What you are asking for is a silly thing to ask for. You shouldn't get to read my mind when I hold down the force attack button combo. The flagging system in place should be fine enough.
Well knowing if someone wishes to PvP allows me to avoid PvEers if they don't want to fight, and it also let's me know when I'm at risk of corruption so I can choose to intentionally take corruption or avoid it depending on the situation. Right now, it's a risk attacking anyone because you don't know if they'll fight back, if they have their flag on at all, how much HP they have and how many attacks you might get in before they die. The idea apparently just goes along with the Risk vs Reward that the rest of the game is built on and I get that, but if I'm risking something, I should at least know that going in so I can make an informed decision. As the system is right now, I have no idea what will happen if I choose to attack someone.
But ultimately you don't have the right to know what another person is thinking unless they announce it to you. This is a game of actions = consequences. If you decide to attack another player you become a combatant, if you kill a non-combatant you become corrupted. There is no need for another visual that shows if a player wants to hit other players as it doesnt make sense for you to ever know that information.
This is the same game that will not tell you the healthiness of other players to make it harder for people to judge on whether they will attack them or not.
I cant believe you are getting so confused.
If you hit a player and he doesnt hit you back STOP hitting.
Here is the visual https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DeKhbtog_pI (replace white with green for no combatant).
2
Options
akabearMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
@George Black awesome, that brought back memories and explained it more clearly than any amount of text seems to have done. Very clear, and perhaps AoC will be very similar to the description.
Apart from reducing your karma by xp (most likely) or dying (less likely) the next part will be dealing with the pks you have by quest.
In L2 the sin eater quest was what you did after you had a pk count to reduce your pks. From memory, the quest took about 30-60min to do and reduced your pk count randomly down from 1-5 pks. I
A fundamental difference I see in going red in AoC from L2, will be that there is no fast travel.
To avoid Pvp or Pk, fast travel teleport was awesome to increase your chances of not dying..To teleport just before you lose and lived to fight another day. Similarly if red, there is no fast teleport back to clan hall.
(or is there?)
For drops when red, many would load up their inventory with misc items so to increase the chance of a non-essential item dropping rather than important.
I hope in Aoc the sin eater quest will be a lot harder. This will give more gravity to peoples choices, and more meaningful activities to those that want to redeem themselves.
These are steps to help prevent griefing.
1
Options
akabearMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited December 2020
If there is no instant teleport back to safety and limited refuge when red, then that in itself with bring gravity to the pk choice.
But instant teleport also helped players escape being pk`d or killed in unfair fights and without it, dying might have greater gravity than L2.
If there is no instant teleport back to safety and limited refuge when red, then that in itself with bring gravity to the pk choice.
But instant teleport also helped players escape being pk`d or killed in unfair fights and without it, dying might have greater gravity than L2.
When you die as a combatant or non combatant you go to some sort of waypoint or spawning area. When you die as a corrupted player you spawn randomly near where your death was instead. Meaning that they actually advocate griefing corrupted players =D
I also don't think people are going to be constantly griefed. Oh it will happen, just not every second of the day. If you get jumped just let others know and I'm sure there will be bounty hunters more than willing to come avenge your death.
And if you are worried about it, DON'T go out alone. Really simple rule. Find a group coop to go farm an area and support each other. Nothing deters a ganker more than uneven odds against them.
This.
Just because this thread has people waving their epeens around about how they will happily take out anyone within their line of sight, doesn't automatically mean that it will play out that way in practice and the game turn into a first person shooter with everyone attacking each other on sight.
There will of course be players out to gank anyone they come across for many different reasons.
But...
There will also be just as many players eager to hunt corrupted players down.
There will also be PvE players willing to fight back against such players on a non-combatants behalf if the game allows it.
There will also be guild mates eager to retaliate against such players.
The game won't necessarily be easy for players who kill without cause. They will be remembered for their actions, earn a reputation, which will make it harder to find a favourable fight, as their enemies grow in number, victims start to band together for protection and players start reporting any sightings of them over chat to warn everyone of their presence. Some players will probably even start baiting such attacks, luring them into surprise ambushes.
In short, there will be more than just corruption to take into consideration when it comes to killing non-combatants, and as each Node community develops, the player base themselves will likely band together to create additional deterrents.
0
Options
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited December 2020
It's not players who will be remembered for their Corrupted actions, just characters.
Corrupted characters can band together, too.
Being lured into surprise ambushes would be part of the fun.
Well I think most of the PvP in the game is of an organized fashion and of those, there are an insane amount of types - caravans, guild wars, node wars, castle sieges, etc.
Well while I don't disagree with you consider that you're in a group that goes out looking for Caravan's to raid/attack. If you find no Caravan's it's unlikely you're just going to migrate to a node siege or guild war if it wasn't already taking place... so now what does the the group do? Do you not expect they would look for pvp in the hunting grounds?
Think about the scope of potential groups roaming en route to sieges - guilds of 300 members, alliances of 1200 members is it not unlikely you would pass other guilds/groups en route before entering any sort of "siege" mechanic to remove the corruption system from the groups? Players are going to get flat wiped out if they're out of position or take a healthy dose of fire from these moving armies.
I'm expecting the objective based pvp to lead to group pvp in advance or post any of the objective based events. These large groups that are taking part in Caravans, guild wars, Sieges etc they all have to get to and fro it's likely they will move in groups/raid parties/mass - it's going to be the double edge to the lack of fast travel. If i'm walking 3 nodes over to get back to my home node damn sure planning on fighting on my way back.
Right now we have no idea if Caravan's will have a limit on the defending or attacking side (player totals) if there is a limit it seems reasonable that if a guild, alliance, node or castle has additional members that want to participate they will just trail or advance the Caravan which means players will be fighting outside of the Caravan system. Would it not possibly make sense for guilds to have an envoy outside of the Caravan to advance it for scouting, to push other people out of it's path, to start fights/distract other groups?
So yes while you're correct there will be "plenty of pvp" outside of the corruption system to partake in, does it really matter if it's the "primary" or not?
Tyrantor
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
What you are asking for is a silly thing to ask for. You shouldn't get to read my mind when I hold down the force attack button combo. The flagging system in place should be fine enough.
