PvP failure has been the very reason I've quit every MMORPG I've ever played. Here's a list of failures that frustrated me to the point of no return -
1. PvE Areas That Allow Unrestricted PvP - This is an attempt by the developers to please the sociopaths by letting them 'gank' players of the opposing faction. Ultimately, this feature frustrates far more people than it pleases.
2. PvP Rewards That Are Better Than PvE Rewards - Once players get to the top, this kind of system makes it almost impossible to compete against them. Players that join the game later than others are at an instant disadvantage.
3. Rock-Paper-Scissors Type Classes And Overbalancing - Instead of letting the players create their character, the game developers do it for them. Always losing to a specific class simply because it's 'better' than yours removes every bit of creativity from the game.
4. "Must Have" Gear And Gear Based Combat - PvP should be about strategy and skill, not play time and gear collection. Losing to someone because they had that 'uber epic' that took them 6 months to farm only makes me want to quit.
5. Rewards For Being In A Specific Guild - This simply makes it impossible for some people to compete properly. Why would I want to play a game where my community standing has a huge impact on my ability to have fun? Again, this is a huge disadvantage for players that join the game later than others.
6. Grinding - PvE is understandable, boring PvE isn't. Korean grindfests need to die, yesterday. I want to PvP, not PvPvEvEvEvEvE...
7. Massive, Unbalanced PvP - There's nothing like spending months of your time working on a character that isn't even noticed in a PvP battle. The side with the most players wins! Yay...
8. Pay-2-Win - Cash shops are bad, mmmkay?
9. Being Spread Too Thin - This problem has single handedly killed several MMOs. Too many servers, too many objectives, not enough focus. Where is everyone?
10. Static PvP - Not being able to evoke real change in a game sucks. This isn't necessarily a deal-breaker, but it will certainly shorten the amount of time I'm willing to spend playing.
11. Twitch Based PvP - Button-mashing zergfests that result in 2 second life spans have no place in an RPG. It's not that I don't enjoy that kind of combat, it's just that it never mixes properly with RPG style game play.
I know I'm never going to play an MMORPG that I'll enjoy. Most people like the 'problems' I've listed here and aren't going to play anything that might actually be a challenge for them. I guess MMOs are just glorified chat rooms after all...
All I could think of when I read the first blue titled section was; Pirates of the Burning Seas.
I swear that's exactly how the game came about! LOL!
I've always got a kick out of those that swear up and down how they are the biggest, baddest Pvp'er's around and then; to use (pre-CU) SWG as an example, attack the other factions fort's at O-dark thirty when you know no defender's are online. And THEN crow about their big Pvp victory! Hahahaha
Good article, and sums up a lot of what I think myself quite nicely. As much as us hardcore vets like some PVP I think most MMos would benefit from ditching it completely.
If you are going to make a niche game then making it PVP centric is fine, but imagining an open-world, sandbox PVP title that will be a huge hit is I think very, very, very unlikely. So rather than ruin your great PVE game because 'everyone' claims you need PVP why not just focus on making a great PVE game?
Personally, I thought the article was freaking hilarious:
" I’ve got no answer for what the designer was thinking on this one and I worked on this game."
"I haven’t even touched on the fact that hardcore PvP players tend, as a stereotype, to be very unique and special snowflakes when it comes to customer service issues"
I also thought the reference to Godwins Law was particularly funny, quite simply because its true. Especially in MMO forums.
However, he does make some good, if not obvious, points about how balancing is a constant struggle and no matter what you do with the best of intentions, you will end up upsetting someone.
I'm what one would term a "casual" PvPer. I play Fallen Earth and I haven't really even gotten involved in the PvP content there; I'm still busy exploring the vast world. I've been playing that game since launch and I finally have a character up to about level 20, a guild that I enjoy, and a sense that I'm "ready" to at least start looking at the PvP options in the game.
I played Everquest, and loved it, and that was about as complete of a PvE experience as you could get - I played back when it first came out and you needed a "balanced" group to do most of the content. I kinda liked it in a way; you had to meet and interact with people in a way that is somehow missing from games like WoW where you basically solo to the endgame and then do "raids..."
One of my favorite games, however, was Warhammer Online. I played it, my wife played it, we loved it. It felt easy to get into the PvP and you were usually fighting on a "team" of people - I'm not really into the one vs. one arena-style combats of WoW. I'm much more "into" team style PvP, like in Warhammer Online when I could hop online on a Saturday night and get a team of 23 other people to follow me through the world capturing flags, taking keeps, and fighting other large bands. THAT is fun to me. Not so much the arena style combat which reminds me more of teenage size comparisons than an actual intellectual or enjoyable gaming experience. (If I want that, I can log on to a FPS and be in awe as the 13 year olds around me show me just how much my reflexes have degraded at my tender age of 30... )
I think Warhammer Online had a GREAT idea with poor implementation. The problem with that game wasn't simply the fact that it was based around PvP - that was actually what I loved about it. (I also liked DAOC, for the record.) The problems were balance, server stability, problems with the game engine, complete lack of a "fun" end game, and a system completely designed around there BEING an intelligent non-AI enemy to fight. The PvE in Warhammer was okay, nothing fantastic, I enjoyed the "lore book" that gave information on the world as you played the game but... most people played Warhammer Online because it was a fun, fast way to get into a TEAM based PvP environment.
If they manage to recapture that, if they manage to merge the servers together to a point where I can actually logon at, say, midnight during the week and find more than 10 active players online doing anything - I'll happily resubscribe.
