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PVP in games, keeping it simple?
AtarisNS
Member Posts: 4
A lot of games that are coming out now want to include PVP, which is great, but not many are succeeding in it. People are always complaining about gankers and griefers, while the programmers have to worry about re-balancing the classes. Obviously there are all types of pvp that you can have, realm vs realm, good vs evil, diety vs diety, player vs player, group vs group, guild vs guild. In FFXI they are talking about a whole set of pvp mini-games like arena basketball. While most of them sound fun, I always enjoyed the 1v1 dueling system of the original Everquest. You can duel your friends, duel for reputation or some sort of wager. You aren't restricted to who you have to pvp vs. (i.e. only characters of the opposite faction). Maybe even a free-for-all arena for anyone to step into and start pking. With a FFA pvp environment, players can dictate their own rules, rewards and consequences rather than have them dictated to them by the game. There are so many games already out and in development that some may already have these ideas, but I'm just throwing ideas out that I've had cluttered in my head for a while, and I'm bored 
Comments
Balancing classes really shouldnt be much of an issue which is something which always irritates me about developers. All it should take is a little mathematical modeling with access to the source code to determine things like balance.
A sandwhich style combat game is never going to be decent pvp because its too predicible. The players are always going to be able to figure out the best tactic in this type of setting and always win. What PVP needs to be fun is to give the players a choice between many different tactics which can be switched between quickly with the SAME character that beat each other, and real time so that every move cannot be carefully calculated. This is what keeps competition fun and unpredictable in real life.
PVP can be done well it just takes people to think about how which noone seems to be willing to do. DAOC realm vs realm made a good step by not allowing pvp victors to "rub it in" the face of the loser, something which isn't done in real life competition for fear of being seen as immature and looking twice as stupid when they loose (but there are other ways of fixing this). The idea of long death recovery times (being out of the game not regetting what you lost) is something that ruins pvp but is widely used to slow down peoples progression for the game. You don't want people concentrate on what and how they lost. The idea of consenual pvp by zoning is good, with the number of desired resources which preside in pvp zones determining how pvp based the game is. A game keeping control of their gm staff and making it very clear to players the state of pvp in the game and what will likely happen when they do certian things is also important.
The only problem I have seen with pvp up to this point is people have been unthoughtful in their application of it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------PROBABILITY(YOUR STATEMENTS BEING MOTIVATED BY FEAR(I>U)) > .5
Wow, Kriminal, good post...
I see your point on this, and I think I understand what you are getting at. Give the characters a rock, paper, scissors set of skills (this is an anology folks, not an insult).
So, Player 1 fights Player 2, Player 1 starts using skill Rock, so Player 2 uses Paper (which we all know beats rock), so then Player 1 switches to scissors, but if Player 2 anticipated this and switched to rock at the right moment, he stillhas the upper hand.
This is an excellent concept. Just make sure every class has a skill set that counters some skills of the other classes, but also loses to some skills of other classes.
Things that make you say, Hmmm...
Good post Kriminal. Why didn't you ever say this before in that annoyingly huge thread we had a couple weeks ago???
Yeah yeah Thats exactly what I mean. I mean thats what keeps competition fun in real life if you think about it, like in boxing the rock, paper, scissors is like low punching, dodging, blocking etc in paintball it might be climbing a tree and hiding in it, in a jackie chan movie it might be throwing a leaky orange in someones eye to distract them or whatever. The more choices the better.
I didn't talk about it in the other thread though because it didn't really matter to that specific argument unless it could be proven that it was impossible to have fun pvp for any one person.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------PROBABILITY(YOUR STATEMENTS BEING MOTIVATED BY FEAR(I>U)) > .5
Wow, Kriminal, good post...
I see your point on this, and I think I understand what you are getting at. Give the characters a rock, paper, scissors set of skills (this is an anology folks, not an insult).
So, Player 1 fights Player 2, Player 1 starts using skill Rock, so Player 2 uses Paper (which we all know beats rock), so then Player 1 switches to scissors, but if Player 2 anticipated this and switched to rock at the right moment, he stillhas the upper hand.
This is an excellent concept. Just make sure every class has a skill set that counters some skills of the other classes, but also loses to some skills of other classes.
