Interesting article but it got me mixed a bit, it is as if it started in one direction and on page two was on completely another direction without any clear transition...
I'll have to read it again.
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Ultimately, all I know is that I am not capable of playing an MMORPG that does not feature PvP in some shape or Form which is tied with the Overall seting in some way.
For example, WoW, a PVE Design, I would never been able to play it more than a week if it were not for its PvP servers and the battlegrounds....
I went to the early 40 man raids, once or twice, until I got to finish em once or Twice, but that is it, I had no inclination returning over and over and over and over like many people seemed to be doing. Albeit I understand why they did it, to complete a certain tier of Gear set..even that prospect was not enough for me so I can become a sheep or a rat in a maze trying to get to the cheese.
So, I got my gear through that which gave me Fun...Battlegrounds, and playing in a PvP server it actually made sense to get PvP in priority..since out there in the open..PvP gear is what is going to help you against the enemy. PVE gear under the context of a PvP server is really inconsequential in my view.
Anyways feels like we are diverting from the topic.
I started playing MMORPG's with Ultima Online and PvP was an Equal part of its Experience as PVE, and I can say a tid bit more too, since playing an MMORPG is also about Interacting with other people it is about the Multiplayer Experience of Adveturing and playing with other people not just amongst other people, and it so happens that not all people actually want to befriend you, some want to kill you therefore PvP is more present and relevant to an MMORPG.
As such without PvP an MMORPG is simply incomplete, and its experience handicaped...besides..I could play an RPG game like Diablo or Dragon Age Origins...KOTOR, Oblivion, etc...if I wanted a pure NPC, PvE experience, I do not have to pay a sub to do that, and nor should anyone else with half a brain.
- Duke Suraknar - Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
I'll disagree with one point from the article and agree on another.
Those games are usually train wrecks, because the developers are so passionate and so sure about their vision that they have no perspective whatsoever..... Other games such as Fury and (to a degree that approached self-parody) and Darkfall had similar trajectories - developers affected a boisterous swagger, egged on by manic fans, in postings and interviews which quickly ebbed once the game was released.
I don't play Darkfall now and only played for a month after they first opened up sales.
But I don't think the pvp was ruined by lack of perspective. It simply interacted poorly with certain game design features. Eg. open pvp with full looting is fine, but if gear is hard to acquire it means that new players run around naked for fear of losing all their hard work every time they ganked - and their nudity just means they get ganked more frequently and easily. I believe the devs eventually cottoned onto this and addressed it by making gold easier to acquire. Just a shame it took them so long.
Darkfall's pvp rules also suffered from a stupefying array of exploits. That for me, is what killed my interest. Playing in a brutal free-for-all mmo is one thing. Playing in a brutal mmo where the winner is he who exploits the rules most deftly... no thanks.
Especially in class-based games (note: every single game is class-based, all of them), it is the forum warrior’s job to minimize the power that their class has, complain about the unwarranted power that every other class has, and mobilize the game’s community to address this imbalance NOW NOW NOW NOW. PvP-focused players are insistent on this - if a class is overpowered, everyone uses it, they use it to kill them, this is bad, and it should stop. Now. Or they’ll leave. And take their entire guild... Of thousands.
Listening to this is death. Not recognizing that your users are trying to “play” you is death. This is because - wait for it - players don’t like nerfs.
A good example of this would be the recently released Fallen Earth. Two of its factions took a major nerf, years before the game was released and before they even started Alpha testing.
The two factions in question (Lightbringers and CHOTA) were already the smallest according to interest polls on the FE forums. Both factions specialty was mutations. Originally, mutations were a significant part of the game design and their plans for them were really very interesting. Had they kept to that original vision, I think the mutations element would have attracted a lot of players. But the forum members planning to play other factions (the guns'n'ammo crowd) huffed and puffed and the FE devs "toned mutations down".
This is a game with a complex pvp faction wheel - and two of the factions relatively close to each other on this wheel took a major kick in the nads. Now they're left with a speciality in melee combat and one of them gets better healing. It should be noted that healing is also greatly toned down in FE compared to other mmos and this is a game with a lot of guns, i.e. ranged combat.
I'd say FE is a case where tunnel vision and sticking to the original plan would have been a good thing.
You should link you blog entry about how to make PvP in a game work.
Cant be sooo hard to think these ,lets take wow for example becos pretty much everyone knows something about it.
now theres character classes like priest ,hunter,serialkiller,mage,paladin
skills of the serialkiller,you can kill everybody in the game,no matter what ,you dont need any reason to do so ,why,well,becose you are serialkiller??woo imagine that!you cant speak ,you cant write to any chat,even serialkillers dont talk with each other,you cant visit any cities,no NPC talks to you etc..
Darkfall example ,you kill people who are not hostile to you,first you will lose your race chat,then global chat ,and after all what you have done you will lose all your chats and ability to use any vendors and you cant speak to NPCs anymore,and theres no way to come back,only way is reroll,or something like that.
just something what came into my mind.
Umm...No, lets not punish pvping/pking, or you might end up with Mortal Online.
Shadowbane was a amazing game for what it did good, and that was pvp. The game allowed freedom to really come up with amazing templates and to defeat 1v3+ odds if you knew your game. One player could make a real impact there. I can remember times where I would kill guild master before they could place a bane stone or while they were planting a tree and come out with more enjoyment then any game since or prior.
It was a true griefers wet dream I admit but as I fit that format I enjoyed it. The game's freedom out weighted its flaws.
Darstar Kieffer Gyois
Hing4life
I agree with you.
Now PM me your template for Darstar. :P
That was a UA Bird Scout, right? You and I had a fight that lasted about 20 minutes one night if I'm right about your toon. It was a really nice build.
I hate Shadowbane for the sole reason that it has made me quit MMOs. I can't seem to find another to challenge me the way SB did, in & out of the game with its fast-paced PvP rush, builds, group templates, strategies & backstabbing politics. 2 good things remain; i can say I had the best gaming time of my life & now that it's over i can spend some (my wife's words) quality time with the family.
This is actually the sad truth.
SB was so good and so evil it litterally made me hate every single MMO I've played since.
This column is about games that are PvP from level 1 to the top, and how it is not trivial to implement PvP properly. Yet reading the title I thought it'd be about something else: games with an identity crisis, those who can't figure out whether they are PvP or PvE?
Like Fallen Earth for instance, with PvP constantly getting in the way of PvE, and abilities being nerfed for PvP purpose and affecting PvE where their effect is different. Or something closer to home, Aion for instance, where you quest/grind in PvE 'till level 20, then are subjected to non-consensual PvP since all the zone past 20 are shared between factions. Or that those who only care about the PvP aspect needing to be subjected to weeks or months of PvE before they can play the way they like. Don't these things break a game too? I don't know, as far as I'm concerned, the MIXING of PvE and PvP is what can break things (at least for one of the sides among the playerbase), just stick to one one the other.
PvP can easily break a game because the group of people who only care about PvP , and want few, or no restrictions on it is relatively small. It is also hard to please, and tends to chase off other players. Trying to cater to the hardcore PVP crowd exclusively is possible, but it's hard to get the number of subscribers required to keep an MMO profitable. PvP can indirectly break a game for hardcore PvPers by making the game too inhospitable to gain a healthy population.
On the other side of the scale you have the pure PvE players, who never engage in PvP activities, and don't want any PvP imposed on them. This is a fairly large group of people. Big enough, that MMOs without any PvP can be profitable, and introducing any PvP mechanics whatsoever may do more harm than good due to balancing issues.
