Well even if this thread is very weird in the first place - mostly because actually any MMO at this time is a bet on success - I want to also consider a few thoughts here:
I have been a pvp player for a long time, coming from shooters and hardcore pvp MMOs like Lineage2 I think there is more to pvp than just a category of players and situations on how to make it right.
I am by far not a good game designer - more into the technical stuff anyway - but I had my experiences, talks and readings about this topic. It came up too often in the past and it has been too often in the past where stuff has just not been done the right way because as a developer you always want to make it right for everyone - to get a bigger audience, to make more people happy etc.
I think the most important part of pvp is the gameplay itself to be fun. I mean old shooters like Counter Strike, there is not much gameplay or possibilities - players do not have levels, xp, unique gear etc... there is no pve aspect of it - and still it got a lot of people to play it. Now times have changed and audiences expect more etc...but in the end I think it will boil down to the same thing. Make it fun and players will like it. Everything else is possibly just cosmetics to get a bigger audience.
Our plan is to do exactly this - make it fun - with you guys together, we will not just do what we think is right, we will include as many players as we can at different stages and adopt the gameplay so that we can all have fun - within limits ofc, I do not believe it's possible to attract every player out there in this world - but knowing that, it makes it easier to focus on those players who like the game
Patrick Balthazar Tech Lead - Behaviour Online Lead Programmer - Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade www.EternalCrusade.com - #eternalcrusade - @lordpada
I tend to agree with the OP in general. Leave the pvp to the FPS games. MMO's always fail so bad at pvp. Class balance is always terrible. Players quickly find the lowest common denominator or "i win" combo of classes, skills, gear. People always flock to the easy win and run from any fight where they have a high risk of losing. WAR was terrible with that, people changing servers to join the winning team. GW2 same deal; people only want to fight for the winning team. I like FPS type pvp, but if I play an MMO I look at the PVE content more and pvp is like a second or third priority if even that. Sure there is always that very vocal hardcore pvp crowd, but generally they make up a very small part of most MMO games population.
as a planetside player (1 and 2) i can tell you that a pvp focused game is fun when you are loseing, so long as you get a good fight. defending a doomed base becomes less a case of a chrushing defeat and more desperate battle to hold out as long as you can so that the rest of your army or another faction can change the tide somweare else. my best memorys in planetside come not from curbstomping to victory but come from the hard fought victorys and the narrowest of defeats.
i agree that warhammer online dident realy work in the pvp department but then again it didtent realy work in the pve department ether. warhammer online is a split focus, hotkey mmo that lacks the depth and balance that it needs to pull off compelling pvp. for me the two best things about war are its tome of knowlage and the way it implemented public quests, not its combat system. war would have been a very diferent game with good quality action combat system with free aiming, and pobably lot better to.
eternal crusade is looking like it is trying to be an asymmetrical third person mmo shooter/brawler focued on territory control with 4 factions and a 5th AI faction all done in the vain of a mix between planetside and space marine. thats a game i want to play.
however due to its asymmetrical nature balance is going to be this games largest chalange. while they will have to make sure that no class is badly underpowered in its chosen area of speciality. the main area of focus will have to be on the faction level looking at the armys as a whole. some classes are just going to be better at what they do than other classes of a simalar speciality, thers no escaping it unless you make all the clases the same and i dont want that.
Originally posted by skeptical I tend to agree with the OP in general. Leave the pvp to the FPS games. MMO's always fail so bad at pvp. Class balance is always terrible. Players quickly find the lowest common denominator or "i win" combo of classes, skills, gear. People always flock to the easy win and run from any fight where they have a high risk of losing. WAR was terrible with that, people changing servers to join the winning team. GW2 same deal; people only want to fight for the winning team. I like FPS type pvp, but if I play an MMO I look at the PVE content more and pvp is like a second or third priority if even that. Sure there is always that very vocal hardcore pvp crowd, but generally they make up a very small part of most MMO games population.
Well, there's your first problem, the designers have come into it acknowledging that something like an Ork will not be able to singularly match a Space Marine in combat. It's against the fluff, so it's not going to happen in game. I personally welcome this an incredible degree, but I understand that mileage my vary (if a game dev decides to come into the game as a Hive Tyrant, a single space marine should stand against it in combat either, there's always a bigger fish out there).
Warfare is a constant thing in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. To say that the game should not have pvp is basically saying: 'drop the 40k license' which, well isn't going to happen.
I actually think that an MMO that acknowledges that class balance isn't going to be addressed in the manner that we've come to expect is actually a breath of fresh air that potentially re-sculpts a lot of people's notions of pvp in general. It's up to the game devs to demonstrate how successful (aka; fun) this will be. Whether it comes as some sort of group buff for Orks that makes them more effective the more of them there are and/or whether it rewards Orks who participate as a group to kill something that it awards each and every participant within 'range' with the kill as opposed to something like an 'assist'.
Not many people enjoy losing that's true, it's up to the game devs again to acknowledge that 'death' isn't a sin as well is one of those problems that needs to be surmounted by all MMO developers, but I don't think it's as much as a problem as you are suggesting.
