UO inadvertently popularized several now-familiar online dysfunctions - especially player-versus-player (PvP) griefing. Koster and the Live Team wrestled with UO's escalating problem of high-level player characters killing and looting lower-level characters. Koster argued against a "PK switch," whereby players could select whether to participate in, and be vulnerable to, PvP combat. After Koster left Origin, UO instituted an area-based PK switch, segregating its shards (servers) into two facets (worlds): "Felucca" (unrestrained PvP) and "Trammel" (PvP only by mutual consent). Most players migrated to Trammel.
UO inadvertently popularized several now-familiar online dysfunctions - especially player-versus-player (PvP) griefing. Koster and the Live Team wrestled with UO's escalating problem of high-level player characters killing and looting lower-level characters. Koster argued against a "PK switch," whereby players could select whether to participate in, and be vulnerable to, PvP combat. After Koster left Origin, UO instituted an area-based PK switch, segregating its shards (servers) into two facets (worlds): "Felucca" (unrestrained PvP) and "Trammel" (PvP only by mutual consent). Most players migrated to Trammel.
The entire Ultima series, prior to UO, was about representing positive virtues through the role of the avatar. It was expected that UO would provide the players with a base, and that they could advance those virtues as they (and the game) proceeded. Instead, it turned into a series of Hatfield and McCoy class feuds, with no hope of ever cleaning up the mess. The break from their SP roots, coupled with the behavioral problems, have widely been accredited as the failure of UO to gain a sustainable player base, and financial expectations not being met.
Thanks for posting this. I couldn't remember Koster's name to Google this earlier.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
UO inadvertently popularized several now-familiar online dysfunctions - especially player-versus-player (PvP) griefing. Koster and the Live Team wrestled with UO's escalating problem of high-level player characters killing and looting lower-level characters. Koster argued against a "PK switch," whereby players could select whether to participate in, and be vulnerable to, PvP combat. After Koster left Origin, UO instituted an area-based PK switch, segregating its shards (servers) into two facets (worlds): "Felucca" (unrestrained PvP) and "Trammel" (PvP only by mutual consent). Most players migrated to Trammel.
Here's another good quote from that article:
""We worked hard to reduce PKing without instituting the switch, and based on what I saw, we did in fact make steady progress. But after I left the team, the introduction of the Trammel and Felucca facets [settled the issue] in a very different way than I would have chosen. I would have kept to the general path we were on. The various systems like stat loss and ping-pong murder counts were having a gradual effect on PK attacks.
That's not the only interview where Koster shows the reason of the Trammel creation. I still remember one where he was much harsher towards the PKs.
Good job finding that one though.
I think the UO developers were naive when they created the game, thinking players would "behave" and roleplay like in their single player Ultima series.
As always you guys seem to be arguing with some ghost somewhere. I never said Trammel wasn't created to curb pk's. In fact I don't think anybody said that. There are other ways to deal with griefing, as Koster himself said in that SAME ARTICLE.
I really hope for a game with a variety of abilities/spells and fun to play unique classes. I don't think any "balanced" classes ever work, they are always boring and the same... In order to create healers that are fairly "balanced" on Everquest 2, they needed to make the Cleric/Shaman/Druids fairly equal (although Inquisitors seriously seem to be way to good as it is).
This lack of balance in favor of variety and fun would mean that its nearly impossible to have a variety of classes in PVP, because everyone would be the "flavor of the month". It's so much easier if they just concentrate on awesome core PVE gameplay mechanics.
Rift's idea needs to be expanded on, and classes should be deeply different... Druids have a healing pet, but no one else does, Shaman's have self buffs that no one else has...
Not the EQ2 idea, that mystics have a healing pet, but Wardens also have a healing pet, everyone has a group cure and group heals, and everyone has similar buffs, and the same healing ability (whether their heals pop up first like Wards do, or last).
Everyone, needs to have an entirely different mechanic like WoW's monk chi pool vs rogue energy vs warrior rage vs death knight runes vs casters mana pool vs hunter's focus, and they all need to feel entirely different...
I don't see how any fun pve game can ever be "Balanced" for pvp, because they wouldn't have the same abilities to crowd control, due to how annoying that is to be perma stunned in pvp (Star Wars: The Old Republic), or just plain be chain control locked down by silence/stifles/daze/fear/root/frozen/incap/polymorphed/hexed/charmed/etc. like on WoW (Warlocks and Rogues etc).
In fact, in pvp there is no equality for healers as it is, because you stand there unable to control your character 90% of the time.
There have to be entirely different play mechanics, pve has to be challenging and dangerous again, there is no need for pvp to be mixed with pve, the pve content should have difficulty levels. They should scale zones to the number of members in your party, and the combined gear item level of what that party has. Zones shouldn't require 5 or 6 people (a party), they should scale accordingly to what you have, hence the game size would be huge, all solo zones could expand to raid zones, all content is doable by everyone, the gear would scale down in statistics depending on that difficulty level.
Instead of Avatars, and contested raids, it would be beneficial for the entire population to fight public quests together as a team, why let only 1% of a game do anything? The Arena of Gods on Everquest 2 is a great example, of letting more see Avatars.
The Public Raids were a great start that got abandoned... They need more variety in Tradeskill Recipes, more third-party program support for designing items via music programs and paintshop programs (and no, not for station cash), and to allow in-game cash to be exchanged for station cash (ala "Plex" on Eve Online). There should be no exclusive shop items, and every single item in the game should be earned or have a very high in-game cost or simply buyable in the shop. Players with time, should be able to acquire the exact same items from the market place, in a very long questline, as a player with money does. Players with skill, should be able to use a raid quest line instead of a solo questline to make up for lack of money or time.
Please, let soloists do long quest-lines for marketplace items, let groupers do shorters ones that are higher in difficulty and teamwork, and let raiders get them for the shortest time, but extremely hard challenging raids,and no dumbed down content. There can still be "raid only" loot, but please let the marketplace items be attainable for everyone. No more "exclusive mounts". They should be gated differently for challenge levels, but be the same mount... Statistic gear should be scaled down in stats (because soloists don't need to solo group encounter instances), but be available to them to earn.
Star Trek Online's Away Team and Star Wars: The Old Republic had the best idea with the npc companions, that allowed you to "solo" group encounter content. However, what we need is true scaling zones, not like The Shadow Oddysey, and requiring us to have the levels, they should scale from level 1 to max level. By limiting that from 85-90 for the best void shards, Sony limited who had a reason to do them. Those 50-85 zones were usually to hard for lowbies to do without a mentored down (hence overpowered) level 90 in group, and generally gave worthless gear that was out-leveled at level 85 (quickly replaced with level 85-90 TSO instance gear). Levels 1-49 never got any of those scaled zones, requiring everyone to be level 50, and they didn't get to attain void shards until level 85, forcing everyone to just power (speed) level to 85. Every level should be able to do content at different difficulty ranges, not only high levels... There should have been tokens for the below level 85's to earn as well..
Even on WoW, the below level 70's don't have tokens, they earn experience and gear upgrading bags, but the game doesn't "start" until level 70, because that's when you start earning Justice points in wrath and head into Valor points in mists of pandaria. Why bother being low level at all, when you're blocked from buying anything cool? That's another problem... Then there's pvp equipment, that is usually always overpowered, and pvp only rewards... Like on WoW everyone is usually in PVP equipment running PVE lfr raids and dungeons, how do you fix that? We should just have one set of equipment but, then those pvp players get bored without gear to "grind", and PVE raid gear is always overpowered... Blizzard does it right decreasing the PVE raid gear to the highest tier of PVP available, but at the same time, a lot of people find it easier to grind arenas for Conquest PVP gear and to wear PVP gear in PVE raids.. They have their broken Honor point system too, if EQNext had pvp like that, people would be getting creamed by people in superior gear all the time, just because they didn't "grind" arenas with a buddy and get carried... No way to turn honor points into conquest, no way to upgrade honor points gear past the limited ilvl allowed, easier to just stay in PVE ONLY servers!!
There's really just no way a company will ever get PVE and PVP right, when you think about it. We can't even fix gear discrepencies now. People would be buying advantages in marketplace item shops that are overpowering and 'exclusive'.
There would be raiders running rampant pwning people, and everything would most likely be overly homogenized boring nerfville... No way to exchange platinum for station cash? No way to exchange honor points for conquest? No way to win gear upgrades in Battlegrounds, because your team always loses practically 80% of the time? Now, we could use item level required checks, so at least every player in a battleground has the chance to win, and isn't facerolled, but there's really so many variables for developers to have to get correct in this PVP and PVE shared world. How you handle everything, from who can attack whom? I don't want to ever be attacked, I don't want my tamable beats to be in the "PVP" zone, I don't want my gathering nodes to be in a "PVP" zone, or any of the cool PVE quest content to be locked... I don't want spys and espionage going on across faction lines, or any amount of mass zerg gangs... Or the trash talk trolling in game channels, and all of the boring similarly redundant spell/abilities above all...
