What Do You Look for in a PvP MMO?
If you’re a big PvP MMO fan, I’d be interested to hear what you’re looking for. Balanced PvP combat? Compelling PvE combat? Safe cities and/or zones? Territorial control (like in EVE)? Player-built cities (like in Shadowbane)? Ship-to-ship combat (like in Darkfall)? What is it you are after when you are interested in a PvP MMO? What’s most important? Personally, I’d probably just say “yes” to all of them. But, for me, the most important things are territorial control in a compelling environment. Balanced combat is something I like, but mostly I’m looking for not-outrageously-imbalanced combat. There should also be some designated safe cities so you can hang out, but I feel like everything (apart from, say, a newbie island) should be open outside of there.
Safe zones, territorial control and most important of all: minimal death penalty. Planetside had it all, i’d still be playing if there were greater population density.
As a long time PK’er, I can tell you that territorial control has always been a big attraction for PVP, but something has to keep it fresh. After a year, fighting over the same piece of land or the same keep becomes boring and mundane, which is the problem which has plagued MMOs that rely on it (such as Planetside and Anarchy Online).
I believe the most important thing in any game attempting to label itself as being PvP-oriented is for PK to be open. Aside from perhaps a tutorial area, there should be no place where PK is absolutely restricted. It’s certainly okay to create areas which would mean almost certain death if you tried to PK someone (Tar Valon on wotmud comes to mind), but it allows for a player to feel that they have accomplished something if they manage to pull it off.
The only argument I have ever heard for a safe zone that did not come across as an attempt to promote hand-holding was quite simple: Someone who logs onto the game for the first time shouldn’t be at risk to die while they are still learning the controls. A cut-throat atmosphere such as that would discourage new players from joining an already established game. I concede to this point, however this is the only instance in which I see a safe zone as beneficial.
I would prefer a game combining territorial control, technology development/unlocking (ala civilization or ATITD), and a deep enough economy and production system to significantly impact strategic and tactical decisions in PVP. Territorial control is fun and all, but when particular areas are hot spots because of they’re along the pipeline of resources that your enemies use to fuel their war machine, or when you can economically devastate your foes without firing a single shot, it becomes much more interesting.
Safe zones. But rather than leave it at that, I want to explain the “why”. When a game is 100% PvP all the time, like an FPS DeathMatch map, from the moment you spawn you are a target, you have to be on guard, you have to be paying attention. But take a game like Team Fortress that often has respawn/resupply rooms. There is a place you can stand, pull your hands off the keyboard/mouse/controller and breathe. Shake out the nerves, talk to people easy and prepare for rejoining the fight. MMOs need this, in my opinion. There needs to be a place where I can log in and get my bearings before I am in danger. There needs to be a place I can go when I need to take a breath that isn’t logging out.
I truly hope this is just an idle question that has nothing to do with Copernicus. I know I’d be terribly disappointed to see the game as a PVP MMO.
More than anything I would like to see PVP that has some sort of relevant impact upon your characters development or even story instead of just “Oh BTW you can kill other people in this area or there happens to be this contest”.
For instance if you were to implement PVP so that anyone can kill anyone in any place. If you do kill people for no reason you will become known to NPCs for killing people and they wont trade with you, which then forces you to go to a Mos Eisley like place in that world.
Or in towns if you kill someone guards come flying from everywhere and you end up with a really hard fight for your life. if you get caught equipment is confiscated for a time or you have to do quest with the areas law enforcement to get back to neutral standing.
Maybe even a bounty quest system for repeated offenders who have not been caught.