Here's another company that will make yet another failed MMO because they wanted to make it a PVP-oriented game. Warhammer Online did the same thing and we all know what happened there. It's astounding that the developers out there don't get it yet. PVP is not popular. I know the forum trolls here will flame me and shout me down, but the numbers don't lie. The only MMO's out there that are even remotely popular after WoW are all PVE-oriented games. The only exception might be EVE, but that game can be played without engaging in PVP, and its success is due to it being a niche game.
When it comes to PVP, most people are not going to pay money into a game in which they lose most of the time. People like to win, and the only way that's going to happen in a game is if they have lots of PVE content. In PVP-oriented games, there are few winners and many losers, and that's why they never really make much money.
Ergo, this is just another sad example of why Games-Workshop just still doesn't get it. While tabletop games might be fun on a PVP basis, and even then most of their popularity is in the massive volume of their lore. I read a lot of their stuff and it's very entertaining. But the gaming side - very expensive, very intense, and unrelaxing entertainment. While there are lots of hobbyists out there that enjoy it, it's still a niche hobby.
If any video game MMO really wants to break out and be successful, they need to be PVE-oriented. Even League of Legends is PVE-oriented via their co-op play. If they had PVP-only type scenarios, I guarantee you that their popularity would sink to spectacularly low levels at astounding speed.
So cute when care bears qq...
Incognito www.incognito-gaming.us "You're either with us or against us"
Comments
Well even if this thread is very weird in the first place - mostly because actually any MMO at this time is a bet on success - I want to also consider a few thoughts here:
I have been a pvp player for a long time, coming from shooters and hardcore pvp MMOs like Lineage2 I think there is more to pvp than just a category of players and situations on how to make it right.
I am by far not a good game designer - more into the technical stuff anyway - but I had my experiences, talks and readings about this topic. It came up too often in the past and it has been too often in the past where stuff has just not been done the right way because as a developer you always want to make it right for everyone - to get a bigger audience, to make more people happy etc.
I think the most important part of pvp is the gameplay itself to be fun. I mean old shooters like Counter Strike, there is not much gameplay or possibilities - players do not have levels, xp, unique gear etc... there is no pve aspect of it - and still it got a lot of people to play it. Now times have changed and audiences expect more etc...but in the end I think it will boil down to the same thing. Make it fun and players will like it. Everything else is possibly just cosmetics to get a bigger audience.
Our plan is to do exactly this - make it fun - with you guys together, we will not just do what we think is right, we will include as many players as we can at different stages and adopt the gameplay so that we can all have fun - within limits ofc, I do not believe it's possible to attract every player out there in this world - but knowing that, it makes it easier to focus on those players who like the game
Patrick Balthazar
Tech Lead - Behaviour Online
Lead Programmer - Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade
www.EternalCrusade.com - #eternalcrusade - @lordpada
as a planetside player (1 and 2) i can tell you that a pvp focused game is fun when you are loseing, so long as you get a good fight. defending a doomed base becomes less a case of a chrushing defeat and more desperate battle to hold out as long as you can so that the rest of your army or another faction can change the tide somweare else. my best memorys in planetside come not from curbstomping to victory but come from the hard fought victorys and the narrowest of defeats.
i agree that warhammer online dident realy work in the pvp department but then again it didtent realy work in the pve department ether. warhammer online is a split focus, hotkey mmo that lacks the depth and balance that it needs to pull off compelling pvp. for me the two best things about war are its tome of knowlage and the way it implemented public quests, not its combat system. war would have been a very diferent game with good quality action combat system with free aiming, and pobably lot better to.
eternal crusade is looking like it is trying to be an asymmetrical third person mmo shooter/brawler focued on territory control with 4 factions and a 5th AI faction all done in the vain of a mix between planetside and space marine. thats a game i want to play.
however due to its asymmetrical nature balance is going to be this games largest chalange. while they will have to make sure that no class is badly underpowered in its chosen area of speciality. the main area of focus will have to be on the faction level looking at the armys as a whole. some classes are just going to be better at what they do than other classes of a simalar speciality, thers no escaping it unless you make all the clases the same and i dont want that.
Well, there's your first problem, the designers have come into it acknowledging that something like an Ork will not be able to singularly match a Space Marine in combat. It's against the fluff, so it's not going to happen in game. I personally welcome this an incredible degree, but I understand that mileage my vary (if a game dev decides to come into the game as a Hive Tyrant, a single space marine should stand against it in combat either, there's always a bigger fish out there).
Warfare is a constant thing in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. To say that the game should not have pvp is basically saying: 'drop the 40k license' which, well isn't going to happen.
I actually think that an MMO that acknowledges that class balance isn't going to be addressed in the manner that we've come to expect is actually a breath of fresh air that potentially re-sculpts a lot of people's notions of pvp in general. It's up to the game devs to demonstrate how successful (aka; fun) this will be. Whether it comes as some sort of group buff for Orks that makes them more effective the more of them there are and/or whether it rewards Orks who participate as a group to kill something that it awards each and every participant within 'range' with the kill as opposed to something like an 'assist'.
Not many people enjoy losing that's true, it's up to the game devs again to acknowledge that 'death' isn't a sin as well is one of those problems that needs to be surmounted by all MMO developers, but I don't think it's as much as a problem as you are suggesting.
So cute when care bears qq...
Incognito
www.incognito-gaming.us
"You're either with us or against us"