Where’s the Great PvP MMORPG?
Where is the great Player-versus-Player MMORPG? It doesn’t exist… yet. There have been a few attempts at integrating PvP into a massively multiplayer game from the ground-up, and it hasn’t quite worked out just yet, at least not for an avatar-based fantasy or sci-fi game. No true PvP game has gone mainstream since MMOs hit the big time.
Does that mean players are not interested in PvP? Does that mean people who are interested in PvP prefer the quick-fix games like Counter-Strike (though I might argue that I’ve never had a quick fix of that one) to get their jollies?
Can PvP be integrated into the core of an MMO alongside all of the standard wonders in such games–quests, NPCs, an actual story? I think it can be, but it’s quite a risk to take.
There are a few games with at least some emphasis on PvP in the pipe. There’s Age of Conan around the corner and Warhammer Online a bit further off. But neither is a full PvP game. Is there no hope for those of us who fell in love with old school Ultima Online?
There’s one MMO that I know of that seems pretty legit and is trying to capture the player-controlled PvP world feeling: Darkfall. I’m really hoping they execute well and the game rocks, because I’ll be haunting the forests as an ebil (not quite evil, but definitely not friendly) avatar if it does. I got a little excited about this game after reading a post on the Lord’s of Death site.
Back to the risks. The inclination is to make a great traditional MMO, then take it further with lots of PvP options. You include the character advancement, the quests, the towns, the item progression, and all the great things you love in every other MMO.
Then you need to add open PvP, player faction systems, sieges, mounted combat, naval battles, and any other wonderful thing you can dream up that players will love to do.
Unfortunately, making a AAA massively multiplayer game is hard. It’s REALLY hard. Trying to make a AAA traditional PvE MMO then integrating PvP into its core is even harder. And more expensive.
It’s not okay to include all of the traditional elements of a World of Warcraft or EverQuest style MMO, then leave those features less polished because the focus of the game is PvP. If the features are in the game, they have to be polished.
Instead, it would be better to simplify every non-PvP system as much as possible so you can focus on PvP. Don’t make the game item-centric, don’t include raid progression, don’t riddle the world with thousands of quests, don’t make a hundred complex and deep zones. You don’t need them!
(Note: Yeah, an amazing traditional MMO with PvP at its core could be friggin’ awesome, you just don’t need all that other stuff, and it’s very time-consuming, expensive, and difficult to do either of them well, so trying to marry the two would be even more challenging).
What’s a PvP MMO all about? I’d argue that Player-versus-Player MMOs are more about social interaction than any traditional PvE MMO. It’s about status and power. It’s about making allies and keeping your enemies in check–keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. It’s about territorial control and influence. It’s about… social interactions.
So, it’s important to allow for those social interactions to occur. The systems you should focus on to make a great PvP MMO are those social systems in addition to direct PvP gameplay (combat, sieges, etc.). Guilds, player towns, player factions, realistic consequences for player actions, and giving players influence within the world to name a few.
The point is, for any game you have to stick to your guns. Focus on the most relevant features that make for an amazing Player-versus-Player experience and simplify everything else. And, you have to realize that there may be a smaller audience for such a game and plan accordingly (so don’t spend $50 million making it).
I personally believe that a great PvP MMO can get several hundred thousand subscribers in North America (maybe over a million!), but anything less than a great game is probably going to be niche, if not a complete bomb. I can’t wait for the great PvP MMORPG to come out, or to go ahead and make the thing myself if nobody else does it right.
Are there any truly great player-versus-player massively multiplayer online games out there that you know of? Any others coming soon that some of us may want to know about? I’m all ears, and I’m willing to try just about any game.
The ones who tries to get away with making the PvP centric mmorpg appears to fail. The symptoms as to how these failures surface seem to be somewhat different from game to game, but I think there is an inherit flaw in the reasoning behind focusing too much on the PvP systems. This flaw maybe can be summed up into three major aspects of brokenness.
1 – The Mastery Problem becomes too powerful.