Well knowing if someone wishes to PvP allows me to avoid PvEers if they don't want to fight, and it also let's me know when I'm at risk of corruption so I can choose to intentionally take corruption or avoid it depending on the situation. Right now, it's a risk attacking anyone because you don't know if they'll fight back, if they have their flag on at all, how much HP they have and how many attacks you might get in before they die. The idea apparently just goes along with the Risk vs Reward that the rest of the game is built on and I get that, but if I'm risking something, I should at least know that going in so I can make an informed decision. As the system is right now, I have no idea what will happen if I choose to attack someone.
That was the point in my question on the stream to allow manual flagging so those of us who don't give a shit about killing some random PvErs but if everyone's gotta suffer through non-combatant flagging then I guess all the PvErs get to live with that reality. Steven seems intent on hunting ground pvp always having corruption consequences and trying to funnel the pvpers into the objective based pvp... I see it as a two way street however and under the current design personally I think the people who don't like pvp at all are due to suffer the most. I'll eat more corruption under the current flagging system, but that doesn't really matter to me since it seems likely to lead to further PvP which ultimately is the entire point of me wanting manual flagging anyway.
Tyrantor
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
That was the point in my question on the stream to allow manual flagging so those of us who don't give a shit about killing some random PvErs
To be honest, I'm not entirely sure they understood the question you were asking. But, hey ho.
I dunno man Jeff reiterated it well when he said "I thought we could essentially live purple" or some variation of that phrase. Which is ultimately the thought process here.... if I roll out in a group in-between what ever objective i'm doing PvP or even PvE I would plan to fight - just my mentality. I'd prefer to start every fight as a combatant or encourage a fight being combatant. I don't see the "advantage" that Steven does by "landing the first attack" especially if that said attack could then result in corruption. The "risk" associated with pvp should be the fact you can die not the fact you can go corrupt especially in scenarios where grief is not involved.... but hey here we are and let's see this play out.
Tyrantor
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
The traditional way to obviously avoid non-consensual PvP combat is to play on a PvE-Only server.
Players who typically play on PvP servers seem to think the Corruption mechanic is too harsh.
Players who typically play on PvE-Only servers seem to think the Corruption mechanic is not harsh enough.
We will have to play to truly know.
I didnt see any "PvE-Only" server options, but if there are, then that would take away all of my concerns, of course. The comments along the line of "if you dont like PvP then don't play" are self-defeating insofar as one is producing a game to actually be successful as a business. if you are making a bit of art, then I agree it doesn't matter one bit if it's profitable or not, since most people will simply take your advice and not play it at all.
As to PvP not being niche; the numbers simply don't bear that out (and I recommend the studies by Nick Yee, too), but it also makes sense to cater to that 20% of players in any game system in order to increase revenues by that amount, right? I have no bones with incorporating "components" of PvP opportunities into PvE games I play - I just want people who are not PvP to always be able to avoid those that are, and to be able to go about their business without any forced PvP by some jerk who wont leave them alone (and I also appreciate the PvPers who are not interested in griefing/non-consensual interacting with PvE folks, and who have interesting ideas on that - so thanks, Leiloni).
There's simply no reason to want to engage PvE players who do not want to be engaged in PvP other than to grief, and getting mad because they insulted your mom, or dont play the way you think they should also do not count as good reasons to allow that sort of abuse.
But, we have months to see how they sort it out, and I appreciate the forums being here to engender some discussion, and to present different ideas and insights to the Devs.
Hummm, don't really agree you are "forcing" PvP on anyone. Once you have agreed to play the game, you have already given your consent to PvP. Period, end of story. It's an accepted part of how the meta of the game itself functions. If you venture out into the world, encountering hostile players is one of the accepted risks. If that's something you just can't handle, please don't play AoC.
If the devs did not consider it forcing, there would be no penalty for non-consensual PvP combat.
Players who don't consider the Corruption mechanic to be enough of a deterrent for non-consensual PvP combat won't play. And then we will have to see if there is enough of a playerbase left to support the game without changes or whether there will be significant changes - as there have been with the New World PvP combat design.
Not really sure what non-consensual PvP has to do with being "forced". The corruption mechanic is there because the Devs understand that if it were not so, the game would turn into a toxic mess like NWs original build turned into. You might not want to be ganked but it IS part of how the game was designed that players will be attacking other players. You sign up to play the game and you are accepting the PvP risk whether you like it or not. You won't be able to do much of anything in the game if you don't accept that risk, so yes, you could stay in a city and log out when it's under siege but it will be very boring for you.
You cannot be forced to do something you already agreed would be the meta of the freakin' game. It's like signing up to be a computer tech and then claiming you are being "forced" to sit at a computer terminal all day long.
Last...PvP is not "niche" as you put it. Just look at a game like EVE or even WoW. You don't spend all that time re-gearing every expansion just to do nothing. I guess you could but that seems pointless. I can name a near endless string of MMOs with PvP as a big part of the game. Think about it.
EVE is a niche, PvP-centric MMORPG - an exception rather than the rule. WoW is not a PvP-centric MMORPG.
If open-world PvP weren't niche, New World would not have changed tack to focus on PvE and...Shadowbane would be just as popular now as EQ or WoW.[/quote]
EVE might not be the largest game out there but it has been running since 2003 and has a consistent active playerbase of 300k players.
Last time I played WoW there were things called PvP servers. Sounds pretty PvP centric to me and I played on one and there was plenty of PvPing in the open world. This might not be the case anymore but when it was created they had PvP built into it as a basic part of the game.
Then there is ESO that has been going strong with over 1 mil active players. What about GW2 and even DAoC (that is still around)? I could go on and on but the point is, Devs build these MMOs with PvP in mind because that's what most of the players want, not a PvE only game.
New World changed tack because of their flawed thought process of how PvP should work, had nothing to do with being a niche playerbase. The game 'was' going to be PvP centered but the devs discovered just how toxic players can be if left to govern themselves. It became lord of the flies basically.
LOL Shadowbane, I PLAYED SB from day 1 for about a year. Are implying it would have been a monster hit if it had not been PvP centered? Because I can attest to the fact it failed largely because of poor game design and lack of content. I journeyed out into the 'world' past the zones close to the cities and you know what I found? Literally nothing.....blank featureless plains of nothing, no flora, no fauna, nothing. I ran clear across the world and it was all like that. Plus once you reached close to cap level there was zero mobs to level up on. you have to go out into the swamps and fight lizard men for poor exp since they were the highest mobs but still 5 levels below you. The only thing to do WAS PvP (and build cities).
