MMO CHAT: I'll probably buy and play that game even though it looks like dogshit

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The MMO HMO > MMO CHAT: I'll probably buy and play that game even though it looks like dogshit

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Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Tricky Ed posted:

This hasn't worked yet because the people who it is intended to punish love the behavior. "I PKed too much, so they're sending more people to try to kill me? Hooray, I can kill them too!" Bounties that require the victim to spend resources are terrible, because the victims usually have fewer resources (and to my knowledge no one's gotten around the "get a friend's alt to kill me and collect the bounty, then split it" strategy). Almost every method I've seen has ended up being more of an inconvenience to the victim than the killer, or, as in SWG's overt/covert flagging, became a metagame that PKs could also win more than their victims.

Eve almost works because you can materially affect a person's play if you blow up enough of their stuff, but you have to have overwhelming force to do so, and no one loses the skill points they used to get all that wealth so defeat is only ever temporary. Almost all of the in-game stuff is ignorable or can be offset with good planning.

Realistically the problem is that the notorious killers, the ones whose name you remember, can't be stopped in games because they're essentially Jason. They're better and stronger than you are in combat, and if they're defeated (10 peasants with pitchforks) they just come right back. You'd need to find some way to take away their ability to PK for a duration of time that they are upset by. No one's tried enough things like this to make any real headway on the problem, because the easy answer is all or nothing.

I don't think it needs to be a punishment per se. If they enjoy it, that's a good thing. That provides them constant gameplay they enjoy while also giving the 'bounty hunters' a role they can play too. And each are content in the others' game. No need to punish that at all! Each can be the villain to the other.

The only issue is if they're griefing the care bears, but as I said in my last post there's looooots of ways around that problem. As long as they're pvping in the way you want, they don't need to be punished for it, they should be encouraged.

No, I wouldn't say the victim should have to spend resources, as you said that's problematic. If anything, they should be rewarded for being killed. (insurance payout? charity from the local government? IDK however you want to spin it) But there's so so many ways to design a system like this.

But I think if you look at it like "Pvp is bad and we should punish those who do it" you're looking at it all wrong. At that point, just don't allow pvp at all. But lots of people enjoy pvp, so opt-in pvp experiences can be really rewarding gameplay loops for those who want them.

Like I keep saying, the answer is better matchmaking and phasing. If someone PKs you but then they don't see you in their game world ever again, no big deal, right? The problem is in a single shared world, they can choose to follow you around and kill the same player over and over and over. With phasing and instances, that simply isn't possible. If you're only PKing people who opt-in to risk pvp (whether because they like it or because there's some loot incentive) and you can't even PK the same person twice in a row, that's pretty reasonable. As far as the PKer can tell, you logged off the game. But you get to keep playing and don't run into that player again (for months or maybe ever).

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 09:26 on Jul 1, 2021

# ? Jul 1, 2021 09:24

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# ? May 25, 2024 00:32

Dik Hz: Feb 22, 2004; Fun with Science

Zaphod42 posted:

I don't think it needs to be a punishment per se. If they enjoy it, that's a good thing. That provides them constant gameplay they enjoy while also giving the 'bounty hunters' a role they can play too. And each are content in the others' game. No need to punish that at all! Each can be the villain to the other.

The only issue is if they're griefing the care bears, but as I said in my last post there's looooots of ways around that problem. As long as they're pvping in the way you want, they don't need to be punished for it, they should be encouraged.

No, I wouldn't say the victim should have to spend resources, as you said that's problematic. If anything, they should be rewarded for being killed. (insurance payout? charity from the local government? IDK however you want to spin it) But there's so so many ways to design a system like this.

But I think if you look at it like "Pvp is bad and we should punish those who do it" you're looking at it all wrong. At that point, just don't allow pvp at all. But lots of people enjoy pvp, so opt-in pvp experiences can be really rewarding gameplay loops for those who want them.

Like I keep saying, the answer is better matchmaking and phasing. If someone PKs you but then they don't see you in their game world ever again, no big deal, right? The problem is in a single shared world, they can choose to follow you around and kill the same player over and over and over. With phasing and instances, that simply isn't possible. If you're only PKing people who opt-in to risk pvp (whether because they like it or because there's some loot incentive) and you can't even PK the same person twice in a row, that's pretty reasonable. As far as the PKer can tell, you logged off the game. But you get to keep playing and don't run into that player again (for months or maybe ever).

