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PvP in a D&D game?
voodoo12
Member Posts: 1 Arc User
ive read a few posts..well a lot actually about the lack of pvp in the game... 2 things here. as far as i know these are PVE servers.and, how can you possibly have PvP in D&D world?... to pvp surely you need opposing factions. there arent any in this game.
another solution would be to set up a couple of pvp servers.like most other MMOs have
by the way im not a fan of pvp.but it does have its place in some games with opposing factions but not this type of environment
Discuss/
another solution would be to set up a couple of pvp servers.like most other MMOs have
by the way im not a fan of pvp.but it does have its place in some games with opposing factions but not this type of environment
Discuss/
Post edited by voodoo12 on
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No, there is no new news on that so far as I know, so it remains... sometime in the future.
Early D&D in particular was a free-for-all. Adventurers were a mixed bag. PvP very definitely belongs in this game, and for all its problems it's better balanced than in most Cryptic games. My only complaint is that the domination maps are fairly limited conceptually and feel more like staged skirmishes. That's fine, but I'd love to see a series of PvP maps set in ruined city streets in unreclaimed districts or in a dungeon setting. A "capture the flag" type deal where the flag is a chest of treasure, or a domination-type map where the players are resolving a "territory dispute" between different factions in the city - those to me would feel much more alive and a part of D&D's history as well as being representative of the setting of Neverwinter as a broken city struggling to rise from the ashes.
I'd guess that the "there's no pvp in D&D" idea comes from the generally large % of the D&D playerbase who just never played like you described. I know that in my first real campaign (1st Ed AD&D, back in highschool), we never had any arguments that would lead to in-game fighting. But, then, we were a group of friends, playing a group of heroes.
Pretty much the only time I've run into actual inter-party conflict in a tabletop RPG was my first college D&D campaign, where the group of people (some random folks I didn't know) were trying to hard at the "we're Adults now! Let's be Complex, and have Serious Personal Motivations, and be all Deep, dude!" (insert facepalm here). Yeah, that "campaign" lasted a whole two sessions, with half the party dying the first session, and the entire party (including the replacements) dying the second. Needless to say, bailed on that group.
(..well, came close this past year, when my regular Saturday night tabletop gaming group decided to give the Dragon Age RPG a try, and I discovered that a number of them are apparently borderline moral relativists who thought my ideas of Heroes and Good to be somewhat outdated. Hrm. Part of the whole modern "gritty! grim! dark! It's More Adult and Realistic!" silliness that's been going around in gaming & fantasy the last decade or so. Can't wait for that fad to pass.)
I have bad news for you, that fad is never going to pass. The best solution is to play with people who want similar things to what you want out of a game.
I realize my anecdote makes it look like my gaming groups have always consisted of amoral, opportunistic backstabbers, but it's actually been a pretty rare occurrence for the most part. Some groups went that way, particularly between middle school and college, but by and large the people I've played with over long periods have followed a similarly heroic bent to what you describe.
Still, even though inter-party conflict may not be a staple of every game, I don't understand how people can think that it doesn't exist at all or isn't a part of the genre in any way, shape or form.
---- FIRE EVERYTHING ! ----
Also the next time they joined us they didn't act so dumb, so win-win.
We are definitely dominating, and we are always about to win.
The hardest thing for any Dev to do in Computer environment is to make a "AI GM" which is really hard to do. So the next best thing is "hard core rule coding" into the system and hope for the best.
PvP in D&D tabletop is doable and GM can "tweak" the rules as needed or balance it out, but in a computer world, that is much harder to do on the fly (unless you have active GM) unlike tabletop, the computer world has to be "balance" or "everyone will play that class" it is no brainer to think that anyone playing want to play the "best class" possible of their interest from best dps, best tank, best healer, best overall etc etc.
in D&D, a GM can change and tweak it so the group of players (4-8) can have a lot of fun and "balance" for that group, but when you pit against 1000+ players, it get tricky. This is why all the tweaks and patches trying to "balance" it all (which can be a good or bad thing depending which side of the coin you are on)
Please review my campaign and I'll return the favor.
agreed, alignment wanst just for npc interactions
---- FIRE EVERYTHING ! ----
So I met with 3 friends of mine to play D&D at a game store. There was a guy who comes there a lot to play other stuff, we knew who he was but never played with him, and he wanted to join us. Long story short this was his 2nd D&D game ever and he was simply being dumb and doing things for the sole purpose of hindering the party and being very annoying.
So he buys 40 vials of lamp oil with the intention of making molotov cocktials lol... GM tells him "Well how are you going to carry 40 vials around without them breaking?" So he buys a coat of many pockets and put 1-2 vials in each pocket. As we progress we come across a vine monster, and he is of course running ahead of the party even though he's a bard. Vine monster rolls a 20 against him and he rolls a 1 haha. Vine monster entangles all around him breaking 25 of his 40 vials while constricting him. My ranger buddy draws an arrow, lights it on fire, and rolls a 7. Not enough to hit, but not enough to completely miss lol, again the bard rolls a 1 (so hilarious when this happened) he is immediately consumed by fire as he had 25 vials of oil all over his body and is dead 3 times over. He rerolled a new character but he wasn't so immature after that =P
We are definitely dominating, and we are always about to win.
I've played the spectrum. Good characters, bad characters, morally apathetic characters... And sometimes there's just good ol' fashioned player conflict that can only be resolved through combat. Some of it's forced (mind control scenarios, etc.). Some of it is planned (the above-mentioned war campaign is something the DM pulled me aside to talk about, and I thought it was brilliant - rolled a new, less morally ambiguous character to replace myself and handed over the reigns so to speak). Some of it is just spontaneous.
D&D is born out of a tabletop miniatures game that was meant to simulate high fantasy battle mechanics (Chainmail) that was similar to other games of it's kind today (Warhammer, Warmachine/Hordes). It was born out of PVP, and until Blackmoor (at the suggestion of Dave Arneson), it stayed that way before finally morphing into the PVE experience it is today. And back in the early days it was closer to PvDM (something that has changed significantly as time has grown on).
The idea that PVP isn't something that should exist in D&D or any other tabletop roleplaying game is somewhat silly.
[SIGPIC]Also, this poster rambles.[/SIGPIC]
Proof that DnD has PVP.
All these stories of PvP are not PvP in the sense that they use in this game, they're just players roleplaying. As players playing a P&P RPG you have almost limitless freedom to do what you wish. In the constraints of a computer game you don't. The concept of PvP they've come up with for this game is more or less nonsensical from a D&D perspective, and the idea of making it somehow 'balanced' doesn't even make sense within the strange character class definitions they've chosen.
With this game being built off 4e, I can see that a drive for more 'balance' between classes in both spectrums of the game (a driving force for the change from 3rd to 4th anyway) to be a good thing. It's carrying forth the ideas the game was built off of in the first place.
If we're being myopic and assuming that only 3rd and prior D&D 'counts', however, well. I'm just going to laugh, because the 'idea' of balance was either barely a consideration, or so badly implemented that suggesting it was even a real consideration is a bit of a joke in and of itself. And even then, there were a LOT of attempts to fix that imbalance when the game was updated (until we finally got to 4e, which did it by dumping a lot of the problem child mechanics in the first place).
[SIGPIC]Also, this poster rambles.[/SIGPIC]
so I guess neverwinter got that bit right, eh?
*BADUM TISH*
What? Sure you can PVP in D&D if your DM allows it and if you are of evil alignment or even just greatly unlike the other player (an evil act of some sorts by say a CN player could get an uptight paladin to attack for example).
All you need to PVP are two people who want to brawl to settle their differences, no faction required for it. Given that 90% of D&D characters had a lot of brawn and no brains, physical resolution of differences is extremely commonplace amongst nonlawful characters.
