Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Thread so epic....
Puremallace
Member Posts: 1,856
I had to repost it here:
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=104147
HOW TO WORLD PVP
A Guide from BioWare
BioWare has really re-written the book on the implementation of world PvP in MMO. All other developers take note - especially you noobs who created Ultima Online. Lets look that pieces of wisdom they have given the development world...
* Ensure that you heavily incentivise instanced, scripted PvP. Make sure everyone wants to do it, all the time, by providing money, experience, loot, titles, access to pvp gear, and an achievement / award system.
* At the same time, all open world-world pvp must have no rewards or incentive, whatsoever. Like, don't even keep count or something.
* Funnel all remaining endgame pvp into a specific, prearranged zone. This has the side benefit or ensuring that 90% of your gorgeous, detailed world will never be used or seen again by players who have overleveled it in the first place by doing the instanced pvp.
* Make levelling incredibly trivial. Make it so only a couple of days are needed to take a character to max level, and more than 25% of the content is skipped due to being redundant. Make certain that mini-games and instanced PvP provide better levelling than playing in the world.
This ensures that there is minimum time to engage in same-level world pvp, and means that pvp which does occur is from bored max-level gankers. This is great as the world PvP will be short, and all the sweeter for happening once if you're lucky!
This is a good start. However, you want to really ensure the full world-pvp experience is given to your players. So further steps should be implemented.
* Create questing areas for opposing factions that do not overlap.
* Huge, impassable lethal death barriers should be placed on large sections of your questing areas, ensuring that opposing players can't even enter!
* Better still, make many zones simply inaccessible to the opposing faction. Don't even put them on the map! This should include the capital and home-worlds of each faction.
* Split each world section into instanced shards, so even when the world is full of people it feels empty, and large-scale faction warfare is impossible. And if you get into any PvP encounter you don't instantly win, just swap instances away from it so it doesn't affect your gameplay in any way.
Sanity check: Did you setup your game world correctly for maximum world PvP action?
1) Can a player level 80% to the maximum level on the highest population PvP server there is while seeing no more than ONE same-level member of the opposing faction, who escaped on a mount, in that time? (hint: answer is yes).
2) Is there no functional difference between PvE and PvP servers?
If you answered 'yes' to both these questions, you are clearly on the right track!
* Install large numbers of town guards that are max level or higher, and are ranged, super-powerful and have artificially boosted HP. Put these in *all* towns and quest locations of all levels - not just respawn points and major centres. Lots of them. RING THE TOWNS in them.
(Bonus points for putting a few of them unobtrusively out in the middle of nowhere with no visual indicator so opposing faction members walk into them while exploring).
Sanity check: Did you implement town guards correctly to promote world PvP, one of the primary selling features of your game?
1) Do endgame PvE players look at low level quest NPCs guards and wonder aloud - why isn't *that* guy killing the epic heroic boss threatening the world? Why is he guarding a hut in the middle of a desert?
2) Do RP players break immersion when they look at said town rent-a-cops and say "hey I thought I was the great Sith Lord Abrazan! That dude is at least 25 times as powerful as me at my level..."?
If you answered "yes" to both these questions - you have done town guards correctly!
* Have no death penalty at all.
* Give the victor of any PvP encounter a disadvantage by giving the loser 12 seconds of invincible invisibility in which he can heal and move around.
Thankyou, BioWare, for finally showing us how it is done!
Comments
Rift not keeping you busy enough these days?
This is the best review I've read for the game. Open world PVP is the most important aspect of an mmorpg to me. Funny stuff.
Who cares about world pvp anyway? If you wanted to feel good by ganking easy prey, you could take some delicious chocolate and eat it while sitting on your little brother. Feels good, right?
according to bioware, the most important aspect of a MASSIVELY multiplayer game is the games instanced content.
you know im playing swtor i was thinking kinda the same thing .. i was like where are all the rebels to kill ,,, then i found them ,, you can get to them if you pay attention to the small dotted trails that lead you to areas you dont have quest ,,,, theres alot of them and also you can find them hunting datacrons too .. the higher level you go the easier it is to find them... also keep in mind the game is semi-new so if your in the top couple tiers youll have less chance to find them as alot people cant just grind to 50 in a couple days like other can .... is a great game as far as im concerned and the open world pvp is making it much better
Same as 95% of mmo developers out there.
First priority and most important thing in their opinion - instances. Everything else is just side-thing that eventually lead to "stay in city or eventually run daily quests while you queue through cross-server LFG with random people to do instances. after you done please repeat x 1000"
open world pvp is only effective with territory control tho..
Well, I dunno what I expected from them, but I expected you to know the difference between a single player rpg and an MMO like TOR. Guess I was wrong.
B-but I-llium, bbbut territorial control, b-b-b-ut pvp with objectives, but but deathmatch pvp, but but ...???? LEGACY SYSTEM!
And CLAN WARS!! YES!! POLITICS.
Buzzwords, all of them.
Illium is wintergrasp 2
0 sandbox elemenets like politics, don't kid yourself.
But who actually expected good PVP in this game?
SWTOR is a great cinematic leveling experience, that's it, PVE and PVP endgame is same old, and we all knew it before buying the game.
"Esport with tournaments is for hardcore pvp'rs that want to be competitive. Openworld PVP with ganking and griefing is for casuals that just wants their pvp mixed with pve from time to time."
otacu
This thread is going to be real epic because by the end of the day every TOR hater on this board will have been in here back-slapping and butt-patting each other over the emminent demise of TOR due to lack of open world PvP, which I delcare is today's TOR-will-fail-because-of...topic of the day.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
the game has its fun moments, however, it's not worth a monthly sub; i understand it's a themepark, but for Pete's sakes, where are the players? all sharded out?; if you are looking for instanced PvP then this game is for you (if you really like the mini-games on this game that is).
Funny, I've had no problem participating in world PvP, and I'm ahead of the bulk of the population in levels and thus the planets I'm on are still relatively empty.
Then again, haters gonna hate.
Fixed?
Yawn...
These TOR hate threads are getting so tiresome. You guys are just looking for anything at all to crticize. Too bad almost everyone is enjoying themselves actually playing the game. That must really bother you.
I was watching Gamebreaker and gary was pretty upset about Ilum and actaully all of them were considering they are top fanboys. Seems like Tol Barad almost.
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.
Carl Sagan-
No, not fixed. Try again.
Well, Bioware was never known for their awesome pvp-concepts, right? The strange thing though: wheres the Mythic-folks, werent they brought in to make the pvp superb?
Maybe they didnt get much to say about the direction then.
I liked this post better.
I don't know if territory control specifically is the only way, but incentives driven by Open World PVP I agree with. The DAOC model where open world PVP and objectives opened up a special dungeon for that one side only was a huge success to me - and surprisingly I don't think any other game has done that to date.
I do think only the two factions was a mistake. It would have been nice to create a third faction around the underworld/Hutts where Bounty Hunters, Smugglers, and maybe another class could have been put together. Three factions is always better than two in my mind for Open World PVP, and can be done effectively for instanced PVP too.
Hahah, I read this post over at the SWTOR forums and actually contemplated copying it over here, then I logon and here it is
!
I think the OP is absolutely true, SWTOR may have its strong points, but PvP is not really one of them.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
While the original post was pretty damn hilarious, I have to admit that PvP is the last thing I'm looking for in a themepark MMO. I'm not surprised, however. What did we expect? They're making a multiplayer game that focuses on story, their last concern is going to be class balance, or dynamic world PvP.
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
The game just isnt built for PVP, not that its the games fault, it wasnt designed for it. Its a tight rope act for any game to put this out. Cost, if this could be done right theyd havnt to build special servers to make it happen. To make this even possible would take a server farm connected to a small super computer. Where theirs maybe 100 connections on the individual server, the servers all connect to a super computer thats running the world.
I doubt even WOW could afford such a system to make it possible for a massive pvp batttle. No gaming companys going to spend 100k a hour to make your pvp session Uber.
People that level to max in 2 days I can't relate too and the game should not be changed to suit their extreme play styles. And people that level that fast are extreme themselves and will never be satisfied, therefor why try.
Huh?
I don't think anyone was asking for 5 bajillion players in one zone. In fact, that would kind of suck and be really confusing.
We would just like things like...you know, to be rewarded for open world PvP, and not have the zones be constructed in a way that greatly discourages world PvP.
Also, if the game isn't good for PvP because it wasn't designed to be good for PvP, then how is that not the game's fault
?
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
You answered that question yourself...?