I respect your views of PvP, but it is evident that we both play MMORPGS for different reasons. Although in the past I got a kick out of PvP, I also saw a heap of newbies fall to others that had no chance of defending themselves. I got sick of evening the odds for these people as well. Although the purist would argue (and this is how I used to look at it), that in order to have a representation of a 'real interactive world' we had to have all components represented. I still feel this way to some extent, however is does have its limitations. You would have to have a MMORPG that allows for merchants and other NPC's to act towards a character as they would have in the 'real' world. For example, if you went and slaughtered a heap on Noobs around a certain town, the merchants may not deal with you/ shun you, the town guards should hunt you down/ form possies - if its a law abiding town that is. Until there are more repercussions to actions than than chance that another player takes exception to your actions its is a flawed system in my eyes.
Originally posted by silverblade Until there are more repercussions to actions than than chance that another player takes exception to your actions its is a flawed system in my eyes.
Developers are not being creative enough to tackle this problem. If you have this kind of scenario, you have to build the gameplay around that. Don't take EQ's gameplay and try to alter it to fit that scenario. It won't work.
I've been working on an idea for awhile that takes all of this into consideration. It's just that I'm not in the game industry at the moment to make it into a reality. But just wait, someday I will.
Long time gamer here early days of MUD"s, BBS, PRE-EQ. I have played just about every MMO ever released, beta tested more than half of them. I can take or leave PvP as long as it has govering laws upon it. I'll give you a good example of my last PvP encounter: I was a tester on DAOC for 2 years and when the PvP server went into beta for us to test it was an absolute nightmare. They did not just let us long term testers test it it was almost as if it were an opne beta free for all. The first week was damaging even to an advance PvP player. People were camping bind stones in towns and repeatedley grief killing newbies over and over again.
As a long time gamer with alot of experience I found it frustrating as well when I had to respawn for over 20 minutes respawn/die etc. before the idiots finally stopped. I don't understand what is so cool about camping portals, binds, etc. there is no pride in facing your enemy in this manner. Of course this situation was fixed but still then unless you ran in big packs and ground levels hard in the first week it was useless you were going to be griefed no matter what.
PvP needs restrictions and rulesets period. It needs to have areas designed for PvP, Arena's for duels, etc. Open ended PvP just doesn't work well especially for the casual gamer. Alot of designers are now putting penalties on PvP kills which is a good idea.
Now I notice most of your refrencing seems to be UO but there are many more games out there and the ones you have listed as playing are not even 5% if what has been available over the years. I am considered a hardcore gamer it is my past time, my hobby, I love gaming. I am 38, married and my wife loves gaming. I've done many things I have wanted to in life, been a musician for 32 years played the bars, had the wild days there all done with. I prefer the comforts of my home away from all the cement heads so gaming is my hobby and one of my passions.
I could go spend over 50 bucks in less than 2 hours on a crappy dinner with just me and my wife no kids included. I used to smoke 2 packs of cigarettes a day for over 25 years paying 30-50 bucks a week to kill myself. Drinking is the same scenario a case of good beer ain't cheap either. I agree designer's need to learn from the previous release disasters and not make the same mistakes but they still continue to do so and it will never end. There has never been a perfect release game period.
Gaming is a hobby and people who can't afford to pay to play should not try tro do so and complain about it and I am not saying that you are mind you, this is a generalized statement. But I find it ludicrous that I have seen even friends complain about spending 50 bucks on a game and getting a month of play before they quit and then bitch to high heaven about it yet they will spend near 5 bucks a day on a pack of cig's and go to the bar tweice a week and blow 200 bucks!
Nowhere can you go and get the vast unlimited amount of hours and enjoyment for your money than you can playing an MMO. People complain that 15 bucks a month is ridiculous to pay as well but were can you go to leave your house and even get a 1/2 day worth of fun for 15 bucks??? let alone a month's worth. These games cost alot of money to develop and maintain. Most of these companies are massing anywhere from 20 million + to create a game alone just to get it to the market. I would like to see any gamers that consistenly complain go out and design us the ultimate game then. I challenge them all. Guess what, it will never happen. We all have great ideas of what we think a game should be but then we scour the opinion's of millions of gamers in doing so.
