If a ffapvp game can give players options in a way that doesn't make players feel forced it can survive.
Eve does this because players can play with the amount of risk they're comfortable with.
Games like Darkfall and Mortal Online fail at this because the pvp mechanics feel forced on the player.
I've recently beta tested perpetuum Online and its following a similar model like Eve.
Half of the game is safish while the other half is FFApvp. this gives players the option to choose.
A game about to head to OB is also like this (earthrise).
This is the way to do ffapvp, if you want a successful game.
Before anyone says these games aren't ffa pvp if they have safe areas, your wrong. while the risk may be reduced you can be killed in these areas with heavy consequences on the attacker.
If a ffapvp game can give players options in a way that doesn't make players feel forced it can survive.
Eve does this because players can play with the amount of risk they're comfortable with.
Games like Darkfall and Mortal Online fail at this because the pvp mechanics feel forced on the player.
I've recently beta tested perpetuum Online and its following a similar model like Eve.
Half of the game is safish while the other half is FFApvp. this gives players the option to choose.
A game about to head to OB is also like this (earthrise).
This is the way to do ffapvp, if you want a successful game.
Before anyone says these games aren't ffa pvp if they have safe areas, your wrong. while the risk may be reduced you can be killed in these areas with heavy consequences on the attacker.
That's the key factor, to get your game to appeal to a broader audience you have to provide players choice and let them decide how much risk they're willing to take. EVE's system manages this pretty well and the same system would work in another game.
Totally FFA Pvp (especially with full loot) is extremely high risk, and will only appeal if every player in the game can take advantage of it (as in a FPShooter)
Since MMO's are all about character progression, their FFA PVP devolves into the strong victimizing the weak and the victims decide not to participate.
Player controlled justice doesn't work because so far, there's no incentive for players to waste their time trying to impart it. Even if doing so might help increase the game's sub numbers (which should be in their interests) you don't see a lot of DFO clans running around protecting newbie areas because there's no direct reward for it.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The eastern markets are rather different from the western markets... They tolerate levels of ganking and griefing that would force any western game into a narrow niche(if it stayed in business at all). Thats been demonstrated time after time.
Linage2 is an excellent example of just that. Look at Darlfalls retention numbers as another example. The silly slogans so beloved in certain quarters; "Grind harder!" "Grow a pair!" "Gank them before they gank you!" are simply expressions of a NARROW niche in the west. Any company that doesn't understand that is going to have serious problems with retention in the west.
And why is this the case? DotA is just as popular in western countries as it is in Asia, and so too were games like Starcraft and counterstrike. Granted they aren't MMOs, but if there's some commonality in tastes in other genres, I don't see why it would be so different for MMOs. Hell, even WoW is massive in China, so there's clearly a section of the Asian market that likes PVE-based mmos. And then you have Asian imports that come over like Final Fantasy Online, Lineage and Aion that are actually reasonably successful, or at least, they're no less successful than a long list of piss-poor western MMOs that have failed, regardless of genre. The fact is, there have only ever been a handful of successful MMOs, and they all fit into different genres. You have WoW, EQ, UO, EVE, DAOC, LOTRO, AOC and that's probably about it. For my money, half of those are pretty brutal PVP games, and even EQ cracked a million subs with some pretty nasty death penalties, so I don't think it has anything to do with the mechanics in isolation, but more the context of those mechanics within the games themselves.
You see, it's not the player-killing that puts people off PVP games, it's the fact that most of the ones that have been released are buggy pieces of trash. Darkfall doesn't have low subs because people don't want to be ganked; it has low subs because it's a shit game. EVE on the other hand has steadily grown despite having THE most brutal mechanics of any MMO still running. There's potential in EVE to lose years of progress, and yet they have 300k subscribers still playing happily. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if EVE implemented actual joystick flight controls so that players could have dogfights, they'd probably double their userbase overnight.
The other thing I don't get is why you care so much about what other people want to play. People are crying out for a decent PVP game because that is what they want to play. There's a demand there that isn't being met, and you telling everyone that PVP players are a narrow niche that can't be supported by the market won't change things. We are here, and we want a game. Regardless of what you think, your psuedo-economic explanations are nothing more than the smug self-satisfaction of someone who doesn't understand that economics is about filling niches because there is money to be made. The economics of game production right now are what is stopping this from happening, not the lack of a market. Rest assured that as those larger companies move to console, and middleware tools become better and more readily available, Indies will fill that gap. Hell, it's already happening now; there wouldn't be so many failed attempts if there weren't demand for the genre in the first place. Why even risk failure for a market that doesn't exist?
The MMO that PVP that players want is coming. Maybe it's five years off, maybe it's ten years off, but irrespective of how long it takes, gamers in that niche won't settle for a crap game. Maybe it'll be Blizzard's next MMO, or maybe it'll be Inifinity, or even some other dark horse that no one sees coming. Either way, someone will make that game. Economic arguments for why that game isn't here yet that don't take into account the context of the games industry as it stands now are disingenuous at best, and completely fallacious at worst. Who are you to tell us that a market doesn't exist when at least 50% of the posts on this forum are either bitching at the state of the industry, or asking for a decent PVP game?