2 – Bottomfeeding becomes too useful.
3 – The motivational structure for participating in general takes damage over time from 1 and 2.
The one that seems to elude peoples arguments is number 3 in this list. For example back in good old Ultima Online we could go adventuring in relative safety in some of the dungeons, in the world where PvP was part of daily gaming you were a hero who could defeat almost any PKer in a fair fight. The problem there is that your illussion shatters randomly when some other player figures out how to get the upper hand and exploits the advantage.
Random illussion shattering is in general a bad thing. The average player will take that hit a certain number of times before quitting.
So now comes the new design challenge, to make game systems which are illussion-shatter-proof. Several successful developers have been to make the basic game free from PvP, then add some PvP enabled content which is voluntary. And now you are back where you started.
The way I would try to get PvP done right is by enabling a whole series of game systems which basically enables players to join a war effort, kindof like enlisting in an army. Players are generally neutral, but the side of the conflict which is in need of more troops will pay better its soldiers better. Once part of the army the soldiers would need to fight over objectives which never become the property of the players, but which enables the soldiers to gain rank and “quest rewards” from within the army organisation.
But this goes back to the matter where a world without civilians the value of rank in an army isnt worth more than kills are worth in Counter Strike. So you have to give the civilians their own content, and that will be rather similar to World of Warcraft.
A true PVP MMO will not emerge. I think there are two reasons.
1. PVP in an MMO is a niche. Not enough people want to be in a FFA PVP environment to make a traditional subscription based MMO pay.
2. Most people that want FFA PVP want Wolf vs. Sheep play. That’s fine if you are a wolf, not so fun if you are a sheep. In any environment, I’d assert that most people will fall into the sheep category, either by amount of effort, money, or skill they bring to the table. In the long term, where is the fun in being the sheep? No sheep = no fun for the wolves. They move on. Say what you will, PVPer’s aren’t known for long attention spans.
Add to that the fact that the PVP communities that I see are prone to belittlement, name-calling, and griefing, and I don’t see a large enough group of people who want to sign up for that long-term to support it.
Of course that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong (thanks, Dennis Miller).
I know that you’re primarily focusing on the blood and magic MMOs, but EVE is doing a masterful job of making a truely PvP game in every sense of the word. I only play it off and on, but I’m always amazed by the level of social complexity in their world. I suppose it doesn’t have traditional walk-around avatars, levels, and raid content, but it has much more interesting PvP related intrigue and politics. In fact, I think the true test of a successfull PvP MMO could be whether you find it interesting to read the in-game news. That is to say, whether the player created storylines are able to be rich and compelling beyond the usual PvP server e-peen forum wars.
I agree with Genda.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. EVE Online has the single best model for PvP that I think you can have.
Social complexity, (walk-around coming soon™…) roles that even new players can play, and serious implications in the bigger world.
You couldn’t ask for more.
You guys kind of prove my point #1. I love EVE, myself. I don’t play EVE just because of the time commitment. But if EVE is the best example of a well-executed PVP game, it’s easy to see that as a niche. Their subscriptions are about 2-3% of what World of Warcraft’s is. That’s less than the churn rate of WoW, if you believe the reports that they turn about 5% of their subs a month.
I think you need to look at EVE as a success, because it is. It’s just a successful niche in the big picture though.
I want to know where the great PvE MMO is. Not a PvP fan at all.
I agree that wolf and sheep PvP can’t exist anymore. From one of my other posts:
But, I think I have solutions that can make a full PvP world possible, just not in the completely imbalanced sense that old school UO was. It’s absolutely possible to make a great PvP game, it’s just difficult, expensive, and risky.
Re: EVE Online
It’s a very good PvP game. It’s also a completely different feeling than an avatar-based MMO. Yeah, the ship’s basically an avatar, but I’m talking about adventuring on the ground vs. in space. I’ve played it a few times now, and I always give up because I don’t have the time to commit to it, and it always bothers me that I can’t really catch up to people because I haven’t paid for my subscription for as long as them (takes 2-3 months to even get anywhere in the game, by which time I burn out because it’s not fun yet).