Designer's need good marketing and balance to draw in a vast array of players they are not in the buisness to appease us as much as they are in making money. Face it what corporation is? I am making generalized statements/scenario's here just to give more idea to your input they are not necessarily directed at you persay. Alot of food for thought no doubt. I was a tester for Horizons that is a whole other ball of wax. We were promised by the head honcho himself in the last week of beta that we would see a totally different game if we would just believe in him and purchase the retail version. He lied of course and I was not as mad about being the piece of crap as I was about being lied to.
I lasted 6 weeks struggling to stay on mind you but I got my 50 bucks out of the game as far as I was concerned. Like I said before when you compare the things we waste our money on daily the cost of a game and monthly service does become pretty irrelevant. I will continue to game and play new release's often as it is my hobby yes it is discerning to buy a crap released game but then it sucks when I pay for a crappy meal at a restaurant as well or the cost of my cable bill with high speed acess or the bill i get for my gas/electric every month.
Peace
Through your fear I am reborn. My hand of grief can't be ignored. You know my name.... yes you know who I am. Frustrating turmoil again and again. I am the spike that drives through your hand. for i am eternal battering ram! Zakk Wylde
Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box. ~ Italian proverb
Originally posted by sonicbrew Hello, 1. Long time gamer here early days of MUD"s, BBS, PRE-EQ. 2. As a long time gamer with alot of experience I found it frustrating as well when I had to respawn for over 20 minutes respawn/die etc. before the idiots finally stopped.3. PvP needs restrictions and rulesets period. It needs to have areas designed for PvP, Arena's for duels, etc. Open ended PvP just doesn't work well especially for the casual gamer. Alot of designers are now putting penalties on PvP kills which is a good idea.4. Now I notice most of your refrencing seems to be UO but there are many more games out there and the ones you have listed as playing are not even 5% if what has been available over the years. 5. I agree designer's need to learn from the previous release disasters and not make the same mistakes but they still continue to do so and it will never end. There has never been a perfect release game period.6. I would like to see any gamers that consistenly complain go out and design us the ultimate game then. I challenge them all. Guess what, it will never happen. We all have great ideas of what we think a game should be but then we scour the opinion's of millions of gamers in doing so. 7. Designer's need good marketing and balance to draw in a vast array of players they are not in the buisness to appease us as much as they are in making money.
1. Christmas of 1984, I received my first computer, an Atari 800 XL. I have been computer gaming ever since. Almost 20 years now.
2. Designers and developers will never think of every possible scenario that could happen with PvP interaction. But, there are some that should have been so obvious to them, such as the bind stones, that they should have known to design and implemented it different. And the bind stones weren't unique to DAoC. AC had them first (EQ has binding but implemented different). AC just didn't have the PvP level that DAoC did. That's the problem with taking a feature of one game and then implementing them into another that has a different gameplay. BTW, UO had unforseen problems similar to this. People would pretend like they were getting a hunting party together that newbies could join. They would open a gate up to a very small island that no one could get off of unless you could recall or gate yourself, or have someone come pick you up in a boat. Once the newbs got there, they would all get slaughtered. So, now the newbs were a bunch of ghosts on an island and couldn't get off. They had to call a GM.
3. All games have rules. The key is to make the rules seem transparent. If you have a game where you can do anything to NPC's and you can't to players, those rules aren't transparent. Open-ended PvP is such a generic term, and the reason it might not work has nothing to do with the nature in itself. And, there's no reason that a MMORPG has to attract the casual gamer. Other genre's don't do this and there is no reason for a MMORPG to do it either. Designers have been putting penalties on PK'ers since UO. Only thing new about that is how they implement it.
