The Difference

Wargfoot

In Murder Hobos Online (PVP Game) a player can find you farming goblins at the rocky outcrop, murder you, and take the 500 gold you've earned in the last 10 minutes.  That player can run off and hoot and holler about his latest kill.  Total cost to you: 10 minutes of play time.  Often times, in Murder Hobos Online the players find you after you've been farming for 45 minutes, costing you upwards of 2,500 gold.  It can be damn inconvenient.

In Farmville Online (PVE Game) a no-lifer can produce copious amounts of cotton and flood the market (or corner the market) so that the 35 hours of work you put in gathering this resource - the value of your work plummeted from 100,000 gold to 5,000 gold - costing you 35hrs of time, or 95,000 gold - depending on how you choose to measure it.  The no-lifer bought a super sweet mansion in a prime location you wanted, but you just got beat in a PVE game.

When players want a meaningful economy in a game what they're asking for is economic PVP.

I'll grant you there are some important differences between murder hobo PvP and economic PvE, but most of that is psychological.
In the end, they both are capable of costing you a great deal of time and money - unless you also want economic PvE where NPCs ensure the value of labor despite inflation - which is fine, but I think most PvE players would claim to not want that, probably up until they realize that yeah, someone else is actually impacting my profits here.

A more helpful distinction may be between players that want only a cooperative environment (other players don't impact in any way other than in helping me achieve my goals) vs. players who want an environment where there is some competition with other players.

So, for the first group you get things like instanced housing, NPC merchants, instanced dungeons and other design directions that don't appeal to me at all.  Don't ask for a real economy if PvP frightens you - nothing wrong with wanted an insulated experience, but just understand that if you don't want other players interfering with your gameplay there are some ugly (what I'd consider ugly) choices that must be made.

olepi

In Ganker's Unlimited, a PvP game, the gankers camp the respawn point so that when anybody is killed they respawn at that point and the gankers promptly kill them again. That causes them to respawn at that point and the gankers kill them again. This continues until they quit trying to play.

The gankers also camp spawn points for important mobs, and kill anyone trying to get one of the mobs. Any important economic resource spot is also camped, so that if you try to harvest any of it you will be instantly killed.

Some people think this is fun.

(And yes, I have tried to play a real game that had this exact behavior.)

Wargfoot

olepi said:

In Ganker's Unlimited, a PvP game, the gankers camp the respawn point so that when anybody is killed they respawn at that point and the gankers promptly kill them again. That causes them to respawn at that point and the gankers kill them again. This continues until they quit trying to play.

The gankers also camp spawn points for important mobs, and kill anyone trying to get one of the mobs. Any important economic resource spot is also camped, so that if you try to harvest any of it you will be instantly killed.

Some people think this is fun.

(And yes, I have tried to play a real game that had this exact behavior.)

There is definitely a bully component that some of these games really bring out.

Xiaoki

The real difference is tolerance.

In a PvE game if someone has their hard earned auction house wares under cut by a bot they will be upset but continue.

In a PvP game if someone gets ganked and has their 10 gold pieces stolen after 10 minutes of playing they will quit.

People will tolerate set backs in PvE but not PvP.

Wargfoot

Xiaoki said:

The real difference is tolerance.

In a PvE game if someone has their hard earned auction house wares under cut by a bot they will be upset but continue.

In a PvP game if someone gets ganked and has their 10 gold pieces stolen after 10 minutes of playing they will quit.

People will tolerate set backs in PvE but not PvP.

I think another difference is that I can totally prevent being undercut on cotton by not selling it anymore.   

olepi

Wargfoot said:

Xiaoki said:

The real difference is tolerance.

In a PvE game if someone has their hard earned auction house wares under cut by a bot they will be upset but continue.

In a PvP game if someone gets ganked and has their 10 gold pieces stolen after 10 minutes of playing they will quit.

People will tolerate set backs in PvE but not PvP.

I think another difference is that I can totally prevent being undercut on cotton by not selling it anymore.   

Yes, if I spend 30 minutes collecting cotton but the market is down, I still have the cotton. I can sell it later when I want to.

If the gankers steal my cotton after killing me, I have nothing.

cameltosis

The vast majority of PvP games don't have full looting, or even partial looting. So, I feel like your original premise is off. Like, I've been back in WAR for the past month since the 10th anniversary, and dying only costs me 20silver to remove a 3min death debuff. Or I can wait 3mins and pay nothing (or just deal with the debuff).

But, I feel there are two major psychological differences.

The first, in a PvP game, the competition is synchronous, whereas in a PvE game the competition is asynchronous. Getting beaten in a straight fight, face to face, can feel intimidating, daunting, maybe a bit depressing. The person who is better than you is right there!

The second is, I feel, to do with our perception of fairness and our own skill. In a PvP game, the loser often ends up coming up with a ton of excuses. They have better gear, they're playing a better class, they've played for longer, they've got more health, they've got a better internet connection. They feel that, for whatever reason, the fight was unfair. (amusingly, those same people, when they win, rarely believe they won because of those same factors!). However, with asychronous competition, players don't feel the need to come up with those same excuses. They seem to be more aware of their own strengths and weaknesses and so if someone does better economically, it affects them less.

Slapshot1188

olepi said:

Wargfoot said:

Xiaoki said:

The real difference is tolerance.

In a PvE game if someone has their hard earned auction house wares under cut by a bot they will be upset but continue.

In a PvP game if someone gets ganked and has their 10 gold pieces stolen after 10 minutes of playing they will quit.

People will tolerate set backs in PvE but not PvP.

I think another difference is that I can totally prevent being undercut on cotton by not selling it anymore.   

Yes, if I spend 30 minutes collecting cotton but the market is down, I still have the cotton. I can sell it later when I want to.

If the gankers steal my cotton after killing me, I have nothing.

If I camp a named/quest mob for 30 minutes and a group or person comes and "tags it" I have nothing.  If it happens a few times I have wasted my day.

Or have I?

Was I playing the game for the experience or the "win"?

Cogohi

cameltosis said:

The first, in a PvP game, the competition is synchronous, whereas in a PvE game the competition is asynchronous. Getting beaten in a straight fight, face to face, can feel intimidating, daunting, maybe a bit depressing. The person who is better than you is right there!

Synchronicity is a factor.  

The thing with "market PvP" is that in a properly designed system it's very hard to corner the entire market.  If an undercutter is targeting your commodities there's always another 5+ to deal in.  When resource gathering manually it's rare to focus on a single one and there are multiple products that can be made from the same set of resources. 

If you deal in high velocity commodities the undercutters don't last very long.  When they get too aggressive somebody will buy out their stuff and relist it for a quick profit.

With a bit of patience and diversification I can mitigate the harm done by the undercutters.  Those tools don't work as well to deal with the griefers that harass me when I'm trying to complete an open world objective.  Essentially the only guaranteed option is to stop playing altogether.

B-b-b-but it's an MMO!  Get some friends!  That's all well and good if said friends are interested or even available to bail you out.  And then there's the "cost" of that help.  Personal relationships only go so far.  In larger guilds you may be required to spend time as that response team or pay some hefty taxes or both.

Regardless if you're alone or have backup the objective you've been trying to accomplish has been interrupted by somebody else with nothing better to do than to ruin your playtime.

(edit: correct thought flow)

olepi

Slapshot1188 said:

olepi said:

Wargfoot said:

Xiaoki said:

The real difference is tolerance.

In a PvE game if someone has their hard earned auction house wares under cut by a bot they will be upset but continue.

In a PvP game if someone gets ganked and has their 10 gold pieces stolen after 10 minutes of playing they will quit.

People will tolerate set backs in PvE but not PvP.

I think another difference is that I can totally prevent being undercut on cotton by not selling it anymore.   

Yes, if I spend 30 minutes collecting cotton but the market is down, I still have the cotton. I can sell it later when I want to.

If the gankers steal my cotton after killing me, I have nothing.

If I camp a named/quest mob for 30 minutes and a group or person comes and "tags it" I have nothing.  If it happens a few times I have wasted my day.