I don't think the problem is PvP itself, Mr. Jennings. I think the problem is that nobody has quite found the right way to implement it in a system that is fun and fair for everyone AT THE START - which necessitates a lot of balancing, nerfs, buffs... things that, as you say, make players feel like their time investment means little or nothing. Warhammer Online came very close in a lot of ways - it would be interesting to see that game running on a single server/shard like "EVE" or "Fallen Earth" where there were always plenty of people in any tier to fight, with a year or two worth of class fixes and balances behind it. Warhammer Online was an absolute BLAST when it was good - when you were in a good group, during prime-time, I still think that game offered more sheer team-based PvP fun than any other game that came before or after it.
What killed it wasn't PvP at all. What killed it was a horrible implementation of PvP and then a complete lack of people to... well, PvP with once they all left. There are many PvE games that fail in just as spectacular of ways - I don't think I even need to start mentioning them as I'm sure you know quite a few more off the top of your head than I.
There is a place for the casual PvPer out there - usually from what I've found, they're more mature gamers - a lot of people from the military and former military members seem to love team-based PvP games as well, perhaps for obvious reasons. The "hardcore" PvPers are, in fact, a smaller audience than these more casual PvPers. People like my wife and I who never log on to a forum and scream that our class is unbalanced, but we did very much enjoy logging on as our squig herders and shooting poison arrows into the avatars of our enemy - enemies that were made much more real for us knowing that it was a team of other living, breathing opponents fighting us and not just a computer generated AI.
There are two main reasons that PvP centric mmorpg's fail and lose subscribers.
It's two reasons that the ones that scream the loudest of their innocence are the most guilty ones, FACT!
2 Reasons:
1. Gank fest preying on new players because they are simply bored, or scared of a real match.
2. The MAIN reason: PvP is nothing more than a scriptfest. Over 10 years ago only a very small minority used hack programs or back in those days Macro programs to automate game functions for them to give them an unfair edge.
Nowadays it's no longer about macro programs it's all about scripting programs and who can write the best scripts. Scripting software is 10 times faster than any macro programs and is more complex naturally.
Scripting programs can be programmed to do what macro programs could never do with such ease.
Argue all you want but those 2 reasons are based on actual FACT not fiction. For you that post that your INNOCENT if you are a diehard PvPer you'll just prove that you are that much guilty, so goodluck.
There are two main reasons that PvP centric mmorpg's fail and lose subscribers. It's two reasons that the ones that scream the loudest of their innocence are the most guilty ones, FACT!
2 Reasons: 1. Gank fest preying on new players because they are simply bored, or scared of a real match.
2. The MAIN reason: PvP is nothing more than a scriptfest. Over 10 years ago only a very small minority used hack programs or back in those days Macro programs to automate game functions for them to give them an unfair edge.
Nowadays it's no longer about macro programs it's all about scripting programs and who can write the best scripts. Scripting software is 10 times faster than any macro programs and is more complex naturally. Scripting programs can be programmed to do what macro programs could never do with such ease.
Argue all you want but those 2 reasons are based on actual FACT not fiction. For you that post that your INNOCENT if you are a diehard PvPer you'll just prove that you are that much guilty, so goodluck.
What do you mean by scripting?
I don't use macros, or scripts, and I am always in the top level of PvP (winning, with one of the highest scores)
Sometimes I use macros or even scripts if it's Darkfall (autoloot) but rarely, and that is NOT the reason I'm the most powerful. My quick reflexes, agile mind, and studious "training" (knowledge of game mechanics and combat systems) is why.
One thing shadowbane had and so does darkfall and that is character. Game play is important and so is execution/polish but non innovative game play matched with polish gets the same result. A result I personally find worse, boring unimaginative cookie cutter mmos. Quite frankly I am not buying any more of those and have not for a while. I would buy a shadowbane game x100 before I buy some shiny pretty game with 2 inches of depth. Cough Aion.
Long live the repsect for the amazing game play of Shadowbane!
Argue all you want but those 2 reasons are based on actual FACT not fiction. For you that post that your INNOCENT if you are a diehard PvPer you'll just prove that you are that much guilty, so goodluck.
They'll prove it because you make a non-provable blanket assessment and if they even try to rebut they are guilty simply because you say so?
wow, you ARE powerful!
edit: I don't doubt that there are people who use scripts or macros. But to say that everyone dedicated to pvp play does is going to earn you the "screenshot or it never happened" award.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
The reason why PvP ever has to fail is because the illusion that balance is needed.
Champions Online is a mess because they listened to the DUMBEST and LOUDEST of their community from BOTH sides of a USELESS conversation. Caps aside; if they'd have followed the Champions Pen and Paper model more, and listened less to the scorned mmorpg community and more to the video game community over all. They'd not be in the mess they're in.
The game's good as it stands now.
But in beta when the shift of the argument and numbers tweaking moved toward the direction it ended up taking. It was painful to watch.
PvP in a mmorpg should be the basis of all mmorpgs simply due to the nature of the beast. Should is always be log in, spam attacks, die, spawn, spam attacks, die, spawn? No, and it's that loop developers are stuck in that causes everything they touch to fail.
Interaction and story are more important than any stat, bit of coding, or balance number crunchers for pvp and a successful community.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
One thing shadowbane had and so does darkfall and that is character. Game play is important and so is execution/polish but non innovative game play matched with polish gets the same result. A result if find worse, boring unimaginative cookie cutter mmos. Quite frankly I am not buying any more of those and have not for a while. I would buy a shadowbane game x100 before I buy some shiny pretty game with 2 inches of depth. Cough Aion.
Long live the repsect for the amazing game play of Shadowbane!
Salute - Tbox
Agreed. Some of the most fun I've had while playing MMOs was the first 9 months of Shadowbane. It wasn't exciting enough to keep me much longer, but I still had a blast playing because the open feeling and the variety of character building made every log in an unique experience.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
The bitter truth is that you can't have true balance unless everyone has access to the same items/power etc.