4. I use UO and EQ because people are familar with them. I could talk about Earth and Beyond and talk about how I didn't like their mission system but did like their build system. I could talk about how boring it is to mine asteroids in EVE and how I didn't like their interface to the game. I could talk about the endless and repetitive hacking of mutants in Neocron to level up (not to forget the newb version of sewer rats). Yet, it still feels like any reference to any one of those games, I could still apply to UO or EQ. If there is something I can't apply to those, such as the allegiance system in AC, I'll go with the game itself. Since AC was another one of those first generation MMORPGs, I may make references to it.
5. It's more than just that designers need to learn from past mistakes. It's about coming up with new unique and intriguing gameplay that hasn't been see before. This is what is not happening.
6. I have already challenged myself to make what I consider as a great game. I'm not worried about the millions who won't like my ideas. That's not the way to think about it. I know you can't please everyone. So, I'm not going to try to. The people who made Counter Strike weren't out to make the ultimate first person shooter (more simulataneous players than all of the other first person shooters combined), but they did. They didn't care that some people thought if you can't automatically respawn in the game like all of the other first person shooters at that time that the game would then be boring. They designed a game that they thought would be fun. They weren't even funded to do it. All they did was modify a game that was suppose to be a single-player game (Half-Life if you didn't know already). Don't underestimate people in what they can accomplish with their ideas.
7. I think with designers, you mean developers along with their publishers. Designers just like to design games. The publishers then look at the design and figure out what part of the design they will use to market the game. If the publishers worry more about the money part before the appeasing part, they will go for short-term goals, which will hurt them in the long run. The smart publisher realize they have to keep appeasing us for them to make money. Therefore, I think appeasing is their priority and money just comes as a result from appeasing.
There is a difference in designing games and playing them. Gamers know when they like a particular game and when they don't like a particular game. They might not know the underlining design that makes them like it (the design document with flowcharts, UML diagrams, tables, etc). They may have ideas what they think might be a great game, but can't really describe it because they know nothing about design. Usually they end up talking about features and not gameplay. I can understand when a gamer can't come up with an original idea about gameplay. They aren't suppose to. A designer should come up with original ideas though. There's probably some out there that do. I just believe that in the MMORPG world, majority of designers don't come up with original ideas. I think that many of them just saw the popularity of games such as UO, EQ, and AC, and then jumped the bandwagon. And, instead of coming with original ideas, they were lazy and just stole the ideas from what was already out.
there are number of games coming that will give players the choice of PvP or non, players who choose to pvp will reap rewards that the people who choose not to will not. One type system has it, if you enter a guild you are then saying that you choose to pvp as all guilds can PvP, in this game if guild a declairs war on guild b guild be can accept (war starts at that time) or deny (war starts in 7 days, this gives guild b time to find friendly guilds to help them). PvP is not always deathmatches..... thieves are a PvP class
...in the end there was no Good and Evil only living and dead...
...in the end there was no Good and Evil only living and dead...
Comments
Alient,
I respect your views of PvP, but it is evident that we both play MMORPGS for different reasons. Although in the past I got a kick out of PvP, I also saw a heap of newbies fall to others that had no chance of defending themselves. I got sick of evening the odds for these people as well. Although the purist would argue (and this is how I used to look at it), that in order to have a representation of a 'real interactive world' we had to have all components represented. I still feel this way to some extent, however is does have its limitations. You would have to have a MMORPG that allows for merchants and other NPC's to act towards a character as they would have in the 'real' world. For example, if you went and slaughtered a heap on Noobs around a certain town, the merchants may not deal with you/ shun you, the town guards should hunt you down/ form possies - if its a law abiding town that is. Until there are more repercussions to actions than than chance that another player takes exception to your actions its is a flawed system in my eyes.
I've been working on an idea for awhile that takes all of this into consideration. It's just that I'm not in the game industry at the moment to make it into a reality. But just wait, someday I will.
Hello,
Long time gamer here early days of MUD"s, BBS, PRE-EQ. I have played just about every MMO ever released, beta tested more than half of them. I can take or leave PvP as long as it has govering laws upon it. I'll give you a good example of my last PvP encounter: I was a tester on DAOC for 2 years and when the PvP server went into beta for us to test it was an absolute nightmare. They did not just let us long term testers test it it was almost as if it were an opne beta free for all. The first week was damaging even to an advance PvP player. People were camping bind stones in towns and repeatedley grief killing newbies over and over again.
As a long time gamer with alot of experience I found it frustrating as well when I had to respawn for over 20 minutes respawn/die etc. before the idiots finally stopped. I don't understand what is so cool about camping portals, binds, etc. there is no pride in facing your enemy in this manner. Of course this situation was fixed but still then unless you ran in big packs and ground levels hard in the first week it was useless you were going to be griefed no matter what.
PvP needs restrictions and rulesets period. It needs to have areas designed for PvP, Arena's for duels, etc. Open ended PvP just doesn't work well especially for the casual gamer. Alot of designers are now putting penalties on PvP kills which is a good idea.
Now I notice most of your refrencing seems to be UO but there are many more games out there and the ones you have listed as playing are not even 5% if what has been available over the years. I am considered a hardcore gamer it is my past time, my hobby, I love gaming. I am 38, married and my wife loves gaming. I've done many things I have wanted to in life, been a musician for 32 years played the bars, had the wild days there all done with. I prefer the comforts of my home away from all the cement heads so gaming is my hobby and one of my passions.
I could go spend over 50 bucks in less than 2 hours on a crappy dinner with just me and my wife no kids included. I used to smoke 2 packs of cigarettes a day for over 25 years paying 30-50 bucks a week to kill myself. Drinking is the same scenario a case of good beer ain't cheap either. I agree designer's need to learn from the previous release disasters and not make the same mistakes but they still continue to do so and it will never end. There has never been a perfect release game period.
Gaming is a hobby and people who can't afford to pay to play should not try tro do so and complain about it and I am not saying that you are mind you, this is a generalized statement. But I find it ludicrous that I have seen even friends complain about spending 50 bucks on a game and getting a month of play before they quit and then bitch to high heaven about it yet they will spend near 5 bucks a day on a pack of cig's and go to the bar tweice a week and blow 200 bucks!
Nowhere can you go and get the vast unlimited amount of hours and enjoyment for your money than you can playing an MMO. People complain that 15 bucks a month is ridiculous to pay as well but were can you go to leave your house and even get a 1/2 day worth of fun for 15 bucks??? let alone a month's worth. These games cost alot of money to develop and maintain. Most of these companies are massing anywhere from 20 million + to create a game alone just to get it to the market. I would like to see any gamers that consistenly complain go out and design us the ultimate game then. I challenge them all. Guess what, it will never happen. We all have great ideas of what we think a game should be but then we scour the opinion's of millions of gamers in doing so.
Designer's need good marketing and balance to draw in a vast array of players they are not in the buisness to appease us as much as they are in making money. Face it what corporation is? I am making generalized statements/scenario's here just to give more idea to your input they are not necessarily directed at you persay. Alot of food for thought no doubt. I was a tester for Horizons that is a whole other ball of wax. We were promised by the head honcho himself in the last week of beta that we would see a totally different game if we would just believe in him and purchase the retail version. He lied of course and I was not as mad about being the piece of crap as I was about being lied to.
I lasted 6 weeks struggling to stay on mind you but I got my 50 bucks out of the game as far as I was concerned. Like I said before when you compare the things we waste our money on daily the cost of a game and monthly service does become pretty irrelevant. I will continue to game and play new release's often as it is my hobby yes it is discerning to buy a crap released game but then it sucks when I pay for a crappy meal at a restaurant as well or the cost of my cable bill with high speed acess or the bill i get for my gas/electric every month.
Peace
Through your fear I am reborn. My hand of grief can't be ignored. You know my name.... yes you know who I am. Frustrating turmoil again and again. I am the spike that drives through your hand. for i am eternal battering ram!
Zakk Wylde
Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box. ~ Italian proverb
2. Designers and developers will never think of every possible scenario that could happen with PvP interaction. But, there are some that should have been so obvious to them, such as the bind stones, that they should have known to design and implemented it different. And the bind stones weren't unique to DAoC. AC had them first (EQ has binding but implemented different). AC just didn't have the PvP level that DAoC did. That's the problem with taking a feature of one game and then implementing them into another that has a different gameplay. BTW, UO had unforseen problems similar to this. People would pretend like they were getting a hunting party together that newbies could join. They would open a gate up to a very small island that no one could get off of unless you could recall or gate yourself, or have someone come pick you up in a boat. Once the newbs got there, they would all get slaughtered. So, now the newbs were a bunch of ghosts on an island and couldn't get off. They had to call a GM.
3. All games have rules. The key is to make the rules seem transparent. If you have a game where you can do anything to NPC's and you can't to players, those rules aren't transparent. Open-ended PvP is such a generic term, and the reason it might not work has nothing to do with the nature in itself. And, there's no reason that a MMORPG has to attract the casual gamer. Other genre's don't do this and there is no reason for a MMORPG to do it either. Designers have been putting penalties on PK'ers since UO. Only thing new about that is how they implement it.
4. I use UO and EQ because people are familar with them. I could talk about Earth and Beyond and talk about how I didn't like their mission system but did like their build system. I could talk about how boring it is to mine asteroids in EVE and how I didn't like their interface to the game. I could talk about the endless and repetitive hacking of mutants in Neocron to level up (not to forget the newb version of sewer rats). Yet, it still feels like any reference to any one of those games, I could still apply to UO or EQ. If there is something I can't apply to those, such as the allegiance system in AC, I'll go with the game itself. Since AC was another one of those first generation MMORPGs, I may make references to it.
5. It's more than just that designers need to learn from past mistakes. It's about coming up with new unique and intriguing gameplay that hasn't been see before. This is what is not happening.
6. I have already challenged myself to make what I consider as a great game. I'm not worried about the millions who won't like my ideas. That's not the way to think about it. I know you can't please everyone. So, I'm not going to try to. The people who made Counter Strike weren't out to make the ultimate first person shooter (more simulataneous players than all of the other first person shooters combined), but they did. They didn't care that some people thought if you can't automatically respawn in the game like all of the other first person shooters at that time that the game would then be boring. They designed a game that they thought would be fun. They weren't even funded to do it. All they did was modify a game that was suppose to be a single-player game (Half-Life if you didn't know already). Don't underestimate people in what they can accomplish with their ideas.
7. I think with designers, you mean developers along with their publishers. Designers just like to design games. The publishers then look at the design and figure out what part of the design they will use to market the game. If the publishers worry more about the money part before the appeasing part, they will go for short-term goals, which will hurt them in the long run. The smart publisher realize they have to keep appeasing us for them to make money. Therefore, I think appeasing is their priority and money just comes as a result from appeasing.
There is a difference in designing games and playing them. Gamers know when they like a particular game and when they don't like a particular game. They might not know the underlining design that makes them like it (the design document with flowcharts, UML diagrams, tables, etc). They may have ideas what they think might be a great game, but can't really describe it because they know nothing about design. Usually they end up talking about features and not gameplay. I can understand when a gamer can't come up with an original idea about gameplay. They aren't suppose to. A designer should come up with original ideas though. There's probably some out there that do. I just believe that in the MMORPG world, majority of designers don't come up with original ideas. I think that many of them just saw the popularity of games such as UO, EQ, and AC, and then jumped the bandwagon. And, instead of coming with original ideas, they were lazy and just stole the ideas from what was already out.
...in the end there was no Good and Evil only living and dead...
...in the end there was no Good and Evil only living and dead...