Why PVP is dead?

[askrj1]

*snip*

Every now and then you folks who push the idea that other PvP games are making money so DDO should do the same and surely it will be profitable. You keep ignoring that those games are designed to be PvP from ground up and have a pay model for so.

Explain to me what rewards can you offer in a PvP mode that will not severely affect power creep but will keep players consistently willing to pay for access.

Catch up to the vets has nothing to do with PvP, and recent updates have made it relatively easy to gear new toons without needing them to run 60 shrouds to finish a GS or a dozen Stealer of Souls to reroll DTA runes for an armor.

You assume adjustments and upkeep of adding a proper PvP arena in DDO will be easy, and surely it will generate enough income to be worth spending time and hiring extra manpower to create and maintain this portion of the game.

You seem to believe DDO will suddenly be popular with droves of new players who will stay for the rest of the game if you could spread word of a great PvP should the devs do make one.

GRuin was just an example of things that won't work in PvP, you never addressed the balance issues when nothing in DDO at this point is balanced around PvP power.

[Proton]

Every now and then you folks who push the idea that other PvP games are making money so DDO should do the same and surely it will be profitable. You keep ignoring that those games are designed to be PvP from ground up and have a pay model for so.

Explain to me what rewards can you offer in a PvP mode that will not severely affect power creep but will keep players consistently willing to pay for access.

Catch up to the vets has nothing to do with PvP, and recent updates have made it relatively easy to gear new toons without needing them to run 60 shrouds to finish a GS or a dozen Stealer of Souls to reroll DTA runes for an armor.

You assume adjustments and upkeep of adding a proper PvP arena in DDO will be easy, and surely it will generate enough income to be worth spending time and hiring extra manpower to create and maintain this portion of the game.

You seem to believe DDO will suddenly be popular with droves of new players who will stay for the rest of the game if you could spread word of a great PvP should the devs do make one.

GRuin was just an example of things that won't work in PvP, you never addressed the balance issues when nothing in DDO at this point is balanced around PvP power.

Answering these questions will be cake work for someone who loves PvP like myself! Before I do, I got done the other day with some matches, had some good moments like when I took down the entire other team all on my own because once again I got randomly stuck with a bunch of "what are we doing" players. It was extremely fun and an awesome feeling to take down a mob of intelligent living people instead of predictable AI... and I can testify that doing that is usually much harder then taking down a mob of AI.

I was left thinking... too bad with my skills... I could't take them to DDO and have a good PvP team match up there. Ok, now for your questions:


Reward: Best way to go about this is limit the gear they can use during PvP match ups. Instead of getting anything new, they fight to earn the priveledge to use what they already got in the PvP arena setting. Items add up the power rating, so a Sword +3 might give 9 points of gear power for PvP match ups wheras a Sword +5 gives 14. The cap of power starts at something like 25 or 20, so you have to initially enter the arena with almost nothing to wear or wield, but can improve your gear as your fight or earn better gear priveledge.

Now for this they don't have to make anything new at all. There is no power creep coming out of this approach either. It won't affect power creep one bit.

Toss in some exp, since they are putting in time and can lose just like a quest, with a random queue, and now it is impossible to abuse for exp, if someone wants to farm easy exp or abuse, there are many more questing options that would get more exp then jumping into a PvP queue, waiting 10-30 seconds, entering a match with 11 other people who can not be coordinated friends or dummy accounts since they are random, and who want to win so will not throw fight, and with fights lasting 5 to 10 minutes with a payout on exp that is something, not much, less then a 1 minutes quest gives on normal... it won't get abused for exp but because it adds exp to the reward as well, PvP players will be far more into it.

Another approach that can either be used or coupled with the one above is to add 3 PvP named trees, something like Duelist for melee, etc. that only function within the PvP match up settings, and are only earned by participating in PvP match ups. Players who do not want to do PvP won't suffer not having them, since they don't do anything outside of PvP, and players who enjoy PvP will naturally want to fill them up. This approach also adds nothing to power creep in quests. Both approaches can be stacked together and it still has zero effect on power creep in the game.

Catch up to vets has nothing to do with PvP, agreed. This is even better for PvP, that these two are not connected. PvP gets a fresh new start, players who want to play the game because they love PvP matches, and find DDO's overall combat system more fun then the game they are currently playing PvP on, will not feel intimidated by the "catch up to vets" game aspect that questing presents. This is optimal for PvP players, who would have a much harder time joining a competitive game where they start out 5 years behind. If they want that awesome gear for their PvP matches... guess where they got to go to get it? That is right, questing! And when PvP players get into it... they will want that gear! So lfms will fill up with eager players ready to help in order to get what they want for their PvP.

This is also BEAUTIFUL for ALT PLAY! Since in this PvP envirenment where it has nothing to do with Catch up to the Vets game, as you say and I agree, Alts are no longer in this place sooo sooo far behind.

So PvP will improve Alt gaming many folds over!

After playing so many PvP games my assumption is not poorly placed nor does it come from nowhere. I engage in these games and see how they make money. If hiring 2 people to manage PvP costs 5000 a month but brings several thousand players who end up spending on average 5 dollars, then it can easily cover the cost and make profit. Perhaps they can manage with one person and pay less for the work done, and still get PvP fixed because that person is a good programmer and gets the job done. Getting PvP balanced would not be that hard really, just listen to what players say when they say things like Gruin will mess up PvP, and remove Gruin from PvP matches.. easy.

If the players are dying too fast, use the trees to beef up their defenses until they are no longer dying so fast. Easy. If they are not dying fast enough, beef up the attack on those trees so they are killing quicker. 3 trees covers ranged, spell, melee so all styles fit into those 3, no matter what style, it is either using melee, ranged, or spells in the game.

Games are currently selling garbage that isn't even a completed item, that is how successful a good PvP system can be. There is more profit in the PvP aspect of gaming, and PvP games tend to be far more active as well. Balancing becomes even easier with teams, so capture the flag, domination, and death match between 6 vs 6 allows for team work, contribution, and less constrained battled. The cleric might not be the best attacker in PvP, but in a team that cleric might be the difference between victory and defeat more then ever. Alone it would never shine, in the team, its a hero!

I got to let my computer restart and update, I got about 2 minutes left... Ill finish this response when its done. Apologies.

Edit: back

Picking up where I left off, balancing teams is much easier then balancing individual fights. The tanks, sneaks, healers, casters and range all find important roles in a good set up. Tanks for obvious reasons, if the ranged and casters are easy to reach and soft, that is a weak spot. Tanks make a wall to protect the casters and ranged, adding to their efficiency while benefiting from their dps. Healers in a team match can easily become scale tippers, though a team of 6 healers probably won't be as effective even though 1 or 2 is. Casters and range, a lot of tactics from from these that play central roles in a healthy team. Just having tanks and healers and lousy damage could cost the fight.

Sneaks - rogues and sneaky builds can easily play an important role just as well, by sneaking up on the softer targets and taking em out instead of letting them trash the team. Invisibility and such could be set for a short 5 second 10 second burst, or it could simply remove the red border arrows that tell you the positions of your enemies, making it much easier for them to sneak up on you and make it so you can't be targeted for the duration of the cloaking. This is one way that things like cloaking and invisibility are currently being used effectively in PvPs and players are definitely enjoying the sneak build options, as those builds are very popular in the games that make them available.

Eliminating or reducing all OP effects and spells isn't really that much. There aren't that many spells in the game, and of those spells, only a few would even qualify to get nerfed or eliminated from PvP, most are going to be fine... things like Jump, Haste.. which is a large part of the spells will be fine, and most powers from trees are fine too, where there is only a few that would really go OP and need to be dealt with.

So between teams naturally being easier to balance anyways and having only a small percentage of the spells that would need elimination or nerf, balancing and adjusting PvP would not be difficult really. Others are doing it with ease, because it actually is pretty easy to do.


Yes, I do believe droves of new players will join if that happens because I already know all my friends would get into the game if that happens and right now, with it as a catch up to the vets game, they will not get into the game. I also know that, from playing PvP games, these games attract active vibrant players, sometimes they can get toxic, but that is easy to manage with a little effort. Most PvP games I play do not have toxic communities.

The people playing PvP games that want to fight other people and compete are not going to come to this game ever if it doesn't offer what they like. So droves of potential players are gone immediately if there is no PvP. Add a good system, a little advertising, and let word of mouth do the rest of the work, yes, this is already how games sell. If the PvP is awesome, people will talk about it, about the fun they had, others will get interested and want to check it out, and if they find that it as fun as they heard, guess what... new players will join, and they will do so by the droves. How do games manage to capture people by the droves anyways? They give the people what they like, and often games try to appeal to both the quest/group niches and PvP niches in most MMORGPs, because most people like having options, and some prefer one more then the other, and they would lose a huge amount of potential players and customers if they went just one way or the other.

Balance issues have been generally addressed, as I said, not a lot of Gruins to weed out of PvP, that part is easy. And build differences of classes fits right into team balances. Nothing much to do there. Exploits are easy to prevent totally. There is no need to create new 3d models, gear, scenes, monsters. If damage is scaling too high or too low, this is easy to adjust by adding 3 PvP trees, that allow one to quickly get the initial tree points to overcome the problem mostly, and then take time to get the full PvP tree affect, in order to totally suppress or overcome whatever is hitting too hard, or not hard enough.


There is not the slightest flinch in my eyes, add a good PvP and new players will come by the droves and all 8 servers will see their populations double or triple within a short amount of time. I predict this with confidence, certainty, and from seeing that it has already been done many times, there is clearly a science to its application.

[lyrecono]

I remember the time when there were a ton of peoples at the pvp in harbor, what happened? >:

and another quotation: what are the time zones for each server? thanks

So this old thing again?

Pvp was never a thing and never will be a thing, it was simply never build around pvp.

But.... If pvp was supposed to be a thing......

Doom(2016) allowed for the other team to play as the demons.
Evolve pitted a boss type monster against 4 players.

Imagine dungeons in ddo where players inhabit the bodies of mobs, if they get killed they respawn deeper in the dungeon.
The monster players could have their own party chat and coordinate tactics, ambushes, spell and trap placement, etc.
Have the Dungeon timed, if the pc kill the boss within the time limit, they win, if the monster players hold of the PC's during the time limit, they win.

The winning team gets pvp points, either monsterous or heroic points. Points they can use to buy specific cosmetics.
Each dungeon should have the option to go in on n/h/e/r(1-10).
The higher the setting, the higher cr mobs can be picked by the monster team

As for cosmetics? What about the ability to look like monsters in the public areas?
Just no power creep like reaper mode.

[Uska]

Can’t kill what never lived

[Proton]

Can’t kill what never lived

PvP was at a time active almost 24/7 and this lasted for a long time. It was alive at one time, even though it lacked any reward, and if anything, this shows how promising it is and what a waste to let something so active atrophy into nothing, rather then seizing up the opportunity and ceasing it! Your statement is challenged as being false! I remember when it was active, so I am not sure who you intend to fool with this statement, or perhaps you just never checked it out or missed that time when it was active for so long (it remained very active for many years I'll add, peaking up to 24/7 with players just wasting time, but having fun).

Seeing how popular and active it was back when this game wasn't a super TR grind, it is clear and obvious that this can be revived if it gets a little attention into a huge money maker that would be intense fun for PvP players.

PvP in DDO lived and can live again, even better then before.

Heck, when you compare PvP games to non-PvP games, it can be said that PvP is far more alive then non-Pvp will ever be.

[Yokido]

I would like to point out that socialization is an important ingredient for a successful MMO. While only 1% of the community used pvp before it was killed by ED & level cap increases, those who were pvp'ers had a tendency to be more loyal to the game.

I do not have a single person in my friendslist that is only PVE who still plays. While the few that are still active on my list used to be fervent pvp'ers back in the day.

ED's killed PVP because they allowed people to do ridiculous amounts of damage in a short period of time. This is a major symptom of power creep, and just dull game-play. When the focus on game-play shifts almost entirely to dishing out damage (due to monsters being made of giant piles of meat who are immune to most CC and debuffs), we've gone the wrong direction.

I will also contend that another issue DDO is plagued with is that there are too many levels and not enough players in each server. We should address this before the game dies, but we will see what happens. Players should be allowed to enter higher or lower level quests than they're designed for. Generic de-buffs or buffs could be applied to players playing out-side of their level range, and they would then be allowed to earn some XP & loot.

__________________________________________________ _____________________________

Lastly, free-to-play needs an addition or two. Not necessarily content, but ways to earn $-based currency. There are a few ways to do this. You can make some items that drop from F2P very rare & exciting to veteran players, but they also don't drop very often at all. We've seen this with the demon sands, invasion, the titan raid quests, and with muckdoom/bane. This is an idea that's served to strengthen our F2P economy, as-well as give them a reason to keep playing. We should revitalize it.

We had something similar to this fairly recently where some of the EE gear from F2P quests was trade-able and very valuable... However, the issue that F2P'ers come across is that they can barely play EH, let alone EE. Whatever the F2P content is, it needs to be easy-enough for this player-base to participate--- Even if this means very bad drop rates.

Peace-out!

[askrj1]

Heck, when you compare PvP games to non-PvP games, it can be said that PvP is far more alive then non-Pvp will ever be.

That's like saying more people played UT than Diablo 2 or Command and Conquer. I don't have the actual numbers and they are not relevant for comparison. They are different genres with different systems and attract different players, while they are not exclusive I will not automatically assume one will enjoy the other.

In recent years PvP enjoys more attention largely because of streaming competitive play and e-sports. Most of these games make money out of selling one or more of the following: 1) cosmetics 2) convenience and 3) pay2win. Please consider in context what that would mean for DDO.

DDO was not a PvP game to begin with, and the brawling pits were more of a feature for people to show off their e-peens, test DCs or simply to muck around while waiting for parties. I do not believe any serious PvP has ever happened, and it will not possibly happen in the context or level of an actual PvP title.

What you are essentially asking for is development and implementation of non-trivial PvP in a PvE title, on the premise that using existing resources and engine will either suffice or not take significantly more work for tangible profits and improvement in population. I do not believe any of these are actually realistic assumptions with sufficient leverage for SSG to actually take the risk over it's current content development. Of course, I do not speak for SSG, but I think it will serve well to use a bit of sense to realize this is not a trivial task with obvious benefits. Please do realize I am not against PvP per se, but I simply cannot imagine a proper implementation without negative impact on the rest of the current content and community, or otherwise enough benefits to justify it.

[Proton]

That's like saying more people played UT than Diablo 2 or Command and Conquer. I don't have the actual numbers and they are not relevant for comparison. They are different genres with different systems and attract different players, while they are not exclusive I will not automatically assume one will enjoy the other.

In recent years PvP enjoys more attention largely because of streaming competitive play and e-sports. Most of these games make money out of selling one or more of the following: 1) cosmetics 2) convenience and 3) pay2win. Please consider in context what that would mean for DDO.

DDO was not a PvP game to begin with, and the brawling pits were more of a feature for people to show off their e-peens, test DCs or simply to muck around while waiting for parties. I do not believe any serious PvP has ever happened, and it will not possibly happen in the context or level of an actual PvP title.

What you are essentially asking for is development and implementation of non-trivial PvP in a PvE title, on the premise that using existing resources and engine will either suffice or not take significantly more work for tangible profits and improvement in population. I do not believe any of these are actually realistic assumptions with sufficient leverage for SSG to actually take the risk over it's current content development. Of course, I do not speak for SSG, but I think it will serve well to use a bit of sense to realize this is not a trivial task with obvious benefits. Please do realize I am not against PvP per se, but I simply cannot imagine a proper implementation without negative impact on the rest of the current content and community, or otherwise enough benefits to justify it.

What you can not imagine I can easily imagine. What you think is not possible I think is possible. I'd not narrate impending failure ideas about something I already know from personal experience is a lot of fun. A lot of PvPer's won't be so into the quests, but give them the wilderness, a start spot for domination matches where they have to start there if they die, gotta grab flagged territory and hold it, spread out just 5 spots, toss in some exp and coin, and with the different team combinations lots of PvPers would go nuts! Add death match and capture the flag and it gets better. DDO, however, can offer them all sorts of interesting match ups, such as Permadeath Matchs that prevent ressing, or allowing random monsters to interfere with the matches, possibly causing both teams to temporarily join forces or die.

DDO has far far more potential for awesome fun PvP then almost any PvP that was specifically designed for PvP. It just needs to bring the damage down and remove cheese death where it pops up. While in Team Match Ups, there could be a level curve, so that as you level up, you lose a greater percentage of damage, though it does still end up being more then if you didn't level. PvP would not be hard to fix, that is what brains are for. A little thinking goes a long way!

I won't ever give up on PvP being probably the biggest lost opportunity of them all, both for making money, and having a lot of fun for people who enjoy this kind of playing.

Well worth it!

[SardaofChaos]

Answering these questions will be cake work for someone who loves PvP like myself! Before I do, I got done the other day with some matches, had some good moments like when I took down the entire other team all on my own because once again I got randomly stuck with a bunch of "what are we doing" players. It was extremely fun and an awesome feeling to take down a mob of intelligent living people instead of predictable AI... and I can testify that doing that is usually much harder then taking down a mob of AI.

I was left thinking... too bad with my skills... I could't take them to DDO and have a good PvP team match up there. Ok, now for your questions:


Reward: Best way to go about this is limit the gear they can use during PvP match ups. Instead of getting anything new, they fight to earn the priveledge to use what they already got in the PvP arena setting. Items add up the power rating, so a Sword +3 might give 9 points of gear power for PvP match ups wheras a Sword +5 gives 14. The cap of power starts at something like 25 or 20, so you have to initially enter the arena with almost nothing to wear or wield, but can improve your gear as your fight or earn better gear priveledge.

This is a cool idea, and would work in a game where all of your power comes from your gear. However, in DDO, a non-zero amount of power comes from your past lives, and if PvP were to have a significantly lowered gear 'cap', those past lives are suddenly going to be the majority of your power. This is the exact opposite of removing the catch-up game. Similarly, any PvP mode where you get objectively better as you play (as opposed to just improving your skill at the game) is a non-starter.

[Cordovan]

Closing as necro