PVP... Its not just for griefers

Faemus

I know PVP isn't for everybody, and a lot of people assume that those of us who want PVP are just a bunch of griefers-in-training. Most of us don't get our kicks out of annihilating an opponent, but rather competing against and defeating the ultimate AI. ( except it would just be "I" wouldnt it )

The most talented game designers in the world can never match the frantic / spontaneous creativity of Real players. Going up against other players adds a whole new demension of skill, timing, and challenge to the experience. If a person doesn't appreciate that challenge, I can respect that. Just know that most PVP'ers aren't just looking for an excuse to turn your toon into a corpse.

Slaggg

Unfortunately, its the negative that people remember most and longest.  Those griefers out there have given the people who genuinely enjoy PvP for the person to person challenge a bad name.  There are quite of few of those that genuinely do enjoy the challenge, for the challenge, but most I hear from, or read posts from, have such a bad attitude that regardless of their stance on PvP, I don't care to hear their crap.

One of my Kinship mates is very much into PvP, for the realism, challenge, and RP possibilities.  I listen to him because he goes about his arguments with maturity and intelligence.  The same reasons I've taken the time to post this reply to your new thread on PvP, even though the subject no longer resembles the infamous Dead Horse.

Ian_Hawkmoon

First off, I am against PvP for the negative reason you stated.  Griefing and/or Ganking... 

Tho, I would not be against some sort of dueling in the game.  We are talking LOTR here.  Nowhere in the books can you find any sort of PvP...  It is all good vs evil.  And the evil never had any self control

The trouble as I see it is simple...  You can never have PvP with out Gankers/Griefers.  Impossible.

 

IIRL

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Originally posted by Ian_Hawkmoon
First off, I am against PvP for the negative reason you stated. Griefing and/or Ganking...
Tho, I would not be against some sort of dueling in the game. We are talking LOTR here. Nowhere in the books can you find any sort of PvP... It is all good vs evil. And the evil never had any self control
The trouble as I see it is simple... You can never have PvP with out Gankers/Griefers. Impossible.

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What you are describing is a co-operative massive single-player MMORPG.

Im a big fan of Tolkien, he inspired me to start involving me in Pen & Paper RPG's like D&D (The world we played in we based on the world of midgard and it's inhabitants as well as places we created and people) when I were nine years old until the age of seventeen and there was "PvP".

Without PvP people feel restricted in a MMORPG, like a singe-player which may be non-linear but without the element of being able to fight another or "defend" yourself against other players.

What happen if you want to roleplay an evil character? To stop the progress of the good, to overthrow the light and let darkness rule? Go with mordor and against all else? You can't, but with PvP you could roleplay as you are going with mordor to a degree.

This game is just to restricted and that's why people want PvP, it's too linear in a way.

Turbine gave alot of people the shaft - the ones that like PvP and those who defend this choice of Turbine naively and blindly call people griefers and gankers because.

They just want something more out of the game then just a stale linear carebare'ish experience.

As I see it they should had make it next-gen, not an EQ clone and leave it someone else to make a co-operative restricted baldur's gate experience.

Ian_Hawkmoon

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Originally posted by IIRL

Originally posted by Ian_Hawkmoon
First off, I am against PvP for the negative reason you stated. Griefing and/or Ganking...
Tho, I would not be against some sort of dueling in the game. We are talking LOTR here. Nowhere in the books can you find any sort of PvP... It is all good vs evil. And the evil never had any self control
The trouble as I see it is simple... You can never have PvP with out Gankers/Griefers. Impossible.

What you are describing is a co-operative massive single-player MMORPG.

How in the world do you get that...  Just because there is no PvP?

Im a big fan of Tolkien, he inspired me to start involving me in Pen & Paper RPG's like D&D (The world we played in we based on the world of midgard and it's inhabitants as well as places we created and people) when I were nine years old until the age of seventeen and there was "PvP".

Um, as far as I know Midgard is not in the Tolkien realm.  If you are talking DnD PvP would be up to each individual DM.  But there was no PvP in Tolkien's world.

Without PvP people feel restricted in a MMORPG, like a singe-player which may be non-linear but without the element of being able to fight another or "defend" yourself against other players.

If you, or other players, do not like it becuse there is no PvP...  Oh well, you will have to find another game tp play.