Or have I?

Was I playing the game for the experience or the "win"?

In my example you didn't care about the mob at all. All you want to do is kill anybody and everybody who comes to get the mob. Your satisfaction is denying everyone else the chance to get the mob.

The same with a resource, your goal is to prevent everybody else from harvesting it. You will kill them before they get a chance to harvest it. You don't want the resource for yourself, you only want to kill others.

A similar move is to camp the resource and harvest it every time it spawns, so that nobody else can ever get it. 

harken33

Maybe it also has to do with Direct and Indirect impact. 

Direct impact -DrizztzPwns kills you, loots you and while you are waiting to respawn desecrates your corpse with an old fashioned teabagging.

Indirect impact -CheetoFRMZ goes to market to sell his Cotton, the market has been saturated and its now almost worthless.

That being said I don't have any gaming memories about saturated markets but i do recall an incident or 2 with teabagging. I guess the person was a *content creator* lol.

AAAMEOW

It usually work more like this.  I'm new to a game, and I have to level up my skills or finish a quest.  So I have to go to an area.  There is some ganker there, but I have nothing else to do beside leveling up there so I have to be there.  So what else can I do?

It would be better if gankers are actually risking something.  WHen usually they are not.  

How about we put harsh penalty for gankers when they get caught?  If developer do that, the gankers just whine and threaten to quit the game.  

Wargfoot

I just find it interesting that another player can cost you 10K and 3 hrs. of your time via one method and that's fine, but if the same player costs you 10K and 3hrs. using a different method, it's a huge problem.

I think many PvE players enjoy PvP - just economic/leaderboard/etc. PvP.

If we include economic PvP in the debate I think it narrows the discussion to core issues (maybe?), those being, how much impact can other players have on my game.

Even in Fractured Online we had a very vocal group of players VERY UPSET that a single player had managed to claim several towns.  The player was using alternate accounts to tie up like 5 cities and he had dozens of other players helping him build/maintain the cities.

The people who were complaining were largely PvP players - angry over what was largely PvE activities.  Furthermore, we got tons of complaints over PvE folks "making too much money" in PvE zones and impacting market prices. (economic PvP).

The complaints flow both ways.

AAAMEOW

My problem with most ganking games is the gankers almost never are in danger.  

So if people should like being ganked so much maybe the ganker should felt he is sometimes in danger too.  

If ganker felt he is in danger he just log off. 

Vrika

In Murder Hobos Online (PvP) the other player destroys or takes away the result of my action (collecting gold).

In Cotton Grind Online (PvE) the action "sell cotton at high price" may or may not be available depending on actions of other players. It's a dynamic PvE environment where PvE actions available to me change, not a PvP environment.

Scot

"When players want a meaningful economy in a game what they're asking for is economic PVP."

I am not sure how many players if any are looking for a meaningful economy in a game. Players seem to want an economy that rewards one of three things. Time spent or money spent or time and money spent. We all find ourselves somewhere on that spectrum.

The effect of PvP on an economy is quite detrimental as far as our PvE players are concerned. But then it is seen as detrimental to their whole experience, so that's hardly surprising. The holy grail of gaming is in my eyes a way of fitting these two disparate groups of players together. Which is best achieved by keeping their "bases" quite separate.

Wargfoot

Scot said:

The effect of PvP on an economy is quite detrimental as far as our PvE players are concerned.

I meant economic PvP - that is, auction house wars.

I've a friend who had a great deal of fun cornering markets in games and jacking up the prices to make a killing.   So he was costing players more money than most PKs, but the PvE crowd was okay with it.

AAAMEOW

Maybe open world pvp games should be more about pvp players killing each other than max level gankers killing defenceless pve players or noobs.  

Then your argument is moot because there is no argument.  

Champie

Slapshot1188 said:

Was I playing the game for the experience or the "win"?

Was it a well designed game or a poorly designed game? The value of the experience might depend on the quality of the game mechanics.

Scot

Wargfoot said:

Scot said:

The effect of PvP on an economy is quite detrimental as far as our PvE players are concerned.