The overwhelming majority of people who claim to love PvP really love ganking. People don't like fair fights; they like winning.

# ? Jul 1, 2021 11:42

Gort: Aug 18, 2003; Good day what ho cup of tea

I always thought the Eve model was the way to go for MMO PvP. Safe areas under the control of NPC factions where punishment for PvP is swift, but the rewards for doing things are small. Unsafe areas where rewards are big, but there's no PvP protection. The ability to make a structure in the unsafe areas that anyone can attack with the right equipment, but that lets you profit much more than grinding away in the safe zone. Equipment in general being disposable and craftable, which means you can lose it all when you die in PvP but it's not that big a deal.

I'd love to see a fantasy MMO in the Eve mould, with a central kingdom surrounded by badlands you can build castles in.

# ? Jul 1, 2021 11:58

THE BAR: Oct 20, 2011; You know what might look better on your nose?

Dik Hz posted:

The overwhelming majority of people who claim to love PvP really love ganking. People don't like fair fights; they like winning.

Pretty much. If I'm attacking someone in an MMO, it's either to drive them off an area I want for myself, or just to waste their time because I feel like being a jerk.

E:

Speaking as a rogue in TBC.

# ? Jul 1, 2021 13:24

Truga: May 4, 2014; Lipstick Apathy

Gort posted:

I'd love to see a fantasy MMO in the Eve mould, with a central kingdom surrounded by badlands you can build castles in.

isn't mortal online this

# ? Jul 1, 2021 13:31

Groovelord Neato: Dec 6, 2014

Zaphod42 posted:

And then after the whole "waking the sleeper" event, Karafym was supposed to be unkillable, but players nearly did it, so the mods intervened, which was a whole kerfuffle. You probably know that story though.

One server successfully killed Kerafyrm (always thought his name was Kerafym since it sounds WAY better but I looked it up and it's Kerafyrm) but it was after SOE intervened in their initial attempt which I'd forgotten about. Took them three hours to do it. It's wild it was on a PvP server (and the one I rolled on initially when I didn't realize the PvP/PvE difference):

quote:

On November 15, 2003, on the Rallos Zek PvP server, the three top guilds (Ascending Dawn, Wudan, and Magus Imperialis Magicus) assembled over 180 players, along with an assortment of other non-PK players with Sleeper's keys, with the intent to kill the Sleeper. This was in response to an attempt to wake the Sleeper by an Iksar monk named Stynkfyst, who partnered with the largest random-pk guild of the time. Having been a former member of uber-guild Ascending Dawn, he had the knowledge the random pk guild needed to wake the Sleeper. The top guilds did not assemble their forces until word of Stynkfyst's intentions had spread, and it became clear that he intended to wake the Sleeper, forever preventing future guilds from farming the old loot table. Until this point, waking The Sleeper had not been seriously considered by any guilds, as it was believed that waking the Sleeper would make the offending guild's players kill-on-sight to the other guilds of the server. After 3 hours and 15 minutes, at 26% health, Kerafyrm disappeared (despawned). The players talked with the EverQuest Game Masters, and there was a general consensus that a bug had caused the problem, although some suggested (backed by statements from one GM) that higher-ups at SOE had purposely despawned Kerafyrm, because it was not intended to be part of the story.

The following day, the players logged in to find that Kerafyrm was back in his "sleeping" state, ready to be triggered again. There was also an apology on the official EverQuest forums from SOE, explaining that they had stopped the encounter because they feared the players were engaging the boss in an unintended manner. Although annoyed (the players pointed out that the reasons SOE gave could not have occurred, and felt lied to), they attempted to battle Kerafyrm once again.

On November 17, 2003, after a nearly three-hour battle, Kerafyrm was defeated. He had between 100 million and 400 million hit points, likely around 250 million (most EverQuest bosses have 2 million at most), was immune to all spells except wizard's manaburn spell and Shadow Knight's Harm Touch, possessed two death touch abilities (abilities that automatically killed players), and attacked players for 6999 damage per swing. By using the cleric's epic weapon and other resurrection spells, the players were able to bring their dead characters back into the battle faster than Kerafyrm could kill them all.

