Consequence-Free PvP Sucks
I’m not quite sure if RedMorgan is espousing consequence-free PvP or if Darkfall has it, but I just had to jump on board the bandwagon and make a comment or two about the latest inanity caused by the aforementioned post and Lum the Still Mad (to the point that he had to close comments). I will come right out and say that consequence-free PvP totally sucks. It isn’t fun. Correction, it is super fun for a few people, and completely not fun for everyone else. You may wonder why I said that given how much I preach about how UO ruled, and I probably just hurt a few feelings, but I’ll explain…
You know why I loved the early days of Ultima Online? I was an angst-filled teen with too much time on my hands. Yes, I said it. Sure, I did play sports while I played UO (I don’t know how I managed that), and I generally went to school, but I had far too much time on my hands and could run on far too little sleep. I had more time, combined with more skill, and therefore I reigned supreme. I had a little ingenuity and a lot of powerful friends, and therefore I reigned supreme.
Back then, I didn’t consider my victims. Well, I did, but only to the extent of, “I wonder how I can jack this guy for his grip or trick him into screwing himself over.” I didn’t realize, through my naivety, that I was making the game incredibly frustrating and sucky for all of the people I preyed upon. I didn’t realize, through my naivety, that due to my actions I would soon be out of people to pick on, and would no longer be able to have fun myself.
Oh, I still had a little fun. There were still people who would pick up the game who I would subsequently drive back to the checkout counter in search of a new game. But other than that, there were other people like me. So we picked on each other. Unfortunately, we were too smart to fall for the dirty tricks, so it mostly involved a few big clashes here and there, a few great triumphs, and a few great defeats. But, most of the time, the game was no longer fun.
The only people left were newbies, the scum of the earth, and people who were too dedicated for their own good, so OSI made Felucca and Trammel, separating free-for-all PvP from the PvE environment. I was pissed, because the only fun I was still able to have pretty much disappeared, and the few newbies who I could still trick were no longer within my reach, so I quit. But the game became better for more people than before, even if I believe they went a little too polar in their solution (I’d rather have seen more logical restrictions).
Okay, so the point is, a consequence-free PvP environment completely rules if you are the hunters, but it really sucks major if you are the hunted. The only way I can see a full PvP environment working is with a lot of good rules in play. Morality, karma, bounty hunting, wanted posters, reputation, NPC hunting parties, and whatever other good things you can think up.
Sorry, but players can’t be left to dispense their own justice all the time, because it doesn’t work. Designers need to come up with good ways to logically guide and and encourage proper PvP while discouraging improper PvP (like griefing). When left to their own devices, players will often do all of the immoral and amoral things they’d never even fathom doing (or admitting to) in the real world. See: Second Life.
I’d imagine that after a few months, each server in a consequence-free PvP game would be like the freaking Robin Hood legend–there would be an evil group of people controlling the masses, and every once-in-a-while a group of do-gooders would try to overthrow their rule, but there would be no way to do so and it would therefore be like the Robin Hood legend had Robin Hood and his merry men (or thieves, if you like) completely and dramatically been defeated then taken their own lives (or quit the game), leaving the Sheriff of Rottingham (or Nottingham) to continue to rape the land and people.
I don’t know about you, but I’d go ahead and say that if that situation existed and I could get out of it, I would. Meaning, I’d cancel my subscription and find another game to bide my time in until I forget how much consequence-free PvP sucks and start longing for it again, while my shoulder angel hopes that I find a well-designed PvP game with logical consequences instead. And after all of the people who aren’t having fun cancel, the people were having fun won’t have fun for much longer because they have nobody to be better than or to oppress.
Personally the only enjoyable PvP I’ve ever had in a game was where you were fighting for something bigger than yourself. When it’s just 1-on-1 gankage it gets pretty old for me quick, but if I’m doing RvR type stuff, or territorial control/resource aquisition like in EVE, then it continues to be fun. Or well, it continues to have the potential to be fun as long as silly game mechanics don’t get in the way
The way I see it, the best possible solution to the PvP problem is to give players a real meaningful reason to pick a side and fight, one that makes the PvP action itself a part of the context, and something that most everyone does because it makes sense and feels important to the setting, and not so much of a thrill game played by only a few.
From your lips to God’s ears.
I play MMO’s mostly with my wife, and once she gets ganked a few times by someone who she has no chance to defeat, then griefed and taunted, she’s done playing that game. Then I lose my duo partner, and I soon follow.
Most of the people I know love playing PVP as long as it’s balanced, even if like me they are not good at it. I can tolerate being killed, I just can’t tolerate being perma-killed.
Make it so people that overtly grief, bottom-feed, or PK constantly have a game mechanism set against them, leveling the playing field a little, and it cuts down on the number of “angst-filled teenagers” lurking with nothing more to do than ruin other’s play experience.
And that’s OK with me.
I really dont see how more “logical” rules would solve this. It’s simply different kinds of people, and the group of people you apparently belonged to in pre-trammel UO doesn’t fit in. These people don’t seem to want the regulated PvP you propose, they’re different from the kind of PvP nut that goes for a consentual or regulated system.
Also, who, in such a system, would opt to go PvP? Surely not the people you killed back then in UO, because hey, they had no interest in PvP, and in a game where they can avoid it, they will. The only ones that will go there are the people that take interest in PvP for whatever reason. But there’s the problem. There’s people like the old UO style griefers, and there’s people that just need it to have the game feel more real (something like why people actually try to flee from Bounty Hunters in SWG instead of just letting themselves be killed) or just want to have a nice honorable fight and dont care for winning or losing. In the end there’ll be a conflict between the griefers (note that i use this term somewhat loosely here, it’s more of a description for a certain kind of PvPer) who will do something that is equivalent to min/maxing in Pen and Paper and whatever else is necessary to satsify their lust for PvP (and probably superiority), which the others might be disturbed or outright disgusted by.
The real question here again is, if you threw only PvPers into an environment, no matter which kind of PvPer in this case, but only them, and no one else that also needs to go there to do PvE stuff or whatever, would they survive? Would they cancel? Would they have fun?
The answer to that question is surprisingly simple. It’s Felucca.
[...] http://www.nerfbat.com/2007/08/09/consequence-free-pvp-sucks/ [...]
Those are 2 distinct groups that you’re not going to be able to please at the same time with one game.
While it shouldn’t be entirely consequence-free, trying to encourage “proper PvP” is a bad idea. I’m not gonna lie, I dislike being griefed, but at the same time, there are other positives from the system being in place. If there was a penalty for PKing a player outright (which there should be), and someone comes into my hunting spot, I want to be able to grief him so bad that he’d know never to do it again. I believe that someone who choose to play on a PvP server should be prepared for whatever eventualities.
It’s the same reason why I dislike faction vs faction PvP, because it confines you to a side, and I very much prefer player/guild based politics. There should be no picking of a pre-defined side (eg. horde vs alliance), but YOU make YOUR own sides (EVE, Lineage 2). If there’s too much restrictions in place, it no longer feels like you’re playing the game, just a nobody watching pre-written events unfold.
It’s probably worth the mention that my logical restrictions and rules do not imply any overt or artificial limitations whatsoever. If you read my blog regularly (particularly last year), you’ll know how much I hate artificial restrictions.
If I see someone, I should be able to kill him. Anywhere. In the wild, in town, even if he is a newbie and I’ve been playing consistently for 5 years.
The logical restrictions/rules I generally suggest for PvP involve laws and morality more-so than heavy-handed game mechanics.
If the game has a level system and I am level 50 and decide to kill a level 10 player, I should be able to. If we are of the same alignment or faction, assuming those explicitly exist, I should lose a lot of favor with them, at a minimum.
If I grief too often, I should pay the price. Town guards would attack me when I come to lawful towns if their particular faction dislikes me enough, though those guards should not be impervious insta-kill demigods.
Hunting parties might start coming after me, or NPC and PC bounty hunters. Players might get positively rewarded for killing me if they are part of factions that aren’t friendly with me.
Essentially, there should be a number of ways to encourage good PvP in the game, and part of that is implementing a combination of risk and reward. I’m a huge believer in risk vs. reward and the importance of maintaining risk, and PvP is no exception.
“If I see someone, I should be able to kill him. Anywhere. In the wild, in town, even if he is a newbie and I’ve been playing consistently for 5 years.”
So when I logon as a n00b and some lvl 50 player ganks me I’m supposed to feel ok because sometime, somehow he’ll recieve some sort of punishment? Nah. I’m just gonna skip the game entirely.