The eastern markets are rather different from the western markets... They tolerate levels of ganking and griefing that would force any western game into a narrow niche(if it stayed in business at all). Thats been demonstrated time after time.
Linage2 is an excellent example of just that. Look at Darlfalls retention numbers as another example. The silly slogans so beloved in certain quarters; "Grind harder!" "Grow a pair!" "Gank them before they gank you!" are simply expressions of a NARROW niche in the west. Any company that doesn't understand that is going to have serious problems with retention in the west.
And why is this the case? DotA is just as popular in western countries as it is in Asia, and so too were games like Starcraft and counterstrike. Granted they aren't MMOs, but if there's some commonality in tastes in other genres, I don't see why it would be so different for MMOs. Hell, even WoW is massive in China, so there's clearly a section of the Asian market that likes PVE-based mmos. And then you have Asian imports that come over like Final Fantasy Online, Lineage and Aion that are actually reasonably successful, or at least, they're no less successful than a long list of piss-poor western MMOs that have failed, regardless of genre. The fact is, there have only ever been a handful of successful MMOs, and they all fit into different genres. You have WoW, EQ, UO, EVE, DAOC, LOTRO, AOC and that's probably about it. For my money, half of those are pretty brutal PVP games, and even EQ cracked a million subs with some pretty nasty death penalties, so I don't think it has anything to do with the mechanics in isolation, but more the context of those mechanics within the games themselves.
You see, it's not the player-killing that puts people off PVP games, it's the fact that most of the ones that have been released are buggy pieces of trash. Darkfall doesn't have low subs because people don't want to be ganked; it has low subs because it's a shit game. EVE on the other hand has steadily grown despite having THE most brutal mechanics of any MMO still running. There's potential in EVE to lose years of progress, and yet they have 300k subscribers still playing happily. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if EVE implemented actual joystick flight controls so that players could have dogfights, they'd probably double their userbase overnight.
The other thing I don't get is why you care so much about what other people want to play. People are crying out for a decent PVP game because that is what they want to play. There's a demand there that isn't being met, and you telling everyone that PVP players are a narrow niche that can't be supported by the market won't change things. We are here, and we want a game. Regardless of what you think, your psuedo-economic explanations are nothing more than the smug self-satisfaction of someone who doesn't understand that economics is about filling niches because there is money to be made. The economics of game production right now are what is stopping this from happening, not the lack of a market. Rest assured that as those larger companies move to console, and middleware tools become better and more readily available, Indies will fill that gap. Hell, it's already happening now; there wouldn't be so many failed attempts if there weren't demand for the genre in the first place. Why even risk failure for a market that doesn't exist?
The MMO that PVP that players want is coming. Maybe it's five years off, maybe it's ten years off, but irrespective of how long it takes, gamers in that niche won't settle for a crap game. Maybe it'll be Blizzard's next MMO, or maybe it'll be Inifinity, or even some other dark horse that no one sees coming. Either way, someone will make that game. Economic arguments for why that game isn't here yet that don't take into account the context of the games industry as it stands now are disingenuous at best, and completely fallacious at worst. Who are you to tell us that a market doesn't exist when at least 50% of the posts on this forum are either bitching at the state of the industry, or asking for a decent PVP game?
Chuckle... On the subject of economics, I suspect I understand at least as much of real economics(Austrian) as you do. Your attempts at making this personal are noted, but declined. Anyone who has been paying attention over the last decade or so, would notice the obvious trend in the western markets towards theme park PvE games, and away from FFA full loot gankfests.
Any company that wishes to pursue such a niche market is of course more than welcome to do so. That is if they can find investors willing to forego the much larger returns to be had from the larger audience be had outside of that niche.
EVE is an excellent example of a PvP game that has had to modify its rule set to appeal to a wider audience. One need look no further than the evolution of Concord, and the high sec rule set to understand that. Even with CCP's PvP centric focus, they themselves(much to their disgust) have admited that well more than half of their player base stays in high sec and seldom if ever leaves.
Who am I? Me of course. I've never claimed to speak for more than myself. Quite unlike some here. The facts remain the facts, no matter how some might wish other wise. The fact is that gankfest games have limited appeal in the western markets. How limited? That depends on the game dynamics, The closer they are to FFA full loot, the narrower their appeal.
WoW is hardly one of those games, since it has PvE and PvP servers(in all markets). Thus its success can hardly be claimed to demonstrate anything about PvP. In fact, if one looks at the number of PvE realms and PvP realms, and their population, it tracks the western market rather well.