Well, I’m glad the Darkfall post only got you a little excited. It is still a lot of big talk and no beta in sight at this point, seven years after it was announced. Their site says the game will allow anything short of live child birth, so I am not surprised they are never there yet because they are probably bogged down in a completely over ambitious feature set.
Every time I visit their site, my first thought is, “No! Simplify! Get a good core game out, then worry about sea battles and all the extras!” That is the dev post I want to see from them. Something about shedding the extras for later and getting a good, clean, if somewhat simple, version of the game finished and released. One sure path to failure in a project, in my experience, is the insistence that every feature be available in the 1.0 version.
On EVE, which I knew had to make the comments, the EVE mafia being all seeing and all knowing, I’ve actually been back for my second run at the game for a year now. I have found that I could come up with short term goals for the game that were fulfilling enough that I did not mind the big time frame for getting to my ultimate goal. But, it is also a game where you can spend a lot of time planning things in a spreadsheet, which I enjoy as well.
EVE Online is a great PvP game… its just so boring…
Right now I’m looking toward Battlefield Heroes to take First Person Shooters to the next step (where Planetside and Tabula Rasa failed). An FPS game where the rounds you play on maps affect the overall balance of power which is tracked on the website. I know not everyone likes twitch play, but I think PvP games are better suited for it than the current spate of MMOs. FPS Twitch play and turn based play (card games) are the two extremes that I feel work best in PvP, current MMOs live somewhere in the middle where you can run around like a twitch game but your abilities are mostly turn/timer based… its just never felt right to me.
EVE Online was only able to accomplish what it did because it didn’t focus on player avatars. Its PVP requires a massive game world (over 5000 systems in the galaxy), and the assets will never be there to build a traditional walking-on-dirt MMO on that scale. The price of depth of gameplay will be “teh shiney” for a long time to come, and is the reason I have difficulty wrapping my head around Darkfall’s aforementioned feature list.
I concur with the mob who says EVE is the best PvP MMO out there. Not only that, but it’s easy to see that its PvP aspect will continue to improve with factional warfare and a return to more intricate political maneuvering after the Great War, pushing the bar ever higher for whatever will come next.
What would the idea behind making a full PvP world possible look like?
I personally believe balanced pvp where players strive towards killing each other is impossible. The only way to get around this impossibility is to make the objectives of the enemies partially orthogonal, which basically means everyone is allowed to win on their own terms.
Anyone currently playing EVE Online? I may give it another shot after my current MafiaMatrix character gets killed since Age of Conan looks like it’ll need to work out a lot of teething issues before I’ll play it.
I’m a huge EVE fan but not currently playing. Ironically I’m not a big PvP fan. I’d truly love an EVE-like universe minus the PvP. It’s probably worthy of a trip to the shrink, but the PvP in EVE I usually run into is stylistically reminiscent of school yard bullies.
I just started Eve a little less than 2 months ago and I’m rather enjoying it. That said — I’m a complete PvE mission runner as of yet. Got in to a battleship on Monday and have been running Level 4 missions since then. Done some mining and protecting friends who were mining from rats, but even though someone came in a couple of times and made like he was gonna steal trying to bait us into attacking him, he didn’t actually do it so I didn’t get to open fire.
I’ve seen some pvp taking place, but mostly just suicide ganks. I’ve not been even to lowsec yet, much less nullsec. got a friend playing who’s got lower SP than I have but he’s in a null-sec corp/alliance so they ferried him down. From what he says though, if he stays in his corp’s soverignty then it’s just like hi-sec. He’s not been part of any pvp gangs yet either.
Another friend who plays has done some pvp as a tackler in an interceptor. Sometimes he and his gang win, sometimes they don’t. Or sometimes they win but he’s destroyed anyway. Fortunately for him it’s all corp provided ships for that, so it’s not too big a deal to him. I think if I were in such a corp I’d probably focus that direction also.
