Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
PvP and Player Looting without Griefing ??
Zaxx99
Member Posts: 1,761
Good solid PvP and allowing the victorious player to be awarded the reward of being able to loot something possibly of value from the corpse of whom he killed. Nice thought, atleast in my mind who loved playing on the old-school Asheron's Call Darktide full PvP server.
Lots of people love PvE, and I do too. But the thing is that PvE tends to get boring and old after a while. Nothing is as challenging as facing another human.
Okay, so maybe you will get killed when you are only level 5 and die a rugged death to that mean and nasty level 12 who then loots your sword of sparkle you just saved up for 4 levels and purchased. So what. You growl and remember his name, storing the revenge you'd love to get on his punk butt somewhere in the back of your mind.
And a week or two later, you are decked out with new armor just given to you by a guild mate and vanquished off of the boss mud golem on that mud cave quest. You have just made level 14 and you see that same bad player who killed you when you were 9 levels younger. You see at glance that he is now level 16, but you chase him into the wilderness pretty sure he doesn't notice you. He attacks a level 16 grizzly bear and you know you have your chance! You pull out your new crystal sword of vanquishing and attack him from his back side. You know you must do more damage then the bear to have loot rights to his corpse, and the double damage you gain from the backside approach puts him to his death quickly as he tries desperately to run away! NO PvE mob kill feels better then this kill! You happily loot off of his corpse a magic medallion that will give you +5% experience and some steel boots that you don't need but can pawn at the nearest armor shop for a good sum of fresh gold coinage!
There has to be a way to put this thrilling element into an mmo and reduce the griefers that makes everyone hate PvP in mmos so much.
I think the best way to handle it is to put some kind of "EfE God" into the game. (EfE short for "Eye for Eye"). Perhaps it is a God that see's almost all battles in the virtual realm at any given moment. And if this God notices a level 77 player attacking a level 9 player, then the player has a random chance of being given this EfE Gods powers transfered to his soul for the battle. So the Level 77 casts a mighty fury fire spell at the level 9. And before this spell of fire lands on its' hapless victim, the EfE Gods transferred powers puts a Fire buff onto the level 9 and the spell only hits the level 9 for [3] of his 65 total health! In surprise the level 77 knows he probably should take off running to have his best chance of survival. But he stays and basically battles a level 77 player instead of the level 9. He only stays thinking that his experience in the game and knowing how to fight will give him an victory, but the level 9 has already been transferred this EfE power many times and gets the best of the 77 mainly because the 77 was in need of armor repairs! Now this level 9 who would have been griefed in any other mmo smiles to himself as he loots some of the most valuable armor and loot he has ever seen off of the slain level 77 before him! ..He knows that the guy will likely be back for revenge, and that he might not be lucky enough next time to get the EfE God powers.. However it will be okay because he will have this loot banked safely long before he will be attacked for vengeance.
So, that's my basic idea on how to slow down or atleast make some of the griefing in PvP games more fair atleast.
I'm sure there are many other good ideas out there.
..Or maybe even with such efforts in a PvP game as my thoughts here, maybe you would STILL hate PvP in your mmo.
..What are your thoughts here? Please explain and don't just write crap like "PvP is gay" or whatever. Provide some halfway intelligent responses please, as I think that this is a very good topic of discussion, and yes.. even though I know it has been beat to death already. ;-)
- Zaxx
Comments
that sounds like a great idea tbh
nothing is more fun then fighting equal type level players for fun
nothing pisses me off more then getting spawn killed 5,000 times by the same level 100 butthole so this would surely help in that situation becuz i'd laugh my truckin ass off when i got to loot his uber loot off his body hahaha
awesome idea -now just find a company to do it
ya baby
Thanks. There's probably better ideas out there just in this forum crowd. What's surprising to me is that the mmo devs and companies never think of such ideas.
- Zaxx
Theres nothing to prevent the lvl 77 Griefer from understanding that the possibility of this power boost can occur and simply doesn't wear his Sunday go to Meeting gear when he decides to go out for a gank fest. Then while hes happily griefing hapless 9th lvl players if they get these super powers he basically looses nothing, while all the 9th lvl players that don't recieve these super powers still loose everything.
Sorry but for every arguement that advocates FFA PVP with corpse looting there is an equally valid counter arguement. The only constant is that the Creeps of online gaming get their jollies and those that don't are victims. Which in the end is what the griefer wants.
PvP debates tend to get very heated. That said, I enjoy a good civil discussion about such.