Finally, I really do not care what others wish to play. Thats entirely up to them, and should always be. Finding a game of their prefered type on the other hand depends on other factors. One of which being that since it takes millions and millions of (other peoples) money to create one of these games, the investors are likely to demand that it be pointed at the widest audience possible. Thus it seems to me that your hostility is best directed towards them, rather than at someone who is simply pointing out the reality of the situation.
Just for the record, i was just simply sharing a fleeting thought. I'm not currently playing any MMO, FFA pvp or otherwise. Personally, i quite enjoy the idea of FFA pvp concept in MMOs, but i'm just stating a thought on why we wont be getting very successful ones. Compared to a non FFA pvp concept MMO, how the players enjoy the game will be more directly influenced by players who manage to get to the top and stay there. Ultimately, the issue is, whilst many players may like this concept as well, its the issue of intending to dish out punishment to other players and not going in expecting to be at the bottom of the food chain. Problem is, in reality, there has to be people at the bottom of the food chain for players higher up in the food chain to enjoy themselves, in a FFA pvp concept game and like i was saying in my original post, not many like it there.
You QQ , whine, and complain to an unrealistic degree. Name an mmo with PvP (FFA, 2 faction, multi faction) where you do NOT start at the bottom of the food chain.
What makes a game "successful" to you? Conan is going steady on 4 servers. Success imo and has the best combat mechanics / pvp I have found to date. Make friends, join a guild, generally don't suck horse d!ck and you will be ok.
It has nothing to do with getting to the "top" as there are several tiers of pvp in conan. 10-19 , 20-39, 40-59. Take your time and make some allies and you will get to the "top" with a few pvp levels under your belt. But you will never have fun in any kind of pvp game from the sounds of it.
Every mmo with pvp implimented requires some sort of gearing up, obtaining skills, and things of that nature that will put you at the so called "bottom of the food chain".
Like one of the other dudes said. Take the advice of your sig and move on.
The problem with FFA PvP is that players and developers are under the misguided impression that its more "realistic".
FFA PvP in the real world is relatively rare. Even in a mob environment human tend to form "factions" unconsciously.
One of the only contextes I can think of where people are really doing soemthing FFA like is a bar room brawl.
And in the end most of the world is dominated by non-combatants .
Without perma-death the ability to attack whomever you please loses a lot of meaning. Even with a harsh DP its not really enough. And having FFA pvp with a steep leveling curve makes it even worse.
At the same time FFA PvP is one of the only ways to capture the the down and dirty bits of human nature like betrayal and conquest.
But in the end it has been very stilted in most games. While it is able to capture somethings other cannot it is not really do what you think it is.
In Eve, can you buy insurance, so if you do lose at PvP, everything is replaced?
Insurance covers only the cost of the ship itself(if that these days). Given that a ships mods can cost more than the ship, thats a GOOD reason to be careful. Good rule of thumb, never fly what you can't afford to replace.
In Eve, can you buy insurance, so if you do lose at PvP, everything is replaced?
No.
Some of the cost of the ship is replaced depending on what level of insurance you choose. Never all though. Also you are not compensated for modules/implants, which can be very costly.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
If the game fails then I would assume its because it focused to much on FFA PVP and didn't have enough crafting/social things to do....thats just my opinion though, that if a game has things for every type of player it will do better....for example I really liked player housing in EQ2 and Guild Halls in Guild Wars and I hung out around there and socialized.
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If you were one of 50% of Eves population who never PvP'ed, it would be like 'Farmville in Space'.
.
Oooo, I wonder if that URL is available...
Hardly.
Give it a spin and try your luck. They do have a 14-Day Free Trial, doncha know
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
Chuckle... On the subject of economics, I suspect I understand at least as much of real economics(Austrian) as you do. Your attempts at making this personal are noted, but declined. Anyone who has been paying attention over the last decade or so, would notice the obvious trend in the western markets towards theme park PvE games, and away from FFA full loot gankfests.
Any company that wishes to pursue such a niche market is of course more than welcome to do so. That is if they can find investors willing to forego the much larger returns to be had from the larger audience be had outside of that niche.
EVE is an excellent example of a PvP game that has had to modify its rule set to appeal to a wider audience. One need look no further than the evolution of Concord, and the high sec rule set to understand that. Even with CCP's PvP centric focus, they themselves(much to their disgust) have admited that well more than half of their player base stays in high sec and seldom if ever leaves.
Who am I? Me of course. I've never claimed to speak for more than myself. Quite unlike some here. The facts remain the facts, no matter how some might wish other wise. The fact is that gankfest games have limited appeal in the western markets. How limited? That depends on the game dynamics, The closer they are to FFA full loot, the narrower their appeal.
WoW is hardly one of those games, since it has PvE and PvP servers(in all markets). Thus its success can hardly be claimed to demonstrate anything about PvP. In fact, if one looks at the number of PvE realms and PvP realms, and their population, it tracks the western market rather well.
