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There will be no ganking of newbie players in the Old Republic.....
Belgaraath
Member UncommonPosts: 3,205
I noticed the following on the official forums and thought it was an interesting tidbit of info for those who shy away from games like Darkfall for just this reason.
The following quote is directly from Bioware:
"there will be no ganking of newbie players in The Old Republic as all Origin Worlds are sanctuaries that can not be invaded by the other faction. We have no interest in allowing high level players to choke off the supply of new players into the game by ganking them over and over before they have learned the ropes of their class.
To put it bluntly: If that is your fantasy, you will have to find another game, because The Old Republic will not cater to that. For every player who enjoys that particular fantasy, there are a lot of players that don't enjoy being on the receiving end of it. That's a fact, a business lesson learned from existing, still running MMOs.
We think we have plenty of great options for PvP in our game, from Warzones, to Open PvP Objective Areas to Open World PvP on Contested Planets, which will be dangerous territory outside the protective reach of guards and fair game for conflicts.
But if you are expecting something akin to the original Ultima Online or DAoC's Mordred server, you need to look elsewhere."
There Is Always Hope!
Comments
Good
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Brilliant.
The exact same lesson Ultima Online learned over a decade ago when they released Trammel -
PvP is more fun when it's a fair fight.
I swear, this is MMO Design 101 stuff that the low-budget indie folks just don't seem to learn... and thusly fail.
Finally a company who knows that ganking does nothing but ruin the game for new players.
Playing
Nothing
waiting for
The secret world
Played
WoW, DCU online, star wars: the old republic, city of heroes, city of villains, everquest, plenty more I'm probably forgetting or aren't worth noting.
Ho Ho Ho! They name names eh?
Anyhow this doesn't bother me in the least. Seriously you would pay for a box and a subscription to camp newbies?
I wonder how they will police lowbie areas.
Uhm good? Not terribly surprising for a mostly PvE-centric theme park MMORPG... the less sociopaths trying to ruin my gaming experience the better.
-------------------------
"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places..." ~ H.P.Lovecraft, "From Beyond"
Member Since March 2004
Where do i click for that free Rift trial ... ?
*stomps hooves*
I'll be lurking around at the first patch of contested territory they'll set foot on to avenge the lack of exciting player danger I experienced on my origin world.
Maybe I'm different though, but I enjoy the feeling of being hunted and vulnerable and looking up to certain high level enemies.
I vividly remember the first level 60 Tauren I saw in Hillsbrad back in vanilla WOW, how I wasn't sure whether it was somekind of world boss or a player and how I almost wet my pants.
Anyway ... it won't make much of a difference this though. Origin worlds should be safe. I always despised the guys that wanted to go to very lowest starter zones to oneshot level ones. There will still be plenty of differences in level to make world pvp delightfully unfair later on ^_^
My brand new bloggity blog.
I don't understand people that complain about ganking.IT IS PART OF WHAT FUN MEANS, isn't much more fun and exciting when you know that danger might always lurk around and not just some shitty NPCs standing in place that will not move a finger unless you get into their aggro range.
[Mod Edit]
I'm pretty sure the Warfronts are not level restricted and the game auto-balances relative power despite level difference.
Higher level obviously has the advantage because they've spent more in "talent trees" and have access to more abilities, but things are balanced where there won't be one shots.
Maybe it'll work the same in the open world in "contested" areas?
Bad design is bad design, plain and simple.
Being able to tolerate it does earn you some kudos, but not being able to tolerate bad design shouldn't earn someone (the vast majority) an insult.
That's not how real war goes though. Most fights are unfair.
It depends what you want out of your pvp content: competition style restrictions / e-sports or open world realism / unbalanced conflict.
My brand new bloggity blog.
+2 to that... gankers are actually the carebears
..but
-1 for the "real men" comment since you are reffering to a video game instead of real life. A pimple faced kid is not turned into a man by playing a video game,..any type of way.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
There are also real stakes in real war and real morality. Games = not real.
Most people don't slaughter women and children IRL because.... it's morally wrong. Most people don't kill unarmed and defenseless civilians in war because it's morally wrong.
It is a game - in a game, cowards slaughter noobs who can't fight back - cowards and people who are bored.
Unbalanced conflict sounds great - if you are on the winning side.
I am all for open world balanced conflict, thank you.
Yeah yeah yeah it's a forum lol and it's a game was mostly just for dramatic effect.
Thats not what the OP is about. It's about the kind of thing that used to happen in AC2 when high level players would camp the zone in area for brand new players and chain kill them on their 1st few minutes in the game, or when a high level nuker decided it was fun to go into the newbie starter area and fire off a huge AoE that killed all the new players in one go.
Now this may be fun for the person doing it ( although I would like to use stronger language to describe them ) but from a purely business perspective they are just one sub where the players they put off playing the game with their cowardly antics could add up to dozens of subs.
