RPGs don’t really afford that when whomever has the best gear, etc. But all of them put the players themselves on an even field (in terms of health:damage) and it’s the *players* experience and knowledge that *can* make the difference, but still leaving the brand-new guy plenty of opportunities. There are so many other types of PvP out there other than shooters. It isn’t you vs me it’s your character (more to the point, your character’s gear/skill points vs mine) which makes me, the player, at least one step removed from the equation. I tend to be quite literal a lot of the time so when PvP stands for “player” vs player, RPGs do not focus on that. If you are looking for a ‘fair and balanced’ fight, an MMO is not the right place to look, and that’s by design.Ĭount me in the crowd who believes (so far) PvP and RPGs do not mix. A FPS is just a raw display of twitch skills, while MMORPG success is a complex web of inputs that, more often than not, leaves someone on the short end of the stick. Point is, you can tip the scales of balance in your favor before the fight even starts, but that in itself takes skill and determination. And that work can be PvE grinding, playing politics, infiltrating clans, etc. You put in the ‘work’, you reap the rewards. Many would see the above as a game flaw, but to me, that’s what an MMORPG is all about (shady PvE aside). It also might explain why, when the rest caught up, they declared victory and left. But it’s undeniable that in the early days, they PvE’ed (shadily) better than anyone else, and used that advantage to dominate ‘unfairly’. Perhaps the players behind the characters in TheMercs were also great PvPers, perhaps not. It’s a simple line, but it holds a lot of weight.
There are reasons why zergs fall apart, and why when they don’t, people remember the name.Ī very memorable line from a DF dev related to all of this: “TheMercs are very good at PvE”, when we were discussing early Darkfall and the very dominant PvP clan TheMercs. “Make more friends” is a legitimate argument in a MMORPG with FFA PvP. There is always a ‘why’ behind someone getting zerged. Where yesterday impacts today, and sets up tomorrow. Where what you bring out, and more importantly, risk, matters. Where who you know and who you can call upon matters. What I am looking for is a game where character progress matters. Which is great if that’s what you are looking to play, but 99% of the time, it’s not what I’m after. The better players should always win unless luck plays a major role. Before the first shot is fired, everything is ‘fair and balanced’ in terms of characters/gear, and it’s a pure player-skill driven game. It’s just you and 15 others, all with the same HP total, the same available weapons, and on a map that starts neutral, against 16 other guys. In a FPS, you can’t ‘zerg’ the other side on a 16v16 server, and you can’t bring out and risk the big toys to out-gear them either.
That, to me, is one of the core differences between an MMORPG and a FPS characters matter, and ‘balance’ is player-driven rather than hard-coded. I’d also ask how important player-skill was in the fight as well. If you lost a 1v1 because someone had a major character/gear advantage, I doubt you would call that an even fight, but I’d again ask ‘why’ the other guy had such an advantage. If you get ganked in a 10v1, it’s hard to argue the fight was fair or balanced, but I’d ask why it was a 10v1 to begin with.
“It isn’t PVP because it is never fair and balanced.”įor starters, what defines ‘fair and balanced’? Most would make that judgment during or directly after the actual encounter, but I think that’s selling the whole thing short. Comment that caught my attention over at Massively, from Jef’s excellent Soapbox piece about RP and FFA PvP:
0 kommentar(er)