Things that make you say, Hmmm...
Good post Kriminal. Why didn't you ever say this before in that annoyingly huge thread we had a couple weeks ago???
It is a great idea...and it's been done for a single player rpg...see GLADIUS...Xaldor
You are talking about DarkSpace here. It's realtime and outcome cannot be guaranteed.
You should really take a look, as it does solo and team PvP excellent.
Of course, you get the balance issues as in any faction based game with more than 2 sides. These are being addressed and with a little experience aren't really much to concern yourself with anyways. You can always pilot your way around the balance probs.
www.darkspace.net
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The only problem I have seen with pvp up to this point is people have been unthoughtful in their application of it.
amen brother!
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Killer 80%|Achiever 53%|Socializer 46%|Explorer 20%
I just completed Gladius on the XBox. Quite fun, but it started going by way too fast near the end. When you think you are about halfway through, you are actually 3/4's or more...
A major advantage you have in Gladius is seeing your opponents before you choose the characters you bring into the fight, which made character selection very easy, and winning the battles too simple.
The probelm with balence is simple : No one will ever be happy with anything.
Its a universal fact, EVERYONE wants the advantage sothey can always win.
Balence can only be achieved if ever team on every game had the same weapons/armor/abilitys etc. etc. Which owuld make the game boring...
-Ent
I think an intelligently done, mathematical system of balancing is a good start for balancing. They need to accurately identify the 'value' of various advantages and disadvantages and have them balance eachother. Determining that value is hit-or-miss though, because there are all sorts of ways players can manipulate those abilities that the developers couldn't think of.
I certainly enjoy a reasonable challenge when I engage in PvP, I want to feel like I have a chance of victory and yet I don't want it to be easily won.
In my experience, PvP is only fun in a system where levels add wrinkles to a character, rather than making someone truly superior to lower level characters. Perhaps the character advancement wasn't all that compelling in Planetside, but the PvP was rather compelling because you knew, even if you were plain infantry with a craptastic rifle, that you had a chance to kill any other infantry you encountered given the right situation. I really wouldn't want to go up against a Jackhammer in close quarters, but at any weapon's optimal range and situation it could defeat any other weapon. (I'm not going to get into those %*@&ing Reavers) However, that game never quite gave incentive for fair battles, and numerical superiority either for your side or against your side would ruin the fun.
Even after battle XP was multiplied, leadership figures still conspired to turn good battles into 'Zerg-rushes', where the leadership of one side would have their people mostly withdraw to get Leadership XP on another continent, which in turn would be abandoned by the other sides. What can we blame but the players themselves?
As far as I can tell, the mainstream RPG that got the closest to good PvP was Dark Age of Camelot, but therein lies the precise problem I mentioned earlier, that high level characters are markedly superior to lower ones. I always had the feeling that if I wasn't level 40 - 50, there was no reason to go into the frontier. It also lacked a truly compelling reason to get into PvP, in my opinion, and the PvE leveling treadmill was excrutiating at higher levels.
I'm not even going to open up the Shadowbane can of worms. Everything from uber guilds picking on tiny guilds, to unbalanced classes and abilities, came together to ruin what could have been a compelling, PvP-centric game. It would have been nice if they made Bane circles cost a certain margin of the guild's total wealth, so that it was not trivial for the uber guilds to wage war and a pipe dream for the smaller guilds.
So long as the perks are balanced in such a way that, with the right play style, they really are a valid choice. Some games have perks and other quirks that you can choose, but if you choose anything but one or two of them then you've gimped your character. This is often where skill trees get flawed as well.
It would be good to have a system where you can choose one class and customize it to a variety of different roles, and have all of them be valid in the right circumstance. It's inevitable that there's going to be some marginal advantage to a certain approach, but it shouldn't be such a big deal that anyone who doesn't follow a particular archetype is gimped.
Okay, here's my newb question. . . I've been playing these games for a long time (as long as they've been around actually), but in the last few days I keep hearing this.
What the hell is "sandwich" style ?
A fronte precipitium a tergo lupi
EQII
Requiiem, Templar
Neriak
EQ is sandwich style... Not much to do but watch...
Some games have a modfied sandwich style, DAoC has sandwich style, but they have a few skills you can make happen by clicking a button during combat. But it is still sandwich style...
Not many games have non-sandwich combat. They try to make you think they do by making you click to attack, but you still have no control of the outcome...
I think Eve online has Great PvP
Gar
Gar
Err EQ was sandwich style ? That's funny because I remember playing a Ranger and using kick, taunt, casting like crazy (dd's, dot's, debuffs), crowd control, healing, pulling, tracking pulls. . . what game were you playing ?
A fronte precipitium a tergo lupi
EQII
Requiiem, Templar
Neriak
LOL
All those things are sandwich... HAHA
If all you did was click and button and knew the outcome, it was sandwich. Like I said, they have ways of letting you click a button to make you think it isn't sandwich, and obvioously by your post, they succeeded in fooling some poeple.
I agree with you for 95% of the class in EQ!
There is no way a chanter or a bard handling 7 mes is going to agree with that althought!
Any generalisation is wrong because it is a generalisation and simplified the facts.
As for the rest of the topic:
DO NOT ENFORCE PvP on me whatever! If I want to be a carebear and hunts killer rabbits, there is nothing to gain to enforce me in conflicts with players, I would train(or use any strategies to return my hatred) someone that PK me for no good reason while I am hunting my rabbits!
Balance is not something anyone desire, it is merely an excuse to change stuff, no more. A cleric that solo fine is not fair to anyone, a tank that can handle adds is not fair...and so on.
Unless you make only 1 class and many skills, which remove the fun of class and the edge they bring on casuals players, because those that benefit from class, are casual players! Balancing is killing that edge to casual players, nobody want that!
But for the rest, as long as PvP is optional(if you make Pvpers better then non-Pvpers in non-Pvp zones, then you enforce PvP) and I can be free of it, I can only applaud at it if it is nice and make me want to try it, because, if it is done nicely and not enforced on me, I might try it, even if I would most likely run away from it back to killins rabbits in a pink forest away from PKers!
- "Coercing? No no, I assure you, they are willing to bring my bags and pay public transportation just to help me, it is true!''
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
LOL
All those things are sandwich... HAHA
If all you did was click and button and knew the outcome, it was sandwich. Like I said, they have ways of letting you click a button to make you think it isn't sandwich, and obvioously by your post, they succeeded in fooling some poeple.
So, besides being a jackass, it is quite clear that you havent played EQ at even a mid 30's level, unless you were on a constant CR or were one of those tanks with 2 hotkeys: one for "heal me!" and one for "buff me!". . .
A fronte precipitium a tergo lupi
EQII
Requiiem, Templar
Neriak
Hey, don't get angry at me if you think clicking the attack button is strategy... I played two characters into the 40's before I quit. I never played a tank, always casters... One Magician, one Necro.
Just because you don't understand what sandwich combat is doesn't mean you have to get angry and start calling people names... Just becuase you get to hit mez, then debuff, then attack, then debuff, blah blah blah, it is still sandwich combat. Especially since you use the EXACT SAME SET OF BUTTON CLICKS ON EVERY ENCOUNTER.
And don't even get me started on the idea of pulling... Because we all know how realistic that is...
"Holy crap, a Ranger just shot me with an arrow. I better run over there and get beat up and not set off an alarm or tell any of these other 5 gnolls standing here..."
EQ isn't much for PVP...
How about some PVP Wars like Notum Wars expansion for Anarchy Online, Tower battles...
This EQ PVP version called an ingame "challange", is far from the reality of PVP where you are restricted 99% unless you accept a challange, where for instance as an example in Anarchy Online you have suppression zones where the lower suppression zones are full throttle PVP zones where it is Freeway for PVP people...I am just hoping more and more games set the Anarchy Online PVP system as an example and perhaps even enhance it to a next level.
Personally I have not played DAOC, but I heard from friends that DAOC has an excellent PVP system. EQ is a joke when it comes to PVP...
I'm not going down there. Do you know what those things can do? Suck the paint off of your house and give your family a permanent orange afro.
I'm not going down there. Do you know what those things can do? Suck the paint off of your house and give your family a permanent orange afro.