Jessica, Ryzom and PvP?

[hecubis]

Atm i dont have this fear. The gameplay is way to boring for such players. I wouldnt give them more then the free-trial. Indeed i hear the first calls for FPS elements. I always wanted to say this once Man, i have played FPS the whole weekend for day and night until i really got sick and had to barf. But this was 15 years ago and fortunately i growed out this phase. Its boring and doesnt have a real perspective. Belief me or learn it yourself. I dont care !

I only brought up FPS to contrast 2 types of PVP: In FPS the PVP is like a football match. In MMORPG's it's like a back alley mugging. MMORPGer's don't like PVP because it's never been done properly in this genre. Hell, FPSer's don't like what you guys consider PVP either. The only people who like it are a bunch of sociopaths out to make people miserable.

The reason FPS doesn't have "a real perspective" or becomes boring, is because your victories and failure doen't mean anything, nor does your character. Once the round is over it's as if it never happenend.

All I'm saying is that I see no reason why the pros of the 2 genre's cannot be combined: Character developement, Persistent worlds, Community and good PVP. PVP is that last element MMOG's need to figure out before the genre matures and appeals to the broadest selection of online gamers. Until then the MMOG genre will just keep regurgitating the same stuff over and over again.

[vguerin]

Way back, like in the manual that came with the game, they said we could acquire Outposts peacefully, by doing quests for the Outpost Officer (or something). Got your hopes up you non PvP lot? Well, not so long ago, I remember Nevrax saying they were only offering the fight-for-Outposts option now. Darn it!

You all probly knew that anyway.

I will try and dig thru old screenshots of how things were done in the past. There were Outpost Officers in the towns (now I think tribe NPC's may do that function) that had each a set of missions for their sectors.

Only one mission per Outpost... The mission types "were" to:

...gain favor with diplomacy with "Tribe X" to get the OP.
...kill "X Tribe" enemies of "Tribe X" to get the OP.
...Clear the area of bandits, bosses etc...

I may not be exact on this, but surely general flavor as other testers will attest to. This was before all the NPC changes and may not be valid currently... There may be a way to take Outposts that suit all play types, which is good... however I cannot see anyway to defend it other than force.

A particular outpost may not be able to be taken the way a particular guild wants to though... There should also be unique rewards in each sector an Outpost is in that reflects the difficulty in acquiring/holding it... Until we know what other than status an Outpost gives to a guild holding it... it's more pipes dreams and wait and see stuff... we have sure had enough of that already.

Where's the beef ?

[aylwyne]

... however I cannot see anyway to defend it other than force.

Why not have it so you defend the outpost the same way it was obtained? If it was obtained through non-combat means, why not defend it through non-combat means?

P.S. I'm not against having some outposts be obtained and defended through combat. But I'm really hoping that's not all there is to outposts.

[micrix]

I only brought up FPS to contrast 2 types of PVP: In FPS the PVP is like a football match. In MMORPG's it's like a back alley mugging. MMORPGer's don't like PVP because it's never been done properly in this genre. Hell, FPSer's don't like what you guys consider PVP either. The only people who like it are a bunch of sociopaths out to make people miserable.

The reason FPS doesn't have "a real perspective" or becomes boring, is because your victories and failure doen't mean anything, nor does your character. Once the round is over it's as if it never happenend.

All I'm saying is that I see no reason why the pros of the 2 genre's cannot be combined: Character developement, Persistent worlds, Community and good PVP. PVP is that last element MMOG's need to figure out before the genre matures and appeals to the broadest selection of online gamers. Until then the MMOG genre will just keep regurgitating the same stuff over and over again.

FPS is (for me) mainly a reaction based combatstyle. You have about 10-20 keys to hit in the right moment. If one knows the combat and is a wizzard of keyboard he wins. Many would like this, i liked it sometimes in the past too. And i can understand that a number of players would like to have such.

Be warned. Such is leading away from the real mmorpg game. As long as the letters R and P are included, the game is about living phantasies and stories. Most of us allready forget this sometimes due to XP. I said this some days ago. XP is a gamekiller. In a perfect mmorpg world everyone just would play out his role. Nobody would care about PvP. There would be bandits and killers probably, but in role. And the games (software) job would only be to supply the players with a wide and hopefully growing number of possibilities to play role.

The warrior/mage needs something to fight, something to conquer or defend
The crafter needs a wide range of possibilities. As wide as possible and growing
The hunter needs huge areas to hunt. prey should have a good AI

The community needs a huge world with many different possibilities to seek adventure or places for sozial life and leisuretime. And this world must change once in a while.

The control of the game must be very simple, but the animations must be good and multifaceted.

Exploids wouldnt be a thing, cause nobody would care about them. One must be pretty stupid to exploid his phantasy.

Yes, i am a dreamer. Thats why i play mmorpg

[hecubis]

FPS is (for me) mainly a reaction based combatstyle. You have about 10-20 keys to hit in the right moment. If one knows the combat and is a wizzard of keyboard he wins.

That's called "twitch skills" Many FPS games today also require a great deal of tactics, strategy and teamwork to win. That's the element of good PVP, and incedentally what I am talking about.

Be warned. Such is leading away from the real mmorpg game. As long as the letters R and P are included, the game is about living phantasies and stories. Most of us allready forget this sometimes due to XP. I said this some days ago. XP is a gamekiller. In a perfect mmorpg world everyone just would play out his role. Nobody would care about PvP. There would be bandits and killers probably, but in role. And the games (software) job would only be to supply the players with a wide and hopefully growing number of possibilities to play role.

Roleplaying and PVP are not mutually exclusive.

You're not talking about Roleplaying, what you are saying is that combat in MMORPG's should only be against AI, not other players. But AI cannot challenge you the way other people can.

[madnak]

Hecubis, I respect your opinion and appreciate your experience playing FPS games. But I'm a bit offended by the condescension. I have quite a bit of gaming experience myself. I have played team FPS games, MUDs, deathmatch FPS games, RTS games, and MMORPGs online. I have also played almost every type of single-player game ever released.

When something is a lot of fun for you, it can be hard to understand why someone else would dislike it. Believe me, I know how that is. I remember having bitter arguments with friends about Final Fantasy 3, Daggerfall, and Fallout. It seemed blasphemous to me that they disliked the games. I figured they must not be giving them a chance. I was wrong. They really honestly did not like the games that, to me, were really glorious.

I don't enjoy FPS games. There are a lot of reasons I could give, but the real reason is just taste. It's not my kind of game. It's not because I haven't played enough of them. It's not because I haven't seen them done "right." It's not because I'm not good at them. It's not because they aren't persistent, or because winning doesn't mean anything. I simply don't like them. Period. Nothing's going to change that.

My favorite games to play competitively are card games and board games. I would much prefer to play Go or Hold 'Em than to play UT or Counterstrike. You say "The best thing about these types of games is the rush you experience when you find yourself as part of a group..." That alone indicts your opinion as it applies to me personally. You claim that FPS gamers and MMORPG gamers play for basically the same reasons. Well, in my opinion rather few MMOG players play for the rush. The rush doesn't even show up on my list. I can go to Coney Island any day and ride the roller coaster for more of a rush than any video game will ever give me. That may not be true for you. But as an MMOG player, I'm uncomfortable having assumptions plastered onto me.

[grimjim]

You're not talking about Roleplaying, what you are saying is that combat in MMORPG's should only be against AI, not other players. But AI cannot challenge you the way other people can.

That's not quite it.

FPS games are not about character development. They are transient, fleeting, fast paced games purely about killing (dressed up in a few other bits and pieces).

The RPG part of MMORPG is rooted in tabletop games which, despite their dungeon-crawling roots are about cooperative play, working together, character progression and so on. In tabletop games there is rarely, if ever, a 'PvP' atmosphere or aspect (there are exceptions but they're not really cogent to this discussion).

RPGs are, generally, a non-competetive, co-operative venture and the rewards are in character development and realisation. Everyone is the hero of their own story working towards their own goals, completing quests, making friendships etc, depending on the game.

