“Sure that fireball does a lot of damage but it gets interrupted if anyone hits you during the cast time.”

“Wow that hammer does a lot of damage to my shield, but it doesn’t hurt my character very much and that sword has great damage but it takes so much stamina to swing that i can hit you twice before you can swing it again.”

Beyond that in an open PvP world there are already tons of reasons for people to kill each other. What a good pvp game will do instead is the opposite of what you would expect. It must encourage players to work together as much as possible while always under threat of death. In an open PvP world there will always be someone who wants to kill you for whatever reason, what players need is people who don’t want to kill them. Players who want them to come and live in their city because every player is a valuable addition to the thriving economy that funds the epic wars and battles that are raging across nearly every inch of the land. Without levels every new player is a potential body you can throw at your enemies.

Imagine for a moment that you are playing an RTS, but any time you want to build a soldier you have to convince an actual human player to join you. Would you not provide that player with equipment, training and a safe place to rest at day’s end? You would indeed. In fact you would do everything in your power to attract as many new warriors to your cause as you could. Now we are starting to create a shift in player vs player thought. Sure there will still be tons of players that just want to kill everyone and especially newbs, but with well designed city and world building elements combined with no grind and levels there will be a class of city building players that see every newb as a potential ally.

Imagine another scenario. You start a new PvP centric game for the first time and the first thing that happens to you is some asshole stabs you in the face, but as you fall bleeding to the ground you see a battle raging all around you. The line shifts and someone resurrects you, they tell you to quickly move to the back where there is a makeshift base camp setup, you approach the armory and a list of available gear sets pops up before you the owners are allowing new players to have two free gear sets. You choose one and your character spends a few moments donning his new weapons of death. You are now ready to enter the fray and spend the next few hours happily slaughtering the people who killed you when you spawned. Now two hours after you spawn the free gear sets are used up and you realize that for the first time you might have to do your first PvE thing. Your new friends direct you toward their city and you realize that every time you complete a quest, buy something from the armory, or do crafting or mining: The owners of the city get a small percentage. They benefit from your presence and you are a valued member of their community. The surrounding areas are kept relatively safe but the threat of enemy incursion is always on the tip of everyone’s tongue and a couple weeks after you start playing, you enter the game to find your home burnt to ground, you vow revenge and the war continues.

That’s the game experience I want. Risk vs Reward. Game mechanics that encourage player cooperation and easy access for all players. And lastly combat that is based on player skill and preparation not # of hours grinding.

eve online sucked

UO would be great if not for it being p2p sence the graphix sucked

Mortal Online had tones of bugs when i played the beta (tho ive seen new footage showing most being fixed) it still has a tone of work to do and isnt worth 60$ usd

Darkfall was fun during the trial and the trail is fee and exept for hackers its beast u should try it

there is also a shadowbane private server but its gat alot of work to do (never played the real 1 T.T heard it was beast)

rakion sucked worse ass then eve online

s4 leuge was cool tho.

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.

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.

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

. 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.