EQ PVP \'e2\'80\ldblquote WHO\'e2\'80\'99S DRIVING THIS GARBAGE SCOW? [Author: Hedron]
Author: Hedron
Topic: Kondra and Gardach – Replies
Posted 01-06-2000 10:18 AM
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Hi guys,
I read your two posts in Abashi’s string, and thought I’d like to reply to them without further cluttering the main string.
I’ll copy the text of the original messages here to make the conversation contiguous. And I’ll intersperse my replies within the text.
Kondra’s post:
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Kondra
Posted 01-05-2000 04:06 PM
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Kondra/Gardach:
I want to respond to one point in particular, because I now believe it would help the PVP servers alot (or at least the teams servers alot) That is xp upon death, about half or 1/3 of a normal death. Why would this help so much? Because consequences upon death would now allow battles, especially large ones, to be winnable and losable.
Perhaps winnable and losable, but very infrequent, because it will be a rare battle that people will want to risk their exp bar on. And tactically unsophisticated because the battles will be infrequent. People who cannot practice pvp because of the penalties cannot become good at it.
Kondra/Gardach:
Everyone who participates in alot of battles or fights knows they degenerate into an endless and pointless naked slugfest. Even if you have a large well-organized force, most of the enemy will retreat after a while, leaving a small group of naked enemy “fanatics” who attack you over and over again.
Part of the reason these fights are pointless is because of the “slugfest” part of your statement. Due to multiple factors, eq combat is relatively skill-less, and there is no decent level cap.
Therefore there is little joy in actual combat. Instead it’s kind of fun to conflict, and have a big fight, but then you want to get back to leveling and stop being bothered by the “slugfest”.
Three things can alleviate this issue.
The first thing is to modify combat to enhance the human skill and decisions made during it. In this way, combat can become an engaging sport instead of boring a slugfest.
The second thing is to get rid of any significant profit motive in pking -other- than the fun of bragging rights and maybe coin. That way people like to fight. Losing doesn\’e2\’80\’99t irritate them, and they don’t mind facing opponents. This would make those attacking fanatics more of a fun challenge and less of an annoying distraction.
The third is to stop the leveling madness. A huge distraction from pvp is the need to level constantly. If people weren’t constantly driven to level, they would actually -interact- with each other instead of hating pvp, and mindlessly killing the same monsters over and over again.
In my opinion, the proper game has you level for a reasonably short period of time (2-3 months), has a very strategic and involving combat system, and does not penalize pvp.
What happens then is:
A) you get a strong community started based on the common experience of leveling up.
B) you have a rich skill-based background of pvp on which to hang your hat and take pride and pleasure from fighting. Instead of just slugging around and at the end feeling like “well, that meant nothing. The outcome was decided by level differences, and classes”.
C) because of the lack of pvp penalties, you get alot of enjoyable combat. People become better at it, skill means more and more, they begin fighting for rp reasons – why not, it doesn’t hurt. Etc. Etc.
Kondra/Gardach:
Everyone wants to avoid xploss, so if this were implemented, when a large enemy group attacked, you wouldn\’e2\’80\’99t bag up then make irritating suicide runs against them. No, you would have to retreat from the area or summon a large force to fight against them.
This sounds good on the surface, but I think that reality will prove some of these assumptions to be wrong.
Everyone does -not- want to avoid exp loss at the expense of their “fun” of suicide attacking you. You will always find that those fanatics will still be fanatical with or without exp loss.
What will happen is that they will stop making suicide runs. Instead they’ll make opportunity-kill runs. They won’t be so reckless, but they will keep attacking. Only now they’ll pick on the weak. And they’ll kill 10 people for every one time they die. And all of those people will have exp loss. That attacker won’t care about his own exp loss. A little exp loss for 10 kills? Good trade!
Kondra/Gardach:
Thus in any battle, once one side has enough of an advantage to cause alot more death than it is receiving, it will ROUT the other side from the area (unless they get reinforcements). The more you outnumber a foe, the more quickly and surely you will kill them and cause xploss.
This will encourage grouping and organized battle in a way that suits EQ very well I think.
Mmm. I don’t think it will encourage anything other than alot of running away.
So first, I don’t think people will fight at all if they can help it. (some will, of course, but overall, less will than now.)
Second, I would guess that you probably don’t realize how many people re-enter a battle during the main -fun- part of it. Only even if they decide to fight at first, they now will not come back after dying. Battles will become short, vicious, and over so quick you didn’t know it happened. They’ll come less frequently, and they’ll tick off the losers. This does not sound like an improvement to me.