However, most people are somewhere in between the extremes. People who prefer to PvP most of the time, may want to engage in more relaxing and purely social experiences like dungeon crawling once in a while. Likewise, players who prefer not watching their backs all the time, may want to try out their fancy new weapons and spells against other players after spending months building the perfect character. Of course, the easy answer is that if you want to have a completely different gaming experience, play a different game for a while, but people get attached to their characters, and is it really that hard to have both?
The answer to this is, yes, of course, but I'm surprised more games haven't adopted the tier system of PvP seen in EVE. The concept is simple enough. Have some starting areas with no pvp to help players settle in and learn the game. Then divide the rest of the world into NPC controlled areas and player controlled areas. Let the NPC controlled areas have faction based PvP, and varying degrees of NPC protection, while the player controlled areas have no restrictions on PvP. The size of areas with different rulesets can be adjusted based on how much of the playerbase actually plays in them regularly.
What is important is to make it possible for different kind of players to play the same game on the same server. PvP minded players need the "carebears" to keep subscription numbers up, and as potential victims opponents if they stick around long enough to want to explore the more competitive aspects of the game. A lot of PvE minded players want PvP as something to do once they are confident they are ready for it, but don't want nasty PKs stalking them during "regular gameplay".
Of course, such a game won't cater to the pure PvE players, but the NPC controlled areas wouldn't be any worse than, say, WoW PvP servers. It also won't cater to the pure PvP players, as they'll be upset with having large areas of the game off-limits to their preferred play-style. Still, a tiered system seems the best way, in my opinion, to cater to the huge amount of players who fall in between the extremes. It would have to be balanced around PvP, but that's not a problem in itself as long as it's done from the start and difficulty of PvE encounters are scaled to fit the players rather than the other way around. It would also need incentives to move from safe tiers to riskier ones (safer areas have lower quality resources etc), while still having a game where everything you don't want to do feels optional.
Anyway, I'm done rambling. Introducing more PvP in a PvE focused game is likely to lose you customers, while introducing enough PvE in a PvP focused game to make the game interesting for a wide audience... without losing the hardcore pvp crowd that make up the core playerbase, should be possible using a tiered system. EVE is on the right track, but lacks interesting PvE. The only other games I know of that are trying something similar are Dawntide and Earthrise, but in its current state of beta Dawntide has neither interesting PvP nor PvE gameplay, and noone who can talk about it knows much about how Earthrise is coming along.
Here is the simple fact why PVP is a niche concept of like few thousands nerds.. while most normal ppl try to have FUN in real games.
If there is a Winner in PVP - then there is also a looser. In fact there is a 50/50 margin so ....
Its not fun loosing...and ppl dont pay for it....
Its fun winning and ppl will pay for it... until THEY become the loosers .... And the fact of the matter is that half of the ENTIRE gaming population are loosers when it comes to PVP games. Maybe that is the main reason why games like AOC - WAR - even AION are now loosing 60, 70, 80 ! of their playerbase every month ?...
It is interesting that the author mentioned Trammel at the very end of his article. Trammel is such an interesting point in the history of pvp that I think a lot of people truly missed its significance in the direction of MMORPGs.
I was a counselor in Ultima Online during the time, and I was one of the major posters on the official Ultima Online boards back then, so I was actively engaged in the conversations that were going back and forth in the arguments about pvp back then. I was playing a unique character in the game, a grandmaster shepherd named little sarbonn who was constantly walking around the most dangerous places, constantly getting killed by pkers as part of the "adventures" he used to experience.
When Trammel came in the headlights of EA/Origin back then, we had just gone through a Christmas holiday season that had practically changed the very nature of the game. The game went from an adventure where there were pkers and very dangerous spots to what had to be a cesspool of activity of new players who joined the game and created a new "griefer" dynamic in the game unseen before in such numbers. It wasn't just pkers that were out of hand, but thieves and scammers were pretty much going nuts in the game at this time. You couldn't walk through a normal part of the game without being accosted by a steady stream of suicidal thieves that had absolutely nothing to lose by stealing anything you might be silly enough to be carrying around with you at the time. At the same time, there were griefer/pkers who were then infiltrating player communities to find out where people were going to be hanging out and then launching armies of pkers on people who were getting together for a fun day in the game. If you ventured to walk outside the safety of the front gates, expect to be assaulted, murdered and pretty much have your fun ruined for you unless you were one of the unique people who played actually looking for that sort of thing (those types of players weren't going to be introducing themselves into the game for at least another year, about the time that Trammel came on line, coincidentally).
Anyway, when Trammel was announed, a lot of people had been on the boards talking about quitting. And people did. Everquest was the new kid on the block, and the reality that you could leave and go somewhere that might be a lot more fun without the hassle seemed somewhat attractive. The fact that it was first person was attracting people as well.
But when Trammel came online, it was a realization that this was how the devs were going to respond to harassment in the game. In the past, it used to be a player community that responded in force, but those players were giving up and leaving the game for other avenues because it no longer seemed worth trying to save anymore. In the past, I remember groups of fighters getting together to go after a pk army, and we had some major battles. Now, people pretty much said you were on your own. So people started leaving.
When Trammel launched, it attracted a few of the people who though it might be fun to stick around and see the world in a totally different light (with no pk or thief danger) and then slowly, people started to realize how easy the world really was to exist in when there was no player danger. So people started to slowly leave the game. The allure of hidden areas was gone because no one could keep you away from them now. All you had to worry about now was the AI, and it was usually easy to get around. There were no more people hidden in dungeons waiting to strike. Sadly enough, taking away the danger also took away the player base.
Sure, they could go to the evil lands (Felucca) but why go there when you didn't have to? And that was the rub. No one was going to risk life and limb when they didn't have to. And there was nothing interesting enough in the game where there was safety. People started to realize that there really wasn't anything else going on in the game other than the sandbox that we were filling in beforehand. There were no quests. It was a pretty empty existence. So people left.
That is how Trammel killed the game.
Unfortunately, pvp has never really been the same since. Part of what made pvp so unique in UO was that it was open and could happen at any time. There's a little bit of that in WoW if you play on a pvp server, but it's just not the same. Many people play on safe servers, so the pvp is by choice, and it keeps the game somewhat carebearified, for lack of better terms.
I don't think we're ever really going to have great pvp in games again because no game has made it seem worth it so far. DAOC was a great game for its time, and I loved the crap out of that game. But it didn't mean anything. You didn't win anything other than bragging rights. They tried to update that with Warhammer, but it still didn't mean anything, and it was so obvious how much of a lack there was in pve content that the pvp content made it hard to play through the rest of the game. Aion has showed that the allure of such a game just isn't there yet.
Sarbon, no offense but how did that kill the game as opposed to save it? You mentioned that people seriously were considering leaving to EQ en masse, couldn't play the game due to griefing players, seemed to have gotten fatigued from trying to constantly mount defenses against those griefing players in game. You say that it was "great" pvp on the one hand, yet describe something which would have been impossible to do anything but react to PvP. It's this contradiction which makes little sense, not just in UO but in all PvP games.
I started playing EVE, and it's very obvious that despite the hardcore PvP rep, PvP is little more impactful to players than a game like WoW. One time in a chat channel some regulars and I went out once to try pirating in lowsec, and it took about an hour going through tens of systems just to find some action. Just about every form of PvP in EVE is opt in, by choosing to travel to specific regions, or signing up for militia. EVE would simply not survive without its own trammel in empire space, because it's very easy for experienced players to kill newbies in seconds, over and over again.