As it is, I’m in a very small hi-sec non-allied corp of IRL friends and former co-workers. And none of them really want to pvp, they just want to fly around nad look at the scenery and make things go boom in missions from time to time. And frankly, I’m about as carebear as that too. PvP I may do later, but not until I have accumulated isk so that I don’t mind losing up to a battleship.
Last I checked on the Eve boards it was estimated that about 75% of Eve’s players are like that also — never leaving hi-sec space, just being miners, traders, and mission runners. And while the other 25% are in low-sec, it’s estimated that half of those are support personnel to the people that actually go out and do all the PvP, so it doesn’t sound like there’s really all that much pvp overall anyway other than a few random soloers in low-sec, the occasional wardec in hi-sec and then roaming gangs here and there in null sec.
The large scale fleet battles that look so nice in the promo vids happen quite rarely. They do happen, but not as often as those who talk them up might make it seem. (My 2 friends I mentioned are in one of the larger alliances and so they know what’s going on in null sec with GS and BoB and such and they’ve not mentioned any fleet events at all).
There’s my 0.02 isk
I tried EVE. I would try it again if CCP paid me.
Well now that Activision is combined with Blizzard maybe a Call of Duty MMO will come out and fulfill all your dreams. In general I like the PvP systems in WoW and I think Warhammer will refine them into something more acceptable to hardcore PvP fans. It’s funny but after playing arenas and battlegrounds in WoW I now refuse to play a MMO that doesn’t have good PvP (sorry LOTR) but I wouldn’t play a game that was purely focused on PvP either.
I like item centric DIKU MMOs that have PvP systems which recognize a gear advantage but also counterbalances it in serious PvP situations like arenas or sieges. WoW has the matching system for arenas (still a bit flawed) and War will have things like increasing guard spawns and levels for the losing side. The gear advantage is necessary in any game with world based PvP I think or else greifing runs wild and will kill your playerbase (UO). I should be able to easily kill 3 griefers that have never done anything in the game but kill low level players. A pure PvP game where items don’t matter is always going to have problems with griefers who have no attachments to their characters and are mostly concerned with making other players miserable.
I would vote that Asheron’s Call was heavily PvP based on Darktide. It was the most fun I had in ages; being able to dodge spells was a great idea. World of Warcraft was always RNG and horribly confined PvP, but I loved the old days of trying to zone into Molten Core or even Naxxramas, only to have a 40 on 40 war–it’s a shame PvP was never truly refined there and was frequently luck based.
Still, you’re right. There is no true PvP game, and most games who have PvP systems need a severe rehash of their system. Or their games are just failures in other departments. Warhammer looks terrible even though it’s PvP focused; after playing the beta and experiencing the awkward controls and engine, I’m not sure it’ll be half as good as I’d hope.
@JC: The thing about EVE, and how much PVP it has, is that different people have different definitions of PVP. If I am cornering a market on a certain good in a corner of the EVE universe, I consider that PVP. I am engaging in a competitive, sometimes realtime, activity against other players, and gaining benefit by inconveniencing them. It absolutely is “PVP” in a literal sense, we just aren’t shooting lasers at each other or hacking each other with swords.
But when you take that view, you then have to conclude that a vast majority of the interaction in EVE is PVP, even in empire space.
To me that is the essence of a “PVP _MMO_”–players are always working with or against each other, even when they aren’t fighting. And no game that I have seen has captured that essence better than EVE. If to someone else “PVP” means personal combat and twitch gameplay, then probably they won’t enjoy EVE at all. But there are games out there to satisfy that urge as well.
Hey try shadowbane
the guild wars are sweet
easy leveling
21 classes
12 races
Good community
and it pretty fun
Shadowbane is not pvp only game. Why????
1- You can not start a game and go to pvp like in the mmo games (not rpg) world war 2 online, planetside, shattered galaxy.
2- Pvp is not everywere and anytime, you dont have pvp anytime you want (at least world war 2 online like pvp).
