I read this in their opening paragraph:
and stopped reading. The place is run by idiot neckbeards as usually comes with dudes following games years before release.
Black Desert
- Thread starter Vepil
- Start date
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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pvp system sounds terrible. I don't really care that much until we're close to release though.
The more I play these games the more I realize this is pretty much the list of features that make for a good open world pvp game. In fact with every game release I can tell what the major flaws are based on which elements are missing:
http://www.prx-guild.com/forum/m/161...nt-in-pvp-game
What Do Ttrue PvPers Want in a MMORPG?
With ArcheAge the big flaws are safe zones and equipment being all powerful/no good ways to get gear from pvp. The game would be so much better if there were zero safe zones.
The more I play these games the more I realize this is pretty much the list of features that make for a good open world pvp game. In fact with every game release I can tell what the major flaws are based on which elements are missing:
http://www.prx-guild.com/forum/m/161...nt-in-pvp-game
What Do Ttrue PvPers Want in a MMORPG?
Long-lasting Fights
In order for a fight to be enjoyable and player skill taken into consideration, it must last. In Ultima Online and Shadowbane, combat between individuals could last long minutes. In Vanguard and World of Warcraft, combat could be over in seconds. The enjoyment is in the fight and the longer it lasts the better.
Quick XP curve and/or XP via PvP.
PvPers want to pvp and not grind mobs endlessly. Allowing for a quick XP curve will allow pvpers to be "ready" sooner. Another benefit is that there won't be as many low level newbies around to be fodder and quit; when players quit of course there are less of them around to pvp with. A fast XP curve means you can get your friends and guildies involved in the pvp faster. Finally, being able to gain XP via pvp is the best of both worlds. The player gets to fight other players and advance through it.
Powerlevel Friends
A major component of a vibrant pvp world is having people to pvp with; the more the merrier. To that end, being able to powerlevel friends and guildies so they "keep up with the Joneses" is key. It's easy to disenfranchise players when you are battling it out in epic combats while they are still killing rats for wheels of cheese. Shadowbane did this very well. A max level character could level 9 afk friends and get them levels in short order.
No Radar
The ability to see people as a blip on the radar is anti-competitive. One should have to use their own eyes to find people in the geometry. This adds tactics, perception becomes important and adds another dimension to the game.
Balance
While we don't expect every single class to be 100% balanced vs every other class, everyone expects to have a chance when they mix it up. There are certain games where one class has absolutely no chance vs another and that is anti-competitive and not fun. PvPers want a chance to win, that's an ingredient of fun.
Many Combat Options to Use While Fighting
In order for a pvper to showcase skill, both he and his target need to have many options and tactics available to them. This allows for skill to really be a factor. If one's only option is to spam the 1 key to power attack over and over then that isn't skill.
Guild Options Such as Tabards
Guilds are proud of whom they are and fighting with your "colors" against enemies with their "colors" adds to the fun of combat.
Death Penalty and Looting
The system in World of Warcraft of bind-rushing, no loss, no penalty death is an anathema to true pvpers. It's really a sad symptom of where our society is heading where "everyone's a winner", a bruised ego is seen as an evil rather than a learning experience and you can sue McDonalds for being fat. But I digress. If you and I engage in combat, the loser needs to lose something. Good examples are the vitae system in Asheron's Call, looting in Ultima Online and resurrection sickness. If I kill you, I should not see you again at full health in 10 seconds. Please note the inherent danger in a system that is too harsh is that players will quit and then you won't have anyone to pvp against. Shadowbane is a perfect example of this. Destroy someone's city and half of its players quit making Shadowbane servers ghost towns. UO's "full loot" system worked because items were not very important.
Inter-Server Combat
Become the best on your server? Now prove yourself against those on other servers.
Exploiters Banned
This is self-explanatory. Fun and meaningful pvp can only stem from it being cheat-free. Also, make it public. "Today, Ebonlore was banned for."
Meaningful
PvP should be meaningful. PvP has higher stakes and therefore is more fun if the combat is over something. In Shadowbane many times it was combat for your entire city, in Ultima Online it was your equipment and in DAoC it was your keep and relics.
Buffs and Equipment Not All-powerful
A pvper wants his skill and tactics to be the deciding factor in combat, not buffs and instance-farmed equipment. If my strength is 100, a buff should only give me 10 points or so making it handy but not an all-important necessity. It's also silly that one has to spend 50 hours inside a Molten Core instance pve'ing to get equipment to compete in pvp.
