Fallen Earth solved this long ago. open world pvp is personal setting you toggle on or off. perhaps a game could augment this by increasing exp or gathering gains/RNG item drops etc while in pvp mode. of course some ammount of cool down for changing modes would be required
Just copy and past Lineage pvp system and problem solved. All carebear kids here have no idea of this, after playing only MMOs with pointless pvp like WoW.
Lure them to your team. Have them taste their own cookie ! Divide the PvP zone in solo and multizones where in the solo zone only one person can attack you at a time and it takes like 30 - 60 secs if they want to tag you. In the multizone everyone can attack you at the same time. You know that feel when you take on a 1v4 and wreck their ass ?
Like many others have said, the zerg is unavoidable so I don't think developers should waste time trying to prevent the zerg. Likewise, in open world pvp, some people will always be accused of griefing and this is also unavoidable (most people I've seen accused of griefing are just cutting off resupply lines to the main fight).
However, there are definitely things devs can do to make the situation better:
1) Self-balancing mechanism The zerg forms when lots of ungrouped players are pvping. They naturally swarm together for protection, its human nature. The problem comes when one sides zerg is superior to the other. So, your game should have a self-balancing mechanism. 3 or more factions is one such thing (if one side's zerg is too big, the other 2 can team up). LotRO and WAR went different routes - the winning team would open up access to a special zone, which would encourage players on the zerg side to disappear and farm good loot elsewhere, returning the numbers to something more even.
2) Collision Detection / Friendly Fire Been mentioned by others but collision detection is one way to prevent the effectiveness of the zerg, especially when combined with friendly fire. Combat would have to take a seriously different route to now, but could be fun.
3) Long Time-To-Kill The shorter the ttk, the more frustrating it is being on the losing side. If it takes me 1 minute to run back to the fight, but I die in 1second to the zerg, that sucks. On a big map, it might take me 5 minutes to get back to the action, only to be killed pretty much instantly. Combat should be designed with a long ttk in mind so that, even if the outcome is inevitable, the player at least has an opportunity to join in the pvp, get in a few hits of their own. In the case of ganking / griefing, a long ttk really helps as it gives more opportunity to escape / call for help.
4) Varied Routes Ganking / griefing tends to occur when enemy movements are too predictable. If there is only one route out of a respawn zone, then that route is getting camped. So, put in lots of routes out of respawn zones and make pathing around the world more interesting.
5) No Stealth Doesn't really have anything to do with the zerg, but removing stealth would help a lot with ganking / griefing. Much harder to jump someone if they can see you 100s of metres away!
6) Make teamwork massively effective This is a double-edged sword, as seen in WAR. Team interplay was a massive thing in WAR. On many occasions, I watched or was a part of small groups (6 players) that took on the zerg and won (24+). This is because, by knowing our classes and playing well together, we could overcome 24 random players spamming dps in a zerg. There were also some really good guilds on our server that could co-ordinate a whole raid really well, and that raid of 24 could beat a zerg of 70+. The downside was it made the solo scene suck so if you weren't in a group or the zerg then chances are you were just cannon fodder.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
I would love to see an mmo implement this, even if it was partial friendly fire- like aoe spells/nukes also hitting friendlies. The game would also need to have body blocking (both for friendly and enemies), which could give more importance to formations and flanking attacks etc.
For ganking/griefing, I think very harsh penalties, bounties, etc are the way to go. A player that regularly griefs/pks/robs others should be seen as a criminal by the game world, possibly increasing relations with criminal npc/player factions in the game but also raising the ire of the authorities.
Fallen Earth solved this long ago. open world pvp is personal setting you toggle on or off. perhaps a game could augment this by increasing exp or gathering gains/RNG item drops etc while in pvp mode. of course some ammount of cool down for changing modes would be required
the end.
Yep.. SWG did it as well. Those who were PVP enabled were prepared to defend themselves, something a certain segment of the PVP crowd just can't grasp.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Honestly the only way to make it even slightly acceptable is to have opt in PvP in the open world. If you want to PvP you join a faction (which can be NPC or PC controlled) and any player in an enemy faction is Open season. You could even go as far as to phase PvP'ers and non PvP'ers so that neer the twain shall meet. Let people that like PvP and zergs to have at it and leve the rest of us alone.
Open world pvp/rvr consists of all playstyles. Solo, small-man, group and zerg. It is what makes open world pvp open world. Trying to place restrictions on zerg warfare kind of defeats the purpose of it in the first place imo.
Honestly, some of my best memories in DAoC were running in our set 8 man and bombing the Kzar zerg. Yes, we would usually die, but would take out a hell of a lot more of them than they did of us. And when the zerg got to big, we would join our realms battlegroup and have some pretty massive battles. It was....fun.
My comment is more on the ganking-aspect of zerking, as participating willingly in PvP always should have the risk of you getting your ass handed to you if you walk through a bad neighbourhood without backup
Use some serious resources to develop a law and order system, that will hammer down on senseless killing of "innocents". I'm not talking about a system that will prevent ganking or zerking, but a system that will present a SERIOUS challenge for the players deciding to go on a senseless murdering spree (which would destabilize almost any kind of society, civilisation or other social living conditions).
I've seen such systems before, but without too much of a penalty.
For those that played EQ; what happened if you attacked an NPC in town? You got to mess with the raid-style-difficulty guards. This system only worked in the cities, but you could implement an event-system that would send out bounty-hunters or a group of guards to hunt down and punish mass-murderers outside cities. The higher your wanted-level the more non-trivial badass guards would head your way.
The system should be balanced in a way so that people who wanted to gank or zerk PvP had to be real organized to be able to survive the repercussions. Make it a very challenging part of gameplay, like old-school raiding.
I mentioned "innocents" before. This would ofcourse indicate some kind of PvP-flagging. Not to prevent you from being attacked everywhere, but just to strip you of the "innocent"-status, so you can choose to engage in full on PvP without the hassle of being criminalized.
In a short amount of time, I'm sure we would have several ganking guilds in-game that would have enough numbers, skill and strategy to withstand the constant fighting with the law (NPCs). The balancing act here could be that other players could join the fight on the side of the NPC law thereby seriously tipping the advantage in favour of the law.
This way there would always be a working tool to use towards organized criminal mass-murdering behaviour...as long as players helping the law could drum up some degree of organized fighting.
For this to work, there would ofcourse have to be some kind of notable penalty for dying, so that executed criminals would feel the repercussions of their behaviour afterwards...just like their victims experienced after being ganked.
To counter zerg, I believe it has to something in terms of how you PvP and who you are with. I don't like getting ganked from zerg either. but when I got really good at PvPing, I got an invite from an elite guild and we took care of zergs. We didnt win most of the time but enough that zergs avoided us if they could.
To counter "griefing" in a PvP game, the developer must grow some balls, ignore the whining of the FFA PvP proponents which usually flood the forums of those games during beta, and create really harsh (and I mean VERY, VERY HARSH) consequences for killing players who are just minding their own business. Part of the consequences must make it so that the "griefers" are removed from the play field for a relatively long time, avoiding repetitive ganking.
Then, you may have a game which real PvPers will enjoy, those who do PvP for a purpose, vs enemy guilds and so on, and in which "griefers" will soon understand that being a murderer is a very harsh life and either adapt and accept the consequences, which will not happen much since those guys are usually also cowards and the worse whiners when things don't go their way, or they will quit.
I think these are good solution I would take it a step further though.
I would seperate the two worlds completely. One server pve other server pvp. make an ocean that links the two and you can get to the other server in game but its a lot of work.
how about that idea? I stole that idea its not orginal
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Zerging: Thats all on the devs and the combat style they set out for the game. Games with the trinity and rolls support classes, lowered the amount of zergs. Adding class skills to deal with zergs like DAoC also made zergs ineffective. Like CCs, stuns and AoE roots. Action combat where each player is their own island will always have more zergs because they are effective.
Grefing: Again all on the devs. Penalize the hell out of it. Killing the same player over and over should give you debuffs and action taken like player jail system. Killing grey con players should give you a debuff that brings you to the same level of the player you killed for 24hrs.
Devs know they can take action on bad play styles. They just chose not to.
Well, gunpowder happened, but that didn't change marching in rank entirely. Witness the Napoleonic era for example. Automatic rifles, bombs, and aircraft changed it for good. But I'm talking about ancient or medieval warfare.
To me, as a player, less challenge = less fun. No challenge = no fun. I'd rather play a good single player game than play a game which allows players to basically cheat to win or gain an advantage over each other. PVP is supposed to be about competition. In order to have good competition, the system must be built in order to be fair and balanced for all players, regardless of how long they've been playing. It is possible for a rookie competitor or team to beat or outplay a veteran competitor or team in professional sporting events.
Your first mistake is in your stance that PvP is about competition. While I agree with you, there are plenty out there that will not. While I personally choose to fight equally geared and (hopefully) equally experienced players, there is a (from just my personal experience) large percentage of players that find just making people miserable a fun thing to do.
You cite PvP, but I have seen it in PvE where I need to kill X mob to get through this quest/mission/assignment and someone (usually much higher level ) with the ability to kill X mob much faster than I can, kill it over and again so I have to either wait for them to get bored, or get lucky and find another spot to kill X mob. So, there is that person and they are never going to leave.
Then there is the person that will level as fast as possible simply to come back and just kill players over and over again for no other reason that to just grief them. These players tend to seek each other out and this is how your griefer zerg starts. I saw this time and time again in Lineage 2. Frustrating at the least.
Then there are some people that actually look at it like you do, however because we love that challenge we tend to stick to ourselves and try to rely on our own skills to see us through. Some times it works, other times we get our teeth kicked in.
If I had to come up with a system that worked the best, I would say Blade and Soul nailed it. You can opt in or out of PvP by simply changing your costume. This work as you can PvP as much as you want, and then when you decide you are tired of that you can change clothes and carry on. Or if you start getting camped by higher level players. It is very convenient.
As far as pure open world PvP where you are in at all times, there is no cure as you would need to cure humans. People do not (generally) behave in games the way they do IRL. My buddy in EvE is a cop. This dude loves to PvP in eve, he will gank you at any opportunity, I dare say he does not roll around in his patrol car knocking off people at random. At least up to the point.
The point is, people play games to get away form reality, and while I am not saying we are all bunch of homicidal maniacs barely controlling ourselves, in a game we can do what we want (within the rules of the game ofc) without being constrained by the laws that make a healthy society.
So in my opinion the more you try to impose real life rules of engagement on people inside a game world the further you get away from allowing people to escape their ordinary lives, and the less appealing that game will be to me, and I would guess quite a few other people.
Long story short: Get stronger and zerg back or play arena games where the point is a level battlefield.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
Devs know they can take action on bad play styles. They just chose not to.
I think they make a bad calculation, and they all repeat the same mistake.
Their first idea is that they don't want to scare the gankers/griefers away, because they are good money. The problem is, once the ganking/griefing starts, it's the vast majority of their player base which will start to quit. Result, another dead or barely surviving game which could have been good.
A few developers did it right, like UO when they added Trammel (guess that's where you got your idea from, @SEANMCAD ).
that might have been in UO before the game I am thinking of but I am specifically stealing a feature from Wurm in that example. also, they made the skill gain faster on pvp then on pve which makes sense because then pvp players are not going to grind in pve for skills. pve might grind in pvp but generally speaking pve players dont care if 'the other guy' has higher skills anyway
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Devs know they can take action on bad play styles. They just chose not to.
I think they make a bad calculation, and they all repeat the same mistake.
Their first idea is that they don't want to scare the gankers/griefers away, because they are good money. The problem is, once the ganking/griefing starts, it's the vast majority of their player base which will start to quit. Result, another dead or barely surviving game which could have been good.
A few developers did it right, like UO when they added Trammel (guess that's where you got your idea from, @SEANMCAD ).
Lots of game companies make this mistake, even games that are not PvP. They look at the insta sales at release over the long term value of their product. Often trying to pull it a large crowd over pulling in a player type that will want to stay because it feels like home.
I'm gonna throw this question out there: What are the benefits of non-consensual PvP and do the benefits outway the negatives?
Now I have nothing against PvP. In fact I rather enjoy it. But I only like it when it is competative, rewarding and fun. But non consensual open world PVP is usually none of these. For the poor sod getting ganked during questing it usually leads to the person feeling powerless and having a negative opinion of the game. If it happens too many times people just quit.
To the people who gank they have fun for a while then take a rep hit which leads to either getting killed by a NPC or grinding rep back which isn't much fun either...
The times when it becomes fun all out battles with two faction on a server is actually very very rare. What usually happens is one or two people get ganked and word spreads and everyone else runs away - because alliance are cowards.
I'm gonna throw this question out there: What are the benefits of non-consensual PvP and do the benefits outway the negatives?
Now I have nothing against PvP. In fact I rather enjoy it. But I only like it when it is competative, rewarding and fun. But non consensual open world PVP is usually none of these. For the poor sod getting ganked during questing it usually leads to the person feeling powerless and having a negative opinion of the game. If it happens too many times people just quit.
To the people who gank they have fun for a while then take a rep hit which leads to either getting killed by a NPC or grinding rep back which isn't much fun either...
The times when it becomes fun all out battles with two faction on a server is actually very very rare. What usually happens is one or two people get ganked and word spreads and everyone else runs away - because alliance are cowards.
agreed.
and I think the gank problem is more pervasive then some in this thread think. That said some mechanics like H1Z1 are just so terrible that the only way to progress is be a ganker. or so I have heard I havent played it
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
I'm gonna throw this question out there: What are the benefits of non-consensual PvP and do the benefits outway the negatives?
Now I have nothing against PvP. In fact I rather enjoy it. But I only like it when it is competative, rewarding and fun. But non consensual open world PVP is usually none of these. For the poor sod getting ganked during questing it usually leads to the person feeling powerless and having a negative opinion of the game. If it happens too many times people just quit.
To the people who gank they have fun for a while then take a rep hit which leads to either getting killed by a NPC or grinding rep back which isn't much fun either...
The times when it becomes fun all out battles with two faction on a server is actually very very rare. What usually happens is one or two people get ganked and word spreads and everyone else runs away - because alliance are cowards.
Its the game you pick to play. DAoC PvP is my fav, a place to PvP, a Place to PvE and another place to PvE with the risk PvP. So what you felt like playing that day, you could get. If you play an MMO where its FFA its never non-consensual. The second you make a char you agree to PvP at any time. You want safe boxes to play in, go play that type of game. BD is a good balance of PvP anywhere but there is a cost. So low risk but it can happen.
In short: The benefits is the crowd you are trying to pull into your game. Nothing more.
I'm gonna throw this question out there: What are the benefits of non-consensual PvP and do the benefits outway the negatives?
Now I have nothing against PvP. In fact I rather enjoy it. But I only like it when it is competative, rewarding and fun. But non consensual open world PVP is usually none of these. For the poor sod getting ganked during questing it usually leads to the person feeling powerless and having a negative opinion of the game. If it happens too many times people just quit.
To the people who gank they have fun for a while then take a rep hit which leads to either getting killed by a NPC or grinding rep back which isn't much fun either...
The times when it becomes fun all out battles with two faction on a server is actually very very rare. What usually happens is one or two people get ganked and word spreads and everyone else runs away - because alliance are cowards.
Its the game you pick to play. DAoC PvP is my fav, a place to PvP, a Place to PvE and another place to PvE with the risk PvP. So what you felt like playing that day, you could get. If you play an MMO where its FFA its never non-consensual. The second you make a char you agree to PvP at any time. You want safe boxes to play in, go play that type of game. BD is a good balance of PvP anywhere but there is a cost. So low risk but it can happen.
In short: The benefits is the crowd you are trying to pull into your game. Nothing more.
to kind of give an example of what I am suggesting in this regard
if Darkfall had a 'pvp limited to only waring factions' ruleset server I would have played that one. however if my options for a pve experience meant going back to EQ2 then I wasnt about to do that either. so as it were I was pvp gankers dream meat in Darkfall for those specfiic reasons
I see no problem with same game multiple servers with different rules
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
I'm gonna throw this question out there: What are the benefits of non-consensual PvP and do the benefits outway the negatives?
Now I have nothing against PvP. In fact I rather enjoy it. But I only like it when it is competative, rewarding and fun. But non consensual open world PVP is usually none of these. For the poor sod getting ganked during questing it usually leads to the person feeling powerless and having a negative opinion of the game. If it happens too many times people just quit.
To the people who gank they have fun for a while then take a rep hit which leads to either getting killed by a NPC or grinding rep back which isn't much fun either...
The times when it becomes fun all out battles with two faction on a server is actually very very rare. What usually happens is one or two people get ganked and word spreads and everyone else runs away - because alliance are cowards.
agreed.
and I think the gank problem is more pervasive then some in this thread think. That said some mechanics like H1Z1 are just so terrible that the only way to progress is be a ganker. or so I have heard I havent played it
Games like Ark, H1Z1 and Rust are different. In these games it's about surviving as long as you can before getting wrecked. You go into the game with the mindset "I'm going to die, but first I will kill as many people as I can". In other words you are in PvP combat the moment you log in the game. This is very different from your typical MMO where the mindset is about progression, co-operative play and loot.
I'm gonna throw this question out there: What are the benefits of non-consensual PvP and do the benefits outway the negatives?
Now I have nothing against PvP. In fact I rather enjoy it. But I only like it when it is competative, rewarding and fun. But non consensual open world PVP is usually none of these. For the poor sod getting ganked during questing it usually leads to the person feeling powerless and having a negative opinion of the game. If it happens too many times people just quit.
To the people who gank they have fun for a while then take a rep hit which leads to either getting killed by a NPC or grinding rep back which isn't much fun either...
The times when it becomes fun all out battles with two faction on a server is actually very very rare. What usually happens is one or two people get ganked and word spreads and everyone else runs away - because alliance are cowards.
agreed.
and I think the gank problem is more pervasive then some in this thread think. That said some mechanics like H1Z1 are just so terrible that the only way to progress is be a ganker. or so I have heard I havent played it
Games like Ark, H1Z1 and Rust are different. In these games it's about surviving as long as you can before getting wrecked. You go into the game with the mindset "I'm going to die, but first I will kill as many people as I can". In other words you are in PvP combat the moment you log in the game. This is very different from your typical MMO where the mindset is about progression, co-operative play and loot.
agree
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Comments
Or you can avoid the big body and bite the small part .
EDIT , did OP play FPS game ?
the end.
Divide the PvP zone in solo and multizones where in the solo zone only one person can attack you at a time and it takes like 30 - 60 secs if they want to tag you.
In the multizone everyone can attack you at the same time.
You know that feel when you take on a 1v4 and wreck their ass ?
Lovely
Full loot PvP best PvP
Sway all day, butterfly flaps all the way!
However, there are definitely things devs can do to make the situation better:
1) Self-balancing mechanism
The zerg forms when lots of ungrouped players are pvping. They naturally swarm together for protection, its human nature. The problem comes when one sides zerg is superior to the other. So, your game should have a self-balancing mechanism. 3 or more factions is one such thing (if one side's zerg is too big, the other 2 can team up). LotRO and WAR went different routes - the winning team would open up access to a special zone, which would encourage players on the zerg side to disappear and farm good loot elsewhere, returning the numbers to something more even.
2) Collision Detection / Friendly Fire
Been mentioned by others but collision detection is one way to prevent the effectiveness of the zerg, especially when combined with friendly fire. Combat would have to take a seriously different route to now, but could be fun.
3) Long Time-To-Kill
The shorter the ttk, the more frustrating it is being on the losing side. If it takes me 1 minute to run back to the fight, but I die in 1second to the zerg, that sucks. On a big map, it might take me 5 minutes to get back to the action, only to be killed pretty much instantly. Combat should be designed with a long ttk in mind so that, even if the outcome is inevitable, the player at least has an opportunity to join in the pvp, get in a few hits of their own. In the case of ganking / griefing, a long ttk really helps as it gives more opportunity to escape / call for help.
4) Varied Routes
Ganking / griefing tends to occur when enemy movements are too predictable. If there is only one route out of a respawn zone, then that route is getting camped. So, put in lots of routes out of respawn zones and make pathing around the world more interesting.
5) No Stealth
Doesn't really have anything to do with the zerg, but removing stealth would help a lot with ganking / griefing. Much harder to jump someone if they can see you 100s of metres away!
6) Make teamwork massively effective
This is a double-edged sword, as seen in WAR. Team interplay was a massive thing in WAR. On many occasions, I watched or was a part of small groups (6 players) that took on the zerg and won (24+). This is because, by knowing our classes and playing well together, we could overcome 24 random players spamming dps in a zerg. There were also some really good guilds on our server that could co-ordinate a whole raid really well, and that raid of 24 could beat a zerg of 70+. The downside was it made the solo scene suck so if you weren't in a group or the zerg then chances are you were just cannon fodder.
For ganking/griefing, I think very harsh penalties, bounties, etc are the way to go. A player that regularly griefs/pks/robs others should be seen as a criminal by the game world, possibly increasing relations with criminal npc/player factions in the game but also raising the ire of the authorities.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Honestly, some of my best memories in DAoC were running in our set 8 man and bombing the Kzar zerg. Yes, we would usually die, but would take out a hell of a lot more of them than they did of us. And when the zerg got to big, we would join our realms battlegroup and have some pretty massive battles. It was....fun.
Dammit! I just admitted having fun in a zerg.
Use some serious resources to develop a law and order system, that will hammer down on senseless killing of "innocents". I'm not talking about a system that will prevent ganking or zerking, but a system that will present a SERIOUS challenge for the players deciding to go on a senseless murdering spree (which would destabilize almost any kind of society, civilisation or other social living conditions).
I've seen such systems before, but without too much of a penalty.
For those that played EQ; what happened if you attacked an NPC in town? You got to mess with the raid-style-difficulty guards. This system only worked in the cities, but you could implement an event-system that would send out bounty-hunters or a group of guards to hunt down and punish mass-murderers outside cities. The higher your wanted-level the more non-trivial badass guards would head your way.
The system should be balanced in a way so that people who wanted to gank or zerk PvP had to be real organized to be able to survive the repercussions. Make it a very challenging part of gameplay, like old-school raiding.
I mentioned "innocents" before. This would ofcourse indicate some kind of PvP-flagging. Not to prevent you from being attacked everywhere, but just to strip you of the "innocent"-status, so you can choose to engage in full on PvP without the hassle of being criminalized.
In a short amount of time, I'm sure we would have several ganking guilds in-game that would have enough numbers, skill and strategy to withstand the constant fighting with the law (NPCs). The balancing act here could be that other players could join the fight on the side of the NPC law thereby seriously tipping the advantage in favour of the law.
