What makes for good PvP?

What is your most memorable PvP moment?

Mine came from playing on PvP-servers (or as PvP-flagged) in PvE-centric games. Why?

Arranged PvP is like a match of paintball between coworkers. Even if you manage to get involved, it still feels arranged. Especially with the oh-so gentleman-style handshake post game. Like a sports match.

The PvP moments I remember, are when problems were solved with the pointy end.

Conflict occur for reason - and you decide to solve it then and there. Western-style justice. Emotions and all.
It simply feels good!

Do you think good and memorable player on player battles can occur under curated conditions? Or are these skirmishes and battles best when they occur naturally? What are your thoughts on the matter?

Sidenote;
PvP has nothing to do with griefing. Griefing is the conscious act of being an asshole, regardless of server ruleset.

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Comments

Ludullu

Don't think I've ever participated in a pre-planned pvp, outside of arena 1v1s. Only sudden pvp is the real pvp.

Sjelden

I have experienced World of Warcraft-style of Arena or Battleground, and New World's city sieges, but both were arranged in the sence that everyone knew a battle would occur. The time and location was predetermined, and for Battlegrounds, the numbers are usually known (and balanced) as well.

Playing Everquest on Rallos Zek before the nerf was a really entertaining. Back then, people experimented alot more, figuring things out. We had a laugh when our wizard acquired his first bolt-spell. Slow-moving, high damage, high mana bolt that hit anything in its path. That ranger still speaks of his scorched wounds to this day.

Ludullu

Sjelden wrote: »

New World's city sieges, but both were arranged in the sence that everyone knew a battle would occur. The time and location was predetermined, and for Battlegrounds, the numbers are usually known (and balanced) as well.

Ah, right. I guess sieges would be considered a pre-planned thing. Then I lied. I've participated in hundreds of those. Though even there, the best ones were always the ones that had some unexpected alliances that happened either right before the start of the siege or even right before its end. So even with sieges there'd be some unknown factors that would make the whole experience even better.

Korela

Planned \ Random?
Closed Arena \ Open world?
With progression reward \ Elo-only?
Duel (1x1) \ Party duel (GvG) \ Unlimited Mass PvP?

I prefer these combinations:
1. "Planned" + "Closed arena" + "Elo-only" + "Party duel (GvG)". A tournament-like systems for consts groups to test and master their skills.
2. "Planned" + sort of "Closed arena" + "With progression reward" + "Unlimited Mass PvP". Big dungeon, PvP area, 1000 characters goes in, fight starts, after a few min entrance is closing, fight for a few hours, big reward for winners.

- Other combinations are less interesting.
- Why not "Duel (1x1)"? It's just straight up unbalanced. And it is fine. The atom of MMORPG balance isn't a character, but a group of them.
- Why not "Random"? Time is a resource. And we use it outside the game too (sadge). Prime-time planned events is the key.
- Why not "Open world"? It's vulnerable to zergs- or alts- rushes or other type of griefing. It forces your side to answer the same. So 1000x1000 players, 0 FPS, no skill involved, 0 profit-per-player, inglourious victory. Why even bother?

Liniker

Longer TTK.

Azherae

Making good PvP is easy.

Step one (and this one is important), DON'T do any of the few hundred things that make bad PvP.

Once you've done that, just decide which group of whiners you'll appease and which group you'll oppose and you're done. Simple and elegant.

Laetitian

Good RvR games I've seen in action (Absolutely Regnum and DaoCamelot; not so much TES:O, and from what I've heard also not GW2) posited no restrictions or announcements for when the majority of impactful things can happen.

These games are at their best in months when there's a natural spike of players (randomly, or enticed by a new game update), and people start developing intuitive rhythms for their gameplay. If I know many of my friends are likely to log in on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday around 6-8pm, I'm likely to try and schedule my life to keep some of those evenings free.