3-The need to have certain level to go to pvp, make the pvp like if it was not open, there many simple ways do to pve (without getting near pvp) to get at the level “needed to do pvp”. If at least if they put low level pve areas in pvp areas.
There are so many thing others things that make shadowbane a warlike pvp only game.
About darkfall, this game will also not be a pvp focused wargame, darkfall will be like:
Think about Ultima online before trammel, add fps view, add factions that are “angry” of each other (on war), remove the invencible guards from cities and add normal guards, add more non-fighting things (like the blackssmith, cooking and etc things on UO).
This game have alot of pvp, but is not like “now that if finished my character creation lets go to the warfront and help my faction to win the war”, like in planetside and shattered galaxy (in shattered galaxy even on of the tutorial quests is to win a battle and in shattered galaxy when you go to a battle you can battle with the most powerfull player of the game if you go to the same area that you are batting)
Another games that I tested:
DOAC: not open, you have to enter zones to battle and this not feel like a war.
RYL2: The same thing as DOAC, newplayers are useless on pvp, so you have to pve to go to pvp.
Regnum online: You can walk 10 min (or less) and get inside the open pvp area, but since new players are useless you can not live without pvp.
Dark and light: At leasr when I played I think that you needed some level to go to pvp, i think.
About the 3rd thing in shadowbane when i said “at least if they had low level pve in pvp areas”, problaby people here will say “and the high levels players that kill newbies???” well shadowbane is a war game (or at least supposed to be), since you are on pvp (war) zone, if some high level player get closer to you will have a high level friend that will help you killing. Well he will be not helping YOU he will be fighting another charater you, he and you enemies are at war and in a war when you see a enemy you kill them.
Forgot to add 2 more games.
Fury- Its not a MMORPG, Its a RPG multiplayer online game.
Dekaron- The same of Fury.
Forget the dekaron, the right name of the game that i was wanthing to say is rakion.
I don’t know how I forgot this one.
Warhammer online – Pvp is not everywhere. They said that everything that you make help you faction in the war, but let me say getting some bonus to you faction when you kill some monster, dont make the game more pvp or a pvp only game. You will kill monsters in the same way the only dfference is getting some bonus to you faction.
Try EVE-Online. its the best pvp game imo, since you can kill anywhere anytime. You loose all of you stuff when you dies (gives a great RUSH) besides that, it has the best economic of all MMORPG’s.
Pros:
Great PvP
Great economic
You loose all you stuff when dieng (Pros, because it gives a great rush)
it has a well thought out industry and trade side.
You can pay you gametime card with ingame money, so if your good you can play free
Cons:
difficult
takes alot of your time
Age of conan- Not pvp. Lol look here (http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/9085/gmszq7.jpg) and here ( http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/9085/gmszq7.jpg )
The greatest difficulty for PvP mmo’s is that the biosphere is misunderstood by developers who usually only have a poor understanding of the business model to go by. They don’t see that unrestricted PvP is actually critical for a successful MMO because they see people quiting over PKing. Their natural instinct is to restrict PKers instead of giving different powers to victims. If victims of griefing were allowed a socially relevent recourse, they could shape the world to their needs. If a murderer is able to face a jury of his peers and have punishment doled out by other gamers, then the results will be satisfactory to the community. Instead, most games have no concept of justice, they just restrict activity as it effects their narrow perception of the “bottom line”. To restrict activity is to deny players a greater enjoyment with the world they interact with. Some will abuse it, some will not notice it, but all will respect it in some form and naturally establish socially acceptable rules over time. However, smaller developers see EQ and WoW are big moneymakers, and following their lead is safer (except for the part where they spend millions in advertising an inferior product that will ultimately succeed most for its large social sphere as apposed to game mechanics).