In what universe do you live in? Apparently not the real one.
Not only is it entirely possible, but most of science and metascience would entirely disagree.
Please name one MMO that is PVP centric where there is perfect balance of diverse classes and been a success.
The only way to achieve balance is to have the same stuff available to all (Pretty much any FPS). Again the ONLY MMOFPS is Planetside and it is as closed to balanced as it comes. However the NC are deemed the most powerful and thus is the most popular and pretty much wins any fight unless outnumbered greatly.
The bitter truth is that you can't have true balance unless everyone has access to the same items/power etc.
In what universe do you live in? Apparently not the real one.
Not only is it entirely possible, but most of science and metascience would entirely disagree.
Please name one MMO that has balanced PVE with PVP and been a success with it. Please.
It might not be balanced, but I'd say if $$ is a factor in 'success' World of Warcraft defeats every argument you people try to make. It has pvp, it has pve, and yeah it's lost tons of players but it's kept tons and gained tons.
It's pvp system is optional. But there's plenty of pvp servers that are very active and even the pve servers have active bg and arena communities.
Short change it if you want.
Doesn't change the fact it's a successful pve game with pvp in it.
Everquest.. Ultima Online.. City of Heroes / Villains Same boat. Might you have heard of them? PvP has been more than footnote in each of their successes.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
Add me to the list of people who take issue with Jennings saying that Darkfall failed because of bugs and the like. All bugs were very quickly addressed, and while balancing is still taking place in the game (it's difficult with so many factors such as availability of reagents and resources, damage mods, player skill, etc), it's the most intuitive, interactive, and complete PvP system available in an MMORPG. Also, Aventurine just recently released a major patch/expansion for free to all it's subscribers. How could the game be failing if they can afford to create 700 more Mb of content and distribute it for free?
For the majority of players who had actually followed the game before launch, Darkfall was a resounding success, completely fulfilling its promises. Most of those people are still playing today.
I also take issue with him saying that "every game has a class-system". Darkfall and Eve clearly don't. How can I take this guy seriously when he doesn't even know what a class-system is? A class system in MMORPGs is a system in which, upon creation of your character or at some specified point thereafter, you are forced down a certain path in terms of playstyle which cannot be broken from but by relinquishing all previously learned abilities of that path (respecing) or by creating a new character. This is not the case in Eve or in Darkfall. How could he not understand this?
Now you can choose to devote more time to developing your character towards a certain playstyle in Eve and Darkfall, but that does not make it a class system.
The bitter truth is that you can't have true balance unless everyone has access to the same items/power etc.
In what universe do you live in? Apparently not the real one.
Not only is it entirely possible, but most of science and metascience would entirely disagree.
Please name one MMO that has balanced PVE with PVP and been a success with it. Please.
It might not be balanced, but I'd say if $$ is a factor in 'success' World of Warcraft defeats every argument you people try to make. It has pvp, it has pve, and yeah it's lost tons of players but it's kept tons and gained tons.
It's pvp system is optional. But there's plenty of pvp servers that are very active and even the pve servers have active bg and arena communities.
Short change it if you want.
Doesn't change the fact it's a successful pve game with pvp in it.
Everquest.. Ultima Online.. City of Heroes / Villains Same boat. Might you have heard of them? PvP has been more than footnote in each of their successes.
Are you F'ing kidding me. WOW? You're joking right. PVP in wow is a total joke. The PVE side of the game has been nerfed too death due to the Arena. WOW is a casual game now. The END Content is so dumbed down from WOTLK to present that it is not even funny. A full guild of retards playing on 386DX2's could beat the content. My guild cleared all of WOTLK a MONTH after hitting lvl 70. I quit because of it. It was simply too damn simple. I also played on a PVP server. AGAIN - PVP IN WOW IS A JOKE! Arena is a joke, the team that is the FOTM wins. There is no balance.
EQ? Played EQ for 5 years. PVP might be in it now, but when I played it was NOT. I quit after POP so who knows. UO? What is that again? Never played, it's not popular so who cares.
COH/COV - HAHAHAHA not what I would call a real MMO. Maybe a kids game.
The truth is that PVP and PVE can't exist on the same platform. If you want PVP you need a PVP only game centered on PVP. You simply can't BALANCE PVP and PVE on the same server. If you think for a second that WOW is anywhere near balanced for both PVE/PVP then you need to go smoke another blunt. They dumbed down PVE so much now it's not even funny. Unless you're in a T1 guild or ever been in one then you have no clue.
I also take issue with him saying that "every game has a class-system". Darkfall and Eve clearly don't. How can I take this guy seriously when he doesn't even know what a class-system is?
As I noted in the blog article I linked to from the (intentionally argumentative) assertion, skill-based systems tend towards player-created classes instead of developer-created classes, have the same balancing issues of class-based systems along with higher complexity and ease of players to make non-optimal/non-functional skill builds.
Of course, refusing to compromise on your vision isn't always a disaster. The poster child for this is EVE, a game which has always embraced its calling as the game that defines hardcore space combat PvP. The game has grown steadily, to the point where it is one of the most popular MMORPGs on the market with over 300,000 subscribers, many of whom have made legends, without ever compromising on its initial vision - a virtual sandbox, on a single server, where one player can challenge the universe. Sometimes everyone else IS dumb.
[quote]
Scott, I'm sorry, but you have been totally, utterly misled on this. Eve Online's actual number of players is a small fraction of their account numbers. Let me be completely clear on this (deep breath). The MAJORITY of Eve's active accounts are SECOND, THIRD, AND EVEN FOURTH, FIFTH, AND SIXTH ALT ACCOUNTS.