What happen if you want to roleplay an evil character? To stop the progress of the good, to overthrow the light and let darkness rule? Go with mordor and against all else? You can't, but with PvP you could roleplay as you are going with mordor to a degree.

As stated before, all evil characters in Tolkiens world had no self-control.  So how do you RP a character with no self-control?  This is about Good vs Evil, and the evil characters have no self-control.  They do what thier master tells them to do.  Period.

This game is just to restricted and that's why people want PvP, it's too linear in a way.

Question...  What would you do about Griefers/Gankers?  Nothing...  I do not feel it is right to be constantly griefed by some person so they can have thier fun...  Let them go play Eve.

Turbine gave alot of people the shaft - the ones that like PvP and those who defend this choice of Turbine naively and blindly call people griefers and gankers because.

I am not saying that all PvPers are griefers/gankers...  But you see a lot of those when you have PvP and there is no real way to control that.  So I agree, No pVp...  maybe some dueling, but NO PvP!

They just want something more out of the game then just a stale linear carebare'ish experience.

As stated before, if you really want PvP, you will just have to find a different game.

As I see it they should had make it next-gen, not an EQ clone and leave it someone else to make a co-operative restricted baldur's gate experience.

Would you please explain this to me...  Not sure what you are getting at with this statement.  We are tlking about Lord of the Rings here.

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ironore

Originally posted by Ian_Hawkmoon
The trouble as I see it is simple... You can never have PvP with out Gankers/Griefers. Impossible.

Never say impossible.  Sure there will always be gankers/greifers but their impact can easily be minimized with some good design.  Most games have no consequences for doing anything of this sort and the gaps between player levels is so wide that anyone who grinds up for a while would have too much power to gank newbies.  So make it more even, THAT would be simple.

I don't understand this argument that there is no pvp in Tolkien's work.  Of course not! There is no MMORPG in tolkiens work.  This doesn't mean that you can't have a game in that world with people playing both good and evil against one another.  Keep in mind tho that the forces of evil were highly concentrated.  Sauron was the big mover of such things and mainly he just sent out his orcs and trolls and recruited men from the east and south.  Sauruman also rose up as a mover of evil.  Now of course players can't play Sauron or Saruman but WHY not let them play ORCS at the very least, Men from Harad or Easterlings and PERHAPS trolls. 

The difference would have to be this:  These evil characters would not level up and be able to gank and grief, heck I would make it so most of them can only talk to EACH OTHER and all others they try to talk at see random strings of the black-speech or gibberish.  Maybe they could rise up in the ranks of the orcs, etc, but they would only be as powerful as the NPC orcs and you could even restrict them to certain areas.  They could crawl through the dungeons and wastelands at will.  These guys would get killed all the time, so you'd only play one if you really wanted to play these races.  This would also provide some more intelligent enemies than the NPC AI.  Why not?  Everybody's happy right?

Ian_Hawkmoon

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Originally posted by ironore

Originally posted by Ian_Hawkmoon
The trouble as I see it is simple... You can never have PvP with out Gankers/Griefers. Impossible.

Never say impossible.  Sure there will always be gankers/greifers but their impact can easily be minimized with some good design.  Most games have no consequences for doing anything of this sort and the gaps between player levels is so wide that anyone who grinds up for a while would have too much power to gank newbies.  So make it more even, THAT would be simple.

What do you mean, too much power to gank newbies?  That is where most of the ganking/griefing come in...  Someone that is so much higher in level that they have no fear of being beat.  I play WoW, and I have witnessed level 60 players ganking level 10 players.

The only way I can see to stop this would be to make it so that if you kill someone that has no chance of killing you, you lose exp enough to drop you down a minium of 2 levels per kill.  And I doubt that would stop it all together.

I don't understand this argument that there is no pvp in Tolkien's work.  Of course not! There is no MMORPG in tolkiens work.  This doesn't mean that you can't have a game in that world with people playing both good and evil against one another.  Keep in mind tho that the forces of evil were highly concentrated.  Sauron was the big mover of such things and mainly he just sent out his orcs and trolls and recruited men from the east and south.  Sauruman also rose up as a mover of evil.  Now of course players can't play Sauron or Saruman but WHY not let them play ORCS at the very least, Men from Harad or Easterlings and PERHAPS trolls. 

My reasoning for not letting anyone play orcs or the others you stated is this...  Again, they really have no self control...  They do what they are told to do or die.  They are, were not, allowed much if any independent thought.