Then there's the 3D Axis PVP, there are things that need to be truly done, and done correctly, but if you combine PVP with PVE, there's not enough money and time to do them right. A true PVP game could incorporate everything correctly without PVE distracting it, and PVE games could concentrade on NPC AI, and fun crafting systems, without having to cater to fighting mechanic balancing every single 3 months. Those balance patches are a waste of developer's time. Keep our classes exactly as you launch them on release, and don't constantly change mechanics like Blizzard, imagine the content we could have? If we just continued our AA/Talent Trees, and didn't have to always nerf/rebalance every single game update?
Comments
This is Raph Koster in 'The Escapist', it may help .
"I think we hit a lot of [our design goals], and were close to having much of it working, but the PK [player killing] problem basically undermined everything."
Read more at http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_55/329-Raph-Koster-on-Fire.2#EZhMhT8zGM1TEZ6C.99
UO inadvertently popularized several now-familiar online dysfunctions - especially player-versus-player (PvP) griefing. Koster and the Live Team wrestled with UO's escalating problem of high-level player characters killing and looting lower-level characters. Koster argued against a "PK switch," whereby players could select whether to participate in, and be vulnerable to, PvP combat. After Koster left Origin, UO instituted an area-based PK switch, segregating its shards (servers) into two facets (worlds): "Felucca" (unrestrained PvP) and "Trammel" (PvP only by mutual consent). Most players migrated to Trammel.
The entire Ultima series, prior to UO, was about representing positive virtues through the role of the avatar. It was expected that UO would provide the players with a base, and that they could advance those virtues as they (and the game) proceeded. Instead, it turned into a series of Hatfield and McCoy class feuds, with no hope of ever cleaning up the mess. The break from their SP roots, coupled with the behavioral problems, have widely been accredited as the failure of UO to gain a sustainable player base, and financial expectations not being met.
Thanks for posting this. I couldn't remember Koster's name to Google this earlier.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Here's another good quote from that article:
""We worked hard to reduce PKing without instituting the switch, and based on what I saw, we did in fact make steady progress. But after I left the team, the introduction of the Trammel and Felucca facets [settled the issue] in a very different way than I would have chosen. I would have kept to the general path we were on. The various systems like stat loss and ping-pong murder counts were having a gradual effect on PK attacks.
If we had gotten to the natural next step, which was player cities with control over PvP within their territory, I think the real nature of PvP in the game could have emerged.
Read more at http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_55/329-Raph-Koster-on-Fire.2#SlF2MUTORDArixMt.99 "
As always you guys seem to be arguing with some ghost somewhere. I never said Trammel wasn't created to curb pk's. In fact I don't think anybody said that. There are other ways to deal with griefing, as Koster himself said in that SAME ARTICLE.
I really hope for a game with a variety of abilities/spells and fun to play unique classes. I don't think any "balanced" classes ever work, they are always boring and the same... In order to create healers that are fairly "balanced" on Everquest 2, they needed to make the Cleric/Shaman/Druids fairly equal (although Inquisitors seriously seem to be way to good as it is).
This lack of balance in favor of variety and fun would mean that its nearly impossible to have a variety of classes in PVP, because everyone would be the "flavor of the month". It's so much easier if they just concentrate on awesome core PVE gameplay mechanics.
Rift's idea needs to be expanded on, and classes should be deeply different... Druids have a healing pet, but no one else does, Shaman's have self buffs that no one else has...
Not the EQ2 idea, that mystics have a healing pet, but Wardens also have a healing pet, everyone has a group cure and group heals, and everyone has similar buffs, and the same healing ability (whether their heals pop up first like Wards do, or last).
Everyone, needs to have an entirely different mechanic like WoW's monk chi pool vs rogue energy vs warrior rage vs death knight runes vs casters mana pool vs hunter's focus, and they all need to feel entirely different...
I don't see how any fun pve game can ever be "Balanced" for pvp, because they wouldn't have the same abilities to crowd control, due to how annoying that is to be perma stunned in pvp (Star Wars: The Old Republic), or just plain be chain control locked down by silence/stifles/daze/fear/root/frozen/incap/polymorphed/hexed/charmed/etc. like on WoW (Warlocks and Rogues etc).
In fact, in pvp there is no equality for healers as it is, because you stand there unable to control your character 90% of the time.
There have to be entirely different play mechanics, pve has to be challenging and dangerous again, there is no need for pvp to be mixed with pve, the pve content should have difficulty levels. They should scale zones to the number of members in your party, and the combined gear item level of what that party has. Zones shouldn't require 5 or 6 people (a party), they should scale accordingly to what you have, hence the game size would be huge, all solo zones could expand to raid zones, all content is doable by everyone, the gear would scale down in statistics depending on that difficulty level.
