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.

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.

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.

[...] 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 [...]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[...] http://www.nerfbat.com/2007/08/09/consequence-free-pvp-sucks/ [...]