Part of it is that players now days could almost care less about actually getting into the game and having "fun". Instead all 90% of the players these days want to do is get into a new mmo and try and level up and get as uber as gear as possible as fast as possible. It really does seem lame to me that most of our players today are so busy trying to level up as quickly as possible that they forget to slow down and actually try and have "fun". They blow right through quests, skipping over any lore or storyline it might have. They just read the words telling them what they need to do, and sometimes go out blindly in such a rush they really don't even know where or why they are doing what they are doing. I will never really get it myself. How can most players say that "fun" is sitting in a damn field killing the same level wolves all day long, over and over and over mashing the same 3 buttons in sequence and never taking any risk at all? Isn't battling another player who might just do something different then those 10,000 wolves a little more exciting even if you do have a higher risk of dying? Most players these days are just bigtime "pussies" is most of the problem. Stop focusing on leveling as fast as possible and maybe think about slowing down enough to try and have "fun" or taking a risk at some point before you are a big level 60 puss and maybe we'll actually and finally get a mmo game made with some good PvP and risk vs reward associated with it. Freakin' wimps. You really have no idea what you are missing until you have experienced first hand a game like old school Ultima Online. But go on and plod through all your mmos games as fast as you can killing the same mobs over and over mindlessly working your way up to level 70 and only dying 3 times only because the phone rings. Fun times! ...Zzzzzzzzzzz.
- Zaxx
Absolutely total F'ing TRUTH spoken here.
All these WOW players and such give a damn about is leveling up as fast as possible and they don't even care how little fun they actually are having. Then when they get max level they all whine that there isn't enough end-game and its boring. I'm like DUH DOPE, maybe if you would have slowed down just a little and thought about having FUN like you are supposed to, you wouldn't be so disappointed now huh?
I totally agree. Almost ALL mmo players are nothing but total pussies now that care nothing about fun and excitement and care only about leveling up and rushing through the content as fast as possible.
And these pussy gomers are the majority so it seems, so thats what all the big mmos are made for. LAME.
As long as there are people who have an emotional connection to the pixels on the screen there will always be some form of griefing.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
Open PvP mmo's with full player looting is like the US Marines, either you join or you dont join. You wont get candy apple kisses, flower scented bed sheets and a phone call to your mom each day after you join. People who play or want games like WoW, WoWhammer, AoC want the candy apple kisses, flower scented bed sheets and that phone call to mom each day. I think its an insane time that game dev's are wusses that keep pumping out wuss mmo's for wuss people.
Griefers will always exist. No matter the penalties, no matter the system, griefers are here forever. Even if you have a non pvp game that specializes on economy you will have scammers and people using all tricks in the book to pwn you. No matter what measure you use it will not work. You cannot force griefers to stop via game mechanics alone.
- bounty system: If a griefer kills you and you put a bounty on him, what stops him from running to his friend, getting killed by him and splitting the bounty in two ? You basically gave him some extra money after he looted you.
- showing no char info (levels): Will not work, because greifers will most likely be max level anyway and will move around in groups and only attack if they have more numbers.
- security status: Doesn't stop griefers in Eve, so will not work. If a char with low sec status cannot move into town he will simply use an alternate char to buy/sell stuff in town.
- tagging looted items as stolen: Is actually a good idea, but in the longer run most items in the world will get stolen, so auctions for stolen items will be a must. Will not work because of practicality.
- random god powers for noobs: Will be exploited. Imagine 10 level 9 players attacking your higher level char as a group. If you fight back one of them will most likely get god powers and you will lose your stuff.
- huge penalties as in reduced attributes for some time: Might reduce the low level killling a bit but you will soon see groups of low level chars running around and ganging on other solo low level players.
What might work is: Making griefers not attack your toon because you are in some sort of big guild that will avenge you. If you are a member of some huge guild griefers might ignore you because they do not want to be put onto the kill list of said guild. If they do kill you then rest assured that your guild will kill him (and his guild) whenever possible. I admit it hasn't stopped the griefing by far but I do not know what else might work.
I suppose level based MMOs and PvP simply does not work. Even RPG and PvP are questionable. Right now most people play the really bad pseudo PvP of the PvE based games which sucks. Players cannot imagine that pvp is fun when experiencing the bad pvp minigames that currently exist and when "the griefer" is always being hyped everywhere. PvP will only become popular when some companies create well thought out PvP-centric games. Eve is such a game and it is doing fairly well. Unluckily there are hardly any good PvP games on the market so it is hard to prove that they can be successful and thus the devs go for the PvE-game formula with sub par PvP.
--- Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Okay, so maybe you will get killed when you are only level 5 and die a rugged death to that mean and nasty level 12 who then loots your sword of sparkle you just saved up for 4 levels and purchased. So what. You growl and remember his name, storing the revenge you'd love to get on his punk butt somewhere in the back of your mind. And a week or two later, you are decked out with new armor just given to you by a guild mate and vanquished off of the boss mud golem on that mud cave quest. You have just made level 14 and you see that same bad player who killed you when you were 9 levels younger. You see at glance that he is now level 16, but you chase him into the wilderness pretty sure he doesn't notice you. He attacks a level 16 grizzly bear and you know you have your chance! You pull out your new crystal sword of vanquishing and attack him from his back side. You know you must do more damage then the bear to have loot rights to his corpse, and the double damage you gain from the backside approach puts him to his death quickly as he tries desperately to run away! NO PvE mob kill feels better then this kill! You happily loot off of his corpse a magic medallion that will give you +5% experience and some steel boots that you don't need but can pawn at the nearest armor shop for a good sum of fresh gold coinage!
Two problems I see with this sort of thing:
1) In this age of min/max powerleveling there's no guarantee you'll catch up with him
2) There's no guarantee you'll even log in at the same time as him again, let alone bump into him
Here's the problem I see with open pvp. It only works for one playstyle. I don't think there's anything wrong with catering to a niche, but this is smaller than most. The only people who benefit from such a system are the pvp fighters. No pvers, crafters, roleplayers, explorers, or anyone else. If you just want the game to be constant combat like an FPS, that's fine, but generally full mmorpgs need more than that, in terms of both subscriber base and community. These groups rarely have a decent chance to win, because they need to devote a large portion of their time, energy, and template to goals other than pvp. Essentially what you're forcing them to do is play a mini-game they have no interest in and no way to win.
Furthermore, a pk getting killed seems pretty rare, and when it does, it's not a big deal to them. It can be a big setback to the others, if the things that took a long time to earn legitimately and that they need to pursue their goals can be looted. Nothing really stops a griefer from being able to grief for long though. Just about any sort of death penalty would hit other types of players harder than griefers.
One question I keep trying to ask people who advocate open pvp: Would you play a game where any chef you meet could challenge you to a cook off which you couldn't refuse, and when you lose (which you will, since you have no cooking skill) he gets all your weapons, armor, spells, and pvp honor points, and you're prevented from initiating combat until you play the dish-washing mini game for a couple of hours? Let's pretend this all somehow makes sense in the game world, and if cooking and cleaning in a game sound cool to you, replace them with something that doesn't.
This is essentially what open pvp does to crafters and other non-combatants. Forces them to play a game they have no interest in and no way to win, humiliates them for losing something they didn't stand a chance at, punishes them for their playstyle, disrupts them from playing the game they want to play, the one they PAID to play, and rewards the person who does this to you immensely. Who would want to play a game like that?
That said, I do think that open pvp opens up alot of possibilities and is something worth exploring, if it can be implemented in a balanced way. I think in determining consequences to pking, we need to recognize that simple character death doesn't mean the same thing to career pks as it does to others. An "eye for an eye" consequence would have to be something that does the same thing to them as they do to others. Also, if full looting is involved, it should not be economically viable to live that way. I think a jail sentence for captured murderers is a good start. That would be the disruption of their game. Perhaps they would also have to work off their bounty doing something tedious and peaceful for a long period of time. If you think that's too much of a punishment, keep in mind that it's nothing more than what you're letting the pks do to others.
Finally, in my humble opinion, bragging about how brave and tough you are because you play a videogame is just a little pathetic, and I'd highly advise those of you doing this to stop now.
If you're building an mmorpg, or if you'd like to share ideas or talk about this industry, visit Multiplayer Worlds.
Originally posted by Impacatus Here's the problem I see with open pvp. It only works for one playstyle. I don't think there's anything wrong with catering to a niche, but this is smaller than most. The only people who benefit from such a system are the pvp fighters. No pvers, crafters, roleplayers, explorers, or anyone else. If you just want the game to be constant combat like an FPS, that's fine, but generally full mmorpgs need more than that, in terms of both subscriber base and community.
