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Why PVE doesn't mix with MMORPG.
Souldrainer
Member Posts: 1,857
After trying EVE, GW, DAOC, and WOW, I am convinced that developers do not yet comprehend how PVP is supposed to work in an MMO. As an example, taking a tower in DAOC can be great fun, until you realize it takes weeks of planning. That said, I am also convinced that PVP is the future and PVE play will everntually take a back seat as people begin realize the limitless potential of PVP.
Some say that PVP has been done better in other genres so far, and I can't argue that PVP content is largely untapped, but there is a lot more that *can* be done with PVP if developers would use the tools available to them. Slaying monsters is OK for a build up, but what people really want is the ability to mix their character building skills with their ability to use said skills in battle. In PVP, you bring this test to the fullest. In PVE, you test your ability to figure out simple patterns with no dynamic element to them. Taking down Ragnaros is awesome fun... once. Do devs and gamers honestly think that such repetition is the future of the genre? If so, they are all missing the point. PVE can never be dynamic. EVER!
The PVP aspects of this genre are awesome, but they are used only minimally. On PVP servers, people who roleplay do it better. They watch their actions closely because the threat of PVP enforcement lurks. In RVR, they believe in the faction's cause because they are forced to defend it in RVR situations. PVP enchances RP. In spite of this, there are gaping flaws in current PVP games that show a lack of understanding from developers and gamers alike. Some people can't handle the idea that PVP = dynamic content.
On PVE servers, people fall into a repetitive grind and have no real competition. PVP has competition, depth of gameplay, and a dynamic aspect that PVE can never achieve, ever. The biggest problem with this genre is that PVE gear> PVP gear. If you want to make a dynamic game that will have fun gameplay forever, PVE needs to be the afterthought, not PVP.
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Comments
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.
--Aristotle
Right now, the MMO market isn't really doing anything different to get away from gear-progression and the things that come along with it. My opinion is the developers are all scared to make a flop game, because a pure PVP game world sounds so unestablished. It IS kind of sad, but until someone breaks the mold of traditional, monster wacking/questing with PVP kind of stapled on, it's what you're going to have to expect from today's MMO.
khrag, Age of Conan is supposed to fix ganking. They have a system that autolevels someone when you try to gank them. So say a lvl 80 person comes up and attacks your lvl 21 toon... you become lvl 80 for purposes of dmg, hp's and mana until they run away. It's kind of like the sk system in COH.
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1.Con based system - if you can see the level or degree of the player or monster then you will know at what risk you are taking.
2.Level vs. skill based. Skills allow for a lot more diversity. Take UO for example versus EQ.
3.PVE can be fun and should be the backbone of any really good MMORPG. It isn't that the games shouldn't be based around or have a lot of PVE in them, it's that PVP gets boring. Without a reason to fight, there is no reason at all.
4.The mentalities of the up and coming gamers that PVP is all there is. This is a major problem. In the years when the MMORPGs were first starting PVP was not only a risk, but due to notoriety, a managed system. It has been the developments constraints which have made this problematic. They cater to the carebears and in so doing so do not protect the freedoms of the players.
I am appauled by the nature of the current mmorpgs and their linear design. Learn from the games that have come out before, and grow as a genre, and as a community.
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Why PVE doesn't mix with MMORPG.
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You never addressed your subject.
All you did was talk about how boring PVE was and how great PVP was... which isn't remotely addressing your subject.
Why doesn't PVE mix with MMORPGs?
FYI: Taking a tower in DAoC didn't take weeks on planning. I dunno what game you played but it hardly took that long AT ALL. I played 2 characters on hib to 50 and RR8 and 9... Towers, a week? Not likely. When I played DAoC we'd take and lose towers 2-3 times in one day.
http://www.greycouncil.org/
I am not talking about gear. Think of the big picture.
Now, as for directly supporting my argument, all of my support in the OP was indirect. It's support, but very general and not specific to what I mentioned. If I had some thesis statements, they would be as follows...
PVE gameplay does not mix with the MMO genre because...
#1 Instead of letting a massive amount of people interact and compete with each other, it forces them to interact with a third-party, the environment. Thus, it defeats the purpose of having lots of players and devalues human competition.
#2 People pay monthly fees to access a dynamic world, and PVE is the antithesis of dynamism. I don't know about other people, but I don't like the idea of paying for a game and not seeing any updates. I always wonder wTF the devs/companies are doing with my cash.
#3 It's repetitive, and the communities that form around repetitive gameplay do not live up to the true potential of an MMO property. IE, because the game never changes, the guilds never change either. Only a handful of guild archetypes currently exist. At all.
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Well there's a couple issues I have with the idea...
First: In a PVP only or predominately PVP game casual gamers are at a significant disadvantage and will lose interest quickly. This would leave only the hard core gamers playing which is a small percentage of the market share.
Second: With a PVE environment the developers can add in game content. This makes it a known variable that can be accounted for. In a PVP environment you have to rely on the players to take the ball and run...if they don't your screwed.
"#1 Instead of letting a massive amount of people interact and compete with each other, it forces them to interact with a third-party, the environment. Thus, it defeats the purpose of having lots of players and devalues human competition." - There are different types of interaction and competition. Both PVP and PVE (when done right) require the cooperation of many players in order to achieve a goal. Thus it doesn't defeat the purpose of on-line gaming in the least.
Originally posted by Souldrainer
Your (wrong) opinion. Just because YOU want that, doesn't mean the other 8+ million MMOG players want that. That's the biggest flaw I see in all the pro-PVP arguments is that PVPers, for some inexplicable reason and contrary to what actual evidence would suggest, think that everyone plays and enjoys games the same way they do and that there is no other form of entertainment to be had.
Again, not true. I have several friends who are members of large raiding guilds in WoW, for example, who go on raid after raid for the best gear with no intention of ever using that gear for anything other than continued raiding and for personal satisfaction at having that gear. PVE achievement is a valid and widespread goal among gamers, in my experience.
Not that I've seen. Well, let me be more precise. Yes, the 3 people who really roleplay on a PVP server probably do it well, but the 3197 non-RP players on that PVP server do not.
I'm beating a dead horse now, but again, who says everyone wants "real competition" ? Most people I know play for fun, be that enjoying exploring PVE content, achieving skill/class/level based goals, completing quests, socializing, or "real competition" in PVP.
As the good Emperor once said, you are sadly mistaken
Yep. Just like PvP, MMORPGs also tend to make PvE stale and boring. About the only thing that MMORPGs seem to get right it the social / collect stuff part, and you really don't need a top line computer with a blazing fast 3D card for that.
Also like PvP, PvE could be one hell of a lot better. I remember playing Phantasy Star on the Sega Master System 2 ( had to spend a whole summer's income on that!) and having almost every battle be a life and death conflict. Difficulty like that would seem insane by today's standards and the game was on a 2 MEG CARTRIDGE IN AN 8 BIT SYSTEM!!! For a more recent example, check out Dragon Quest 8. In DQ8, the monsters will often time gang up on or try to immobilize your healer or wizard, they'll call for back up, or flee when the going gets tough. Often times in DQ8, you'll walk into a what you think is a perfectly routine battle that ends up lasting 2 or more HOURS. Clearly, PvE itself is not to blame.
The blame is a mixture of inadequate technology and developer apathy. The first "M" stand for Massive, so players (as well as everything else) are dealt with in mass. Much of the game logic in an MMORPG is batch processes at regular intervals. Player actions, mob actions, update database, send messages, clear the socket and retrieve the next packet in the que. There just isn't a whole lot of space to make some genuinely difficult mobs. However, it doesn't take much to make genuinely difficult mobs. If I was sweating bullets fighting monsters on the SMS, I should think that I could get the same thing fighting a monster that gets to think off of 1/1000 of quad 4ghz CPU time.
Let's also not forget how ridiculous PvE actually is in an MMORPG. You step out of town and there are little clusters of mobs positioned exactly 20 feet from one another. It's like somebody threw all the monster along the road like a bunch of empty beer cans and fast food wrappers. Come to think of it, that's exactly what they did.
Hey, maybe if we keep asking questions like this, we can zero in on why MMORPGs are addictive even though they generally suck. If we could just get rid of the sucking.....
I, on my side, think that MMORPGs should get rid of PvP altogether. PvP players have no notion of fun. I read an article on Guild Wars Nightfall and apparently ArenaNet has deciced to focus GW on PvE now. They have made many studies and the conclusion is that the crushing majority of players are PvE, most do not or rarely PvP. In other words, the majority of players are PvE, not PvP, and this is probably the case of most MMOs out there as well. PvE is a must to MMOs, PvP is not.
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http://www.jeuxvideo.com/news/2006/00017900.htm
Actually that kind of makes sense from the perspective of the box only business models. It's not really needed for Guild Wars though. Since GW can release new character classes and Skills CCG style.
Part of the reason why the industry has gone MMORPG crazy is the fact that games are a one-shot purchase. A good PvP game is timeless. Chess, for instance, hase been played for thousands of years. This is bad for video game designers since they don't get paid per play, only purchase. People are still playing the original Starsiege: Tribes, but no one is making any money off of it. People are still playing Red Alert 2 and very little money is being made off of it. Open source 3D engines are catching up to comercial engines and indie / freeware teams are delivering experiences that are comparable to most commercial PvP games and bigger dev houses are feeling the hurt.
In walks the MMORPG concept. Expensive enough to keep the little guy out with a monthly fee to generate income much longer than a single player game. The end result is heavier long term profit. In this system, you need timeless gameplay. Players will burn through PvE content way faster than it can be produced. The only way to keep people playing (and paying) is to give them something to do that they won't get bored with for years.
Also remember that there are many different forms of PvP. Financial, political, gambling, etc. Instead of any of this however, devs have decided to just make a bunch of linear content that is doled out slower than the US Postal Service.
Your (wrong) opinion. Just because YOU want that, doesn't mean the other 8+ million MMOG players want that.
Sidd, I like how you started here. Your post starts with good direction and a good point. Maybe you should have stuck with these first few sentences and then stopped instead of going on to make yourself look childish. In the beginning, you mention how my personal opinion may n
ot be all that important in the big picture of MMO gaming. That is a very good point. My personal opinion is mine, and people don't always need to share it.
Then you go on to show why YOUR opinion and the opinion of your friends are much better opinions than mine. Additionally, the idea that everyone would accept one player's personal experiences as proof for a counterargument is a leap in logic. You are more than welcome to tell your stories and share your opinions with us, but you surely do not think that one opinion is greater than another? Opinions can never be rigth or wrong. That's what makes them opinions. The sum of all opinions = 0.
I really can't take your post seriously when only 1/5 paragraphs does not contain an example of hypocrisy or a logical fallacy. Your dissenting opinion is more than welcome here, but to claim that my opinion is somehow wrong because it doesn't match yours is a very hypocritical, conformist, and facist line of thought.
the majority of players are PvE, not PvP, and this is probably the case of most MMOs out there as well. PvE is a must to MMOs, PvP is not.
So, in your honest opinion, stagnation is the wave of the future? Everybody brace yourselves: Sounds like we are in for more of the same. Seriously, if PVE is king, then why is anybody here? You should all just go back to WOW, because that is the epitome of what PVE can produce. To be fed up with the epic grind of WOW is to be fed up with PVE at large, and to complain about one while touting the other is hypocisy. Code is finite and thus incapable of producing dynamic worlds without the help of player competition.
When designers code an MMO, the entire world is based on code. They can only code so much before they release a game. This creates a finite world. Coding new content takes a long time. By the time new content of any significant amount is created, characters have already explored the world at large. So, when the new areas come out, you now have a world you've already explored + 1 dungeon. You do not have a dynamic world by any means. Yet, the players pay for these updates only to be let down and wonder why. Code is the answer to all of this.
Enter the sandbox. Games like Oblivion are a perfect example of what a sandbox is and why they work so well. In spite of this, they are painful to program and detail. Even though the world seems limitless at first, there is a finite amount of scripted events that can happen, and eventually you grow weary of it. Enter players. Players are the one piece of content in an MMO which does not require coding. They keep things random and updated by their very existence. If someone were to make a PVP sandbox game where the vast majority of exp's come from fighting other people, it would sell millions. Imagine, if you will, quest rewards where you can control a monster and give the exp's to your character. Concepts like this aren't even being fathomed by designers. Devs want stagnation because it creates predictable income. But, at the rate these games are going, the market will soon crash. Someone has to break the mold or we will all suffer.
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#1 Instead of letting a massive amount of people interact and compete with each other, it forces them to interact with a third-party, the environment. Thus, it defeats the purpose of having lots of players and devalues human competition.
I think human co-operation is of higher value than human competition. I think human competition is intrinsically anti-social.
I prefer "everybody wins" to "it's you or me".
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Well, I'm not really trying to present a counter-argument here. Obviously we're both just expressing opinions, but your thesis statement, if you will, seems to be "PVP content is the best content there is and all MMOGs should therefore emphasize PVP." All of my statements are made to refute that. As has been pointed out, as well, this is not merely my opinion, but the opinion of the majority of people who play MMOGs today.
In any case, I do apologize if my statements were insulting, as that was not the intent -- but I get frustrated sometimes reading the thousandth "PVP is the only way" thread. I actually enjoy player versus player conflict, but much like PVE, it has to be done well to be fun.
Now I think it is you who make the leap in logic
I do NOT think WoW is the epitome of what PVE can produce. It can, and eventually will, be done much better. I happen to like WoW a lot, they've done a lot of things well, but just because it is the current market leader in PVE content does NOT mean it is the ultimate limit of what can be done with PVE.
I agree with the basic premise here, but really, I think we maybe we should clarify between "dynamic content" and "significantly different dynamic content". Let me put it to you this way: how different, really, are each PVP encounter one has in a game? I fight you in Zone A, then later I fight you in Zone B, I still have the same stats, skills, abilities, gear, etc. Maybe I win once, maybe you win once. The FIGHT itself is dynamic each time, but is the PVP ENCOUNTER really that different? It seems that what a lot of PVP players want is, basically, to fight other players and not fight an AI. But is that really "dynamic" content? If you've been on one keep raid in DAoC, you've been on them all. That's not to say they aren't fun -- I enjoyed a lot of RVR/PVP in DAoC back in the day, but really I was fighting for the fun of the actual experience of matching up against other players, not because it was "content" that changed in any meaningful way over the course of playing the game.
I'm not sure I'm expressing my thoughts on that last topic very well, but hopefully you get my drift...
Hey guys.
Remember when MMORPGs WEREN'T made for the casual gamer?
Ya heard
I've been saying for a long time now (to my friends who are gamers) that once the MMOG market reaches some level of maturity (when and what that is, I'm not sure), it will become possible for niche developers to produce MMOGs that are targeted more narrowly and cater to more specific playstyles, including a variety of PVP models, hardcore games with permadeath, realistic travel times, realistic reputation and law enforcement, etc.
In the post-WoW world, success will still be rated by subscriptions, but I fully believe a game can be successful with limited subscriptions. Game companies will be able to write targeted niche games and be profitable with "only" 20k subscribers. We might even see niche games come out with higher pricing to offset the lower subs, but for the people that are getting EXACTLY the type of game they want, that will be a price they gladly pay. (That EQ server, I forget the name, where the sub price is like $40 a month or something, but they cater to the players a lot more, comes to mind as an early example.)
Going back to the original poster, Souldrainer: if there was a successful MMOG out that was EXACTLY what you wanted in a rock solid PVP oriented game, would you be willing to pay $25 a month for it? $50 a month? I'm talking about your dream game here... I know a lot of people who would. Hell, there are plenty of folks out there who multi-account and/or multi-box already just to get more enjoyment of the games they play, or to get an edge, whatever. Paying $50 a month for a single account on a game that was just what you were looking for would be easy...