Devs & Designers and everyone interested in PVP; Criticism/Comments – welcome

[lariva]

I started playing online games about 7 years ago, 6 years ago I started PVP. For reference purposes - I have played Ultima Online; in time, I have understood what makes and breaks the PVP. This is NOT a rant, but, hopefully, an eye opener for design & development teams.



1. One shot kills (or 2 shot for that matter) of an equal level opponent.
If I can kill an equal level opponent, in two shots - whoever shoots first wins 95% of the time - where is the glory in it? - Just grief for another person (think of DP now)

2. Loopholes that allow a person to kill another using the same combo over and over.
One combination of spells / hits makes a nearly unbeatable combo. In current setup, think of Acid + Madness spell. If castled, I hit another person, and most likely prevent it from hitting me back - rinse and repeat after the fact. Or just do fear – acid – fear ….


In Ultima online the combination was explosion + poison. Because of the game mechanics, poison that was casted second would interrupt person's casts; explosion on the other hand would cause damage. The cure for that - was magic resistance, where it would become a gamble whether your spell succeeds or does little to no damage (The resist was a separate skill tree); in addition cure from poison was another spell. In Ryzom, however, none of that exists (perhaps blind that would reduce opponents success would do the same trick, but then again, - why use it if I kill in two hits. There is no way to cure yourself, hence if I’m blind, I remain blinded – what would be better is cure for blind, then I can ether choose to cure myself or try to cast offensive spell (same goes for melee)


3. Items that make one's abilities extraordinary.
In PVP the most interesting aspect (for me at least) is the process, not the end result. Combinations of spells and skills win the challenge, being able to adjust to another person's tactics in conjunction with combinations make a win for PVP hands down.

4. Free for All PVP, where there are no penalties for non-consented aggressor.
Aggressors for non-consented PVP should be punished, if I choose to stick around and constantly kill people – avatar should be penalized. Once again, parallel to UO - if you killed more then 5 people within certain time period, you would turn red, which would prohibit you from entering town (guards would wack you on sight) as well as every person could take a shot at you and kill you without penalties for themselves. If you were to get yourself really deep in killing – if someone kills you, your skills would go down 20% (which really did make a lot of people think twice before going “perma-red”)

In absence of that - I can really see people camping 20 meters away from spawn point or well known 'road' and just kill everyone in sight – entertaining themselves and completely destroying other’s time online.


5. Everyone can be everything (250 level mage and 250 level fighter) - that is just plain wrong. Yet again parallel to Ultima online, there were only 700 skill points, and people had to balance between skills they pick (i.e. a smith could not be a mage and fighter); realistically, you could only be one good something and barely something else (i.e. good mage, and auxiliary fighter). In Ryzom, however, affiliation doesn’t matter. If I’m a mage and a fighter, I do cast, cast and if opponent is not dead, I’ll switch to melee. This is very wrong IMHO.

6. Blank screen kills - if my client is loading the terrain, I should not be standing in the field open to anyone's attack. The avatar should be appearing AFTER client is 100% ready.

7. Stat loss for PVP/Group-on-Group. If a player is killed in group combat he should not be able to rise in an instant and be at full power again. Ultima did have a nice feature - stat loss. If killed by an opposite faction avatar's skills would be reduced to 80% of normal for 20 minutes. IMHO that system brought a lot of balance (that was instantly lost because of some other changes, but that is besides the point)


To preempt a question – if I liked UO PVP so much – why did I quit UO and play Ryzom instead.

Origin Systems / EA decided that in order to attract more people, artifacts and increased weapons strength was in order, hence they implemented it and 1 – 2 shot/hits kills became a routine. There were no group fights lasting 5-10 minutes anymore, the show was over in 1 with about 20 bodies on the ground.

Origin Systems decided that in order to attract more players they should reduce the time that it takes for a player to progress and …. Only for $19.99 you could get yourself a character with nearly all skills at 80%.

Origin Systems allowed to change character name for $25.00; which rendered knowledge of people through their avatars completely impossible. Before, griefers, good players, PVP tactics and skills would come in mind when you’d see an avatar, later on Griefer-Joe become Honest-Stud (in name only) and by the time people would re-learn who-is-who Honest-Guy would become Average-Bob

[kisedd]

A very nice post. There have been lots of threads about PvP. I've not played any Mmorpg that had good PvP. DaoC probably had the best I played, but in the end it had so many problems I didn't find it fun at all.

The level treadmill nature of the genere basically creates a situation where players who devote the most time to the game will pretty much do the best in PvP. There are people who play Ryzom 19 hours a day. They are high levels and they can tackle most of the challenges Ryzom has to offer. I don't have that kind of time to devote to any game. It could take me months or even years to achieve any kind of respectable levels. With my meager skills, I don't see myself winning many PvP fights.

Open PvP is just bad. It doesn't create good PvP battles, it just creates ganking. People who PvP are competative and they want to win. When I enter a fight, I want to win. The thrill of winning trumps most other things in PvP. Killing a helpless harvester, I hate to say, is going to still evict a thrill. Maybe not as much as a cool one on one battle to the death, but watching people die is fun. I know this from my DaoC experiences, I know I ganked my fair share of lowbie characters.
If you can't win fairly, bring more people! In DAoC we had some great 8 on 8 battles. Cept some people couldn't win those battles, so they brought 16 people to the party. Pretty soon we had huge zergs of 60 people running around. 60 people beats most anything it meets.

I know I can't talk Ryzom out of doing open PvP. I just know that if I"m not having fun, I can only take my money somewhere else.

[phy420]

I liked UO untill they turned it into the crap that it is today. The system was pretty well balanced before origin started their "implementations", which is the reason I quit it. Last time I checked UO had some new ninja thing or other in its chivalry setting that disgust me so much i vowed never to look at teh site again.

[lariva]

I have no issues with open PVP for as long as it is well thought through. What it seems like now, it is far from it (or people are kept in the dark). When I was in PVP guild in UO, I was ganked more times then I can think of. And I also know that when we were in a group against 1 - most of the time the oppoents would run off without us chasing them through the land. Why? Because it made no sense, it was nearly guaranteed victory yet, where is the satisfaction of killing someone KNOWING you will win unless some freaky thing happens.

Back in UO days, the most i enjoyed was 20 on 20 fights, and since it was tough to pull everyone together, quite a few times fights were scheduled (i.e. come here and there, we will wait for you)

The other part, i liked about UO (before it was turned into crap as a post below well-states) is the fact that you could take a hit or two (when someone attacks you without you seing it and you could win.

Why did it happen there? Because the max damage you could do was 40 points, life was 100 and on high enough levels, probability of resisting the spell was quite high, therefore, you'd take a damage of 20-25 points, throw yourself a heal at a cost of 10 mana (out of 100) and full speed ahead the battlefield was equal (someone casted on you and wasted mana, you healed up and wasted mana).

The same scenario in Ryzom. I get hit for 1500 HP, I'm down to 700 life left (now i cant avoid healing myself as the next hit WILL kill me) i use the skill button to heal myself up. while i'm doing that and scrolling through to find a target - i get another hit for 1500 HP and another. I'm dead (considering that it takes 1 second to cast a spell and definately more then that to target your attacker. There is no self-heal spell, hence, I can only heal myself once whereas in UO I could do it for quite a bit while looking for those attacking me.


I have won more then my share of fights in UO being 1/4 life left from initial attack. No matter how many times i tried it in Ryzom - i have NEVER succeeded.

A very nice post. There have been lots of threads about PvP. I've not played any Mmorpg that had good PvP. DaoC probably had the best I played, but in the end it had so many problems I didn't find it fun at all.

The level treadmill nature of the genere basically creates a situation where players who devote the most time to the game will pretty much do the best in PvP. There are people who play Ryzom 19 hours a day. They are high levels and they can tackle most of the challenges Ryzom has to offer. I don't have that kind of time to devote to any game. It could take me months or even years to achieve any kind of respectable levels. With my meager skills, I don't see myself winning many PvP fights.

Open PvP is just bad. It doesn't create good PvP battles, it just creates ganking. People who PvP are competative and they want to win. When I enter a fight, I want to win. The thrill of winning trumps most other things in PvP. Killing a helpless harvester, I hate to say, is going to still evict a thrill. Maybe not as much as a cool one on one battle to the death, but watching people die is fun. I know this from my DaoC experiences, I know I ganked my fair share of lowbie characters.
If you can't win fairly, bring more people! In DAoC we had some great 8 on 8 battles. Cept some people couldn't win those battles, so they brought 16 people to the party. Pretty soon we had huge zergs of 60 people running around. 60 people beats most anything it meets.

I know I can't talk Ryzom out of doing open PvP. I just know that if I"m not having fun, I can only take my money somewhere else.

[lariva]

My point exactly. Which shard did you play?

I liked UO untill they turned it into the crap that it is today. The system was pretty well balanced before origin started their "implementations", which is the reason I quit it. Last time I checked UO had some new ninja thing or other in its chivalry setting that disgust me so much i vowed never to look at teh site again.

[varelse]

5. Everyone can be everything (250 level mage and 250 level fighter) - that is just plain wrong. Yet again parallel to Ultima online, there were only 700 skill points, and people had to balance between skills they pick (i.e. a smith could not be a mage and fighter); realistically, you could only be one good something and barely something else (i.e. good mage, and auxiliary fighter). In Ryzom, however, affiliation doesn’t matter. If I’m a mage and a fighter, I do cast, cast and if opponent is not dead, I’ll switch to melee. This is very wrong IMHO.

I also left UO for Ryzom. I agree with everything you said about PvP in this post, and I even see the truth in this part of your statement, and yet I hope that the devs do not change the system to fit into a "skill cap" in order to balance PvP.

It's really awesome to have total freedom to build our skills up as we choose, and not under the onus of a skill cap. I am enjoying that feature very much, so naturally I hope it stays in, even though as you say, it's wrong for PvP. Perhaps one solution is to increase the re-equip delay time when a player is in a PvP situation or area. Anyway as it stands now, a pure melee fighter can use the enchantment on a weapon to afflict his opponent even if he has no magic skill at all. So we'd still have people using both magic and melee in a fight.

There are loads of other things to do in this game besides PvP, so I also hope things done to balance PvP don't take such an overwhelming priority over every other aspect of the game, that other playstyles are ruined.

Nearly every player I have spoken with in game is NOT for open PvP and most of them are not even all that gung-ho about being in PvP at all. So, the devs would do well to think carefully through any major changes to the way the skill system works or to stanzas also used in PVE if they are likely to drive off the majority of the playerbase, which does not appear to put PvP at a high priority at this time.

BTW I am from the Siege Perilous shard and I left when the community manager came out and stated that our shard was in danger of being shut down if it could not be made more popular with the production shard players. I personally am not against open pvp or against well thought out changes to balance it. I just do not want to be playing in an empty server because two thirds of the people I know have quit in disgust, so I hope that any balance changes will be done very carefully. Losing more than half the people on my friends list after Patch 1 was a real eye opener for me. =(

[lariva]

When I came to ryzom, I liked unrestricted skill tree as well (after all I could just create 5 characters to perfom different functions - this will save aggrovaiton). For PVP skill cap is good, for general gameplay - not. I'm sure if people think hard enough, they can come up with a solution.

Being from Siege, I'm sure you know what 'open PVP' is. And my vote goes for open pvp area with well-thought, balanced ruleset.


P.S.
UO: La Riva
Ryzom: Exquisite
My old shard was Chesapeake.

I also left UO for Ryzom. I agree with everything you said about PvP in this post, and I even see the truth in this part of your statement, and yet I hope that the devs do not change the system to fit into a "skill cap" in order to balance PvP.

It's really awesome to have total freedom to build our skills up as we choose, and not under the onus of a skill cap. I am enjoying that feature very much, so naturally I hope it stays in, even though as you say, it's wrong for PvP. Perhaps one solution is to increase the re-equip delay time when a player is in a PvP situation or area. Anyway as it stands now, a pure melee fighter can use the enchantment on a weapon to afflict his opponent even if he has no magic skill at all. So we'd still have people using both magic and melee in a fight.

There are loads of other things to do in this game besides PvP, so I also hope things done to balance PvP don't take such an overwhelming priority over every other aspect of the game, that other playstyles are ruined.

Nearly every player I have spoken with in game is NOT for open PvP and most of them are not even all that gung-ho about being in PvP at all. So, the devs would do well to think carefully through any major changes to the way the skill system works or to stanzas also used in PVE if they are likely to drive off the majority of the playerbase, which does not appear to put PvP at a high priority at this time.

BTW I am from the Siege Perilous shard and I left when the community manager came out and stated that our shard was in danger of being shut down if it could not be made more popular with the production shard players. I personally am not against open pvp or against well thought out changes to balance it. I just do not want to be playing in an empty server because two thirds of the people I know have quit in disgust, so I hope that any balance changes will be done very carefully. Losing more than half the people on my friends list after Patch 1 was a real eye opener for me. =(