the only real way to do it, is stick all the people who want to have fun (PvP) on their own server, and stick all the weenies who want to slay monsters on the other servers. it worked great in Ashersons Call.. if you dont completely seperate them, you will NEVER find a balance that is fun to both groups of people.

BTW, to that guy who said "if you want to kill other people pick another genre".. thats complete BS... why pick another genre? RPG's are an excellent source of PvP and IMO, if done properly, is the most fun a video game can get. if the combat system is well designed and balanced, its a lot of fun killing other people. and yes, as a newbie people will gank you, but too bad. suck it up and get stronger...

I'm pretty much a newcomer to these forums, but I'll go ahead and post anyways cause this is a rather interesting thread.

I agree to a certain extent that clicking on monsters and constantly fighting the weak AI can get repeatative.
I personally don't care for PvP due to the fact that many MMORPGs of this day impose a form of penalty and loss on the looser of PvP. This is often in the form of loosing items, but can even be as harsh as loosing stats/level/etc.

I think that this loss is the main reason why PvP seems to be a minority. If I knew up front that there would be no permanent loss to loosing a PvP fight, I would probably enjoy it almost as much as most who allready do.

So, with my opinion out of the way, I will present you with a 'MMORPG' which fits the bill of one *intended* for PvP:
Planetside!

Yes, it's not a 'traditional' RPG, but I feel there is enough element of character growth that it qualifies. Plus the fact that you are teaming up with dozens and dozens of human players, to defeat other teams of players, makes this a rather rich tactical game.

Course, this is all just my two credits.

Quote: Original post by graveyard filla
and yes, as a newbie people will gank you, but too bad. suck it up and get stronger...

This is what makes you a griefer. You want to play a game in one certain way and you don't care if it ruins the gaming experience for others.

No, a griefer is someone who plays _deliberately_ to cause grief to other players, regardless of actually playing the game well. Like a teamkiller or chatspammer in FPS games - they're losing the game, but they don't care 'cause they're pissing people off. Like Trolls on Slashdot.

If a game provides encouragement for killing newbies (you can loot their body and they're easy picking) - that's not griefing, that's just playing the game. If it pisses players off, its a badly designed game. Don't punish players for playing to win. Design the game to protect the newbs (or don't if that's what you want).

imho, I'll expect we see more "specialized" MMOs. Most MMOs up until now have tried to be the be-all and end-all of MMOs and end up pissing someone off. That's because MMOs are fundamentally the meeting of several different gametypes, and people play for different reasons. We see these specialized MMOs already in a few games - for crafters and socializers, there are games like Sims Online and A Story In The Desert. For Roquelike level-up treadmill enthusiasts, there's Evercrack and FFXI. For PvP players, there is PlanetSide and EVE. And then there are the omnipurpose games like UO. You can't please everyone all the time.

Why remove something people like? If you want to do something new add content, dont take it away.

I guess truthfully I can only partially agree with people complaints over PvP in rpgs. If it wasnt for the overly simplified AI and movement controls in most MMORPGs there would be absolutely no distiction between PvP and natural creature aggression. In every MMORPG I can recall playing if you mess up and step into an area with creatures that are aggressive, they WILL attack you, and if strong enough they WILL kill you, without any regard to your level or your reasoning for being in that area in the first place. But as I said they AI is so crude on average for NPC agents this in itself is the distinguishing and limiting/policing factor between PvP in most games.

If the designers of these games would take more care and place systems in place for policing areas, both by physical players, and their NPC counterparts, there would be little frustration with this by people that are actually trying to play correctly. Put a more robust punishment and reward system in place, and taking advantage of the system would be much harder, possibly less or more rewarding, and even more enjoyable in a lot of instances.

In most of these games, once you get to a certain level you pretty much stop having to worry about anything or anyone confronting you and posing any real problem. Up the anti for those that would take the darker path. Have guards, police, bounty hunters, assassins, etc. that are dynamic and feed off the events around them. Allow abuse and tyranny to be reported to these agents and appropriate reponse to be taken accordingly.

As it stands there are no "real" interactions between the players and these worlds, and often times (as we have seen) people will take advantage of that fact. Most of the times I have seen, all the things people moan about over PvP is present in some form by the local NPC AI Creatures, just in a sad and pathetic state that doesnt pose as much of a challenge, so is not as frustrating as an "intelligent" entity taking advantage of the same liberties. Allow players to be tracked down by player and npc bounty hunters alike, that are just as ruthless in pursuit as the person they are tracking.

Another interesting thing about the people I have known personally that have been so-called griefers, is that they are quite often some of the most powerful level characters in the world otherwise, who have just gotten bored with the high level state of their characters and decide to wreak some havok. In other words, to them, creating chaos in an otherwise uninteresting or unchallenging environment, creates new challenges and experiences...or...just passes the time more enjoyably than the boring nature of constantly building up another high level puppet for the umpteenth time in a row. In my opinion there should always be something for every character to do and achieve, with there never really being anything as stupid as the strongest level obtainable. At least overall anyway.

As hard as it is to admit, most MMORPGs don't offer as much unique or original content as they so proudly claim. The design of these games just need to step up and match their offline and, unfortunately, often single player counterparts. On another note, designers of MMORPGs havent seemd to realize that the MMO part of an rpg is not really all that necessary. As with most popular PnP RPGs, which can be played with a select group of like-minded individuals, building basig multiplayer support into most RPG game experience would truly broaden the experience. And thus shoud even more so in a massively multiplayer effort. Most of the time I actually DON'T WANT to play 5 different characters in a party at once. I usually have a select few character and/or personality types I would like to portray effectively. Open up the possible interactions for players, add some true player-environment interactions, and allow players to truly distinguish themselves in an immersive setting. Most of the best elements of the RPG portion of thise genres distinction have been left out of most of the associated gameplay mechanics present in all the variations presented.



[Edited by - Amadeus on June 25, 2004 11:27:12 PM]

Quote: Original post by Pxtl
No, a griefer is someone who plays _deliberately_ to cause grief to other players, regardless of actually playing the game well. ... If a game provides encouragement for killing newbies (you can loot their body and they're easy picking) - that's not griefing, that's just playing the game. If it pisses players off, its a badly designed game.

Exploiting an imperfect design is griefing. If I break an opponent's legs in a game of soccer while the referee isn't watching, then I may get away with it under the rules, but it wasn't fair, nor was it an intended part of the game. Similarly if I decide I'm going to spend all my online time killing weak people for a laugh, especially when those people believed they were entering a shared roleplaying environment and would have a chance at a reasonably fair game, then I'm a griefer. The game wasn't designed so you could do that. It just happened to not be designed so that you couldn't. In the case of Ultima Online this is because the original designers didn't believe that so many people would be morons. It's sad really, but at least we all learned something.

While I agree that the game should enforce the design as far as possible, anybody who deliberately exploits a weakness in it without caring about the negative effect on other players is essentially a griefer. Social rules should count just as much as technically-enforced rules.

Give someone a finger, and they'll take your hand.

The problem isn't necessarily the griefers. The problem lies with the game developer and the "whiners" specifically. The "whiners" will cry for changes anytime something happens that is relatively unfair to them individually. "Whiners" aren't roleplayers, they are people who want a graphical, immersive chat program under the pretense of role-play. If you have to call tech support because someone outwitted you in an online game, then you shouldn't be playing video games.

As Amadeus pointed out, there is pretty much 0 room for a real roleplaying environment in MMORPGs in the first place. In fact, the last time I really role played in an MMORPG was Sierra's 'The Realm' (that was pre-UO, pre-Meridian 59 I believe). In that time PK'ers were called 'jumpers', simply because they would attack anyone who came on the screen. But people actively waged war in enmity of these 'dark' forced. The Good side outnumbered the bad side. If you were a jumper then there were guilds of individuals who would be set out to humiliate and destroy you. No one cried! If I was jumped, killed, and looted, I informed my guild officers, who informed their allies, who informed their members. Being a 'jumper' meant that you had to be extremely powerful, and if not, extremely stupid. Isn't that how it is in real life? Unprepared criminals in MMORPGs should be the equivalent of those 'stupid criminals' stories where the guy robs a bank with no getaway car.

And yes, I had fun running around as a lvl 46 Cleric in DAoC and running lines of lvl 30 mobs into a camp of lvl 6s so that they could be aggroed.

ho ho ho.
Alex

Quote: Original post by Alex Curtis
The problem isn't necessarily the griefers. The problem lies with the game developer and the "whiners" specifically. The "whiners" will cry for changes anytime something happens that is relatively unfair to them individually. "Whiners" aren't roleplayers, they are people who want a graphical, immersive chat program under the pretense of role-play. If you have to call tech support because someone outwitted you in an online game, then you shouldn't be playing video games.

3 problems there:
1) Why should a game that you pay a subscription to be "unfair"?
2) Who says that your definition of roleplaying is right and theirs is not? If they just wanted to chat then most of them would be on MUDs.
3) Online games were intended to offer a largely cooperative gameplay experience. If you log onto a cooperative FPS server, and some guy of a higher skill level decides he's going to shoot you all the time, eventually you might ask the ops to kick him. And that would be reasonable in my view. It was also reasonable in the view of the people who made UO.

Quote: As Amadeus pointed out, there is pretty much 0 room for a real roleplaying environment in MMORPGs in the first place.

That's not true. Some text-based games feature hundreds of people in shared spaces and they don't feel the need to hunt and kill newbies for a laugh. But the point isn't about acting out characters and doing heavy roleplaying, the point is that people expected to be able to play in a largely (not entirely) cooperative environment, but in fact found that far too many people worked selfishly to make this impossible.

Quote: The Good side outnumbered the bad side. If you were a jumper then there were guilds of individuals who would be set out to humiliate and destroy you. No one cried!

I have italicised the 2 above points as they are important. The first point was not true in Ultima Online. This broke the gameplay. If the first point had been true, I expect the second point would have been true as well.

Ultima Online was billed as a friendly and social experience set in the Ultima world. The expectations were not that you would spend most of your time worrying about the equivalent of bandits. People did not get what was advertised and they had the right to complain. The developers realised that the game didn't offer what they'd intended for it to offer and they changed the game accordingly. Good on them.

I have no time for anybody who derives their entertainment from disrupting that of others.

Quote: Original post by Kylotan
1) Why should a game that you pay a subscription to be "unfair"?

Unfair is relative. Most people believe that any injustice that is heaped against them in a game is unfair. (i.e., losing!)

Quote: Original post by Kylotan
2) Who says that your definition of roleplaying is right and theirs is not? If they just wanted to chat then most of them would be on MUDs.

So you say if they wanted to just chat, they would derive more fun from a text-based platform instead of a graphical platform? Like WHO?

Quote: Original post by Kylotan3) Online games were intended to offer a largely cooperative gameplay experience. If you log onto a cooperative FPS server, and some guy of a higher skill level decides he's going to shoot you all the time, eventually you might ask the ops to kick him. And that would be reasonable in my view. It was also reasonable in the view of the people who made UO.

I'm glad you pointed that out 'higher skill level'. Are you saying that because someone who is better than you at a game targets you, it is unfair? If you are then I see your problem. You don't want a game, you want a utopian fantasy.

Quote: Original post by KylotanThat's not true. Some text-based games feature hundreds of people in shared spaces and they don't feel the need to hunt and kill newbies for a laugh. But the point isn't about acting out characters and doing heavy roleplaying, the point is that people expected to be able to play in a largely (not entirely) cooperative environment, but in fact found that far too many people worked selfishly to make this impossible.

If the game developers don't implement features to deter criminal actions (you know, like in real life) and allow realistic counter-actions by the victims, then 'griefers' will appear. In The Realm, we took it upon ourselves to destroy these sort of nuisances (as, the game provided), not tech support.

Quote: Original post by KylotanI have italicised the 2 above points as they are important. The first point was not true in Ultima Online. This broke the gameplay. If the first point had been true, I expect the second point would have been true as well.

Ultima Online was billed as a friendly and social experience set in the Ultima world. The expectations were not that you would spend most of your time worrying about the equivalent of bandits. People did not get what was advertised and they had the right to complain. The developers realised that the game didn't offer what they'd intended for it to offer and they changed the game accordingly. Good on them.

First, I would like to point out that I've never played UO. And also, you are right, if the game developer is marketting a pritsy cutsie graphical IRC client, they should implement things to deter these sorts of actions. But if they utter the words 'role-play', then they are foolish to do so. Who is to choose what role I play in a role-playing environment, much less force me into a role? Isn't that why games like GTA are so popular? Freedom?

Quote: Original post by KylotanI have no time for anybody who derives their entertainment from disrupting that of others.

I have no time for anyone who describes a role-playing game as an experience where everything goes well for them. If you want that, there is a game called The Sims.

I have never in my time playing MMORPGs been killed or robbed without returning the favor to the enemy, or attempting to do so.