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Don't restrict PvP to timeslots or incentivise it only through PvE/gear.
Laetitian
Member
ArcheAge-related thread inspiration context for those interested:
I come from a different background than the average Lineage or themepark player on this forum. The games I've played didn't have much PvE at all, and the best ones I've played had post-level-farming gameplay loops that had nothing to do with mobs or dungeons or raids. There was PvP or RvR, and that was what the game was - and it was glorious. You logged on, attacked an enemy (3 opposing realms) castle or fort, defended your own, or picked a fight with groups around hotspots. And when your sieging was successful, you raided the enemy territory.
My suggestion is pretty direct. Give us meaningful territory-control-related PvP content (It can't just be caravans, because the current caravan design just doesn't impact the game world enough on the long term to be a persistent motivator) to measure our strategic and fighting skill every day, around the clock.
Make it possible for 3 players to start it and force a response out of their opponents. Make it spontaneous and important, just like important bosses, raids, and events/quests. PvP players will still show up everywhere else, just like PvE players will still show up for important metropolis sieges. But give the PvPers something to do when they decide it's time for PvP action, rather than force them to follow an artificial schedule.
I completely see the need for protecting players from having to be terminally online in order to preserve their achievements (if only because free wins make wins lose their meaning), but I don't think you have to restrict all PvP siege engagements to timeslots for that. You can just make sieges span over longer stretches of time (think: days) and across multiple buildings, so defenders have ample time to respond to sieges across different outposts and fight and defend across stages of a siege. Outposts don't have to decide the outcome of sieges: Each hour of controlling an outpost could just influence an upcoming siege's timers and power balances. Or a certain duration of controlling a circle of forts could open up a PvP raid micro-invasion heist to steal defence equipment or (on the defending side) set up additional defences.
I understand and accept that Ashes doesn't want to be a PvP-centric game, and I don't mean to replace the need for players to participate in non-PVP in order to compete. Players should be encouraged to care about the game as a whole, and fulfil their role in the entirety of it, but I do think the healthiest way to create a long-lasting PvX game with a large playerbase has to give players space to soak in their preferred side of the content when they feel like it, rather than having to subordinate their mood to the game's calendar and list of responsibilities.
Excited to hear what people think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRzxBIQunIA
The first 8 minutes of this opinion piece about the current state of Archeage (If you have barely any background info, the summary in first 10 minutes here is worth a watch) highlight the problem fairly directly.
I was only around when Trion set up the ArcheAge beta and have recently been watching videos about the course ArcheAge took that led to its downfall. In my perception, aside from the obvious monetization stuff, it comes down to one very vital thing: Motivation and justification to do what you want to do, when you want to do it.
I wrote a 1k word long essay on why PvP needs its own space, but no one's gonna read that, so I'll try my best to leave the discussion to the community, and only give the gist of my suggestion.
The first 8 minutes of this opinion piece about the current state of Archeage (If you have barely any background info, the summary in first 10 minutes here is worth a watch) highlight the problem fairly directly.
I was only around when Trion set up the ArcheAge beta and have recently been watching videos about the course ArcheAge took that led to its downfall. In my perception, aside from the obvious monetization stuff, it comes down to one very vital thing: Motivation and justification to do what you want to do, when you want to do it.
I wrote a 1k word long essay on why PvP needs its own space, but no one's gonna read that, so I'll try my best to leave the discussion to the community, and only give the gist of my suggestion.
I come from a different background than the average Lineage or themepark player on this forum. The games I've played didn't have much PvE at all, and the best ones I've played had post-level-farming gameplay loops that had nothing to do with mobs or dungeons or raids. There was PvP or RvR, and that was what the game was - and it was glorious. You logged on, attacked an enemy (3 opposing realms) castle or fort, defended your own, or picked a fight with groups around hotspots. And when your sieging was successful, you raided the enemy territory.
My suggestion is pretty direct. Give us meaningful territory-control-related PvP content (It can't just be caravans, because the current caravan design just doesn't impact the game world enough on the long term to be a persistent motivator) to measure our strategic and fighting skill every day, around the clock.
Make it possible for 3 players to start it and force a response out of their opponents. Make it spontaneous and important, just like important bosses, raids, and events/quests. PvP players will still show up everywhere else, just like PvE players will still show up for important metropolis sieges. But give the PvPers something to do when they decide it's time for PvP action, rather than force them to follow an artificial schedule.