It’s all good. As Lum pointed out there are lots of choices for us carebears. Kill-anyone-any-time games are fine. We don’t have to play them so I guess everyone wins.
I was taken with Psychochild’s comment…
“The ideal is to have free-for-all, rules-lite games. The problem is, as Lum famously pointed out, people are broken. Now, the absolute best game would be if I could get together all the cool PvPers and have a game with just them…The big problem is that a PvP-heavy game tends to attract more mouth-breathers than decent people. You get all kinds of cheating, exploiting, rude, crass, and socially unacceptable fucktards.”
Now maybe your system will work, but I’m sceptical. I know that segregation and ‘heavy-handed’ systems like switches work.
Nice post.
So what would it be like if grief murder carried a permadeath penalty? Or exile to noob island? If caught and convicted. People probably wouldn’t do it unless they had a good reason and opportunity. So in other words, if someone ganks me and steals all my stuff, I lose xp, but the cops come looking for them and they lose their avatar. Or maybe they get sentenced to having to help X number of noobs leave the island, or something.
Private servers work too, Jujutsu, but that’s not the goal. The goal is one world where we all live harmoniously and peacefully and skittles fall from the sky every so often.
I’ve always been of the opinion that a grief murder carries a penalty of having their avatar put up on wanted posters. It’ll then given dynamic quests in which noobs can band together to complete (ie, payback)
Some very well thought out points in this post. I agree that non-consequential PvP would totally suck, and that’s not what I advocate. You mentioned “Morality, karma, bounty hunting, wanted posters, reputation…” all those things are in Darkfall’s features. You should really check them out.
I’m actually not a PKer myself, but I want a world where there is real good and evil. I’ve always been the kind to hang out with the carebears in a game to be honest. Thing is, I like danger and inter-player struggles. I think that’s what MMORPGs should really be about.
[...] past the age when free for all PvP can be considered a good idea, a concept covered well over on Nerfbat a month back. PvP cannot be a noob ganking bloodbath an expect to drive a successful game. Nor [...]
This is true. The connection that people who think these games are going to ever attain serious commercial success don’t make is that if you tell someone “well if you don’t like it, don’t play the game”….they don’t. Even if they think they’re hardcore, even if they were part of that 20% in every other game they’ve ever played; if they game sucks for a person, the person stops playing it.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a recent example. Who’s more hardcore in WoW: Horde or Alliance? It’s commonly accepted by both sides that Horde players are, strictly as an average, more skilled (I play Alliance). However, a funny thing happened when the Honor system went up a couple years ago: the Alliance fielded vast armies of (some) PvPers and (mostly) hapless idiots in Southshore, while the Horde fielded vast armies to go complain on the forums. Usually for a couple hours a day, there were enough Horde for a serious battle to ensue, but most of the time, the few Horde trying to PvP hunkered down in Tarren Mill while they and the omnipresent Alliance campers tried to pick each other off. The Alliance ratio during these times far exceeded the A:H census numbers available.
What happened? The Horde was supposed to be hardcore, right? Why weren’t they PvPing more? “Well, there were too many Alli-” LEARN TO PLAY. “It’s not really a fair tes-” CRY MORE. “I mean it got to the point where it wasn’t even fun anym-” WAAAH OWNED LOL /dance.
Get the picture? If it’s not fun, people won’t play. It doesn’t matter what rationalizations, excuses, or perfectly valid reasons are given for the problem: if people aren’t playing, the game is a failure.
So you were a badass, but you didn’t play Siege Perilous when it was offered to you, and instead continued to gank the few newbies you could find before UO:R took them from you? Poor you.
You suck. You would have been torn apart on SP. Several “big” PK guilds showed up there, touting themselves to be the new biggest badasses on the shard, and were torn to pieces by competent PvP guilds. Yeah, a lot of us PvP guilds went PK on SP, but it was for resources and PvP action. Opportunistic PK guilds never stood a chance.
Any serious PvPer with some experience, and with the other options, will know that having carebears and PvPers on the same server is an exercise in futility. The best option is to separate them and let those who want to fight have a fully open environment. Let it be wolves vs. wolves vs. carebears(gankers/opportunistic PKs)-who-think-they-are-wolves-but-really-are-sheep duke it out on a server they all opt to be on.