Levels Unimportant
A level should give a small boost but not be a key component when they are similar. For example, a level 40 should have a chance to win vs a level 50. A level 30 should have a chance to defeat a level 38. I am not advocating a 50/50 chance necessarily, but it needs to be greater than 0%.
1 Character per Server
Players can only do "bad" things with more than 1 character. They can make mules to carry loot, mules to grief folks, reroll a toon to lose their earned reputation and use a throwaway scout. For pvp to be meaningful, characters need to keep the reputation they earn. Alternately, if more than 1 character is allowed per server, give all the toons common last names. For example, if your first character's last name is "Johnson" then they all share that name.
Large Server Population
The more people playing, the better the pvp. A player won't have to waste time running all over looking for it and there will be more fights.
Quick Recognition of Enemies
There should be an in-game system whereby you can recognize your enemies. If the server is free-for-all then a guildmaster should be able to mark individuals and guilds as KOS and have their color change.
Virtually no Safe-Zones or Instances
Other than a starter newbie zone, pvpers want to be free to take the fight to their enemies anywhere in the game whenever they can. Instances only turn the combat from a true war where victory is determined by tenacity and will as much as skill to cute little sparring matches that don't prove true warrior spirit.
Ability to Respec or Retrain Abilities
All games go through rebalancing, patches and class changes. Being able to retain our pvp skills allows us to adjust and keep current with these changes without having to reroll another character and grind more XP.
Don't Show Levels
A true PvPer doesn't pick on someone just because they will instantly win, they enjoy fighting and learning other's reputations for those combats. Knowing someone's level doesn't provide any positive benefits.
Ability to Spar and Battle Guildmates
It's a small thing, but the ability to fight friends w/o any penalty or loss makes for fun. Ability to practice, have tournaments or just mess around when things are slow can make for some fun times.
In-game Proof of Victory
Ever read a public forum? Steve says he owned Frank and the next post is Frank saying he owned Steve. An in-game system for proving victory is necessary. In DAoC it was hard to say "PRX Sucks!" with much credibility when our realm had all 6 relics and we were #1 in realm points. In Shadowbane it's hard to say "We pwned you" when your city is a burning hulk and ours is safe and sound and the world map clearly shows you had a larger population than we do. In Guildwars anyone can clearly see how many matches a guild won and how many a guild lost. PvPers want to see hard data on the pvp happening in game.
In order for a fight to be enjoyable and player skill taken into consideration, it must last. In Ultima Online and Shadowbane, combat between individuals could last long minutes. In Vanguard and World of Warcraft, combat could be over in seconds. The enjoyment is in the fight and the longer it lasts the better.
Quick XP curve and/or XP via PvP.
PvPers want to pvp and not grind mobs endlessly. Allowing for a quick XP curve will allow pvpers to be "ready" sooner. Another benefit is that there won't be as many low level newbies around to be fodder and quit; when players quit of course there are less of them around to pvp with. A fast XP curve means you can get your friends and guildies involved in the pvp faster. Finally, being able to gain XP via pvp is the best of both worlds. The player gets to fight other players and advance through it.
Powerlevel Friends
A major component of a vibrant pvp world is having people to pvp with; the more the merrier. To that end, being able to powerlevel friends and guildies so they "keep up with the Joneses" is key. It's easy to disenfranchise players when you are battling it out in epic combats while they are still killing rats for wheels of cheese. Shadowbane did this very well. A max level character could level 9 afk friends and get them levels in short order.
No Radar
The ability to see people as a blip on the radar is anti-competitive. One should have to use their own eyes to find people in the geometry. This adds tactics, perception becomes important and adds another dimension to the game.
Balance
While we don't expect every single class to be 100% balanced vs every other class, everyone expects to have a chance when they mix it up. There are certain games where one class has absolutely no chance vs another and that is anti-competitive and not fun. PvPers want a chance to win, that's an ingredient of fun.
Many Combat Options to Use While Fighting
In order for a pvper to showcase skill, both he and his target need to have many options and tactics available to them. This allows for skill to really be a factor. If one's only option is to spam the 1 key to power attack over and over then that isn't skill.
Guild Options Such as Tabards
Guilds are proud of whom they are and fighting with your "colors" against enemies with their "colors" adds to the fun of combat.
