What do you think? Can a sandbox actually work where pve and pvp players can both be happy? If so, is there any game where this actually happened, or is it only in theory?
I'd say that PVP and PVE coexist pretty well in Uncharted Waters Online. That's about as sandbox as you can get, as there are a ton of different activities without any implied order between them. Indeed, it's expected that most players will only pick some subset of the activities and skip a lot of other things entirely.
From the perspective of a PVE player, it's arguable that the open loot free for all PVP actually enhanced the PVE experience. You had to be on your toes in some parts of the world to avoid getting attacked and having stuff looted off of your ship. (What gets looted is determined randomly; you'd keep most of your gear but lose much of your cargo.)
But there are a few keys to making free for all PVP not greatly disrupt PVE. One of the most important was that, if you wanted to get away, you probably could. If you wanted to be a pirate, attack players, and win, you needed to be geared for it, with lots of cannons and a big crew. This meant you couldn't stay at sea for long, and your ship wouldn't be that fast. A ship built for speed rather than combat could and would outrun you if so inclined. The bulk of the game world had free for all PVP, but in the bulk of the world, you knew that the odds of getting attacked by a pirate were exceedingly slim.
It also helped that, if you were being chased by a pirate and you knew it, you could log off. Log off wasn't instant; you had to wait 15 seconds without any input (e.g., no turning your ship), but you could continue sailing at top speed during that 15 seconds. A pirate couldn't camp you very well if you did that, either, as when you logged in, you'd be moving at the same speed as when you logged off. You were also unattackable for 15 seconds after logging in, so if a pirate stopped where you logged off and sat there, when you logged back in, you'd quickly zip away and he wouldn't catch up.
Even if a pirate does catch you and start a battle, if you can get out of the combat circle before he catches you, you end combat and he can't re-attack you for quite a while. Such combat tended to be very asymmetric, as player A is trying to board and loot player B, while player B was just trying to run away. Lower level players weren't necessarily at a disadvantage here, as smaller ships accelerate faster, which is a huge deal when both ships start from a dead stop and you're racing to get out of a circle. It's not at all like games where, if a level 60 attacks a level 30, the latter can't do much besides die. The speed boost items in the item mall were inoperative in combat, so pirates couldn't catch you that way. I'd only get attacked about once per month or so, and usually got away with at worst some minor damage from a few cannon shots.
There were also heavy penalties for piracy. For starters, you had a bounty on your head, so anyone who catches and sinks you gets to take a bunch of money from you. Furthermore, while players who aren't pirates can hide from the list of players in the zone, pirates can't hide their presence. Most ports wouldn't let pirates enter without paying a heavy fee. Much of the world was safe zones where you couldn't be attacked by players, but pirates could be attacked anywhere.
If you've been a pirate for a while and wanted to not be a pirate, you had to get your notoriety below 1000, not just wait a few minutes for a flag to wear off. For comparison, your first successful attack on another player instantly sets your notoriety to 1500, and the cap was 100000. Notoriety decayed exponentially, but at a rate of 0.1% per minute. Pirates trying to come clean would sometimes sail around in remote areas for many hours hoping not to be found and sunk by someone seeking your bounty. So people couldn't launch a PVP attack, steal your stuff, and be back to normal inside of ten minutes.
I think a true sandbox has to be immersive in the sense that combat has meaning and you rarely ever fight meaningless fights. So Darkfall to me is not a complete sandbox. Mortal... I barely got out of the newbie zone in my 3-5 times of attempting that game.
SWG did it very well. You start off a neutral. As a neutral you have no reason to kill anything so you don't PvP. Pretty simple. You could talk to any Rebel or Stormtrooper and that's fine. Do you want to PvP? Join the Rebels or the Empire. Then as a Rebel, ALL Empire NPCs now KoS you. This includes freakin AT-STs. It also included ENTIRE towns that are Imperial owned. There were perks for joining either side, though. You had access to better stories and dungeons and you could gain faction specific gear...and your own AT-ST!
Now let's expand this system!