2
Options
mcstackersonMember, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One
The traditional way to obviously avoid non-consensual PvP combat is to play on a PvE-Only server.
Players who typically play on PvP servers seem to think the Corruption mechanic is too harsh.
Players who typically play on PvE-Only servers seem to think the Corruption mechanic is not harsh enough.
We will have to play to truly know.
I didnt see any "PvE-Only" server options, but if there are, then that would take away all of my concerns, of course. The comments along the line of "if you dont like PvP then don't play" are self-defeating insofar as one is producing a game to actually be successful as a business. if you are making a bit of art, then I agree it doesn't matter one bit if it's profitable or not, since most people will simply take your advice and not play it at all.
As to PvP not being niche; the numbers simply don't bear that out (and I recommend the studies by Nick Yee, too), but it also makes sense to cater to that 20% of players in any game system in order to increase revenues by that amount, right? I have no bones with incorporating "components" of PvP opportunities into PvE games I play - I just want people who are not PvP to always be able to avoid those that are, and to be able to go about their business without any forced PvP by some jerk who wont leave them alone (and I also appreciate the PvPers who are not interested in griefing/non-consensual interacting with PvE folks, and who have interesting ideas on that - so thanks, Leiloni).
There's simply no reason to want to engage PvE players who do not want to be engaged in PvP other than to grief, and getting mad because they insulted your mom, or dont play the way you think they should also do not count as good reasons to allow that sort of abuse.
But, we have months to see how they sort it out, and I appreciate the forums being here to engender some discussion, and to present different ideas and insights to the Devs.
Just because they are trying to make a profit, doesn't mean it's not art. Do you not consider most music art? Should all musicians make pop music? Is it impossible for musicians to make money if they don't make pop?
The most popular games are PvP game i.e. fortnite, Lol, CoD, Overwatch, etc. The numbers definitely do show that they are popular. Just because a Pvp MMO hasn't been as successful as the current games on the market, doesn't mean it couldn't be.
Just because a popular western pvp mmo hasn't been made before doesn't mean it can't be made and be popular. We just got a whole new genre with BRs recently which weren't popular until someone finally made a good one.
There will be plenty for pve players. This is a pvx game after all and most, if not all, resources and methods of progression are through pve. Just because someone is a pve player, doesn't mean they are intolerant of pvp. It is the people who are intolerant of pvp, the ones who through tantrums and freak out when they die to someone, who might not enjoy this game as much.
Don't conflate pve players with those who are intolerant of pvp.
0
Options
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited December 2020
Caravan raids happen in the hunting grounds.
Seems like a group gathered to raid caravans is not going to find much fun attacking a couple of folks minding their own business in the "hunting grounds".
Any time a group wants to engage in PvP combat, some form of castle siege content will be available...and will likely involve caravans.
0
Options
mcstackersonMember, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Caravan raids happen in the hunting grounds.
Seems like a group gathered to raid caravans are not going to find much fun attacking a couple of folks minding their own business.
Any time a group wants to engage in PvP combat, some form of castle siege content will be available...and will likely involve caravans.
Pretty sure castle sieges are a weekly thing and even then, it's at a certain time of day. Not a reliable way to pvp in the open world. It's also a large scale event and probably not the best for someone who wants to solo or small group.
Its pretty shocking to me that people here are asking for a pve server when the game design entirely revolves around player vs player conflict. Its one of the largest pillars of the game and you wanna throw it out the window?
This is the part where I say, "go play another game then" right?
Its pretty shocking to me that people here are asking for a pve server when the game design entirely revolves around player vs player conflict. Its one of the largest pillars of the game and you wanna throw it out the window?
This is the part where I say, "go play another game then" right?
Don't need to tell them to go play another game, just tell them to wait, keep an open mind, and see if it's for them. There will be plenty of pve content for them to do so it will fall on how they feel about the pvp portion once they get there hands on the game.
It's going to be a shift for a lot of western players who haven't played a game where pvp plays a role in the open world.
That was the point in my question on the stream to allow manual flagging so those of us who don't give a shit about killing some random PvErs
To be honest, I'm not entirely sure they understood the question you were asking. But, hey ho.
I dunno man Jeff reiterated it well when he said "I thought we could essentially live purple" or some variation of that phrase. Which is ultimately the thought process here.... if I roll out in a group in-between what ever objective i'm doing PvP or even PvE I would plan to fight - just my mentality. I'd prefer to start every fight as a combatant or encourage a fight being combatant. I don't see the "advantage" that Steven does by "landing the first attack" especially if that said attack could then result in corruption. The "risk" associated with pvp should be the fact you can die not the fact you can go corrupt especially in scenarios where grief is not involved.... but hey here we are and let's see this play out.
Well I think the important difference here is to remember that it's a two part system. So you have to flag up first before you're even capable of PvP at all. Then the second part is turning purple after attacking someone.
So you can live in a constant state of "PvP=On" and really that's all that matters. Purple gives you extra benefits for deciding to fight someone, and those half death benefits are HUGE. So it wouldn't make a ton of sense to allow people to be Combatant all the time because they'd be at a massive advantage over PvE only players. But we do still need to know who has flagged but is not yet purple.
So what really needs to happen is they add a fourth color into the system. The way I see it is this -
White - average PvE player, not flagged to allow PvP combat. If you attack them, you get Corruption. Green - player who has their PvP flag turned on but is not in PvP combat or hasn't been recently. If you attack them, you're both purple/combatant while fighting and this is a consensual fight, no corruption gained. Of course they can still decide not to attack back at all and they'd still give you corruption, but let's just assume it's unlikely and they'll get a bad rep for doing so.
These will both fall into the "Non-Combatant" death penalty category (unless in a PvP fight of course at which point the color changes anyway).
Then we have the other two being the same - Purple - Combatant who has attacked another player, either currently in combat or recently. 50% death penalties Red - Corrupted
So if we have White vs Green names, at least we know going in who is likely to fight us back, and is essentially already "opting-in" to PvP combat. I think letting people turn off the ability to attack other players makes sense for this game - for anyone who doesn't want to accidentally hit another player and get into PvP, and even more so for those with action combat heavy or AoE heavy builds they may want this. Especially for those who are worried about griefing associated with another player "forcing" them into PvP - I've seen a TON of discussions about this so it is a concern for many. The flag ensures that doesn't happen. But, we do need to know who is flagged and who is not so we can make informed PvP decisions. Thus, White vs Green names.