I think you are letting nostalgia affect your judgement. No trammel and UO would have been a footnote in history.
It is interesting that the author mentioned Trammel at the very end of his article. Trammel is such an interesting point in the history of pvp that I think a lot of people truly missed its significance in the direction of MMORPGs. I was a counselor in Ultima Online during the time, and I was one of the major posters on the official Ultima Online boards back then, so I was actively engaged in the conversations that were going back and forth in the arguments about pvp back then. I was playing a unique character in the game, a grandmaster shepherd named little sarbonn who was constantly walking around the most dangerous places, constantly getting killed by pkers as part of the "adventures" he used to experience. When Trammel came in the headlights of EA/Origin back then, we had just gone through a Christmas holiday season that had practically changed the very nature of the game. The game went from an adventure where there were pkers and very dangerous spots to what had to be a cesspool of activity of new players who joined the game and created a new "griefer" dynamic in the game unseen before in such numbers. It wasn't just pkers that were out of hand, but thieves and scammers were pretty much going nuts in the game at this time. You couldn't walk through a normal part of the game without being accosted by a steady stream of suicidal thieves that had absolutely nothing to lose by stealing anything you might be silly enough to be carrying around with you at the time. At the same time, there were griefer/pkers who were then infiltrating player communities to find out where people were going to be hanging out and then launching armies of pkers on people who were getting together for a fun day in the game. If you ventured to walk outside the safety of the front gates, expect to be assaulted, murdered and pretty much have your fun ruined for you unless you were one of the unique people who played actually looking for that sort of thing (those types of players weren't going to be introducing themselves into the game for at least another year, about the time that Trammel came on line, coincidentally). Anyway, when Trammel was announed, a lot of people had been on the boards talking about quitting. And people did. Everquest was the new kid on the block, and the reality that you could leave and go somewhere that might be a lot more fun without the hassle seemed somewhat attractive. The fact that it was first person was attracting people as well. But when Trammel came online, it was a realization that this was how the devs were going to respond to harassment in the game. In the past, it used to be a player community that responded in force, but those players were giving up and leaving the game for other avenues because it no longer seemed worth trying to save anymore. In the past, I remember groups of fighters getting together to go after a pk army, and we had some major battles. Now, people pretty much said you were on your own. So people started leaving. When Trammel launched, it attracted a few of the people who though it might be fun to stick around and see the world in a totally different light (with no pk or thief danger) and then slowly, people started to realize how easy the world really was to exist in when there was no player danger. So people started to slowly leave the game. The allure of hidden areas was gone because no one could keep you away from them now. All you had to worry about now was the AI, and it was usually easy to get around. There were no more people hidden in dungeons waiting to strike. Sadly enough, taking away the danger also took away the player base. Sure, they could go to the evil lands (Felucca) but why go there when you didn't have to? And that was the rub. No one was going to risk life and limb when they didn't have to. And there was nothing interesting enough in the game where there was safety. People started to realize that there really wasn't anything else going on in the game other than the sandbox that we were filling in beforehand. There were no quests. It was a pretty empty existence. So people left. That is how Trammel killed the game. Unfortunately, pvp has never really been the same since. Part of what made pvp so unique in UO was that it was open and could happen at any time. There's a little bit of that in WoW if you play on a pvp server, but it's just not the same. Many people play on safe servers, so the pvp is by choice, and it keeps the game somewhat carebearified, for lack of better terms. I don't think we're ever really going to have great pvp in games again because no game has made it seem worth it so far. DAOC was a great game for its time, and I loved the crap out of that game. But it didn't mean anything. You didn't win anything other than bragging rights. They tried to update that with Warhammer, but it still didn't mean anything, and it was so obvious how much of a lack there was in pve content that the pvp content made it hard to play through the rest of the game. Aion has showed that the allure of such a game just isn't there yet. Anyway, just some thoughts.
I liked your Post, you made some nice points and my feeling is the same as yours.
I never PKed anyone in UO, but I did PvP lots, actually my style is RP-PvP, allong with my Guild, we created a Vibrant Community in Serpent's Hold (Atlantic Shard), upkeeping many alliances and friendships with many other guilds and their people. And fighting in at least 3 major wars vs PK's, during the five years we played, that is to say, we did PvP quite frequently as well with other Guilds as part of the Role Playing community too, with player made Plot Lines and Adventures, this was the passionate Dynamic of UO.
The beauty of UO was exactly what you did, playing as a Shepherd, a blacksmith, a tailor, a merchant, and only that was possible in UO, not everyone had to be a Fighter not everyone had to be a non fighter, and all together formed a community which was a mirror of what would actually happen in RL.
You actually lived the Life of your character as you saw fit, and that life was varied could evolve and change allong the way depending on what new avenues the player wished to explore...but the tools to do so were there too in a mechanic way.
PK's were 10-15% of the population, another good thing UO had was of course its players, when you went out in the wilderness you would not always be attacked, actually 7 out of 10 people you met would be friendly in various degrees, players had values and used their judgment, today players use no judgment at all...
When Trammel came it simply changed the dynamics of it all, the UO lost its adventure became more of a Sims Online type of game rather, the alliances were all of the sudden not relevant or needed...Trammel was a Utopia in comparison, and the Utopian way of life did not last for long people became bored and left to discover new horizons in other MMORPG's.
In the Atlantic Shard we were able to minimise the impact by having several community leaders sit down together, and we came up with what we called the Territorial War Project (TWP), and established spheres of influence for every Player village or City, as well as Communities based out of NPC cities, and then played out the Intrigue with Declarations of War and Conquest, Diplomacy and negotiations, this prolonged many people's continued existance in the server and specially in the RP community as well as introduced many new players in to Role Play and this type of Fun.
Yet, even that had it course because in the end, it was just not the same Dynamic, even if a few brilliant and passionate individuals would pull the strings behind the scenes and stimulate or guide a bit events as these unfolded, there was no more the unpredictability that one find is reality and was there before Trammel...and even the organizers in time had their fill as well, and with every new generation replacing the old the quality thinned.
So yes, all in all Trammel hurt the Experience, and killed that game for many. And it is really sad, because UO still till today had the best combination of features and mechanics Lore and Playebase to actually be the most successful Role Play PvP oriented game there ever has been.
A PvP game that stimulated Creative Construction and was not only about Destruction (see Darkfall).
- Duke Suraknar - Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
Sarbon, no offense but how did that kill the game as opposed to save it? You mentioned that people seriously were considering leaving to EQ en masse, couldn't play the game due to griefing players, seemed to have gotten fatigued from trying to constantly mount defenses against those griefing players in game. You say that it was "great" pvp on the one hand, yet describe something which would have been impossible to do anything but react to PvP. It's this contradiction which makes little sense, not just in UO but in all PvP games. I started playing EVE, and it's very obvious that despite the hardcore PvP rep, PvP is little more impactful to players than a game like WoW. One time in a chat channel some regulars and I went out once to try pirating in lowsec, and it took about an hour going through tens of systems just to find some action. Just about every form of PvP in EVE is opt in, by choosing to travel to specific regions, or signing up for militia. EVE would simply not survive without its own trammel in empire space, because it's very easy for experienced players to kill newbies in seconds, over and over again. I think you are letting nostalgia affect your judgement. No trammel and UO would have been a footnote in history.