How about there are tons of factions in the game (there were in SWG as well). The game starts you as neutral. You're an herbalist and want to rake up all the plants for tea? Well the tree-hugger's faction will be angry with you unless you pay them or do a simple quest to plant an amount of plants you uprooted. You find smugglers and really dislike what they are doing so you take them out. Now smugglers will start to see you as an enemy unless you pay them off or help them smuggle things. All the while your favor with the World Police has risen since you've been taking out the smugglers. Do you want to be a tree-hugger? Join them! Do you want to be a smuggler? Join them! Do you want to be the Po-Po? Join Them! Obviously you may or may not be able to join them all and you must have certain favor before they'll accept you. As a smuggler, you'll PvP against the police. ETC.
If that makes sense, basically YOU control how the world sees you. YOU control whether you have enemies and a reason to fight and everyone can coexist in the same world. Immersion is retained.
I agree with people who said no. Games where PVE and PVP coexist in the same areas don't exist, PVE players don't want confrontation, PVP players do. The game that offer both, are forced to still split up the demographics, which means it's not coexistence.
PVE and PVP players want fundamentally different things and the communities are different. From my experience, PVP players seem less interested in the lore, world, and the PVE experience, and are more interested in player confrontation. PVP players seem more interested in individual power, while PVE players are often interested in supportive roles, where survivability is tied to another class.
Tying personal survivability to other classes, is something many PVP players have a fundamental issue with, even though it's a cornerstone of PVE group combat.
It's like water and fire, both don't mix and doing so anyway, usually results in PVE players just leaving the game.
I don't think that PVE and PVP players can peacefully play without any major issues unless there are some form of protection for players who have absolutely no interest. Like safe zones or something like that.
NO.......... PvE and PvP mix like oil and water.. One can not thrive at the expense of the other.. Too many PvE skills are deemed too unbalanced in a PvP world, so they always get nerfed.. By homogenizing all the PvE classes to be balanced you end up with boring gameplay.. IMO..
The problem with most PvP focused games is they cater to ganking. If a game developer created a realistic PvP game, I guarantee you hardcore PvP fanatics would hate it. What do I mean about realistic PvP? Full loot is already being done, so what I'm talking about is consequence. Most games don't give a counter to people being asshats. So that is why you get a lot of high level morons killing low level newbs.
The way Eve Online deals with this is the bounty system. However, people simply pod themselves once the bounty is high enough. I guess devs need to be more creative with battling the onslaught of clever thinking assholes. ArcheAge is on the right track with their Justice system and jail time, except they need to remove breaking out of jail. Then you would be getting closer to a realistic PvP system.
As of right now, PvPers have had it easy because there are no substantial consequences. If they could end up in jail for a very long time for their crimes, I bet they would cry like the carebears they complain about ruining their games. Seriously, most PvPers have no friggin clue how easy it is for them and game developers aren't helping to change that.
Make a game like ArcheAge, remove the stupid cash shop items it has. Force carefree murderers to pay for their consequences if they get caught and you might see a game where PvE and PvP can exist. Until then, it's nothing more than a silly gankfest by kids who get their rocks off behind the anonymity of their computers.
Agreed on the gank aspect. I think developers expect gank drive to improve their game numbers because blob wins and in the short term it does. Very short term.
EVE has Concord and High Sec. If they removed those, I give EVE 6 months. It also has a teleport type escape system that can zoom you to immunity level platforms called stations. It did better than most MMO's because of what it is. Something else EVE doe not have that is key to the success of it. It does not have 'World Chat' and does not allow people to see 99.9% of the population at any given time.
Put NPC guards in a land based game that spawn on site inside 2 to 20 seconds, insure the death of a criminal like player, make the map visual only with no radar, make it impossible to control large areas, even lawless areas and give unlimited storage for replacement gear and you duplicate EVE.
My next great hope is Black Desert Online and I have a few ideas I think they could make work in addition to the above but they, like EVE will need to deal with a few years of RMT trying to drag the game to the bank and like EVE they need to be willing to grow slow. People who played EVE 2 or 3 years in knew what the game was. There were times when less than 5K people were there and there were huge area's where you saw nobody and in EVE? That was a good thing.
Can the two happen? Yes but I don't see it happening. No MMO has the resources to make a map the size it would need to be to allow PvP and PvE people to think they are in the same game when in truth they are so far apart in real time travel they might as well be in another game.
Originally posted by d_20What are the things about this game that make it work as well as it has been over the years? Why have other developers seemingly failed to learn from EVE's success? [I have tried EVE, only briefly, but I can't get into it -- I guess I need an avatar. But I've heard great things about EVE.]
