The PvP Enigma

@Gunga Din:

Actually my idea is about making the rewards depend on the population imbalance in such a way that, if the imbalance is great enough, losing while fighting for the weaker side should be more rewarding than winning while fighting for the stronger side. For balanced fights winning should still be more rewarding than losing.

The idea is that players that are just after the rewards will have an incentive to jump into the smaller side and then fight to win. If there are enough players that are mainly chasing the rewards (as I believe there are) this would allow players that actually have faction pride to not have to change factions in order to have an even fight.

The traditional factional PvP model has rewards that are the same no matter the faction imbalance; in this case the players that are chasing rewards will jump into the already stronger side, making it even stronger and throwing any pretense of balance out of the window. Even when changing factions is restricted this still happen, just more slowly, through players re-rolling or new players intentionally choosing the already stronger faction when starting to play.

 

Well seems like there is a little confusion. Both Chris and LB have made it abundantly clear PVP is a choice. There is no open PVP world, if you choose PVP you will only see PVP enabled people.
Now they did also stress there will be quests and other situations to encourage PVP but if you don't want to get involved in PVP you don't have to and won't miss out on anything.....cept PVP.

 

@Silent Strider - I have to disagree.
In UO many guilds, my guild also, choose to play in the factions that had less numbers cause they wanted more of a challenge. Factions in UO was very balanced.

I dont know how other games sorted this issue but below is a fix for how to solve the problem.

Balancing factionnumbers is very easy for a programmer. Allow certain numbers into faction 1 and when that faction reached that number dont allow any more in. Move on to faction 2 and 3 and 4 and on and on. Then back to faction 1 and repeat. That will give factions balance when it comes to numbers.

 

@Silent Strider

Your balance idea sounds good. Anything that gives less reward for a lesser path of resistance is good. You pick the winning side for an easy battle and get less reward. Sounds good!

I have no problem with games that have easy modes. My problem is with the rewards, if the resources in Trammel would have been cut back 50% and the "NEW" world would have been unique instead of cut and pasted, I think UO could have competed with WoW.

Instead of making Trammel unique and less rewarding, they cut and pasted a risk free replica of the exact same world. Even the players that love Trammel, have to admit it was a lazy, cheap, and stupid idea.

 

@Ara

Your balance suggestion also means that:

- Players lose the choice of which faction they belong to. Not usually a good idea for player retention; would you be willing to play red if you actually wanted to play blue, or vice versa?

- Friends might be forced into different factions.

- It doesn't solve the issue with players in the already losing faction being more prone to leave, leading to imbalance anyway. Look at Aion, which implements something fairly similar to your idea (creating characters in the leading faction is disabled if the imbalance is large enough) and ended with most servers being imbalanced anyway due to players in the losing faction leaving.

An answer to balance that dictates which faction each player belongs to is not optimal. In an ideal system players should go help the faction that needs help the most on their own free will. Which is why, for factional PvP, I defend a system based on incentives, one that uses the player's own greed to send them where they are needed the most.

I do know that there are players that play for the challenge. In WoW I knew players that actually transferred to the smaller faction in servers with a brutal imbalance because they wanted the extra challenge and PvP opportunities. Those players are usually rare, though, and far less numerous than the ones that merely chase after the highest rewards; they alone are just not numerous enough to help balance things out.

@Acrylic 300

Nothing against UO, and this is a bit off-topic, but IMHO UO would never have been able to compete with WoW even if adding Trammel was done in a way that attracted PvE players without driving away hardcore PvP players.

I don't think WoW made existing MMO players into casual, "********", soloers, or whatever label one might use for them; WoW was simply the first big MMO game that catered to players that wanted casual gameplay, that wanted to get to max level without the need to group even once, that liked being able to progress as a crafter without the requirement of social interaction, that didn't want the risk of losing anything on failure - neither gear, nor even crafting materials. In other words, it attracted to the MMO genre a legion of players that would never consider playing the earlier, harsher, MMOs, including UO.