I think Lineage 2 is the best PvP MMO around. You can attack everyone, everywhere (except for peace zones like towns etc). There are regular castle sieges and fortress sieges, usually with ~ 100 players fighting on each side. There are clans and alliances. Intensive clanwars. Olympiad system is also great, daily 1v1 fights in arena for points, only selfbuffs, to become hero in the end of the month. Very balanced characters, you have to cooperate in group if you really wanna kick some serious butt. But … grinding is hardcore *sigh* It takes about half a year to become a pvp character.
Thanks to some hackers, there are lot of free servers with high rates and GM shops, pvp focused, but they are either outdated or plagued with buggs and donate. Some of them can be fun though.
A true PVP MMO will not emerge. I think there are two reasons.
1. PVP in an MMO is a niche. Not enough people want to be in a FFA PVP environment to make a traditional subscription based MMO pay.
2. Most people that want FFA PVP want Wolf vs. Sheep play. That’s fine if you are a wolf, not so fun if you are a sheep. In any environment, I’d assert that most people will fall into the sheep category, either by amount of effort, money, or skill they bring to the table. In the long term, where is the fun in being the sheep? No sheep = no fun for the wolves. They move on. Say what you will, PVPer’s aren’t known for long attention spans.
Add to that the fact that the PVP communities that I see are prone to belittlement, name-calling, and griefing, and I don’t see a large enough group of people who want to sign up for that long-term to support it.
Of course that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong (thanks, Dennis Miller).
thats all true…but dont u desire to become a wolf?at beginning every1 is a sheep
thats what pvp is all about>>to become more skilled more powerfull just dont be a pussie n dont give up otherwise pvp isnt for u go kill 1000s of mobs to get another few lvls n at the end realize that u wasted months of ur life for nothin…just playin stupid computer(mobs) that cant actually even touch u…
ohh n btw true wofls dont kill sheeeeps=mobs…only fightin bigger wolfs than urself rises ur skillz n gives true satisfaction glory n fame….if ur a wolf that kills sheeps u should know ur just another random NUUB
im 100% for real pvp mmorpg
p.s excuse my horrible english
Asheron’s call (the origional, not #2) is without a doubt the best pvp I’ve ever played, and I’ve been searching for one like it ever since. What they gave you on Asheron’s call was a dedicated pvp server, it had everything the o.O (carebear) server offered, but you could attack or be attacked by anyone at any time. To the victors came the spoils, as every death you had allowed your body to be looted for items (2 or 3 of your highest valued items dropped at each death). Now, they countered some of the item drops by providing you with items some armor or items that could not be dropped, or you just carried around items that were worth more than your favorite sword so you’d drop it instead. Of course, death had a penalty, and you’d loose a percentage of your abilities every time you died, which could be regained after getting x amount of experience. With all the penalties of dieing, you were forced to join a clan for your own protection, for socialization, and so you could form a group to go an raid your neighbors. Oh, I loved raiding. AC was absolutely my favorite PVP game.
My second favorite was Dark Ages of Camelot. Yes, you had to enter zones to do your pvp’ing, but you could traverse from a zone littered with players from your area of the world to a zone littered with players from another area of the world. The problem with DAoC was that the rewards for going on PvP quests were minimal.
PVP elements in games such as WoW seem to be too carebearish, and seem more as an afterhtought. Why not have a WoW server dedicated to PvP. Their prime issue it seems, from a story perspective is having Orcs bashing on Orcs.
Yes, being the sheep is not the most fun. But no true wolf eats the little sheep. The true wolf is after the bigger wolves, thats how you become top dog. Bring on the wolves, and a great PVP!!
Did you know that darkfall is based on two games not just one?
1) UO
2) Shadowbane
Darkfall developers have stated many times they are trying to capture the pvp of shadowbane and rpg of uo.
So for those that haven’t caught on… you want pvp while ya wait for darkfall?
Shadowbane – http://chronicle.ubi.com/
There ya go its free…. the game that darkfall is trying to live up to…
Shadowbane was awesome. It was truly an PvP game and whoever said it wasn’t pure didn’t play it. The bottom line is that it had little PvE content, you could max level in days thought typically a few weeks of play. Typically pvp groups are 5-10. If Darkfall comes close to this it will be an amazing game. There were two bad things with Shadowbane. First, the graphics were terrible. Second, there was so little content that if you weren’t actively pvping, you got bored. The city sieges were awesome, sometimes very laggy, but fun nevertheless. Having 500 people battling around a city is damn fun.