I will simply say this; Wide scale PvP (or arguably any PvP whatsoever) can not be simply "implemented" on a local level. There are wide-spread ramifications for letting players beat the puss out of each other, and these things have to be considered right from the start of the design process.
Finally, always remember that participation in MMOs is voluntary. If people are unhappy, they won't stay and fight back, they'll simply leave. For designers who like the idea of PvP-centric gameplay, this can be one of the hardest truths to accept.
Griefers will always have the upper hand.
You cant just grind your teeth and say ill get him next time,
Griefers are always higher level with a serious amount of playtime, they will always have the upper hand.
Living in the parents basement and being unemployed helps.
So a full looting system is for my opinion just to grief the victim making them more likly to quit the game all together.
Less people to grief, less fun for you, less money for the servers, no more game.
Im all up for taking fingers, ears, or head as a trophy for the one you killed, taking gear and money is just to be a ass imo.
I will just throw in something:
Safezones.
Let the newbies grow a bit, until they feel strong enough to move into the wilderness. Of course you will have people sitting their whole life in them, but if they do not want to PvP, then let them stay where they are. They are paying customers.
But, even outside those safezones, there should be some goal for PvP. Not just randomly griefing people running Quests. Something that encourages (not forces) doing things in groups.
I enjoy griefing myself
-----------------------------
SWG - PrePub9 Jedi mastered all professions - June 26th 2003 > Nov 15th 2005
EVE Online - 24 million SP - May 6th 2003 > Early 2005
PlanetSide - BR20 CR5 - May 23rd 2003 > Sept 2003
So you enjoy the griefing of other players eh? Well what if a new mmo that you were playing employed a similar strategy to the one I talked about in my original post in this thread? ..Where if you were a level 77 and attacked a level 9 player who obviously had no chance.. well what if that level 9 had about a 65% random chance of getting godly powers on your attack that made him equal to you in abilities and health and basically gave him a good chance at beating you? Then you'd be the corpse laying there in front of that level 9 and you'd be on the one corpse looted by him?
Would that make the game better? Would you hate a PvP lower level protection system such as that implemented? Why or Why not?
- Zaxx
The current state of MMO's is not, I think, a reflection on bad or un-imaginative developers, but rather the state of the market they are trying to sell to.
Launching an MMO is an extremely expensive endeavour as we all know and as with most investments people are trying to mitigate risk, this is especially obvious with the entertainment industry, with part 2, 3 or 4 and beyond of any title that is even mildly successful.
With a budget of 50+ millions you just can not afford to target a niche group, or hope that the mainstream will flock to your unorthodox game.
So investors invest like they always have, maximum profit for the least risk.
Even if you managed to make a game with these "hardcore" features that got the amount of players of say Lotro, wich arguably is the second biggest success since WoW ( Not counting asian titles ), you still do not make more money, or spend less, but the risk you take in making it would have been huge in comparison to the "safe bet".
Maybe I got of topic there, sorry.
As to stop griefing, I see several ways.
Make in in game law enforcement is one.
An act of crime put the character in jail for an appropriate amount of time, with an added financial fine to be payed to the victim.
This would mean in game courts though, but as all info in a mmo is logged this should not be all that hard to program.
Problem migth be to decide what a criminal act is and were the laws should apply, something like EVE's security system migth work here, in 1.0 you WILL go to jail, in 0.0 you can do whatever you please.
Another idea, since the really hardcore crowd preach the permadeath gospel then give it to them, a criminal that is a repeat offender and has a really "red" status will by dead for good upon death.
Make you "security status" reflect on how much you drop when you get killed.
As I see it the choice to be a criminal should be there, but only those who really wants to and like that path should be able to go down that path, no wannabes, no "carebears", no random gankers, to live a life of crime you should need to dedicate yourself to that lifestyle, and live with the consequences.
The people willing to do so, and sticks to their guns migth even go from hated anatagonists to respected members of the community, allthough probably feared members, but that is the payof.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ah the age old debate of pvp and how to make it acceptable. I still go with with the idea that everything in the game should have concequences. If you kill someone much lower than you you should lose some kind of standing in the game. If you lose too much standing you can not go into the "good" towns or the guards have you marked. Also they should put in something like Eve where you can put a bounty on that person's head with your own loot. Make it so that if you want to randomly kill you can, but you life is going to be harder just as if you were a criminal in the real world. The bounty system will also encourage other people that might not normally like PvP due to lack of reward have something to gain. Maybe beside just cash the bounty gives you some standing boost.
Just my thoughts.