UO would never be able to attract those players, not without completely changing in ways that would have made it a completely different game. The same way realistic (hard) shooters can't attract the Modern Warfare crowd, realistic business simulation games can't attract the Farmville crowd, realistic racing games can't attract the Mario Kart crowd, etc.

BTW, I don't know when it was implemented, but from my research about UO, seems like Felucca has both a 100% bonus on resource collection and is the only source of most Power Scrolls. I don't know if it was already like this when Trammel was added, but the incentives to go to Felucca seem to be in place. Given the 100% bonus for resources, my guess is that as long as staying only in Trammel is feasible, the players that don't already go to Felucca wouldn't go there no matter how large the incentive.

 

@Silent Strider : Yea, sorry misread your post. So basically diminishing returns if you always join the winning side. Might hinder role play if you are just switching sides based on numbers and rewards. Think most would like to join a side based on principle and stick with it. Flip-flopping won't appeal to many.

@Duke Death-Knell : Yes, we know what LB and Chris have said. My post was also meant as a refresher on PvP for people who never experienced it before in this type of setting and support LB and Chris' comments.

 

I think some kind of factions system has to happen. This make PvP bigger than the player, allows movement of the map, eliminates flagging / PK problems, etc.

It is acceptable to me if the factions start out as NPC controlled. I like the idea that these are some day controlled by the players but that can happen in two years or whatever.

Factions should always be a choice. You can choose to join and choose to leave. I'm open to the idea of a player being in many guilds and that some guilds are neutral, but a PvP guild should be associated with a faction. (Perhaps I can join a farmer guild and a poetry reading guild but I can join one and only one PvP guild and if my guild is friendly with xxx faction, then that's how I'm marked.)

Guild / players should be able to switch sides, (and that's critical to game balance) but there needs to be rep / progress associated with the faction so people aren't flipping every week.

The map should be large enough so that every faction is strong somewhere. And that there's always a somewhere that matters due to resources being spread out.

 

@Silent Strider
"I don?t know when it was implemented, but from my research about UO, seems like Felucca has both a 100% bonus on resource collection and is the only source of most Power Scrolls."

If they did give it a 100% bonus it was after the dedicated fan base left. Many years later.

@Silent Strider
"I don?t think WoW made existing MMO players into casual, ?********?, soloers, or whatever label one might use for them; WoW was simply the first big MMO game that catered to players that wanted casual gameplay, that wanted to get to max level without the need to group even once, that liked being able to progress as a crafter without the requirement of social interaction, that didn?t want the risk of losing anything on failure ? neither gear, nor even crafting materials. In other words, it attracted to the MMO genre a legion of players that would never consider playing the earlier, harsher, MMOs, including UO"

UO is the one who created and catered to casual "********", soloers. WoW became more hardcore than UO as sad as that sounds. WoW also capitalized on their earnings by advertising and adding more content.

UO eliminated Its PvP by default. WoW at least had PvP and even if it sucked it was better than no PvP. If WoW would have had a sandbox environment and a looting system, UO would have vanished completely.

When the internet population exploded people chose the game with the best content, graphics, PvP, and PvE. UO could not expect to compete at that point because EA had already screwed its fan base in exchange for a few easily entertained players.

 

@Gunga Din

If the player keeps jumping factions, and this makes it hard to roleplay, it's his own problem; I don't think that RP players that want to keep a consistent character would keep jumping factions (unless roleplaying a chronic turncoat).

Not everyone wants to roleplay anyway, so with a system that gives incentives to help the weaker side, there should still be enough players chasing after rewards to balance things out. In fact, I believe there are more players that chase rewards than players that are faithful to a faction.

If this kind of incentive is implemented and works correctly min-maxers that go chasing the best rewards would be the ones changing factions and balancing the game, earning a bit more rewards for doing so; while the players faithful to a single faction get to keep their choice of faction, with a reasonable factional balance. I believe it's a win-win situation.


@Acrylic 300

Well, WoW went out of it's way to make the game solo and casual friendly:

- From the start, players could get to the max level while playing exclusively solo.

