Is PvP Bad for MMORPGs?

voqar

So I've been reading up on this game and so much of it looks promising and cool, and then I read that they want to impliment a robust PvP system, and I'm thinking...why...when has D&D ever had anything to do with PvP?

I played PnP D&D when there were softback manuals long before AD&D and played for years, and I've played countless cRPGs based on D&D. No PvP anywhere to be found.

So why?

Now, as to my hypothesis that PvP is bad for MMORPGs. The reason I say this is because what seems to be happening with many new MMORPGs, even when they are very good, is that people get sick of them quick, because they exhaust the content that appeals to them the most quickly.

This is because most new MMORPGs try to be everything for everybody. The offer tons of solo content, a decent amount of group content, and a decent amount of PvP content. Solo content is always utter ez-mode and gets chewed up quick - it's sort of like the single player campaign of MMORPGs. Usually there is a much smaller amount of group and PvP content by comparison even though that's what's supposed to keep you interested for the long haul once you wipe out solo ezmode in a few weeks.

There also is the issue of PvP vs PvE balancing never really working. What's good for PvE isn't always good for PvP, and vice versa, and nothing is more absolutely annoying as a PvE player than having the game you love get mutilated in the name of PvP balance. Many PvP players also don't want much to do with the PvE side of the PvE MMORPG they're playing (logic I've questioned for ages but that's another discussion).

Some players like all types of content, and I'm not against PvP, I just prefer high quality and large volumes of group-based PvE.

You might also argue that D&D isn't a solo game either. PnP D&D is almost always about grouping up with friends. Most cRPGs of D&D feature parties, not soloists, or at worst, a single player with companion NPCs and co-op available.

So, I would further contend that to make a truly enduring and excellent D&D MMORPG right now, one should forget about PvP entirely. Don't waste a single dev resource on it. Don't bastardize your PvE game for it. Instead, focus all of that extra time and effort on making megatons of group content - the type of content that will keep people playing for months instead of weeks, and that leads into more and more group-based PvE content to keep playing for years/forever (obviously it's not really possible to make enough content to keep people going for year+ out of the gate, at least not reasonably so).

I've read this game will have some content that scales from solo to any sized group. That's brilliant and as it SHOULD be as long as the bigger groups are the priority. Solo should be tolerated and facilitated but grouping should be where the big prizes and big fun are at (since quality grouping is worlds more fun than solo, period).

Again, it's not about being against PvP - it's about being pro quality PvE. There are tons of single player games out there. There are tons of PvP games out there. There are lots of MMORPGs with PvP. Why not be different?

There are also very few truly excellent MMORPGs, and even damn good ones that've come out recently have had fans turn on them very quickly, and IMO, it's because these games try to be everything to everybody and end up being lean on content for any one type of player.

For D&D, the one type of player should be the one who likes to do group PvP content, because THAT is what D&D is all about, and that's what this game should be all about.

Watch and see, if this game comes out with a boatload of solo ez mode, a handful of dungeons and a handful of battle grounds, with an ultimately weak and lean set of endgame options, it'll thrive for a few months then players will turn on Cryptic and lots of players will bail to do something else.

Argue or disagree all you like, but remember this previous paragraph, because it's hard to dispute that even the best MMORPGs coming out are having problems retaining players past the first few months.

Oh yeah, you know what happens in these games when players start bailing in droves? The developers panic and start mutilating the game trying to figure out some way to get people to stick around and usually what they do is making things worse instead of better because then they end up alienating segments of players while trying to appease some other segment. If you don't have fractured segments of players to begin with (single player gamers vs pve groupers vs pvpers) you wouldn't ever have this problem, right?

babylon

There's actually too much group content at endgame in every MMORPG, and fact is, these days too few people want to do (or have the time to do) that type of content. That's why people leave - most are solo or just happen to casually group in passing - and don't want to be trapped into grinding gear at endgame in large, organised groups, as is the default endgame for most MMORPGs. It's default because developers don't have to put much thought into it, just churn a few raids out every so often and they think people will be pleased with more grind. Well we're not. Once MMORPGs leave that tired old dinosaur behind (forced organised group grinding for endgame gear), we'll start to get somewhere and see player retention.

adamantium1

Pvp is not necessarily bad for a mmorpgs. If its not made from the ground up and just tacked on as an afterthought it usually cr_p. Daoc and Eve online were the pioneers in adding pvp to there mmorpg from the ground up and both were successful for there time. Daoc was my introduction to pvp and it was much more challenging then any ai mob can be...well there are exceptions some players might be worse. Wow's pvp servers were more numerous and crowded then the pve servers for the first couple years and even on the pve servers something like 60 percent of the players did the pvp battlegrounds.

So pvp in of itself is not bad.

Most mmo's are pve centric with some form of optional pvp tacked on usually in some poorly implemented way.

Some of your points are spot on it is difficult to balance pvp and pve for that matter and combining the two can be difficult. I think daoc did it best by balancing the sides. It was a group based game and pvp was balanced by group play not so much individual vs individual. Wow balanced pvp pretty well in my opinion..i just didn't care for the environment in which the pvp took place. Each class could beat usually beat some classes lose to other classes and have an even fight with other classes. The bigger issue was gear of your oponent as compared with yourself.

zebular

Is PvP "Bad" for MMORPGs? I'd say yes. PvP brings imbalance and other tweaks and changes that far too often fundamentally change PvE content and play. For MMOFPS or MMORTS however? No, PvP is integral in these latter two types of MMOs.

conjugalburns

I think you may be underestimating just how popular PvP is, and how big the PvP community can be. I don't think alienating that audience is good thing, and Cryptic is probably doing the smart thing in getting PvP in at launch, rather than their first major update. And the last half of your post was basically describing every issue that every MMO has to deal with, whether PvP is involved or not.

I agree, if everyone that touches this game has the mentality of doing group content all the time, all day, everyday, until the end of time... then sure, lets skip PvP and focus on group content. (Final Fantasy XI/XIV says hello!) But lets be practical, that's not going to happen. I think trying to turn the game completely one-sided just isn't the answer to hold people's attention.

And no, I don't blame this all on PvP. However, I'm not blind to the issues PvP brings to PvE, especially when you try and combine everything to be balanced. I actually think FFXI did a good job with their PvP in the sense that it was strictly group PvP, and classes were never re-balanced for the sake of PvP. It treated PvP as its own entity. Probably not the best solution, but it left PvE alone.

hippyo

NWO is going to be much more combat focused than any previous MMO and should actually lend itself well to PVP because of that. Imo, the autofocus positional play typical of DND didnt really make it suitable for PVP at all.
PVP requires a character to be autonomous, versatile and deadly ? If you take a PVE build to the battlegrounds, you are likely to get pulverized on the spot. As MMOs are getting more casual, asian crowd focussed by the minute, we may well see COOP elements vanish from MMOs in general.PVE requires too much preparation, advanced tactics (like tank/avenger role splitting etc), for the general crowd. Finding a matching party to go on a run with is asking too much of a casual player. Many just want to try a new game, hang out a couple of hours and move on. I read somewhere that most chinese, for example don't own a pc/cable, instead they use public internet cafes to PVX. Advanced character development would be too much of a hassle, understandably.
edit: general crowd, this means millions of players. How many will be genuine DND fanatics like some of the readers of this forum ? 10%

guriphu

Since when has anyone ever played a pen and paper D&D game that didn't include PvP between the PCs and the DM? I've only played ten-ish sessions of the pen and paper game, but the standard means of making a villain was to crack open the player's handbook and roll up a formidable but legal player character or rival party. This villain is then controlled by a human intelligence - namely, the DM. NWN's villains were often constructed as legal characters as well, and, contrary to what you say, NWN and NWN2 multiplayer DID include true PvP combat. PvP/PvE balancing is a legitimate concern, but the notion that D&D and the NWN series have never involved PvP is completely false.

hippyo

voqar wrote: »

I played PnP D&D when there were softback manuals long before AD&D and played for years, and I've played countless cRPGs based on D&D. No PvP anywhere to be found.

PNP as defined by the WOTC ruleset is essentially a game that takes place between a DM and a group of players. It never involves PVP as far as i have ever seen. Thats why the ruleset was designed not for PVP but for tabletop sessions. Which elements of the ruleset provide support for digital PVP ?

ruinedmirage

If they have designated areas for PvP and you don't want to do PvP, don't go to those places (probably arena-based).

surf13

guriphu wrote: »

Since when has anyone ever played a pen and paper D&D game that didn't include PvP between the PCs and the DM? I've only played ten-ish sessions of the pen and paper game, but the standard means of making a villain was to crack open the player's handbook and roll up a formidable but legal player character or rival party. This villain is then controlled by a human intelligence - namely, the DM. NWN's villains were often constructed as legal characters as well, and, contrary to what you say, NWN and NWN2 multiplayer DID include true PvP combat. PvP/PvE balancing is a legitimate concern, but the notion that D&D and the NWN series have never involved PvP is completely false.

4e explicitly eschews rolling PCs as monsters.

elve

Most people seem to forget that Neverwinter is not only MMO-RPG but also MMO- Third-person Action Adventure game. I have a lot of fun playing those in multiplayer arena-style environment and if you haven't played multiplayer on Rune or Jedi Academy you are missing out severely.

PvP would bring balancing issues to the game if the healing class is overpowered as it is in most MMORPGs. This is because the endgame of these games is purely based on statically fighting overpowered mobs. In that case the healing is only meant to just slow the dying of the tank enough for the others to kill the mob. In PvP such healing power is overpowered. The simplest solution for this is just to remove the healing class altogether but the games are just built that way and it will create much more issues than it would solve. Recently games that have omitted including including dedicated healing class are doing better(Guild Wars 2 anyone?) and have much easier time balancing PvP and PvE. Cryptic have said in several interviews that group dungeons can be completed even without a cleric so PvE is built in a way that makes healing not necessary and they are following the GW2 trend so PvP would be also easier to balance in comparison to other MMOs. Also proclaiming that content is bad for a game just because you do not care for it is purely selfish.

hippyo

I am certainly willing to honor your opinion on this. And i would further a motion to deny Neverwinter the "RPG" appendix if they dare to remove the cleric from the class options. Several ot the other classes have healing abilities. (druids, rangers, bards, paladins). Health regeneration in general constitutes a vital element of the survivabilty of these classes.
Roleplaying Games are called that way (among other reasons) because the native role of each and every character VARIES with their abilities. These different roles define the success options of a party and the route they will take to win. The winning chances of a party also VARY with the classes that it is made up of.
The subtle but important VARIATIONS in every run make the gameplay interesting and entertaining. If they started to BALANCE the game for either PVE or PWP it seems obvious, that both factions will eventually suffer.
But wth.

elve

Well, IMO D&D is really well balanced to begin with as you are fighting credible player characters most of the time instead of random stat compilations that just happen to work well at certain levels. I think that this is certainly an advantage when trying to balance PvP and PvE at the same time.

Also not having a "dedicated healing class" is not the same as not having healing at all. Also dedicated healing class is not a bad thing at all as long as it is not overpowered. The developer's claims that you can actually complete a dungeon without a dedicated healer(although it exists in the game) leads me to believe that healing is not overpowered in Neverwinter so it is not really a problem for the PvP balance which IMO is the greatest problem when balancing PvP and PvE at the same time.

Balancing both aspects of the game is a challenging task but you can do it if you focus on it from the start. IMO first you should adjust character classes against one another so one of them would not feel overpowered or underpowered against another and then you should build the PvE content around the already balanced classes. Building a purely PvE game and later trying to convert it to PvP(as voqar suggested) is far more difficult than having an already balanced PvP game and balancing PvE.

RPG is neither bound to PvE content nor it is bound to the healing capabilities of the classes. It simply means that you are playing a someone else - a character, a role(as in a play, not as in a party composition). As long as you have the ability shape this character in a significant way it does not matter what exactly your options are(obviously a game is limited by its rules) and whether you fight other PCs or NPCs(in a way limiting you in fighting only NPCs is crippling your ability to roleplay).

giggliato

I won't be playing NWO PVP. It's going to be duels and minigames right? Garbage IMO. Are there even factions that have ancient bloodfeuds in this game? Maybe Cryptic is working on Monster play like in LOTRO. Although even that felt tacked on.

shiaika

guriphu wrote: »

Since when has anyone ever played a pen and paper D&D game that didn't include PvP between the PCs and the DM? I've only played ten-ish sessions of the pen and paper game, but the standard means of making a villain was to crack open the player's handbook and roll up a formidable but legal player character or rival party. This villain is then controlled by a human intelligence - namely, the DM. NWN's villains were often constructed as legal characters as well, and, contrary to what you say, NWN and NWN2 multiplayer DID include true PvP combat. PvP/PvE balancing is a legitimate concern, but the notion that D&D and the NWN series have never involved PvP is completely false.

The DM is not a Player so the only PvP that could be possible would be Players fighting each other (through their Player Characters). That 3E allowed to create enemies using PC systems is irrelevant (so if you fight a lvl 3 Fighter it's PvP but if you fight a Dragon it's not?).

Considering that PnP D&D is about a group of "heroes" (there is always the cliche party of evil doers) doing stuff together (and classed being balanced around that), unless you play a DMless autogenerated dungeon, you need an extra person that takes care of stuff that goes beyond controlling monsters (including humanoids): friendly NPCs, adventure hooks, game balance... And the NPCs and such are controlled by a human being because no one has created an AI DM (yet).

NwN had PvP? Yeah, so? The PvP community is quite vocal. And to a point, allowing it in the video game (which allowed DM mode too) gave more freedom for people to do stuff in their modules/PWs (like being able to have duels) which would have more population and roleplaying opportunities than your regular PnP session. PnP D&D is a cooperative game (that you play it in a competitive way is a different story) but when you design a multiplayer game based on it, I understand that companies feel like they must compromise. And to a point it's ok.

Is PvP bad? Depends. Having skills totally screwed for PvE due to PvP balance sucks. Mostly for those that don't play PvP. I would just design the PvE stuff and then just allow players to flag themselves for PvP (and add some PvP only areas/minigames/instances maybe). Balance? Haha! Like in Warhammer where most people would join Destruction? Or SWTOR where most would join Sith? (Neverwinter won't have such server population problems) Like people finding "exploits" every day for any class so the forums are filled with endless topics about "This class is OP!!1!!one!!!bbq!!"? Like the Modrons say: Balance is futile. Despite competitive players demanding perfect balance.

Edit: unless players are happy with 3 classes: Rock, Paper and Scissors. Maybe Cryptic can add later Lizard and Spock though.

syfylis

Ok I don't agree with some stuf what you guys did here.

1. PvE why so short? - Is it? or is it not. Lot of new games end after several hours and not many people cry about that. Seems like many people here forgot that story have it's ending and cannot go on forever. Good story can't be too long and I don't know what you guys expect here? Cryptic have a writer that create a story but he's not going to be there everyday to keep writing new stuf for you and sooner or later quest will become boring.

Foundry solve this problem hopefully so I'll gladly check those quests of harcore pve players

2. Balance of pvp destroy pve? - can someone name me a mmo when somthing like that happend? I did play many mmo and balance was normal thing in each of them still it didn't make game so hard that you couldn't finish pve content, you need to be highly unskilled player or game developer but i never seen something like that happen

3. MMO why pvp, craft, grind and so on? - mmo makes money on people that play and stay for longer time because there is higher chance for them to shop at item mall and what is also important bring more players with them. Often F2P mmo start making money after few months after release so keeping high number of players is critical

4. Big words with no meaning - great PvE experience, super story, we don't want another WoW game, when we played PnP game

5. Fact - DnD is based on Medieval Europe. The problem with this is when I ask someone about that i hear "oh yes King Arthur and Knights". What a beautiful character, well beautiful and cheap. What DnD did is hide that dirty half of medieval times.

You get shiny knight stories and wise kings but no one says that wars was full of <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>, doom, violence. Most of kings were fat and often disgusting and not giving a damn about people lives. How many of you see how a real castle look like? I'm from europe and thing you see in disneyland it's not a real castle.

So yes you may have great fun but it doesn't mean it was really great story, limiting yourself from some of human emotions doesn't make great field for character build or writing story. People kill people.

galvayra

syfylis wrote: »

5. Fact - DnD is based on Medieval Europe. The problem with this is when I ask someone about that i hear "oh yes King Arthur and Knights". What a beautiful character, well beautiful and cheap. What DnD did is hide that dirty half of medieval times.

You get shiny knight stories and wise kings

Have you even played D&D or at the very least read a book? shiny knight stories .. oh you!


On topic: The problem i see with PvP in MMORPGs is that it is dumb, pure and simple, there is no point to it, no goal, no consequence,no reason, you just kill people then you die and re-spawn and kill more people and its just a treadmill of stupid, this is something for a MMOFPS or games like dota

syfylis

galvayra wrote: »

Have you even played D&D or at the very least read a book? shiny knight stories .. oh you!


On topic: The problem i see with PvP in MMORPGs is that it is dumb, pure and simple, there is no point to it, no goal, no consequence,no reason, you just kill people then you die and re-spawn and kill more people and its just a treadmill of stupid, this is something for a MMOFPS or games like dota

It's competition you fight to feel you are better than others it's a very pure human feeling same as hate or jealousy, it is same as you would say that sports are stupid. PvP have different modes so using your head is often key to win. What is a qonsequence of going to instance where you kill the mobs take loot and go out.

This is open world mmo so anything you do will not affect other players. I think you have expectations that may be difficult to meet in F2P mmo open world game.

ranncore

ITT: I don't like it and you shouldn't either.

elve

galvayra wrote: »

Have you even played D&D or at the very least read a book? shiny knight stories .. oh you!


On topic: The problem i see with PvP in MMORPGs is that it is dumb, pure and simple, there is no point to it, no goal, no consequence,no reason, you just kill people then you die and re-spawn and kill more people and its just a treadmill of stupid, this is something for a MMOFPS or games like dota

How is anything you do in a game more pointless than another thing you do in a game? Is endgame gear treadmill more productive than fighting with other people? I thought that we played games because it is fun and not because it had any greater purpose.

catburger003

If it's PK yes. Bullying is not good. I'd rather have arenas or specific areas for PvP. There must be also a duel option. Or a party based duel or even a guild.

syfylis

Well i know people that like PK option but also I understand those who don't. Usually people PK when someone ks your mobs, and 4fun sometimes people gank others however PK doesn't happen that often as some people may think.

For me pvp arenas and duels is enough but PK it's not bad either, for some people game is more fun with PK and PK system is fair because you can PK others also. It did <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> me off when some noobs ganked me but I had really great time when my guild show them their place.

In few mmo that I playd PK servers are often more populated than pve ones so I wouldn't put people that like PK in some minority.

borisbot

PvE could also unbalance PvP, you know why it works both ways? Due to BAD GAME DESIGN. If Cryptic Studio have a solid design shouldn't be an issue. Scaling isn't skilled option, all it means NPC will have little more HP and Damage output. If "hard mode" of pve content added SMART AI then that would take more skills then a Scale content. PvP adds "eSports" to games, attracts more gamers if the game is design right. I disagree with your "hypothesis" OP

sirsitsalot

Disclaimer:
The following statements are reflective of my own personal opinion and I make no claim to speak for anyone other than myself...

- - - - - - - - - -

Is PvP bad for MMOs?

In my opinion, yes it is. Far too often, skills and abilities are the same whether playing PvE or PvP, so when the developers make an adjustment to correct an issue in one playstyle, it ends up having a negatve effect on the other playstyle.