In my experience, this spontaneous naturally developed coordination automatically leads to eventful RvR/GvG/PvP, where both the aggressors and the defenders can muster up strategically effective sudden moves. Since the coordination is on-the-fly, and both sides tend to be at the peak of their potential at the same time because of the natural flow of the game, there is a better chance of underdogs winning against a zerg by making better decisions in the moment.

It's difficult to say how much a game should do to control that rhythm, but I think the best thing it can do is just stay intriguing to the playerbase. With that provided, you don't really need server restrictions and scheduling requirements for PvP at all. Besides maybe some protections in the obvious deadtime, to prevent nolife zerging at, say, conservatively 5am-1pm.

So that's why I'm definitely not a fan of officially scheduling everything. In coordinated events, everyone is a cog in a machine. It feels like a job. In spontaneous natural coordination, individual priorities count, but skilful ambitious leaders can still unite the masses to function more effectively.
Scheduled 500v500 sieges, and scripted arena battles for 8v8s or 40v40s, are fun are fun for guilds to show off the obedience to their military drill sergeants once a week. They're not the PvP I want to log in for on the regular.

As far as protecting expensive/critical areas from ninja blitzkrieg sieges is concerned, I think the more elegant solution is to let sieges that can happen at any day of the week take a long time. Spread it out over a day or two if necessary, and give defenders an advantage so they can have time to gather their forces and recapture defensive outposts before the threat becomes a concern.

My response is only concerned with combat that revolves around rewards that matter in the game. So sieges, caravans, perhaps arenas with strong rewards for consistent performance.
Any PvP that revolves around the privilege of calling yourself the biggest outplayer is completely meaningless to me.

Noaani

Azherae wrote: »

Making good PvP is easy.

Step one (and this one is important), DON'T do any of the few hundred things that make bad PvP.

Once you've done that, just decide which group of whiners you'll appease and which group you'll oppose and you're done. Simple and elegant.

Not doing things that result in bad PvP, and attempting to appease any group of PvP players seem to me to be mutually exclusive - at least to anyone not in that group.

To me, what makes good PvP first and foremost is having people to attack. If you don't have that, it doesn't matter what systems are in place, you have shit PvP.

JamesSunderland

Q: Do you think good and memorable player on player battles can occur under curated conditions? Or are these skirmishes and battles best when they occur naturally?

A: Yes, it kinda depends on the type of game, but in MMORPGs it needs highly competitive circumstances/environments with a lot on the line for the winner, especially if the players already have grudges against each other from previous battles and/or open world pvp encounters and what they stand to lose from the result.

Lineage 2 Olympiads (1v1 Arenas) provided such "highly competitive circumstance/environment with a lot on the line for the winner" as every Hero Player could have a huge impact of multiple players in open world conflics due to the Hero Weapons and the Hero Skills. Such privileged Hero Status was only acquired by a single player of every class, the ones whom performed the best in the olympiads.

Fighting against against Heroes and Hero Contenders from your clan or enemy clans, of your class or even others classes and with tons of spectators for the extra meaningful sense of community were truly amazing memorable battles.

The conflicts that happens naturally are usually better due to the surprise factor of the unexpected standoff and the circunstances presented, for example, what is the motivation and environment of the conflict?
A top farming spot with strong monsters? A World Boss? Guild war enemies? Are you Outnumbered?
Enemy Node Territory? PK Squad looking to take over your group stacked inventory resources?
The variables creates memorable stories of such encounters.

It comes down to the thread title question, so, what makes for good PvP?
I would say that other than the technical aspects, it varies a lot from people to people but i believe it's mainly,
how invested in the PvP the players are.
What is at stake?
For how many people is it important?
Does it make you emotionally invested?

Garrtok

Warhammer online or daoc made it super good

superhero6785

My most memorable PvP moment was in Aion when it first launched. I was doing a quest in the PvP area and these 3 guys kept ganking me. I sent out an SOS in guild chat and our guild leader showed up and spanked all 3 of em single handedly. Even though I was on the receiving end, it felt amazing to see a badass show up and save the day. Like seeing justice served.