- Travel time was reduced so a player that knew the travel routes could go between any two arbitrary points in the game, without a teleport, in less than half an hour, often less than 10 minutes (far faster than in most other MMOs at the time).

- Travel made the character almost absolutely safe for most of the way (faction boats have guards, flight paths make the character completely immune to attacks while in transit).

- It's impossible to lose non-consumable items; no player looting, no gear degradation (there is durability, but gear can always be fully repaired), failures while crafting don't waste materials, etc.

- The vast majority of content is both solo and casual friendly. A casual and solo player, at launch, had enough content to remain entertained for months, perhaps years, depending on his content consumption speed, before having to even look at group and/or hardcore content.

- The most important content was instanced in dungeons and raids, preventing any PvP interference and eliminating any kind of competition for boss spawns.

- The Auction House, and the mail system with a "cash on delivery" option, allowed players to trade without ever meeting face to face; players could master crafting without ever meeting another player face to face.

- Very light death penalty, amounting to just a corpse run (with the character completely invulnerable during the corpse run) and a slight durability hit for his equipped gear (which costs just a bit of gold to repair).

- The factional PvP meant that the player was completely safe from attacks from half the population of his realm (if the realm is balanced). Plus, PvP was mostly disabled in the first leveling zones (players could never be attacked in the starter zones, even in PvP servers, unless they flagged themselves for PvP first).

- Players could opt, at character creation, to be effectively immune to non-consensual PvP. In fact, I believe Blizzard was surprised by how popular that option became; the PvE servers were an afterthought in the launch marketing, and perhaps even during development, but quickly garnered more players than the PvP servers.

- Death penalties mostly removed in PvP (the corpse run remains, but being killed by players remove the durability hit for the gear).

No other well made MMO back then was like that; no consequences PvP, no competition for group content, little to no penalty for failure anywhere in the game, etc. At the time I was actually looking for a MMO to try, one that meshed well with the fact I wasn't a teenager with a lot of free time on my hands anymore, and WoW was the only one among all the big name MMOs of the time that offered me a casual friendly experience, so I know quite well how WoW was, at the time, unmatched in this.

BTW, at launch WoW only had a reasonable amount of PvP in PvP servers; back then, without battlegrounds or arenas, the only PvP to be had was world PvP, and finding someone flagged for PvP on a PvE server - where most players actually decided to play, to Blizzard's surprise - was very rare.

 

<i>Why does PvP lose its luster in most games? </i>

I think its just been very poorly implemented in most MMORPGs. PvP certainly isn't unpopular outside of MMORPGs, with everything from shooters to sports game all featuring great player vs player modes.

First and foremost, MMORPGs tend to rely almost entirely on vertical progression, where the damage and health numbers just get bigger and bigger. This causes a veteran player to one shot a newbie. Not good for PvP. You don't have a baseball video game where a veteran player gets to use the American League All-Stars against a new player's little league team. That's what alot of the PvP in open world games boils down to.

Then there is the numbers problem in MMORPGs, where a band of 5 players will go around ganking 1-2 other players. Similiar to the above problem where PvP just isn't on a level playing field.

So often the solution is to make pvp "brackets" and arenas that limit the veritical progression difference and equalize the numbers. I think these are good PvP options, but have just simply been done to death. There's a limit to how many times a "King of the Hill" or "Capture the Flag" type mini game can be fun. But I think my major problem with these arena style mini games are that they are often completely disconnected from the actual game itself and often doesn't fit well with the storyline. The results of PvP are a scoreboard, with no lasting impact on the world itself. To go back to a sports game comparison, that would be like each win/loss not impacting your record and playoff chances.

To make good PvP think you need the following:

1. Everyone feels like they can contribute when participating in pvp. No one-shotting noobs allowed.
2. Ensure relatively equal numbers so that each side has a fighting chance (with the mini-sharding tech in this game, this should be easy to accomplish without resorting to 5v5 mini games)
3. Tie the PvP into the game beyond just making up a few paragraphs to explain why faction A and B are fighting over this hill. Make Pvp impact the world to a great degree, where everyone who plays the game has a vested interest over who wins the wars (this is probably the hardest to implement)
4 And lastly, make the barrier to enter PvP low. I've played games where you would need to PvE for a few hours to get enough equipment and spell components just to PvP for 15-20 minutes. Death should have impact, but it shouldn't feel like a grind just to get back to fighting other players again.

 

@marthos : Exactly, I totally agree with your 4 points.

Star Wars The Old Republic tried to achieve this with their Warzones:

- Equal number sides
- Ease of access (Just hit the WZ que button)
- PvEers also participated

But had issues with Gear Gap and some class imbalance. Warzone outcomes had no bearing on the world or story and this is the only real PvP option you had.

So, its possible to use a similar system if its implemented better. I'm not saying this should be the only option to participate in PvP, but one of many.

 

"(Just hit the WZ que button)"

This goes beyond just PvP, but I hope there are almost NO examples of this kind of functionality in the game at all. I hope that all mechanisms to do whatever will be immersive and in context of the game and not a big button that then displays a timer or status bar or whatever.

Sorry for the off topic!

 

Something else to consider...PvP goes beyond just fighting. Crafters are often the biggest PvPers in MMORPGs, by competing with each other on the auction hall for another player's business. Charge too much, and you lose to another player. Charge too little, and you don't earn a profit. If you look at PvP from that unorthodox perspective, you'll see:

1. Very little vertical progression. In a typical class/level game, a newbie crafter can make the same level 5 dagger as a veteran crafter. The difference may be the "chance to critically succeed" on that dagger recipe, or less failures that consume materials. But after a short time all crafters are generally on the same playing field.

2. Numbers don't make a difference. A single crafter can effectively compete against the thousands of other crafters on the server.

3. It fits nicely into the game world. Your crafted gear impacts the success/failure rate of the rest of the community, and crafting is often tied directly into other game systems (kill the epic dragon and crafters can use his scales to make powerful armor). Crafting isn't as glamourous as say destroying a rival guild's headquarters, but crafters do play a very valuable service and advance the game as a whole. And each crafting "win" over your competitors gives you more money, a persistent reward that can be used in the rest of the game to give you an advantage.

4. Low cost to participate. Grab a pick axe, get some ore, make a dagger and you're on your way! Once you sell that dagger, you can easily go out and make another dagger. If you lose that sale to someone else, your dagger is returned to you (minus a fee usually) and available to participate in "battle" again.

 

@Phredicon : I don't want a warzone button either, but I do want PvP to be readily available without searching the lands for hours to find a fight. Just using SWTOR as an example.

 

If it's anything like UO or Wow or warhammer: online on a pvp server you wont have to do much searching to find a fight.. you'll know where those pvp guys are hanging out at, or someone will be yelling for help so you can go find your fight that way.

plus, i believe RG has said he likes the control point pvp stuff... I like vanilla wow's tower control point system, constant fighting whenever you wanted it for a benefit. burning crusade put it on a timer which is okay, but hsould have been in a max level area where the best stuff could be found.. after that the battlezone area 2x a day i didn't like.

and i'm with you, i think Star wars the old republic did a terrible job on world pvp... and pvp in general. (although I only played the first 2 months after launch, maybe the fixed it) It felt like a single player game, with multiplayer interactions being an afterthought.

 

@Sir Mishri : SWTOR PvP did not improve, if anything, its worse now. I just quit the game after the 2.0 update (Bolster issues, bugs and exploits)

The control points or areas you know will have PvP would be ideal of course. As long as there is more than one option, ill be happy. SWTOR was the 5 warzones over and over again.

 

I think someone who just wants to gather and / or craft will have a huge stake and role in PvP.

There should be NPC work orders showing up allowing you to fortify (or weaken) a towns defenses. Armies take a lot of work to build and maintain.

Control of the area where a town is located will completely change the economy. There will be different tax rates. Trade routes will run different ways so the supply of components and demands for your goods will change.

Or they may just not like you in the new town and politely ask you to leave.