Also, many developers spend so much time trying to balance PvP (which will NEVER happen because as long as there is a thinking person behind the toon you're fighting, no matter what the developers do, they will find a way to figure out how to outdo you). If they spent half as much time and resources producing world-expanding content as they do trying to balance PvP, then there could be an official questline released evey other week all year round.

Another thing that makes PvP bad is if it is forced on players through open-world PvP mechanics, where griefers can gank you while you are just minding your own business.

Not to mention the massive explosion of bad attituded that manifests durring a heated PvP encounter.

I do not play MMOs to fight against others. I play MMOs to experience a different world shared with others.

- - - - - - - - - -

Disclaimer:
The above statements are reflective of my own personal opinion and I make no claim to speak for anyone other than myself...

syfylis

You don't need to balance skills. There was never need for that. What you need do is balance "imbalance".

So you can make some character stronger than other and game and pvp will be ok as long as those weaker class's get disable, suport skills. It all depends on good distribution of skills. If game developer create 15 fireballs with different names and animation then there will be never good pvp.

Wise developer will create game of rock, paper, scissors so to put in other words "if you do this then i can do that". So when we meet that condition what we need is making sure that we have arena battles for more than 1 player and everything is fine.

Balance the imbalance.

zebular

Also, if a PnP Group is imbalanced, it is no ones fault but the DM's. A proper DM would not allow their party to be so imbalanced, despite any game rules that may "allow" it.

banaanc

1st i have never ever seen a game where pvp balance would harm pve, ever. how its even possible ? pve doesnt even need real balance as long as its "close enough" and classes are fun to play, ok you get your dps bragging rights or i did solo this and that, but this is an action mmorpg, so there much more will depend on player skill than class, ofc there will be difference how classes feel, and their way of doing thing, support oriented classes will be slower in pve, but much safer

in action mmorpgs skills arent as important as player skill, dodging, blocking, attacking, positioning.... ive played most action mmorpgs that are free/could get into beta

but you do need a few things for pvp to coexist with pve without problems
1)ability to change talents between pvp and pve, like wow where you could switch between few trees, so your character isnt locked in either pvp or pve since pvp builds need to be different and focus on other things, though less so in an action mmorpg
2)pvp and pve gear and different ways to obtain them
3)not being forced in either of them, since they will have 1 server with many shards they should make pvp and pve shards so you can quest peacefully if you want(they said they cant do it, but lets hope), and get some pvp action when you decide you want some. its really annoying if somebody higher lvl/better geared/group camps you, but same time - getting a good pvp fight is just awesome, stranglethorn vale was one of my favorite places to lvl in wow, in times escalating with both of us getting our lvl 80 and going on a rampage, or getting away from some high lvl chasing you by using terrain

iamtruthseeker

Oh wow what a great new concept for this specific MMO! Saying if PvP does or doesn't belong!


Ahh, no. Even more than death penalty, I can't think of a more resurrected topic here besides beta.

Look here, and here and here and here and here and here and here (sort of) and here [stopping at 45 pages back] just for the PvP threads debating PvP for/against this MMO alone in Discussion. I've left out several more simply talking about PvP. Since search doesn't work with three letters, I manually did this.


Long story short, they all said the same thing, nobody agreed on either side of it, the game was delayed to include PvP, it's not mandatory or world-based and whether you like it or not, you can choose to play it or not. There will be both regular and end-game PvP just like Cryptic has done in their other two current titles. If you think it's the end of MMO's as you know it, get over it. Unless you can prove it's linked to December 21st, it's not the end of the world.

vindicon

It's not a question of whether PVP is good or bad. And it's not a question of whether it fits the RPG part of an MMORPG - no, MMORPGs, unlike MMOFPS, are much different beasts than their SP counterparts.

It's a matter of how exactly are you going to implement it to your MMORPG. PVP needs to be a valid part of the game - an optional part, but a valid and useful part of it nontheless. You shouldn't just add random pk and maybe some arenas and say that you've got PVP covered - not by a long shot. PVP, like any other game feature, should only exist to make the game better.