What?!?? The only people who benefit you say are the pvp players and then you say right after that No pvpers benefit... SO WHICH IS IT?
Then your next statement is utterly stupid as well. If you want the game to be constant combat like an FPS?!?? ...Have you even ever played a good PvP mmo like pre-trammel UO or Darktide on Asherons Call or Mordred on DAoC?? Obviously not, or you would know that a PvP mmo server is WAY different from something like Quake 4 or Call of Duty 4 Online. In an mmo, even in a free-for-all PvP world, you can actually escape all the combat by simply staying away from the more popular PvP zones. The worlds are usually HUGE and just take off into the wild and fight PvE mobs and stay away from the most popular town/dungeon/bind stone areas.
I didn't even read your post any further after reading this far and seeing you stray so far what what is actually true. If you are going to try and badmouth PvP in mmos like you know something about it, then I suggest that you actually have some experience with what you are talking about first. ..It's blatantly obvious you don't here.
Read my post a little more carefully please, and learn the difference between pvp and pve. I did not say that no pvpers benefit from open pvp.
I have played open pvp games. And I maintain that in general only pvpers enjoy open pvp. If they're your only target market, then the game would end up like an FPS. Those games you mentioned had features that attracted other playstyles, but open pvp was not one of those features. Sure you'll get the occasional masochist, but they're by far the minority. To people other than pvpers, open, unrestricted, and unbalanced pking hurts their experience, it does not improve it.
If you're building an mmorpg, or if you'd like to share ideas or talk about this industry, visit Multiplayer Worlds.
I understand what you are trying to say. You see open pvp as a means for a small group of players to force something unwanted on a bigger group of players and furthermore even looting their items. Then you say in pvp MMOs only the pvp players win. If you implement open pvp + playerlooting in a traditional PvE-game like WoW then you are correct but you are forgetting one thing:
A good pvp MMO has been designed specifically with pvp in mind. You can create a world where everyone wins although PvP is at its core. Open PvP + looting will hardly work in an RPG-based level-based PVE MMO. Its futile to talk about this combination.
Look at Eve-online for example. You have three different security sectors: No security (0.0 rating) where anyone can shoot anyone without punishment. Then there is low-sec (0.1-0.4) where you get a standing loss for shooting someone and there is high sec (0.5-1.0) where patrol ships attack you on the spot when you attack another player.
In 0.0 and low-sec you have a lot of pvp and the whole conquering of solarsystems going on. In highsec you have all the producers, missionrunners, trading stuff. The pvpers need the stuff from high sec to fuel their wars. The high-sec people need the resources from 0.0 area and the buying power of the PvPers. Both are dependend on each other. I myself had two accounts, one PvPer and one producer. My producer made enough money to pay for both my accounts and for all my item needs with about 30 mins work per day. It shows that a producer can do just that alone and become wealthy. Eve is an example for a game where lots of playstyles work well together although its a hardcore pvp game.
Oh and about the chef thing: If my favourite pvp game allows for chef battles you can be pretty sure that I will either master cooking beforehand or play in a way that a chef will never be able to duel me. I will adapt to the game. After all: A PvPer is as strong as his ability to adapt to the game and being unprepared is your own fault. Do you cry foul when your opponent uses an unknown strategy against you in a chess game? I think not.
Summary: A well designed PVP MMO can support lots of playstyles and be quite balanced. A PVE game on the other hand is not suited for an open PvP system with looting and can never be balanced.
--- Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
PvP debates tend to get very heated. That said, I enjoy a good civil discussion about such. I will simply say this; Wide scale PvP (or arguably any PvP whatsoever) can not be simply "implemented" on a local level. There are wide-spread ramifications for letting players beat the puss out of each other, and these things have to be considered right from the start of the design process. Finally, always remember that participation in MMOs is voluntary. If people are unhappy, they won't stay and fight back, they'll simply leave. For designers who like the idea of PvP-centric gameplay, this can be one of the hardest truths to accept.
I am all about open PvP. Oh how I miss Asheron's Call - Darktide! But what VPellen said is exactly right, for a game to have a PvP system that truely "works", it needs to be thought out as a cornerstone of the game, rather than an after-thought or just another feature.
Asheron's Call was of course the exception to this rule, the whole PvP thing was a complete fluke, but it is still in my opinion, the most skill based PvP combat system around.
