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Is PvP Bad for MMORPGs? (redux)
bw022
Member Posts: 1 Arc User
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 **** 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?
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.
Yes... PvP is bad for both roleplaying and for most computer games in general.
If you look at table-top RPGs... the goal is to have fun, same as any games. This leads to an interesting dynamic for those DMs running the game... don't kill of the players and do it in a way which isn't obvious. Obviously if you just kill off the players they get frustrated and quit. However, if must make them immortal, they get bored from the lack of challenge... and quit. They idea for great games is to make it seem like they can die while trying as much as possible not to let that happen. You can capture PCs, have resurrection rules, allow them to flee, etc.
PvP immediately breaks one of those rules. Either half the players die or they become immortal. Ultimately, you get tired of either killing everyone over-and-over or dying and coming back to life over and over. In any case, it is perfectly obvious you are playing a game.
It is also bad for the games themselves. It carries with it so much baggage which detracts massively from the rest of the game. Factions, character balance, faction-locked areas, systems to limit PvP in PvE areas, etc. all waste time from the RPG itself. In old school D&D 'balance' between classes was created through the DM adding lots of varied encounters such that each has a chance to shine. In MMORPGs... it means any three random characters must be able to defeat any other three random characters in a fight. This is were you see massive amounts of dumbing down of character abilities, a complete focus on combat abilities, etc. This also creates massive dumb-down of PvE encounters. Why create an encounter where a bard could talk his way into getting the guards to help you in the final encounter, when the "bard" is equal in combat to any other class?
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There should be keeps and player controlled areas for pvp. I heard something like this was done in AoC but I was completely bored with it early on. Eve as far as I can see is the only successful game with pvp/sandbox. Ive been searching for this in a D&D style game but I guess developers just cant think outside of the box.
Sad thing is I think this will turn into SWToR. I was excited for that game and made the mistake of buying a founders pack... The story was good, but there wasnt anything outside of that. Arena PVP sucks, and their world pvp was barely developed.
Oh I totally disagree and I would imagine all the players that had characters that I whacked as a player in the past 30+ years would too.
I believe the complete opposite. Games that cater to much to solo and casuals lose retention faster then group and raid based content games.
Sounds like you have not played MMO's for a long time. I have been around since UO, and MMO's that required coordination of groups always had more retention. EQ was played by people for 5-7 years on average.
I bet the GW2 retention rate is in mere months.
All games that require groups do is push the far larger numbers of people who don't want to be forced to group away, and retain the tiny numbers of groupers (ie by "retention" you mean keeping small numbers of group style players while letting all the other players leave the game because there's nothing there for them at endgame).
Nothing at endgame for solo players is why solo players leave, not because solo players are less loyal than raiders/groupers to a game.
There are far more solo players than raiders, so a game catering to raiders is shooting itself in the foot.
No game caters to solo players at endgame yet. Certainly not GW2 - that is a pvp endgame, not a solo player endgame. Killing the same ridiculous poorly designed AI zombies over and over in Orr is not my definition of an endgame.
I play many MMORPGs...waiting for the one that has a good endgame for solo players and doesn't try to make me grind raids for my loot. When that game is produced (GW2 did not have a good endgame, so don't try act as if that is a solo player's heaven, as it's clear you have no idea at all what we want) then that game will find itself with the highest retention since...WoW
I see your point and enjoyed your post but I just can't go that far.
I'd go so far to say that PvP makes designing MMOs challenging and that very often a perfectly terrific MMO has lousy PVP. I can think of only one came where its the reverse, Warhammer Online had fabulous PVP but the rest of the game was a lemon (to my eyes anyway).
But PVP is a core requirement in MMOs now. You can't ignore it, just because you are premised on a game that never advocated fighting other players. In fact, some gamers come to MMOs almost exclusively for the PVP.
My brother is one I can think of right away. Whenever he and I are talking video games, his first question to me is almost always, "oh yeah, how's the PVP"?
To which my response was, "It seemed find to me, but how would I know? I'm a carebear".
A lot of decent MMOs have had crappy PVP. I think every super hero MMO ever made, for example, had awful PVP. Skill-based games like TSW have awful PVP.
My main beef with MMO PVP is it's never particularly intelligent. It really is about builds and being on organized teams. And by "organized" I mean, "don't just zurg, actually have some idea how to play on a team".
My favorite PVP game? It's actually World of Tanks. I love how deadly it is. You get hit twice, you're pretty close to dead. You can use actual cover and it requires great patience and a supreme knowledge of your weapon and how best to use it on the map you're on. It's probably the SMARTEST PvP game I've ever played. There's no button smashing here, no thumb-twitch gank fest. It's a careful game that you have to think to succeed.
Sadly, I don't think NWO will have good PVP at all. Most especially since they've chosen frenetic, chaotic combat over tactical intelligence, I wager PVP will expose how imbalanced the classes are for PVP and just how "pew, pew" the combat really is.
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Like others i am not expecting PvP to be very good in Neverwinter.
On a side note: Aren't MMOs typically for group play? Maybe its just me, but I come to an MMO to group up, not necessarily for hardcore raiding or forced grinding, but for a group effort in just about anything, be it PvP, raids, quests, etc. If I wanna play something alone I usually just go play a single player game (just got Dragon's Dogma btw. loving the combat).
No single character is supposed to be capable of doing everything and going out on their own. D&D adventures are normally filled with a wide range of challenges calling for different skill sets in order to be covercome, and adventurers typically need to have a diverse group in order to advance in their quest. That doesn't necessarily mean that they should force you to group with other players--they could still achieve that with a group of NPCs like they do in single player D&D video games, such as Baldur's Gate. But single characters are normally very limited on how far they are able to advance on their own.
On the topic of PvP, however, it comes down to this:
In themepark MMOs, once you've maxed out your character and done all there is to do as far as PvE is concerned there are exactly two things left to do that may keep you around indefinitely if you want to keep playing the same character (and particularly if you're not the type of player that likes to alt): RP and PvP.
/The End
Additionally I don't buy into the notion that PvP balance somehow breaks PvE balance. In the majority of cases it can't and it doesn't. When stuff is "OP" (assuming that it really is "OP" and not just people QQ because they need to L2P... but that's a different matter), it is generally OP, period. Its just that NPCs can't complain how bad they're getting their butts handed to them, but other players at then receiving end of those powers can.
I feel that PvP'ers often get a bad rap and get blamed for a lot of things that aren't warranted, and PvE QQ'ers overestimate the power that players have over the devs when it comes to their feedback. If the devs decide to change something in the game its entirely their decision. The players might help along by pointing out things that they "feel" are unbalanced but ultimately its the devs that determine whether they feel that's the case or not, and the only ones that can do anything about it. The devs are the only ones that can make changes to the game. It is virtually impossible for PvP'ers to be responsible for changes to the game unless the PvE'er in question happens to be a dev.
That being said, I don't expect PvP on this game to be a big thing. At least from my experiences in CO, Cryptic isn't very good at PvP content and they generally tend to cater to the casual (usually PvE) crowd to the exclusion of everyone else.
What else could the internet possibly be for?
PVP dictates that "player 1" must be able to beat "player 2", and vice-verse, and that balancing to make all toons viable destroys the game..IMO.
I wouldn't mind if i could endure in PvP battles and that would be a pretty sure thing to reconcile standardizing all char classes with equal chances and talents!
Um... What? All player characters need to be viable, or whats the point? PVP balancing doesnt change PVE. From what Ive seen if you go into PVE with a PVP setup, you do just fine. It could get "difficult" at times but its completely doable.
Things I hate about pvp in mmo:
1. random challenges, while you walk around you get this popup window into the face blabla wants to fight you or something
2. pvp as end-game content and a must to develop your character
3. balancing of characters based on pvp and not pve content
4. those 1% who always whine about pvp and how bad it is implemented, go play another game then
stuff and things
That is usually not true. Most PvP-centric games rely on a kind of RPS mechanics and the winning of the match comes from a well formed team that plays well together.
There hasn't been an mmo since WoW and EVE that's kept great retention in a decade- EVE is completely different from other mmos and thus has its own playerbase, and WoW is the lucky behemoth that simplified everything first and thus benefited from what was actually a fairly mediocre (and extremely buggy) game at launch.
Yes- solo and casual games lose retention in a percentage at a very fast rate compared to games that don't cater to them. But, it's flawed to say UO, EQ kept players for years so that should be the model- they kept players for years because a- mmorpgs in general are built to hook you once you get into them, so many players had a lost invested (which is why those game may still retain old subscribers, but aren't attracting anyone new), and b- they came out at a time with very little competition, and thus gathered up the lion's share of the market, nowadays there's dozens of 'good' mmorpgs, and hundreds of bad ones out there.
Also- you seem to be talking percentages. Yes, games like GW2 and SWTOR for example have lost half or more of their subs- but when their subs started around the 2 million mark- yes, TOR dropped to half a million and is only active now due to going f2p, and GW2 has lost likely half their active players in the last few months too... they still are looking at hundreds and hundreds of thousands of casual players. That's likely going to be considered a good thing compared to games that get 15k players but retain all of them- which is most of the recent games that aren't casual friendly.
I'm curious as to what these 'successful hardcore' games are that haven't had huge retention loss issues are (not counting EVE), currently- yes, we all know ten years ago EQ, UO, Lineage, etc... had it- but that was then.
If we're talking retention- a heavy raid based game is naturally going to retain. Why? Because anyone interested in heavy raiding is going to be spending hundreds of hours with 20+ people working towards goals, that can't be done by a casual. Casuals won't try it/will give up fast, so the bulk of the playerbase will be people who are ready to spend hundreds of hours in the game.