A bugged patch made his regen way lower than it should've been otherwise he would've been actually unkillable. Similar to probably the most famous MMO event where Lord British was killed by a nicked fire spell during an event because a server reset had turned off his invulnerability flag.

Of course I say "took them three hours to do it" when FFXI had fights that took entire days and weren't successful.

Groovelord Neato fucked around with this message at 14:23 on Jul 1, 2021

# ? Jul 1, 2021 13:55

CuddleCryptid: Jan 11, 2013; Things could be going better

THE BAR posted:

Pretty much. If I'm attacking someone in an MMO, it's either to drive them off an area I want for myself, or just to waste their time because I feel like being a jerk.

E:

Speaking as a rogue in TBC.

This is kind of the issue with things like a bounty system, or any other systemic punishment for PVP. Those systems depend on people acting in ways that will grow their wealth, where they won't PvP if the amount they lose exceeds the amount they gain. And this does work for lower level people who are saving up their pennies for something, but if you are already established then you are going into pvp expecting to lose a lot of money because it is *fun*. The only way to actually stop pvp is to make it less fun, which is impossible, because the drive to gently caress with other players will never go away no matter how expensive it is. I mean God, in EVE you sometimes have people fighting CONCORD just to screw with miners.

# ? Jul 1, 2021 16:26

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Dik Hz posted:

The overwhelming majority of people who claim to love PvP really love ganking. People don't like fair fights; they like winning.

The system I described allows ganking, I think you kinda missed the point.

# ? Jul 1, 2021 17:44

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

CuddleCryptid posted:

This is kind of the issue with things like a bounty system, or any other systemic punishment for PVP. Those systems depend on people acting in ways that will grow their wealth, where they won't PvP if the amount they lose exceeds the amount they gain. And this does work for lower level people who are saving up their pennies for something, but if you are already established then you are going into pvp expecting to lose a lot of money because it is *fun*. The only way to actually stop pvp is to make it less fun, which is impossible, because the drive to gently caress with other players will never go away no matter how expensive it is. I mean God, in EVE you sometimes have people fighting CONCORD just to screw with miners.

Again, if you want to stop pvp all you have to do is program the game such that you can't do it. You have complete control over this. This is the point of game design.

# ? Jul 1, 2021 17:47

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Groovelord Neato posted:

One server successfully killed Kerafyrm (always thought his name was Kerafym since it sounds WAY better but I looked it up and it's Kerafyrm) but it was after SOE intervened in their initial attempt which I'd forgotten about. Took them three hours to do it. It's wild it was on a PvP server (and the one I rolled on initially when I didn't realize the PvP/PvE difference):

A bugged patch made his regen way lower than it should've been otherwise he would've been actually unkillable. Similar to probably the most famous MMO event where Lord British was killed by a nicked fire spell during an event because a server reset had turned off his invulnerability flag.

Of course I say "took them three hours to do it" when FFXI had fights that took entire days and weren't successful.

I think its sorta because it was a pvp server. The pve servers woke him much sooner, but the pvp servers kept killing each other first. As a result he stayed asleep while guilds geared up past the point anybody on a pve server was when he was awoken.

# ? Jul 1, 2021 17:48

Dik Hz: Feb 22, 2004; Fun with Science

Zaphod42 posted:

The system I described allows ganking, I think you kinda missed the point.

Maybe I did. What problem is your system supposed to address?

# ? Jul 1, 2021 17:56

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Dik Hz posted:

Maybe I did. What problem is your system supposed to address?

The negatives of pvp as we just described. It allows pvp while not allowing griefing. I'm basically just going to have to say the same things so read my previous post again?

To make it explicitly clear I guess, my point is you can allow people to gank others while preventing them from ganking the same person more than once, only letting them gank people who opt in to it, and also making them risk being hunted by bounty hunters or guards. This way there's balance and also everybody gets rewarded for the gameplay they want and nobody has to deal with gameplay they don't.