I also dislike pvp in MMOs. PVP in games where everyone is roughly equal and skill determines it I like (modern warfare for example) but in an MMO you need the best of the best stuff to even try to compete. I am getting too old to chase down the latest and greatest pixel for every slot just so I can start to think about pvp.
We don't need a pvp server. The pvp is not open: I can't just start cutting chunks out of you if I see you go for the nature node I was going for, for example. That is why you need a pvp server, when you have open world pvp anywhere, anytime. When it is confined to an arena type zone, its fine to mix pvp and pve players.
I dunno, I find 4e to be worlds better designed mechanically then 3rd. Fluff-wise, nobody is beating AD&D 2nd and early 3rd, and I think WotC fired most of the guys that they had that knew how to write compelling lore/etc. in the first place. Similarly, when they did that, they also got rid of the guys that had no business writing game mechanics and, rather then carry forth the albatroses that mechanically bloated the game down, they cut them loose and started fresh.
They didn't really maintain that momentum, but the first ~15-20 books for 4th and the design ideals that went into them were great. I really, really wish they hadn't petered out as bad as they did towards the end of it (with the shift to D&D Next, or whatever it is now; I still kind of feel like blaming Hasbro for not knowing how to run an RPG book company feels accurate, even if that helped them when designing 4th).
[SIGPIC]Also, this poster rambles.[/SIGPIC]
I mean, I always figured the trick with 3e stupidity was just to disregard it, but then I was a fairly...cavalier GM.
"The rule for fires spreading is...you're an idiot. You're on fire."
That sounds indicative of someone who's never actually read any of the 4th material, specifically the DMG. They make it abundantly clear that the entire point of cutting the mechanical bullcrap was to encourage and promote telling better ideas. There were even optional rules to allow character background to have some mechanical benefits again, but you were instead aggressively encouraged to find a way to incorporate and engage your players through non-mechanical story content and reward inventiveness in the roleplay area WITHOUT needing rules and explanations for it.
For all the demonizing people make of the game, it didn't try to make things harder for DMs. It just gave you more room and freedom to make the story better because you weren't wasting so much time with obscure and arcane rules material (something that had plagued D&D from AD&D to 3rd; White Box had less rules to sift through, thankfully, as did early basic D&D).
What edition is 'superior', however, is tainted heavily with nostalgia. Personally, I think each edition has it's own quirks and 'life' to it that treating them as the same game (instead of a game inspired by the same source material) is disingenuous to what actually happened in development. They're all good fun, some are just easier to get into then others (AD&D and 3rd are nightmarishly hard to get into, and that's coming from a GURPS/Hero System fangirl; Basic and 4th are both light and easy to get into by comparison, and that's a good thing. It's why both are on my gaming lodge's Intro to Roleplaying Games Systems list).
[SIGPIC]Also, this poster rambles.[/SIGPIC]
A lot of the new stuff is better. But every single time the new rules take something away from the game that gave it depth and customization, it was a bad move. Every single time. And moving away from using all the die types was poor: people love their die sets, are proud of them, and want to USE them.
I agree. 4e is trying to balance all the classes (that is why 1st level wizard in 4e is more powerful than 3e BUT 20th level 3e can do more IMO than 20 level in 4e, that is just my opinion due to more spell variety)
DDO is 3.5 base and it is hard to balance that. I lost of DPS are mages because at high level, mages ARE that powerful.
Please review my campaign and I'll return the favor.
That could be part of it..... pretty much every tabletop RPG campaign I've played (that had alignment), all the players were in the Neutral/Neutral Good/Chaotic Good range. But, then, we were playing heroes/adventurers. Protagonists. No reason to ever make an evil character.
(Personally, I find myself nearly unable to play "bad" characters. Tried to do a second playthrough of Fallout:New Vegas to try other plotlines, but I couldn't get myself to side with the Powder Gangers, or House, or definitely not Caesar's Legion. Never had any desire to play any of the GTA's or Saint's Row games. Etc, etc, etc.)
On the more general topic of "pvp in the MMO".... I've never been a fan of PvE and PvP being in the same game. Conflicts between the two are inevitable, as pvp "balance" whining causes damage to the PvE systems, or PvE looting unbalances the PvP, etc, etc, etc. PvP's always seemed best in games designed for and around it. I'm just always surprised that the die-hard PvP'ers, keep trying to find "good pvp" in PvE games where the pvp is clearly a sideline minigame; rather than going to games that actually do it well because pvp is their purpose. /shrug
I don't think it's necessarily fair to use one's personal subjective experience to determine what is, or is not, easy. First edition AD&D was badly designed, and focused so heavily into memorization of a large number of charts and spreadsheets that while it was easy to figure out once you knew what you were doing (and where to look), it was ridiculous to try and teach new players. On top of that, you had to constantly have these materials on-hand to reference to even if you did have all of your information correct, and math errors were frequently common.
It was clunky, inefficient, and absolutely non-new player friendly. There are by far worse systems (GURPS and Hero System are my two go-to favorites for that - I love the reactions of new players when you thump a 500+ page manual down on a desk, it's brilliant), but that doesn't excuse what was bad game design. Maybe I'm better able to identify it because I do have to think about explaining things to people more often (s'part of my job in my gaming lodge), though.
That doesn't mean it was a bad game, of course. It was just designed poorly. Thankfully, they iterated on that fairly well and still managed to produce some amazing material in spite of the flaws.
[SIGPIC]Also, this poster rambles.[/SIGPIC]
PinkSugar, lvl 60 CW.
Baby Cakes, lvl 60 GWF.
*******, lvl 60 TR.
Premium Juicebox, lvl 60 CW.
Pink Exxxtacy, Ranger
There is NO pvp in Neverwinter.
It also took many great GM to "adjust" the rules accordingly or have house rules. That is why D&D survive this long. It does have a base for guideline, but ultimately it is up to the GM and players to make it work. My gaming group change/add/adjust many rules to suit our needs and we have a blast playing each time
The problem with ONLINE version is that, we don't have that option to "bend the rules" to make it fun. It is easy to mold the game to fit 6-10 players+GM because most of the time, it is a group of people that you know. It is VERY hard to balance for a group of 1000. Especially when each person has their own opinion on what direction it should take. Should it follow CORE rules? should there be some level of "fudging" for gameplay? or balance?
It would be cool to see NW's Roadmap, but we don't have luxury, but I can easily presume it is for balance.
While 4e does make balance easier, the old game of D&D there isn't much balance in terms of classes.
High level mages can really sweep the floor on anyone unless the mage is unattentive, ran out of spells, or have lousy contingency in place. Rogue are great to fight in the shadows and assassination (not open combat), but how can you do that on Online? changes... lots and lots of changes.
We can have many core mechanic EASILY on single players and can have overpower unbalance classes, but in MMORPG, that doesn't work well. (We learn this from other MMO that certain OP classes people will play that more. like STO, Escort is king. so more escort than any other class of ships)
Please review my campaign and I'll return the favor.
It is not out of place whatsoever.
It would be when taken in the context of a pnp game of D&D, but this isn't a pnp game of D&D which comes along with a DM that can moderate things on the fly and come up with ways to handle things as needed in a way that is just as much art as the 'science' of the rules. Further, PvP battles in pnp are often more about the role-play than the strict mechanical outcome of the encounter, so there is room for some dramatic license in the moderation of them.
The PvP of this game is presented in a different manner due to the differences in medium between pnp and MMOs. There is no human element to the moderation of battles, and participants in online MMORPG PvP expect at least some balance between classes so they can feel they can challenge other players on a reasonably equal footing. Also, generally the purpose of PvP in MMOs is winning the fight, rather than using the PvP for story telling or character development purposes.