Finally, I really do not care what others wish to play. Thats entirely up to them, and should always be. Finding a game of their prefered type on the other hand depends on other factors. One of which being that since it takes millions and millions of (other peoples) money to create one of these games, the investors are likely to demand that it be pointed at the widest audience possible. Thus it seems to me that your hostility is best directed towards them, rather than at someone who is simply pointing out the reality of the situation.
You claim to know a thing or two about economics, and yet you completely missed the point of what I said. I didn't mention anything about market trends, or even WoW being a PVP game for that matter (I actually meant the opposite; UO, DAOC and EVE are PVP-centric games, the others I would consider PVE). You made that up to sound like you have a clue, when the analysis you've made is superficial, and lacks any form of reasoning or evidence. Do you have a link for CCPs stats on playerbase demographics, because the latest EVE economic newsletter indicates that the population of high sec space is actually decreasing as more players go into low sec to use wormholes. Not only that, but their demographics only distinguish between null sec and all the other sectors of space. Also, I've never heard of CCP being disgusted over players residing in high sec; I believe their aim is for people to have fun, making such a statement a value judgement on your own behalf. For the record, this isn't personal. I routinely destroy people when they make fallacious arguments, though it's not in my nature to judge them for doing so .
Since you brought up market trends though, let's compare the games industry to another, broadly similar market. You see, market trends just as often reflect the context of production within that market (i.e. insurance costs and overheads) as they do demand. Just because there is a trend in supply, doesn't mean there isn't still demand for a competing product that isn't being produced. Look at the movie industry for a good example. After years of declining profits and blame being hurled at internet piracy, James Cameron comes along and makes the highest grossing film of all time. Why is this relevant? People won't pay for crap, but they will pay for an experience. Games nowadays are crap; at it's inception, WOW was an experience, and people flocked to it in droves. No other game since then has managed to replicate that, and that is why they are all failing. Likewise, for the past ten years, we've been swamped by movie sequel after movie sequel, because production companies didn't want to take the risk on a brand new franchise. It took a screen legend to come along and do something new for the industry to wake up. Games are in the same rut. They're so expensive, and studios are so risk averse, that until a game comes along that taps into that latent demand properly, no one else will take the risk.
I mean, who would have thought the Sims would have been popular before it came out? Or that counterstrike would become the dominant online game of the early 2000s? Or that a warcraft 3 mod would become more popular than the original game ever was? Market trends are a poor indicator of what people want when that product doesn't actually exist yet. You can't say, for instance, that fantasy skillbased FFA PVP games have no market, when there are no bug-free, polished examples in existence (aside from UO, which is still the best implementation after 12 years). It would be even more naive to say this when there is a game that does have FFA PVP that is still growing, and has done so steadily over the last 6 years. This doesn't even take into account the lamentations on online forums such as somethingawful, facepunch, and even this one, begging for a decent skill-based PVP game to come along. You see, the real problem is that PVP is hard to balance; most players don't mind losing when things are balanced, but when things are buggy, laggy, and otherwise look underwhelming, no one wants to bother.
And again, since you missed this last time, the problem isn't the mechanic; it's the mechanic as it is presented within the context of the game. Just because you have a FFA full-loot PVP game, doesn't mean it can't be fun. If items are player crafted, don't bind, and are relatively cheap and plentiful, who gives a shit if you just lost your sword and pants? Go grab another set and get back to doing whatever it is you were doing before you got ganked. Sure, in the context of a WoW-like game, it wouldn't work, but that's not to say that you couldn't do it if you wanted -- only that it takes a developer (and gamer) capable of thinking outside the box. No one wants to lose their raid epics, but the solution to that is simply to remove the concept of raid epics. Once you do that, you replace it with crafted items, and allow those items to be stolen, so that you create a market for people selling those items. The next step is to take out levels entirely, and use a skill system so that healers aren't such a nightmare to balance, and can actually progress their character by healing rather than killing mobs.
Honestly, half the reason we are stuck in a rut right now, is because people think that we have MMOs down to a fine art, and we know what players want. We don't, we only know what some players want. No one could have anticipated that the market for MMOs was even as big as WOW's, so don't sell the rest of us short just because a game for us hasn't come along yet.
In Eve, many people have multiple accounts. Do you need to buy more than one account to stay competitive? Do players with single ships win against multi-boxers?
In Eve, many people have multiple accounts. Do you need to buy more than one account to stay competitive? Do players with single ships win against multi-boxers?
In Eve, many people have multiple accounts. Do you need to buy more than one account to stay competitive? Do players with single ships win against multi-boxers?
Maybe people have more than one account because doing pretty much anything in Eve is so damn boring, you need to keep 3 or 4 toons going just to make it interesting.
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. -Winston Churchill
In Eve, many people have multiple accounts. Do you need to buy more than one account to stay competitive? Do players with single ships win against multi-boxers?
Maybe people have more than one account because doing pretty much anything in Eve is so damn boring, you need to keep 3 or 4 toons going just to make it interesting.
