aelvana wrote:Haven't we all played vs. video games, on Nintendo, Playstation, Doom on computers, whatever? The only video games I've heard of where people react so badly to vs gameplay are the kinds of games we end up getting addicted to and treating like much more than a game. One day, when none of us are playing Ryzom anymore, our characters and what we did with them are all going to mean squat. Your toon will be gone, and everything we've done here and tried to preserve is going to be gone, and the frustrations we had over the game are going to seem silly. These games are best taken with a grain of salt and a very, very relaxed attitude, IMO.
MMORPGs are different to normal video games in the same way that a round of poker played for matchsticks is different to playing for money.
These are roleplaying games, you are encouraged, you SHOULD get into the role of your character, enjoy playing them, building them up. Each character is the hero of their own personal story.
This is not the same as playing Tekken or an FPS, even against other people. Die or lose in those and there are no consequences, you are playing a simple cipher, not a character in the truest sense of the word. Defeat means nothing, doesn't affect your (or the character's) self image or impinge on your fun.
There IS a way to have the challenge of PvP without the griefers, gankers, children, small-gender-organed ego junkies or other problem players and its a model I wish games would adopt.
Allow the guides or GMs to directly and indirectly control the bad guys. There's no better AI than another 'player' and human controlled enemies could give us greater challenge, tactics and otherwise a fine old time without turning players on each other so much.
PvP has a place here, due to the storyline, but the implementation doesn't seem to match that and is being worked on and added to in spite of a lack of general interest amongst the existing playerbase.
This MAY be a business decision, there aren't a massive amount of us after all, perhaps the PvP a**hole option would provide more income and keep the game running, you can't really fault Nevrax for that... you can fault them for the implementation though.
These new zones? Wouldn't it make more sense to make them the border territories between the opposing factions?
Outposts? Why promote a faction storyline and then introduce an element that is FAR more likely to get people fighting their own races and guilds?
It just doesn't make sense.
PvP creates an antagonistic _OOC_ atmosphere and sours the enjoyment of games, breaking up communities and heavily increasing the amount of complaints, cheating, exploiting and OTT competetiveness. We've already seen the negative effect introducing combat-taken uberloot had, that's nothing.
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