I completely see the need for protecting players from having to be terminally online in order to preserve their achievements (if only because free wins make wins lose their meaning), but I don't think you have to restrict all PvP siege engagements to timeslots for that. You can just make sieges span over longer stretches of time (think: days) and across multiple buildings, so defenders have ample time to respond to sieges across different outposts and fight and defend across stages of a siege. Outposts don't have to decide the outcome of sieges: Each hour of controlling an outpost could just influence an upcoming siege's timers and power balances. Or a certain duration of controlling a circle of forts could open up a PvP raid micro-invasion heist to steal defence equipment or (on the defending side) set up additional defences.
I understand and accept that Ashes doesn't want to be a PvP-centric game, and I don't mean to replace the need for players to participate in non-PVP in order to compete. Players should be encouraged to care about the game as a whole, and fulfil their role in the entirety of it, but I do think the healthiest way to create a long-lasting PvX game with a large playerbase has to give players space to soak in their preferred side of the content when they feel like it, rather than having to subordinate their mood to the game's calendar and list of responsibilities.
Excited to hear what people think.
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The entire 'way Ashes is built', in my opinion, works against this, and for me, everything in those videos just reminds me of the reasons I think Ashes won't work out well.
Ashes has too much ArcheAge in it, I think, but if we choose to believe that Ashes' gameplay loops won't have the same issues detailed in the videos you referenced, the specific thing you are thinking of, would still not work for more than a year.
Properly adding PvP to MMOs is such a monumental task of incentives, balance, and emotional management of players, that 'not even putting schedules on it' seems to me, to be among the worst foundations you could build it on.
Fairness issues, balance issues, snowballing, and the general suggested PvP complexity of this game, just puts 'long siege style PvP' objectives out of reach. Normally I rely on NiKr to check reasonings and clarify incentives here, and a lot of the stuff I've learned about L2 indicates that there's a good ebb and flow around it, but L2 also has some weird built in 'strength' and 'economy' limits which make the game itself a bit less extensive than Ashes but makes those PvP incentives work.
There's a reason why standard fantasy MMOs seem to constantly be split between the 'PvP should be the main focus, let us have freedom' and the 'why is this game so PvP?'. There are too many aspects of the 'fantasy style' game that work almost explicitly to divide these playerbases until the PvE players are looking for safe zones and the 'PvP is ok with me' or more engaged players are looking for the Arena.
Not trying to turn this much more into a PvE versus PvP debate, because like I said, my suggestion is meant to fit into a PvX system, just provide impact for each of the isolated systems without depending entirely on their constant direct interdependency as the only true solution.
The more I talk about it, the more I worry it will just be turned down, because the declared vision for the game is a rather strict "Only PvX." But as you've mentioned, the videos show the sorry state of what happens when you force the playerbase to conform its desires too tightly to the demands proposed by the game. And I just think the scope of "pure PvX content" is too limited to fill a game. Doesn't leave enough room for variety of priorities.
If you aren't sieging or defending, you are getting ready to do so in between fighting for control back of your outposts, and attacking rival outposts in order to use up some of their siege preperation time.
Basically, it works for a one dimensional game where sieges are the only thing players are doing.
I assume the game the OP is talking about is Planetside - as that is the most popular game I can think of that had this kind of gameplay. That game was an MMOFPS rather than an MMORPG - this is an important distinction.
In Planetside, there was nothing to do other than attack the enemy and attempt to hold what ground you had made. That was all the game was - there was literally nothing else to be done.
The issue is simpler than that. All games must limit realism and introduce fiat functions for gameplay purposes. These then destroy 'balance' and need to be countered by other functions.
That's what schedule limitations on siege events, is doing. Players are immortal, don't need supply logistics, and don't have true intel. Battles in fantasy MMOs don't even involve friendly fire. We can say it's 'just a test of PvP skill', right up until the point where someone decides 'wait, why do I need skill when I can just leverage my immortality and throw bodies at the problem until a smaller force gets tired?'
Every competitive PvP game that people seem to like these days, 'understands' this fact, and deals with it in some way, except OpenWorld/Sandbox Fantasy MMOs. People are sick of it, but they're sick of different parts of it, so people come to the discussion table with different 'things they think should be more realistic'. No one gets anywhere in the end.
Everything you add to make the game 'more reasonable to play' makes something else exploitable. All we can do is match the limits against the exploits. Unscheduled territory PvP could easily have applied limits to make it reasonable, but the playerbase would then be fractured by their reactions to those limits.