Whew. Seriously, virtually no one plays Eve long-term without having at least a second and often a third paid account (you can play multiple Eve instances on one comp, that's definitely a contributing factor btw). I've personally played with long-termers who had 5 active paid alt accounts, there were some others with 4 paid, there were a significant number with 3 paid alts accounts, and the number of players with 1 and 2 paid alt accounts were - a LOT of the ones I met.
Truth is, the game environment just about demands it, because you can only train 1 character per account at one time, and your character must have training to use - well, anything at all, really. Because you can only gain training at a certain pace, a player with just 1 account is stuck in the space mud compared to a player who has other paid accounts on which they've trained a pure PvP character, a master miner, a manufacturer, etc. Training other chars on the same account means you have to stop training your primary char - and that's a serious issue when your primary needs to put 11 days of solid training to get over just ONE of the 20 or so humps he has to surmount to play with the cool kids.
And CCP just LOVES that fact about their game. Seriously, CCP has every motivation not to make a game where 1 person can make 1 account and just go play all happy on a level playing field with everyone else. They've a niche (meaning tiny) market, their game environment is filled with hardcore players (and a lot of metagaming griefers), both of which mean mainstream sub numbers aren't going to happen. AND their client can multibox on 1 computer pretty easily.
So OF COURSE they're going to sell all of the alt accounts they possibly can - it's the only way to really grow their income from the property! Their "Double your fun!" specials (where buying a second paid account is only 50 bucks for 6 months) is pretty much proof of that. What other game company has a "hey, we're cool with multiboxing!" promotion going on? lol.
FYI, in my personal opinion, that's pretty much a soulless and evil way to run a gaming company. But that's what they have to work with, and I also don't personally care, as I don't play Eve anymore.
But for god's sake, I wish reporters like you would check into the facts before spouting off about the "astounding success" of Eve Online "omgspacegamesandboxwith300ksubstheymustRULE!!!11!!!!1". They are not a 300k subscriber game. In my guesstimation (calculated completely in my butt from the number of players I've known and the number of alts they had), they've got around 1/4 of those numbers of long-term players.
Oh, and please by all means, feel free to debunk my from-my-butt statistics. Ask CCP to release the numbers of actual subscribers, instead of the number of paid accounts. I don't really care, but no other game company "plays the players" the way they do, so I am academically interested in the numbers.
Or sometimes you have a class that is dependent on a core concept that is, um, a bug. Sticking with Dark Age of Camelot, let’s look at the Berserker class. It’s a class that swings two axes at people. This is a simple concept. Swing axes, do damage, fall down because you can’t take that much in return. Pretty much every game has some class like this - the melee glass cannon. Well, one fine day the game server programmer noticed that there was a fairly obvious bug in the way combat was calculated that made “Left Axe”, the Berserker off-hand weapon skill, do entirely too much damage. So… he fixed it. We fix bugs, right? Well, for all the Berserker players who logged in one day and did substantially less damage (in a class focused on... doing damage) it was not right, it was fairly wrong. And no amount of adjustments later fixed it. People got fed up, and left.
[/quote] crap, how do you quote parts of the article? blarg
This one's a classic. This is why you unfortunately have to make people use and obey a cumbersome change management system. It's not that everyone would do something like this, so a CM leash is a necessity. It's that sooner or later SOMEONE will, and cost everyone bigtime, like in terms of their jobs
Sigh, once more into the breach: [quote] Of course, refusing to compromise on your vision isn't always a disaster. The poster child for this is EVE, a game which has always embraced its calling as the game that defines hardcore space combat PvP. The game has grown steadily, to the point where it is one of the most popular MMORPGs on the market with over 300,000 subscribers, many of whom have made legends, without ever compromising on its initial vision - a virtual sandbox, on a single server, where one player can challenge the universe. Sometimes everyone else IS dumb. [quote] Scott, I'm sorry, but you have been totally, utterly misled on this. Eve Online's actual number of players is a small fraction of their account numbers. Let me be completely clear on this (deep breath). The MAJORITY of Eve's active accounts are SECOND, THIRD, AND EVEN FOURTH, FIFTH, AND SIXTH ALT ACCOUNTS. blah blah blah etc etc adnauseum.
so you dont like eve, well you know, last time i checked nobody was actually forced to play the game, and seriously, what is so special about claiming to have so many active subscriptions, and while some people do have more than one account, its hardly the prevalent state of affairs no matter how much you might wish it to be the case
Pvp in eve may be fundamental, but its not game breaking, it has consequences, and its not always consensual.
What is so hard to believe about the figure anyway, when other games claim to have millions, eve isnt even claiming to have 1 million! and yet somehow that is less believable.. hate the game all you want, not everyone can cope with a sandbox environment after all, but for those that do, everything else pales by comparison.
Oh, and any evidence you have that everyone in eve has at least a dozen accounts each, will be read with some amusement, we may even laugh
Originally posted by LumTheMad As I noted in the blog article I linked to from the (intentionally argumentative) assertion, skill-based systems tend towards player-created classes instead of developer-created classes, have the same balancing issues of class-based systems along with higher complexity and ease of players to make non-optimal/non-functional skill builds.
I still don't see how this applies to Darkfall. Perhaps to Eve, because you are more forced to focus on specific areas. Even so, I fervently disagree with calling it a "class-system" because, well, there is not a series of classes, player defined or otherwise. It's misleading and disingenuous to call games that may have a player base who create their own ideas of classes based on certain skillsets games that have "class-systems". This is a class-system the same way a stick you pick up off the ground is a baseball bat.
Balancing in games with no class system is done among skills individually; not even skill sets, let alone classes. Often, balancing has just as much to do with items (usually more often) than with skills. How you can pin this balancing on a class system is beyond me.
I was a Shadowbane player, this guy obviously NEVER played ShadowBane. It was not fail by any means. There are hundreds awaiting its return Via Emulator team. There were more races/classes than i feel like listing. Endless toon builds. It was all pvp, group or solo. And it was not tedius to finish a toon, 1-2 days tops. This guy is extremely ignorent of that game IMO. When the Emulator server opens i advise EVERYONE to go try it, PM me ill show you the ropes and you'll throw rocks at any other game. None of us can find another game we enjoy. So to you sir, i say you fail. SBEmu Link: http://community.shadowbaneemulator.com/forums/index.php if it was fail why do so many desire it back?
Im just saying hi to all the DF players that post often in mmorpg.com
And the reason why shadowbane died had nothing to do with the pvp, but because of the bugs, you had to point and click to move around and it had too mcuh grind. While in DF, you cans teal city, in shadow bane, you had to destroy the whole base and reconstruct it with your clan money.
Personally, thats why i left shadow bane, too mcuh grind.
Wootin, it may surprise you to know that a LOT of people don't have multiple accounts. I have played EVE since June of 2004, and I only acquired a second account this past February. That's 4 and 2/3 years with only one account, and I count myself as having done just fine.
-Wrayeth "Look, pa! I just contributed absolutely nothing to this thread!"
Comments
MMORPG PvEPvP FPS game with rules which suits for everybody,introduced by blizzard in StarCraft Online.
I allmost hope that history repeats itself
Generation P
PvP failure has been the very reason I've quit every MMORPG I've ever played. Here's a list of failures that frustrated me to the point of no return -
1. PvE Areas That Allow Unrestricted PvP - This is an attempt by the developers to please the sociopaths by letting them 'gank' players of the opposing faction. Ultimately, this feature frustrates far more people than it pleases.
2. PvP Rewards That Are Better Than PvE Rewards - Once players get to the top, this kind of system makes it almost impossible to compete against them. Players that join the game later than others are at an instant disadvantage.
3. Rock-Paper-Scissors Type Classes And Overbalancing - Instead of letting the players create their character, the game developers do it for them. Always losing to a specific class simply because it's 'better' than yours removes every bit of creativity from the game.
4. "Must Have" Gear And Gear Based Combat - PvP should be about strategy and skill, not play time and gear collection. Losing to someone because they had that 'uber epic' that took them 6 months to farm only makes me want to quit.
5. Rewards For Being In A Specific Guild - This simply makes it impossible for some people to compete properly. Why would I want to play a game where my community standing has a huge impact on my ability to have fun? Again, this is a huge disadvantage for players that join the game later than others.
6. Grinding - PvE is understandable, boring PvE isn't. Korean grindfests need to die, yesterday. I want to PvP, not PvPvEvEvEvEvE...
7. Massive, Unbalanced PvP - There's nothing like spending months of your time working on a character that isn't even noticed in a PvP battle. The side with the most players wins! Yay...
8. Pay-2-Win - Cash shops are bad, mmmkay?
9. Being Spread Too Thin - This problem has single handedly killed several MMOs. Too many servers, too many objectives, not enough focus. Where is everyone?
10. Static PvP - Not being able to evoke real change in a game sucks. This isn't necessarily a deal-breaker, but it will certainly shorten the amount of time I'm willing to spend playing.
11. Twitch Based PvP - Button-mashing zergfests that result in 2 second life spans have no place in an RPG. It's not that I don't enjoy that kind of combat, it's just that it never mixes properly with RPG style game play.
I know I'm never going to play an MMORPG that I'll enjoy. Most people like the 'problems' I've listed here and aren't going to play anything that might actually be a challenge for them. I guess MMOs are just glorified chat rooms after all...
All I could think of when I read the first blue titled section was; Pirates of the Burning Seas.
I swear that's exactly how the game came about! LOL!
I've always got a kick out of those that swear up and down how they are the biggest, baddest Pvp'er's around and then; to use (pre-CU) SWG as an example, attack the other factions fort's at O-dark thirty when you know no defender's are online. And THEN crow about their big Pvp victory! Hahahaha
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
Good article, and sums up a lot of what I think myself quite nicely. As much as us hardcore vets like some PVP I think most MMos would benefit from ditching it completely.
If you are going to make a niche game then making it PVP centric is fine, but imagining an open-world, sandbox PVP title that will be a huge hit is I think very, very, very unlikely. So rather than ruin your great PVE game because 'everyone' claims you need PVP why not just focus on making a great PVE game?
Personally, I thought the article was freaking hilarious:
" I’ve got no answer for what the designer was thinking on this one and I worked on this game."
"I haven’t even touched on the fact that hardcore PvP players tend, as a stereotype, to be very unique and special snowflakes when it comes to customer service issues"
I also thought the reference to Godwins Law was particularly funny, quite simply because its true. Especially in MMO forums.
However, he does make some good, if not obvious, points about how balancing is a constant struggle and no matter what you do with the best of intentions, you will end up upsetting someone.
Top 10 Most Misused Words in MMO's
I'm what one would term a "casual" PvPer. I play Fallen Earth and I haven't really even gotten involved in the PvP content there; I'm still busy exploring the vast world. I've been playing that game since launch and I finally have a character up to about level 20, a guild that I enjoy, and a sense that I'm "ready" to at least start looking at the PvP options in the game.
I played Everquest, and loved it, and that was about as complete of a PvE experience as you could get - I played back when it first came out and you needed a "balanced" group to do most of the content. I kinda liked it in a way; you had to meet and interact with people in a way that is somehow missing from games like WoW where you basically solo to the endgame and then do "raids..."
One of my favorite games, however, was Warhammer Online. I played it, my wife played it, we loved it. It felt easy to get into the PvP and you were usually fighting on a "team" of people - I'm not really into the one vs. one arena-style combats of WoW. I'm much more "into" team style PvP, like in Warhammer Online when I could hop online on a Saturday night and get a team of 23 other people to follow me through the world capturing flags, taking keeps, and fighting other large bands. THAT is fun to me. Not so much the arena style combat which reminds me more of teenage size comparisons than an actual intellectual or enjoyable gaming experience. (If I want that, I can log on to a FPS and be in awe as the 13 year olds around me show me just how much my reflexes have degraded at my tender age of 30...
)
I think Warhammer Online had a GREAT idea with poor implementation. The problem with that game wasn't simply the fact that it was based around PvP - that was actually what I loved about it. (I also liked DAOC, for the record.) The problems were balance, server stability, problems with the game engine, complete lack of a "fun" end game, and a system completely designed around there BEING an intelligent non-AI enemy to fight. The PvE in Warhammer was okay, nothing fantastic, I enjoyed the "lore book" that gave information on the world as you played the game but... most people played Warhammer Online because it was a fun, fast way to get into a TEAM based PvP environment.
If they manage to recapture that, if they manage to merge the servers together to a point where I can actually logon at, say, midnight during the week and find more than 10 active players online doing anything - I'll happily resubscribe.
I don't think the problem is PvP itself, Mr. Jennings. I think the problem is that nobody has quite found the right way to implement it in a system that is fun and fair for everyone AT THE START - which necessitates a lot of balancing, nerfs, buffs... things that, as you say, make players feel like their time investment means little or nothing. Warhammer Online came very close in a lot of ways - it would be interesting to see that game running on a single server/shard like "EVE" or "Fallen Earth" where there were always plenty of people in any tier to fight, with a year or two worth of class fixes and balances behind it. Warhammer Online was an absolute BLAST when it was good - when you were in a good group, during prime-time, I still think that game offered more sheer team-based PvP fun than any other game that came before or after it.
What killed it wasn't PvP at all. What killed it was a horrible implementation of PvP and then a complete lack of people to... well, PvP with once they all left. There are many PvE games that fail in just as spectacular of ways - I don't think I even need to start mentioning them as I'm sure you know quite a few more off the top of your head than I.
There is a place for the casual PvPer out there - usually from what I've found, they're more mature gamers - a lot of people from the military and former military members seem to love team-based PvP games as well, perhaps for obvious reasons. The "hardcore" PvPers are, in fact, a smaller audience than these more casual PvPers. People like my wife and I who never log on to a forum and scream that our class is unbalanced, but we did very much enjoy logging on as our squig herders and shooting poison arrows into the avatars of our enemy - enemies that were made much more real for us knowing that it was a team of other living, breathing opponents fighting us and not just a computer generated AI.
There are two main reasons that PvP centric mmorpg's fail and lose subscribers.
It's two reasons that the ones that scream the loudest of their innocence are the most guilty ones, FACT!
2 Reasons:
1. Gank fest preying on new players because they are simply bored, or scared of a real match.
2. The MAIN reason: PvP is nothing more than a scriptfest. Over 10 years ago only a very small minority used hack programs or back in those days Macro programs to automate game functions for them to give them an unfair edge.
Nowadays it's no longer about macro programs it's all about scripting programs and who can write the best scripts. Scripting software is 10 times faster than any macro programs and is more complex naturally.
Scripting programs can be programmed to do what macro programs could never do with such ease.
Argue all you want but those 2 reasons are based on actual FACT not fiction. For you that post that your INNOCENT if you are a diehard PvPer you'll just prove that you are that much guilty, so goodluck.
In what universe do you live in? Apparently not the real one.
Not only is it entirely possible, but most of science and metascience would entirely disagree.
What do you mean by scripting?
I don't use macros, or scripts, and I am always in the top level of PvP (winning, with one of the highest scores)
Sometimes I use macros or even scripts if it's Darkfall (autoloot) but rarely, and that is NOT the reason I'm the most powerful. My quick reflexes, agile mind, and studious "training" (knowledge of game mechanics and combat systems) is why.
They'll prove it because you make a non-provable blanket assessment and if they even try to rebut they are guilty simply because you say so?
wow, you ARE powerful!
edit: I don't doubt that there are people who use scripts or macros. But to say that everyone dedicated to pvp play does is going to earn you the "screenshot or it never happened" award.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
The reason why PvP ever has to fail is because the illusion that balance is needed.
Champions Online is a mess because they listened to the DUMBEST and LOUDEST of their community from BOTH sides of a USELESS conversation. Caps aside; if they'd have followed the Champions Pen and Paper model more, and listened less to the scorned mmorpg community and more to the video game community over all. They'd not be in the mess they're in.
The game's good as it stands now.
But in beta when the shift of the argument and numbers tweaking moved toward the direction it ended up taking. It was painful to watch.
PvP in a mmorpg should be the basis of all mmorpgs simply due to the nature of the beast. Should is always be log in, spam attacks, die, spawn, spam attacks, die, spawn? No, and it's that loop developers are stuck in that causes everything they touch to fail.
Interaction and story are more important than any stat, bit of coding, or balance number crunchers for pvp and a successful community.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
Agreed. Some of the most fun I've had while playing MMOs was the first 9 months of Shadowbane. It wasn't exciting enough to keep me much longer, but I still had a blast playing because the open feeling and the variety of character building made every log in an unique experience.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
In what universe do you live in? Apparently not the real one.
