I read the posts on PvP again, and I felt it funny -- and yet sad -- that months after our initial discussions on Pkill we are almost rehashing the same points again on both sides. In the end I would say we are trying to compare oranges with apples, with different visions in our minds.
It occurred to me that we are in fact looking for the same thing in PvP, but that RoD terminology is simply misleading us.
RoD pkill is consensual. One can choose to log on as a peaceful (non-PvP) character, or a deadly (PvP) character. Anyone who makes a deadly character has in himself/herself the intention to PvP. In fact, when I feel like doing more "peaceful" things without having to stay alert for attacks, I log onto a peaceful character.
As a matter of fact, I have very little interest in killing hapless people who do not want to fight back. There is quite simply no challenge. I will be very disappointed if Cryptic had chosen to make PvP mandatory for everyone; I myself will not enjoy myself if I was suddenly jumped while patiently punching my last mob to death in a mission.
However, a large part of the thrill in PvP is knowing that after you have chosen to be open to attack, you can be attacked any time and any where. Consider a Doom Deathmatch server. When you log on (consent to PvP), you know anyone around you can hit you -- they might not, but they most probably will, so you can safely assume they are aggressive.
Combat by consent only, however, is something different. It is what I would term instanced combat. An analogy would be logging onto the Doom server, and a player who wishes to initiate combat with you must send you a dialog. Uhoh, he has that nail gun while you only have a little pistol? Click no.
No matter how many times I have tried to explain the even team concept, it seems that Juli here is firmly in the camp that deadly play is all about over-powering and ganging up on people. True, that happens. More often than not there are always players who sit out, or switch to weaker characters, or let the poorly equipped side have gather greater numbers ... all to make teams balanced and the pkill be fun. Yes, I admit uneven teaming happens, bad behaviour happens. It is not so different from normal gameplay.
In a way, deadly play is arena PvP. The world is your arena, and most of all, the pk-town. Standing in the square of pk-town itself is an arena challenge -- come, hit me, I am bored and waiting. Some players will not leave pk-town during a battle unless they are almost about to drop. (Some run out the moment they become the target, oh well.) There are doors to stall people fleeing out or pursuing, secret exits, mini-mazes to run around in and heal up when you are low. It is a nicely designed arena.
What RoD calls "arena pk" is what I call "box pk". A box of identical room names, and run around without tactics. When you get low, type "retreat", and instantly you are safe from attack, back to peaceful life, with no risk of ever getting hurt.
When a deadly flees pkill town, he can be sure there will be people hot in pursuit. There is no press the magic-button and move to GO. People will be constantly locating the room he is in, and running there to hit him. Conversely, when I am pursuing someone I must constantly see where he is and/or predict where he is going. How does my opponent behave in battle? Where do they like to run to? Are they "left-tending" or "right-tending"?
I don't get that thrill from a box with identical room names. I don't get that with a magical "free from attack" button. Doing PvP in a little 8x8 box (with one up/down loop in the centre) defeats the entire purpose of PvP for me -- the challenge of matching wits and reflexes against another human being.
That is maybe the reason why deadlies hold such contempt for peacefuls, especially well-dressed peacefuls who deck out a thief and pretend to be badass in the arena. Because they are spamming in a box, when there are many deadlies who put on not just seth, but even seth pops and dfbs and fight where there is no 'safe button' and 'no loot'.
(As to the common conception that deadlies cannot be trusted/will cheat you at any instance/will steal/etc...I have seen loot returned and loot passed worth sets. Gloried Malefications, shrouds, whispers, veils, and so on. Of course, I have seen set rings looted. Let me just point out again that as in any other communities, there are different people, both good and bad. I certainly won't trust any deadly, but I won't trust any peaceful either, given the human penchant for weakness.)
So it all depends on what the CoH arena will be like. Can it be sophisticaed enough to challenge a human being, or will be become like the RoD box-arena? PvP areas might be interesting, but I would suggest that they be smallish areas designed for the sole purpose of PvP, not just modified hazard zones. When you have humans to keep to occupied, those AI minions pale in comparison, so do away with them. There is no need either to force people doing missions to move through these areas; some people just want to do their mission, not deal with every trigger-happy sniper hovering in the sky.
Doesn't that sound pretty much like Juli's posting?
4 comments:
I'd think in the end we'll have to agree to disagree. We like different things in PvP or Pkill.
I don't think consensual PvP combat means combat through prompt-only. In fact, I think prompts like that can almost constitute harassment if they are set up in the same way as the team-invite prompts. (Check the bitching about blind invites for why those prompts are so annoying.)
My main disagreement/dislike is the openness of pkill in RoD.
I LIKE box pkilling. I LIKE the confined spaces where you cannot run. Where one HAS to die, no two ways about it.
I DISLIKE having totally open spaces where in theory one can run away forever. I DISLIKE RoD's combat code and the skillsets required. I DISLIKE having to sit and plot a hunt of somebody and knowing that someone is trying to spring some sort of uneven surprise on you as well.
Am I really in this camp you put me in, or are you not really listening to what I'm saying?
I'm glad to learn that a lot of RoD pkillers actually like to fight in even teams. I would be even happier playing a game where even teams are FORCED by the code or at least team numbers kept the same and players randomized. (A number of various FPSes do this.)
Because RoD's code does NOT support this, is where the problem lies. I'm sure 99% of the pkillers can be trusted to follow the stated code of honour in the pre-agreed on balanced teams. What about mistakes where you accidentally hit someone you're not supposed to? Why can't the code prevent this? It would make me much happier.
And it would also eliminate that 1% of troublemakers who really aren't pkillers, but use pkilling as a tool for GRIEFING. (Which by the way, is what the "over-powering and ganging up on people" and my disdain refers to.) I despise GRIEFERS. I have misgivings about PvP because it's been my experience that such a competitive contest where one can "kill" another and rack up huge "scores" often create emotions/politics that encourage griefing behaviours.
I have no patience to sit around and be fodder for some immature griefer to get his jollies off of.
Oh, and the magic 'retreat' button is ridiculously specific. You're scorning all 'box/arena' pk because of ONE supposedly badly built Forested Arena. Forested is a place to spar, where retreat is allowed if you want to be chicken about it. I've never retreated in Forested until I ran out of heals - same as pkillers break off combat and run for their precious storekeeper when they run out of heals.
In fact, in RoD pkill where the 'world' is your arena, you can retreat at any time. Sure you can get pursued, but what's safe rooms for or logging off if you wanted to? Same chicken-coward effect too.
Imm-sponsored arena'ing has no magic retreat button. FPS maps have no magic retreat button (ok, you can disconnect and log off, but we're talking about trying to play the game here. This goes for RoD pkill in world or in box too. The only curious thing is that RoD pkill is so unspecific in its rules that there are deadlies playing different games with it. The one Kelizendis espouses is, I take it, the most commonly accepted one most deadlies play by.)
I LIKE no loot. I see no reason to discourage pvping by penalizing losers by making them even MORE incapable of killing others. There are other ways to keep score.
That, imo, is why RoD pkill has never flourished, because losing is penalized. Only those "tough enough" to stick it out and go on to get on "winning sides" will continue to play. And no matter how much deadlies try to egg others into doing the same thing they did, only a subset of the population will do this. You're shooting yourself in the foot by adding loot, and hoping more fresh blood will join.
You have to ask yourself then. Did you want the fresh blood to actually play with you and have pvp combat? Or did you really just want the fresh blood to loot dry?
Can't have both. There are only so many people with that kind of tolerance for pain thresholds.
I played all sorts of FPSes. As a beginner, you can imagine how much I sucked. TFC - very common to see me with something like 1:20 kill/death ratio or worse. Right at the bottom of the scoreboard. That was the only penalty though. I didn't have my gun taken from me. I didn't have my aim screwed up even more. I didn't end up with less ammo or something. I didn't have to go tromping across many areas trying to find the equipment I lost or log an alt to replace it. (Counterstrike excepted. Maybe that's why I don't like it that much.)
And without the penalty, you can move back into the game faster and learn and get better. Right at my prime in TFC, I was hovering around 2nd-3rd on the scoreboards. Not the best, but certainly positive kill/deaths and a bigger asset to the team than the noob blowing himself up with demoman spam.
Do I want to play a game where I have a chance (no matter how low) of getting set back by getting looted blind, or even partway looted? Nope. I'm playing another game. A faster one where I can actually jump in and blow things up. Those of you who LIKE loot can play the game I choose not to play.
It's my belief that people pkill for as many reasons as they play mmorpgs. We can list all the stuff we like and dislike to see where we stand. In the end, it might become obvious we like different things, and that's why there are so many PvP games with varied rulesets that caters to our different tastes.
PvP in an existing mmorpg though? That affects many people. So the best way to go about it is to do it in a mild fashion, and make sure it doesn't stomp on too many people's mislikes. That means consensual, pretty much box pk, imo.
Otherwise, if you want to cater to whichever niche of the pk crowd, that's why you design a new game that does so.
Check out the up-and-coming Guild Wars, Auto-Assault and Tabula Rasa, amidst other games. Maybe some of them will have PvP done right the way YOU personally like it. (No, I swear I'm not an NCsoft employee and have no stake in them.)
Sorry for the double post, two other things occured to me.
1) The really specific instance of RoD pkill combat code, and why I've always been very scornful of it.
To accrue a positive score in this pkill game, you must kill people. There is no team based objective, it's pretty much a deathmatch or a team deathmatch at best.
That means, doing more damage to the other person, and withstanding the other person's damage.
Ie. More Damroll and More HP. Where does it come from? Uber equipment. Phat loot. Not cool for me personally.
Face it, no matter how much you carp about skill, Azvacar the buffed up vampire has a lot easier time of it than a ghetto fathomer.
Of course, skill has an effect in this game. It has in EVERY game you play. Morons are equally ineffective all over. Lag screws you any time you have a worse internet connect than the other person. You can make better macros/aliases, get faster at typing, have the correct hunches on when to run and when to type a damage-causing skill, but when all other factors are equal, DR and HP play a big role.
The above mentioned are all personal skill improvements. They'll happen naturally, as time progresses. What's a faster shortcut most people hit on, to make it easier to kill somebody?
Two hitting on one equals more damage than one on one. And so on. And then we have ganging up on someone, which is supported by the code and deadly culture.
And that pretty much becomes very unfair when you pvp in a persistent world where your friends are there every day. (How often do you see a group of friends in Quake all jointly shooting at the same people to take them down faster? Same principle applies, but it really never happens. Because it's just not game culture. It's a FFA deathmatch.)
To make things even more irrational, there is no certain death. If you're on the ball, you never die. You can always break off from combat, fuel up on heals and never run out.
No, I don't see the point. I probably won't see the point of Quake deathmatching either where you can constantly fuel up on heals/ammo and never die if you know what you're doing. (I certainly drooled over Alana Reid's skill when I saw her play though. But would I care to spend hours and days of my lifetime learning how to do that? Would I find it fun enough? Not really.)
So I'm a hopeless spoiled grunt who needs a set team objective other than kill everyone or kill everyone on the team. I need to plant a bomb. I need to destroy hives or command centers. I need to guard a flag. I need to take and hold and assault and defend.
I need an objective that I can help the team achieve, because my desire to kill or be killed has never been very high to begin with.
PvP is just a tool to reach the objective.
That by the way, is why I loved Deathball. *hugs her Deathball trophy which is likely to delete some day* It's a shame it was never automated in RoD. *weeps*
2) By the way, Keli, if you can ever pry yourself away from CoH - you need to pick up Steam and Half-Life 2.
Then you can try out CS, TFC, DoD and NS and see if any of those styles of PvP interest you. :)
Re: What about mistakes where you accidentally hit someone you're not supposed to?
This actually happens so often with me you won't believe the number of times I started hitting Akhemis (clan leader) instead of Azvacar. I think Jim's just about used to it that he ignores it.
This is actually one of my favorite stories.
Decoy KillingMarcus is a brilliant guy. He told us he hit Amritsan just to lure Dre into bashing (and getting the bash-lag, which would prevent him from healing), because as Dre's good friend, he knew Dre was a huge risk-taker. As usual, there is the train about each person's different role. Amritsan, the warrior, bashed Garbozas back. If it had hit, Dre would have been lagged more, and died. But he missed, and all seemed lost. Then my otherwise melee-less thief circled, and cut down a large amount of hitpoints. Saki the vampire and Amritsan then finished Dre off with melee.
And did we loot Dre of seth, gloried seth at that? Yes we did. Even though Marcus and Dre were great friends. Loot is impersonal; loot is just loot. It's not victimizing, it just is. I don't mind being looted, and there's very rarely any problem with ghettos getting looted, if you do lose all your 'high end' stuff. More misconceptions?
That's where we'll have to agree to disagree.
I certainly don't find loot impersonal. Heck, you have no idea how long it took before I managed to shrug away the impending deletion of most my RoD characters.
It still has 'value' in my mind. It still has significance. All my "stuff". The filthy "richness" of it. The only thing is I tell myself I can no longer be bothered to uphold that significance and it's better for everyone if it all washes away.
And as I mentioned earlier, to me, it's a penalty. You fought better pre-looting naked than post-looting. Now you have to overcome even greater odds if you want your stuff back. Pretty darned impossible.
Can I view equipment and loot as pretty much a shared reservoir or pool? Just like apparently Kelizendis and many deadlies do? Not really.
Perhaps here's one difference between the casual gamer and the professional pkiller. Casuals like to own junk. We're collectors. We put value on stuff being OURS.
Not stuff being swopped around as a method of keeping score.
And perhaps that's why I can game in FPSes, there's no ownership in those, the weapons are there to be used and thrown away. Can I transfer the sentiment to an mmorpg? Nope. Persistent world = I want my collection (be it of junk, badges, or complete contact tiers).
Loot = I don't PvP.
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