We call it the interactive-screen-saver-game in my gaming organization, made for accountants to waste their breaks on more spreadsheets
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In Eve, many people have multiple accounts. Do you need to buy more than one account to stay competitive? Do players with single ships win against multi-boxers?
Maybe people have more than one account because doing pretty much anything in Eve is so damn boring, you need to keep 3 or 4 toons going just to make it interesting.
No troll!
People have multi accounts because its convenient.
Miner having a hauler alt, Pvper having a scouting alt, mission runner having a salvage/loot alt.
An MMORPG needs a community in order to function properly and you can't build a community with a game that encourages, or at the very least, doesn't punish anti-social behavior.
Any MMORPG that doesn't discourage player killing in some way will utlimately become a spree killing game.
You need a healthy balance of different types of players in order to keep a MMORPG healthy and positive interaction between the different players is essential. At the very least , the experience should be more positive than negative, after all, it's a form of entertainment, and it's very rare to find people that derive pleasure from a overbearingly negative experience.
Creating a completely open FFA PvP game means that you will naturally divide players into 2 camps, the sheep and the wolves, so you need to give the sheep a valid reason to continue playing after the wolves have victimized them - without that, you'll slowly bleed out subs as the wolves invariably render each other into sheep, and then again, and again, until hosting the game is no longer profitable.
A PvP gane that discourages PvP isn't a PvP game at all. It's a a game at war with it's own mechanics. The real question is do you leave punishment to an inevitably exploited set of mechanics or do you empower the players to defend themselves?
Although player killing is an aspect of PvP it is not the type of PvP that makes a good MMORPG.
There is a difference between PK and PvP. Standing in the middle of the new player loading area waiting for new players to spawn ingame so that you can kill them is not PvP. Killing a player simply because you can is not PvP it's player killing.
In order to give players the ability to defend themselves you would need to ensure a total balance of an avatar's skills and stats once they start the game and not allow them to grow in skills and stats in the typical RPG fashion. Then you'd need to consider group players ganging up on smaller groups. There is no balance so you need to provide safety in some way. All PvP games do it in one way or another.
Manhunt Online might be able to be turned into a death match multiplayer game but it would be a poor MMORPG.
"The liberties and resulting economic prosperity that YOU take for granted were granted by those "dead guys"
In Eve, many people have multiple accounts. Do you need to buy more than one account to stay competitive? Do players with single ships win against multi-boxers?
Maybe people have more than one account because doing pretty much anything in Eve is so damn boring, you need to keep 3 or 4 toons going just to make it interesting.
Or maybe most players of EvE are old and rish in IRL, and dont mind having multiple accounts to do diffrent aspects of the game? Or maybe people buy thier playtime with ISK so it dosent cost them anything but playtime to keep that second account. Or maybe people have firgured out that It could be fun to specialize one charecter into a special play field, like mining, manafacturing or pvp. Or maybe people run multiple accounts to be able to sell one charecter from time to time to get some extra ISK. In EvE you never really know. YOU KNOW WHY, because there are as many reason to doing something as the human brain can come up with.
But as you like to be doing this all dayhttp://schoolnew.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/images/mousewheel.gif I dont expect you will understand... EvE players and you are not on the same playfield. As we all know the EVE playerbase are the top of the food chains the real Hardcores of the MMO market. We are the Space marines and you are the Imperial Guard, sorry but you are not Elit enough to be expected to understand the inner workings of an EvE players mind.....So please go back to your mouse wheel it entertains us to watch you run all day for some cheese(BOP raid item) hahaha
FFA PvP fails because of the community it attracts...simple as that. Therefore, the PvE'ers and non-hardcore or semi-soft PvP'ers don't stick around because of the ganking and griefing. I am talking about murder, plain and simple, not killing other players. I mean just plain unprovoked, unsolicited, unnecessary murder of another avatar.
It doesn't take a lot of ganking or griefing to run these peeps, like myself, away.
This doesn't happen in RL and I don't care what you say about role-playing in MMOs, the peep behind the avatar "acts" just like his/her RL self in an MMO world. If they are an egotistical, self-centered, anarchist in RL, their toon is in the MMO.
Unfortunately, in RL and MMORPGs, a few bad apples spoils the whole bunch.
Comments
They don't all fail.
If a ffapvp game can give players options in a way that doesn't make players feel forced it can survive.
Eve does this because players can play with the amount of risk they're comfortable with.
Games like Darkfall and Mortal Online fail at this because the pvp mechanics feel forced on the player.
I've recently beta tested perpetuum Online and its following a similar model like Eve.
Half of the game is safish while the other half is FFApvp. this gives players the option to choose.
A game about to head to OB is also like this (earthrise).
This is the way to do ffapvp, if you want a successful game.
Before anyone says these games aren't ffa pvp if they have safe areas, your wrong. while the risk may be reduced you can be killed in these areas with heavy consequences on the attacker.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
That's the key factor, to get your game to appeal to a broader audience you have to provide players choice and let them decide how much risk they're willing to take. EVE's system manages this pretty well and the same system would work in another game.