But UO had it own Empire Space, it was the NPC towns, no one could be attacked in them, except if you were at War with another guild or part of the early Factions (Order vs Chaos). And on top of it, Guild wars were two way confirmations, you could not just declare war to a guild in an instant and gank its crafters in the town, like people do in Darkfall.
Everyone flourished from these towns and moved outwards the same as in EVE everyone flourished first in Empire space and then moved outwards in to 0.0
The only reason why we got trammel was because EA bought Origin and Richard Garriot was no longer part of the scene, most probably someone made a meeting in front of the board of directors with their financial plan of what changes had to be done to UO in order to attract more people to it and make more profit than it was making before...The Virtual World that was UO seased to exist and instead it became a game.
However..this is like trying to turn a society of citizens in to a society of robots, it just does not work specially if people have other choices...Sony repeated the same mistake with NGE.
- Duke Suraknar - Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
First of all, balancing game play for those who like to be antisocial and play alone, and providing a challenging (yet winable / exploitable) end game experience for large groups of highly aggressive raiders.
Secondly, expansions bring about new tiers of gear that if you're not one of the thousands looking for the same set, you won't be able to join en masse the previously discussed end-game content.
Exploits and bots, bored individuals just pick and pick at any constant in the coding to take advantage of.
Cybersex predators, need I discuss more.
And finally, whining. So you didn't get your drop.. So you didn't come out on top of the dps chart.. So you were afk and the group got wiped.. Don't worry in PvE /ignore is the only way to settle these things. Therefore alienating you from the social network you've spent weeks trying to impress with your infinite-stasis of knowledge regarding drops, spawn camping, crafting prowess, and general ability to type LoL whenever a guild leader says something remotely clever.
PvE's been ruining the mmorpg experience by removing player interaction on a meaningful level since it's conception.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
Sarbon, no offense but how did that kill the game as opposed to save it? You mentioned that people seriously were considering leaving to EQ en masse, couldn't play the game due to griefing players, seemed to have gotten fatigued from trying to constantly mount defenses against those griefing players in game. You say that it was "great" pvp on the one hand, yet describe something which would have been impossible to do anything but react to PvP. It's this contradiction which makes little sense, not just in UO but in all PvP games. I started playing EVE, and it's very obvious that despite the hardcore PvP rep, PvP is little more impactful to players than a game like WoW. One time in a chat channel some regulars and I went out once to try pirating in lowsec, and it took about an hour going through tens of systems just to find some action. Just about every form of PvP in EVE is opt in, by choosing to travel to specific regions, or signing up for militia. EVE would simply not survive without its own trammel in empire space, because it's very easy for experienced players to kill newbies in seconds, over and over again. I think you are letting nostalgia affect your judgement. No trammel and UO would have been a footnote in history.
I think you're seeing my post to be a lot more nostalgiac than it was meant to be. I was just reporting an observation as I saw it at the time. My opinion isn't that the decision to bring in Trammel was necessarily a bad one, but it was one that used a broadsword method to remove a tumor. It NEEDED to be done, but it wasn't necessarily the right move that SHOULD have been done. The game was suffering a lot, and it needed something, but no matter how much input was given on the boards, the decision was made by people who didn't really seem to be listening to the players, but were listening to the boardroom execs talking about how they could stave off the incoming competition.
What was lost in Trammel was something the game had developed by Hobbesian purposes. People got together in the past and became parts of communities because it was beneficial to all. When Trammel came along, the need to band together was gone forever. You didn't need those other people, so the idea of community involvement died as well.
I was a counselor on Atlantic at the time. I was a senior member in organizing a lot of events on the shard (in several different guises) but I started to notice how much harder it was to organize anything after Trammel came along. People actually started coming along and disrupting player made quest events because they realized no one could stop them from doing so (the members used to police the events because in the past they could physically remove you from an event by killing you). The game slowly changed, and that's what led to its demise, amongst other things. It was sad to see it go.
But don't think that didn't mean there weren't problems before Trammel. Oh, there were lots of them. And Trammel wasn't like an NGE kind of thing. The devs put it in to help the game, and I believe they had every great intention involved, which is why it was so sad to see the next year of the game after Trammel because it sputtered on and then became something completely different.
Sarbon, no offense but how did that kill the game as opposed to save it? You mentioned that people seriously were considering leaving to EQ en masse, couldn't play the game due to griefing players, seemed to have gotten fatigued from trying to constantly mount defenses against those griefing players in game. You say that it was "great" pvp on the one hand, yet describe something which would have been impossible to do anything but react to PvP. It's this contradiction which makes little sense, not just in UO but in all PvP games. I started playing EVE, and it's very obvious that despite the hardcore PvP rep, PvP is little more impactful to players than a game like WoW. One time in a chat channel some regulars and I went out once to try pirating in lowsec, and it took about an hour going through tens of systems just to find some action. Just about every form of PvP in EVE is opt in, by choosing to travel to specific regions, or signing up for militia. EVE would simply not survive without its own trammel in empire space, because it's very easy for experienced players to kill newbies in seconds, over and over again. I think you are letting nostalgia affect your judgement. No trammel and UO would have been a footnote in history.
But UO had it own Empire Space, it was the NPC towns, no one could be attacked in them, except if you were at War with another guild or part of the early Factions (Order vs Chaos). And on top of it, Guild wars were two way confirmations, you could not just declare war to a guild in an instant and gank its crafters in the town, like people do in Darkfall.
Everyone flourished from these towns and moved outwards the same as in EVE everyone flourished first in Empire space and then moved outwards in to 0.0
The only reason why we got trammel was because EA bought Origin and Richard Garriot was no longer part of the scene, most probably someone made a meeting in front of the board of directors with their financial plan of what changes had to be done to UO in order to attract more people to it and make more profit than it was making before...The Virtual World that was UO seased to exist and instead it became a game.
However..this is like trying to turn a society of citizens in to a society of robots, it just does not work specially if people have other choices...Sony repeated the same mistake with NGE.
Not everyone actually moves to 0.0 though. If anything I would argue that the bulk the activity is still in NPC space with occasional forays to lowsec for most people.
My outsider's guess is that in UO, NPC towns simply weren't enough. Citizens weren't enough to protect their own rights. It's the same in EVE-without concord, most of us miners and mission runners would be unable to protect ourselves against the flood of pirates and pvpers. I understand your point very well, but the question is why then did people feel the need to quit if safe havens existed, and it was possible to minimize griefing or pvp contact in them?
Sarbon, no offense but how did that kill the game as opposed to save it? You mentioned that people seriously were considering leaving to EQ en masse, couldn't play the game due to griefing players, seemed to have gotten fatigued from trying to constantly mount defenses against those griefing players in game. You say that it was "great" pvp on the one hand, yet describe something which would have been impossible to do anything but react to PvP. It's this contradiction which makes little sense, not just in UO but in all PvP games. I started playing EVE, and it's very obvious that despite the hardcore PvP rep, PvP is little more impactful to players than a game like WoW. One time in a chat channel some regulars and I went out once to try pirating in lowsec, and it took about an hour going through tens of systems just to find some action. Just about every form of PvP in EVE is opt in, by choosing to travel to specific regions, or signing up for militia. EVE would simply not survive without its own trammel in empire space, because it's very easy for experienced players to kill newbies in seconds, over and over again. I think you are letting nostalgia affect your judgement. No trammel and UO would have been a footnote in history.
I think you're seeing my post to be a lot more nostalgiac than it was meant to be. I was just reporting an observation as I saw it at the time. My opinion isn't that the decision to bring in Trammel was necessarily a bad one, but it was one that used a broadsword method to remove a tumor. It NEEDED to be done, but it wasn't necessarily the right move that SHOULD have been done. The game was suffering a lot, and it needed something, but no matter how much input was given on the boards, the decision was made by people who didn't really seem to be listening to the players, but were listening to the boardroom execs talking about how they could stave off the incoming competition.
What was lost in Trammel was something the game had developed by Hobbesian purposes. People got together in the past and became parts of communities because it was beneficial to all. When Trammel came along, the need to band together was gone forever. You didn't need those other people, so the idea of community involvement died as well.
I was a counselor on Atlantic at the time. I was a senior member in organizing a lot of events on the shard (in several different guises) but I started to notice how much harder it was to organize anything after Trammel came along. People actually started coming along and disrupting player made quest events because they realized no one could stop them from doing so (the members used to police the events because in the past they could physically remove you from an event by killing you). The game slowly changed, and that's what led to its demise, amongst other things. It was sad to see it go.
But don't think that didn't mean there weren't problems before Trammel. Oh, there were lots of them. And Trammel wasn't like an NGE kind of thing. The devs put it in to help the game, and I believe they had every great intention involved, which is why it was so sad to see the next year of the game after Trammel because it sputtered on and then became something completely different.
I see what you are saying with this, but it sounds like it was a done deal either way.
If EVE forced everyone to mine or do a lot of business outside concord, you would probably see the same thing happen. Miners would have to band together with PvPers just to exist. However the advantage in such is always with the pirates or griefers. The people with something to defend are at a disavantage to the people who do things for the lulz.
Eventually players would get fatigued.
I'd be interested actually to see the proposed player suggestions that would have been preferrable to trammel. I think they might be relevant to Lum's article and might shed some light on it being possible to have unbroken PvP.
I feel that the PvE centered games can't have balanced PvP because of their ineherent need of CLASSES.
Without different classes (with very distinct abilities) it's very hard to produce good quality compelling PvE. The myriad of abilities make it hard to balance class vs class, let alone class combos.
A wise friend once told me: "PvP can't be fair until there's but one class".
As for the freedom to PvP vs "100% safe areas", why the heck do people want to mix these two different player profiles is something I can't quite understand.
In fact even within the PvP crowd there are sub-segments that hate eachother: total loss vs no loss, full loot vs no loot, etc.
We [old school PvPers longing for sandboxes] have to admit that we are indeed a minority in a world full of "casual players" BUT developers should remind themselves that we also have $15/month to spend on a game designed for us.
While we require as many, if not more, game features as a standard PvE centered game, the reduced content requirement (i.e. dungeon design) alone justifies the development - even if you only get 100K subs, that's still 20Mill/year.
Excellent article and spot on - I've always said PVP divides and/or destroys a community, never builds it - introduce it into your game and expect it to either fail miserably or remain a niche for its lifespan. EVE Online may have numbers starting to approach 'interesting' but its taken a LONG time to get them and those numbers would swell 10 fold if it were to introduce a seperate shard for PVE.
DEFINITION OF REALITY: Graphics ok, Sound ok, Gold drops need more work...
It's really very simple. It is "Vision" that creates great PvP. It is compromise that destroys it. UO had awesome PvP and declined with Trammel due to OSI listening to the complaining on the boards. Asherons Call Darktide server owned for PvP. From what I understand, 1 or 2 of the Zek servers also rocked in EQ1. Shadowbane's issues were in code, not in PvP mechanics. I got nothing from the article.
I have to agree, it is when developers cave in to certain whiners and crybabies on their forums that usually leads to great PvP being destroyed. I don't think it's the developers sticking true to their vision that is the problem at all.
Look at Trammel.... and how that basically ruined PvP in UO....
EVE Online may have numbers starting to approach 'interesting' but its taken a LONG time to get them and those numbers would swell 10 fold if it were to introduce a seperate shard for PVE.
Maybe it would get a lot more subscriptions, but that isn't what they are trying to achieve. A PvE only EVE shard would not be EVE Online, it would be a completely different game.
Take Darkfall for example, the population keep growing, and Aventurine has made it clear they will never, ever, ever, ever make a PvE only server, or will never, ever, ever add complete safe zones.
Comments
Interesting article but it got me mixed a bit, it is as if it started in one direction and on page two was on completely another direction without any clear transition...
I'll have to read it again.
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Ultimately, all I know is that I am not capable of playing an MMORPG that does not feature PvP in some shape or Form which is tied with the Overall seting in some way.
For example, WoW, a PVE Design, I would never been able to play it more than a week if it were not for its PvP servers and the battlegrounds....
I went to the early 40 man raids, once or twice, until I got to finish em once or Twice, but that is it, I had no inclination returning over and over and over and over like many people seemed to be doing. Albeit I understand why they did it, to complete a certain tier of Gear set..even that prospect was not enough for me so I can become a sheep or a rat in a maze trying to get to the cheese.
So, I got my gear through that which gave me Fun...Battlegrounds, and playing in a PvP server it actually made sense to get PvP in priority..since out there in the open..PvP gear is what is going to help you against the enemy. PVE gear under the context of a PvP server is really inconsequential in my view.
Anyways feels like we are diverting from the topic.
I started playing MMORPG's with Ultima Online and PvP was an Equal part of its Experience as PVE, and I can say a tid bit more too, since playing an MMORPG is also about Interacting with other people it is about the Multiplayer Experience of Adveturing and playing with other people not just amongst other people, and it so happens that not all people actually want to befriend you, some want to kill you therefore PvP is more present and relevant to an MMORPG.
As such without PvP an MMORPG is simply incomplete, and its experience handicaped...besides..I could play an RPG game like Diablo or Dragon Age Origins...KOTOR, Oblivion, etc...if I wanted a pure NPC, PvE experience, I do not have to pay a sub to do that, and nor should anyone else with half a brain.
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
I'll disagree with one point from the article and agree on another.
Those games are usually train wrecks, because the developers are so passionate and so sure about their vision that they have no perspective whatsoever..... Other games such as Fury and (to a degree that approached self-parody) and Darkfall had similar trajectories - developers affected a boisterous swagger, egged on by manic fans, in postings and interviews which quickly ebbed once the game was released.
I don't play Darkfall now and only played for a month after they first opened up sales.
But I don't think the pvp was ruined by lack of perspective. It simply interacted poorly with certain game design features. Eg. open pvp with full looting is fine, but if gear is hard to acquire it means that new players run around naked for fear of losing all their hard work every time they ganked - and their nudity just means they get ganked more frequently and easily. I believe the devs eventually cottoned onto this and addressed it by making gold easier to acquire. Just a shame it took them so long.
Darkfall's pvp rules also suffered from a stupefying array of exploits. That for me, is what killed my interest. Playing in a brutal free-for-all mmo is one thing. Playing in a brutal mmo where the winner is he who exploits the rules most deftly... no thanks.
Especially in class-based games (note: every single game is class-based, all of them), it is the forum warrior’s job to minimize the power that their class has, complain about the unwarranted power that every other class has, and mobilize the game’s community to address this imbalance NOW NOW NOW NOW. PvP-focused players are insistent on this - if a class is overpowered, everyone uses it, they use it to kill them, this is bad, and it should stop. Now. Or they’ll leave. And take their entire guild... Of thousands.