Some people are afraid of open world PvP, but to me it creates possibilities for some of the best feeling moments.

tautau

In L2, I had an alt with the primary purpose of killing red players (PKers). I had wonderful PvP with her. She had an unusual design, not following the traditional 'best design' so it threw off her enemies.

What makes good PvP? PvP with a purpose...killing red a**holes.

Azherae

More seriously, this is one of the places where an MMO can learn from MOBAs.

I'm not talking about the lobby part, I'm talking about the fact that a MOBA match is basically 'a PvX MMO server running at 100x speed'.

Everyone starts off with one ability, trying to PvE to level up faster than the other person they are near.

Everyone can roam to any location if they have time, everyone is encouraged to use a different 'class' so that if thiings get complex later, you have options.

Any players doing well because of their leveling strategy/who aren't having their leveling disrupted by the PvP segment/ganker should help out the ones who aren't doing as good.

And of course, once one person gets decently far ahead in gear (10% or so) dealing with them becomes a nightmare that requires having the numbers advantage.

So, is the 'unexpectedness' the 'good' part? For some. But 'unexpected' usually means 'disadvantaged' so some dislike it. Therefore those games have 'wards', so that you can put some effort into not dealing with 'unexpected ganking'.

If you don't ward... and your teammate who is doing well doesn't help you out in your bad matchup, and you're starved for resources or time, and fall behind, you're a liability. Once 3 people fall behind, or the opponent 'manages to take the boss drop' enough times, it takes all your skill just to squeak out a single 5v3 teamfight win.

Usually this is where people surrender the match and go on to the next match or disconnect mid-match and stop for the night. PvX MMOs are the same, they just 'surrender' 100x slower.

Oh, and there's no matchmaking in MMOs so good luck with that.

Good PvP is different to different people. I'm not suggesting Ashes should be like a MOBA. I'm moreso saying that all PvP/PvX MMOs are, and based on the standard reaction encountered in those MOBA, the only good PvP is the kind where you keep having a chance, where you 'know you can do it if your opponent messes up, at least', and you can try to trick them or force the error.

Being outnumbered doesn't really matter. Having an objective...? I guess, but if you didn't have an objective just 'being online' that would get you closer to whatever you consider 'victory', it's not much of a game. It's why MOBAs aren't just 'Team Deathmatch Battle Arenas'. Especially for a PvX game.

It's based on this premise that I don't agree with the 'unplanned PvP is fun' concept as a whole. Maybe if your opponent is an arrogant idiot or joking around, but if the game has any depth, you're not winning any unplanned PvP, you're at best hoping someone else who can 'win it for you' shows up. Which is kinda like saying 'what makes a good basketball game' by talking about players you like watching, I guess.

Noaani

Azherae wrote: »

Usually this is where people surrender the match and go on to the next match or disconnect mid-match and stop for the night. PvX MMOs are the same, they just 'surrender' 100x slower.

Oh, and there's no matchmaking in MMOs so good luck with that.

While perhaps not the takeaway from your post that you may have wanted, it just occured to me that this is actually another example of the phenomenon of players leaving PvP games that I have been talking about for years on these forums.

It actually is the same thing as people in a lobby game surrendering or dropping, the difference being that in a persistent world MMO,they dont have the option to just join another match.

Veeshan

Unpredictability, simply put i enjoy pvp especialy open world pvp becuase it makes the world unpredictable, pve games are incredably boring to me since there so predictable.
PvP especialy open world pvp is unpredictable and not always fair so getting jumped or sneaking up on somone gets the blood flowing to either escape or come out on top, those tend to be more memorable moments when you overcome the odds either winning a fight your outnumbered or escaping a zerg, or getting a big score or loosing one these tend to have more emotional responses which makes them more memorable and an experience.
Mindlessly pveing/grinding without a care in the world is just boring because no threat or unpredictability where developers have tried to make the most "fair" PvE experience by removing thing like mob trains, high level mobs from zones or any form of possible unpredictability that can occur the zones and gameplay feel so ridgid and predictable.
Everquest for me has beed the best PvE experience for me for some reasons below
- Same level mobs didnt mean same difficulty there was like 5 difficulties (Easy, normal, hard, difficult and im gonna fk you up) not all lvl 25 mobs were the same in strength