1) The game being about spaceships and sandbox, aka horizontal design, complex (combat) mechanics, complex PVP rule sets and heavy zoning.
2) Most of EVE's complexity is difficult to transfer into on-land environment - ie. you would aim for seamless world rather than granulite structure of EVE Online, chance to hit being determined by movement vector and velocity would not work with melee combat, etc.
But most importantly - there is no point trying to do what EVE does. It does not get you more money and tools that would provide gameplay appealing to masses are very difficult to implement as pointed out above.
I have to agree with an earlier poster that sandbox has become very poorly defined today. The very term used, sandbox, should give the meaning away, but, sadly, it doesn't. It should mean any game in which one defines his / her own adventure and whose actions have an impact on the game world or community. When playing in a sandbox as a kid, it didn't reset back to the blank slate it was when we started playing. The sandcastles we built were there for the next kid to destroy or build up as they chose. There wasn't a separate sandbox for sandcastles, tall kids, short kids, girls, boys, and bullies. There was no right or wrong way to play in sand. You did or made what you wanted from sandcastles, to mudpies, to roads for matchbox cars.
So, can PvP and PvE coexist in a sandbox game? I think that in a true sandbox, they must coexist. I despise open-world PvP, but in a sandbox, it's the community that matters, not the content. When you start restricting freedoms too much, you get away from sandbox, and move closer to the themepark side of things. Nothing wrong with that, mind you. There are some great themepark games out there, but a sandbox should be as open and as pure as possible. That said, we need rules so that it doesn't become a cesspool of angry 14 year olds that all want to rape my mother. I think SWG struck a very good balance with the covert / overt system. Rewards offered encouraged one to flag up, not some silly imposed server ruleset.
Originally posted by wanderica So, can PvP and PvE coexist in a sandbox game? I think that in a true sandbox, they must coexist. I despise open-world PvP, but in a sandbox, it's the community that matters, not the content. When you start restricting freedoms too much, you get away from sandbox, and move closer to the themepark side of things. Nothing wrong with that, mind you.
It is funny how you nods to sandbox term being misused and then you misuse it yourself.
Also, you mistake freedom for "do whatever I want" = sandbox.
And most open-world PVP MMO fail to add risk on PK . IMO
You PK someone who can't fight back and get away with nearly no risk ? ***** *** ****
Say here , the PK get fun when PK other , but what other get when PKK them ?
That's matter of risk and reward and mindful PVP
PVP is endless until the people who get PK tired and give up on game .
They can't just kill off the PK to the point trip all of his things and leave him penniless , because the gameplay favorite the PK and not the prey .
That's why open world PVP as it is implemented in most games can't mix with PVE very well. But it doesn't mean that it can't work if there are heavy penalties to attacking random players who aren't flagged for it. Look at what I outlined in Uncharted Waters Online, for example.
1) There is no non-consensual PVP on land. At all. Ever. This is important because most of what is done at sea is just traveling from this place on land to that place on land.
2) Part of the world is permanent safe waters where you can't be attacked in PVP unless you're a pirate. Some of the rest is also temporary safe waters for a week at a time.
3) If you attack and sink or successfully board another player, you're flagged as a pirate for several hours. Subsequent successful attacks add to that. Your "notoriety" only diminishes when you're at sea, available for others to attack--not when you're on land or offline. And if you're a pirate, people can attack you and earn a bounty, and not get the usual penalties for PVP.
4) If you're a pirate and you get attacked and lose a battle, you can't attack someone else in PVP for a number of hours--sometimes as long as 24 hours. But you can still be attacked in that time.
5) If you're a pirate and you get defeated in a PVP battle, not only can you be looted as normal, but you also have to pay a bounty to whoever just beat you. Higher notoriety means a bigger bounty, and it can run into the millions of ducats. If you don't have the money, it will take from your bank account to pay. If you don't have the money in the bank, it will start selling items from your bank storage to pay. If you didn't plan ahead or lose more battles than you were prepared for, this can really be devastating, as items that you really wanted to keep can get vendored to pay your bounty.
That's hardly the sort of "gank someone who had no chance to fight back then be safe yourself within minutes" PVP that causes PVE players to quit in a hurry. That's heavy consequences, which is why there aren't very many player pirates. Many of those who do like to be pirates sometimes are only intermittently pirates, as staying a pirate for long can get expensive.