I meant economic PvP - that is, auction house wars.

I've a friend who had a great deal of fun cornering markets in games and jacking up the prices to make a killing.   So he was costing players more money than most PKs, but the PvE crowd was okay with it.

We had a guy in our BDO guild who just seemed to play the economy and nothing else, he would dish out loans for lowbies to pay back once their level meant the debt was a really minor.

I think a lot of PvE types love economic PvP though they may think of it as "getting a bargain" or "making a mint".

Wargfoot

Scot said:

Wargfoot said:

Scot said:

The effect of PvP on an economy is quite detrimental as far as our PvE players are concerned.

I meant economic PvP - that is, auction house wars.

I've a friend who had a great deal of fun cornering markets in games and jacking up the prices to make a killing.   So he was costing players more money than most PKs, but the PvE crowd was okay with it.

We had a guy in our BDO guild who just seemed to play the economy and nothing else, he would dish out loans for lowbies to pay back once their level meant the debt was a really minor.

I think a lot of PvE types love economic PvP though they may think of it as "getting a bargain" or "making a mint".

I think a real-life analogy might be:

Would you rather lose $50 getting mugged or $50 at a game of poker?

For the analogy to work, in either case it is impossible for you to suffer real life harm.  
In either case you're losing $50 to another player.

Cogohi

Wargfoot said:

I just find it interesting that another player can cost you 10K and 3 hrs. of your time via one method and that's fine, but if the same player costs you 10K and 3hrs. using a different method, it's a huge problem.

I think many PvE players enjoy PvP - just economic/leaderboard/etc. PvP.

Not that many.  Very few that would consider playing the market their primary content.  At best it's side content.  For those that don't play the market they either wait it out, find a different venue to sell it in or just sell direct or cut their losses.  Buyers have similar options right down to making their own if the prices aren't reasonable.

Much like real life, anybody that's at least semi serious about using the markets to make money look for underserved niches with enough demand to make it worth their while.

Wargfoot said:

Even in Fractured Online we had a very vocal group of players VERY UPSET that a single player had managed to claim several towns.  The player was using alternate accounts to tie up like 5 cities and he had dozens of other players helping him build/maintain the cities.

Using multiple accounts to work around intended limits looks like an exploit otherwise it sounds like they're working as intended and providing content for "dozens".

Are player-run cities intended to be a PvP feature?  Can they be conquered?  If not there's no excuse for them to be in the open world or scarce.

Theocritus

I would rather take my chances competing in an aggressive market than being killed and losing everything constantly.

Wargfoot

Theocritus said:

I would rather take my chances competing in an aggressive market than being killed and losing everything constantly.

Nothing wrong with that preference.
I simply don't have the reflexes to compete in PvP.

That aside, I do wonder about the psychology of panic over losing 1,000 gp to a ganker vs. losing 50,000 gp on the market.  I think that difference is a window into the reasons why so many developers fail to actually address the problem in a satisfactory way.

They think the problem is lost funds - it goes well beyond that.

Slapshot1188

Don’t forget that with bots, the economic PvP can be absolutely unfair as well. Folks can instantly buy up items for markups later. Not to mention the bot farmers that ruin games.

Brainy

Wargfoot said:

Theocritus said:

I would rather take my chances competing in an aggressive market than being killed and losing everything constantly.

Nothing wrong with that preference.
I simply don't have the reflexes to compete in PvP.

That aside, I do wonder about the psychology of panic over losing 1,000 gp to a ganker vs. losing 50,000 gp on the market.  I think that difference is a window into the reasons why so many developers fail to actually address the problem in a satisfactory way.

They think the problem is lost funds - it goes well beyond that.

Well I think its like Black Friday where sometimes people are fighting it out over some item.

People just dont want to be put in that environment at all.  When a safer environment comes along like Amazon, they just go there is mass.

It doesnt matter if it only happens 1 in 1000 times, people dont want that stress.

To get people to turn up in that hostile environment, it requires EXTREME incentives to get people to show up, even then most people dont bother if there is another similiar safer option.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71pGdbipU6I