Not only is it entirely possible, but most of science and metascience would entirely disagree.
Please name one MMO that is PVP centric where there is perfect balance of diverse classes and been a success.
The only way to achieve balance is to have the same stuff available to all (Pretty much any FPS). Again the ONLY MMOFPS is Planetside and it is as closed to balanced as it comes. However the NC are deemed the most powerful and thus is the most popular and pretty much wins any fight unless outnumbered greatly.
In what universe do you live in? Apparently not the real one.
Not only is it entirely possible, but most of science and metascience would entirely disagree.
Please name one MMO that has balanced PVE with PVP and been a success with it. Please.
It might not be balanced, but I'd say if $$ is a factor in 'success' World of Warcraft defeats every argument you people try to make. It has pvp, it has pve, and yeah it's lost tons of players but it's kept tons and gained tons.
It's pvp system is optional. But there's plenty of pvp servers that are very active and even the pve servers have active bg and arena communities.
Short change it if you want.
Doesn't change the fact it's a successful pve game with pvp in it.
Everquest.. Ultima Online.. City of Heroes / Villains Same boat. Might you have heard of them? PvP has been more than footnote in each of their successes.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
Add me to the list of people who take issue with Jennings saying that Darkfall failed because of bugs and the like. All bugs were very quickly addressed, and while balancing is still taking place in the game (it's difficult with so many factors such as availability of reagents and resources, damage mods, player skill, etc), it's the most intuitive, interactive, and complete PvP system available in an MMORPG. Also, Aventurine just recently released a major patch/expansion for free to all it's subscribers. How could the game be failing if they can afford to create 700 more Mb of content and distribute it for free?
For the majority of players who had actually followed the game before launch, Darkfall was a resounding success, completely fulfilling its promises. Most of those people are still playing today.
I also take issue with him saying that "every game has a class-system". Darkfall and Eve clearly don't. How can I take this guy seriously when he doesn't even know what a class-system is? A class system in MMORPGs is a system in which, upon creation of your character or at some specified point thereafter, you are forced down a certain path in terms of playstyle which cannot be broken from but by relinquishing all previously learned abilities of that path (respecing) or by creating a new character. This is not the case in Eve or in Darkfall. How could he not understand this?
Now you can choose to devote more time to developing your character towards a certain playstyle in Eve and Darkfall, but that does not make it a class system.
- Theguruofreason
In what universe do you live in? Apparently not the real one.
Not only is it entirely possible, but most of science and metascience would entirely disagree.
Please name one MMO that has balanced PVE with PVP and been a success with it. Please.
It might not be balanced, but I'd say if $$ is a factor in 'success' World of Warcraft defeats every argument you people try to make. It has pvp, it has pve, and yeah it's lost tons of players but it's kept tons and gained tons.
It's pvp system is optional. But there's plenty of pvp servers that are very active and even the pve servers have active bg and arena communities.
Short change it if you want.
Doesn't change the fact it's a successful pve game with pvp in it.
Everquest.. Ultima Online.. City of Heroes / Villains Same boat. Might you have heard of them? PvP has been more than footnote in each of their successes.
Are you F'ing kidding me. WOW? You're joking right. PVP in wow is a total joke. The PVE side of the game has been nerfed too death due to the Arena. WOW is a casual game now. The END Content is so dumbed down from WOTLK to present that it is not even funny. A full guild of retards playing on 386DX2's could beat the content. My guild cleared all of WOTLK a MONTH after hitting lvl 70. I quit because of it. It was simply too damn simple. I also played on a PVP server. AGAIN - PVP IN WOW IS A JOKE! Arena is a joke, the team that is the FOTM wins. There is no balance.
EQ? Played EQ for 5 years. PVP might be in it now, but when I played it was NOT. I quit after POP so who knows. UO? What is that again? Never played, it's not popular so who cares.
COH/COV - HAHAHAHA not what I would call a real MMO. Maybe a kids game.
The truth is that PVP and PVE can't exist on the same platform. If you want PVP you need a PVP only game centered on PVP. You simply can't BALANCE PVP and PVE on the same server. If you think for a second that WOW is anywhere near balanced for both PVE/PVP then you need to go smoke another blunt. They dumbed down PVE so much now it's not even funny. Unless you're in a T1 guild or ever been in one then you have no clue.
As I noted in the blog article I linked to from the (intentionally argumentative) assertion, skill-based systems tend towards player-created classes instead of developer-created classes, have the same balancing issues of class-based systems along with higher complexity and ease of players to make non-optimal/non-functional skill builds.
Sigh, once more into the breach:
[quote]
Of course, refusing to compromise on your vision isn't always a disaster. The poster child for this is EVE, a game which has always embraced its calling as the game that defines hardcore space combat PvP. The game has grown steadily, to the point where it is one of the most popular MMORPGs on the market with over 300,000 subscribers, many of whom have made legends, without ever compromising on its initial vision - a virtual sandbox, on a single server, where one player can challenge the universe. Sometimes everyone else IS dumb.
[quote]
Scott, I'm sorry, but you have been totally, utterly misled on this. Eve Online's actual number of players is a small fraction of their account numbers. Let me be completely clear on this (deep breath). The MAJORITY of Eve's active accounts are SECOND, THIRD, AND EVEN FOURTH, FIFTH, AND SIXTH ALT ACCOUNTS.
Whew. Seriously, virtually no one plays Eve long-term without having at least a second and often a third paid account (you can play multiple Eve instances on one comp, that's definitely a contributing factor btw). I've personally played with long-termers who had 5 active paid alt accounts, there were some others with 4 paid, there were a significant number with 3 paid alts accounts, and the number of players with 1 and 2 paid alt accounts were - a LOT of the ones I met.
Truth is, the game environment just about demands it, because you can only train 1 character per account at one time, and your character must have training to use - well, anything at all, really. Because you can only gain training at a certain pace, a player with just 1 account is stuck in the space mud compared to a player who has other paid accounts on which they've trained a pure PvP character, a master miner, a manufacturer, etc. Training other chars on the same account means you have to stop training your primary char - and that's a serious issue when your primary needs to put 11 days of solid training to get over just ONE of the 20 or so humps he has to surmount to play with the cool kids.
And CCP just LOVES that fact about their game. Seriously, CCP has every motivation not to make a game where 1 person can make 1 account and just go play all happy on a level playing field with everyone else. They've a niche (meaning tiny) market, their game environment is filled with hardcore players (and a lot of metagaming griefers), both of which mean mainstream sub numbers aren't going to happen. AND their client can multibox on 1 computer pretty easily.
So OF COURSE they're going to sell all of the alt accounts they possibly can - it's the only way to really grow their income from the property! Their "Double your fun!" specials (where buying a second paid account is only 50 bucks for 6 months) is pretty much proof of that. What other game company has a "hey, we're cool with multiboxing!" promotion going on? lol.
FYI, in my personal opinion, that's pretty much a soulless and evil way to run a gaming company. But that's what they have to work with, and I also don't personally care, as I don't play Eve anymore.
But for god's sake, I wish reporters like you would check into the facts before spouting off about the "astounding success" of Eve Online "omgspacegamesandboxwith300ksubstheymustRULE!!!11!!!!1". They are not a 300k subscriber game. In my guesstimation (calculated completely in my butt from the number of players I've known and the number of alts they had), they've got around 1/4 of those numbers of long-term players.
Oh, and please by all means, feel free to debunk my from-my-butt statistics. Ask CCP to release the numbers of actual subscribers, instead of the number of paid accounts. I don't really care, but no other game company "plays the players" the way they do, so I am academically interested in the numbers.
[quote]
Or sometimes you have a class that is dependent on a core concept that is, um, a bug. Sticking with Dark Age of Camelot, let’s look at the Berserker class. It’s a class that swings two axes at people. This is a simple concept. Swing axes, do damage, fall down because you can’t take that much in return. Pretty much every game has some class like this - the melee glass cannon. Well, one fine day the game server programmer noticed that there was a fairly obvious bug in the way combat was calculated that made “Left Axe”, the Berserker off-hand weapon skill, do entirely too much damage. So… he fixed it. We fix bugs, right? Well, for all the Berserker players who logged in one day and did substantially less damage (in a class focused on... doing damage) it was not right, it was fairly wrong. And no amount of adjustments later fixed it. People got fed up, and left.
[/quote] crap, how do you quote parts of the article? blarg
This one's a classic. This is why you unfortunately have to make people use and obey a cumbersome change management system. It's not that everyone would do something like this, so a CM leash is a necessity. It's that sooner or later SOMEONE will, and cost everyone bigtime, like in terms of their jobs
so you dont like eve, well you know, last time i checked nobody was actually forced to play the game, and seriously, what is so special about claiming to have so many active subscriptions, and while some people do have more than one account, its hardly the prevalent state of affairs no matter how much you might wish it to be the case
Pvp in eve may be fundamental, but its not game breaking, it has consequences, and its not always consensual.
What is so hard to believe about the figure anyway, when other games claim to have millions, eve isnt even claiming to have 1 million! and yet somehow that is less believable.. hate the game all you want, not everyone can cope with a sandbox environment after all, but for those that do, everything else pales by comparison.
Oh, and any evidence you have that everyone in eve has at least a dozen accounts each, will be read with some amusement, we may even laugh
I still don't see how this applies to Darkfall. Perhaps to Eve, because you are more forced to focus on specific areas. Even so, I fervently disagree with calling it a "class-system" because, well, there is not a series of classes, player defined or otherwise. It's misleading and disingenuous to call games that may have a player base who create their own ideas of classes based on certain skillsets games that have "class-systems". This is a class-system the same way a stick you pick up off the ground is a baseball bat.
Balancing in games with no class system is done among skills individually; not even skill sets, let alone classes. Often, balancing has just as much to do with items (usually more often) than with skills. How you can pin this balancing on a class system is beyond me.
- Theguruofreason
I was a Shadowbane player, this guy obviously NEVER played ShadowBane. It was not fail by any means. There are hundreds awaiting its return Via Emulator team. There were more races/classes than i feel like listing. Endless toon builds. It was all pvp, group or solo. And it was not tedius to finish a toon, 1-2 days tops. This guy is extremely ignorent of that game IMO. When the Emulator server opens i advise EVERYONE to go try it, PM me ill show you the ropes and you'll throw rocks at any other game. None of us can find another game we enjoy. So to you sir, i say you fail. SBEmu Link: http://community.shadowbaneemulator.com/forums/index.php if it was fail why do so many desire it back?
Im just saying hi to all the DF players that post often in mmorpg.com
And the reason why shadowbane died had nothing to do with the pvp, but because of the bugs, you had to point and click to move around and it had too mcuh grind. While in DF, you cans teal city, in shadow bane, you had to destroy the whole base and reconstruct it with your clan money.
Personally, thats why i left shadow bane, too mcuh grind.
C:\Users\FF\Desktop\spin move.gif
Wootin, it may surprise you to know that a LOT of people don't have multiple accounts. I have played EVE since June of 2004, and I only acquired a second account this past February. That's 4 and 2/3 years with only one account, and I count myself as having done just fine.
-Wrayeth
"Look, pa! I just contributed absolutely nothing to this thread!"