Totally FFA Pvp (especially with full loot) is extremely high risk, and will only appeal if every player in the game can take advantage of it (as in a FPShooter)
Since MMO's are all about character progression, their FFA PVP devolves into the strong victimizing the weak and the victims decide not to participate.
Player controlled justice doesn't work because so far, there's no incentive for players to waste their time trying to impart it. Even if doing so might help increase the game's sub numbers (which should be in their interests) you don't see a lot of DFO clans running around protecting newbie areas because there's no direct reward for it.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
And why is this the case? DotA is just as popular in western countries as it is in Asia, and so too were games like Starcraft and counterstrike. Granted they aren't MMOs, but if there's some commonality in tastes in other genres, I don't see why it would be so different for MMOs. Hell, even WoW is massive in China, so there's clearly a section of the Asian market that likes PVE-based mmos. And then you have Asian imports that come over like Final Fantasy Online, Lineage and Aion that are actually reasonably successful, or at least, they're no less successful than a long list of piss-poor western MMOs that have failed, regardless of genre. The fact is, there have only ever been a handful of successful MMOs, and they all fit into different genres. You have WoW, EQ, UO, EVE, DAOC, LOTRO, AOC and that's probably about it. For my money, half of those are pretty brutal PVP games, and even EQ cracked a million subs with some pretty nasty death penalties, so I don't think it has anything to do with the mechanics in isolation, but more the context of those mechanics within the games themselves.
You see, it's not the player-killing that puts people off PVP games, it's the fact that most of the ones that have been released are buggy pieces of trash. Darkfall doesn't have low subs because people don't want to be ganked; it has low subs because it's a shit game. EVE on the other hand has steadily grown despite having THE most brutal mechanics of any MMO still running. There's potential in EVE to lose years of progress, and yet they have 300k subscribers still playing happily. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if EVE implemented actual joystick flight controls so that players could have dogfights, they'd probably double their userbase overnight.
The other thing I don't get is why you care so much about what other people want to play. People are crying out for a decent PVP game because that is what they want to play. There's a demand there that isn't being met, and you telling everyone that PVP players are a narrow niche that can't be supported by the market won't change things. We are here, and we want a game. Regardless of what you think, your psuedo-economic explanations are nothing more than the smug self-satisfaction of someone who doesn't understand that economics is about filling niches because there is money to be made. The economics of game production right now are what is stopping this from happening, not the lack of a market. Rest assured that as those larger companies move to console, and middleware tools become better and more readily available, Indies will fill that gap. Hell, it's already happening now; there wouldn't be so many failed attempts if there weren't demand for the genre in the first place. Why even risk failure for a market that doesn't exist?
The MMO that PVP that players want is coming. Maybe it's five years off, maybe it's ten years off, but irrespective of how long it takes, gamers in that niche won't settle for a crap game. Maybe it'll be Blizzard's next MMO, or maybe it'll be Inifinity, or even some other dark horse that no one sees coming. Either way, someone will make that game. Economic arguments for why that game isn't here yet that don't take into account the context of the games industry as it stands now are disingenuous at best, and completely fallacious at worst. Who are you to tell us that a market doesn't exist when at least 50% of the posts on this forum are either bitching at the state of the industry, or asking for a decent PVP game?
So........ The summary of the last 30 or so posts is:
EVE PVP = WIN
DARKFALL PVP = FAIL
MO PVP = WTF
lol right? If so, I agree.
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Chuckle... On the subject of economics, I suspect I understand at least as much of real economics(Austrian) as you do. Your attempts at making this personal are noted, but declined. Anyone who has been paying attention over the last decade or so, would notice the obvious trend in the western markets towards theme park PvE games, and away from FFA full loot gankfests.
Any company that wishes to pursue such a niche market is of course more than welcome to do so. That is if they can find investors willing to forego the much larger returns to be had from the larger audience be had outside of that niche.
EVE is an excellent example of a PvP game that has had to modify its rule set to appeal to a wider audience. One need look no further than the evolution of Concord, and the high sec rule set to understand that. Even with CCP's PvP centric focus, they themselves(much to their disgust) have admited that well more than half of their player base stays in high sec and seldom if ever leaves.
Who am I? Me of course. I've never claimed to speak for more than myself. Quite unlike some here. The facts remain the facts, no matter how some might wish other wise. The fact is that gankfest games have limited appeal in the western markets. How limited? That depends on the game dynamics, The closer they are to FFA full loot, the narrower their appeal.
WoW is hardly one of those games, since it has PvE and PvP servers(in all markets). Thus its success can hardly be claimed to demonstrate anything about PvP. In fact, if one looks at the number of PvE realms and PvP realms, and their population, it tracks the western market rather well.