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Jul 1, 2021

# ? Jul 1, 2021 18:01

Jazerus: May 24, 2011

Zaphod42 posted:

The negatives of pvp as we just described. It allows pvp while not allowing griefing. I'm basically just going to have to say the same things so read my previous post again?

To make it explicitly clear I guess, my point is you can allow people to gank others while preventing them from ganking the same person more than once, only letting them gank people who opt in to it, and also making them risk being hunted by bounty hunters or guards. This way there's balance and also everybody gets rewarded for the gameplay they want and nobody has to deal with gameplay they don't.

yeah i mean there has to be incentive for people to opt into being ganked tho. the usual pvp flag stuff doesn't work for that

this is where eve's model succeeds. lots of people who don't "want" to pvp still end up participating because it is possible to venture into nullsec and back out without ever being bothered, which is very rewarding compared to the same time spent in highsec. but it's also rewarding to hunt down those nerds and take their stuff.

# ? Jul 1, 2021 18:36

shirunei: Sep 7, 2018; I tried to run away. To take the easy way out. I'll live through the suffering. When I die, I want to feel like I did my best.

Zaphod42 posted:

I think its sorta because it was a pvp server. The pve servers woke him much sooner, but the pvp servers kept killing each other first. As a result he stayed asleep while guilds geared up past the point anybody on a pve server was when he was awoken.

The big bad of Veeshan's Peak was only ever killed once in era due to feuds like that on rz and probably the other pvp servers too. Some dude got a crown of rile, which at the time was absurdly overpowered due to stamina.

# ? Jul 1, 2021 18:55

Jokerpilled Drudge: Jan 27, 2010; by Pragmatica

Black Desert has a somewhat appealing conceptualization of open pvp but it misses the mark because killing and dying are mostly meaningless and that's virtually the entire extent of socialization with strangers in the game

# ? Jul 1, 2021 19:06

Groovelord Neato: Dec 6, 2014

shirunei posted:

The big bad of Veeshan's Peak was only ever killed once in era due to feuds like that on rz and probably the other pvp servers too. Some dude got a crown of rile, which at the time was absurdly overpowered due to stamina.

lol one person having the Crown of Rile on a PVP server is so goddamn busted. I never paid attention to the PvP side of things when I played so I missed out on their server dynamics when it came to raids and poo poo.

Groovelord Neato fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Jul 1, 2021

# ? Jul 1, 2021 19:12

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Jazerus posted:

yeah i mean there has to be incentive for people to opt into being ganked tho. the usual pvp flag stuff doesn't work for that

this is where eve's model succeeds. lots of people who don't "want" to pvp still end up participating because it is possible to venture into nullsec and back out without ever being bothered, which is very rewarding compared to the same time spent in highsec. but it's also rewarding to hunt down those nerds and take their stuff.

Yes but I already said all you have to do is offer increased xp or quest rewards if you opt in.

I hate having to repeat myself.

# ? Jul 1, 2021 19:22

Hra Mormo: Mar 6, 2008; The Internet Man

Zaphod42 posted:

Yes but I already said all you have to do is offer increased xp or quest rewards if you opt in.

I hate having to repeat myself.

WoW did this but the success was negligible, though not nonexistent. That said, it might see better success in a game where xp isn't ultimately meaningless or if the reward is more focused on other meaningful rewards, like high value currency.

# ? Jul 1, 2021 19:39

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Or more loot / better loot rates.

You could even have drops that only show up when flagged for pvp.

Loooots of possibilities!

# ? Jul 1, 2021 19:41

CuddleCryptid: Jan 11, 2013; Things could be going better

Zaphod42 posted:

Yes but I already said all you have to do is offer increased xp or quest rewards if you opt in.

I hate having to repeat myself.

And then you end up with a system full of ganking because the lower your level is the more the XP and rewards would matter to you, while the high level players circling around looking for prey don't particularly care.