Death Penalty and Looting
The system in World of Warcraft of bind-rushing, no loss, no penalty death is an anathema to true pvpers. It's really a sad symptom of where our society is heading where "everyone's a winner", a bruised ego is seen as an evil rather than a learning experience and you can sue McDonalds for being fat. But I digress. If you and I engage in combat, the loser needs to lose something. Good examples are the vitae system in Asheron's Call, looting in Ultima Online and resurrection sickness. If I kill you, I should not see you again at full health in 10 seconds. Please note the inherent danger in a system that is too harsh is that players will quit and then you won't have anyone to pvp against. Shadowbane is a perfect example of this. Destroy someone's city and half of its players quit making Shadowbane servers ghost towns. UO's "full loot" system worked because items were not very important.
Inter-Server Combat
Become the best on your server? Now prove yourself against those on other servers.
Exploiters Banned
This is self-explanatory. Fun and meaningful pvp can only stem from it being cheat-free. Also, make it public. "Today, Ebonlore was banned for."
Meaningful
PvP should be meaningful. PvP has higher stakes and therefore is more fun if the combat is over something. In Shadowbane many times it was combat for your entire city, in Ultima Online it was your equipment and in DAoC it was your keep and relics.
Buffs and Equipment Not All-powerful
A pvper wants his skill and tactics to be the deciding factor in combat, not buffs and instance-farmed equipment. If my strength is 100, a buff should only give me 10 points or so making it handy but not an all-important necessity. It's also silly that one has to spend 50 hours inside a Molten Core instance pve'ing to get equipment to compete in pvp.
Levels Unimportant
A level should give a small boost but not be a key component when they are similar. For example, a level 40 should have a chance to win vs a level 50. A level 30 should have a chance to defeat a level 38. I am not advocating a 50/50 chance necessarily, but it needs to be greater than 0%.
1 Character per Server
Players can only do "bad" things with more than 1 character. They can make mules to carry loot, mules to grief folks, reroll a toon to lose their earned reputation and use a throwaway scout. For pvp to be meaningful, characters need to keep the reputation they earn. Alternately, if more than 1 character is allowed per server, give all the toons common last names. For example, if your first character's last name is "Johnson" then they all share that name.
Large Server Population
The more people playing, the better the pvp. A player won't have to waste time running all over looking for it and there will be more fights.
Quick Recognition of Enemies
There should be an in-game system whereby you can recognize your enemies. If the server is free-for-all then a guildmaster should be able to mark individuals and guilds as KOS and have their color change.
Virtually no Safe-Zones or Instances
Other than a starter newbie zone, pvpers want to be free to take the fight to their enemies anywhere in the game whenever they can. Instances only turn the combat from a true war where victory is determined by tenacity and will as much as skill to cute little sparring matches that don't prove true warrior spirit.
Ability to Respec or Retrain Abilities
All games go through rebalancing, patches and class changes. Being able to retain our pvp skills allows us to adjust and keep current with these changes without having to reroll another character and grind more XP.
Don't Show Levels
A true PvPer doesn't pick on someone just because they will instantly win, they enjoy fighting and learning other's reputations for those combats. Knowing someone's level doesn't provide any positive benefits.
Ability to Spar and Battle Guildmates
It's a small thing, but the ability to fight friends w/o any penalty or loss makes for fun. Ability to practice, have tournaments or just mess around when things are slow can make for some fun times.
In-game Proof of Victory
Ever read a public forum? Steve says he owned Frank and the next post is Frank saying he owned Steve. An in-game system for proving victory is necessary. In DAoC it was hard to say "PRX Sucks!" with much credibility when our realm had all 6 relics and we were #1 in realm points. In Shadowbane it's hard to say "We pwned you" when your city is a burning hulk and ours is safe and sound and the world map clearly shows you had a larger population than we do. In Guildwars anyone can clearly see how many matches a guild won and how many a guild lost. PvPers want to see hard data on the pvp happening in game.
With ArcheAge the big flaws are safe zones and equipment being all powerful/no good ways to get gear from pvp. The game would be so much better if there were zero safe zones.
Zehnpai
Molten Core Raider
- 399
- 1,245
I think you should clarify long fights. Exciting fights is more desirable if harder to quantify. A good fight can still be over in only a few seconds. I think what is more important, and you eventually alluded to it, is avoiding the frustration of impotence. A 20 second fight where there was nothing you could do to win is just as bad as a 20 minute fight where you can't possibly think of a thing to do to win. if I'm making any sense.
It's all in the combat system. If you can create a system of move/counter move that can prolong a fight due to player skill, then a longer fight is great. If it's a fight because everyone has 10000 hps and it's a battle of attrition then no.
I never got into much world pvp in my career but general combat I still enjoyed SWTOR pvp more then any other game in 16+ years. And this is coming from some one who hates sci-fi shit and star wars. You couldn't get completely raped without having some shot and while there was never true balance it was still pretty solid outside of 2 classes at the time (mercs were so useless and of course my 2nd character had to be a damn merc healer).
