AOC is NOT a PVP game.

Fiddlez

AoC is a PVX game and that means something.

This started as a reply during another Forum post but It became long winded so I just made a post. As always any thoughts of your own are appreciated.

I think there is a general confusion on what AoC is trying to be and why some people incorrectly think that this game is being designed around Nostalgia or PVP. Its not.

I look at this game as closer to a Story to be read, or something you could write about and even if you didn't play there would be stories you would want to hear. You can have a version of meaningful conflict with out PVP for sure but the more you risk the bigger the conflict and the more interesting the story. Just look at Eve Online, I've barely touched that game but I've heard the stories and there's a chance you have to.

The idea isn't that you need to focus on your inventory when out collecting but that its a dangerous world full of conflict(terror). You need to address that, no one will likely disturb you but there is a chance and that chance pushes players in to Social content essentially. Players may provide protection services or people will group to collect to ensure safety or be aware of the other players and maybe be a little more friendly etc. Its simply not as simple as "other players want to kill me while I collect flowers and that's silly". Its that with out that you are sacrificing the core of the game and reducing the need for players to rely on each other.

Even the Nodes are designed to create conflict. So the goal is to create a world that feels in conflict. (Ideally they do add corruption effects to your character when you increase in corruption.) Where you are going out in to the world and your safety isn't guaranteed. When you see a player you ask yourself, who is that? what are they doing? what do they want? If they are corrupted, what do I do ? Did they kill someone that pissed them off or are they just out to cause trouble? You have just entered into conflict simply by being there.

People should be very clear that this is NOT a progression train that you hop on and off with no need to interact with other players and even when you do they might as well be AI for the value that it brings to the experience. I think In-fact you are most likely to prefer bots because the players tend to gravitate towards toxic behavior with a " if you slow me down you are hurting me and now I am pissed off" style of development. When i say Modern MMO's/RPGs feel empty it barely seems to even scratch the surface.

I played Wayfinder and that games feels so dam empty just like so many before it, for what it is its probably decent but I am not interested. There are a lot people that are upset that T&L has auto-play but because there is such a focus on just instant gratification that players and companies seem to just assume that anything outside that wont work, they design games that are one breath away from being AutoPlay. So clearly Autoplay was the next logical step.

Which is probably why it takes someone like Steven Shariff to change things. Remember WoW had 0 experience going in to making their MMO with only a vision and not enough money, before WoW they made RTS's and Action RPGs in a world where gaming itself was certainly not mainstream. If anyone remembers how silly their launch was and how little content the game had it would probably blow them away. It took them a full year or more to even get their servers in line. Either way they developed a game that everyone wanted to play for that time. Everyone projected a massive failure. They came out on top because their vision of WOW at that time hit the right chord.

Despite being the most popular MMORPG to date Blizzard are also oddly enough the last developer anyone should talk to before making their own MMORPG. They made what they made and that worked for them and that's it, even recently though it seems they don't understand why anyone keeps playing their own game.

Main Point is this, stop focusing on if this game is PVP or PVE, they operate together to achieve a larger goal from a Man who made a world as a Dungeon Master and wants to see that world live. Telling him to reduce the conflict points would be like telling GRR Martin to stop killing characters.

Solvryn

Depraved wrote: »

Solvryn wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

Solvryn wrote: »

Dygz wrote: »

Raven016 wrote: »

Steven tries to attract PvE players to his game but he will be surprised to see that his trick will not work. Players who like PvE will stay with PvE games even if they want PvP sometime. And players who want PvE sometime will find themselves doing it by force if they become corrupt or will be forced to do objective PvP only when playing on land.
True PvP-ers will be forced to go into the ocean where they have no nodes.

Prior to 2022, when Steven was not acting as Lead Game Designer, Steven and the former EQ/EQ who were Ashes Lead devs pitched a game that was more conducive to PvE players who like PvP sometimes.
About a year ago, it became clearer that Steven is mostly catering to Lineage II players.
I think Lineage II players would say that Lineage II has a lot of PvE players.
I also think Lineage II PvPers consider themselves to be "true PvPers".

Meanwhile the rest of us don’t consider L2 them true PvP.

still more true pvp than gw

Open World full loot PvP bout as truest as it gets.

you mean do 2000 hours of pve, so that you can have 50 weapons in your storage, then you die and you just grab another one, making dying basically pointless. then when you are low on weapons, you just pve for another 10 hours so that you can do 1 hour of dying? sounds more like a pve game to me xD

do you realize when l2 started you could die and lose everything? and getting gear was really really really hard. you didnt even have money to buy something on the store. getting drops was an utopian dream and every time you killed a mob you lost money? you basically had to make alts to do money quests and stop your progression on your main, or you needed alt dwarfs to make money. on top of that, it would take months to get to max or do anything (a year or more if you were a solo casual). you couldnt really go out of town without a party or that was suicide. and you had to do all that while pvping?

every where you went, there was pvp (unless you played in korea hahahaha). dying a couple of times and going back to town means you lost a week of exp. you had to walk everywhere, so you risk getting ganked at any time at any point.

full foot means nothing when its easily replaceable xD

Darkfall didn’t take 2000 hours, neither did Asherons Call.