Ashes of Creation

Gravel said:

I mean, if we're being honest, even in games like Arc Raiders it puts people off the game.

I'd say the only place it's actually ever been successful is battle royales, the CoD/BF franchises, and for some reason Eve. Outside of that, pvp is just toxic every time.

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It's super interesting from a sociological/psychological perspective, the way PvP changes people's behavior a full matrix of active and passive positive and negative behaviors. One can see how societies and areas of lawlessness developed and "how the West was won" so to speak, in that order was brought to areas previously unsafe to travel in.

I have never enjoyed the PVP parts of any MMO games because that's not why I play RPGs. FPS games were always how I played PVP; short matches, equal equipment, small maps. People who want to PVP in RPG MMOs aren't looking for that kind of setup; typically when someone says "good fights" and there are those people who are interested in them, what they mean are unbalanced fights "newb stomps" spawn camp murder sprees etc. It's like the RL "hunters" sitting with 20k gear in a deer stand waiting to shoot a yearling. That's not hunting.

Eve is the perfect example of how a PVP MMO should work. It's what New World needed to prevent the bottoming out of prices and/or constant inflation as players constantly pumped currency and items into the game.

-Corps drive everything outside of 0.0, player generated content
-New/low skilled players could contribute right away as tacklers on large target ships in combat or as miners/transporters.
-Area control was not quickly achieved but delivered real rewards in the form of defense, resources, and money making potential
-Economy/itemization is driven by the constant destruction.
-Named items/green/blue/purple/orange rares don't drive itemization; best items are player made and store/stall/station bought
-Allows trade route/trade wars to be a part of player generated content
-Destruction by combat drives churn in gear and limits player attachment, incentivizing risk taking and limiting fear of loss
-Provides a role for those who don't want to participate in risk/pvp by allowing basic mining and crafting/transport of said goods to contribute to upper end econ and war effort.

DAOC when I played also worked pretty well, 3 separate borderlands where folks knew there would be PVP. ESO did it pretty great as well I thought.

It's so hard to get both the balance right and attract/keep the right crowd so one doesn't drive off the other.

Edit: I would have loved to play a more traditionally formatted Eve PvE Campaign, and I know they have had their moments of it but between my work schedule, my experience with MMO guilds, and my ADD I am not interested in Corp intrigue. I've got a few multi million skill point characters stranded at what were at the time GOON stations a decade ago.

Cybsled said:

Stephen’s primary influence was Archeage - Tuco and myself were in a guild that fought his in that game. He used to complain on the game forums about two main things: pirates not having enough penalties and people ganging up on his guild (including people in his faction that would spy for the rival factions or just grief his guild). He probably thought open PvP with a karma system would solve for that, but it really doesn’t. People will just use throw away characters to grief or be assholes, or use exploits/loopholes to avoid punishment

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Why there haven't been more people who want PVP-centric games copying Eve systems I will never understand. New World's primary failure is implementing their emphasis on crafting and gathering and not copying major facets of their economy. It's not a 1:1 translation re: control but from a PvP perspective they could have built a shadow version on top of the PVE and let people interact as much as they wanted.

Have blueprints drop in dungeons rather than items, and let you have craftsmen get a copy of the BP for making it for someone, 5 or 3 uses: All items decay with use and time, get limited number of repairs, can pay exorbitant amount to reset repair limit, best items are crafted not dropped, craftsmen items are pretty good, no more constant inflow of rare items never removed from economy so over time price of everything drops to nothing, eventually craftspeople can't earn money or even make enough to pay to skill up, all markets eventually turn into a race to the bottom as deflation ruins all markets.

Chase and named items are great but it doesn't work when you have an army of gatherers and craftsmen bubbling up with things to make. In New World's case, it just screams late stage revamp and no one really tore out the old systems when they laid in the new, so you have competing Game Design philosophies working against each other so in the end, your whole game fails.