Finally, I really do not care what others wish to play. Thats entirely up to them, and should always be. Finding a game of their prefered type on the other hand depends on other factors. One of which being that since it takes millions and millions of (other peoples) money to create one of these games, the investors are likely to demand that it be pointed at the widest audience possible. Thus it seems to me that your hostility is best directed towards them, rather than at someone who is simply pointing out the reality of the situation.
In Eve, are there people who never PvP? People who remain in high security space all the time?
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
You QQ , whine, and complain to an unrealistic degree. Name an mmo with PvP (FFA, 2 faction, multi faction) where you do NOT start at the bottom of the food chain.
What makes a game "successful" to you? Conan is going steady on 4 servers. Success imo and has the best combat mechanics / pvp I have found to date. Make friends, join a guild, generally don't suck horse d!ck and you will be ok.
It has nothing to do with getting to the "top" as there are several tiers of pvp in conan. 10-19 , 20-39, 40-59. Take your time and make some allies and you will get to the "top" with a few pvp levels under your belt. But you will never have fun in any kind of pvp game from the sounds of it.
Every mmo with pvp implimented requires some sort of gearing up, obtaining skills, and things of that nature that will put you at the so called "bottom of the food chain".
Like one of the other dudes said. Take the advice of your sig and move on.
The problem with FFA PvP is that players and developers are under the misguided impression that its more "realistic".
FFA PvP in the real world is relatively rare. Even in a mob environment human tend to form "factions" unconsciously.
One of the only contextes I can think of where people are really doing soemthing FFA like is a bar room brawl.
And in the end most of the world is dominated by non-combatants .
Without perma-death the ability to attack whomever you please loses a lot of meaning. Even with a harsh DP its not really enough. And having FFA pvp with a steep leveling curve makes it even worse.
At the same time FFA PvP is one of the only ways to capture the the down and dirty bits of human nature like betrayal and conquest.
But in the end it has been very stilted in most games. While it is able to capture somethings other cannot it is not really do what you think it is.
In Eve, can you buy insurance, so if you do lose at PvP, everything is replaced?
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
Yes. In fact its a bit more than half of the player base. Much to the CCP Dev's disgust. ^^
Insurance covers only the cost of the ship itself(if that these days). Given that a ships mods can cost more than the ship, thats a GOOD reason to be careful. Good rule of thumb, never fly what you can't afford to replace.
No.
Some of the cost of the ship is replaced depending on what level of insurance you choose. Never all though. Also you are not compensated for modules/implants, which can be very costly.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
That "disgust" is an act to keep the more vocal playerbase happy.
Those mofos are smiling all the way to the bank with carebear money.
If the game fails then I would assume its because it focused to much on FFA PVP and didn't have enough crafting/social things to do....thats just my opinion though, that if a game has things for every type of player it will do better....for example I really liked player housing in EQ2 and Guild Halls in Guild Wars and I hung out around there and socialized.
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If you were one of 50% of Eves population who never PvP'ed, it would be like 'Farmville in Space'.
.
Oooo, I wonder if that URL is available...
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
Hardly.
Give it a spin and try your luck. They do have a 14-Day Free Trial, doncha know
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
You claim to know a thing or two about economics, and yet you completely missed the point of what I said. I didn't mention anything about market trends, or even WoW being a PVP game for that matter (I actually meant the opposite; UO, DAOC and EVE are PVP-centric games, the others I would consider PVE). You made that up to sound like you have a clue, when the analysis you've made is superficial, and lacks any form of reasoning or evidence. Do you have a link for CCPs stats on playerbase demographics, because the latest EVE economic newsletter indicates that the population of high sec space is actually decreasing as more players go into low sec to use wormholes. Not only that, but their demographics only distinguish between null sec and all the other sectors of space. Also, I've never heard of CCP being disgusted over players residing in high sec; I believe their aim is for people to have fun, making such a statement a value judgement on your own behalf. For the record, this isn't personal. I routinely destroy people when they make fallacious arguments, though it's not in my nature to judge them for doing so
.
Since you brought up market trends though, let's compare the games industry to another, broadly similar market. You see, market trends just as often reflect the context of production within that market (i.e. insurance costs and overheads) as they do demand. Just because there is a trend in supply, doesn't mean there isn't still demand for a competing product that isn't being produced. Look at the movie industry for a good example. After years of declining profits and blame being hurled at internet piracy, James Cameron comes along and makes the highest grossing film of all time. Why is this relevant? People won't pay for crap, but they will pay for an experience. Games nowadays are crap; at it's inception, WOW was an experience, and people flocked to it in droves. No other game since then has managed to replicate that, and that is why they are all failing. Likewise, for the past ten years, we've been swamped by movie sequel after movie sequel, because production companies didn't want to take the risk on a brand new franchise. It took a screen legend to come along and do something new for the industry to wake up. Games are in the same rut. They're so expensive, and studios are so risk averse, that until a game comes along that taps into that latent demand properly, no one else will take the risk.