PvP is extremely disruptive to ongoing roleplay in a standard setup, it disrupts the progress of your character, makes you feel unheroic and takes a big dump all over your character development and fun from a great height.

Now, PvP and roleplay _need_not_be_ mutually exclusive. They can and do exist in RPG set ups, more commonly in Live Action Roleplay (of the mud and beer or wine and cheese varieties) and there IS something to be said about the challenge of fighting human opponents. The problem is that where there are human checks and balances in PvP RPGs they don't exist to the same extent and players are not held to the same high standards in online games.

While there are some people who roleplay their factions here, who fit PvP into a roleplaying context there are other people who USE RP as an excuse to act like d*cks and, from what we've seen thus far, most of the people currently engaging in PvP here are not doing it in an RP context.

In a FPS game when you log in you know you're there to fight other people, that that is all its really going to be about. Even there you still get people using bugs, exploits, shouting racial and homosexual slurs over teamspeak whenever they die and so on and so forth, unpleasant, but everyone is there for the same thing.

An MMORPG is a different prospect.

Some people play to roleplay. Others play to 'beat' the game by powerlevelling. Others play to master some skill or art in the game and understand it. Others to decode the experience point and damage systems. Others to follow an ongoing story. Some to gank 'n00bs' and shout 'pwned' like its the funniest thing in the world ever.

Its like inviting a hundred random strangers into your house and expecting them all to want to do the same thing. There's no quality control, no seperation.

If you've got one set of kids on a beach who like to build sandcastles, painstakingly, making a real art of it and another set who like to stomp sandcastles flat, the two groups are NOT going to get on.

For me the ideal would be a mix of two things.

1) PvP would not normally be in play, coming up only faction Vs faction as the war progresses with a neutral or noncombatant option. It would otherwise, occasionally be available for special events and in certain areas and duels.

2) The challenge of fighting another human does not have to come from player vs player. It would be nice if guides or GMs could take direct control of NPCs and monsters and use their abilities as their own, alter and direct spawns to attack us and react to our presence in a more 'organic' manner.

IF PvPers are genuinely up for it for the human challenge that should satisfy, without having the immense irritation factor for the other styles of play.

The other solutions are to either somehow enforce a roleplay perspective on the PvPers or to exercise quality control, kicking out the 'pwners' from the game - which isn't going to happen.

[akicks]

erm, not to disagree with the rest of your post, but my box does not mention outposts in any way and only talks about pvp as challenges mixed in with "epic real time battles". granted i have a german box, but please take a look, does it really say outposts?

My English box does. In the manual and everything

[hecubis]

Hecubis, I respect your opinion and appreciate your experience playing FPS games. But I'm a bit offended by the condescension.

Huh? What condescension?

When something is a lot of fun for you, it can be hard to understand why someone else would dislike it. Believe me, I know how that is. I remember having bitter arguments with friends about Final Fantasy 3, Daggerfall, and Fallout. It seemed blasphemous to me that they disliked the games. I figured they must not be giving them a chance. I was wrong. They really honestly did not like the games that, to me, were really glorious.

Fallout was the best single-player game ever made and I defy anyone to say otherwise.

My favorite games to play competitively are card games and board games. I would much prefer to play Go or Hold 'Em than to play UT or Counterstrike. You say "The best thing about these types of games is the rush you experience when you find yourself as part of a group..." That alone indicts your opinion as it applies to me personally. You claim that FPS gamers and MMORPG gamers play for basically the same reasons. Well, in my opinion rather few MMOG players play for the rush. The rush doesn't even show up on my list. I can go to Coney Island any day and ride the roller coaster for more of a rush than any video game will ever give me. That may not be true for you. But as an MMOG player, I'm uncomfortable having assumptions plastered onto me.

The point I was trying to get across was that the majority of online players, when looked at as a whole, enjoy some good competition. It's an important part of interacting with other players, which in turn is the whole point of playing MMOG's or any other kind of online game. Developers, like Jessica, should keep that in mind if the want MMOG's to appeal to a broader fan base as oppossed to a relatively small niche market of people that don't like competition.