Too much PvP will seriously discourage new players especially if they can be killed in the starting zones. FPS games don’t rely on levels, gear, etc. nearly as much as MMOs, so PvP has to be different in regard to this. What EVE has done has been good in that you have areas controlled by the players, which does bring in a sense of realism to the game and a want to join up with someone quickly. I think it could be interesting if PCs could also take over some parts of a neutral city and hiring NPCs to patrol the area. There would still be some neutral areas of the city where no one faction controlled it, but there would still be patrols. This would allow for PvP to happen in a lot of places, but would make people think twice before just killing anyone they come across. Non-stop, free-for-all PvP has less appeal to me in a MMORPG because games that use that style as a base for the game I have never stayed with long. I often found myself asking: Why would any skilled killer (high level PC) waste their time stabbing kids just out of school (low level PCs)? Why would someone from your hometown kill an ally (someone from the same faction) in enemy territory? By the same token, why can’t I join up with someone from an opposing faction? Why doesn’t anyone (NPCs) do anything to stop this psycho from killing everyone in the town square? Why is there only super-powered villains (high level PCs) running around, causing havoc with no hope in site? Why aren’t these two age-old enemy forces (Cities/NPC factions) not/always fighting each other (constant war kills both sides, no war makes it feel fake)? There are a lot of examples of where one or more of these issues have been addressed by various games, but these are things I ask myself in games.
One area, from my time gaming, that I remember having a good PvP/PvE balance (on PvP server) was in EQ2. The city of Maj’Dul had gangs, called “Courts”, which would patrol their turf and aggro anyone who did not have enough faction with them. There were neutral areas to provide a chance to get a faction, resupply, etc. Also, there was law enforcement that patrolled from the sky and swoop down if there were any fights happening out in the open. This seemed to help keep PvP reasonable because you wouldn’t usually fight anywhere you could get a group of NPCs on your tail. There was a way to get enough faction with more than one court or even all of them, but it wasn’t easy and required proper planning to pull off. Gang turf would also change by PCs accepting a quest from their gang and assaulting a rival’s outpost to take control of that area. If PCs weren’t taking over these towers once in a while, a fourth court emerged with no available faction to entice players to get the three courts back into power.
I want to ride out alone. I want to lose; over and over and over and over again. I want to see people, to recognize them, and have a friendly chat as we try to kill each other. One day, I want to win. I want to know the person I beat, and know just how good he was, just how hard I had to work to win against him.
The rest is perfunctory to me.
You should check out Aion if you haven’t already. They’ve done a really good job of PvP for a number of reasons.
Tactical possibility. Encounters shouldn’t be pre-determined by numbers alone. I’ve seen a single scout take out an entire raid. Granted, alot of it is levels, gear, twinking, grinding… you know, all those things without which you would not call it an MMO…which I don’t care too much for, but there is still the possibility. Botting also takes on a new twist. The bots run, the enemies farm the bots, and we farm the enemies (the bots are bait). Everyone wins.
Level design. The use of the gliding mechanic and vertical spaces. I’ve chased a seemingly lone enemy a long distance (nothing new there for open pvp), up a large hill to a cliff… then they jump off to glide and I move to cut them off at a lower point, thinking aha I have you at last… but to my dismay, they glide to a higher place I can not reach because I committed to the cut off move…. mean while, the rest of the runner’s previoulsy hidden group circles behind my group, which is now spread out across the map, taking us out in smaller chunks.
Alot of people who play Aion love the Abyss PvP, where you can straight up fly rather than glide… but it’s pretty imbalanced for classes that can kite, so I tend to avoid it playing a class that can’t. I prefer Morheim, which is alot like Antonica/Commonlands… but with vertical possibilities.
Kisks. Players can (for a somewhat large money sink) buy an item that will give them a spawn point wherever they want. They can be destroyed by the enemy of course, which means game over for now. Those cliffs you think are impassable when you first start and just serve as a path for PvE? Nope, it is a whole different level inside of a level up on top of those where you can hide and find kisks.
Rifts. Wormholes into the enemy’s homeland that spawn periodically in remote locations. It makes it open but not a floodgate of endless ganking.
