Saving MMO PVP and nerfing the Zerg
- Thread starter Walkerie
- Start date
Oldschool AO introduced orbital strikes (nukes) which instantly made cluster zergs hazardous.
...but when it comes down to balancing pvp population imbalances, with artificial rules... you aren't going to please everyone. e.g. a 45% stats nerf, just because you are on an overpopulated server?
...but when it comes down to balancing pvp population imbalances, with artificial rules... you aren't going to please everyone. e.g. a 45% stats nerf, just because you are on an overpopulated server?
One of the big problems with mass PvP comes where you only have two sides. Once one starts to dominate, more people naturally join that side and it just gets worse. This was why DaoC and Planetside worked so well - three sided PvP is self balancing. If one side ever gets too strong, the other two tend to ignore each other and gang up on the big guy.
It's also one of the reasons Warhammer failed so badly and why Aion have to micromanage populations on their servers. Any system with only two sides where you can change to the winning side easily is always going to have this problem, and no amount of buffing is going to get around it.
It's also one of the reasons Warhammer failed so badly and why Aion have to micromanage populations on their servers. Any system with only two sides where you can change to the winning side easily is always going to have this problem, and no amount of buffing is going to get around it.
Aye Mir was awesome back in the day, FFA PVP rocked.
I know what you mean, happened in SWG. People switched to their alts which happened to be on the opposing faction, it got to a total count of over 20 Imperials vs my teamspeak group (Group of 8). We had the perfect setup for professions as well which helped us a lot but we ended up exploiting the buildings to survive (wall walking etc), we did win though.
Those were the days
Planting a barman shanker into the spine of some aoe spamming mage and running away
Yeah, great times indeed.
Open unrestricted PvP, real "danger" when leaving the towns in case you lost all your belongings. Craftable weapons, armour, clothing, furniture. Dyeable weapons, armour, clothing, furniture. Personal ships, personal housing, personal mounts and pets. Skill based system. No classes, no quests, no levels, no epic loot, shared dungeons, no level indicators on mobs so you could tell if you could kill them or not. Hell, you could even kill a player, take his belongings then skin him with a knife, then cook his skinned flesh and eat it.
The game just had it all, and all in the gameworld. No instancing, no zoning, no loading screens. Loved it. Really showed what can be possible in an MMO if the devs would think a little more outside the box instead of just reproducing re-skinned clones of previous MMOs.
Will always remember my years in UO, probably the best gaming experience I've ever had
Yeah, great times indeed.
Open unrestricted PvP, real "danger" when leaving the towns in case you lost all your belongings. Craftable weapons, armour, clothing, furniture. Dyeable weapons, armour, clothing, furniture. Personal ships, personal housing, personal mounts and pets. Skill based system. No classes, no quests, no levels, no epic loot, shared dungeons, no level indicators on mobs so you could tell if you could kill them or not. Hell, you could even kill a player, take his belongings then skin him with a knife, then cook his skinned flesh and eat it.
The game just had it all, and all in the gameworld. No instancing, no zoning, no loading screens. Loved it. Really showed what can be possible in an MMO if the devs would think a little more outside the box instead of just reproducing re-skinned clones of previous MMOs.
Will always remember my years in UO, probably the best gaming experience I've ever had
Aye, I remember them fondly as well. I remember when I first started playing and I ended up chopping loads of trees down outside Occlo just to be able to fletch them into bows to sell to the vendors to earn cash for a new set of armour. I ended up buying a lovely shiny set of Copper Plate, ventured outside with my newly-bought armour and a Massive Viking Sword of Power, and ended up getting PKed at the Brit mine pass near to where the Crossroads were. I'd never heard of the Crossroads and just so happened to be wandering around there as I was exploring. Of course the PK was naked, wielding a spear for the para hits, and switched to a poisoned Kryss as well (damn dexxers). I died quickly and he just took all my stuff and wandered off. Killed my poor horse as well. I learned a hard lesson that day and eventually managed to learn enough about the game and the skills in it to become strong enough to take down the PK (Lumberjerk ownage!). Still got killed by 3 others as there were 4 of them, but I was happy, and didn't lose anything but the poisoned GM exceptional katana, GM exceptional double axe, some pots, bandages, and trapped pouches that I was carrying
I don't know why developers spend so much time these days generating the content for the players. Why they can't see that a skill-based, sandbox MMO is the way to go is anyones guess. I don't think that a totally open MMO like the old days of UO would survive in this market. Can you imagine how many of the little kiddies would be crying on the forums after they have been PKed and had all their new "Epic Vestments of Ownage" and "Axe of the Pwnage Dude" taken off of them? Or if they got scammed out of a house, ship, or something equally as valuable? Yeah, it just wouldn't work. But I'm sure there's still a hardcore contingent of players that would love to have that same fear and adrenaline rush that you'd get when heading outside of the major cities.
"You have left the protection of the town guards". Bring it on!
Edit - Oh, I almost forgot about the server wars before they restarted them early morning, and fights that crossed server lines. So much fun
I often muse on that exact same question myself. Its strange, back in UO no quests, no levels, no epic loot as such, no raids etc etc. Yet people played for years and years and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. We set our own goals, wrote our own stories (quite literally because of course there were ingame books which you could write in and others could find them and read them. I believe that my novel is still on the Catskills server in some houses, even now, 10 years after I wrote it. If anyone is on Catskills hunt around and see if you can find some books called The Shadowheart Volumes.)
Really just was an MMO of imagination with few restrictions and masses of freedom of choice for us to write our own tales. It was, if you like, a world rather than just a game. Then again Origins motto was "We Create Worlds" and they most certainly did
You're right about its success in todays MMOs though, I think far too many players would just be lost today, not knowing what to do without being told and unsure how to create their own tale.
Used to be great fun getting that message "You see <player> snooping in your backpack" , just as someone stole something from your pack, like your house keys
, and then giving chase and hunting them down to kill them and get it back heheh. BANK GUARDS RECDU RECSU !Epic times and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to experience it.
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Epic times and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to experience it.
Yep me too. I spent many hours on that game, and played it for over 6 years. I just wish that something similar would come along. I would love to be able to play a truly open-ended MMO with the freedom that UO provided. Skill-based MMO's are way better than level-based. Much more variety and player skill was actually a factor in the PvP fights. Now days it is just who has what weapons / armour / gems / enchantments / insert random crap here etc. We invest so much time trying to get the gear to make us better than most of us just don't enjoy the game. UO / SWG, please come back to us!
Is it actually working?
Ah no I meant live, rather than still in testing. I tested it a while back and it still needed a lot to do. By the time it is out, it'll probably be too late.