Kondra/Gardach:
It will also really mess up the anti-social infamous player killers. Once someone\’e2\’80\’99s name gets known as a dishonorable nasty, there will be hordes of do-gooders out to do them justice. They can keep recreating low level characters, but up though level 5 there is no xp loss anyway, and its almost negligible till lv15. 1/2 of that will be nothing, making the lowbie murderer pretty pointless.
Mmm, nope. History has proven that there will -not- be hordes of do-gooders out to do them justice. There will be hordes of distracted people who are busy leveling for them to kill, who will now have exp loss when they die.
Player justice exists when it’s fun for it to exist. People would rather level, or don’t want to spend all of their in-game time hunting murderers. You know, like real life police, it becomes a job. The killer will kill all the time, because it’s fun and because the killer can -always- find someone to kill.
The policeman will not defend all of the time because they want to level, and they will have a hard time finding the killers. So they’ll spend alot of time running around looking, get bored, and quit.
Kondra/Gardach:
Everyone remembers the first days of PVP teams, with all the fun and great battles and invasions. One of the main reasons this dwindled was because battles felt “pointless”
Even now when trying to muster a force there is a feeling that organizing into larger groups to “invade” doesn’t achieve anything. It just ends up naked bashing against a few fanatics and spewing insults.
But Add in xp loss, and organizing into large forces will now have a PURPOSE. The enemy can be defeated, routed, whatever. They can be effected to lose xp, driven from an area so that one feels something was accomplished. Victory would be possible as would defeat. Also, counterattacks would be a great deal of fun. Summoning up a massive organized defense will now be necessary.
Xp loss is not a good way to keep score and feel like something was accomplished. There are too many negatives.
I see where you’re going with “driving the enemy from the field”. It’s a good thought. I just think exp loss isn’t the way to do it.
I’d say let’s brainstorm a different method. Verant has talked about making binding city only for all players. This way when you kill somebody, they’re gone. This is too annoying, I feel because it inhibits pvp strategy (proper use of gate is a cool tactic) and adds alot of tedium to life by forcing you to run around alot. It also doesn’t really stop re-entering the fight much, because many classes have alot of conveniently placed teleports anyway.
I think the best thing to do would be to flip their pvp switch to “off” for x amount of time after dying? That’s just off the top of my head. Thoughts?
Kondra/Gardach:
In other words, xploss will encourage grouping and reward tactics and brave defense. Right Now when there is a big fight, half the folks bag up and continue hunting NPC’s. They can’t be harmed. With xploss they will be “drafted” by the necessity to defend their area from the potentially harmful enemy.
People who are forced to play the game the way others want to play it learn to hate that game and/or the people forcing them. “drafting” players isn’t fun for them. Because they don’t want to fight at that time, they will either move to another spot to level, or they will just log out and come back later.
Kondra/Gardach:
This will really invigorate the Zek’s and make them so different and interesting from the blue servers. And the xploss won’t be large enough to discourage players from PVP. It may be substantial at higher levels, but high level characters can survive/escape better and have clerics to help them recover, so it is warranted.
I really disagree that he xp loss won’t be large enough to discourage players from pvp. I strongly disagree. Verant thought that 1-item loot plus cash would not be enough to discourage pvp, and would not be enough to encourage naked mage op killers. They were wrong too.
Kondra/Gardach:
Negatives: We worry about exploits and bind-point camping.
But let’s be concrete: what would they be? With xploss bind-point camping would become the most heinous of offenses, and someone who did it would become infamous (as well as possibly banned)
Not to mention it is very easy to avoid by binding in secure or hidden places or logging out once one realizes he is being bind-camped. I’ve been on the Zek’s from the beginning and only was ever bind camped ONCE. Binding next to zones and in typical blue-server “convenient” locations is not too bright on the Zek’s.
Ok, sure. I buy it. It is a negative, it’s just probably not that impactful.
Kondra/Gardach:
Other negatives: “Xp assassins” sneaking around zones killing wounded players to cause as much xploss as possible.Again I think these players would become infamous very quickly and would end up dying far more than they killed. And they can’t bag their xp bar.
I can’t really think of any other negatives. Indiscriminate killers wouldn\’e2\’80\’99t like xploss. They just want some free mayhem. My feeling is that this cheapens the whole Zek experience and makes PVP action about on par with drunken foot races.
Adding skill to pvp is what increases its value. Your statement to me is somewhat equivalent to saying “hey, this rusted out broken car I\’e2\’80\’99m selling isn’t being valued enough. Let’s charge more for it to make it better and more valued.”
Far better to improve the condition of the car than to just try and charge more for it and hope that creates excitement.
We must concentrate on pvp changes to add human skill to the process so people can be proud of their wins, and humbled by their losses.
Hedron
The False Prophet
Gratuitous RP Signature