Rewards fit the challenge. As Sara said, it is way gratifying to finally kill that ass twink who loves to spawn camp you and basically makes terrorizing your village (Alsig on Zikiel in my case) their full time entertainment. It’s even better to get a huge reward for the achievement. Aion isn’t perfect with this, particularly in factoring in the gear, but you do get a somewhat higher reward for winning tougher fights (sliding scale Abyss Points redeemed for phatz). Converse of course is punishment fits the failure… you lose AP when you lose fights, also on a sliding scale.
Smart Guards and Dumb Guards. Or tough guards and weak guards… NPCs are the only way to realistically guarantee safety. And it isn’t a guarantee. But “guard humping” aside, it is fun to taunt the 70% runspeed twinks who will bail the second the tide turns by standing with the tough guards… and though they will still attack you if you pick the wrong guard for protection, at least the fight evens out a bit. Some guards will chase an enemy a really really long way too, way longer than a normal mob, hitting them hard only every so often, which is fun to watch.
Long story short if you design from the beginning for this it can be really really good. But most games I think get caught with PvP as a secondary elder game… which limits the design quite a bit.
That’s easy: I *don’t* look for PvP in MMO’s. Mind you, I *love* PvP, but I love *real* PvP. I have never (yet) seen PvP actually work correctly in an RPG — noting you specifically used the abbreviated “MMO” rather than “MMORPG” in your post — and I just don’t the two can properly mix. Yet.
If we *are* talking MMORPG’s then PvP pretty much fails because entirely too many of them follow the same tired and obsolete Diku leveling scheme, which means PvP isn’t actually Player vs. Player, it’s Level and Gear vs. Level and Gear. Only at the level cap is anyone on the same ground, and even then it becomes Gear vs. Gear.
That’s not to say immense fun can’t be had in the MMORPG version of “PvP’ but frankly, just like the PvE portion of the game, if I’m going to bother paying a subscription, the damned PvP had better have a point to it. If it’s just repeating arena battles with no meaning other than a scoreboard, I can get that on countless multiplayer PvP games for no subscription — and better PvP while I’m at it.
The ability to kill ANYONE (outside of safe cities and/or zones) but with real alignment penalties. If I kill a bunch of good, law abiding players, I should be flagged as a murderer, banned from good towns and KOS to both players and NPC guards. There should be evil towns/camps/outposts so that these PKers still have a basic hub to do business. (Bucs Den in UO)
Massive, long lasting debuff penalties for ganking lowbies. Buffs for managing to kill higher level players.
Lootable player corpses. Any non-bound and non-quest related item should be fair game. A % of the players money on hand. This, along with a real murder penalty system, will give PKs incentive to kill, but will also make them responsible for their actions.
Player cities in the actual game world, (Like Shadowbane) not instanced like in Age of Conan. Guild owns the city, guild members can build the buildings for whatever purpose they desire.
Siege equipment like in WAR. Ballistas, Trebucehes, cannons, etc.
Accessible PVP from level 1 and up. (Like in WAR) Battlegrounds and scenarios (penalty free perhaps) that are accessible at any level and at any time.
Scott said, ” which means PvP isn’t actually Player vs. Player, it’s Level and Gear vs. Level and Gear. Only at the level cap is anyone on the same ground, and even then it becomes Gear vs. Gear.”
Even then, a Diku model is usually Rock-Paper-Scissors for most fights. Class X beats Class Y, Class Y beats Class Z, and Class Z beats Class X. If you are Class X and take the field against a bunch of Class Ys, your gear matters less because unless you far exceed them in that area their class trumps yours and you lose.
Bah! That should say “If you are Class X and take the field against a bunch of Class Zs”.
Here’s the problem…are you talking about PVP in a game that is also PVE? Or are you talking about a game that is mostly going to be centered towards PVE? Because if you have a lot of PVE players in your game and then you also have PVP where those players can be killed, you are going to lose a big part of your market. Aion is a good example of this. Many people who are primarily interested in PVE have left the game. Rifting makes ganking coming and easy where players who mostly want to quest and level end up being frustrated at being constantly killed.
