Introducing PvP as a fun money maker for DDO!

[Wonedream]

Introducing PvP as a fun money maker for DDO!

For this to happen, first it has to be better! It could be making a lot of money, competitive nature is active in the human population, a lot of humans enjoy competing with each other, some to show off, others to test their abilities and improve, others for social fun and in good spirit. These are the 3 primary drives of competition (with economic or power gain applying to corporate competitions...).

I tested PvP the other day and found that many players were just itching to beat up Kworr! And he got beat up a lot, but managed to kill some along the way!

He held his own in a deathmatch against a Warlock 2 levels higher then him for 15 minutes, him being a level 22 barbarian. It was a LOT of fun!

It is important to recognize the value of PvP in DDO, because though people on these forums have claimed falsely many times that it is dead, testing proves otherwise, if you put up a friendly lfm and have a good spirit.

PvP can be done in a few different ways, all of them worth investigating and all of them could add a tremendous amount of fun to those who love PvP and will be participating in it, and possible spending money there, which is the point of this thread... how to turn PvP into a money maker for DDO!

If you think it can't happen, you can add your voice to that opinion, but this thread's objective will remain focused on the opinion basis that it can happen, which I strongly believe to be true.

PvP ought to be approached a little at a time like class passes are, so there is lots to do instead of a narrow range. Let us look at the possible menu for PvP and if this menu were to appear, how, which features to add first? The easiest to pick fruits... to increase game budget and make game better for PvE players as well as PvP players.


Pvp Menu of fun activites to get into (each with its own grind mechanism, that only works in PvP, thus PvE players won't feel forced to participate, and PvP players will have way more fun getting the goods)


We will also discuss how each possible system can be controlled to avoid exploits from say, people with 2 computers and putting a dummy out to feed on.


PvP Menu:
Tavern Brawling (Currently exists - no incentive other then chaotic fun - easily allows ganking with no level restrictions)
Death Match (Currently exists - no incentive other then more organized fun - ganking not possible unless agreed upon which wont usually happen)

Gladiator Mode This mode would add a coliseum arena where players could watch from the seats, walk around in circles with vendors under the seats, and have an arena where gladiators meet up and fight for glory and honor! For those who love PvP, they will get this picture fast!



In the arena, you start out with nothing, but your level and basic feats and APs. Your PLs do not help you here! You are forced to be equal for what your skill is worth! There will be HONOR in the arena, and those who lack it are unworthy to be called Gladiators! You also start with no gear. Your league is "New Blood" and your power rating is a big fat zero! You will have to fight others hand to hand with no spell ingredients or handwraps.. or with scraps they can wear from privilege gained from winning fights. You can fight NPCs that are faster and tougher then usual, or other players who queue in and replace NPC. This keeps the fights coming either way.

Items are assigned a power rating for PvP purpose. All of them get some value. When you enter the arena, you have a dubplicate item sheet (that looks a little different, but almost exactly the same) and a power rating. You can add to your inventory items so long as their value does not exceed your power rating you gain from winning fights. It turns into a long grind to earn the privilege to wear a full set, and even more to have back up items and things that you don't wear or wield, but help and can be important, like spell ingredients. You can't just take 900 of level 9 spell ingredient there, it would be 900 x the power rating of a single ingredient... so there is a lot of planning involved now.

As you win fights, you slowly grind for the right to simply use more gear you already possess. After earning 100 Privilege you move up to the next league title and new NPCs make it hard, or tougher players with more gear, and trying to make the most of their gear. Fight your way up, but if you lose fights you can also lose small amounts of privilege, so plan well. (You win more then you lose, so getting ahead can happen, but more and more to the top gets harder as only those that aren't losing and good at PvP will be more funneled into higher leagues this way). If you are good and persistent, you will inevitably earn the privilege to gear up for the Grandmaster League and fight the best players in the game.

There are 4 kinds of matches to tackle in the arena.

Melee only - Spell and ranged values drop to zero because a powerful magic light keeps hitting everyone every 10 seconds with a x0.0 debufff that lasts 20 seconds. Also knocks out spell casting power while debuff is active...

Ranged only - Spell and melee power is dropped to zero by multiplying it by 0.0 as a different colored powerful magic light debuffs spell and melee... this is a shoot em up! Also, spell casting is not possible while under the debuff effects...

Magic only - Wizard matches here, as different powerful magic light debuffs ranged and melee to zero. If you do not have spells to cast, this isn't the place for you.

All against All - Everything works here.

To enter the arena, players would go to a ticket master and purchase entries to enter themselves for the next fight. They would then go watch from the seat and when their names pop up after the fight they both have to jump into the arena and be there when timer starts or fight defaults and nothing happens, giving them up to 1 minute to get a refund (entry costs depend on what level you are). If both are in the arena when timer goes off, fight starts and they have their own 1 on 1 instance that anyone can see, where they can only effect each other. Many people can jump down into the arena and fight in there in their own instances, which can add to the confusion a bit, as you focus on your opponent and two other gladiators might be near distracting you even though you can not interact with them in combat. You can also speak to your opponent as if you are in the same group or mute that.

All damage is scaled down as levels go up, so that 1 hit killing problem is solved when it starts to happen.

Each ticket would be purchased by level ranges also. So if you purchase a Melee Only ticket to queue yourself for the next melee fight, you can only purchase a Beginner's ticket if you are levels 1-4, a Veteran's Ticket at levels 5-8, an Expert's ticket at 9-12, a Seasoned Veteran's ticket at 13-16, a Professional's at 17-20, a Gladiator's ticket at 21-24, an Epic's ticket at 25-28, and a Final's ticket at 29-30.

If no one within your league is in the queue, you will fight a very tough random NPC that moves faster and was developed to kill you. Some NPCs will be much tougher then others. You will lose matches to them. If someone uses two accounts for some easy privilege, they won't automatically get their dummy because queue might throw someone else at them, or an NPC anyways, making such a trick unreliable and a waste of time. Now we are only seeing fighters arrive for a fight and a incentive system.

This PvP wraps itself up with weekly titles that appear to be seen in the arena or as you walk around under the seats where the vendors are. So that is the final incentive, becoming first place melee for your level range. The screen would change, showing who won top 10 places for their place. Melee Beginner's title would have the top 10 Beginner's who got the highest win scores for that week, with the following week showing a page for them that flashes on a screen in the arena.

So many PvP players would flock to the place immediately. I would! It wouldn't ever feel like a waste of time on any toon you use, as your toon is getting better for such a fun place whenever you participate in it, so alts become specialized gladiators in this place, making them far more fun, and since PLs don't function, alts and mains do not exist here, just gear privilege and fair fights!

PLs could be something that you can spend privilege on to activate, but that seems like more programming, and would take away from the fair fight feeling PvPs crave so much. It would be counter productive to the money making part.

In order to grind the privilege to wear great level 30 items in every inventory slot you can wear, it would be a long grind to get a lot of privilege. It would take possibly years, and be a lot of fun reaching for. If the grind is too long, gladiators will see their own version of main gladiators and the ones that don't get as much. Perhaps the grind could slow down on a curve to keep the grind but close the distance, so as your ability to get that very best gear does keep going up, it takes longer to get the last points to the extent that making alt gladiators is nearly just as good. There should be a grind to it though, because this brings us to the money maker.


The money maker comes from the grind. You can sell entry tickets in the DDO store that bypass PP costs in the game, and those PP costs could be something that gets PvP players going out to get PP so they can pay to fight more :P (which is just brilliantly fun! For a PvP player they would totally dig it). Selling entry tickets gets you lots of fights faster. And epic entry tickets cost a lot of PP, while Store tickets end up being cheap and easy in comparison for epics. This gets the epic gladiators who like power battles considering... cheap tickets to keep fighting which I love, or go help some PvE to earn some battle funds?

Another money maker is to buy Potions that increase the privilege you win from fights... 10%... 25%... 50%... anyone eager to climb that ladder faster would be considering to buy potions.

Players could also place bets using shards, and win shards. The weekly tournaments would have some tree system that eliminates players over 7 days, and shows who is still in the tournament. If someone is out of the tournament, they can still fight for privilege, but won't win the awards for placing 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place in their league. If someone enters a tournament, they have to buy a tournament Entry to enter themselves. And that costs PP also, more then just a typical quick match. Once committed, they have to buy the matches on their own after that, and spending PP will have them running around more eventually, so just buying a bunch of tickets from the store makes sense... a little money for a lot of tickets. I'd buy em if they where cheap and it was far more convenient then spending PP and breaking myself because I am having so much fun building up my gladiators! Perhaps you buy a book of 1000 tickets... for a very low price, which is just easier then getting the PP for a 1000 fights... the tickets should be very cheap to make the appeal and temptation of relying on little transactions seem innocent and easy and worth it. I will try harder to win if I bought the tickets or know they aren't just infinitely free.

If a player stops fighting during a tournament while highly placed, their ranking will quickly drop as their win count doesn't keep up. The last day of the tournaments would have the finalists showing up if they want to have the most counts, and likely encountering each other in the arena and becoming very focused on setting their competition back to claim the title.

Winning the tournaments and showing up on the charts gives large privilege returns, and possible unique items from time to time, or PP since those tickets cost money, or even shards, or maybe 1st wins a little DDO points (suddenly everyone eyeballing the arean...)


Adding this would turn PvP into a money maker for DDO, and would be its own place which needs no further maintenance and keeps PvP playing and paying for a long time to come. PvP love DDO and its fighting system, despite a few balance problems, and PvP is not dead in the game, there is just no reason to do it and reason to do other things as the game is now, whereas this would give reason to do PvP and increase population, revenue, and things to do that are fun.



Team Raid
This PvP system takes any raid in the game and turns it into a 6 player vs 6 player PvP teamwork competition. If your team is a randomly put together pug going against an organized guild... good luck! You will need it! If two organized guilds are meeting up... have fun... it will be one of the toughest matches you ever had! If its pugs against pugs... oh the fun!

If a full group decides to try Team Raid, they have enter a raid queue. If the queue has six openings left, they can all get in. Anyone can enter the queue. They then wait (maybe in slayer) while the current Team Raid is played out. Once the new queue starts, the Raid begins and they have 10 minutes or 5 minutes to get to the entrance. The entrance is not the usual entrance to a raid, but a magical door that takes you to which ever randomly active raid is live. You could end up in any raid. There is no flagging needed, and there is no named items. Experience is rewarded if you complete the quest in time. Rewards come with performance from getting kill counts, and different types of monsters give different counts. More counts equals more reward.

There is a timer in there. Teams can interact like teams, and but also interact with their competitors as if they are on the same team. Then the timer goes off after 5 minutes and for the next 20 seconds both teams are able to attack each other. Then they are suddenly unable to attack each other as if they are all the same team again. 20 seconds isn't much time to plan your attack. After that, the 20 second bursts of PvP in there are random. But there is an effect when they are active so players know now is their chance.. maybe they glow or something.

Both teams aim to get the most points. Killing monsters gives points depending on how tough it was, higher DCs are worth more. Killing Champs are worth more. Killing mini-bosses are worth more. Killing the Boss is worth a huge amount, but does not mean your team will automatically win with the most points. Killing other players reduces the points of their team and increases the points of your team. The team with the point points at the end of the quest wins.

Players automatically come back to life here, so it is impossible for one team to suddenly knock out the competition and dominate the rest of the match. It doesn't happen instantly, but so that they get a chance to recover, so they reappear somewhere randomly (preventing players from staying near where they fell).

Now the rewards. If they beat the quest, both teams get quest experience. If they kill each other to the point they both fail the quest, both team still get rewarded. But winning team gets better reward. In this case the reward would best work with the setting, but could carry over to the arena setting and award privilege in the arena (though that makes no sense, the arena being its own reality). The team that makes the most kills gets the full kill count bonus, while losing team get 1/2 the kill count bonus.

The rewards are Raider Boxes. Raider Boxes have random treasures in them, sometimes unique items, sometimes exp stones, or other things really tasty. There are also Ancient Coins to be obtained. When you go to end reward you will get a share according to your kill count. The ancient coins can be used to by special defenses that help you not get killed while in Team Raid mode. These defenses also offer a neat cosmetic effect. Both only active in Team Raid. It turns PvP into a friendly team cooperative experience, that gives experience if quest is finished and gives reward if you are busy getting kills along with rewards. The unique items work inside and outside Team Raid.

Money Making Part: First off you got to have access to the raid. Pots that help kill count sorta like Slayer Pots, exclusively at the store. Making the places is not required. Their settings are always at some standard that is tough, and you can not possibly enter if your not the right level. There would be two raids active at all times, heroic and epics.

Even if you didn't beat the raid and soloed, kills would be rewarding and your "team" would win, but it would be a harder earned victory killing the monsters alone. If someone else joins, they may steal kills... then the timer goes off and you get your chance to deal with him, then more players show up and things start to get interesting... you guys start talking "lets see if we can beat this for the experience too"... but if your team loses... your count drops heavy and you get half the quest experience.... will you manage to get to end fight... will timer change things...

Such a place would be a lot of fun, involving trust with your team and the other team, and suspense, and be rather unpredictable. Since only two are running at a time and its first serve first come... on a queue, no one would be able to use a double computer and get any value from this. It would be a lot of fun, and if the pots helped just right, a money maker. Also, new players who like PvP would want to purchase the Raids they can't access, giving them new PvE and PvP at the same time!

Quest Mode
Quest Mode is not for the feint hearted. It would have many soloists coming to DDO. In this PvP Mode you can not open LFMs if you set your toon to this mode. LFM would not work while mode is on. When entering a dungeon, you can select everything else like normal. Reaper, Elite, etc. You can bring a hireling and companion pet lion. No one can join you. When you enter a quest, an LFM will appear automatically advertising to everyone in the game you are PvP material and they are welcome to try and take you down. Kill counts begin. Who ever has the most kill counts gets the exp if they beat the quest. But they can turn the tables by killing each other, and winner takes all, while loser gets 25% of the quest exp. The LFM allows only players that are within 2 levels above or below your own to join. Only 1 other player may enter at a time, so team work mobbing is impossible. If both die and quest is lost, then no experience points as usual. If one dies and the other goes on, he has 1 minute to revive himself or he will be booted from the quest and LFM will open up again, so someone else can try. He can also surrender.

It is all pointless still getting kills in this setting adds to your reputation. That reputation itself can turn into something quite interesting and the money lure. As kills pile on, either as an invading toon, or as a defending toon, you are able to do more things, get more services here and there, and see yourself treated differently by certain NPCs, some of whom are merchants who are involved with promoting their market by catering to players with a reputation for handling themselves in this setting. In order to gain a count, you have to take out monsters, but if you take out the player, you lower his count a lot and increase your own. Tougher monsters are worth more. Bosses worth the most, while taking the other player out a couple of times with no recovery can obliterate chances for highest kill count when quest ends. Highest count takes the prize, not whoever killed the boss. His final kill count will not be reduced. Nor his experience for beating the quest under such risky circumstances.


Pet Fighting
Reserved



Title Match Mode
Reserved

[Uska]

A lot of dev time for something only,a few would want not sure about now but historically pvp has always been a tiny minority in DDO

[Saekee]

you have put a lot of thought and enthusiasm in your ideas OP

another example is to have leaderboards like they did for the Cannith Challenges. Guilds that dominate leaderboards would then get a special amenity, like Loot+2 or something. It should always be about the guild as that will inspire players most.

[Loromir]

The only thing I would advocate for improving PVP is to multiply the players HP's by 10,000 when they jump into a PVP pit and then return it to normal when they exit the pit.

Otherwise, I would prefer the devs work solely on PVE.

[phillymiket]

I absolutely did not read the OP's post nor any of the replies.
But I'm still going to give my opinion on whatever that guy just said.

Sure, why not?
How complicated could whatever he suggested be?
Surely a PvP set up like a Challenge could be done.

I'd never play that stuff, and the people who did would probably be a whole different animal than the usual player, but so what?
If those guys spent money then I'm for it.
Money keeps the game going. Money means fixes and more content.

[Captain_Wizbang]

I absolutely did not read the OP's post nor any of the replies..

I cant read it. Wall of text. too much, over the top, and Im sure he has a point in there somewhere. Ill never find it.

[TacoBob33]

I absolutely did not read the OP's post nor any of the replies.
But I'm still going to give my opinion on whatever that guy just said.

Sure, why not?
How complicated could whatever he suggested be?
Surely a PvP set up like a Challenge could be done.

I'd never play that stuff, and the people who did would probably be a whole different animal than the usual player, but so what?
If those guys spent money then I'm for it.
Money keeps the game going. Money means fixes and more content.

It's really simple. People don't go to McDonalds for fine dining, so if they stopped serving burgers and started selling filet mignon, people would likely stop showing up in droves. Same with DDO, it's a PvE driven environment and if they stopped making quests and raids for the people who play it and spent their time making PvP content just because a small handful of people find it cute, they stop making money.

[phillymiket]

It's really simple. People don't go to McDonalds for fine dining, so if they stopped serving burgers and started selling filet mignon, people would likely stop showing up in droves. Same with DDO, it's a PvE driven environment and if they stopped making quests and raids for the people who play it and spent their time making PvP content just because a small handful of people find it cute, they stop making money.

Oh TacoBob33, you always take someone's thoughts and bend them to absurd levels and then argue against your own distorted version of what the person said rather than what was actually said.
Who said anything about stopping to make quests and raids?

[TacoBob33]

Oh TacoBob33, you always take someone's thoughts and bend them to absurd levels and then argue against your own distorted version of what the person said rather than what was actually said.
Who said anything about stopping to make quests and raids?

Because.....well just spitballing here....it would take forever to make even basic PvP viable in this game (given that the class passes are at least 2 years in the making and to make PvP viable they would have to go through and rebalance each of those classes on almost a monthly basis to keep a FOTM meta from taking too much of a hold over which most PvP centric games do, which would at their current rate of development leave little time for much else)? So I don't think i'm bending to absurd levels given the absurd suggestions made.

[phillymiket]

Because.....well just spitballing here....it would take forever to make even basic PvP viable in this game (given that the class passes are at least 2 years in the making and to make PvP viable they would have to go through and rebalance each of those classes on almost a monthly basis to keep a FOTM meta from taking too much of a hold over which most PvP centric games do, which would at their current rate of development leave little time for much else)? So I don't think i'm bending to absurd levels given the absurd suggestions made.

Not really.
All you'd need to do is establish the mechanics of having two teams of player characters.
After that, designing the environments wouldn't be any harder than making a new challenge, would it?
Gain points by collecting crystals, controlling nodes, or whatever.
Choose to do that, or choose to try to kill the other team to prevent them from doing the thing, or split the party to do both. Most points wins. Or whatever.
Winner gains Mats for gear.
Just like a challenge.

It doesn't need to be a giant global Maybar thing.
But now that I mention Maybar, they've devoted time to making giant things outside of the usual scope like seasonal events without sinking the ship plenty of times while still putting out new content. Why would this be so different?
That said, I honestly couldn't care less one way or the other.
Just saying that if it brought in money, then it would be a good idea IMO.

[TacoBob33]

Not really.
All you'd need to do is establish the mechanics of having two teams of player characters.
After that, designing the environments wouldn't be any harder than making a new challenge, would it?
Gain points by collecting crystals, controlling nodes, or whatever.
Choose to do that, or choose to try to kill the other team to prevent them from doing the thing, or split the party to do both. Most points wins. Or whatever.
Winner gains Mats for gear.
Just like a challenge.

It doesn't need to be a giant global Maybar thing.
But now that I mention Maybar, they've devoted time to making giant things outside of the usual scope like seasonal events without sinking the ship plenty of times while still putting out new content. Why would this be so different?
That said, I honestly couldn't care less one way or the other.
Just saying that if it brought in money, then it would be a good idea IMO.

Yeah, you could do that, but it'd be so silly out of balance it wouldn't be playable. Half a dozen abilities in just the epic destinies alone cause more damage than most players can sustain (Boulder Toss for example, used to irritate the brawling pit people with it when ever i'd see someone in there). To make money off of it, they'd have to account for the silly out of balance that is player abilities vs. players. For Mabar all they had to do was upgrade a few old quests and tweak how Delera's worked, once they got the taste for such things.

[phillymiket]

Yeah, you could do that, but it'd be so silly out of balance it wouldn't be playable. Half a dozen abilities in just the epic destinies alone cause more damage than most players can sustain (Boulder Toss for example, used to irritate the brawling pit people with it when ever i'd see someone in there). To make money off of it, they'd have to account for the silly out of balance that is player abilities vs. players. For Mabar all they had to do was upgrade a few old quests and tweak how Delera's worked, once they got the taste for such things.

That's why I was thinking that gaining points for <doing something> would be best as opposed to gaining points for simply killing the other team.
The skill of running away could be the "paper" that beats the "rock" of DPS etc etc.
Depending on how you designed it.
The devil would be in the details.

(But in reality, of course, this is never ever going to ever happen ever, just don't tell OP that.)

[TacoBob33]

That's why I was thinking that gaining points for <doing something> would be best as opposed to gaining points for simply killing the other team.
The skill of running away could be the "paper" that beats the "rock" of DPS etc etc.
Depending on how you designed it.
The devil would be in the details.

(But in reality, of course, this is never ever going to ever happen ever, just don't tell OP that.)

I just see the devil in the details being the thing that takes away from the much happier PvE tone that has been set for the better part of a decade.

[phillymiket]

I just see the devil in the details being the thing that takes away from the much happier PvE tone that has been set for the better part of a decade.

That's a fair point. I've said the same thing myself. It's a PvE game.
I just wouldn't oppose a side-show if it helped the cash flow.
But fair enough.

[whoolsey]

Ahhh, the op found another windmill.
Skipping the pointless wall of text, no, taking dev time away to develope content that will be checked out by a minority only to be abandoned 2 months down the line is a waste of effort.

This is a pve game and the devs can't even get that right.
Class/playstyle ballance is all over the place.

Next time, find a windmill that is a little smaller.