I see the looting idea and FFA came up in this thread as well as it did on tcos forums. Sera's response was answer for all those questions. Here is full version of his post and link to the discussion thread.
Originally posted by Sera I just answer all your first questions in one shot. Its not easy to get theses resource. You seem to think that going to a mine or just a pvp area in general for a resource is nothing more then a quick five minute run grab a few items then your back in non pvp areas. Its not like that at all. Devs went threw alot of trouble dividing up the areas into pvp and non pvp and justifying it. So expect to spend a fairly decent time in the mines if your a serious crafter or just a farmer. How far is the bank. Well that depends. PvP areas make a hugh chunk of the world in Spellborn. Closest pvp area to a town is the Green District. But even with the Green District being so close to quarterstone. ( its a part of the same place) its still a good run from one zone to another. You can look at Green District itself in the GC 2007 video the devs did for mmorpg.com The place is hugh and I'm just talking about the pvp area of the Green district not the pve. The time it would take to run back and fore from the bank back to the pvp area is just way to much time wasted. An if looting is allow. You will see way to many crafters and farmers just gaining a hand few of resource. Then trying to leave before they get attack. Will they fight? No will they take any unnecessary risk? No. What do you think that will do to pvp? I haven't even talked about the areas that will require you to clear half a zone just to get there.Since I'm talking about zones how exactly does looting stop people from camping zones entrances. Correct me if I'm wrong here the benefit of camp zone lies in the loading process. When you load into a new zone often times your character loads before your PC catches up so you can end up dead before you know it. Now if there is no loading require people just gather in a large mass and zerg targets with overwhelming number trying to enter. Either way looting is not going to stop this. So I kinda wonder where you was going with that comment. In Spellborn's case. There is a time limited before you can be attack when you load into a pvp area. Now if there is no loading process. The Devs provide more then one entrance so no one should have a problem getting into a area.When it comes to games that have looting you and I know that no one walks around with anything of real value. Everything could be replace with ease. Now in a game like Spellborn where most of everything is for looks and the rest give very small improvements. An alot of it can be gained in pve wihout ever touching pvp. An you want to kill that with looting in the pvp areas? I asked before. How long do you think it would be players think "you know what its not worth trouble". An just farm money outside the areas and just buy there stuff from the AH? Players have always look for ways to gain better advantages for themself or just making there life eaiser. An if its easier just to farm money instead of going to farmer resources they will.As far as level access starts at level 20. The Green Dsitrict is a 30ish zone. So the Devs intended for players to get a fairly early start when pvping. As far as ganking goes you seem to think that only low levels get can ganked. Gankings are not limited by level. You can be ganked at any level if system allows it. On top of that there is more then one way to gank someone. A high level killing a low level is one way. A player killing another player while they are buys fighting a mob is another way. Or killing someone who is low on HP/MP is also considered a gank. The only reason why people think of low level getting killed by high level as the only from of ganking is because it happens all the time. For most of a person's pvp exprience getting killed by those much higher in level then them is all they have to base pvp on. An people such as yourself wonder why pvp is in the shape it is today. If high levels would so a little more honor and stick to fighting people around there level more often people would look at pvp in a better light. Look at DaoC held as one of the best pvp games ever. An they had a system much like ours. There was only two flaws. One was inbalance number to often half the server was only one faction which made it easy to zerg the others. The level range. It just took to long to get into pvp even there devs will tell you that. Thats why with WAR they are make the level range low so that people don't have to wait to long to get into the action.Those successful mmorpgs you talk about that had looting. Are you talking about the first generation on mmorpgs where you had little options? Either you play those mmorpgs or you play nothing. Don't mistake success for that. Any feature can become successful if you have no other choice but to use it. Kinda like old school raiding/PvE. Alot of people hate it. But you did it or you got no where in the world. An look at mmorpgs today raiding/PvE is nothing like it use to be.The mines being FFA. I don't know what reason you came up with for FFA exsisting in this game but its wrong. When pvp was first talked about heck even before it. PvP was limited by faction. So the only people you could fight outside the arena was everyone not in your High House. Shard Conquest at first was build around this. Of course it caused problems. Because it didn't make sense. In Spellborn you could talk with people from other factions you could party with them in pve. You could even guild up with people from different High houses. But when it came time to fighting. Your own guildies could be your enemies. So the devs looked at the problem after some brain storming they said lets make the pvp generally FFA. Lore wise it fits in perfectly with Spellborn. The High Houses are allies but like any policital suitation there is fighting between factions or with in the same faction. All of this going on outside the eyes of the general public. That what FFA means in those pvp areas. Take the Green District. Its general "No mans land" for normal enclave citizens. So two people from the same high house can fight and it not get back to the public.As for your idea of limited looting. I don't have a problem with it. But I say no. Simply because Spellborn was never made to have looting ever. If Spellborn was build from the ground up to be that way then I would be for it or just find another mmorpg. If your going to allow looting allow it in its purest form don't under minded it by putting limits on it. Because people who don't like looting are still not going to like it. An those who do are just going to be angry because they can't loot free. Thats why no one talks about Lineage 2 when they talk about looting. Because its a random drop. You could get crapy item out of the bag of the victim or you can get that powerful sword. But its still shot in the dark what you can get.This is getting to long. So I'm going to end this post with this. You said that people should earner there resources. Fair enough. But in this system you earn your resources by being better then me. You see me in the pvp areas. Your free to take what resources you can find but only after you beat me. You can't beat me you suffer a defeat and you lost a resource point. If you can beat me then you have to worry about the next person who comes along.
"Don't argue with dick-heads, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience"
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I see the looting idea and FFA came up in this thread as well as it did on tcos forums. Sera's response was answer for all those questions. Here is full version of his post and link to the discussion thread.
"Don't argue with dick-heads, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience"