Ryzom

balsalt wrote:Lets be reasonable rather than sarcastic...obviously a factor of the combined totals of magic and melee would come into play on this. Using harvesting as the level check it totally unrealistic, even in a retort.

But using harvesting as a level check is not out of the question either [it definitely has affected my death penalty, even though I haven't gained a level in fight or magic in a long time!]...less logical things have happened here.

I'm of two minds about this.

I'm actually strongly in favor of event, storyline, and consensual PvP. It ultimately is what makes games work in the long term, as no game ever created is as creative as the rivalries and storylines players create. It is also what I feel the game was designed around; the Kami and Karavan struggle should be integral to the game, and races and guilds have every reason to be rivals against each other with appropriate results.

That said, to me any largescale forced PvP at this point is just nuts. Why? Three reasons.

First, as many have pointed out there are any number of problems with how you calculate character strength. Pure crafters and harvesters are open season if its done wrong. And if you calculate it based on total combat strength those who level in a balanced way get toasted, especially those who do things like ranged combat.

Second, so many of the PvP and faction mechanics are broken. Someone mentioned affliction spells. But what about jewelry? Its supposed to grant resistance. It doesn't. Neither do hand targeting stanzas work entirely well either. I'm sure there are a whole bunch of other mechanical issues that I'm not even aware of. Add in that its hard to choose between kami and karavan on a practical basis - since some tp locations are better than others, not to mention some work and others don't - so that throwing your entire character makes sense only for pure RP.

Third, what worries me most is that the one best thing about the game - the friendly, help-everyone attitude that most players display - goes away the minute there are any real benefits to not helping others.

I'm looking forward to the fact the devs actually seem to maybe have learned something from the disaster that was the patch 1 ATS experience, where many of us provided feedback only to have it blithely ignored. The ATS forum is a good start. I for one will be on seeing how the game plays with PvP.

But I think you need to fix PvP and the rewards and consequences for it before you even think about implementing it on any large scale basis ala all of PR. Otherwise we have a recipe for disaster. And I for one will probably call it a game if I get griefed harvesting; spending 2 weeks to get enough mats to grind crafting is one disaster, but a harvester/crafter and a PvP melee type are two entirely different sets of player goals for a game and letting one goal completely overtake the other with non-consensual PvP would tell me those goals are considered worthless by the devs.

I played Ultima Online almost from the beginning, and before long gravitated to the veteran shard Seige Perilous. It was a full blown pvp, looting rights shard. It attacted the hard core pvp'rs and those who wanted to become hard core. There were guilds, and there were raging wars at the graveyard in Brit almost every night, with from 20-50 folks on the average slugging it out for hours till bed time. I loved it and so did many, until one patch, pub 16, and the later release of Age of Shadows changed it all, and almost overnight it became a ghost town, and three years later it still is.

It is also, my experience, that maybe as much as 75%-80% of the players of these type of games prefer non pvp. The adrenaline rush, and shaky hands is not their idea of fun, even tho I love it. They prefer the social aspects of crafting, harvesting, and chatting with friends, and an occsional hunt of monsters, which I also enjoy. They seem to also enjoy having their own house, which can be decorated and designed by them, or someone they hire/help to do it for them.

So, maybe having one civilvization be an open pvp area is an option, where all the hard core pvp folks could gravitate. Yes with full looting rights. Of course team work is important, for survival. Yet, the downside to that is, when civilization wars are implemented at some time in the future, that shard would be heavily imbalanced compared to the other civilizations when it came war time. Facing the Spartans in real life was not what most cities or countries wanted to do.

I hope you do your home work well, and continue to improve the game as time rolls along.

GoldenHammer