Listening to this is death. Not recognizing that your users are trying to “play” you is death. This is because - wait for it - players don’t like nerfs.
A good example of this would be the recently released Fallen Earth. Two of its factions took a major nerf, years before the game was released and before they even started Alpha testing.
The two factions in question (Lightbringers and CHOTA) were already the smallest according to interest polls on the FE forums. Both factions specialty was mutations. Originally, mutations were a significant part of the game design and their plans for them were really very interesting. Had they kept to that original vision, I think the mutations element would have attracted a lot of players. But the forum members planning to play other factions (the guns'n'ammo crowd) huffed and puffed and the FE devs "toned mutations down".
This is a game with a complex pvp faction wheel - and two of the factions relatively close to each other on this wheel took a major kick in the nads. Now they're left with a speciality in melee combat and one of them gets better healing. It should be noted that healing is also greatly toned down in FE compared to other mmos and this is a game with a lot of guns, i.e. ranged combat.
I'd say FE is a case where tunnel vision and sticking to the original plan would have been a good thing.
Cant be sooo hard to think these ,lets take wow for example becos pretty much everyone knows something about it.
now theres character classes like priest ,hunter,serialkiller,mage,paladin
skills of the serialkiller,you can kill everybody in the game,no matter what ,you dont need any reason to do so ,why,well,becose you are serialkiller??woo imagine that!you cant speak ,you cant write to any chat,even serialkillers dont talk with each other,you cant visit any cities,no NPC talks to you etc..
Darkfall example ,you kill people who are not hostile to you,first you will lose your race chat,then global chat ,and after all what you have done you will lose all your chats and ability to use any vendors and you cant speak to NPCs anymore,and theres no way to come back,only way is reroll,or something like that.
just something what came into my mind.
Umm...No, lets not punish pvping/pking, or you might end up with Mortal Online.
I agree with you.
Now PM me your template for Darstar. :P
That was a UA Bird Scout, right? You and I had a fight that lasted about 20 minutes one night if I'm right about your toon. It was a really nice build.
This is actually the sad truth.
SB was so good and so evil it litterally made me hate every single MMO I've played since.
"How PvP Can Break Your Game"
This column is about games that are PvP from level 1 to the top, and how it is not trivial to implement PvP properly. Yet reading the title I thought it'd be about something else: games with an identity crisis, those who can't figure out whether they are PvP or PvE?
Like Fallen Earth for instance, with PvP constantly getting in the way of PvE, and abilities being nerfed for PvP purpose and affecting PvE where their effect is different. Or something closer to home, Aion for instance, where you quest/grind in PvE 'till level 20, then are subjected to non-consensual PvP since all the zone past 20 are shared between factions. Or that those who only care about the PvP aspect needing to be subjected to weeks or months of PvE before they can play the way they like. Don't these things break a game too? I don't know, as far as I'm concerned, the MIXING of PvE and PvP is what can break things (at least for one of the sides among the playerbase), just stick to one one the other.
PvP can easily break a game because the group of people who only care about PvP , and want few, or no restrictions on it is relatively small. It is also hard to please, and tends to chase off other players. Trying to cater to the hardcore PVP crowd exclusively is possible, but it's hard to get the number of subscribers required to keep an MMO profitable. PvP can indirectly break a game for hardcore PvPers by making the game too inhospitable to gain a healthy population.
On the other side of the scale you have the pure PvE players, who never engage in PvP activities, and don't want any PvP imposed on them. This is a fairly large group of people. Big enough, that MMOs without any PvP can be profitable, and introducing any PvP mechanics whatsoever may do more harm than good due to balancing issues.
However, most people are somewhere in between the extremes. People who prefer to PvP most of the time, may want to engage in more relaxing and purely social experiences like dungeon crawling once in a while. Likewise, players who prefer not watching their backs all the time, may want to try out their fancy new weapons and spells against other players after spending months building the perfect character. Of course, the easy answer is that if you want to have a completely different gaming experience, play a different game for a while, but people get attached to their characters, and is it really that hard to have both?
The answer to this is, yes, of course, but I'm surprised more games haven't adopted the tier system of PvP seen in EVE. The concept is simple enough. Have some starting areas with no pvp to help players settle in and learn the game. Then divide the rest of the world into NPC controlled areas and player controlled areas. Let the NPC controlled areas have faction based PvP, and varying degrees of NPC protection, while the player controlled areas have no restrictions on PvP. The size of areas with different rulesets can be adjusted based on how much of the playerbase actually plays in them regularly.
What is important is to make it possible for different kind of players to play the same game on the same server. PvP minded players need the "carebears" to keep subscription numbers up, and as potential victims opponents if they stick around long enough to want to explore the more competitive aspects of the game. A lot of PvE minded players want PvP as something to do once they are confident they are ready for it, but don't want nasty PKs stalking them during "regular gameplay".
Of course, such a game won't cater to the pure PvE players, but the NPC controlled areas wouldn't be any worse than, say, WoW PvP servers. It also won't cater to the pure PvP players, as they'll be upset with having large areas of the game off-limits to their preferred play-style. Still, a tiered system seems the best way, in my opinion, to cater to the huge amount of players who fall in between the extremes. It would have to be balanced around PvP, but that's not a problem in itself as long as it's done from the start and difficulty of PvE encounters are scaled to fit the players rather than the other way around. It would also need incentives to move from safe tiers to riskier ones (safer areas have lower quality resources etc), while still having a game where everything you don't want to do feels optional.
Anyway, I'm done rambling.
Introducing more PvP in a PvE focused game is likely to lose you customers, while introducing enough PvE in a PvP focused game to make the game interesting for a wide audience... without losing the hardcore pvp crowd that make up the core playerbase, should be possible using a tiered system. EVE is on the right track, but lacks interesting PvE. The only other games I know of that are trying something similar are Dawntide and Earthrise, but in its current state of beta Dawntide has neither interesting PvP nor PvE gameplay, and noone who can talk about it knows much about how Earthrise is coming along.
Here is the simple fact why PVP is a niche concept of like few thousands nerds.. while most normal ppl try to have FUN in real games.
If there is a Winner in PVP - then there is also a looser. In fact there is a 50/50 margin so ....
Its not fun loosing...and ppl dont pay for it....
Its fun winning and ppl will pay for it... until THEY become the loosers .... And the fact of the matter is that half of the ENTIRE gaming population are loosers when it comes to PVP games. Maybe that is the main reason why games like AOC - WAR - even AION are now loosing 60, 70, 80 ! of their playerbase every month ?...
It is interesting that the author mentioned Trammel at the very end of his article. Trammel is such an interesting point in the history of pvp that I think a lot of people truly missed its significance in the direction of MMORPGs.
I was a counselor in Ultima Online during the time, and I was one of the major posters on the official Ultima Online boards back then, so I was actively engaged in the conversations that were going back and forth in the arguments about pvp back then. I was playing a unique character in the game, a grandmaster shepherd named little sarbonn who was constantly walking around the most dangerous places, constantly getting killed by pkers as part of the "adventures" he used to experience.
When Trammel came in the headlights of EA/Origin back then, we had just gone through a Christmas holiday season that had practically changed the very nature of the game. The game went from an adventure where there were pkers and very dangerous spots to what had to be a cesspool of activity of new players who joined the game and created a new "griefer" dynamic in the game unseen before in such numbers. It wasn't just pkers that were out of hand, but thieves and scammers were pretty much going nuts in the game at this time. You couldn't walk through a normal part of the game without being accosted by a steady stream of suicidal thieves that had absolutely nothing to lose by stealing anything you might be silly enough to be carrying around with you at the time. At the same time, there were griefer/pkers who were then infiltrating player communities to find out where people were going to be hanging out and then launching armies of pkers on people who were getting together for a fun day in the game. If you ventured to walk outside the safety of the front gates, expect to be assaulted, murdered and pretty much have your fun ruined for you unless you were one of the unique people who played actually looking for that sort of thing (those types of players weren't going to be introducing themselves into the game for at least another year, about the time that Trammel came on line, coincidentally).
Anyway, when Trammel was announed, a lot of people had been on the boards talking about quitting. And people did. Everquest was the new kid on the block, and the reality that you could leave and go somewhere that might be a lot more fun without the hassle seemed somewhat attractive. The fact that it was first person was attracting people as well.
But when Trammel came online, it was a realization that this was how the devs were going to respond to harassment in the game. In the past, it used to be a player community that responded in force, but those players were giving up and leaving the game for other avenues because it no longer seemed worth trying to save anymore. In the past, I remember groups of fighters getting together to go after a pk army, and we had some major battles. Now, people pretty much said you were on your own. So people started leaving.
When Trammel launched, it attracted a few of the people who though it might be fun to stick around and see the world in a totally different light (with no pk or thief danger) and then slowly, people started to realize how easy the world really was to exist in when there was no player danger. So people started to slowly leave the game. The allure of hidden areas was gone because no one could keep you away from them now. All you had to worry about now was the AI, and it was usually easy to get around. There were no more people hidden in dungeons waiting to strike. Sadly enough, taking away the danger also took away the player base.
Sure, they could go to the evil lands (Felucca) but why go there when you didn't have to? And that was the rub. No one was going to risk life and limb when they didn't have to. And there was nothing interesting enough in the game where there was safety. People started to realize that there really wasn't anything else going on in the game other than the sandbox that we were filling in beforehand. There were no quests. It was a pretty empty existence. So people left.
That is how Trammel killed the game.
Unfortunately, pvp has never really been the same since. Part of what made pvp so unique in UO was that it was open and could happen at any time. There's a little bit of that in WoW if you play on a pvp server, but it's just not the same. Many people play on safe servers, so the pvp is by choice, and it keeps the game somewhat carebearified, for lack of better terms.
I don't think we're ever really going to have great pvp in games again because no game has made it seem worth it so far. DAOC was a great game for its time, and I loved the crap out of that game. But it didn't mean anything. You didn't win anything other than bragging rights. They tried to update that with Warhammer, but it still didn't mean anything, and it was so obvious how much of a lack there was in pve content that the pvp content made it hard to play through the rest of the game. Aion has showed that the allure of such a game just isn't there yet.
Anyway, just some thoughts.
My blog:
http://www.littlesarbonn.com
Sarbon, no offense but how did that kill the game as opposed to save it? You mentioned that people seriously were considering leaving to EQ en masse, couldn't play the game due to griefing players, seemed to have gotten fatigued from trying to constantly mount defenses against those griefing players in game. You say that it was "great" pvp on the one hand, yet describe something which would have been impossible to do anything but react to PvP. It's this contradiction which makes little sense, not just in UO but in all PvP games.
I started playing EVE, and it's very obvious that despite the hardcore PvP rep, PvP is little more impactful to players than a game like WoW. One time in a chat channel some regulars and I went out once to try pirating in lowsec, and it took about an hour going through tens of systems just to find some action. Just about every form of PvP in EVE is opt in, by choosing to travel to specific regions, or signing up for militia. EVE would simply not survive without its own trammel in empire space, because it's very easy for experienced players to kill newbies in seconds, over and over again.
I think you are letting nostalgia affect your judgement. No trammel and UO would have been a footnote in history.
That's the same comments I have been hearing from devs and players alike for years. Lum, as usual, has a unique perspective on things.
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Awesome!
I liked your Post, you made some nice points and my feeling is the same as yours.
I never PKed anyone in UO, but I did PvP lots, actually my style is RP-PvP, allong with my Guild, we created a Vibrant Community in Serpent's Hold (Atlantic Shard), upkeeping many alliances and friendships with many other guilds and their people. And fighting in at least 3 major wars vs PK's, during the five years we played, that is to say, we did PvP quite frequently as well with other Guilds as part of the Role Playing community too, with player made Plot Lines and Adventures, this was the passionate Dynamic of UO.
The beauty of UO was exactly what you did, playing as a Shepherd, a blacksmith, a tailor, a merchant, and only that was possible in UO, not everyone had to be a Fighter not everyone had to be a non fighter, and all together formed a community which was a mirror of what would actually happen in RL.
You actually lived the Life of your character as you saw fit, and that life was varied could evolve and change allong the way depending on what new avenues the player wished to explore...but the tools to do so were there too in a mechanic way.
PK's were 10-15% of the population, another good thing UO had was of course its players, when you went out in the wilderness you would not always be attacked, actually 7 out of 10 people you met would be friendly in various degrees, players had values and used their judgment, today players use no judgment at all...
When Trammel came it simply changed the dynamics of it all, the UO lost its adventure became more of a Sims Online type of game rather, the alliances were all of the sudden not relevant or needed...Trammel was a Utopia in comparison, and the Utopian way of life did not last for long people became bored and left to discover new horizons in other MMORPG's.
In the Atlantic Shard we were able to minimise the impact by having several community leaders sit down together, and we came up with what we called the Territorial War Project (TWP), and established spheres of influence for every Player village or City, as well as Communities based out of NPC cities, and then played out the Intrigue with Declarations of War and Conquest, Diplomacy and negotiations, this prolonged many people's continued existance in the server and specially in the RP community as well as introduced many new players in to Role Play and this type of Fun.
Yet, even that had it course because in the end, it was just not the same Dynamic, even if a few brilliant and passionate individuals would pull the strings behind the scenes and stimulate or guide a bit events as these unfolded, there was no more the unpredictability that one find is reality and was there before Trammel...and even the organizers in time had their fill as well, and with every new generation replacing the old the quality thinned.
So yes, all in all Trammel hurt the Experience, and killed that game for many. And it is really sad, because UO still till today had the best combination of features and mechanics Lore and Playebase to actually be the most successful Role Play PvP oriented game there ever has been.
A PvP game that stimulated Creative Construction and was not only about Destruction (see Darkfall).
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
But UO had it own Empire Space, it was the NPC towns, no one could be attacked in them, except if you were at War with another guild or part of the early Factions (Order vs Chaos). And on top of it, Guild wars were two way confirmations, you could not just declare war to a guild in an instant and gank its crafters in the town, like people do in Darkfall.
Everyone flourished from these towns and moved outwards the same as in EVE everyone flourished first in Empire space and then moved outwards in to 0.0
The only reason why we got trammel was because EA bought Origin and Richard Garriot was no longer part of the scene, most probably someone made a meeting in front of the board of directors with their financial plan of what changes had to be done to UO in order to attract more people to it and make more profit than it was making before...The Virtual World that was UO seased to exist and instead it became a game.
However..this is like trying to turn a society of citizens in to a society of robots, it just does not work specially if people have other choices...Sony repeated the same mistake with NGE.
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
How PVE can break a game;
First of all, balancing game play for those who like to be antisocial and play alone, and providing a challenging (yet winable / exploitable) end game experience for large groups of highly aggressive raiders.
Secondly, expansions bring about new tiers of gear that if you're not one of the thousands looking for the same set, you won't be able to join en masse the previously discussed end-game content.
Exploits and bots, bored individuals just pick and pick at any constant in the coding to take advantage of.
Cybersex predators, need I discuss more.
And finally, whining. So you didn't get your drop.. So you didn't come out on top of the dps chart.. So you were afk and the group got wiped.. Don't worry in PvE /ignore is the only way to settle these things. Therefore alienating you from the social network you've spent weeks trying to impress with your infinite-stasis of knowledge regarding drops, spawn camping, crafting prowess, and general ability to type LoL whenever a guild leader says something remotely clever.
PvE's been ruining the mmorpg experience by removing player interaction on a meaningful level since it's conception.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
I think you're seeing my post to be a lot more nostalgiac than it was meant to be. I was just reporting an observation as I saw it at the time. My opinion isn't that the decision to bring in Trammel was necessarily a bad one, but it was one that used a broadsword method to remove a tumor. It NEEDED to be done, but it wasn't necessarily the right move that SHOULD have been done. The game was suffering a lot, and it needed something, but no matter how much input was given on the boards, the decision was made by people who didn't really seem to be listening to the players, but were listening to the boardroom execs talking about how they could stave off the incoming competition.
What was lost in Trammel was something the game had developed by Hobbesian purposes. People got together in the past and became parts of communities because it was beneficial to all. When Trammel came along, the need to band together was gone forever. You didn't need those other people, so the idea of community involvement died as well.
I was a counselor on Atlantic at the time. I was a senior member in organizing a lot of events on the shard (in several different guises) but I started to notice how much harder it was to organize anything after Trammel came along. People actually started coming along and disrupting player made quest events because they realized no one could stop them from doing so (the members used to police the events because in the past they could physically remove you from an event by killing you). The game slowly changed, and that's what led to its demise, amongst other things. It was sad to see it go.
But don't think that didn't mean there weren't problems before Trammel. Oh, there were lots of them. And Trammel wasn't like an NGE kind of thing. The devs put it in to help the game, and I believe they had every great intention involved, which is why it was so sad to see the next year of the game after Trammel because it sputtered on and then became something completely different.
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But UO had it own Empire Space, it was the NPC towns, no one could be attacked in them, except if you were at War with another guild or part of the early Factions (Order vs Chaos). And on top of it, Guild wars were two way confirmations, you could not just declare war to a guild in an instant and gank its crafters in the town, like people do in Darkfall.
Everyone flourished from these towns and moved outwards the same as in EVE everyone flourished first in Empire space and then moved outwards in to 0.0
The only reason why we got trammel was because EA bought Origin and Richard Garriot was no longer part of the scene, most probably someone made a meeting in front of the board of directors with their financial plan of what changes had to be done to UO in order to attract more people to it and make more profit than it was making before...The Virtual World that was UO seased to exist and instead it became a game.
However..this is like trying to turn a society of citizens in to a society of robots, it just does not work specially if people have other choices...Sony repeated the same mistake with NGE.
Not everyone actually moves to 0.0 though. If anything I would argue that the bulk the activity is still in NPC space with occasional forays to lowsec for most people.
My outsider's guess is that in UO, NPC towns simply weren't enough. Citizens weren't enough to protect their own rights. It's the same in EVE-without concord, most of us miners and mission runners would be unable to protect ourselves against the flood of pirates and pvpers. I understand your point very well, but the question is why then did people feel the need to quit if safe havens existed, and it was possible to minimize griefing or pvp contact in them?
I think you're seeing my post to be a lot more nostalgiac than it was meant to be. I was just reporting an observation as I saw it at the time. My opinion isn't that the decision to bring in Trammel was necessarily a bad one, but it was one that used a broadsword method to remove a tumor. It NEEDED to be done, but it wasn't necessarily the right move that SHOULD have been done. The game was suffering a lot, and it needed something, but no matter how much input was given on the boards, the decision was made by people who didn't really seem to be listening to the players, but were listening to the boardroom execs talking about how they could stave off the incoming competition.
What was lost in Trammel was something the game had developed by Hobbesian purposes. People got together in the past and became parts of communities because it was beneficial to all. When Trammel came along, the need to band together was gone forever. You didn't need those other people, so the idea of community involvement died as well.
I was a counselor on Atlantic at the time. I was a senior member in organizing a lot of events on the shard (in several different guises) but I started to notice how much harder it was to organize anything after Trammel came along. People actually started coming along and disrupting player made quest events because they realized no one could stop them from doing so (the members used to police the events because in the past they could physically remove you from an event by killing you). The game slowly changed, and that's what led to its demise, amongst other things. It was sad to see it go.
But don't think that didn't mean there weren't problems before Trammel. Oh, there were lots of them. And Trammel wasn't like an NGE kind of thing. The devs put it in to help the game, and I believe they had every great intention involved, which is why it was so sad to see the next year of the game after Trammel because it sputtered on and then became something completely different.
I see what you are saying with this, but it sounds like it was a done deal either way.
If EVE forced everyone to mine or do a lot of business outside concord, you would probably see the same thing happen. Miners would have to band together with PvPers just to exist. However the advantage in such is always with the pirates or griefers. The people with something to defend are at a disavantage to the people who do things for the lulz.
Eventually players would get fatigued.
I'd be interested actually to see the proposed player suggestions that would have been preferrable to trammel. I think they might be relevant to Lum's article and might shed some light on it being possible to have unbroken PvP.
I feel that the PvE centered games can't have balanced PvP because of their ineherent need of CLASSES.
Without different classes (with very distinct abilities) it's very hard to produce good quality compelling PvE. The myriad of abilities make it hard to balance class vs class, let alone class combos.
A wise friend once told me: "PvP can't be fair until there's but one class".
As for the freedom to PvP vs "100% safe areas", why the heck do people want to mix these two different player profiles is something I can't quite understand.
In fact even within the PvP crowd there are sub-segments that hate eachother: total loss vs no loss, full loot vs no loot, etc.
We [old school PvPers longing for sandboxes] have to admit that we are indeed a minority in a world full of "casual players" BUT developers should remind themselves that we also have $15/month to spend on a game designed for us.
While we require as many, if not more, game features as a standard PvE centered game, the reduced content requirement (i.e. dungeon design) alone justifies the development - even if you only get 100K subs, that's still 20Mill/year.
Excellent article and spot on - I've always said PVP divides and/or destroys a community, never builds it - introduce it into your game and expect it to either fail miserably or remain a niche for its lifespan. EVE Online may have numbers starting to approach 'interesting' but its taken a LONG time to get them and those numbers would swell 10 fold if it were to introduce a seperate shard for PVE.
DEFINITION OF REALITY: Graphics ok, Sound ok, Gold drops need more work...
I have to agree, it is when developers cave in to certain whiners and crybabies on their forums that usually leads to great PvP being destroyed. I don't think it's the developers sticking true to their vision that is the problem at all.
Look at Trammel.... and how that basically ruined PvP in UO....
Maybe it would get a lot more subscriptions, but that isn't what they are trying to achieve. A PvE only EVE shard would not be EVE Online, it would be a completely different game.
Take Darkfall for example, the population keep growing, and Aventurine has made it clear they will never, ever, ever, ever make a PvE only server, or will never, ever, ever add complete safe zones.