Mmorpgs

[Jon Miller]

camp/level is a lot bigger in AO

JM

[Jon Miller]

of course PvP is the best I ahve seen too

arenas

sectors which are politically up for grabs

anyone who is flagged (you get flagged by attacking flagged people, choosing to be flagged, or attacking city guards)

and most importantly, the huge battles that decide who controls the notum mines (which give bonuses to you and your ORG (Guild) as well as give XP bonuses to your entire side)

Jon Miller

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by General Ludd


I don't really know about CoH, but atleast EQ2 has always said that they've had no plans for PvP - which isn't a surprise, since EQ has always been the posterboy of the camp/level/horde playstyle. But World of Warcraft was advertising PvP as key feature, and they've neglected it. I really don't understand why PvP is such a taboo. Look at Dark Age of Camelot, for instance. Every server has meaningful and plentiful PvP and at the same time has safe zones for the cowards people who want something different to camp monsters in all day long. It's not executed the way I would personally want things(I think the PvP servers in WoW would be set up pretty good if PvP had some meaning to it), but it's been a very succesful format and there are few complaints about it from the players one way or the other. Infact, virtually everyone looks forward to being powerful enough to help out their realm in DAoC, and all the high end players end up fighting PvP the majority of their time rather than camping monsters.

I think the problem is that alot of people hear PvP and think there's going to be a some level 60 guy waiting at the spawn to point to kill them as soon as they start their character. It's probably the ****y EQ PvP servers or the UO free-for-all (which I kind of like, actually, although UO didn't execute it as well as it could of) that have made so many people completely afraid of the term.



Yeah... but I was optimistic for a while there.


The official word is that they have no plans of making a RP-PvP server but will "continue to monitor the situation"

Yeah, I'll be skipping on this WoW. And EQ2.

I'm still tempted by the Roleplay server on the original EQ - it's ruleset is almsot exactly what I'm looking for... too bad it's stuck onto the worst game mechanics ever.

*sigh* Why do MMORPGs always have to suck so?

As I said, it looks like a decent base it there, and all MMORPGs (even DAoC by all accounts) had problems on release. I think WoW will have good PvP in it.

PvP is a strange thing though.........it get so much coverage (essentially because killing monsters can get boring after a while) yet not many games do it well.

[Skanky Burns]

An interesting question is how to do PvP well.

[Jon Miller]

I think it is important to have semiconsensual PvP, or else someway to punish the *******s out there (like in RL they get taken to jail, what could work in game).

Now the game companies want the *******s to play and pay also. So removing their account if they are an ******* won't work. Therefore to limit the *******s, you must have limited PvP (limited PvP also means that you don't really have to ballance the classes for PvP).

Also, in order to encourage PvP there should be reasons to do it. In AO, you can fight over land (which gives you bonuses), get personal titles about how good of PvPer you are (these are for status only), and get access to rare monsters (one of the dragons lives in a PvP enabled dungeon, so first you have to kill the other adventuring party, and than you get to kill the monster, who only spawns once every 18 hours). The first and the last are both things that I think are very interesting, and I wish other games had similiar things.

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

Just thought of another idea. If you are an *******, than you will be chased by bounty hunters. The number and strength of the bounty hunters will depend on your level and how assholish you are. The bounter hunters will be tough, and will provide no loot or XP when killed; they can, however, kill you. This would of course only work if dying was bad.

So basically, how *******s would be kept in check is that they would be dying at inopportune times, and so they would not like it and would not as as *******ish.

Jon Miller

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
An interesting question is how to do PvP well.

Well, that depend son the game of course.


I think Shadowbane did quite well. It's open PvP, people can be "ganked" but that's really the whole idea of the game. If you want protection you join a guild and build a city. There are no lone-wolf 'gankers' because they can't survive alone, so it becomes guilds vs guilds and for the most part it's all group combat.


The game itself wasn't that great, and they could of done alot better. They should of made the city guards that youc an hire much stronger. There should of been resources and more purpose to the cities that you can build, and the world should of been 100 times more interesting than it was, rather than the cut and pasted hunting areas scattered admist deadlands.



If you want less "hardcore" rules, than the PvP servers in WoW are pretty good. If pvp was given a purpose - the ability to capture towns and influence hunting areas in that fashion, or perhaps also be able to capture relics which grant your 'team' bonuses, like in Dark Age of Camelot - another game that did it well, although went overboard in the safe zones in my opinion. (I hear there's been some changes in that department, I don't know what. But from when I played I felt that the frontier zones where too unimportant and small, and that they should either of been exapnded greatly and/or the gatehouse defenses should of been made mortal so that a large raid from an opposing team could theoretically make it into their enemies homeland - and perhaps have soem super power relic in the capitol city, or something.)

[General Ludd]

And of course, the game has to be designed and ballanced with PvP in mind. That's half the problem in most games, I think. The characters just aren't suited for PvP.


Since shadowbane was designed witht he sole purpose of PvP in mind, their classes are well suited for it. The abilities they have are made to counter other character's abilities, and they all have some form of protection - whether it be stealth, flight, teleportation, divine protection, or sprinting. For those time when you are caught unaware and alone by a group of enemies.

[Tassadar500]

What racial abilities compliment the Warlock the most?

[DrSpike]

Btw if anyone cares beta is over. Release date is the 23rd, for those in the US anyway.

[pg]

If you want PVP play a FPS or RTS, or hell even a TBS. Why do people want PVP in an MMORPG? If you make PVP in an MMORPG with any cool features it seems to not work at all. PVP does not work in a persistant world if by killing you gain more power.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Lord Nuclear
What racial abilities compliment the Warlock the most?

I haven't played a warlock so it's hard for me to say, but I would guess either gnomes humans or orcs.


Gnomes for the increased intelligence. The ability to break a root or snare doesn't hurt either, but that's not really specific to warlocks.

Humans for the increased spirit. The ability to increase chances of seeing a stealthed player would also help in PvP since rogues are probably the biggest danger to a spellcaster.

Orcs for the increased pet damage. And a resistance (ability to break?) stuns and knocks again doesn't hurt.

[DinoDoc]

Can anyone explain why Cryptic felt it necessary to wipe the 5th Column completely out of existance (to the point where they remove all in game references to them in game) in adavnce of the Eurocom release of City of Heroes?

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Can anyone explain why Cryptic felt it necessary to wipe the 5th Column completely out of existance (to the point where they remove all in game references to them in game) in adavnce of the Eurocom release of City of Heroes?

Yeah it's stupid, they were cool villains, and the Ubelmann story arc was probably the best I've played.

However in this world of political correctness it was deemed they were too similar to Nazis.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by DrSpike
However in this world of political correctness it was deemed they were too similar to Nazis.

I'll tell you why that is crap from a video game standpoint and a comic book standpoint. 1) Return to Castle Wolfenstien was allowed to be sold in Germany of all places with only minor changes (Nothing as drastic as this!) 2) The Red Skull and other honest to God actual Nazi villians are still running around in the Marvel Universe.