I won't go back to MMO's anytime soon but I was kind of hoping this might turn out to be a good game incase I want to flirt with coming back, I would want something new.
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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I agree with you. I think part of it is how people spec and build their characters. A glass cannon player complaining he dies too quickly and kills everyone too quickly is a little silly. I agree with Draegan that a good combat system has tiers of moves and counter moves. If it's just attack vs heal and everyone has a bunch of hp/mitigation it's boring.
To me the most important thing with fight length is that fights between equal players aren't completely over if one person gets the jump on the other. In ArcheAge if I get the jump on someone with similar or worse gear than me I can start a rotation that almost guarantees a victory. It's totally disatisfying and often when I find someone I want to kill I will give them a warning shot and let them react before I start.
Vitality
ＨＵＳＴＬＥ
- 5,808
- 30
I feel you on this one, I really think if darkfall was executed correctly it would have fit into a good portion of that list you posted.
To stay on topic I'm of the opinion that Black Desert doesn't get even remotely close.
Darkfall on paper is the perfect PRX game. Except it had shitty tech, shitty hacks some shitty systems etc. And it looked like ass.
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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I thought there was some support classes in th is game.
Can't you block ppl with collision? Anyway PvP in this game sounds lame.
Can't you block ppl with collision? Anyway PvP in this game sounds lame.
Bondurant
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 3,837
- 4,786
Well at least they shat the bed so early we won't have to wonder about playing it or not :BDO Open PvP ruined - Korean Servers - Black Desert Online Forums
Also PvP centered MMO without Trinity -> nope.
Also PvP centered MMO without Trinity -> nope.
Pops
Avatar of War Slayer
- 8,136
- 21,317
The trinity was the foundation of team play. None could really function without the other.
Pasteton
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 2,609
- 1,724
Long fights allow for more gameplay flexibility. You can chain pull a solo mob and put yourself to sleep - lots did in original Eq. But you could also kite around 20 mobs, or cc a dozen and get thru em one at a time fast, or, most importantly, if shit went bad, it gives you time to collect your thoughts and figure out how to diffuse it. Some of the best players and best times in Eq were in recovering from seemingly untenable situations. Part of the reason this was doable was the slow pace of gameplay. In games nowadays where it's 'dodge or die' ad nauseum it's fun briefly in an arcadey kind of way, but the lack of emergent gameplay due to the inherent restrictions in fast pace combat ultimately leads to a sense of shallowness and is unsatisfying. I guess a vague analogy would be comparing chess to pinball.
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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Nope indeed, too bad, BD looked really beautiful.
What's funny is that games like AA or BD would probably be much more liked by hardcore PvPers if they had an alternate rules server that removed karma/crime/tendency/whatever from the game along with a bunch of other stuff.
Zehnpai
Molten Core Raider
- 399
- 1,245
Chess doesn't have to be slow and the best pinball players in the world are still some of the most amazing.
What you're bemoaning ins't the speed of combat but more the lack of recovery options. I agree, gameplay where if you fuck up once and that's it is not at all interesting or fun. There should almost always be some sort of way to go "Holy fuck how did we pull that off?" to keep things interesting.
There's just dozens of pitfalls to avoid however. You don't want the fight to be a joke for those of even a medium amount of efficiency. You don't want to it to be rez/bind rushing bullshit every time. You don't want to run into the EQ problem of only needing 2 people who know the fight and 50 warm bodies to throw at it. And so forth.
It's a problem with no easy solution honestly.
So long as healing exists as a game mechanic though I think game developers will be severely limited though because it makes battle attrition that much harder to plan around.
Pasteton
Blackwing Lair Raider
- 2,609
- 1,724
Or in the case of AA, how about a new server with alternate rules and also without ANYTHING BUT cosmetic crap in the marketplace, AND all the previously game breaking exploits already fixed. That would be a game i'd play and even sub for.
Bondurant
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 3,837
- 4,786
BD will never be liked by hardcore players because of two things :
- its combat gameplay is boring as hell and doesn't offer counters, tactical options, teamplay or support. Learning is basically wait for the game to give you your most powerful skill and spam it ad nauseam. It's a every-weeaboo-for-himself orgy.
- right now in korean OBT PvP (PK) is heavily prevented by a stupid karma system which basically forbids you to kill anyone ever if you don't wanna spend the rest of the week farming thousands of mobs to get your karma back. Casual to the bone.