0
Options
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Last time I played WoW there were things called PvP servers. Sounds pretty PvP centric to me and I played on one and there was plenty of PvPing in the open world. This might not be the case anymore but when it was created they had PvP built into it as a basic part of the game.
Uh. No having PvP servers in addition to PvE servers does not make a game PvP-centric.
For most of its history, WoW has had a significantly larger PvE server presence than PvP server presence.
When I checked last week, it currently appears to be about evenly split...with PvE servers a bit ahead.
Having PvP as part of the gameplay does not make a game PvP-centric.
Then there is ESO that has been going strong with over 1 mil active players. What about GW2 and even DAoC (that is still around)? I could go on and on but the point is, Devs build these MMOs with PvP in mind because that's what most of the players want, not a PvE only game.
[Question]
Is ESO a PvP-centric game?
"No not at all, although there is cyrodil and battlegrounds.. the majority of the game is its story and large amount of things that can be done solo. alot of group dungeons and trials also... "
"ESO's PvP was definitely a huge, if not the biggest attraction of ESO's release. 600 v 600 v 600 R v R v R which ended up being really fucking cool but also hard for the game to handle. ESO has been riddled with some form of performance issue and even today where I think it's a 150 cap per region in Cyrodiil, the performance issues still happen, but it's less to do with overcrowding in one region.
Despite that being said, the PvP is still fun, but PvP is also not that big an attraction for MMOs. Battlegrounds are a thing though but doesn't really feel that rewarding. Winning in BGs doesn't feel as good as like winning a game of League or CS:GO or R6 for example."
New World changed tack because of their flawed thought process of how PvP should work, had nothing to do with being a niche playerbase. The game 'was' going to be PvP centered but the devs discovered just how toxic players can be if left to govern themselves. It became lord of the flies basically.
LOL Shadowbane, I PLAYED SB from day 1 for about a year. Are implying it would have been a monster hit if it had not been PvP centered? Because I can attest to the fact it failed largely because of poor game design and lack of content. I journeyed out into the 'world' past the zones close to the cities and you know what I found? Literally nothing.....blank featureless plains of nothing, no flora, no fauna, nothing. I ran clear across the world and it was all like that. Plus once you reached close to cap level there was zero mobs to level up on. you have to go out into the swamps and fight lizard men for poor exp since they were the highest mobs but still 5 levels below you. The only thing to do WAS PvP (and build cities).
Exactly. The only thing there was to do is PvP. The motto was: Play To Crush. No way to know if it could have been a hit if it had not been PvP-centered because the entire focus of the game was PvP.
And it failed. Because most successful MMORPGs are PvE-centric or, at least cater to both PvPers and PvEers.
Caravan raids happen in the hunting grounds.
Seems like a group gathered to raid caravans is not going to find much fun attacking a couple of folks minding their own business in the "hunting grounds".
Any time a group wants to engage in PvP combat, some form of castle siege content will be available...and will likely involve caravans.
What reasons do you have to consider this, group(s) of players actively looking to pvp already in a hunting ground the most probable response is going to be to find players and then initiate the pvp corruption or not. I'd probably suggest my group go raid a dungeon and clear that out... I mean if we can't clear a Caravan damn sure going to clear something for my time.
Tyrantor
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
So you can live in a constant state of "PvP=On" and really that's all that matters. Purple gives you extra benefits for deciding to fight someone, and those half death benefits are HUGE. So it wouldn't make a ton of sense to allow people to be Combatant all the time because they'd be at a massive advantage over PvE only players. But we do still need to know who has flagged but is not yet purple.
I disagree entirely about it being an advantage over anyone. Per Steven's own words "Flagging purple is going to make everyone want to jump you" if that is true there would be no advantage to being purple if it resulted in constantly getting attacked if you were the PVE only player. How is that not obvious?
Tyrantor
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
0
Options
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Um. I didn't say anything like, "This is the only thing groups wanting to raid a caravan will want to do if they can't find a caravan."
You very well might want to go raid a dungeon. Dungeon raids are a PvE experience.
I guess from what you write, you think that dungeons will always be filled with rival groups you can PvP.
What I've said is that there will always be Castle siege content to participate in (once Castles are occupied by player characters). That's a guarantee because each week the Castle owners have to build defenses leading up to the actual monthly siege to try to take over ownership. And rivals will want to make sure those defenses aren't built each week so that the monthly Castle siege is easier to attack.
Finding a dungeon to raid has no guarantee there will be rival groups.
Most often, the result will be a PvE raid encounter rather than a PvP encounter.
0
Options
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Well I think the important difference here is to remember that it's a two part system. So you have to flag up first before you're even capable of PvP at all. Then the second part is turning purple after attacking someone.
No. You don't really flag up first.
The first thing you do is hit CTRL or ALT to turn your attack into a PvP attack.
Once that attack hits the target, the attacker turns purple.
I don't really now what you mean by living in a constant state of PvP=On.
That is true if you are Corrupted and choose not to rid yourself of Corruption.
If you are a combatant, you will change from purple back to green shortly after you stop engaging in PvP attacks. The default state is green.
There is no need for a 4th color.
As has been said already...if the person you attack does not attack you back, then you know they aren't interested in PvP combat.
If you want a guarantee that you won't gain Corruption from PvP combat, go find a caravan to attack/defend or go to a Castle to help or hinder building defenses.
Oh I don't expect dungeons to be full of PvP players by any measure, I mean some of them should be of course but the point I was making, is this is when I'll be creating my own pvp. Corruption resulting or not. If the hunting grounds doesn't have "purple" players and I just have to assume everyone has the same potential for not fighting back - I'm going to the location where someone has the most to lose and I have the most to gain from a loot perspective.
Tyrantor
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
So you can live in a constant state of "PvP=On" and really that's all that matters. Purple gives you extra benefits for deciding to fight someone, and those half death benefits are HUGE. So it wouldn't make a ton of sense to allow people to be Combatant all the time because they'd be at a massive advantage over PvE only players. But we do still need to know who has flagged but is not yet purple.
I disagree entirely about it being an advantage over anyone. Per Steven's own words "Flagging purple is going to make everyone want to jump you" if that is true there would be no advantage to being purple if it resulted in constantly getting attacked if you were the PVE only player. How is that not obvious?