That's why open world PVP as it is implemented in most games can't mix with PVE very well. But it doesn't mean that it can't work if there are heavy penalties to attacking random players who aren't flagged for it. Look at what I outlined in Uncharted Waters Online, for example.
But why bother? 100% consensual pvp solves the issue.
And most open-world PVP MMO fail to add risk on PK . IMO
You PK someone who can't fight back and get away with nearly no risk ? ***** *** ****
Ect ect .....
They can't just kill off the PK to the point trip all of his things and leave him penniless , because the gameplay favorite the PK and not the prey .
That's why open world PVP as it is implemented in most games can't mix with PVE very well. But it doesn't mean that it can't work if there are heavy penalties to attacking random players who aren't flagged for it. Look at what I outlined in Uncharted Waters Online, for example.
1) 2) 3) 4) 5)
That's hardly the sort of "gank someone who had no chance to fight back then be safe yourself within minutes" PVP that causes PVE players to quit in a hurry. That's heavy consequences, which is why there aren't very many player pirates. Many of those who do like to be pirates sometimes are only intermittently pirates, as staying a pirate for long can get expensive.
Your example are good example that show PVE and PVP can co-exist without PVP turn in to no honor full PK.
While PVP normally can co-exist with PVE , PK is problem that ruin it.
So by add more restriction and risk make PK last option to chose , and player have to think before chose to walk in that way .
PK should exist , but it must be last option to chose.
Do that . PVP and PVE can co-exist .
Tell the true , i prefer to play as PKK , because it more challenge to hunt down predators instead of sheep .
But PKK normally don't get support by the gameplay.
Originally posted by Bladestrom Lol all consensual pvp is 100% consensual the issue is where a game provides an environment where there is non consensual pvp.
Wait I thought high end raiding was high form PvPer. Being the first guild to plant your flag on that new raid boss. The level of organization and skill to reach that point, well I think it's silly that you don't recognize it.
What about all those crafters. They spend A LOT of time trying to out compete others trying to find the cheapest way to get materials and customers.
Have you seen what people who write guides put themselves through. They go through TONNES of effort to find that one nugget of information, that 1% advantage, or whatever else. Just to out do their competition and get a few more hits. The spats/arguments that happen within that group makes it incredibly obvious to me that those people are also playing a different game full of PvPer.
Hmmm and then there's guild leaders. They have a whole different meta game with the community and other guild leaders.
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Stop defining PvPer as "PvPer that I like". Every MMO has some form of PvPer in it, even if you don't recognize it.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
Sandboxes are about competition for resources, and thats only possible if you mix pvp and pve. Alot of ppl say they cant be mixed because they have only played themeparks, but its esential for a healthy game economy to have full loot/durability as well, so theres constant demand for new items. If anyone can just farm any resource while having pvp off, then that resource wont have any value. This kind of games might be hardcore and not for everyone, but it definetly can be done and adds alot of depth to a game if done right.
That depends on what you mean by "co exist", and by "sand box". If by sand box, you mean the typical full loot gankfest, so beloved of Goonies and other such, I'd say no.
EVE is a special case. I spent almost six years in the game. I watched as CCP evolved Concord and the high sec ROE, to protect their business model.
Even as pro PvP as CCP is, they knew that with more than half of their player base being high sec Care Bears, they needed to change how things once worked.
In the absence of such, I'd say that co existence is simply not possible, in the modern western markets.
Pretty much. One will always keep the other from enjoying the game the way they want to. In the full loot gankfests that Wraith's talking about at least.
All in all I don't have much faith in a sandbox game that appeals strongly to both sides, since they're pretty much opposites. It's why the "old school" MMOs never really took off.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
The best I've seen was Lineage 2. When red names were running around it would be shouted out in chat to give players doing quests a chance to head to town or another area to grind. You had blessed scrolls that could instantly transport you to town. So as a PVE'er you could actually solo level most of the time in the game. But I can't think of a single game I've played in which the forums weren't filled with threads from PVP'ers who couldn't kill players because their was a way for them to instantly get away or avoid death. Also having a red name and fear of dropping your gear if caught and killed kept things under control for the most part.
In SWG there was a big uproar about feign death. PVP'ers hated it because the player would just lay there and couldn't be killed. Even though it was pointed out that it was a temporary skill that had to be dropped at some point in order to fully fill a Jedi's skill tree.
