Open world full-loot PVP a must for all "sandboxes"

d_20

It's my most click-bait title ever. But seriously, I was reading about Wild Terra and thought about this old issue again. What's the argument in favor of this?

A "sandbox" is about freedom. Therefore, players should have the freedom to kill other players (and loot them because risk v reward).

Another argument is: Players should create the content, which is fighting each other (or cooperating with friends to fight others and take their stuff). 

But as far as I have seen, since the old days of UO, these games just don't survive (except for the anomaly of EVE). They become niche because the predators chase away the sheep and the people who don't have friends or a guild who wants to play this type of game. The population keeps shrinking from there. (This comes from my personal experience of two years playing Darkfall. I also played Mortal Online for several months shortly after it launched.)

I know variations of this discussion have appeared in these forums many times. Here, I want to focus on some specific questions:

• Am I missing any of the arguments in favor or why ffaowpvp is a must in "sandboxes" besides what I wrote above?  
• Are there any games that have survived and thrived on this model in the past 10 years besides EVE?
• How will this even work in the era of cash shops (because p2w seems inevitable in this type of game, especially as the population starts dropping and the devs try to squeeze what they can before the end)?
• Are there are pve-only or consensual-pvp "sandboxes" around or planned? Are they feasible as "sandboxes"? 

bcbully

"A "sandbox" is about freedom. Therefore, players should have the freedom to kill other players (and loot them because risk v reward)."

You nailed it. There should be jails and such too.

bcbully

Full loot is not necessary. Heck im not a fan of it. There needs to be something lost and something gained though. Or the potential of something lost and something gained.

azurrei

bcbully said:

"A "sandbox" is about freedom. Therefore, players should have the freedom to kill other players (and loot them because risk v reward)."

You nailed it. There should be jails and such too.

So what you are saying is that if the developer is going for an extremely limited, niche audience - they can go full "sandbox."  If they actually want to be of any relevance beyond that small niche, it needs to be a "limited sandbox" - got it ... and I think most developers understand that too...

bcbully

azurrei said:

bcbully said:

"A "sandbox" is about freedom. Therefore, players should have the freedom to kill other players (and loot them because risk v reward)."

You nailed it. There should be jails and such too.

So what you are saying is that if the developer is going for an extremely limited, niche audience - they can go full "sandbox."  If they actually want to be of any relevance beyond that small niche, it needs to be a "limited sandbox" - got it ... and I think most developers understand that too...

same old argument. Hows landmark working for you? 

Gruug

I don't mind PvP in a game but if there are no consequences for just killing other players then I am out. You kill someone and get caught, you go to jail (or worse). You run the risk of being caught when entering NPC towns and so on. Otherwise, PvP is nothing but one sided murder.

rvhausen

Depends on how long it takes to acquire whatever you risk losing.  It's less about being "sheep" than the game becoming tedious and frustrating.

azurrei

bcbully said:

azurrei said:

bcbully said:

"A "sandbox" is about freedom. Therefore, players should have the freedom to kill other players (and loot them because risk v reward)."

You nailed it. There should be jails and such too.

So what you are saying is that if the developer is going for an extremely limited, niche audience - they can go full "sandbox."  If they actually want to be of any relevance beyond that small niche, it needs to be a "limited sandbox" - got it ... and I think most developers understand that too...

same old argument. Hows landmark working for you? 

Being a niche isn't a bad thing by the way - well, I guess it could be a bad thing if a company is actually trying to turn a profit on extremely expensive and time consuming game development like an MMORPG.  Different server types would be the only way it would be viable in most circumstances, no?  No matter the MMO, I will always be a strong advocate of player choice.

rvhausen

rvhausen said:

tedious and frustrating.

Oops, think I just described the end-game of most mmo's

Xatsh

If a game was actually designed the ground up for this then I can see it maby working.

But the stuff, gear, weapons, money , and so on would have to be extremely easy to get (<1hr to get all your gear) and have little effect on the PvP itself (can't be like archeage and full loot... or the people on top will just be gods while everyone else is running around naked). Can't have stuff that require a commitment of time to obtain if someone or a group of people can gank you and take literally 20-100hrs of your work.

I personally would never play it. I play mmos for progression of yourself and guild.

PvP is good, full loot pvp though would be a game breaking aspect and would make it where I walk the other way. But I can see a small audience that would probably enjoy it.