Well you'd only be purple if you were recently in a fight or are currently in a fight. The status disappears quickly, so the window for someone else to attack you while in that state is short. Even so, if they do attack you, then they'd also turn purple and you'd be on an even playing field. If you're risking death - and only 1/2 death penalties at that - then your attacker is also taking the very same risks you are.
Well I think the important difference here is to remember that it's a two part system. So you have to flag up first before you're even capable of PvP at all. Then the second part is turning purple after attacking someone.
No. You don't really flag up first.
The first thing you do is hit CTRL or ALT to turn your attack into a PvP attack.
Once that attack hits the target, the attacker turns purple.
I don't really now what you mean by living in a constant state of PvP=On.
That is true if you are Corrupted and choose not to rid yourself of Corruption.
If you are a combatant, you will change from purple back to green shortly after you stop engaging in PvP attacks. The default state is green.
There is no need for a 4th color.
As has been said already...if the person you attack does not attack you back, then you know they aren't interested in PvP combat.
If you want a guarantee that you won't gain Corruption from PvP combat, go find a caravan to attack/defend or go to a Castle to help or hinder building defenses.
Both Steven and Jeffrey in the most recent livestream mentioned Ctrl+F being the way to allow your character to hit other players. Then the second part is actually landing an attack that turns you purple. So it sounds like you have a toggle, Ctrl +F, that let's you attack other players but you're still green while in that state. So you'll have two types of green players out there - those who have not activated Ctrl+F (and thus would not be capable of attacking back in PvP until they activated that), and may or may not decide to attack back if you hit them, and those who live in Ctrl+F who likely will decide to fight back.
Second question you asked - the way they describe it, it sounds like you can live in a state of Ctrl+F, meaning live in a state where you're capable of attacking other players. Compare this to PvE only players who never activate Ctrl+F, and are essentially living in a PvE only state, where their only PvP combat is being PKed and turning their opponent red.
Now following this logic of two very distinct groups of "green" players, would you not want to know who is running around with Ctrl+F activated, and who is not?
As for the idea that "well you can hit a person once and wait to see if they attack back" - that's just not realistic. PvP is very fast paced, often involves more than just a simple 1v1, and your tactics would have to change drastically to allow for such an artificial wait period before continuing a fight. Imagining that actually play out in reality is the most absurd thing I've ever heard.
Best case scenario is someone gets in several attacks before it occurs to them the opponent isn't fighting back, and you better hope the person has enough HP and defenses that that hasn't yet killed them - and in a game mode like PKing, where killing someone as fast as possible is your goal, the outlook here is not good. It's just not a viable scenario to "wait to see if they attack back". If I am going to get corruption, I should know ahead of time it's a likely outcome so I can choose to accept it or avoid it. As it is right now, you're just rolling the dice every time you PK someone.
As another poster said, the current system encourages more griefing, not less. If I know who doesn't want to PvP, I can avoid those PvErs. As it is right now, they're going to get ganked left and right because none of us knows who they are until they're half or fully dead.
You continue to use terms like "niche" and "PvP centric" without any basis for qualifying what either actually means in your opinion.
From my perspective, a game like EVE is NOT niche. Why? Because other than WoW, the vast majority of MMOs today don't have a huge playerbase. WoW has been and probably always will be an anomaly.
If it was more like 50-100k, that is more niche imho. 300k and going strong for SEVENTEEN years proves a good number of people want to PvP.
I consider a game PvP centric when PvP mechanics are an important part of the world. Doesn't mean 100% and can even be 50%. So in my eyes the WoW PvP servers ARE PvP centric (not to mention all the BGs which are PvP as well).
Another good example of a PvP centric game would be DAoC. Not a single person would deny that but yet it also has a huge amount of PvE content and large areas where you were safe from RvR. There were even complete PvE dungeons/high level raids not to mention an entire expansion devoted to PvE (all to grind for gear for RvR).
And your ESO links are RANDOM people stating it's not a PvP centered game, which holds zero weight as official. Just random opinions, which are a dime a dozen. I'm sure I can find plenty of other opinions that would disagree with your cherry picked ones. Find me a link to a Dev that will claim ESO is a PvE game and I may listen. However, by my definition, ESO is a PvP centered game because it revolves around Cyrodiil. Just like DAoC, it has completely safe areas to PvE and raids, etc but at it's core, if you aren't PvPing you are missing out on the game meta....imho. I played ESO for nearly 4 years and in my opinion it is a PvP game.
As I said about SB, it didn't fail because all there was to do was PvP, it failed because it was a horribly under-cooked game released way too soon and never finished. It was also hacked multiple times which didn't help. The PvP was great at times but it failed due to it being a terrible game overall.
AoC is considered PvP centeric but yet there is a TON of PvE content as well. It just so happens the backdrop for all that PvE content allows for PvP interaction most of the time.
I would be interested to know about this vast amount of highly successful PvE only MMOs though. By that I mean MMOs with sustained 1 mil + subs and have survived more than a couple years.
When I made this topic I wanted to show how many people are strange to the concept of a collaborative open world game. Collaborations bring rivalries and conflicts. Real player interactions. Not an NPC driven game.
A simple question was asked "why would you PK?" and the conditioned players from years on themepark story driven mmos, with optional raiding, optional battlegrounds, isolsted instanced gameplay thought "why would I grief somebody? I cant think of ANY reason to PK. If some1 PKs me that player is a griefer".
No matter. The latest dev update reiterated that AoC has a vision which will stick to.
Comments
But ultimately you don't have the right to know what another person is thinking unless they announce it to you. This is a game of actions = consequences. If you decide to attack another player you become a combatant, if you kill a non-combatant you become corrupted. There is no need for another visual that shows if a player wants to hit other players as it doesnt make sense for you to ever know that information.
This is the same game that will not tell you the healthiness of other players to make it harder for people to judge on whether they will attack them or not.
If you hit a player and he doesnt hit you back STOP hitting.
Here is the visual
Apart from reducing your karma by xp (most likely) or dying (less likely) the next part will be dealing with the pks you have by quest.
In L2 the sin eater quest was what you did after you had a pk count to reduce your pks. From memory, the quest took about 30-60min to do and reduced your pk count randomly down from 1-5 pks. I
A fundamental difference I see in going red in AoC from L2, will be that there is no fast travel.
To avoid Pvp or Pk, fast travel teleport was awesome to increase your chances of not dying..To teleport just before you lose and lived to fight another day. Similarly if red, there is no fast teleport back to clan hall.
(or is there?)
For drops when red, many would load up their inventory with misc items so to increase the chance of a non-essential item dropping rather than important.
These are steps to help prevent griefing.
But instant teleport also helped players escape being pk`d or killed in unfair fights and without it, dying might have greater gravity than L2.
When you die as a combatant or non combatant you go to some sort of waypoint or spawning area. When you die as a corrupted player you spawn randomly near where your death was instead. Meaning that they actually advocate griefing corrupted players =D
Just because this thread has people waving their epeens around about how they will happily take out anyone within their line of sight, doesn't automatically mean that it will play out that way in practice and the game turn into a first person shooter with everyone attacking each other on sight.
There will of course be players out to gank anyone they come across for many different reasons.
But...
There will also be just as many players eager to hunt corrupted players down.
There will also be PvE players willing to fight back against such players on a non-combatants behalf if the game allows it.
There will also be guild mates eager to retaliate against such players.
The game won't necessarily be easy for players who kill without cause. They will be remembered for their actions, earn a reputation, which will make it harder to find a favourable fight, as their enemies grow in number, victims start to band together for protection and players start reporting any sightings of them over chat to warn everyone of their presence. Some players will probably even start baiting such attacks, luring them into surprise ambushes.
In short, there will be more than just corruption to take into consideration when it comes to killing non-combatants, and as each Node community develops, the player base themselves will likely band together to create additional deterrents.
Corrupted characters can band together, too.
Being lured into surprise ambushes would be part of the fun.
Well while I don't disagree with you consider that you're in a group that goes out looking for Caravan's to raid/attack. If you find no Caravan's it's unlikely you're just going to migrate to a node siege or guild war if it wasn't already taking place... so now what does the the group do? Do you not expect they would look for pvp in the hunting grounds?
Think about the scope of potential groups roaming en route to sieges - guilds of 300 members, alliances of 1200 members is it not unlikely you would pass other guilds/groups en route before entering any sort of "siege" mechanic to remove the corruption system from the groups? Players are going to get flat wiped out if they're out of position or take a healthy dose of fire from these moving armies.
I'm expecting the objective based pvp to lead to group pvp in advance or post any of the objective based events. These large groups that are taking part in Caravans, guild wars, Sieges etc they all have to get to and fro it's likely they will move in groups/raid parties/mass - it's going to be the double edge to the lack of fast travel. If i'm walking 3 nodes over to get back to my home node damn sure planning on fighting on my way back.
Right now we have no idea if Caravan's will have a limit on the defending or attacking side (player totals) if there is a limit it seems reasonable that if a guild, alliance, node or castle has additional members that want to participate they will just trail or advance the Caravan which means players will be fighting outside of the Caravan system. Would it not possibly make sense for guilds to have an envoy outside of the Caravan to advance it for scouting, to push other people out of it's path, to start fights/distract other groups?
So yes while you're correct there will be "plenty of pvp" outside of the corruption system to partake in, does it really matter if it's the "primary" or not?
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
That was the point in my question on the stream to allow manual flagging so those of us who don't give a shit about killing some random PvErs but if everyone's gotta suffer through non-combatant flagging then I guess all the PvErs get to live with that reality. Steven seems intent on hunting ground pvp always having corruption consequences and trying to funnel the pvpers into the objective based pvp... I see it as a two way street however and under the current design personally I think the people who don't like pvp at all are due to suffer the most. I'll eat more corruption under the current flagging system, but that doesn't really matter to me since it seems likely to lead to further PvP which ultimately is the entire point of me wanting manual flagging anyway.
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
To be honest, I'm not entirely sure they understood the question you were asking. But, hey ho.
I dunno man Jeff reiterated it well when he said "I thought we could essentially live purple" or some variation of that phrase. Which is ultimately the thought process here.... if I roll out in a group in-between what ever objective i'm doing PvP or even PvE I would plan to fight - just my mentality. I'd prefer to start every fight as a combatant or encourage a fight being combatant. I don't see the "advantage" that Steven does by "landing the first attack" especially if that said attack could then result in corruption. The "risk" associated with pvp should be the fact you can die not the fact you can go corrupt especially in scenarios where grief is not involved.... but hey here we are and let's see this play out.
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
I didnt see any "PvE-Only" server options, but if there are, then that would take away all of my concerns, of course. The comments along the line of "if you dont like PvP then don't play" are self-defeating insofar as one is producing a game to actually be successful as a business. if you are making a bit of art, then I agree it doesn't matter one bit if it's profitable or not, since most people will simply take your advice and not play it at all.
As to PvP not being niche; the numbers simply don't bear that out (and I recommend the studies by Nick Yee, too), but it also makes sense to cater to that 20% of players in any game system in order to increase revenues by that amount, right? I have no bones with incorporating "components" of PvP opportunities into PvE games I play - I just want people who are not PvP to always be able to avoid those that are, and to be able to go about their business without any forced PvP by some jerk who wont leave them alone (and I also appreciate the PvPers who are not interested in griefing/non-consensual interacting with PvE folks, and who have interesting ideas on that - so thanks, Leiloni).
There's simply no reason to want to engage PvE players who do not want to be engaged in PvP other than to grief, and getting mad because they insulted your mom, or dont play the way you think they should also do not count as good reasons to allow that sort of abuse.
But, we have months to see how they sort it out, and I appreciate the forums being here to engender some discussion, and to present different ideas and insights to the Devs.
Not really sure what non-consensual PvP has to do with being "forced". The corruption mechanic is there because the Devs understand that if it were not so, the game would turn into a toxic mess like NWs original build turned into. You might not want to be ganked but it IS part of how the game was designed that players will be attacking other players. You sign up to play the game and you are accepting the PvP risk whether you like it or not. You won't be able to do much of anything in the game if you don't accept that risk, so yes, you could stay in a city and log out when it's under siege but it will be very boring for you.
You cannot be forced to do something you already agreed would be the meta of the freakin' game. It's like signing up to be a computer tech and then claiming you are being "forced" to sit at a computer terminal all day long.
EVE is a niche, PvP-centric MMORPG - an exception rather than the rule. WoW is not a PvP-centric MMORPG.
If open-world PvP weren't niche, New World would not have changed tack to focus on PvE and...Shadowbane would be just as popular now as EQ or WoW.[/quote]
EVE might not be the largest game out there but it has been running since 2003 and has a consistent active playerbase of 300k players.
Last time I played WoW there were things called PvP servers. Sounds pretty PvP centric to me and I played on one and there was plenty of PvPing in the open world. This might not be the case anymore but when it was created they had PvP built into it as a basic part of the game.
Then there is ESO that has been going strong with over 1 mil active players. What about GW2 and even DAoC (that is still around)? I could go on and on but the point is, Devs build these MMOs with PvP in mind because that's what most of the players want, not a PvE only game.
New World changed tack because of their flawed thought process of how PvP should work, had nothing to do with being a niche playerbase. The game 'was' going to be PvP centered but the devs discovered just how toxic players can be if left to govern themselves. It became lord of the flies basically.
LOL Shadowbane, I PLAYED SB from day 1 for about a year. Are implying it would have been a monster hit if it had not been PvP centered? Because I can attest to the fact it failed largely because of poor game design and lack of content. I journeyed out into the 'world' past the zones close to the cities and you know what I found? Literally nothing.....blank featureless plains of nothing, no flora, no fauna, nothing. I ran clear across the world and it was all like that. Plus once you reached close to cap level there was zero mobs to level up on. you have to go out into the swamps and fight lizard men for poor exp since they were the highest mobs but still 5 levels below you. The only thing to do WAS PvP (and build cities).
Just because they are trying to make a profit, doesn't mean it's not art. Do you not consider most music art? Should all musicians make pop music? Is it impossible for musicians to make money if they don't make pop?
The most popular games are PvP game i.e. fortnite, Lol, CoD, Overwatch, etc. The numbers definitely do show that they are popular. Just because a Pvp MMO hasn't been as successful as the current games on the market, doesn't mean it couldn't be.
Just because a popular western pvp mmo hasn't been made before doesn't mean it can't be made and be popular. We just got a whole new genre with BRs recently which weren't popular until someone finally made a good one.
There will be plenty for pve players. This is a pvx game after all and most, if not all, resources and methods of progression are through pve. Just because someone is a pve player, doesn't mean they are intolerant of pvp. It is the people who are intolerant of pvp, the ones who through tantrums and freak out when they die to someone, who might not enjoy this game as much.
Don't conflate pve players with those who are intolerant of pvp.
Seems like a group gathered to raid caravans is not going to find much fun attacking a couple of folks minding their own business in the "hunting grounds".
Any time a group wants to engage in PvP combat, some form of castle siege content will be available...and will likely involve caravans.
This is the part where I say, "go play another game then" right?
Don't need to tell them to go play another game, just tell them to wait, keep an open mind, and see if it's for them. There will be plenty of pve content for them to do so it will fall on how they feel about the pvp portion once they get there hands on the game.
It's going to be a shift for a lot of western players who haven't played a game where pvp plays a role in the open world.
Well I think the important difference here is to remember that it's a two part system. So you have to flag up first before you're even capable of PvP at all. Then the second part is turning purple after attacking someone.
So you can live in a constant state of "PvP=On" and really that's all that matters. Purple gives you extra benefits for deciding to fight someone, and those half death benefits are HUGE. So it wouldn't make a ton of sense to allow people to be Combatant all the time because they'd be at a massive advantage over PvE only players. But we do still need to know who has flagged but is not yet purple.
So what really needs to happen is they add a fourth color into the system. The way I see it is this -
White - average PvE player, not flagged to allow PvP combat. If you attack them, you get Corruption.
Green - player who has their PvP flag turned on but is not in PvP combat or hasn't been recently. If you attack them, you're both purple/combatant while fighting and this is a consensual fight, no corruption gained. Of course they can still decide not to attack back at all and they'd still give you corruption, but let's just assume it's unlikely and they'll get a bad rep for doing so.
These will both fall into the "Non-Combatant" death penalty category (unless in a PvP fight of course at which point the color changes anyway).
Then we have the other two being the same -
Purple - Combatant who has attacked another player, either currently in combat or recently. 50% death penalties
Red - Corrupted
So if we have White vs Green names, at least we know going in who is likely to fight us back, and is essentially already "opting-in" to PvP combat. I think letting people turn off the ability to attack other players makes sense for this game - for anyone who doesn't want to accidentally hit another player and get into PvP, and even more so for those with action combat heavy or AoE heavy builds they may want this. Especially for those who are worried about griefing associated with another player "forcing" them into PvP - I've seen a TON of discussions about this so it is a concern for many. The flag ensures that doesn't happen. But, we do need to know who is flagged and who is not so we can make informed PvP decisions. Thus, White vs Green names.
Uh. No having PvP servers in addition to PvE servers does not make a game PvP-centric.
For most of its history, WoW has had a significantly larger PvE server presence than PvP server presence.
When I checked last week, it currently appears to be about evenly split...with PvE servers a bit ahead.
Having PvP as part of the gameplay does not make a game PvP-centric.
[Question]
Is ESO a PvP-centric game?
"No not at all, although there is cyrodil and battlegrounds.. the majority of the game is its story and large amount of things that can be done solo. alot of group dungeons and trials also...
"ESO's PvP was definitely a huge, if not the biggest attraction of ESO's release. 600 v 600 v 600 R v R v R which ended up being really fucking cool but also hard for the game to handle. ESO has been riddled with some form of performance issue and even today where I think it's a 150 cap per region in Cyrodiil, the performance issues still happen, but it's less to do with overcrowding in one region.
Despite that being said, the PvP is still fun, but PvP is also not that big an attraction for MMOs. Battlegrounds are a thing though but doesn't really feel that rewarding. Winning in BGs doesn't feel as good as like winning a game of League or CS:GO or R6 for example."
"Nope, It's a PVE based game as a Elder Scrolls RPG game should be."
---https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/8zb3br/is_eso_a_pvpcentric_game/
pve has allways been top priority, and pvp allways took back seat.
that is still true even unto recent.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/459735/do-you-feel-pvp-is-becoming-more-important-than-pve/p3
Same difference.
Exactly. The only thing there was to do is PvP. The motto was: Play To Crush. No way to know if it could have been a hit if it had not been PvP-centered because the entire focus of the game was PvP.
And it failed. Because most successful MMORPGs are PvE-centric or, at least cater to both PvPers and PvEers.