Then they complained because Jedi would never leave their houses. So the Devs forced the Jedi to be ejected from their homes if they used a force power.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
The game has to be designed to make both groups dependant on each others. As some others have said, if you want to play FPS go play FPS. You don't need a half-baked and watered down RPG as a tutorial for that.
I also believe there has to be some form of PvP in any MMORPG, and PvP has to have some purpose other than gain honor or tokens you spend for your personal gear. PVP mechanics should be designed to prevent mindless zerging, so if you kill civilians and non-combat oriented players and get hunted down you won't be back in 5 mins and start it all over. Full loot is a bit too harsh, but a chance to lose something would be a reasonable penalty for dying in PvP.
The biggest mistake in most MMOs is to keep PvP and PvE apart from each others. They are like two different games in one package. At worst a player has to pass a very easy and mind numbing set of scripted quests and chores with voice-overed cut-scenes before he can join to the part he bought the game for and what he enjoys. Think about if you were a modern MMO lover who enjoys story-driven questing and dungeons, but you wouldn't be able to do that until you gain rank 50 in PvP battle arena. How many would be playing that for even a one week?
If you design a game with both PvE and PvP, make sure they are connected to each others. You shouldn't be able to even participate in PvP until you've gotten your weapons and armors by doing PvE. In return, PvE players should need the protection of PvP players, who keep the enemy far away from their home lands and secure the sites with important resources.
Originally posted by Distopia As others have said SWG...
Flagged OW, even throw in some FFA OW lawless or wilderness areas. It isn't just about the two way division of PvP and PvE drive either. In SWG I would flag up because I knew there was no gray area about who I was attacking while in PvP mode. What kills pure FFA for me isn't the fear of losing in PvP it's the hesitation from the possibility I might be pissing in someones cornflakes that just wants to gather some ore or hides.
SWG was one of the very few games where I felt 100% good about PvP.
Originally posted by Distopia As others have said SWG...
Flagged OW, even throw in some FFA OW lawless or wilderness areas. It isn't just about the two way division of PvP and PvE drive either. In SWG I would flag up because I knew there was no gray area about who I was attacking while in PvP mode. What kills pure FFA for me isn't the fear of losing in PvP it's the hesitation from the possibility I might be pissing in someones cornflakes that just wants to gather some ore or hides.
SWG was one of the very few games where I felt 100% good about PvP.
Agreed.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Comments
I'd say that PVP and PVE coexist pretty well in Uncharted Waters Online. That's about as sandbox as you can get, as there are a ton of different activities without any implied order between them. Indeed, it's expected that most players will only pick some subset of the activities and skip a lot of other things entirely.
From the perspective of a PVE player, it's arguable that the open loot free for all PVP actually enhanced the PVE experience. You had to be on your toes in some parts of the world to avoid getting attacked and having stuff looted off of your ship. (What gets looted is determined randomly; you'd keep most of your gear but lose much of your cargo.)
But there are a few keys to making free for all PVP not greatly disrupt PVE. One of the most important was that, if you wanted to get away, you probably could. If you wanted to be a pirate, attack players, and win, you needed to be geared for it, with lots of cannons and a big crew. This meant you couldn't stay at sea for long, and your ship wouldn't be that fast. A ship built for speed rather than combat could and would outrun you if so inclined. The bulk of the game world had free for all PVP, but in the bulk of the world, you knew that the odds of getting attacked by a pirate were exceedingly slim.
It also helped that, if you were being chased by a pirate and you knew it, you could log off. Log off wasn't instant; you had to wait 15 seconds without any input (e.g., no turning your ship), but you could continue sailing at top speed during that 15 seconds. A pirate couldn't camp you very well if you did that, either, as when you logged in, you'd be moving at the same speed as when you logged off. You were also unattackable for 15 seconds after logging in, so if a pirate stopped where you logged off and sat there, when you logged back in, you'd quickly zip away and he wouldn't catch up.
Even if a pirate does catch you and start a battle, if you can get out of the combat circle before he catches you, you end combat and he can't re-attack you for quite a while. Such combat tended to be very asymmetric, as player A is trying to board and loot player B, while player B was just trying to run away. Lower level players weren't necessarily at a disadvantage here, as smaller ships accelerate faster, which is a huge deal when both ships start from a dead stop and you're racing to get out of a circle. It's not at all like games where, if a level 60 attacks a level 30, the latter can't do much besides die. The speed boost items in the item mall were inoperative in combat, so pirates couldn't catch you that way. I'd only get attacked about once per month or so, and usually got away with at worst some minor damage from a few cannon shots.