The only other thing if you are going to have looting and completely open PvP stealth has to be changed. People need to chance to escape. I could accept motionless stealth, but being able to see them coming and running for you life can be fun. Just standing there killing rabbits for your first quest and out of no where something flashes on your screen and you die will just piss you off.
Yes, I fully understand the ideas mmo companies take these days. All trying to clone WoW with "safe bets".
But look at a game like Ultima Online. Look at all the players who truly experienced that game before Trammel was introduced as a huge safe zone for all the players. Listen to what those players will tell you about Trammel and what it did to the game. Most will tell you that Trammel ruined the game.
That's because when it was only Felucia, it really was so damn thrilling to walk out into the woods alone. The thought or risk that a red murderer player would strike made that game so much more exciting and thrilling. Players now days just don't realize the "risk vs reward" excitement level of PvP it seems.
I blame the success these companies are having producing non PvP safe games on the players myself. If players would demand a more exciting (but well made) PvP game that gave griefers and murderers real consequences, then we might have a high demand for such a PvP oriented mmo.
Part of it is that players now days could almost care less about actually getting into the game and having "fun". Instead all 90% of the players these days want to do is get into a new mmo and try and level up and get as uber as gear as possible as fast as possible. It really does seem lame to me that most of our players today are so busy trying to level up as quickly as possible that they forget to slow down and actually try and have "fun". They blow right through quests, skipping over any lore or storyline it might have. They just read the words telling them what they need to do, and sometimes go out blindly in such a rush they really don't even know where or why they are doing what they are doing.
I will never really get it myself. How can most players say that "fun" is sitting in a damn field killing the same level wolves all day long, over and over and over mashing the same 3 buttons in sequence and never taking any risk at all? Isn't battling another player who might just do something different then those 10,000 wolves a little more exciting even if you do have a higher risk of dying?
Most players these days are just bigtime "pussies" is most of the problem. Stop focusing on leveling as fast as possible and maybe think about slowing down enough to try and have "fun" or taking a risk at some point before you are a big level 60 puss and maybe we'll actually and finally get a mmo game made with some good PvP and risk vs reward associated with it.
Freakin' wimps. You really have no idea what you are missing until you have experienced first hand a game like old school Ultima Online. But go on and plod through all your mmos games as fast as you can killing the same mobs over and over mindlessly working your way up to level 70 and only dying 3 times only because the phone rings. Fun times! ...Zzzzzzzzzzz.
- Zaxx
Its a very impracticable idea really as i could just create a noob alt to grief some high levels for valuable loot. Which would then get quickly transfered to my main who will the sell/wear it.
"Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god."
-- Jean Rostand
I still remember Pre-Trammel.. where the city was filled with newbies, because stepping outside would have you ambushed by 3-5 PK gangs, that continuously circled the town...
And the few Anti-PK'ers were so outnumbered that they only managed to chase away the PK'ers about 3 hours of 24...
I know plenty of people that left UO before Trammel...just because of being PK'ed(read gangraped) one too many times.
Linear thinking fails, linear PVP fails, balance ruins comunity, this idea fails.
Yeah there are a few different ideas you could pursue. One of the most ideal is to get rid of levels I suppose. And get rid of Classes
FPS games can enjoy Classes because upon death a PVPer can switch. MMORPGs lack this flexibility so pvp suffers. Levels suck for PVP because people hate losing a fight they cant win. Makes ya helpless
I think game designers realize all the faults in their game thus ignore PVP. It would take a sandbox MMO to really do PVP right for open PVP. Now, WAR has interesting ideas for a linear MMO I must say
I'm all for consequences. Like, there should be guards or local law (like real life). It makes sense. If the game is WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), then why not also attach other real life rules.
consequence-free PVP is usually anarchy and relies too much on players governing the server. In which they cant cause their human and must logout sometimes or do their own stuff.
So consequence-PVP should probably be high risk for the thieves. All stolen loot should be marked. Cant sell in town cause the victim will want it back. You always have to dodge the local law
I'm down for that. This way, the victim can get payback after theif apprehended. And the thief should pay a fine too. This way victim gets a lot more cash over long run
Being a criminal should be appealing and fun for those that want it. Would make murders a lot more rare. should always be high risk to gank whether it be a simple crafter or not. Being a criminal should be dangerous and a career for the skilled. It's a rough life but rewarding if you're skilled and lucky enough to avoid persecution. Like real life
This is how a WYSIWYG game be. With weight restrictions too. Want to carry around someone else stolen gear? Cool, but now you move slower and you're less Agile
And we could still have lawless zones too.....
