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Sylas

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There is this misconception that there are PVErs and there are PVPrs, like they are two separate groups of people with no overlap, and if you only do X you can convince one to enjoy the other or vice versa.

A few weirdo outliers aside, players enjoy both. Players are both. Its the context that matters.

People who play FPS, purely pvp, are the same players who enjoy looter/shooters, purely PVE. Looter shooters always try and include a few optional ffa pvp zones and they are always empty, just 1 hard core camper/lootbox hero with his credit card gear obliterating anyone who comes in. The people who enjoy pvp in looter shooters are a miniscule portion of the player base. Game studios realized this and stopped trying to design around or cater to those types of players. They are irrelevant. They also stopped trying to force players into having to participate in that kind of content.

If only MMO devs would learn this lesson.

But why? All those PVErs all enjoy pvp in a regular fps...whats the difference?

The context. In a fps there is a sense of parity, equal footing, fairness. Even if you have a choice of kits it still correlates to rock/paper/scissor style of balance and your brain is ok with it because ultimately you all have equal power and no one has an unfair advantage.

In the other, you invest time/energy on questing/grinding/progression/growing in power. Your lizard brain assigns in innate value to your time invested and you judge every interaction with a toddlers sense of fairness and equality. This is mine and its not fair for you to take it.

Imagine if minecraft or any other survival game required you to grind mobs for 15 days /played before you could build your first hut or chop your first tree. And the second you do someone with 30 days /played can just come along and destroy your shit. That game would fail.

Now keep in mind, this already happens in effect, other players can come destroy your shit that you spent 15 days /played making. But people arent up in arms about it. Why not? Because there is a difference psychologically in the value assigned to the action of "building" (ie playing the game) than the action of "grinding" ( chore i needed to do to unlock the power to play the game)

The MMO genre is just an online version of the RPG genre in most players minds. Its about worlds and stories and progression and character growth (power). That context is never going to square with pvp. Yet every few years a developer comes along and who thinks they've "cracked the code" and itll work this time. It won't. Everyone who has tried has failed. Either they stick to pvp and the game dies or they neuter all pvp into meaninglessness and its just another pve theme park.

You can build a mmo that is pvp but you have to break the correlation in players minds with RPGs. One game has done so successfully.

If you want to keep the theme park bones but make your game pvp focused, then just change how experience is earned. You only gain experience or level up by killing other players. No secondary pve-style objectives to gain power in pvp. Only by killing other players do you gain power. Pvp is the game from level 1 and it is drilled into your brain from the moment you exit character creation.
Start with a gladiator arena or something, you start as a slave fighting in the pits instead of some hero standing in freeport.

Once you've leveled up a bit you get to leave the arena and go explore the world. Theres mobs and danger and things to see and explore like any other world/themepark, but you gain no experience/levels by pve. You must kill other players to gain power, which by happenstance, makes you strong enough to dungeon dive or kill dragons or whatever for shinies.

I dont know if that game would be popular,but it wouldnt die after a month either.
 
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Mahes

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The game was called Dark Ages of Camelot.

To this day, it is the closest I have seen to realizing a great PvX experience. AoC is already different from that formula with the faction based system. DAoC worked until Atlantis required raiding for players to get BiS weapons for PvP. The systems can mix but there needs to be multiple avenues for players to acquire the best stuff for PvP based action. Raiding cannot be the only way.

I think this game lives or dies on what it offers for players who do not group very much. Obviously going solo and PvPing rarely have good outcomes for the solo player, but there needs to be things players can do while waiting for friends or just a pick-up group to form. If there is plenty of that kind of content, then the game will last a while.
 
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Daidraco

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Yea I agree, this MMO will die a quick death if they dont have a good path for PvE players to take that offers meaningful advancement without needing to go into PvP areas IMO. And this is as a hardcore PvPer in all MMO's.

I honestly feel that the only open PvP areas should be the intercontinental areas (like the open seas), im going to play the betas and 100% provide feedback to them.

(This will make cross intercontinental trade routes extremely lucrative and venerable to pirates as well meaning that you can try and take the risk and go it alone or get a fleet together to do a bunch at once)

But if you dont do intercontential travel you can still make good coin between contential cities, get great resources ect.

(frankly if I was making this MMO, id have 3 huge continents with a pirate island in the middle, with large seas between. NO PVP on any solo continents with *maybe an exeption for faction or guild warfare* but if you wanted to make the most money you would need to trade between a different Continent... thats where the big money comes from; but... because the ocean is so large you could easily try and cross it yourself.)
From what I understood from the podcast before this last one is that you auto flag for PVP as soon as you're a certain distance off the coast, as soon as you're within the perimeter area of a traveling caravan, and as soon as you enter any Ruins of a prior city. (Which Im still unsure when ruins happen? Do they happen when the city drops a tier, stay ruins for a day or two, and then turn back into a town?) So basically, you're just perma purple while in those areas. Unless you're stating that people are going to pursue you past those areas, which, to my understanding, if you're transporting goods - you're going to be going to a port or city. So I just dont see where you would become perma red. Towns are safe zones afaik (finish lines in my head). If you're not transporting goods and not intending to pvp - I dont know why you wouldnt choose a faster (safer) mode of travel.
 