 

@marthos

Good pair of posts. A few comments on the first one:

<blockquote>I think its just been very poorly implemented in most MMORPGs. PvP certainly isn?t unpopular outside of MMORPGs, with everything from shooters to sports game all featuring great player vs player modes.</blockquote>

In which case it's interesting to look at what make those PvP games that popular. Most PvP-dedicated games follow your points 1, 2, and 4.

Also, in PvP-only games, PvP is fully consensual. You only log when you want to engage in PvP.

Finally, they typically have little to no PvE elements.

<blockquote>To make good PvP think you need the following:

1. Everyone feels like they can contribute when participating in pvp. No one-shotting noobs allowed.
2. Ensure relatively equal numbers so that each side has a fighting chance (with the mini-sharding tech in this game, this should be easy to accomplish without resorting to 5v5 mini games)
3. Tie the PvP into the game beyond just making up a few paragraphs to explain why faction A and B are fighting over this hill. Make Pvp impact the world to a great degree, where everyone who plays the game has a vested interest over who wins the wars (this is probably the hardest to implement)
4 And lastly, make the barrier to enter PvP low. I?ve played games where you would need to PvE for a few hours to get enough equipment and spell components just to PvP for 15-20 minutes. Death should have impact, but it shouldn?t feel like a grind just to get back to fighting other players again.</blockquote>

1. Completely agree. If the player feels like he can't contribute, the chance of the player giving up on the PvP game and never returning rises drastically.

2. Relatively equal numbers is not really needed; asymmetrical PvP is possible, for example a small group with war engines and a fortified position defending against a more numerous force. But you are spot on in that making sure all sides have a fighting chance is essential.
Also, the only way instancing can really solve this problem is when the game decides which side the player fights for - which is very common on PvP-only games, but not an ideal proposition when immersion and persistence are important. If the game can't shift players around to the factions that need them the most, the problem remains - the game can't conjure out of thin air extra players to help the outclassed side.
IMHO, the best way to provide this in MMOs would be by tweaking the rewards. Make the individual rewards for PvP more based on effort than on results, and on top of that make helping the weaker side more rewarding than helping the already stronger side. In other words, make players that chase rewards actually want to help the weaker side, and make them actually have to fight hard (but not necessarily win) to earn rewards.
In other words, a player actively helping the underdog gets the most rewards, a player actively helping the winning side gets somewhat less, and players not actively helping their side get almost nothing no matter if on the winning or losing sides.

3. The typical way MMOs attempt this is by granting faction-wide benefits for success. The problem is that this typically results in players simply joining the already winning faction for the rewards, making it even stronger, in a cycle that can end up with a clearly overpowered faction and opponents that can't fight back.
My suggestion here would be to have, as far as changes to the world are concerned, cosmetic / prestige rewards only for the winning faction, and actual combat bonuses for the underdog. Make winning desirable for the prestige, but staying at the top harder than actually reaching there in the first place.

4. Completely agree. Getting into PvP should be easy and quick, and getting back into action after a defeat should be quick too.

 

@Silent Strider, "4. ... Getting into PvP should be easy and quick, and getting back into action after a defeat should be quick too."

I disagree with respect to getting back into action being quick and easy, which is one reason for full loot. In Guild Wars 2 WvW, people can be killed and respawn with a little gear damage, and after a short run from a spawn point, they are back at the siege, or whatever fight is going on at the moment.

In UO (Pre Trammel and Siege Perilous), full loot allowed you to render a player combat ineffective, at least until they resupplied. Even so, long fights were common, as people had combat resupply bags stocked in banks and houses. In the case of a guild war that might last weeks, depleting your enemy's supplies was nearly as important as defeating them on the field.

Defeat in PvP should mean more that a quick res. A decisive victory should be possible, otherwise we are back to 'Death, where is thy sting', and PvP merely for the sake of PvP, which I think should be avoided. If you are talking about duels, or arena matches, sure. Combat in the field? No.

 

@Owain : I understand where your coming from, but sometimes i'd rather spend my limited time ... playing. Some delay in getting back into the action is ok, but it has to be reasonable, not to disrupt the flow of my gameplay.