What is the line between PvP and Griefing?

The last few days has seen a lot of camping of the only entrance and resurrection point in Grunvald Shardfall by a couple of guilds. The problem lies in the poor implementation by Portalarium for allowing an area of PvP to take place.
I present a solutions:
1) There should be multiple ressurection points and entrance points to a PvP zone! This will prevent ambushing people as they arrive and then continually res killing them.
2) Create an interior zone within an instance using rivers or creeks to define the PvP battleground. Then use a crossing penalty of time before someone may return to the battleground after leaving it. Somrthng around 2 to 5 minutes so they can reflect upon their cowardice or do more human things like answer a phone call. This would prevent gaming the zone line to a certain degree.

Currently the PvP zone of Grunvald Shardfall feels more like griefing people than PvP. My question to the community is what is the line? How do we create a mutually acceptable compromise where griefing is not the issue at hand? Are the potential solutions offered workable and if not what will work?

 

#shockamazmentdisbelief.

 

For one, you don't make pvp areas where 2 to 99 people can stand around waiting for 1 person to show up and be completely out matched.

PVP stands for Player vs. Player, not PlayerS vs. Player.

I think that's the first start to all this. Solo players are the base. If you can't solo play through a Shardfall, what's the point of it? The only people that will get any fun out of that are going to be a few groups of people that team up at the expense of anyone else that might want to have fun being involved in pvp.

From there you ramp up so that fights are always built on a platform of "fairness".

I'm not saying that all pvp areas should force 1 v 1 battles. I'm saying that if all your pvp zones are only made for very open gang like dominance, then not everyone is going to be able to enjoy that. You have to think about multiple playing styles and then integrate them into the world of pvp accordingly. I'm not going to design this system, I'm just going to state that I think the devs should seek to achieve these goals as a part of "meaningful pvp".

Here's ONE example of something the devs could do: Envy and 1 friend are standing around a shardfall waiting for their next victim. The system recognizes this and creates a quest to fight these two. But the system doesn't broadcast this request, it looks for whoever shows up at a particular NPC and asks the player for help. In return, the NPC says it will give the player a reward. The NPC then explains that it has "friends" and together you should be able to take on Envy and his friend.

So now you show up to the shardfall with 3 NPC's at your back. Game on!

 

I just do not go there, the one time I did I did in single player online haha

 

This is a great post. PVP zones can not just have one entrance. Or we need to come up with some ideas to prevent the zone camping that has been going on. Maybe allow ghosts to move around and resurrect somewhere else? Say two groups zone into grunvald. Make one group appear on one side and the other group the other side? I dont know but yes we should sit down and figure something out for all pvp zones. I like option one of ABJ's post too.

 

Interesting idea to balance it out. What if multiple guilds are camping with a truce so they can slam people on entrance? The nth degree problem would rear its ugly head unfortunately.

Ghost movement and res at point of choice is another good alternative. I just hope we can present some ideas to provoke thoughtful responses to create an world for everyone.

 

So a few things people should remember about a PvP enabled area:

- It isn't an arena, ie its not 1v1 with rules.
- It is consensual, in other words you don't have to go there.
- Expect the unexpected and expect to die.
- If you resurrect in an PvP enabled area, expect to die again. Resurrection in the area is still a choice.
- If you don't like particular playstyles or tactics of others doesn't mean that it is not meaningful......it just means your not enjoying that particular session.

There is no such thing as 'griefing' in a consensual PvP area. If you don't like the play style of certain players then you should avoid them.

 

Well the problem is and ALWAYS will be the people that choose to find a way to "exploit" some method in the game at the expense of others.

If you have ANY honor, ethics, or morals you would NOT sit at the place people enter or res and kill them. There is NO skill in that.

But that is what some player call PvP.

They are the ones who ruin it for anyone else who might want to PvP but would do so with Honor, Ethics, or Values, but wont because of those types of players :-(

Sadly time will be spent to make PvP something people can enjoy, and willing to participate in. The time could be better spent all out effort on completing the general play, and then fix and work PvP as an afterthought :-(

 

A warning from the Oracle as you enter the zone with a 30 second timer. For that 30 seconds you can not engage, or be engaged in PvP. Even give the warning and buff to people flagged PvP who enter the zone. Also, if there isn't a system in place already (since I haven't PvP'd yet) prevent dropping the PvP Flag if your character has participated in combat with another player in the last 5 minutes.

 

It would be nice if the death penalty was removed in PVP zones.

 

I have to agree with envy, that is the way it works. But we all know the outcome of this, and maybe something should be considered. We know that this kind of thing, regardless if its the way the game is intended to work, will turn people away from pvp. There will be less single pvp'rs and more groups possibly. I guess the end result will be something like the outcome that UO is now, and the moongate camping, but without guard zones. You will have a couple hard core pvp'rs there, and no one else lol.

 

I really like the idea of having a river or such to cross to get into the PvP area from the spawn point. That would give you time to assess the situation, set your skills if you're going to fight your way through... or you can always use words or stealth to get past the killers. A bard could threaten to satirize them in song, a mage could cast a mirror image to distract them and blink past, or you could challenge them to a battle of wits. PvP doesn't always have to be combat!

 

What is actually missing are those "virtuous" guilds who make out that they protect players from those "evil" PKs ........... Guess they are letting their players down. *sniggers*

 

How about adding random spawn points? Why not? I am not diminishing anyones pvp.


I am simply avoiding the spawn camp problem.

 

I agree, but we cannot change this. I am going to probably do guild war pvp and role play pvp. I do not want to diminish the hard core factor for the game and do not want to introduce rules and regulations that would stifle the pvp base. The community can police itself and if they want to drive the people away and be alone on the battlefield, then so be it.

 

This is completely true in the current build (R14). But it doesn't have to be true in new builds. We can do better.

 

No we aren't, it is strange that we are hardly ever in there at the same time though heh

 

My opinion on this is that PVP should be open in these areas. When you enter an area such as this, you know you're being put in the line of danger. You do so willingly by continuing on. You can easily bypass this at the moment by going into Single Player Online though I don't believe that will always be the case but for these special hat quests, you can do exactly that. They have stated in the past that no player will be forced to enter these areas but there will be certain quests based around them that you can choose not to do. This was at least the case early on so I'm hoping it still is.

I do not believe we should have game mechanics to help enforce rules in PVP areas that cater to people who don't PVP. Something I would like to see is entering a map based on the direction you came from to get to it. If I come into the map from the north, it should start me on the northern entrance of the map. This will help cut down on spawn camping.

PKing is part of PVP. I believe that putting mechanics in game that help to squelch them into "playing fair" goes against the principles of PVP. If a player chooses to play as a murderer, they should be allowed to play that out in areas that are set for player combat.

Rez killing on the other hand... there is an issue here I think that PKers need to consider with this. Right now they have full and open ability to do whatever they want in PVP areas; that comes with some responsibility. If rez killing becomes a major issue, it could end up that regulations are put into place because of it to help prevent it from happening so PK responsibly. I will say I have yet to find a way to rez outside of an area I'm in so other than logging completely out of the game and coming back in on the overland map, we are pretty much forced to rez in the area we die in.

 

I THINK you can actually exit the scene as a ghost still.

 

You can /zone out as a ghost