Sudo

Blackwing Lair Raider
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Fair enough, it's damn difficult. Lets see how the betas play out.

I do think there is a good balance that can incorporate pve and pvp into the same world but we have yet to see it, I think ArchAge was a really close attempt save for all the PTW, and the MASSIVE effectiveness disparities if you didn't PTW.

One thing I felt Archeage did right for the land was peace times, so in the better zones with better drops every so often the zone would go into peace time for 2 hours and there was no PVP. It rotated between all the zones so PvEer could do their shit if they time their zones right without any interference (from PvP).

But hey maybe im just hoping for a better communism but I dont think it's as bad as that.
I think PVErs have moved a lot over the past few years. Would the current wow pve crowd play a game where they had to wait for a peace period? or where there was a peace route to trade, but it was twice as far as the PVP route. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think they expect instant teleport fast travel anywhere they want, dungeon finder instant queue, and social justice equity in the risk reward system.
 

Daidraco

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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I think PVErs have moved a lot over the past few years. Would the current wow pve crowd play a game where they had to wait for a peace period? or where there was a peace route to trade, but it was twice as far as the PVP route. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think they expect instant teleport fast travel anywhere they want, dungeon finder instant queue, and social justice equity in the risk reward system.
Walking to dungeons is fine if its set up properly / organically. People do it non stop for Mythic Dungeons in WoW. The real interesting question you proposed is if they have, or see any value in adding Battlegrounds and Arenas.
 

Harkon

Vyemm Raider
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Walking to dungeons is fine if its set up properly / organically. People do it non stop for Mythic Dungeons in WoW. The real interesting question you proposed is if they have, or see any value in adding Battlegrounds and Arenas.

Yea 100% they would, we saw it happen in archeage all the time. as soon as a zone went peace hordes of players would come out and easy trade routes would be flooded.

The majority of people will always take the path of least resistance even if it means its a longer path so long as any (even imaginary) roadblocks are removed. You could run routes in wartime and 95% of the time nothing would happen but that 5% chance of possibly losing your cart full of trade packs meant people waited.

So what Id do (and ill recommend this to the devs for the Caravans) is to make cities have PVE caravans and PvP caravans (intercontinental) then for every PVE caravan that that get turned in the PvP caravans go up buy a percentage - say 2% for starters. There would be no cap on how large the PvP caravan amounts would go up to and eventually it will naturally settle on a price that people feel is worth the risk to take to deliver an intercontinental caravan.
 
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Cybsled

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I used to try to run packs during non-peace periods to get more reward, but I always did it during off hours where the risk of ganks was extremely low

Again, path of least resistance
 
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Pooch

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I’m surprised no mmo has tried to get in on the battle royal crazy. Keep your pve game then just add a “war zone” area where everyone starts naked and runs around looting “fallen comrades” for gear etc keep all gear there with pvp stats etc.
 
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Animosity

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I’m surprised no mmo has tried to get in on the battle royal crazy. Keep your pve game then just add a “war zone” area where everyone starts naked and runs around looting “fallen comrades” for gear etc keep all gear there with pvp stats etc.
Camelot Unchained halted development so they can make a spinoff game thats a battle royal.
 

Mahes

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Camelot Unchained halted development so they can make a spinoff game thats a battle royal.
AoC also initially went that direction. I guess they recognized that the market for something like that was not financially sustainable. I am also guessing that the popularity for the idea was just ho hum when they are hoping for a descent or better turnout.
 

Sylas

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Crowfall was going to but it failed. Was supposed to be eve + shadowbane but ended up being minecraft + shadowbane.

Its sad cus the whole battle royale concept was theirs but by the time they released their game shooters had already stolen the idea and subverted it.
 
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Cybsled

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The biggest problem with a MMO BR is at a certain point, you’ve already lost the game before it has ended.

Think about a fps BR. Everyone tries to loot up early and you see lots of deaths at the start. Then you get into that mid game where you hope to find better stuff and an advantageous position. Then you have the end game where if you have loot + position, chances are you will win unless the surviving people are really skilled, hack, or you just make a mistake they capitalize on.

It’s hard to replicate that in a MMO setting if you can just respawn indefinitely, because at some point you’ll either be so far behind the curve that there isn’t much point in playing, or one group just snowballs fast and decimates everyone. And if you limit respawns, what then? You pick a new server?
 

tower

Golden Knight of the Realm
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Asmongold went over basically all the recent PVP and PVE arguments while watching a LazyPeon video and I still find the PVE argument wanting. Comes back to my point - game is designed a certain way and you want to tear it up and make it something different. World bosses are not hard, in fact the whole game is probably not hard. What is supposed to be hard is the PVP element. You get rid of the PVP element and you just have a boring ass boss with limited mechanics that is not fun. What are the Caravans on a PVE server? You spawn PVE mobs to attack them? Then youre taking away resources from the main game design to code that and it also sounds boring as shit after the 2nd time you do it.