I mean, who would have thought the Sims would have been popular before it came out? Or that counterstrike would become the dominant online game of the early 2000s? Or that a warcraft 3 mod would become more popular than the original game ever was? Market trends are a poor indicator of what people want when that product doesn't actually exist yet. You can't say, for instance, that fantasy skillbased FFA PVP games have no market, when there are no bug-free, polished examples in existence (aside from UO, which is still the best implementation after 12 years). It would be even more naive to say this when there is a game that does have FFA PVP that is still growing, and has done so steadily over the last 6 years. This doesn't even take into account the lamentations on online forums such as somethingawful, facepunch, and even this one, begging for a decent skill-based PVP game to come along. You see, the real problem is that PVP is hard to balance; most players don't mind losing when things are balanced, but when things are buggy, laggy, and otherwise look underwhelming, no one wants to bother.
And again, since you missed this last time, the problem isn't the mechanic; it's the mechanic as it is presented within the context of the game. Just because you have a FFA full-loot PVP game, doesn't mean it can't be fun. If items are player crafted, don't bind, and are relatively cheap and plentiful, who gives a shit if you just lost your sword and pants? Go grab another set and get back to doing whatever it is you were doing before you got ganked. Sure, in the context of a WoW-like game, it wouldn't work, but that's not to say that you couldn't do it if you wanted -- only that it takes a developer (and gamer) capable of thinking outside the box. No one wants to lose their raid epics, but the solution to that is simply to remove the concept of raid epics. Once you do that, you replace it with crafted items, and allow those items to be stolen, so that you create a market for people selling those items. The next step is to take out levels entirely, and use a skill system so that healers aren't such a nightmare to balance, and can actually progress their character by healing rather than killing mobs.
Honestly, half the reason we are stuck in a rut right now, is because people think that we have MMOs down to a fine art, and we know what players want. We don't, we only know what some players want. No one could have anticipated that the market for MMOs was even as big as WOW's, so don't sell the rest of us short just because a game for us hasn't come along yet.
Cheers!
In Eve, many people have multiple accounts. Do you need to buy more than one account to stay competitive? Do players with single ships win against multi-boxers?
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
no you don't need multi accounts.
Yes you can kill someone with multi accounts.
Maybe people have more than one account because doing pretty much anything in Eve is so damn boring, you need to keep 3 or 4 toons going just to make it interesting.
We call it the interactive-screen-saver-game in my gaming organization, made for accountants to waste their breaks on more spreadsheets
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No troll!
People have multi accounts because its convenient.
Miner having a hauler alt, Pvper having a scouting alt, mission runner having a salvage/loot alt.
Although player killing is an aspect of PvP it is not the type of PvP that makes a good MMORPG.
There is a difference between PK and PvP. Standing in the middle of the new player loading area waiting for new players to spawn ingame so that you can kill them is not PvP. Killing a player simply because you can is not PvP it's player killing.
In order to give players the ability to defend themselves you would need to ensure a total balance of an avatar's skills and stats once they start the game and not allow them to grow in skills and stats in the typical RPG fashion. Then you'd need to consider group players ganging up on smaller groups. There is no balance so you need to provide safety in some way. All PvP games do it in one way or another.
Manhunt Online might be able to be turned into a death match multiplayer game but it would be a poor MMORPG.
"The liberties and resulting economic prosperity that YOU take for granted were granted by those "dead guys"
Or maybe most players of EvE are old and rish in IRL, and dont mind having multiple accounts to do diffrent aspects of the game? Or maybe people buy thier playtime with ISK so it dosent cost them anything but playtime to keep that second account. Or maybe people have firgured out that It could be fun to specialize one charecter into a special play field, like mining, manafacturing or pvp. Or maybe people run multiple accounts to be able to sell one charecter from time to time to get some extra ISK. In EvE you never really know. YOU KNOW WHY, because there are as many reason to doing something as the human brain can come up with.
But as you like to be doing this all dayhttp://schoolnew.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/images/mousewheel.gif I dont expect you will understand... EvE players and you are not on the same playfield. As we all know the EVE playerbase are the top of the food chains the real Hardcores of the MMO market. We are the Space marines and you are the Imperial Guard, sorry but you are not Elit enough to be expected to understand the inner workings of an EvE players mind.....So please go back to your mouse wheel it entertains us to watch you run all day for some cheese(BOP raid item) hahaha
FFA PvP fails because of the community it attracts...simple as that. Therefore, the PvE'ers and non-hardcore or semi-soft PvP'ers don't stick around because of the ganking and griefing. I am talking about murder, plain and simple, not killing other players. I mean just plain unprovoked, unsolicited, unnecessary murder of another avatar.
It doesn't take a lot of ganking or griefing to run these peeps, like myself, away.
This doesn't happen in RL and I don't care what you say about role-playing in MMOs, the peep behind the avatar "acts" just like his/her RL self in an MMO world. If they are an egotistical, self-centered, anarchist in RL, their toon is in the MMO.
Unfortunately, in RL and MMORPGs, a few bad apples spoils the whole bunch.