I think one simple solution to griefing in pvp games is to eliminate the con system. Make it so nothing gives away a players level, no text, no armor/weapons and even make zones so that its hard to tell what level mobs the person is fighting.
Maybe make it so that mobs scale to the level of the player, so that it might be possible for a level 50 to fight same mobs as level 10 player, but both gain experience. Then a griefer would have to try and figure out whether it was worth taking the chance to attack the group.
By tossing in doubt you remove the griefer's main incentive to gank, since they generally only attack targets they know they can beat.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
well I have read in blogs in which they state "Assume Players Have No skill".
RPGs are good because it does not take skill to hit the top. It just takes time. Perhaps there is skill at raids sure- but for most part u can solo to level cap in mmorpgs now is my point easy. Really all games have sunken to this level.
Well, PVP contradicts 'RPG'. PVP involves skill and it prevents one from achieving goals (quests, etc). Good pvp has Resource Denial. Add player looting, now you just altered their avatar as well an d set them back. Which leads to complaints, "wolves get stronger, lambs get weaker".
Who suffers here in this scenario? The Casual. That's bad most mmorpg players might be casual if we look at WoW's success
Lately I've been thinking what does it matter if the pve'ers get a safe zone or some sort of safety provided by local npc guards? And let pvpers fight for control of the land, etc. the pve'ers will be denied access to resources if they choose not to fight. The pvpers get to control land. Matches real life more.....
The problem is most game designers aim for Tactical Transparency. They state that PVPers need to be able to look at the battlefield and target the 'serious threats'. So, if they cannot look at the battefield and target the higher levels then it might suck to lose.
In FPS, we have Tactical Transparency. And in EVE Online. Imagine a huge freakin' Titan in EVE Online or some other big ship. Wouldnt you want to know a Titan is in range so you can make contingency plans?
In real life, there is some transparency. We know if the enemy got Tanks, ships, and boats.
Here is an idea....... If you dont like full open PvP with full on player looting, dont play the game that offers it. Games like Shadowbane, classic UO and to come Darkfall offer real PvP. If you are level 10 and get killed by a level 75 toon.... who cares? Level up and fight back and loot back. What sucks is people who cant really handle a true PvP mmo do their hardest to butter games up so dev's make all these so called PvP mmo's like WoW, WoWhammer, AoC, Spellborn and so on and so forth. If you cant stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen!
Nothing will end griefing. The strong prey upon the weak...that's the order of the universe.
In fact, it was the complete opposite, not how to turn people AWAY from games like this, but how to make them PLAY.
It is cool to try to sound cool and all that, albeit a tad old, escpecially using the same old arguments over and over.
But come the end of the day, an online game can not survive on a couple of thousand 1337 dudes, an AAA title even less so.
Zaxx asked how one can get more people interested in these games, as to make it a viable option for producers, he did not ask for a way to kill it of rigth from the get go.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Any other arbitrary system ads confusion and breaks immersion, and that killes the fun for me.
I figure skills wouldn't increase in power but in usefulness, the same with mobs in other areas. Some would have more hitpoints and you need the right skill to stay alive long enough to kill it, some would travel in groups, again you would need skills that let you brake their formation and pick them of, some would use tactics and have a decent AI, so you would need wide array of skill to counter theirs...
Just get rid of the arbitrary numbers, just one game, please!
In fact, it was the complete opposite, not how to turn people AWAY from games like this, but how to make them PLAY.
It is cool to try to sound cool and all that, albeit a tad old, escpecially using the same old arguments over and over.
But come the end of the day, an online game can not survive on a couple of thousand 1337 dudes, an AAA title even less so.
Zaxx asked how one can get more people interested in these games, as to make it a viable option for producers, he did not ask for a way to kill it of rigth from the get go.
And what?... You cant get WoW infected mmo noobs to play an open PvP with player looting. Noobs that think that there is insane griefing in these mmo's are true mmo noobs hands down like yourself. Trust me, I only play Shadowbane from release to date and was a classic uo player. The so called griefing being done is all hype done by people who cant handle PvP.... so who is the wuss?
myself I played classic UO pre-AoS, pre-Trammel so I have no idea how trammel ruined UO personally no one ever really goes into much detail guess u had to be there to understand
About WoW PVPers- well to be honest I started out in WoW then played on a sharded UO. please dont ban me moderators even Raph koster (designer on UO) talks about sharded UO servers on his site. I mean no disrepect
my point is all I play is open pvp MMOs mostly. well at least snadbox MMOs with looting.