This is the core flaw in Fantasy PvX games.
A niche offshoot 2007-released of Dark Ages of Camelot. DaoC was highly popular for a PvP-centric MMO - peaked at 250k subscribers before WoW took over.
So, uh. I'll ignore the parts about FPS or whatever.
Only if you can't mentally handle your enemies and your allies working out some minor buffs and advantages for when the next siege will come around. It wouldn't even all have to result in advantages; it could just speed up which day the next siege will be at.
This is honestly what frustrates me most about the PvEer's mindset. It seems you can never just let action take place without ensuring that you win every potential advantage you might earn at any second of the game.
You think a PvPer ever complained that the PvEers got to be 30% stronger after spending 50 hours per week grinding raids?
You just said you don't want to turn this into a PvP vs PvE thread, but your response immediately went in the direction that makes me want to disengage from trying to explain it.
I'm just letting you know in case you care about that.
I already play games like this. I enjoy them for precisely the same reasons you do. I'm just aware that what you want does not stand up well in Fantasy MMOs. And I agree with Noaani that in those Fantasy MMOs, this is what it becomes.
Unless you failed to explain your concept correctly, you shouldn't be reaching for the 'PvEer's mindset' card just yet. At least let us 'PvEers' (neither of the people responding are this) get a little further than this if you actually want to discuss it.
My mindset is - if it has to be one or the other - that of a PvP player.
Yes.
Yes they do.
Literally all the time.
This is literally the reason games like WoW made it so PvE obtained gear is not as good in PvP as PvP obtained gear - it was PvP players complaining.
We have even seen a number of the more prominent PvP players on these forums complain about this in Ashes.
I am not sure where you are getting the idea that PvP players don't complain, it is clearly not grounded in reality.
~~later I mean I'd love to, but just going and assuming I must be talking about a shooter because an intriguing siege-based MMORPG is so utterly unheard of and such an intrinsic impossibility...that's a bit thick by Noaani there.
The gameplay loop in DaoC left plenty of room for required PvE.
Regnum had bosses in the warzone and in protected PvE dungeons. Nothing special, but challenging enough, even for larger groups, to constitute some amount of PvE. Not worth mentioning becuase they weren't a massive part of the gameplay loop, but the fact that people regularly cleared them showed that the concept has plenty of room for PvE, it just needs to be well enough designed for people to want to do both (or either, depending on their personal preference.)
I might have made this mistake with you before in the past? Either way I apologise, but there might be something about the things you seek in PvP that just really doesn't align with the things I crave from it. Either that, or you're playing PvE MMOs and calling them PVP, I'm not sure.
Okay, there are idiots on both sides, I thought that went without saying.
All the players I communicate with understand that when they invest their time in one aspect of the game, they'll have more control over their rewards in those aspects than in other aspects where other players invest theirs.
If it helps my point, I haven't ever so much as wished I had better gear when the guy who grinds world bosses like it's his job 5-hits me with his elemental bow of awesomeness. I readjust my helmet and regroup with my party, who I've been raiding his realm with every weekend. It's all balanced with a little bit of perspective.
For someone that claimed they don't want to make this a PvP vs PvE thing, you've done a really poor job at it.
Regnum Online, from what I can find using my sources, is almost entirely about Sieges.
All player investment is related to PvP and RvR. It has no other immediately easily available 'information about other game aspects'. Therefore it has no 'loss' in an area outside of territory and sieges that I can find.
Please explain to me anything else that Regnum Online consists of.
If this comes off as me trying to catch you in a 'gotcha' situation, I am happy to go into detail about Elite Dangerous and FFXI Campaign, both of which actually do have most of the required functions to make 'sieges without timers' at least viable, but one isn't a Fantasy game, and the other is not PvP (in the Campaign).
Otherwise, I'm not sure what meaningful discussion we can have. I don't have the information to do anything but either 'continue to think you're wrong based on your love of a narrow game', or 'take your word for it without basis, against all my experience'.
If you reward the nolifers too much - you'll have the game for only nolifers, and they're usually a fairly small bunch. And you if you don't really rewards them for their time - you get what ZZav described in AA, which is no one participating in content that has lower rewards for their higher efforts.
L2 kinda had these "endless sieges" in the form of guild Forts. You'd register your guild to a siege and 3h later you'd have it for an hour. Obviously not quite as prolonged or permanent as what you suggest, but definitely way closer than AoC's primetime gating. And you know who usually dominated those sieges? People who either played in off hours or the nolifers (kinda the same thing, but you get the point).
And even when these forts were made way more rewarding on some private servers - people still rarely interacted with them, because everyone was either playing during primetime hours or just had better things to do (usually mob grind for gear).
But I'd say that we already kinda have what you're suggesting. Node/guild wars have unlimited killing during their existence. So one side's players are free to go and search for enemies during whichever hours.
The main problem with wars though is that we know jackshit about their design. We don't know costs of declaration, we don't know consequences of refusal to participate, we don't know if there's any links to any even semi-meaningful goals outside of the prime-time ones. We only know that you can declare at any time, but goals only spawn at prime-time.
I'd say that involving guild-related freeholds in the off-hours guild wars and in-node housing in off-hours node wars would be a good way to get close to your suggestion. You won't be able to destroy those locations, but you'll need to do smth in them to have maybe a buff or an item for the prime-time goals of the wars. Node/guild gets notified that you're aiming to raid their stuff and can decide whether they want to defend (that is, if there's even anyone online).
Outside of that, I don't think permanent sieges would work as well as you think they would, precisely for the reasons presented by ZZav.
Love that game, even though I haven't played much still. Really think it's one of the best mass pvp games out there and teaches people about great player-made-content designs.
I think AoC is trying to be a PvE & PvP game in equal measures. As far as I know, you can actually make one note declare war on another note, without siege even. Guilds can declare war on other guilds. I am not sure there is more ways to declare wars, but if you want a ton of PvP, I am thinking you can make a guild and declare war on several guilds that is around your area. Maybe you could even take somewhat controll over a dungeon that way.
Any mmorpg that has tried it has had very bad PvP, Age of Conan had it and PvP was nonexistant.
Imo Ashes of Creation would be better if it had DaoC type of PvP.
Theres a reason its considered the pinacle of PvP mmorpgs and Archage/Lineage arent
It was discussed in the old forums way back when already and i said the same thing back then but yea, it wont change.
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I can confirm that. It's just as Noaani says. (lol)
It's even worse when "Casual PvP'ers" in for Example World of WoW-Token Craft, meet other Players who grinded and farmed the most ridiculous Arena-Items while using +5 PvP Addons and more.
The Difference even then is like Day and Night even if the "Casual" PvP'ers have unlocked a strong PvP-Set which you don't need to do Arena for.
You are stuck either using PvP-Items that negate Stuns and give You serious Stat Buffs for like 20 Seconds, or you just get obliterated like the Casual you are. * sighs in Casual * ^-^ x'D
It's EVEN. WORSE. when it's a Battleground that is "Pre-made". Meaning +20 to 40 PvP-Lunatics farm up and entirely shred to bits a Casual-Player Group that is simply there for farming Honor Points and Batches. 🤣👍
It's like the one Line from Game of Thrones.
" You went through us like Piss through Snow. " or so. 🤣👍
Apparently it looks like " all Classes " in Ashes will have a form of Stealth-Ability, from the January Caravan-PvP Presentation.
If it's solely something during Ambushes on Caravans, or an Ability, Feature, Item or something else that Players can unlock in the Game,
apparently everyone will have a Possibility to become semi translucent.
And until now, i didn't even mention the Possibility that Classes may all be able to gain some Stealth, by having a "Rogue-Second-Class" unlocked later on.
Is it the pinnacle of PvX MMORPGs?
Once again, it's not an Archer, but a Ranger.
It's camouflage, and not stealth.
if you're talking about DAOC, you're miss-leading this conversation.
Darkness Falls (PvEvP) dungeon was a must for character progression in PvP.
Was the majority of the game-loop for PvP in the frontier? Yes, but contestable PvE was still a necessity
It's called Ashes of Creation
That's what I was saying. The argument is that it's possible for a game to be PvP-centric but still allow for PvE to be essential and leave room PvE-preferring players to enjoy the game without being forced to engage in PvP duty constantly.
DAoC is one of my favorite games of all time, but with AoC the mechanics don't line up the same way.
Warhammer Online had it's chance to be DAoC2, but they added keeps to late in the game and wasn't designed properly, and then their game performance ruined it.
Warhammer Online also has open world PvPvE. Which was awesome.
The reality is, DAoC and AoC at the core are completely different, and it's either you're ok with the direction, and design of AoC because it's not going to change at all, or you'll need to wait for Camelot Unchained.