Then it comes back to the "just go play a PVP game with MMR." Those games have their own fanbase. But there's clearly people frustrated with them as the only option - see image below. Not everyone wants to tryhard every waking moment they're playing a game like you have to on Dota or a FPS to maintain your MMR. I enjoy chilling out and grinding on mobs but the variety of getting jumped and having to switch on and defend yourself, or noticing a party coming in that you have to fight for resources over or going to an area specifically to look for a fight after the downtime where you're mostly not experiencing it. Are those idealized examples of "fair fights" and will I not enjoy it if I'm getting rolled 20v3 all the time (or vice versa - I quit Aion Classic when my guild basically killed its server by dominating the opposite faction too hard)? Absolutely, and it's on the Ashes devs to figure out how to avoid the scenario that has killed pretty much every other game that has tried. I think their challenge is going to be figuring out how to manage the "downtime" areas and whether the less PVP inclined can survive without getting camped and PK constantly. If you get zapped randomly for some ore every now and then despite taking precautions, that's one thing. If there's a bottleneck entering every town that is camped by PKers 24/7 then yeah you're going to lose everyone but the wolves within a month and then wolves will start feasting on each other

But dont say it's impossible for it to work. We've had games, even MMOs, that hit that sweetspot for us before. DAoC and Warhammer Online had PVP levelling and people liked them - their failures were after the levelling. Competitive WoW battlegrounds with a low TTK are more fun for me than arena autism. I mean, if I'm going to deal with autism give me large organized zerg raids against other large organized zerg raids over 60 minute 2v2s

I can go play a MMR game if that's what I want. I can go play a PVE loot pinata if that's what I want. But I can't play a PVP MMO. Let Intrepid at least try to make one. I'll take the low percent chance it can work out over the 0% chance it would if you make the game something it's not. It seems Steven does too and he's the one funding this.


sd.PNG
 
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Leibowitz

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i i usually play PVE. However i DO like PVP I find i prefer group PVP over solo . I played wow for 10 years and quit when i felt that reading the forums was more fun than playing. I trully MISSED horde attacks on ironforge and Alliance attacks on tarren mill (I played both sides depending on the mood i was in ) I have not heard of an opposing faction attack on a major city in YEARS. its just not done anymore. I am really looking forward towards the node wars.!
 
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Daidraco

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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i i usually play PVE. However i DO like PVP I find i prefer group PVP over solo . I played wow for 10 years and quit when i felt that reading the forums was more fun than playing. I trully MISSED horde attacks on ironforge and Alliance attacks on tarren mill (I played both sides depending on the mood i was in ) I have not heard of an opposing faction attack on a major city in YEARS. its just not done anymore. I am really looking forward towards the node wars.!
I played Darkfall for longer than I probably should have. Dealing with the fly by PK'ers that just kill noobies for fun. Dealing with PK'ers that are completely naked and are just bothersome as fuck. Just all that toxic shit caused me to quit. I didnt know anyone and since I joined late, no one wanted to guild me. It was just a miserable experience and its no wonder that game has rebranded itself a handful of times. Lineage 2 I started with a bunch of friends and we watched each others back. It was.. for what its worth, a fun experience until we just ran out of content.

Point being, I dont think the PVP itself is a bad thing. Even for mostly PVE players. Its when they have to deal with a fucking autist 25 year old still living with his parents that can play 24/7. If they can minimize that kind of persons toxic behavior down to the single digits in percentage, then I think the game will do really well.

Another thing I noticed as Ive gotten older, and Lost Ark really pointed it out to me - I just hate this asian art style a lot of these games have. AA, Aion, both of those I lasted less than a week or two in. Wasnt because the PVP - I just didnt care for those games at all. So another thing AOC has going for it, is just its art style.
 

Rabbit_Games

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The 24-hour Extra Life livestream is ongoing right now. I joined their team for donations. Here's their Twitch page since they're giving away Alpha Keys.
 

Mahes

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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That was repetitive. They could have shown everything in that video with a lot less time. I did like how the Bard class kind of slipped out. Does give me hope that a lot more stuff than just what they show is being worked on.
 

Daidraco

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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That was repetitive. They could have shown everything in that video with a lot less time. I did like how the Bard class kind of slipped out. Does give me hope that a lot more stuff than just what they show is being worked on.
I feel like there is quite a bit in that video that is relatively new. Not just the subjects at hand. With UE5, they all can work simultaneously to finish something. So I really doubt anyone would be sitting on their hands.
 

Mahes

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Yeah, I also liked the reference to going to 5.1. I assume that is considerably easier than 4. to 5.0.
 
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