There were also heavy penalties for piracy. For starters, you had a bounty on your head, so anyone who catches and sinks you gets to take a bunch of money from you. Furthermore, while players who aren't pirates can hide from the list of players in the zone, pirates can't hide their presence. Most ports wouldn't let pirates enter without paying a heavy fee. Much of the world was safe zones where you couldn't be attacked by players, but pirates could be attacked anywhere.
If you've been a pirate for a while and wanted to not be a pirate, you had to get your notoriety below 1000, not just wait a few minutes for a flag to wear off. For comparison, your first successful attack on another player instantly sets your notoriety to 1500, and the cap was 100000. Notoriety decayed exponentially, but at a rate of 0.1% per minute. Pirates trying to come clean would sometimes sail around in remote areas for many hours hoping not to be found and sunk by someone seeking your bounty. So people couldn't launch a PVP attack, steal your stuff, and be back to normal inside of ten minutes.
I think a true sandbox has to be immersive in the sense that combat has meaning and you rarely ever fight meaningless fights. So Darkfall to me is not a complete sandbox. Mortal... I barely got out of the newbie zone in my 3-5 times of attempting that game.
SWG did it very well. You start off a neutral. As a neutral you have no reason to kill anything so you don't PvP. Pretty simple. You could talk to any Rebel or Stormtrooper and that's fine. Do you want to PvP? Join the Rebels or the Empire. Then as a Rebel, ALL Empire NPCs now KoS you. This includes freakin AT-STs. It also included ENTIRE towns that are Imperial owned. There were perks for joining either side, though. You had access to better stories and dungeons and you could gain faction specific gear...and your own AT-ST!
Now let's expand this system!
How about there are tons of factions in the game (there were in SWG as well). The game starts you as neutral. You're an herbalist and want to rake up all the plants for tea? Well the tree-hugger's faction will be angry with you unless you pay them or do a simple quest to plant an amount of plants you uprooted. You find smugglers and really dislike what they are doing so you take them out. Now smugglers will start to see you as an enemy unless you pay them off or help them smuggle things. All the while your favor with the World Police has risen since you've been taking out the smugglers. Do you want to be a tree-hugger? Join them! Do you want to be a smuggler? Join them! Do you want to be the Po-Po? Join Them! Obviously you may or may not be able to join them all and you must have certain favor before they'll accept you. As a smuggler, you'll PvP against the police. ETC.
If that makes sense, basically YOU control how the world sees you. YOU control whether you have enemies and a reason to fight and everyone can coexist in the same world. Immersion is retained.
I agree with people who said no. Games where PVE and PVP coexist in the same areas don't exist, PVE players don't want confrontation, PVP players do. The game that offer both, are forced to still split up the demographics, which means it's not coexistence.
PVE and PVP players want fundamentally different things and the communities are different. From my experience, PVP players seem less interested in the lore, world, and the PVE experience, and are more interested in player confrontation. PVP players seem more interested in individual power, while PVE players are often interested in supportive roles, where survivability is tied to another class.
Tying personal survivability to other classes, is something many PVP players have a fundamental issue with, even though it's a cornerstone of PVE group combat.
It's like water and fire, both don't mix and doing so anyway, usually results in PVE players just leaving the game.
Agreed on the gank aspect. I think developers expect gank drive to improve their game numbers because blob wins and in the short term it does. Very short term.
EVE has Concord and High Sec. If they removed those, I give EVE 6 months. It also has a teleport type escape system that can zoom you to immunity level platforms called stations. It did better than most MMO's because of what it is. Something else EVE doe not have that is key to the success of it. It does not have 'World Chat' and does not allow people to see 99.9% of the population at any given time.
Put NPC guards in a land based game that spawn on site inside 2 to 20 seconds, insure the death of a criminal like player, make the map visual only with no radar, make it impossible to control large areas, even lawless areas and give unlimited storage for replacement gear and you duplicate EVE.
