What if instead of peace and love overtaking the quadrant, things took a different path. Starting with the Romulans. What if instead of choosing to align with the Federation or Klingon empire, you chose to either join the hippie commune (Romulan republic) on New Romulus, receiving aid from the Federation or join the Tal Shiar in thier quest to rebuild the Romulan Star empire, with the backing of the Klingons (the enemy of my enemy).
What if this backing of different sides in the Romulan situation widened the rift between the two major powers? What if this continued on in other factions? Car-hippians/Bajorans vs True Way/Dominion. Distant Originasts vs Indoctrinators and so on.
What if this was represented in game by adding PvEvP zones and missions with new seasons? Something different than Ker'rat. Take Breach, for example. What if there were two teams from opposing sides? Maybe instead of just trying to make the place go boom, they are trying to steal plans/technology/Raptor eggs (they bred Raptors!). What if these two teams were running the same mission, but on different sides of the map?
What if there was a chance to receive three rewards for this mission? The main reward would be for entering and completing it. Two optional rewards would be for completing the primary mission first and for the team that escapes first. Imagine that when one team finishes the primary mission (and collects that "optional"), both teams are thrown together for the escape scene and an all out race/brawl back to the breach. The team with the first ship out escapes with the goods and the final optional.
What if for a PvEvP adventure zone, each faction started out on different sides of the zone and battled through Voth (for example) and objectives until both sides met in a final Battle Royal between all players in the zone?
Or something.
Comments
What if, all that happens but in the mirror universe not prime.
What if, we had an FE arc that put us in the MU for a while.....
Oh wait that's what we're doing.
+1 this idea.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Not so much an argument. Just thinking out loud, so to speak. Essentially about PvP expanding beyond the basic Team Death Match and how it might be beneficial to the game.
But yeah, also I would really rather be with the Tal Shiar, than the hippies.
That's not "thinking out loud" though, that's full-on pipe dreaming.
Besides, Rule 35: peace is good for business
It's too late to do anything with PvP in STO.
And PvEvP will not work in STO, given that this isn't an open environment like Sandbox MMOs. PvPers in STO will just attack people attempting the PvE and just creating a mess, which will lead to people complaining and QQ talk. And then you have the massive imbalance that PvP has become over the years that if you start throwing in PvErs, it would be a disaster. Within days, such a zone would become a wasteland as people are chased away from content.
PvEvP could most certainly work in STO because it's not an open sandbox environment. If that were the case, then yes people could just go around killing each other. Think about the examples I gave. In both cases, it's the PvE that will be the most rewarding, with PvP offering both a bit of additional reward and a bit of excitement. Not to mention both require going through PvE to get to PvP.
But those are just a couple of options. I've played games that were player vs player, team vs team in which killing was not the primary goal. Kills were not even displayed. There's many ways PvP can become more mainstream in STO and if done correctly, it can be incredibly fun and do what Cryptic wants most. To keep people logged in, playing and spending money.
As for "PvPer" slaughters and balance issues, I believe a larger influx of "average" players would probably help both those issues. If most everyone is participating in some form of PvP, then I would think something like balance would take on a bit more importance.