I remember it happening to me in AC2 when I was starting a new alt. Guy came to the starting area and killed me along with a bunch of others a couple of times. I logged in my main, headed down there and spent the next 10 minutes chasing him around the bloody place as he was running away crying for mummy; yeah, a real hero of the game he was lol
I respect this this decision. While I enjoy the art of the PK, I take no pleasure in preying on lowbies. Others on the other hand do, which can lead to quite a frustrating starting experience and a possible rage quit. Nonetheless, valar morghulis.
"For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed:
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!"
~Lord George Gordon Byron
I agreed with you right up until here. You seemed to be more understanding that this isnt a realworld scenario and rather a game. However, you then make this outrageous comment that balanced OpenWorld Conflict is possible.
Open-world conflict is in itself going to be unbalanced. There is no way that a game company can create the game so that openworld conflict will be balanced. The only way to make sure fights are fair is to have instanced combat scenarios, I.E. Battlegrounds. Which IMHO are not fun at all. Sometimes fighting as a smaller group against all odds and coming out on top is the most gratfiying thing in MMO gaming.
"Question everything, even the existence of a god"
{mod edit}
Haha in all serious it's just BAD game design to allow your high level players to ruin the game experience for newbies before they even have a chance to figure out if they like the game or not.
It's smart design and it's smart business.
I think Bad spock may have touched on this but fun is subjective because you find it fun doesn't really do much for the multitudes of other gamers who won't find this kind of game play fun.
Take this from someone who has been ganked plenty and may be willing to do so again to play a game I thought was fun in other ways, most people don't want to waste the entire gaming evening trying to avoid some tool they have absolutely no chance of beating and almost as little chance of avoiding.
And while a player like yourself may not be bothered by it think of it from the perspective of the "type" of gamer who would do this what exactly do they get out of it? The ability to engage in pvp without the actual threat of losing? A momentary reprieve from boredom alleviated by griefing others as opposed to logging out and going to find something to do with oneself?
The bottom line is the bad far outweighs the good to let a practice like this into the game as the op mentioned DF is probably kicking themselves right now for allowing this type of attitude to permiate their game from the start and if one wants to actually make money on the mmo they make this model will be followed going forward.
Balanced open world conflict is possible, just very, very hard to do in a two faction game - so we probably won't see it in SWTOR which is sad, but hopefully they do enough to make the lower-population side "stronger" so it's still fun to play.
The last part of your statement, a smaller group against all odds etc. etc. only really works when gear and level are not major factors, and skill/coordination/strategy/team work are the #1 determining factors of victory.
So again, that completely validates my anti-ganking ideals.
Ahhh, White Sands in AoC, where ganking squads roamed the island in abundance. The killing fields and testing ground for any new MMO gamer that thought that pvp could be fun and was confronted with the harsh reality of the other side of the medaillon.
New players immediately got confronted with the soulsearching question what they were looking for in pvp and a pvp server and if they were ready to deal with the consequences, good and bad.
Sure, it brought a lot of controversies and heated discussions, but those who went through it and didn't leave immediately got toughened and learnt what it would really be about on the server: stealth, cunning, fleeing like hell when needed and ruthless, merciless payback when the occasion presented itself, and fair fights were obvious daydreams and an illusion in Conan's Hyborea.
It was fun, if you could stomach it!
But yes, I also know of many people who left because those hurdles just were too big to take and no fun to them at all.
Origin planets and capital planets gank free, ok, that should give new players at least some breathing room to find their footing and spread their wings.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
^^ the memeroies ..this is what people dont have anymore when pvping nowa days..now its just mindless arena pvp with op gear. kill x collect x ..cant wait till archage...theres alot of mmos out there that can be great pvp style games but are to fixed on "questing" like it HAS to be in every mmo that comes out
ganking them over and over before they have learned the ropes of their class.
Its not even really comparable. If trying to compare something to real life, It would be like an adult going to a playground and kicking all the kids asses and throwing them off the equipment etc. Plus lots of kids play MMOs too and being slaughtered over and over again would result in a load of complaints and quits from the starting zones. Its safe to say that nobody is really a "man" when they're starting out in an MMO, but a bunch of people trying to figure out gameplay and mechanics and what is going on in the world.
However, if squads of commandos npcs were to police a starting zone and could fairly rapidly reply to an intruder - this may be a lot more interesting.
Anyways, starting worlds and capital worlds don't allow the opposin faction, as they'd most likely be blasted in space before successfully landing
I dont see a way that Open-World PvP can be balanced. There will always be one side with more players, higher levels, better gear etc. They couldnt pull of a "lower pop is stronger" thing in a open world because there is no way of telling who is actually fighting in the area and who is running around as a warband trying to pick large fights.
For example, if there was a warband of 30 people running around looking for fights, but there were 50 players of the opposite faction in the area just questing or sitting in a neutral town, the warband would still get the buffs, so that if 20 of the 50 players tried to stop them, the buff would make it even harder.
Gear can only do so much to make up for skill level in games. As long as the game isnt 100% focused on gear and level (As WoW, and other themeparks are) then a good fight can be had with decent players putting up a fight. I understand this kind of thing turns out to be a pipedream for now, but hopefully someone will find a balance with gear reliance to skill ratios.
"Question everything, even the existence of a god"
That's why the Bioware rep says in the OP's quote - This game is not for you.