The difference would have to be this:  These evil characters would not level up and be able to gank and grief, heck I would make it so most of them can only talk to EACH OTHER and all others they try to talk at see random strings of the black-speech or gibberish.  Maybe they could rise up in the ranks of the orcs, etc, but they would only be as powerful as the NPC orcs and you could even restrict them to certain areas.  They could crawl through the dungeons and wastelands at will.  These guys would get killed all the time, so you'd only play one if you really wanted to play these races.  This would also provide some more intelligent enemies than the NPC AI.  Why not?  Everybody's happy right?

Sorry...  Wrong!   First off, most MMOs have it so you cannot talk to opposing forces now...  WoW...  If you are Alliance, you cannot "talk" to Horde races...

You could put on all of the restrictions, but it will never happen...  There would be too much crying about being nerfed, etc...  And Turbine just won't do it.

About the intelligence...  To make it somewhat of a fair fight, you would have to have them, the Orcs, be in some way capable of killing the good guys, which would lead to the ganking/griefing scene...  Yes, there would be, probably a lot, of players that would play "fair".  The problem is, is that there would also be a lot of players that would not play fair.  Using the excuse that they are evil characters and that is what they are supposed to do.

If you want to test yourself against real people, I would be happy to allow dueling.  Even with concequesces like being able to loose something of value.  I just don't want to see Orcs running around creating havok just bedcause they can.

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You may have good points...  I just don't want it to happen.

ironore

Well don't worry, it won't happen, I'm sure it won't change now.  My main point is greifing can be reduced with the right design.  One step in this direction I would like to see is having players be more on an equal ground, NOT having these huge level gaps.  That is what I meant by players being able to grind up to high power and then attack those lesser.  If the gaps weren't that big and pvp existed then a greifer would have to think about whether to attack and it probably wouldn't be worth it most of the time.  What would we do then without grinding up the levels?  Well there might actually be a possibility for some actual dynamic game play at that point, but that my friend, is a whole different story and it is much discussed in the Developers Corner section of MMORPG.COM.

JWillCHS

I think one of the obvious reasons why there will be no PvP combat is because of the linear storyline. Turbine Studios plans to follow what exactly happen within the LOTR books using both licenses from the Hobbit and LOTR. Because the ultimate end is for evil to lose, I honestly think that they see no reason to include a "evil" faction let alone give the option for evil characters(which reduces the option for roleplayers). I can understand Turbine trying to live up to the lore and Tolkien's dream.

The strategy game, Battle For Middle Earth(whether it's not based off the books) gives the player the option to play good or evil. If you do choose Sauron's forces the storyline can shift in your favor to the point where the ultimate end is for evil to win. I think if Turbine included a "what if" situation for the storyline you would be able to not only play these ugly lookin' creatures, but also amongst Sauron's army. I honestly believe that this idea was once in consideration by the dev. team.

But since Tolkien ideas have been influential to so many other products(D&D, Might & Magic, Everquest, etc) I think Turbine rather pay more respect to Middle-Earth's creator. One reason the dev. team said that there would be no PvP was because Tolkien didn't like the idea of man fighting/killing man. Because of that alone they didn't want player killing player, but instead be the uniting people of Middle-Earth. The obvious theme for this franchise is that good always triumphs over evil. Tolkien Enterprise also had a say so in this as well and their decision  was heavily based on what Tolkien believe rather then what MMORPG fanbase wanted.

With games like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XI catching the eye of both casual and console gamers the market has grown even larger. These type of gamers are use to being competitive against other players. I think that there should be some form of PvP combat; even dueling(that's being considerate). But Turbine is known for doing excellent story arcs(especially in Asheron's call), and I think that's going to be the major draw.

In a sense, the MMORPG genre needs a game like this; not to mention it'll be easier to promote because of the name. I bet over 80% of MMORPG gamers have never even experienced a storyline that's executed the way Asheron's Call's story arc was. Out all the MMORPGs I've played, AC was the only game where the dev. team created a world which people felt like the adventure was much more then grinding, PvP, casual conversation, and power leveling. I personally believe that Turbine is trying to attract a specific gamer with Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar. If you read the article on the official site that talks about "RP vs G"(roleplayers vs casual/power gamers), Turbine made it clear that the atmosphere is going to be geared towards roleplaying.