My next great hope is Black Desert Online and I have a few ideas I think they could make work in addition to the above but they, like EVE will need to deal with a few years of RMT trying to drag the game to the bank and like EVE they need to be willing to grow slow. People who played EVE 2 or 3 years in knew what the game was. There were times when less than 5K people were there and there were huge area's where you saw nobody and in EVE? That was a good thing.
Can the two happen? Yes but I don't see it happening. No MMO has the resources to make a map the size it would need to be to allow PvP and PvE people to think they are in the same game when in truth they are so far apart in real time travel they might as well be in another game.
1) The game being about spaceships and sandbox, aka horizontal design, complex (combat) mechanics, complex PVP rule sets and heavy zoning.
2) Most of EVE's complexity is difficult to transfer into on-land environment - ie. you would aim for seamless world rather than granulite structure of EVE Online, chance to hit being determined by movement vector and velocity would not work with melee combat, etc.
But most importantly - there is no point trying to do what EVE does. It does not get you more money and tools that would provide gameplay appealing to masses are very difficult to implement as pointed out above.
I have to agree with an earlier poster that sandbox has become very poorly defined today. The very term used, sandbox, should give the meaning away, but, sadly, it doesn't. It should mean any game in which one defines his / her own adventure and whose actions have an impact on the game world or community. When playing in a sandbox as a kid, it didn't reset back to the blank slate it was when we started playing. The sandcastles we built were there for the next kid to destroy or build up as they chose. There wasn't a separate sandbox for sandcastles, tall kids, short kids, girls, boys, and bullies. There was no right or wrong way to play in sand. You did or made what you wanted from sandcastles, to mudpies, to roads for matchbox cars.
So, can PvP and PvE coexist in a sandbox game? I think that in a true sandbox, they must coexist. I despise open-world PvP, but in a sandbox, it's the community that matters, not the content. When you start restricting freedoms too much, you get away from sandbox, and move closer to the themepark side of things. Nothing wrong with that, mind you. There are some great themepark games out there, but a sandbox should be as open and as pure as possible. That said, we need rules so that it doesn't become a cesspool of angry 14 year olds that all want to rape my mother. I think SWG struck a very good balance with the covert / overt system. Rewards offered encouraged one to flag up, not some silly imposed server ruleset.
It is funny how you nods to sandbox term being misused and then you misuse it yourself.
Also, you mistake freedom for "do whatever I want" = sandbox.
They can . But you have to make clean between risk and reward .
And make clean line between pure PVE , PVE with PVP option and pure PVP .
Most game developers fail to make the clean line , but it don't mean the line don't exit .
And most open-world PVP MMO fail to add risk on PK . IMO
You PK someone who can't fight back and get away with nearly no risk ? ***** *** ****
Say here , the PK get fun when PK other , but what other get when PKK them ?
That's matter of risk and reward and mindful PVP
PVP is endless until the people who get PK tired and give up on game .
They can't just kill off the PK to the point trip all of his things and leave him penniless , because the gameplay favorite the PK and not the prey .
Open world PK (they call themselves PVPer) are all carebears .
Ironic that they call PVE players carebear but they are more heavy carebear than PVE players.
PVE and PVP can only co-exist if the game have PK option but the players have to think twice before chose to walk on PK way .
nah .. it has been shown you need to segment players with different game modes to make them happy.
Heck, WoW actually had to take out world pvp zones.
That's why open world PVP as it is implemented in most games can't mix with PVE very well. But it doesn't mean that it can't work if there are heavy penalties to attacking random players who aren't flagged for it. Look at what I outlined in Uncharted Waters Online, for example.
1) There is no non-consensual PVP on land. At all. Ever. This is important because most of what is done at sea is just traveling from this place on land to that place on land.
2) Part of the world is permanent safe waters where you can't be attacked in PVP unless you're a pirate. Some of the rest is also temporary safe waters for a week at a time.
3) If you attack and sink or successfully board another player, you're flagged as a pirate for several hours. Subsequent successful attacks add to that. Your "notoriety" only diminishes when you're at sea, available for others to attack--not when you're on land or offline. And if you're a pirate, people can attack you and earn a bounty, and not get the usual penalties for PVP.
4) If you're a pirate and you get attacked and lose a battle, you can't attack someone else in PVP for a number of hours--sometimes as long as 24 hours. But you can still be attacked in that time.