What reasons do you have to consider this, group(s) of players actively looking to pvp already in a hunting ground the most probable response is going to be to find players and then initiate the pvp corruption or not. I'd probably suggest my group go raid a dungeon and clear that out... I mean if we can't clear a Caravan damn sure going to clear something for my time.
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
I disagree entirely about it being an advantage over anyone. Per Steven's own words "Flagging purple is going to make everyone want to jump you" if that is true there would be no advantage to being purple if it resulted in constantly getting attacked if you were the PVE only player. How is that not obvious?
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
You very well might want to go raid a dungeon. Dungeon raids are a PvE experience.
I guess from what you write, you think that dungeons will always be filled with rival groups you can PvP.
What I've said is that there will always be Castle siege content to participate in (once Castles are occupied by player characters). That's a guarantee because each week the Castle owners have to build defenses leading up to the actual monthly siege to try to take over ownership. And rivals will want to make sure those defenses aren't built each week so that the monthly Castle siege is easier to attack.
Finding a dungeon to raid has no guarantee there will be rival groups.
Most often, the result will be a PvE raid encounter rather than a PvP encounter.
The first thing you do is hit CTRL or ALT to turn your attack into a PvP attack.
Once that attack hits the target, the attacker turns purple.
I don't really now what you mean by living in a constant state of PvP=On.
That is true if you are Corrupted and choose not to rid yourself of Corruption.
If you are a combatant, you will change from purple back to green shortly after you stop engaging in PvP attacks. The default state is green.
There is no need for a 4th color.
As has been said already...if the person you attack does not attack you back, then you know they aren't interested in PvP combat.
If you want a guarantee that you won't gain Corruption from PvP combat, go find a caravan to attack/defend or go to a Castle to help or hinder building defenses.
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
Well you'd only be purple if you were recently in a fight or are currently in a fight. The status disappears quickly, so the window for someone else to attack you while in that state is short. Even so, if they do attack you, then they'd also turn purple and you'd be on an even playing field. If you're risking death - and only 1/2 death penalties at that - then your attacker is also taking the very same risks you are.
Both Steven and Jeffrey in the most recent livestream mentioned Ctrl+F being the way to allow your character to hit other players. Then the second part is actually landing an attack that turns you purple. So it sounds like you have a toggle, Ctrl +F, that let's you attack other players but you're still green while in that state. So you'll have two types of green players out there - those who have not activated Ctrl+F (and thus would not be capable of attacking back in PvP until they activated that), and may or may not decide to attack back if you hit them, and those who live in Ctrl+F who likely will decide to fight back.
Second question you asked - the way they describe it, it sounds like you can live in a state of Ctrl+F, meaning live in a state where you're capable of attacking other players. Compare this to PvE only players who never activate Ctrl+F, and are essentially living in a PvE only state, where their only PvP combat is being PKed and turning their opponent red.
Now following this logic of two very distinct groups of "green" players, would you not want to know who is running around with Ctrl+F activated, and who is not?
As for the idea that "well you can hit a person once and wait to see if they attack back" - that's just not realistic. PvP is very fast paced, often involves more than just a simple 1v1, and your tactics would have to change drastically to allow for such an artificial wait period before continuing a fight. Imagining that actually play out in reality is the most absurd thing I've ever heard.
Best case scenario is someone gets in several attacks before it occurs to them the opponent isn't fighting back, and you better hope the person has enough HP and defenses that that hasn't yet killed them - and in a game mode like PKing, where killing someone as fast as possible is your goal, the outlook here is not good. It's just not a viable scenario to "wait to see if they attack back". If I am going to get corruption, I should know ahead of time it's a likely outcome so I can choose to accept it or avoid it. As it is right now, you're just rolling the dice every time you PK someone.
As another poster said, the current system encourages more griefing, not less. If I know who doesn't want to PvP, I can avoid those PvErs. As it is right now, they're going to get ganked left and right because none of us knows who they are until they're half or fully dead.
You continue to use terms like "niche" and "PvP centric" without any basis for qualifying what either actually means in your opinion.
From my perspective, a game like EVE is NOT niche. Why? Because other than WoW, the vast majority of MMOs today don't have a huge playerbase. WoW has been and probably always will be an anomaly.
If it was more like 50-100k, that is more niche imho. 300k and going strong for SEVENTEEN years proves a good number of people want to PvP.
I consider a game PvP centric when PvP mechanics are an important part of the world. Doesn't mean 100% and can even be 50%. So in my eyes the WoW PvP servers ARE PvP centric (not to mention all the BGs which are PvP as well).
Another good example of a PvP centric game would be DAoC. Not a single person would deny that but yet it also has a huge amount of PvE content and large areas where you were safe from RvR. There were even complete PvE dungeons/high level raids not to mention an entire expansion devoted to PvE (all to grind for gear for RvR).
And your ESO links are RANDOM people stating it's not a PvP centered game, which holds zero weight as official. Just random opinions, which are a dime a dozen. I'm sure I can find plenty of other opinions that would disagree with your cherry picked ones. Find me a link to a Dev that will claim ESO is a PvE game and I may listen. However, by my definition, ESO is a PvP centered game because it revolves around Cyrodiil. Just like DAoC, it has completely safe areas to PvE and raids, etc but at it's core, if you aren't PvPing you are missing out on the game meta....imho. I played ESO for nearly 4 years and in my opinion it is a PvP game.
As I said about SB, it didn't fail because all there was to do was PvP, it failed because it was a horribly under-cooked game released way too soon and never finished. It was also hacked multiple times which didn't help. The PvP was great at times but it failed due to it being a terrible game overall.
AoC is considered PvP centeric but yet there is a TON of PvE content as well. It just so happens the backdrop for all that PvE content allows for PvP interaction most of the time.
I would be interested to know about this vast amount of highly successful PvE only MMOs though. By that I mean MMOs with sustained 1 mil + subs and have survived more than a couple years.
When I made this topic I wanted to show how many people are strange to the concept of a collaborative open world game. Collaborations bring rivalries and conflicts. Real player interactions. Not an NPC driven game.
A simple question was asked "why would you PK?" and the conditioned players from years on themepark story driven mmos, with optional raiding, optional battlegrounds, isolsted instanced gameplay thought "why would I grief somebody? I cant think of ANY reason to PK. If some1 PKs me that player is a griefer".
No matter. The latest dev update reiterated that AoC has a vision which will stick to.