I’m looking forward to darkfall, we shall see.
Cheers
shadowbane is not a truly pvp (the rvr side of pvp), I played and didnt found pvp very easily, also you can not create a caracter and in the exacly time you enter in the game, make something rvr base. In mmo (but not mmorpg) like world war 2 online and planeside you can start the game and join the battle, in the shattered galaxy you even have to win a battle with your side to complete the tutorial (yes, with your low level and money character)
Darkfall Online.
try Guild Wars. You can choose to do just PvP, just PvE, or both. Only 20 levels, so less grinding and more skills. 8 (or 7 can’t remember now, been a while) skill slots, so VERY strategy based. You have the option to make PvP characters that start at lv 20, with the best weapons and armor. And you can make skills available to your PvP characters either by learning them in PvE OR winning PvP battles and buying skills with PvP points. Since you only need 8 skills for a complete character, this is pretty easy. You can train up a PvE character and fight it in PvP, but not the other way around.
Unfortunately, and this is the reason I stopped playing, you have to buy several versions of the game to have all the skill sets available to you. Also, the world is not persistent, which bothers me a little. I might consider buying Guild Wars II, which is supposed to be persistent, and, so far you only need one version (although im sure updates will come, much to my chagrin)
My ideas for a PvP orientated mmorpg.
. No levels or gear that alters the stats of a character. (in other words, nothing that alters any of the characters statisticaly in any way. The game will be 100% balanced)
. Character advancment can be represented by a Rank or Skill level. (This will rise up when killing other players, and will represent the advancement of a character. Perhaps physical appearance could change with every 10 ranks. Again no statistical change.)
. To reward people for spending time on the game new pieces of physicaly changing only gear could become available for purchase.
Onto the actual PvP side of things.
. Many different maps would be required, to hold interest.
. All Open PvP with certain areas blocked off for 1 on 1 combat.
. 3 or more factions would make the game more varied.
. NO CLASSES. (or everyone is the same class.) This is to ensure everyone is balanced. Everyone has the same skills.
. HP regen on a global timer (all characters with less than 100% hp gain (for instance) +5% hp every minuite.)
. The characters should be able to run rather fast. To enable them to either escape or prevent escaping.
Skills.
. Everyone would have the same skills, but can only have 10 equipped at a time.
. There should be at least 50 skills to provide almost unlimited combinations of skills, so no 1 person finds the “Ultimate Combination”
. Skills could vary between ranged skills, close combat skills, buffs, debuffs and hindering skills.
. Each skill should be noticably different from each other. ( Nothing like “Shadowbolt – 200 dmg and stuns” compared to Gloombolt “267 dmg and stuns”)
. Limited cooldowns. Only placing cooldowns on the most powerful skills.
Mechanics preventing foul play.
. Once a character is stunned or something along those lines, a 15(?) second timer gets set off, all other stunning skills have no effect on that character during that time. (To prevent stun locking)
. No stealth skills.
. Absolutly ZERO chance of skills getting blocked parried etc. NO chance of criticaly hitting. ALL skills hit for what they say on the tin.
You guys are blind or something. There is already a perfect game out there but it was under greedy management for awhile. For everyone looking for a good pure pvp based game try Rakion. There is no real rpg element to this game. Its like Halo or Counterstrike in the fact that your pvping people throughout the whole game but it has nice elements to it.
Pros
1) I hate pure shooting games. Rakion deals mainly in Melee combat but everyone has a melee weapon and a range weapon. There are archers so if you preffer to shoot you can but you must have teamates watching you or be able to fight well against melee fighters while using range.
2) You can always play a team game which means its not only skill based but also strategy.
3) The grafics arent great but they are decent and you can play it on almost any system.
4) The game has a fairly tight community of players and its easy to make friends and play with them on the same team.
5) Its free to play and who doesnt love that.
Cons
1) There are alot of people who abuse the cash shop but thats to be expected from any game. To balace this they have many events though where people who cant afford cash shop items.
2) There are many pros, cash shop nubs, and usually one or two hackers a day with good armor and high level summons that lurk in the lower level games.
All in all i reccomend at least trying this game. Lately they have added many features to give new players a fair chance and to control the use of cash over skill. I like the seperation of levels which seperates skill levels too. The ability to gain gold and exp from winning rounds is nice. You can purchase better weapons or armor and really begin to make a character to your liking.
I highly reccomend
Why EVE sucks, from a PVP’rs point of view…
I love PVP games and can’t stand EVE.
Why?
Though it might be a PVP game, and it might have lots and lots of cool features, the bottom line is your not really “playing” the game… Your captaining and the computer plays…
Fly “Here”
Shoot “That”
ETC
ETC
ETC
Maybe its pvp, but its terrible gameplay and terrible gameplay + PVP still = terrible gameplay.
The game was so dull that I’ve never managed to get more than a day or two into a trial account before I uninstall the craptastic piece of software from my computer.
Darkfall was “almost” the perfect game. It being in EU screwed it up for me (ping issues), though there were other problems as well (cheaters, and shit) and I haven’t gone back since the NA launch as I’m waiting for Mortal, but I’ve been considering it.
if your looking for a game that is like UO look at Mortal Online, A Swedish company is makeing it and it pretty much is UO put into a HIGH quality 3d world ,it has the best graphics of any mmo ive seen, and the comany making has stated that they are basing their game off of UO. it is only in beta right now
If you aren’t concerned with graphics or a clunky interface you should check out http://www.castlethornsoftware.com/SQOweb2/index.html It’s a FULL PVP space game where you aren’t a ship you are an actual person. You have fully player manned ships with Helm, tactical, sensors, Engineering etc stations. you can freely travel from ship to planetside with no loading screens. you can see your ship in orbit if you park it close enough. This game has a feature never before seen in an mmo… Kidnapping. You can capture and hold other players against their will fora limited amount of time. Everythign on yoru ship can be stolen but your ship cannot. Anyway check it out that’s justa few of the features. THere is also colonization and a working player government. It’s more of a space SIM than an MMO. Totally sandbox you make your own adventure..
try see Knight Online, it has the best PVP system i ever see, but it’s still sux a lot of hackers and bugs, and the developer not cares much about this games -,-, if develop-well, it would be the best games since most people prefer PVP ^^
PVP as in shadowbane. This game had and is comeing out again soon a rare pvp system where if you figured out the right build you could kill a level 75 while you was lvl 25. The game was all open pvp and that was the base of it. You own a city build it wage a war on another city defeat thos players get there city as a reward.
The only reason you have these little pricks who whine and complain about pvp is because they enjoy running there mouth at you without any suffering.
I played many mmo’s and the ones with the pvp on off switch they would talk smack and run away with pvp turned off.
Final fantasy xi people would talk as if they was unbeatable for the fact they couldnt be attacked but wouldnt dare jump in a ballista match for some pvp for they knew the outcome would be there loss.
Wow is too slow and unbalanced pvp you need to be within atleast 5 levels of the person to have a chance at all at takeing them out reguardless.
Gear realy takes a tole on the player base as well. If you work and have little time to play games like this you will be lucky if ever you get to have a even pvp match.
I say shadowbane hands down had the best ballanced overall pvp system I had ever been apart of and I have played over 75 mmo’s recently with a pvp system in them.
It will release again soon as SBEMU and when it does dont get on noob isle and kill 3 things and say this sucks, it takes too long to level blah blah whine. getting to 30 takes aout 20 minutes leave noob get to 75 takes about 3 hours.
Do this in any other mmo that has pvp in it. You wont! Now stop talking aout gay wow pvp.