5) If you're a pirate and you get defeated in a PVP battle, not only can you be looted as normal, but you also have to pay a bounty to whoever just beat you. Higher notoriety means a bigger bounty, and it can run into the millions of ducats. If you don't have the money, it will take from your bank account to pay. If you don't have the money in the bank, it will start selling items from your bank storage to pay. If you didn't plan ahead or lose more battles than you were prepared for, this can really be devastating, as items that you really wanted to keep can get vendored to pay your bounty.
That's hardly the sort of "gank someone who had no chance to fight back then be safe yourself within minutes" PVP that causes PVE players to quit in a hurry. That's heavy consequences, which is why there aren't very many player pirates. Many of those who do like to be pirates sometimes are only intermittently pirates, as staying a pirate for long can get expensive.
But why bother? 100% consensual pvp solves the issue.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
Your example are good example that show PVE and PVP can co-exist without PVP turn in to no honor full PK.
While PVP normally can co-exist with PVE , PK is problem that ruin it.
So by add more restriction and risk make PK last option to chose , and player have to think before chose to walk in that way .
PK should exist , but it must be last option to chose.
Do that . PVP and PVE can co-exist .
Tell the true , i prefer to play as PKK , because it more challenge to hunt down predators instead of sheep .
But PKK normally don't get support by the gameplay.
Don't provide such a game .. problem solved.
Wait I thought high end raiding was high form PvPer. Being the first guild to plant your flag on that new raid boss. The level of organization and skill to reach that point, well I think it's silly that you don't recognize it.
What about all those crafters. They spend A LOT of time trying to out compete others trying to find the cheapest way to get materials and customers.
Have you seen what people who write guides put themselves through. They go through TONNES of effort to find that one nugget of information, that 1% advantage, or whatever else. Just to out do their competition and get a few more hits. The spats/arguments that happen within that group makes it incredibly obvious to me that those people are also playing a different game full of PvPer.
Hmmm and then there's guild leaders. They have a whole different meta game with the community and other guild leaders.
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Stop defining PvPer as "PvPer that I like". Every MMO has some form of PvPer in it, even if you don't recognize it.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
Pretty much. One will always keep the other from enjoying the game the way they want to. In the full loot gankfests that Wraith's talking about at least.
All in all I don't have much faith in a sandbox game that appeals strongly to both sides, since they're pretty much opposites. It's why the "old school" MMOs never really took off.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
In SWG there was a big uproar about feign death. PVP'ers hated it because the player would just lay there and couldn't be killed. Even though it was pointed out that it was a temporary skill that had to be dropped at some point in order to fully fill a Jedi's skill tree.
Then they complained because Jedi would never leave their houses. So the Devs forced the Jedi to be ejected from their homes if they used a force power.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
The game has to be designed to make both groups dependant on each others. As some others have said, if you want to play FPS go play FPS. You don't need a half-baked and watered down RPG as a tutorial for that.
I also believe there has to be some form of PvP in any MMORPG, and PvP has to have some purpose other than gain honor or tokens you spend for your personal gear. PVP mechanics should be designed to prevent mindless zerging, so if you kill civilians and non-combat oriented players and get hunted down you won't be back in 5 mins and start it all over. Full loot is a bit too harsh, but a chance to lose something would be a reasonable penalty for dying in PvP.
The biggest mistake in most MMOs is to keep PvP and PvE apart from each others. They are like two different games in one package. At worst a player has to pass a very easy and mind numbing set of scripted quests and chores with voice-overed cut-scenes before he can join to the part he bought the game for and what he enjoys. Think about if you were a modern MMO lover who enjoys story-driven questing and dungeons, but you wouldn't be able to do that until you gain rank 50 in PvP battle arena. How many would be playing that for even a one week?
If you design a game with both PvE and PvP, make sure they are connected to each others. You shouldn't be able to even participate in PvP until you've gotten your weapons and armors by doing PvE. In return, PvE players should need the protection of PvP players, who keep the enemy far away from their home lands and secure the sites with important resources.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Flagged OW, even throw in some FFA OW lawless or wilderness areas. It isn't just about the two way division of PvP and PvE drive either. In SWG I would flag up because I knew there was no gray area about who I was attacking while in PvP mode. What kills pure FFA for me isn't the fear of losing in PvP it's the hesitation from the possibility I might be pissing in someones cornflakes that just wants to gather some ore or hides.
SWG was one of the very few games where I felt 100% good about PvP.
Agreed.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson