I Didn’t Wreck Your Game, Honestly! January 10, 2008
Posted by Wilhelm2451 in EverQuest, MMO Design, World of Warcraft, entertainment.Tags: PvP, Ultima Online, Warhammer Online
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Syncaine has something of a rebut to some sentiments expressed in Shut Up We’re Talking #17. He started off by pointing out that for a group talking about PvP, we were pretty PvE oriented.
And he was pretty much right. The cast was an older group and, while I cannot speak for everybody, it was mostly a group influenced heavily at some point by Dungeons and Dragons.
D&D is, of course, all about cooperative PvE (The DM is the environment), so go figure how we all ended up being about PvE.
Again, not speaking for the others, but for me computer role playing games, then MUDs, and now MMOs, were a way to get past the heavy lifting involved with table top role playing games, the throws of the die, the rule checks, the source books, and the need to get three to seven people together in a single room for at least a four hour stretch.
While some of the play flexibility (okay, a lot of the play flexibility) of those days is missing, it still gives me a taste of gaming adventure. And while the greatest amount of fun still seems to require getting five people together for 2-4 hours, at least we can be scattered across the country.
So yes, PvE at the core. That is me, and probably a lot of people like me.
Still I think as a group we had all had some PvP experiences we had enjoyed and none of us are die hard opposed to PvP in general. I even have a post here about how PvP should be the richest play experience available.
And while Syncaine’s article has some good points and some agreement with what we said, as well as some issues with PvE players that are valid, the whole thing lost me with the line, “…you should not force your PvE views on a PvP focused game.” The post then goes on to fret about how the PvE community might “ruin” Warhammer Online.
Not to go full slam on Syncaine, but this is one of my pet peeves.
I shake my head when I see somebody go on about how some other group, PvE’ers in this case, might “ruin the game” by expressing their opinions. (And I have seen this argument pointed at players who like to raid, solo, group, role play, not role play, and so on.)
Let’s face facts. In the end, it is the devs and the company at large creating the game in question which makes that choice. The company can say “no” to people. They often do.
Look at EverQuest. People have been screaming from day one for more solo oriented content. Go to Mobhunter and see what EverQuest Lead Designer Travis “Rashere” McGeathy had to say just a few months back when asked about solo content:
EverQuest is a group-based game, so we don’t specifically design content for soloing.
Holy Crap! In this day and age, in the era of World of Warcraft, when everybody seems to agree that to attract and keep players you need to give them something to do when they cannot find a group, the EverQuest team just says, “No.” Love it or hate it, they have a vision and have pretty much stuck to it for more than eight years now.
And, on the flip side, the team at Origin could have easily decided that Ulitma Online should have been all Felucca and no Trammel, a dark brooding world of danger. If that was the game they wanted to make and you were upset about being ganked every time you stepped out of a safe area, they probably would have told you that perhaps it wasn’t the game for you.
So with Warhammer Online, what it comes down to an essential: Does the team have a vision they believe in and will stick to, and will EA back them up on it?
And, of course, is that vision your PvP dream, my PvE desire, or some third route altogether?
But if it ends up being CareBearHammer Online, make sure you put the blame where it belongs:
On those furries in SecondLife!
On the people who made the game!
If WAR is an updated version of DAoC, I can only see this as a good thing. That’s not to say DAoC didn’t have it’s problems. DAoC started really strong and then kind of lost itself in adding too much, and rewriting the rules too much in the process, losing the population along the way. Some of the changes they put in were attempts to get PVErs out to PVP, rewarding crafters for fixing doors out in the frontiers, or taking NPC missions for PVP rewards. But it was still hard to get PVErs out to defend the realm. I can understand why they don’t want to participate either, it’s a different ruleset and the rewards aren’t there if you’re not as polished as people that constantly play in PVP. But DAoC accomidated both play styles. My biggest concerns with WAR is the level grind (assuming balanced player classes of course), and a large balanced end game population involved in PVP when the grind is over.
I fully agree with you in that ultimately the blame should be placed on the developers, but I think it’s important to realize the power of community voice. Your EQ1 example is a good one of sticking to a vision (small v), but one could argue that the recent EQ2 expansion is just the opposite, being a little too solo-friendly for some of the EQ player base (from what I’ve heard/read, I myself quit EQ2 before RoK)
And I think there are a lot of examples where the communities voice changed the course of a developer. CCP with the recent Capital ship nerf delay, Blizzard focusing on catering to the small yet very vocal raiding community, etc.
My point with WAR was that if the PvE-focused community enters it expecting WoW-like friendly gameplay and a quest/item focused game, they will be disappointed and go voice it on forums/blogs/podcasts. Now depending on Mythic, they either ignore those they never really intended to attract (the PvE only players), or cave in and make changes to WAR, shifting focus away from PvP and adding more PvE elements.
Just saying that the market is big enough for a PvE focused game like WoW and a PvP focused game like WAR to co-exist and not have to blend into some middle-of-the-road bastard child. Focus on strengths, instead of trying to patch up weakness, that type of deal.
Yes the issue isn’t pvpers ruining games for pveers, or vice versa, but game designers changing what made their games popular. For instance one big attraction to LOTRO was you wouldn’t have the constant nerfing of classes’ viability for pve due to pvp balancing. But then they have already broken that idea with CC all of which is now extremely weak. For instance Loremaster CC is routinely resisted even by lower level mobs, hunters simply must use the trait that increases their trap power or their traps are worthless, etc. All of this constrains the pve player which was balanced beforehand but is now imbalanced vs mobs.
Now is that “pvp whiners” ruining the game for pveers? Or is it the development team not doing things the harder way that would be better for the players, and instead doing it the easier way but goes against what they said they were trying to create in the first place.
People that expect WAR is going to be this great PvP holy grail are going to be sorely disappointed. WAR is going to be an upgraded version of DAoC, so if you don’t like DAoC’s PvP ruleset, you’re probably not going to like WAR’s. Just a prediction… As an “also said,” the industry will NEVER release a “hard-core PvP” ruleset on a large licensed property. It just doesn’t make business sense. Hardcore PvP is such an incredibly small niche-market that it cannot justify a big-name license. It simply will not attract enough subscribers to justify the price of the licensing – you wouldn’t even break even.