Is large scale combat with minimal pvp what you really want?

[mutantmagnet]

So far my only experience with large scale pvp has been in planetside. Planetside was a lot of fun but one complaint that players would have about it is how easy it was for territory to change hands. Many times I've wondered if the game would be a lot more fun if gaining and holding territory was a lot more costlier and I'm still looking forward to experience this type of gameplay first hand.

But I noticed many of you come from other large scale battle games where territory was worth a lot more and question why many of you who come here would want this type of gameplay?

My reason for questioning your perceptions of fun stems from arguements like the following:

I found Shadowbane in development. Shadowbane developers focused on PvP rather then PvE, they described their world as a world where you couldn't randomly gank people without consequence from other players. The game was to focus on large scale battles and large network of cities and guilds that could lay seige to the towns of other guilds. It wasn't about PvP, oh no, it was about Kingdom vs Kingdom! You could fly in this game! You didn't have to grind levels in this game! For months all you heard was the ranting and raving of all the fanboys... This was going to be a different kind of game!

Then it came out. The developers didn't lie per say. Their game was what they had said it was. Unfortunately, things don't always play out as you would imagine them. First of all, their servers were incapable of handling the large scale battles they were advertising. Huge lag and instability were regular occurences.

Politics between guilds ran rampant, however you didn't participate unless you were someone important in your guild. You couldn't just gank people randomly, infact, you could not participate in any PvP of any kind out of fear that you would be kicked out of your own guild.

Why would you be kicked out? Well, even though you didn't need to grind levels you insted grinded gold to build your city. Since you couldn't PvP, you would grind gold nonstop. Now once you had put all that work into your city, you didn't want to run the risk of losing it by having your members attack other people randomly. If any guild got out of line there were 20 other guilds ready to pounce on it. The only time people would engage in battle was if they were SURE they could win - They didn't want to lose their towns. In short, while the ideas were great the implementation was horrible. The game failed and has since been reduced to 2 playable servers that STILL cannot handle large scale battles after 5 years of being on the market.

I also frequent the Eve Online forums and the problems that this person cited for Shadowbane or similar with Eve. No one gets into serious battles unless they can win or run away if a mistake was made, losing is pretty costly.

Naturally because of this situation players complain about less PvP happening than there should (and could?) be.

Ensuring that battles are lopsided and being involved in less fights than what I would've gotten with Planetside doesn't sound like fun but I'm willing to experiment.

But if you already experienced this type of gameplay firsthand why are you interested in seeing Mortal Online taking this route? Don't you really wish for more pvp to occur?
Aren't you interested in getting into close fights that push your abilities to your limits?
Do you really want another game where small scale skirmishes really don't matter in the grand scheme in the face of the zerg?

[Geoff]

The problem with SB was that Wen large scale battle happened it was too laggy. You couldnt realy even tell what was happening 1/2 the time till it was over lol.

There was alot of pvp going on in SB though lest on my server.

If theres a reson for smaller battles (resorces, outlying areas to hunt, ect) and the whole PK thing there will be plenty of pvp action. With that in mind IMO the huge city Sieges should be rare. If you see sieges everyday they become comon place. if they only happened once in awhile more ppl will partisapate and it could be funner.
but thats my opinion

[no-one]

Static bases are lame. I would rather fight for territory or bases that I had time invested in, or try to take someone Else's.

[Traceur]

to the main point:

i think SB did a lot of things wrong, and i think EVE has a long way to go (though it is constantly improving).

but yes, i would rather have less but more meaningful PvP where your afraid of loosing, then rampant PvP with meaningless results. i am mostly interested in both the political & criminal side of PvP: basically, i want the strong sense of community it creates.

[sushibandit]

To a certain extent, I believe that your actions should eventually come back to you. As far as development of the game goes, this could be implemented in any number of ways such as a notoriety stat, wanted posters with an appropriate reward posted in NPC controlled towns, etc..

Now if you really are able to form a guild and construct your walled fortress hall living area anywhere you feel like, going out and randomly slaughtering other players will attract those knight-in-shining-armor roleplaying type of guilds, who may very well discover the location of your base and siege it. That kind of flexibility and player-determined justice system (or lack therof) is something I'm really hoping the developers are able to make work in this game.

[Xtra-Medium]

Well if your guild is not displayed then that takes care of one problem, why should someone know what guild your in anyway if you didn't tell them? And it sounds like the game suffers from to many pussys, people need to take risks on a fight even if they might not win.

[warriorswar]

Originally Posted by Geoff

The problem with SB was that Wen large scale battle happened it was too laggy.

The biggest problem with SB? its only a PVP game. No victim no PKer no anti-PK, just fight for farm spot/ LVLing spot/ or for your city (mine, bane, etc)

No adventure, no quest, no fun PVE, no skill cash making, well a game with only PVP content without victim.

I play SB, its somtimes funny, but i remember the PVP in my old mmo' in a real adventure, protec victim against PKer, ok killing some n00b with rich gear


SB with full loot, huge no-PVP content (a lot of victim), better combat system (real time?) sound awesome

[Damukag]

I loved Planetside, but I agree: In the end, the combat was meaningless. You were taking a base just so the next base became vunerable, and the next, and so on and so forth. It just wasn't really involved PvP, it was just another form of grinding, in a way.

With full loot, players already have a stake in combat, but it should be more than that. So yeah, I'd go for more involved combat, but less of it.

[Danach]

I agree with the original post. I posted something about the time taken on how long it should take to siege an area and the general consensus was it should take quite a bit of time. If I could find the link for my post I would post it but no can do.

[Oxim Oresi]

If your guild kicks you for killing other players, then you were in the wrong guild anyway.