Keller

On Day 1 with a healthy population you're totally right. On Day Y the hype sheep have left the game and the die-hard "wolves"  are left. On Day Z the wolves found out there are better pvp-ers out there and have left too, because they got their asses handed to them.

EVE survived these years, because there are other things to do then kill each other. The universe is a big place, you can find a quiet spot to do your own thing. Plus the monitored zones are a nice example vs reward. Kill some one in high sec and the space police will demolish your ship.

hayes303

As "sandbox" is a fan-made term, it doesn't really have a formal definition. You are 100 % right, even setting aside the hordes of griefers who farm new players (lets call them "revenue") like a resource, any established ffa pvp game has a retarded steep power curve for a new player who doesn't have a guild full of friends.

I don't know if there is a good balance to be struck. There is another chalk of these games coming out and it will be interesting to see if they can do better than Mortal Online, Darkfall, or Cash Shop online (Archage). I suspect that the model itself is untenable, as the existing players form guilds, alliances, gain power, experience and resources, the delta for new players gets larger and larger. Attrition of the older player base sets in as they get bored, and no new players join due to the violent, endless stream of savage beatings they receive.

H0urg1ass

People who don't play EVE don't understand why FFAOWPVP works there and fails to work in other games. Let me break down the differences.

• EVE Online is a space based game where the travel distances are enormous, ships can move those distances very quickly and they can't be intercepted mid-travel and forced to fight.
• EVE Online gives a player numerous ways to avoid PVP.  You can scout with an alt, you can cloak your ship, you can fly extremely fast ships that are difficult to catch, you can use all kinds of ECM to disrupt enemy players from being able to lock onto your ship... and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
• In order to fight another player, you have to first lock onto their ship.  Larger ships take longer to lock onto smaller ships and smaller ships lock onto larger ships much quicker.  Therefore that battleship waiting for you on the gate will never catch your cruiser in a million years before you warp off.
• There are only small handful of ways to stop a ship from getting away if you do manage to lock onto them.  You can warp disrupt them and warp scramble them, and that's the only things that a ship can do.  There are also deployable bubbles which will stop most ships from warping, but yet again, those are easy to scout for, especially in ships that ignore warp bubbles.
• Ships can create bookmarks in space while they are flying.  This allows them to fly back to those bookmarks and remain completely safe from enemy ships unless those enemy ships have probe lauchers to scan you down.  In which case, you simply engage your cloaking device.

In games that do not use the infinite universe as their setting, the majority of these things are not possible.  In fact, in games like Darkfall, the aggressor has most of the advantages, not the defender.  There's no bookmarks that you can warp to.  No locking mechanism that allows a faster character to run off... ect.  

In order for FFAOWPVP to work, the player who is not looking to fight needs to feel as if they have some advantages.  If all of the advantages are in the attackers ballcourt, then the game will crush under the weight of the gankers who don't care about your crafting empire and your desire to simply move some steel ingots from one city to another.

The defender needs to win more than the attacker simply for the economy to survive.  If the defenders are completely on their back heels all the time, then the game isn't fun for them anymore and they will leave.

Xiaoki

bcbully said:

azurrei said:

bcbully said:

"A "sandbox" is about freedom. Therefore, players should have the freedom to kill other players (and loot them because risk v reward)."

You nailed it. There should be jails and such too.

So what you are saying is that if the developer is going for an extremely limited, niche audience - they can go full "sandbox."  If they actually want to be of any relevance beyond that small niche, it needs to be a "limited sandbox" - got it ... and I think most developers understand that too...

same old argument. Hows landmark working for you? 

Same old response. How's Minecraft working for you?

Loke666

Is full loot really risk Vs reward?

Because usually in games with that you get a larger hunting parties attacking smaller groups and loners which will give those players maximum loot an hour for relatively little risk. The real risk is taken by loners and small groups and their reward does not measure up.

I think the real problem is there, in PvE it is rather easy to balance the loot to how hard challenge the players face.

There possibly solutions, you could skip the player loot, you could make a formula that only makes players drop stuff if they were beaten by an equal or lower threat, you could "lock" combat like many old PvE games did or something similar.

FFA full loot PvP games with more gear then "Doom" will never become popular. Eve BTW  is faction based which have way higher potential then FFA. You will need to tweak the formula to get more players.

Horusra

You could fix full looting by using strict rules on how much you can carry.  You want to carry around 2 sets of platemail...have fun cause you are not going to move very fast.

d_20

Horusra said:

You could fix full looting by using strict rules on how much you can carry.  You want to carry around 2 sets of platemail...have fun cause you are not going to move very fast.

True enough. I wore a chainmail shirt once at a medieval fair and I can tell you there would no swimming with that on. Forget about the great sword and battleaxe.

Wizardry

Two very important points missed.

1 Freedom,well what about the OTHER player in that 2 player equation,what if his wish is to NOT be attacked,where is his freedom to do as he wants?What if he just wants to go out harvesting?
2 Risk??What if player 2 is far inferior to player 1 ,where is the risk?The ONLY risk would be for player 2 and that only risk would be the simple task of login because any higher tier player would kill him.

Two very obvious points that i cannot believe anyone misses,yet once again,i feel so many gamer's really just don't ..."get it".

d_20

Wizardry said:

Two very obvious points that i cannot believe anyone misses,yet once again,i feel so many gamer's really just don't ..."get it".

You bring valid points to the discussion, but I don't know why you feel that you need to add this bit. 

Keller

d_20 said:

Wizardry said:

Two very obvious points that i cannot believe anyone misses,yet once again,i feel so many gamer's really just don't ..."get it".

You bring valid points to the discussion, but I don't know why you feel that you need to add this bit. 

FFA World PVP is not restricted to ingame only , now if they only would add full loot.

rounner

This has been argued for 10 years on this site with the same arguments. Little has changed in terms of games dealing with ass-hattery. At least a few attempts at trial and jail like AA have been made, with in my opinion little big picture impact. 

VengeSunsoar

d_20 said:

It's my most click-bait title ever. But seriously, I was reading about Wild Terra and thought about this old issue again. What's the argument in favor of this?

A "sandbox" is about freedom. Therefore, players should have the freedom to kill other players (and loot them because risk v reward).

Another argument is: Players should create the content, which is fighting each other (or cooperating with friends to fight others and take their stuff). 

But as far as I have seen, since the old days of UO, these games just don't survive (except for the anomaly of EVE). They become niche because the predators chase away the sheep and the people who don't have friends or a guild who wants to play this type of game. The population keeps shrinking from there. (This comes from my personal experience of two years playing Darkfall. I also played Mortal Online for several months shortly after it launched.)

I know variations of this discussion have appeared in these forums many times. Here, I want to focus on some specific questions:

• Am I missing any of the arguments in favor or why ffaowpvp is a must in "sandboxes" besides what I wrote above?  
• Are there any games that have survived and thrived on this model in the past 10 years besides EVE?
• How will this even work in the era of cash shops (because p2w seems inevitable in this type of game, especially as the population starts dropping and the devs try to squeeze what they can before the end)?
• Are there are pve-only or consensual-pvp "sandboxes" around or planned? Are they feasible as "sandboxes"? 

This only provides freedom to one side, those that want pvp. Those that don't want to be attacked don't have freedom. 

There are several pve only or consesnual pvp only sandboxes. Ryzom, Istaria are two of them. 

waynejr2

bcbully said:

double post

Loved the first post hated the second one!

waynejr2

d_20 said:

Horusra said:

You could fix full looting by using strict rules on how much you can carry.  You want to carry around 2 sets of platemail...have fun cause you are not going to move very fast.

True enough. I wore a chainmail shirt once at a medieval fair and I can tell you there would no swimming with that on. Forget about the great sword and battleaxe.

Another advantage to chainmail bikinis!

ste2000

d_20 said:

A "sandbox" is about freedom. Therefore, players should have the freedom to kill other players (and loot them because risk v reward).

A Sandbox is about freedom so players are free to behave like dicks.
It make perfect sense.......

Distopia

bcbully said:

"A "sandbox" is about freedom. Therefore, players should have the freedom to kill other players (and loot them because risk v reward)."

You nailed it. There should be jails and such too.

Player freedom gets thrown out of the window in most FFA systems, in certain cases much more so than with developer designed constraints. Loke also had the right of it with his point about risk vs reward. 

FFA PVP MMORPGs will always be second rate PVP/game experiences, the only way to really get around that is to take away power gaps and make them 100% based on player skills. This will at least take away the most detrimental factor to future growth (noob ganking).

Gear should also be much more balanced across the board. The MMORPG design is in large part a PVE design, lvling, mob grinding,  RPG elements, etc... are almost all about gaining strength then putting groups together to take down PVE content. Hence why PVP is largely a side activity (BGs), or exclusive to end game (SWG/DAOC as players are more so on equal ground)...