FPS games are not about character development. They are transient, fleeting, fast paced games purely about killing (dressed up in a few other bits and pieces).

I've said as much myself. That's the problem with FPS games but is something that the MMOG genre can rectify. Many people would love to play a MMOG that had good pvp combined with all the other things the genre has to offer. The reason MMOG's don't appeal to a larger selection of online gamers is because (IMO) they lack good PVP.

Either they just tack PVP on as an afterthought, they dont have it at all, or it exists merely as a tool for sociopaths to irriate others and merely becomes an obstacle to character developement, roleplaying, etc. instead of being a part of those things like it should.

PvP is extremely disruptive to ongoing roleplay in a standard setup, it disrupts the progress of your character, makes you feel unheroic and takes a big dump all over your character development and fun from a great height.

That's because developers always include PVP as an afterthought and go to great lengths to ensure that PVP either won't allow your character to grow at all, or at a much slower pace then grinding PVE content. Hence, PVP is an obstacle in MMORPG's, not because of the nature of competition or even the sorts of people it attracts, but because of how it is implemented by developers.

While there are some people who roleplay their factions here, who fit PvP into a roleplaying context there are other people who USE RP as an excuse to act like d*cks and, from what we've seen thus far, most of the people currently engaging in PvP here are not doing it in an RP context.

The problem is that "d*cks" can't be held accountable by the general community. All the measures that are supposed to protect people from "d*cks" IE: Low or non-existent death penalties for dieing in PVP and abundant safe zones to hide from PVPer's allow the "d*cks" to act like they do without any consequences.

On top of this, MMORPG's seem to often be focussed much more on your character rather then the community as whole. So not only is there nothing people can do to punish or control d*cks bythemselves, they also don't have any incentive to do so even if they could.

Take WoW and the most common occurance of d*cks in that game: level 60 players from an enemy faction hanging out in a level 30 zone and killing anyone they see.

First of all the level 30's are at a serious disadvantage due to the absolutely lame charachter progression system, even when they attacked as a group.

Second of all: even if they killed the interloper, there was no practical deterance to the enemy. He could respawn in less then 5 minutes and would not be punished in any way for dieing.

Finally, if the lowbies were victorious, they would gain absolutely nothing from it. In fact, they would just be wasting time that could have benn spent on character progression even if the level 60 didn't return after being killed.

An absolutely horrible implementation of PVP if I have ever seen one. I don't think it's possible to do PVP in an MMORPG any worse then then Blizzard did it.

In a FPS game when you log in you know you're there to fight other people, that that is all its really going to be about. Even there you still get people using bugs, exploits, shouting racial and homosexual slurs over teamspeak whenever they die and so on and so forth, unpleasant, but everyone is there for the same thing.

Heh, maybe it's because my only real experience with MMORPG's has been WoW (got an invite to alpha, have played it for about 1.5 years in total), But I honestly find MMORPGer's to be much more offensive, immature, and above all: unsportsmanlike then anyone I encounter in my FPS games. I hadn't even really been introduced to terms like pwned, ganked, or n00b until WoW.

2) The challenge of fighting another human does not have to come from player vs player. It would be nice if guides or GMs could take direct control of NPCs and monsters and use their abilities as their own, alter and direct spawns to attack us and react to our presence in a more 'organic' manner.

That's a pretty cool way to do it as well. Although you couldn't smack talk the GM if you won. Well, you could, but it wouldn't be condusive to continuing gameplay experience.

[xenofur]

@akicks: thanks for the answer, but this was already resolved a few posts higher ^^

The RPG part of MMORPG is rooted in tabletop games which, despite their dungeon-crawling roots are about cooperative play, working together, character progression and so on. In tabletop games there is rarely, if ever, a 'PvP' atmosphere or aspect (there are exceptions but they're not really cogent to this discussion).

just a small point, all of these games are competitive, even if it's hidden, the competition is always: players vs gm