- Mob patrols (still exsist in some games to date not as common though)
- trains mobs didnt leash so you had to be wary of mob trains to the zone, player would usualy shout it in chat so u knew to get out of the way but sometimes they couldnt.
- High level mobs in low level zones
- factions and reputation for mobs most mobs had a faction that reduced and increased faction with other mobs for example killing enough guards in a town might actualy make mobs dungeons not KoS to you cause they like you killed the guards

Also some cities had corrupted guards which if your not carful might become KoS to you and wack you in town (Non corrupted guards would also assist the corrupted guard aswell because they dont know better)

All in all the older games PvE wise felt more alive/living world than the current ones on the market which seems to have deleted the living world elements to make the game convient for more players.

Veeshan

Also as weird as this sounds what makes a good PvP MMO is focusing on PvE content to keep pve players entertained, just gotta keep the Pvp content in mind when designing PvE content.

PvP = players are the content less players means less content.

Darkfall for example neglected PvE and every time something PvE related was sugested PvP players are like no we dont want that cause it a PvP game gets ur carebear PvE stuff out of here, except when the PvE crowd left there became less content to do for PvP players eventually they just sat in there player city dueling sometimes raiding other people cities but overall the game slowly bled out after that.
the high skill ceiling didnt help either combined with full loot you just bled the lowest skill player base out cause they got farmed and couldnt kill anyoneand then next lowest skill players would quit and then the next cause they could no longer kill anyone and so on to eventually there was no content for the higer skilled players that they quit, its a very canabalistic game cycle when you have full loot with high skill ceiling with no empheses on PvE content.
PvE content in PvP games might not be the content you want but it the content you need to give content to pvp players they just dont seem to relise it :P

Laetitian

Noaani wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Usually this is where people surrender the match and go on to the next match or disconnect mid-match and stop for the night. PvX MMOs are the same, they just 'surrender' 100x slower.

Oh, and there's no matchmaking in MMOs so good luck with that.

While perhaps not the takeaway from your post that you may have wanted, it just occured to me that this is actually another example of the phenomenon of players leaving PvP games that I have been talking about for years on these forums.

It actually is the same thing as people in a lobby game surrendering or dropping, the difference being that in a persistent world MMO,they dont have the option to just join another match.

The carebear-pandering in the game you two would design with these assumptions would literally create Wizard 101. Minecraft has decade-old servers for 8-year-olds that have less loss aversion than you demand "for player retention."

You desperately need to get used to the idea that, even if ArcheAge and LineAge didn't turn into the dominant games on the market, game design for PvP-friendly games still needs to look different, and appeal to a different playerbase, than WoW or EQ2. Eliminating imbalanced strength levels (zergs, scheduling advantage, let alone gear/levels) will just turn a PvP game into a stale arena.

You can drastically reduce numbers imbalance for some events to give ample recognition to individual mastery of mechanics and character build achievements. But a good PvP MMO will still always reward spontaneous player coordination highly, even for high-stakes PvP objectives, because it combines all the great hallmarks of MMO social life. *Especially* if your MMO has sandbox-ish design features that should reward constant communication and shared goals among players with common enemies, so there's always something new and important to talk about and coordonate for.

Noaani

Laetitian wrote: »

\

The carebear-pandering in the game you two would design with these assumptions would literally create Wizard 101.

Does Wizard101 alert the entire server to where a a guild at, and is very slowly heading with some of the best loot in the game, in a battleground (removing corruption) so that others have the ability to attempt to ambush them?

Because that is what I have suggested.

I could quite easily turn around and say anyone not thinking that would be great PvP content is clearly just a carebear and can't handle it.

You desperately need to get used to the idea that, even if ArcheAge and LineAge didn't turn into the dominant games on the market, game design for PvP-friendly games still needs to look different, and appeal to a different playerbase, than WoW or EQ2.

In order for this to be true, one would need to assume that these two games only appeal to one type of MMO player.

They do not. There are many people playing WoW that love PvP and get their PvP fix either on a PvP server or in the games arena. In EQ2, there are a lot of players that also enjoy PvP, but since EQ2 had - for at least a decade - the best PvE in the genre. they played that game for the PvE and other games for PvP.

There are indeed also some players in both games that simply do not want PvP at all - Ashes is not for these gamers, for sure.

What Ashes should be doing is positioning itself to be an attractive game to anyone happy with the level of PvP the game will have - regardless of any other aspect of how they want to play their MMO.

If you look at the bulk of MMO players, the order of preferred content types across all games is as follows - PvE > PvP > crafting > RP.

Obviously players that have PvP as their preferred content type will be fine with the PvP in Ashes, so they need not be catered to any more than the PvP system is already catering to them.

From there, it only makes sense that the next group to try and appeal to are those that prefer PvE, but are more than happy to PvP as well.

From what I can see, these players are mostly playing the EQ games, WoW, ESO and GW2 right now. Some others are in Rift and FFXIV.

Laetitian

Noaani wrote: »

Laetitian wrote: »

You desperately need to get used to the idea that, even if ArcheAge and LineAge didn't turn into the dominant games on the market, game design for PvP-friendly games still needs to look different, and appeal to a different playerbase, than WoW or EQ2.

In order for this to be true, one would need to assume that these two games only appeal to one type of MMO player.

They do not. There are many people playing WoW that love PvP and get their PvP fix either on a PvP server or in the games arena.

If someone can get their PvP fix out of WoW, they might not be a PvE-only player, but their preference is still heavily slanted towards sheltered conditions.
Point is, not every player who can appreciate PvP should be catered to for every game that has PvP in it, and I still stand by my point that your suggestions encourage that a bit too much, and with too little of an awareness of the irreplaceability of player resilience in a functional, reasonably PvP-driven system.

Noaani wrote:

Does Wizard101 alert the entire server to where a a guild at, and is very slowly heading with some of the best loot in the game, in a battleground (removing corruption) so that others have the ability to attempt to ambush them?

Because that is what I have suggested.

But how do you reconcile that with your fear about players leaving if they dislike the unfair PvP they're subjected to? Are you fine with it if the people who might be ambushed are aware of it ahead of time (because they know others will get the announcement when they engage in certain activities?)

I could actually be fine with that: Allow spontaneous sieges of a certain outposts, if enough citizens of the node in question (and perhaps its allied nodes; the specifics would have to be figured out, and numbers would have to be affected by character levels) are currently online. Then those outposts could be used to make an officially scheduled siege easier - but could be recaptured as long as enough citizens of the factions that captured it are online.
And you make sure this doesn't lead to too much change-of-hands of territory and warlike conditions by just making outposts difficult to approach and capture.
Bit of a clumsy suggestion, but there's probably a way to make it feel more organic.

I'm having too much fun thinking about this, I'm setting myself up to be disappointed. =§

hleV

In an MMORPG, one's PvP performance needs to depend on both skill and stats. Removing or reducing the stats part makes it a non-RPG game (as far as PvP goes). A trash well geared high level player shouldn't have much issue defeating a good low level player who hasn't yet put in the time and effort in progressing their character.
OWPvP is a must, unexpected PvP encounters, as well as PvP where you're not bound by some gamemode victory conditions, to a lot of us are the most enjoyable content.
High-rewarding group PvP gamemodes (sieges, etc.) are a good motivator for a PvPer to continue playing and progressing.
Gamemodes where you can prove yourself individually and as a group (dueling/arenas) are the cup of tea for lots of PvPers.

I think the only check AoC doesn't mark here is 1v1 dueling/arenas, due to rock-paper-scissors approach to classes. I suppose 1v1 arenas could be locked to your own class category.

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