You can have overworld pvp or you can ban it, but flagging systems are the worst of both worlds because it exposes players to danger in an extremely artificial way. The whole point of server pvp is that the person you are with could at some time try to take you down, and the socialization involved is done with that in mind. If you're relying on flags then it's just a crowd of people, only some of which can be fought, which is boring. It also stops people from trying to come together to take down a high level threat, because they have no stake in helping a flagged character if they are not flagged themselves

# ? Jul 1, 2021 19:51

30.5 Days: Nov 19, 2006

I think EVE is proof that you can have a pretty brutal world provided that you are straightforward about the level of risk people are taking on and there is an actual path to avoiding that risk long-term. By contrast, Albion is very honest about the level of risk people are taking on, but at a certain point there's not a lot of reason to keep playing if you're not going into nullsec zones since the main city and all high level resources are there, and UO just frequently lied to you about the level of risk you were under until trammel was released.

EDIT: Also in EVE, the cost of getting owned, like with the division black zones, is mostly limited to your current outing. Insurance goes a long way to making replacing your ship feel not-so-bad, and EVE gear is already commodity-based, although I believe UO had that also. Taking cash and making your current effort fail is a lot more palatable than taking whatever amount of time some epic piece of gear might represent.

30.5 Days fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Jul 1, 2021

# ? Jul 1, 2021 20:04

Jazerus: May 24, 2011

Zaphod42 posted:

Yes but I already said all you have to do is offer increased xp or quest rewards if you opt in.

I hate having to repeat myself.

i'm very sorry that you felt compelled to repeat yourself because i decided to post a comment about your post that didn't even contradict anything in it. thank you for elevating the discourse

# ? Jul 1, 2021 20:11

Good Dumplings: Mar 30, 2011; Excuse my worthless shitposting because all I can ever hope to accomplish in life is to rot away the braincells of strangers on the internet with my irredeemable brainworms.

Phigs posted:

I think mutual-aid and politics are the directions MMOs need to go to create more player interaction and social worlds. The social construction through murder experiments haven't worked out so well. I think the core problem of the murder route is you need people to stick around through the murder phase in order for them to build social structures that essentially end the murder phase. Why would non-murderers stick around during the first phase, and why would murderers bring about the second phase? I think that opportunity only existed in the early UO days and is now dead because people have the choice to go play something else instead of stick it out and make it work.

This is a while back, but the topic of 'what goals are there beyond combat' is super interesting to me.

A lot of it is constrained by how most game worlds are just 'kill bots' even if there's no PvP, but a big first step would be to make it so access to higher-level enemies/regions/equipment would depend on players in PvE-only zones maintaining global-scale structures/systems rather than guild-scale systems. Having an alternate goal for people besides fighting bigger stuff can then give an impetus to form groups that aren't about combat, and cooperative mechanics can be tuned to encourage meeting people you don't already know in a combat guild.

EVE was planning to do something like this with jumpgates to other systems, but it was aimed more at sovereignty-holding groups building infrastructure for their own benefit, and CCP being what it is the idea fizzled out and got forgotten with the other eighty billion experiments on their mind.

Dik Hz posted:

The overwhelming majority of people who claim to love PvP really love ganking. People don't like fair fights; they like winning.

Also god this is the central truth of PvP. To make a good experience in a game that's not an absolute warzone, aggressors need to be tuned such that they take a starting handicap with each battle that directly affects their combat ability, not a metagame penalty at the end. It's the chance of a fight not going well that dissuades people from charging everything they see in real/realistic combat. And then there's also the matter of the aggressor not always being the one who shoots first, as with players defending territory they own.

Games are hard to design

# ? Jul 1, 2021 20:13

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

CuddleCryptid posted:

And then you end up with a system full of ganking because the lower your level is the more the XP and rewards would matter to you, while the high level players circling around looking for prey don't particularly care.

You can have overworld pvp or you can ban it, but flagging systems are the worst of both worlds because it exposes players to danger in an extremely artificial way. The whole point of server pvp is that the person you are with could at some time try to take you down, and the socialization involved is done with that in mind. If you're relying on flags then it's just a crowd of people, only some of which can be fought, which is boring. It also stops people from trying to come together to take down a high level threat, because they have no stake in helping a flagged character if they are not flagged themselves

Why do XP matter more for low level players than high level players? That doesn't make sense, short of people who are level capped.

Are you assuming it would be a flat amount of xp that doesn't scale? That's odd. You can do things other ways.