On the other hand if you are talking about specific servers that are PVP or a game that is billed as PVP there is definitely a difference in what is acceptable.
- balanced combat, of course. i don’t want to hear ever again the awfull excuse “it’s rock/paper/sisors”
- non CC driven combat : nothing is less fun than being unable to play half the time because of fear, sleep, roots…
- the end of the stuff > all usual model : i want decent chances to win even my oponnent plays 12 hours a day i can only play 2 hours.
- no one can be killed in 1/2/3 shot(s). Yes, NO ONE ! not even the level 10 ganked by the 50 (if there’s levels)
- the possibility to pvp as soon as i enter the game (i.e battlegrounds of some kind)
- pvp that matters to my faction : RvR that is not only “who has the biggest zerg wins”. This means battles that are not focused on only one interest point. Conquered land should give access to NPCs shops, quests, instances, crafting ressources…
- pvp that matters to my guild : city or guild HQ/fort to build, defend, attack
- pvp that matters to me : houses, shops, towers to build, defend, attack
- competitive pvp (i.e arenas, ladders for duels, guilds…)
so it basicly boils down to 2 things :
1 : combat that is fun for everyone and
2 : diversity in scope and importance
And i sure hope Copernicus as lots of PvP
- good core combat mechanics. -a must .
- said combat should work well from duel situation, to small groups to massive battles
- meaningful non instanced pvp. – over resources ,territories , etc. but I accent NON INSTANCED and meaningful- if I wanted otherwise I would either play wow or FPS
- No time sinks in terms of travel time, grind etc. – i want be able to log in and have combat in 10 min. Groups , with goals and targets. Not look for it for hours and then have 5 min of fun (if that)
STATS STATS STATS, and titles for everyone! Remember Perfect Dark and Goldeneye’s ridiculous list of titles each player could achieve in deathmatches? Bring those back, it’ll sure cushion the blow of defeat.
I see a lot of people saying balance, but what fun is that? Instead of 8 balanced classes, have 20 unbalanced classes with the ability to cherrypick abilities from whichever classes have already been mastered (with the requisite safeguards in place to prevent mage tanking, of course). That way if there is ever a flavor of the month hybrid class, someone will eventually figure out a counterclass, which will eventually be countered as well. Less tedium for both the player and the developer.
Faction/Guild bases with an invitation system of raiding enemy bases. Challenges could be issued and raid dates set in advance, so both sides could prepare for what was coming
Dungeon faction rep, so one guild could become allies with a dungeon boss and ask the boss to come out and attack enemy factions!
I look for a lack of it – not a big PvP fan.
To me, the most important thing is balance in PVP.
I’ve played PVP in EQ2 for the longest time, since it came out actually.
To me, the game being rock-papers-scissors isn’t absolutely terrible, but there comes a point when it’s far too unbalanced.
Just lately, for example, with the release of battlegrounds there were huge issues with balancing mages.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a tank class with 25,000 hitpoints, a Wizard could very likely kill you in one or two hits.
That’s just completely and absolutely unbalanced.
The same thing happened with Swashbucklers back in KoS/EoF with Reach & their temp buffs, and Brigands for the longest time.
Safe zones, titles, fame, whatever else other people say might be important, but nothing is as important as balancing the classes.
No one should be invincible and no class should have a good chance at simply one shotting every single person they come across.
I almost agree with the crowd control posts, saying that CC should not be an issue. If that is put in motion, you need to make sure you don’t have a class that almost has to rely on CC to do their job. Coercers, for example, have to get all their debuffs on someone before they’re truly able to put out DPS. Without CC, that would be pretty difficult.
I think a PvP system that has no limits would be perfect.
But to balance it out, all the charactes would have to be on the same level. To prevent people 1HKOing newbies.
Skill levels would be recorded as your win:loss ratio and repeated killing of the same character would remove PvP benefits for a while.
Whilst people who get camped get a handicap to help them fight back.
Simple enough.