@Impacatus I understand what you are trying to say. You see open pvp as a means for a small group of players to force something unwanted on a bigger group of players and furthermore even looting their items. Then you say in pvp MMOs only the pvp players win. If you implement open pvp + playerlooting in a traditional PvE-game like WoW then you are correct but you are forgetting one thing: A good pvp MMO has been designed specifically with pvp in mind. You can create a world where everyone wins although PvP is at its core. Open PvP + looting will hardly work in an RPG-based level-based PVE MMO. Its futile to talk about this combination. First off, thank you for your reasonable and well thought out response. Yes it's true that I was mostly speaking in terms of current mmos, as well as older mmos that experimented with open pvp. Like I said, I'm not against open pvp as a concept, I just think in general there's very little balance to it. Look at Eve-online for example. You have three different security sectors: No security (0.0 rating) where anyone can shoot anyone without punishment. Then there is low-sec (0.1-0.4) where you get a standing loss for shooting someone and there is high sec (0.5-1.0) where patrol ships attack you on the spot when you attack another player. In 0.0 and low-sec you have a lot of pvp and the whole conquering of solarsystems going on. In highsec you have all the producers, missionrunners, trading stuff. The pvpers need the stuff from high sec to fuel their wars. The high-sec people need the resources from 0.0 area and the buying power of the PvPers. Both are dependend on each other. I myself had two accounts, one PvPer and one producer. My producer made enough money to pay for both my accounts and for all my item needs with about 30 mins work per day. It shows that a producer can do just that alone and become wealthy. Eve is an example for a game where lots of playstyles work well together although its a hardcore pvp game. I've never played Eve, but that sounds like a good way to do it. I think the key element is that there is a choice whether to expose yourself to pvp. A player may gain some advantage by entering low-sec, but they can still play the full game without being required to. This is better than Darktide, where there were no safe zones, or UO, where only the cities were safe. This seems like a more reasonable compromise.
Oh and about the chef thing: If my favourite pvp game allows for chef battles you can be pretty sure that I will either master cooking beforehand or play in a way that a chef will never be able to duel me. I will adapt to the game. After all: A PvPer is as strong as his ability to adapt to the game and being unprepared is your own fault. One thing I thought about adding is that leveling up one thing makes you less competitive at the other thing, as is often the case in skill based mmos. Even if the game allows you to have both skills, there's still the fact that you'll be prepared to fight, not to cook. Besides, not everyone is hardcore enough that maxxing out all necessary skills before actually playing is seen as a solution. If nothing else this requires all players to approach the game with a pvp mindset. Do you cry foul when your opponent uses an unknown strategy against you in a chess game? I think not. Not the same situation. That just means he's better at the game than me, and I can live with that. If someone beats me at a pvp match I didn't agree to because he's combat specced and I'm crafting specced, that means that we're playing two different games, and the devs have decided that his game is more important than mine.
Summary: A well designed PVP MMO can support lots of playstyles and be quite balanced. A PVE game on the other hand is not suited for an open PvP system with looting and can never be balanced.
If you're building an mmorpg, or if you'd like to share ideas or talk about this industry, visit Multiplayer Worlds.
Comments
All these WOW players and such give a damn about is leveling up as fast as possible and they don't even care how little fun they actually are having. Then when they get max level they all whine that there isn't enough end-game and its boring. I'm like DUH DOPE, maybe if you would have slowed down just a little and thought about having FUN like you are supposed to, you wouldn't be so disappointed now huh?
I totally agree. Almost ALL mmo players are nothing but total pussies now that care nothing about fun and excitement and care only about leveling up and rushing through the content as fast as possible.
And these pussy gomers are the majority so it seems, so thats what all the big mmos are made for. LAME.
As long as there are people who have an emotional connection to the pixels on the screen there will always be some form of griefing.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
Open PvP mmo's with full player looting is like the US Marines, either you join or you dont join. You wont get candy apple kisses, flower scented bed sheets and a phone call to your mom each day after you join. People who play or want games like WoW, WoWhammer, AoC want the candy apple kisses, flower scented bed sheets and that phone call to mom each day. I think its an insane time that game dev's are wusses that keep pumping out wuss mmo's for wuss people.
Griefers will always exist. No matter the penalties, no matter the system, griefers are here forever. Even if you have a non pvp game that specializes on economy you will have scammers and people using all tricks in the book to pwn you. No matter what measure you use it will not work. You cannot force griefers to stop via game mechanics alone.
- bounty system: If a griefer kills you and you put a bounty on him, what stops him from running to his friend, getting killed by him and splitting the bounty in two ? You basically gave him some extra money after he looted you.
- showing no char info (levels): Will not work, because greifers will most likely be max level anyway and will move around in groups and only attack if they have more numbers.
- security status: Doesn't stop griefers in Eve, so will not work. If a char with low sec status cannot move into town he will simply use an alternate char to buy/sell stuff in town.
- tagging looted items as stolen: Is actually a good idea, but in the longer run most items in the world will get stolen, so auctions for stolen items will be a must. Will not work because of practicality.
- random god powers for noobs: Will be exploited. Imagine 10 level 9 players attacking your higher level char as a group. If you fight back one of them will most likely get god powers and you will lose your stuff.
- huge penalties as in reduced attributes for some time: Might reduce the low level killling a bit but you will soon see groups of low level chars running around and ganging on other solo low level players.
What might work is: Making griefers not attack your toon because you are in some sort of big guild that will avenge you. If you are a member of some huge guild griefers might ignore you because they do not want to be put onto the kill list of said guild. If they do kill you then rest assured that your guild will kill him (and his guild) whenever possible. I admit it hasn't stopped the griefing by far but I do not know what else might work.
I suppose level based MMOs and PvP simply does not work. Even RPG and PvP are questionable. Right now most people play the really bad pseudo PvP of the PvE based games which sucks. Players cannot imagine that pvp is fun when experiencing the bad pvp minigames that currently exist and when "the griefer" is always being hyped everywhere. PvP will only become popular when some companies create well thought out PvP-centric games. Eve is such a game and it is doing fairly well. Unluckily there are hardly any good PvP games on the market so it is hard to prove that they can be successful and thus the devs go for the PvE-game formula with sub par PvP.
---
Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Two problems I see with this sort of thing:
1) In this age of min/max powerleveling there's no guarantee you'll catch up with him
2) There's no guarantee you'll even log in at the same time as him again, let alone bump into him
Here's the problem I see with open pvp. It only works for one playstyle. I don't think there's anything wrong with catering to a niche, but this is smaller than most. The only people who benefit from such a system are the pvp fighters. No pvers, crafters, roleplayers, explorers, or anyone else. If you just want the game to be constant combat like an FPS, that's fine, but generally full mmorpgs need more than that, in terms of both subscriber base and community. These groups rarely have a decent chance to win, because they need to devote a large portion of their time, energy, and template to goals other than pvp. Essentially what you're forcing them to do is play a mini-game they have no interest in and no way to win.
Furthermore, a pk getting killed seems pretty rare, and when it does, it's not a big deal to them. It can be a big setback to the others, if the things that took a long time to earn legitimately and that they need to pursue their goals can be looted. Nothing really stops a griefer from being able to grief for long though. Just about any sort of death penalty would hit other types of players harder than griefers.
One question I keep trying to ask people who advocate open pvp: Would you play a game where any chef you meet could challenge you to a cook off which you couldn't refuse, and when you lose (which you will, since you have no cooking skill) he gets all your weapons, armor, spells, and pvp honor points, and you're prevented from initiating combat until you play the dish-washing mini game for a couple of hours? Let's pretend this all somehow makes sense in the game world, and if cooking and cleaning in a game sound cool to you, replace them with something that doesn't.
This is essentially what open pvp does to crafters and other non-combatants. Forces them to play a game they have no interest in and no way to win, humiliates them for losing something they didn't stand a chance at, punishes them for their playstyle, disrupts them from playing the game they want to play, the one they PAID to play, and rewards the person who does this to you immensely. Who would want to play a game like that?
That said, I do think that open pvp opens up alot of possibilities and is something worth exploring, if it can be implemented in a balanced way. I think in determining consequences to pking, we need to recognize that simple character death doesn't mean the same thing to career pks as it does to others. An "eye for an eye" consequence would have to be something that does the same thing to them as they do to others. Also, if full looting is involved, it should not be economically viable to live that way. I think a jail sentence for captured murderers is a good start. That would be the disruption of their game. Perhaps they would also have to work off their bounty doing something tedious and peaceful for a long period of time. If you think that's too much of a punishment, keep in mind that it's nothing more than what you're letting the pks do to others.
Finally, in my humble opinion, bragging about how brave and tough you are because you play a videogame is just a little pathetic, and I'd highly advise those of you doing this to stop now.
If you're building an mmorpg, or if you'd like to share ideas or talk about this industry, visit Multiplayer Worlds.
What?!?? The only people who benefit you say are the pvp players and then you say right after that No pvpers benefit... SO WHICH IS IT?
Then your next statement is utterly stupid as well. If you want the game to be constant combat like an FPS?!?? ...Have you even ever played a good PvP mmo like pre-trammel UO or Darktide on Asherons Call or Mordred on DAoC?? Obviously not, or you would know that a PvP mmo server is WAY different from something like Quake 4 or Call of Duty 4 Online. In an mmo, even in a free-for-all PvP world, you can actually escape all the combat by simply staying away from the more popular PvP zones. The worlds are usually HUGE and just take off into the wild and fight PvE mobs and stay away from the most popular town/dungeon/bind stone areas.
I didn't even read your post any further after reading this far and seeing you stray so far what what is actually true. If you are going to try and badmouth PvP in mmos like you know something about it, then I suggest that you actually have some experience with what you are talking about first. ..It's blatantly obvious you don't here.
- Zaxx
Read my post a little more carefully please, and learn the difference between pvp and pve. I did not say that no pvpers benefit from open pvp.
I have played open pvp games. And I maintain that in general only pvpers enjoy open pvp. If they're your only target market, then the game would end up like an FPS. Those games you mentioned had features that attracted other playstyles, but open pvp was not one of those features. Sure you'll get the occasional masochist, but they're by far the minority. To people other than pvpers, open, unrestricted, and unbalanced pking hurts their experience, it does not improve it.
If you're building an mmorpg, or if you'd like to share ideas or talk about this industry, visit Multiplayer Worlds.
@Impacatus
I understand what you are trying to say. You see open pvp as a means for a small group of players to force something unwanted on a bigger group of players and furthermore even looting their items. Then you say in pvp MMOs only the pvp players win. If you implement open pvp + playerlooting in a traditional PvE-game like WoW then you are correct but you are forgetting one thing:
A good pvp MMO has been designed specifically with pvp in mind. You can create a world where everyone wins although PvP is at its core. Open PvP + looting will hardly work in an RPG-based level-based PVE MMO. Its futile to talk about this combination.
Look at Eve-online for example. You have three different security sectors: No security (0.0 rating) where anyone can shoot anyone without punishment. Then there is low-sec (0.1-0.4) where you get a standing loss for shooting someone and there is high sec (0.5-1.0) where patrol ships attack you on the spot when you attack another player.
In 0.0 and low-sec you have a lot of pvp and the whole conquering of solarsystems going on. In highsec you have all the producers, missionrunners, trading stuff. The pvpers need the stuff from high sec to fuel their wars. The high-sec people need the resources from 0.0 area and the buying power of the PvPers. Both are dependend on each other. I myself had two accounts, one PvPer and one producer. My producer made enough money to pay for both my accounts and for all my item needs with about 30 mins work per day. It shows that a producer can do just that alone and become wealthy. Eve is an example for a game where lots of playstyles work well together although its a hardcore pvp game.
Oh and about the chef thing: If my favourite pvp game allows for chef battles you can be pretty sure that I will either master cooking beforehand or play in a way that a chef will never be able to duel me. I will adapt to the game. After all: A PvPer is as strong as his ability to adapt to the game and being unprepared is your own fault. Do you cry foul when your opponent uses an unknown strategy against you in a chess game? I think not.
Summary: A well designed PVP MMO can support lots of playstyles and be quite balanced. A PVE game on the other hand is not suited for an open PvP system with looting and can never be balanced.
---
Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
I am all about open PvP. Oh how I miss Asheron's Call - Darktide! But what VPellen said is exactly right, for a game to have a PvP system that truely "works", it needs to be thought out as a cornerstone of the game, rather than an after-thought or just another feature.
Asheron's Call was of course the exception to this rule, the whole PvP thing was a complete fluke, but it is still in my opinion, the most skill based PvP combat system around.
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
If you're building an mmorpg, or if you'd like to share ideas or talk about this industry, visit Multiplayer Worlds.