the weapons came in every shade of the rainbow. It was just too much for me.

All the PvPers will be fine once combat is something that is fun to do. You will have your people to kill, and they will be happy for the challenge.

 

Those charts only show one small factor of the equation. Number of potential subscribers would be pretty darn important to know.

What I do find interesting is a thread based on PvP being unknown with people discussing PvP as a control.

 

I just wanted to enter in this conversation to say I felt that the pdf was uninspired, uninteresting, and lacking of any worthwhile content regarding game design. I believe it was intended to appeal to the masses, and not to anyone who has ever designed a video game. Most notably he missed out on several reasons people play other types of games. For example, I hate puzzles/pattern/exploration games. That does not entertain me, yet are the only subjects he tackles. I like strategy and progression. It's why I love classic RPGs such as Final Fantasy (6 is my favorite) and Dragon Quest (4 is my favorite). My next favorite games are RTS's, such as StarCraft. There aren't puzzles in there, the closest thing to a pattern you can find in those games is following a certain build order or attack order. I think the entire pdf misses the mark so badly on overall game design that it is essentially worthless.

 

Until they want for a reason or a motivation. There are the PvPers who just want to PvP, and there are the PvPers who want to have an effect. I could care less about leaderboards and tournaments and just going out to PvP; I want to kill you, loot you, chop your head off, mount it on my doorstep, teabag your bones and eat your human bacon in front of your ghost. And I want you to remember me for it.

That's a similar mindset for a lot of PvPers and PKers who enjoy sandboxes, that feeling of effect. It isn't a matter of memories; people are doing this every day on freeshards and have been for over a decade. I just stopped after 17 years straight. And it isn't just hardcore UO fans going back for nostalgia; I've seen hundreds of new players on freeshards in the last 5 years who wanted to experience what UO was all about "back then" - and they love it. If some of these freeshards had better graphics and a whole new realm to explore, new monsters and so on, but ultimately worked like UO does, it'd be huge.

Granted, some things would need polish, but it'd be big. The downfall is that there are no real consequences for PKers. Too many people measure victim's losses in terms of property; they need to measure it in time. Time is what determines gold, gear, skill gain, etc. Ten grand in game might be pocket change for one person and end-game fortune for another, but it's achievable with time. However, not everyone has the same amount of time to spend, so if you kill someone and they're out of playing for an hour while they res, try to get their stuff back, fail, go back to town, restock, and realize they lost maybe a few hours worth of hard earned gear, then you actually took 4-6 hours from them. For someone who plays 50 hours a week, no biggie; for someone who can squeeze in 3 hours on the weekend, that's where it hurts and costs players.

In-game jail time (allowing for burning of murder counts/redemption, jail breaks, bail/bribes) and even perma-death would curb this. But the punishment would need to fit the crime; something like perma-death wouldn't be something that pops up after killing 5 players. It might be at 500 murder counts or something (which roll off after 40 hours, as an example). This way, murderers can keep murderin' without fearing PD, but if they spend their time farming newbies for nothing, they get nothing in return. Before long they're jailed without the funds to bail out and have to spend their time in prison. Or worse yet, they racked up a few hundred grinding newbies outside of town and some white knight showed up and - boom, character deleted. Restart, buddy.

PKers pride themselves on hard mode but it simply isn't true; it's harder playing defense and the penalties are nearly completely absent. The pros outweight the cons, particularly for veterans and players who know what they're doing. In turn, anti-PKers and victims quickly realize their fight is empty and hollow; they aren't making a difference. Victims would feel a lot better about putting a bounty out on someone if it couldn't be abused and if they knew it would motivate someone to jail or PD that PKer. "Well, he got my pitchfork and leather boots and griefed me and my friends for three days, but I just saw him behind bars in the local jail. His sentence is 272 hours. THAT SUCKS LOL."

It all comes down to risk vs. reward in terms of balancing. For PKing and PvP in games, though, the risk rarely stacks up to the rewards you get from PKing, making it extremely profitable. Having an effect, one way or another, is a huge motivation for players who enjoy sandboxes. Otherwise they'd play on rails in one of the several thousand theme park games out there and never be bored.

 

In a single phrase, everything despicable about people who go any distance to take advantage of mechanics, to impose their ego on others. (And no, not only PVPers, of course, but a certain mindset overwhelmingly found in a specific subset of players, who sleep well at night after patting themselves on the back at another good job of getting rid of other players.)

I hope you agreed beforehand with the subject(s) of your "tests", so you can both help the pre-alpha by extensively documenting the glitch.

But something tells me they were unaware you were testing that exploit on them.

 

It is from Raph Koster.
Regarded as one of the top thinkers in regards to Game Design.


http://www.raphkoster.com/

Lead Designer and Director of Games like Ultima Online or Star Wars Galaxy Online.

It is from his book: a theory of fun.

http://www.theoryoffun.com/

And it is recommended from many game developers and used for educational purposes.

I would not use a pdf as a source if it would not
be from someone i believe knows what he is talking about.

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Gessh from the posts i have read here, only makes me glad I don't PVP in this game..... to each their own, I have nothing against PVP if flagged for it, so as not to force me to PVP if I choose not to.... If this game went open PVP, and did not force me to PVP unless flagged for it, then I have no problem with it, kill each other for all I care, just leave me be.... as far as PK is concerned , if that means a pk'er can freely kill non-pvp'ers, who aren't flagged for it, then I am totally against it.... I will never play a game that allows such a thing,,,, never did, never will, it's not my idea of fun.... Only PVP stlye game play I liked was DAOC's , LOVED it, miss it .... There was a reason there for killing others, best part was taking and holding and defending keeps etc...

But to each their own.. if you like to kill others, then PVP for you when flagged, if you like Pk'ing then pk'ing for you to others flagged for it.... HENCE, us peeps that don't want to, don't have to if not flagged for it... you do your thing we do ours. Win win all around Pk'ers can only kill other pk'ers flagged for PVP.

 

Interesting article...
http://community.crowfall.com/index...alton-are-you-the-one-who-brought-us-trammel/

 

Thx Mata... reading this was wonderful.

I love how Gordon Walton is honest with this sentence:

The real bad though was that the intensity and "realness" of the game for all players was diminished. This was the major unintended consequence.

That "realness" i am still searching in every game till today and never found it ever again.
A lost journey for me in my Gaming World till today!


If i understand it correct, if he had to make the decision again he just would have created PvE Shards leaving the ones that had run alone. So no Trammel / Feluccia Split?

 

Im just going to read what you say like this:

"Thank you for finding an exploit within the Alpha testing phase that could have potentially upset many people at launch when they are able to play the game"

Your welcome.

 

Sehr gerne Myrcello!

 

I ask you again, in case somehow you lost the question.

Did your test partners KNEW they were helping you testing an exploit?

Yes or no. It's just that easy.

Thank you.

 

I have to disagree with the OP, we can't be needed and referred to as an irrellevant market share all at the same time.

I personally have lost faith that I will ever be able to compete with the sycophants breed in online gaming communities. As an irrellevant market share i really just feel like making a character named Debbie Downer so I can dance 3.