Instead of Avatars, and contested raids, it would be beneficial for the entire population to fight public quests together as a team, why let only 1% of a game do anything? The Arena of Gods on Everquest 2 is a great example, of letting more see Avatars.
The Public Raids were a great start that got abandoned... They need more variety in Tradeskill Recipes, more third-party program support for designing items via music programs and paintshop programs (and no, not for station cash), and to allow in-game cash to be exchanged for station cash (ala "Plex" on Eve Online). There should be no exclusive shop items, and every single item in the game should be earned or have a very high in-game cost or simply buyable in the shop. Players with time, should be able to acquire the exact same items from the market place, in a very long questline, as a player with money does. Players with skill, should be able to use a raid quest line instead of a solo questline to make up for lack of money or time.
Please, let soloists do long quest-lines for marketplace items, let groupers do shorters ones that are higher in difficulty and teamwork, and let raiders get them for the shortest time, but extremely hard challenging raids,and no dumbed down content. There can still be "raid only" loot, but please let the marketplace items be attainable for everyone. No more "exclusive mounts". They should be gated differently for challenge levels, but be the same mount... Statistic gear should be scaled down in stats (because soloists don't need to solo group encounter instances), but be available to them to earn.
Star Trek Online's Away Team and Star Wars: The Old Republic had the best idea with the npc companions, that allowed you to "solo" group encounter content. However, what we need is true scaling zones, not like The Shadow Oddysey, and requiring us to have the levels, they should scale from level 1 to max level. By limiting that from 85-90 for the best void shards, Sony limited who had a reason to do them. Those 50-85 zones were usually to hard for lowbies to do without a mentored down (hence overpowered) level 90 in group, and generally gave worthless gear that was out-leveled at level 85 (quickly replaced with level 85-90 TSO instance gear). Levels 1-49 never got any of those scaled zones, requiring everyone to be level 50, and they didn't get to attain void shards until level 85, forcing everyone to just power (speed) level to 85. Every level should be able to do content at different difficulty ranges, not only high levels... There should have been tokens for the below level 85's to earn as well..
Even on WoW, the below level 70's don't have tokens, they earn experience and gear upgrading bags, but the game doesn't "start" until level 70, because that's when you start earning Justice points in wrath and head into Valor points in mists of pandaria. Why bother being low level at all, when you're blocked from buying anything cool? That's another problem... Then there's pvp equipment, that is usually always overpowered, and pvp only rewards... Like on WoW everyone is usually in PVP equipment running PVE lfr raids and dungeons, how do you fix that? We should just have one set of equipment but, then those pvp players get bored without gear to "grind", and PVE raid gear is always overpowered... Blizzard does it right decreasing the PVE raid gear to the highest tier of PVP available, but at the same time, a lot of people find it easier to grind arenas for Conquest PVP gear and to wear PVP gear in PVE raids.. They have their broken Honor point system too, if EQNext had pvp like that, people would be getting creamed by people in superior gear all the time, just because they didn't "grind" arenas with a buddy and get carried... No way to turn honor points into conquest, no way to upgrade honor points gear past the limited ilvl allowed, easier to just stay in PVE ONLY servers!!
There's really just no way a company will ever get PVE and PVP right, when you think about it. We can't even fix gear discrepencies now. People would be buying advantages in marketplace item shops that are overpowering and 'exclusive'.
There would be raiders running rampant pwning people, and everything would most likely be overly homogenized boring nerfville... No way to exchange platinum for station cash? No way to exchange honor points for conquest? No way to win gear upgrades in Battlegrounds, because your team always loses practically 80% of the time? Now, we could use item level required checks, so at least every player in a battleground has the chance to win, and isn't facerolled, but there's really so many variables for developers to have to get correct in this PVP and PVE shared world. How you handle everything, from who can attack whom? I don't want to ever be attacked, I don't want my tamable beats to be in the "PVP" zone, I don't want my gathering nodes to be in a "PVP" zone, or any of the cool PVE quest content to be locked... I don't want spys and espionage going on across faction lines, or any amount of mass zerg gangs... Or the trash talk trolling in game channels, and all of the boring similarly redundant spell/abilities above all...
Then there's the 3D Axis PVP, there are things that need to be truly done, and done correctly, but if you combine PVP with PVE, there's not enough money and time to do them right. A true PVP game could incorporate everything correctly without PVE distracting it, and PVE games could concentrade on NPC AI, and fun crafting systems, without having to cater to fighting mechanic balancing every single 3 months. Those balance patches are a waste of developer's time. Keep our classes exactly as you launch them on release, and don't constantly change mechanics like Blizzard, imagine the content we could have? If we just continued our AA/Talent Trees, and didn't have to always nerf/rebalance every single game update?