This way there would always be a working tool to use towards organized criminal mass-murdering behaviour...as long as players helping the law could drum up some degree of organized fighting.
For this to work, there would ofcourse have to be some kind of notable penalty for dying, so that executed criminals would feel the repercussions of their behaviour afterwards...just like their victims experienced after being ganked.
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no sig
To counter zerg, I believe it has to something in terms of how you PvP and who you are with. I don't like getting ganked from zerg either. but when I got really good at PvPing, I got an invite from an elite guild and we took care of zergs. We didnt win most of the time but enough that zergs avoided us if they could.
I would seperate the two worlds completely. One server pve other server pvp.
make an ocean that links the two and you can get to the other server in game but its a lot of work.
how about that idea? I stole that idea its not orginal
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Grefing: Again all on the devs. Penalize the hell out of it. Killing the same player over and over should give you debuffs and action taken like player jail system. Killing grey con players should give you a debuff that brings you to the same level of the player you killed for 24hrs.
Devs know they can take action on bad play styles. They just chose not to.
You cite PvP, but I have seen it in PvE where I need to kill X mob to get through this quest/mission/assignment and someone (usually much higher level ) with the ability to kill X mob much faster than I can, kill it over and again so I have to either wait for them to get bored, or get lucky and find another spot to kill X mob. So, there is that person and they are never going to leave.
Then there is the person that will level as fast as possible simply to come back and just kill players over and over again for no other reason that to just grief them. These players tend to seek each other out and this is how your griefer zerg starts. I saw this time and time again in Lineage 2. Frustrating at the least.
Then there are some people that actually look at it like you do, however because we love that challenge we tend to stick to ourselves and try to rely on our own skills to see us through. Some times it works, other times we get our teeth kicked in.
If I had to come up with a system that worked the best, I would say Blade and Soul nailed it. You can opt in or out of PvP by simply changing your costume. This work as you can PvP as much as you want, and then when you decide you are tired of that you can change clothes and carry on. Or if you start getting camped by higher level players. It is very convenient.
As far as pure open world PvP where you are in at all times, there is no cure as you would need to cure humans. People do not (generally) behave in games the way they do IRL. My buddy in EvE is a cop. This dude loves to PvP in eve, he will gank you at any opportunity, I dare say he does not roll around in his patrol car knocking off people at random. At least up to the point.
The point is, people play games to get away form reality, and while I am not saying we are all bunch of homicidal maniacs barely controlling ourselves, in a game we can do what we want (within the rules of the game ofc) without being constrained by the laws that make a healthy society.
So in my opinion the more you try to impose real life rules of engagement on people inside a game world the further you get away from allowing people to escape their ordinary lives, and the less appealing that game will be to me, and I would guess quite a few other people.
Long story short: Get stronger and zerg back or play arena games where the point is a level battlefield.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
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Now I have nothing against PvP. In fact I rather enjoy it. But I only like it when it is competative, rewarding and fun. But non consensual open world PVP is usually none of these. For the poor sod getting ganked during questing it usually leads to the person feeling powerless and having a negative opinion of the game. If it happens too many times people just quit.
To the people who gank they have fun for a while then take a rep hit which leads to either getting killed by a NPC or grinding rep back which isn't much fun either...
The times when it becomes fun all out battles with two faction on a server is actually very very rare. What usually happens is one or two people get ganked and word spreads and everyone else runs away - because alliance are cowards.
and I think the gank problem is more pervasive then some in this thread think. That said some mechanics like H1Z1 are just so terrible that the only way to progress is be a ganker. or so I have heard I havent played it
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In short: The benefits is the crowd you are trying to pull into your game. Nothing more.
if Darkfall had a 'pvp limited to only waring factions' ruleset server I would have played that one.
however if my options for a pve experience meant going back to EQ2 then I wasnt about to do that either. so as it were I was pvp gankers dream meat in Darkfall for those specfiic reasons
I see no problem with same game multiple servers with different rules
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Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me