But- while that game may retain, it's going to be a niche game with a small audience.
As for pvp- people don't mind it when a- they aren't forced to do it, and b- it doesn't effect them (aka- class isn't ruined in pve due to a pvp related nerf). Problem generally is the second though, it's always happening. Other big problem is- look at the pvp forums for any game and compare it to the other forums for that same game. There is always going to be negativity in an mmo- but pvp simply crushes the game with it. It's nonstop and bogs down games heavily- even if you only have arena/warzone based pvp.
Now, that said- I like pvp, I do almost nothing but pvp in SWTOR and GW2, since both are accessible gear-wise, and I don't have the time to raid anymore so organized pve is less possible. But, as much as I love pvping- I hate pvp communities, and some games just do not need pvp- for example, DDO functions perfectly fine, and is doing well for an older game, with just pve- LotRO too (ya, they both have minor pvp, but it's practically an afterthought).
I don't see why NWO needs pvp.
This is just my opinion, it doesn't fit into this game.
If PVP makes sense, I do that as well. Like in Warhammer Online, it is essential to kill foes and fight them in this game. It is not essential however to go into a roleplaying game to play capture the flag in some sandbox.
It would even make more sense to me if open-pvp is enabled, but then with friendly fire as well. The short time I played WoW, this was on an open-pvp-rp server and it was fun, no farming lowies etc. everything very civilized.
ESO will be another game, where the three realms fight each other in a DAoC like fashion.
Neverwinter is about quests and not killing other players. Let there be pit-fights in the tavern but do not waste too much time/money on PVP development.
NWO has been badged as PvE so I find it difficult to accept that players who prefer PvP content flock to a game designed around PvE content and then complain when things don't go as planned. Often, character skills get amended for the benefit of the few to the detriment of the many.
Also, I don't buy the suggestion that overpowered is always overpowered whether it is in PvE or not. As someone stated earlier, the NPCs arent able to complain - that's true - and for loopholes / exploits I'm all for PvP identifying, and addressing those.
But conversely, the NPCs are designed to obey rules that players can ignore, and bypassing certain skills or classes doesn't make them broken.
How hard would instances be if taunt didn't work for the tank? It doesn't in PvP but imagine the outcry if it was and your party of three was 'forced' to fight the tank who was being healed whilst rogues backstabbed you all..
How often do you see instances where all of the mobs ignore the armoured tank and focus on the healers killing them in seconds? This does happen in PvP but how many PvE raids are successfull without tanks, whilst the boss feasts on the healers?
It is those different AI mechanics that make PvE and PvP different experiences and, in my opinion, makes them very difficult to balance evenly. The problem is that the game can't work with everything balanced otherwise you'd have encounters lasting forever. There has to be a tilt one way or the other;
unbalanced numbers in groups - smaller group would usually complain
balanced numbers but with different classes - losers would complain their classes aren't good enough
balanced numbers with same classes - losers would still complain to each other about their playing skills
In PvP, whoever is on-tilt complains.
TLDR;
PvP and PvE are like oil and water - you can throw them together, but they don't mix too well.
Exactly, in Warhammer Online taunt is very well implemented into PVP. If a tank taunts you, then you do half damage to anyone else but the tank. So the tanks do AoE taunt in Warhammer to get attention by the opposite players and prevent damage to your own party.
Such things don't exist in Neverwinter because it is not a PVP game.
Exactly my point - and if they want to do that, then they should badge the game as PvP first, and PvE second.
Give me an instanced PvP Realm-vrs-Realm with PvP gear/rewards (none pve stats/benefits) and I would be happy, atleast until they start "balancing" classes. I still say if they slowed XP down it would increase the journey of leveling and give them more time to add higher lvl content (am an old school EQ player, 7 years, where it could take years to max out your character if you took your time).
I don't think they should slow down exp. It is not like in other MMO's where you have to kill monsters to get experience, in fact I would do it like in DDO where you get no experience at all for killing monsters. You gain experience by completing quests and it doesn't matter how many monsters you kill in that dungeon. It should matter how complete you do the quest and if you found all secrets, if any.
This is quite offtopic but... mindless quest-grind much? I would rather have a variety of ways to level up characters than being locked into doing one type of content.
It is not mindless and I hope we don't always have to do the same quests.
Why would you play NWN modules then? They usually require a level to start the quest with, often there is a level up function and/or item vendor at the start to prepare your character. You can import a character but it is up to the author to decide which level it has to be and what items you can wear.
This game isn't about the level at all in my opinion, there should be modules in the foundry for all kind of chracters. Leveling is less important to me than good stories.
There will be those dungeons for the raiders folk afaik, once you had to group up and do such a dungeon but it was buggy.
Also if leveling is unimportant why would you rather have less ways to do it than more? It doesn't really affect you in any way.