Random PK and Arenas by themselves serve no purpose, they add nothing to the game and in fact substract valuable development time from other parts of the game. There is no real enjoyment to be had from randomly killing passers-by if there's no real point to it, and even if you do enjoy it the annoyance you cause to everyone else far outweights your own enjoyment. And there's no point fighting in Arenas just for a place in the rankings and maybe some items here and there - MMORPGs are not a pure competitive genre. Period. They're not any more suited for pure competitive play than Farmville is. If you want a real competitive game with RPG mechanics then you go play MOBAs, not MMORPGs.

However, imagine the same PK system, but tied with a war between factions, a solid game-controled law enforcement system and a robust political/economical system run by the players. And imagine Arenas replaced by large-scale battlefields where factions fight for dominion over specific areas and the recources within them. Now we're talking.

That is where MMORPGs excel - involving the players with the world around them. There's no other genre that can come anywhere close to it. That's what you should be doing if you want to actually play by the strengths of what you're trying to make. Because, if you end up with some random killing, then you've only accomplished what other genres do infinitely better. For random killing there's nothing better than FPS. For arena fights there's nothing better than MOBAs. And there's no way an MMORPG can beat those if it doesn't mix its PVP with what the genre is actually good at.

syfylis

The problem with large battles is that often it's a game of pure force, big group kill small group so you can win/lose not because of your skills but numbers of players.

Thats why arena pvp is good because it give control to the team and your influence is higher than on mass player battles. I did take on that problem with my idea of GvG battles
my thread : http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?21121-Guild-Wars-End-game-content-%28Work-In-Progress%29&p=329001#post329001

syfylis wrote: »

Basic Idea: We have two sections first one is called "Last Man Standing" and second is "Return of the King". Last Man standing is a part where guild fight for becoming Lord of the city and second to become King of forgoten Realms.

Guild Master of every guild that have more than 30 people nominate 30 players to be ones that fight in guild wars (at least 10 of them need to have max lvl). First part of GW starts on (let's say friday) when guild masters register for GW. Guild wars take place in 8 the biggest cities of Forgotten Realms (Neverwinter,.,.,.)

On Friday When each guild master register his guild he get rank points based on added numbers of lvls of nominated players. So if max lvl is 20 then 30 players with that lvl give you 600pts and place in Guild wars when it starts. So at the end of the day (friday) 64 guilds with the highest score will take part in guild wars.When the ranking of guilds becomes clear on saturday 1.am groups of 8 guilds will be assigned to one of the 8 cities.

Last Man Standing(PvE gear): Saturday. Now at the time of 1.pm In each city for two hours competition starts. Selected 30 players of each guild in the city will have to kill 30 players of other guilds. To make it easy(heh) these players will pop out as 210 red dots on a map. Leaving city = you are out from competition. It's a single knock out so if you die once then you are out of competition also if there will be some players from more than one guild alive after 2 hours then city ripper will spawn and kill one member of each guild every 30 seconds until last man stands.
Rules:
1. You can see enemy nick but you can't see enemy guild name
2. Location of all players is refreshed every 60sec to give guild chance for unexpected atack

So basically there is mass pvp of 240 people but I did split it to groups to eliminate "brute force" problem. About PvP arenas they require MobA game type skill design but what is important is fact that this is best skill design made in games because what moba games did is creating "skill body" where each part of it works good with another and also it can create a good combo with other characters.

That is a future of rpg games where characters had gameplay problems because of bad skill build design.

iamtruthseeker

There are no NW player factions.


Since Cryptic stopped releasing group options News since Events, it's very likely to me that PvP then will be like their other two STO/CO games and be group events or solo 1-on-1 instanced events, look up Star Trek or Champions Online PvP to see what video they have if you don't already play it. Unless they show me screenshots/video otherwise.

Since they are not mentioning anything ground breaking and had this planned for the early 2013 release, it's all but guaranteed to me it's their usual way of doing it. For better or worse, that's how it is.