You would also be matching people based on level, so this feels like a weird take. You're like, overlooking all the possible options just to try to needle something without giving it a chance.

# ? Jul 1, 2021 20:33

Chev: Jul 19, 2010; Switchblade Switcharoo

Probably worth reposting A brief history of murder in Ultima Online at this point.

# ? Jul 1, 2021 20:44

Jokerpilled Drudge: Jan 27, 2010; by Pragmatica

Zaphod42 posted:

Why do XP matter more for low level players than high level players? That doesn't make sense, short of people who are level capped.

Are you assuming it would be a flat amount of xp that doesn't scale? That's odd. You can do things other ways.

You would also be matching people based on level, so this feels like a weird take. You're like, overlooking all the possible options just to try to needle something without giving it a chance.

Exactly! Maybe imagine something like mount and blade pvp crossed with wurm. Power progression can be mostly about developing social structures ( so as to outnumber opponents) gear, and player skill.

# ? Jul 1, 2021 20:55

Phigs: Jan 23, 2019

Good Dumplings posted:

This is a while back, but the topic of 'what goals are there beyond combat' is super interesting to me.

A lot of it is constrained by how most game worlds are just 'kill bots' even if there's no PvP, but a big first step would be to make it so access to higher-level enemies/regions/equipment would depend on players in PvE-only zones maintaining global-scale structures/systems rather than guild-scale systems. Having an alternate goal for people besides fighting bigger stuff can then give an impetus to form groups that aren't about combat, and cooperative mechanics can be tuned to encourage meeting people you don't already know in a combat guild.

EVE was planning to do something like this with jumpgates to other systems, but it was aimed more at sovereignty-holding groups building infrastructure for their own benefit, and CCP being what it is the idea fizzled out and got forgotten with the other eighty billion experiments on their mind.

Also god this is the central truth of PvP. To make a good experience in a game that's not an absolute warzone, aggressors need to be tuned such that they take a starting handicap with each battle that directly affects their combat ability, not a metagame penalty at the end. It's the chance of a fight not going well that dissuades people from charging everything they see in real/realistic combat. And then there's also the matter of the aggressor not always being the one who shoots first, as with players defending territory they own.

Games are hard to design

I think a very interesting possibility is the idea of a 'world quest'. Where essentially the whole server has this huge, multi-part goal to achieve that involves every aspect of the game. If you take WoW you essentially give every person a quest to kill X end-game baddie. But what if instead it was a server-wide quest to have that baddie be killed at all? I guess it would look like a mix of public quests, server-wide logistics quests like the opening of the AQ gates, and world bosses. Maybe even a seasonal thing where players could fail the task if they aren't fast enough or they fail to deal with emerging threats. That way you'd avoid the 'we can't let players kill the sleeper/protect the big bad' problems if the worlds persist forever. It could even just be a survival quest where the world could actually end if players don't protect it well enough.

The regular MMO model, even the ones that allow a lot of player interaction, are still very much about the solo/group goals and just set within a massive multiplayer environment. I think it would be interesting to see a game built around massively multiplayer goals.

# ? Jul 1, 2021 21:13

CuddleCryptid: Jan 11, 2013; Things could be going better

Zaphod42 posted:

Why do XP matter more for low level players than high level players? That doesn't make sense, short of people who are level capped.

Are you assuming it would be a flat amount of xp that doesn't scale? That's odd. You can do things other ways.

You would also be matching people based on level, so this feels like a weird take. You're like, overlooking all the possible options just to try to needle something without giving it a chance.

Putting aside this bizarre aggression, its because statistically speaking the vast majority of players in an mmo older than a few months are at the level cap. If you remove the effect that level has on combat entirely it can work because then there is no such thing as ganking, that is what Sea of Thieves does, but that means it isn't a "real" RPG then.

CuddleCryptid fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Jul 1, 2021

# ? Jul 1, 2021 21:14

30.5 Days: Nov 19, 2006

CuddleCryptid posted:

Putting aside this bizarre aggression, its because statistically speaking the vast majority of players in an mmo older than a few months are at the level cap. If you remove the effect that level has on combat entirely it can work because then there is no such thing as ganking, that is what Sea of Thieves does, but that means it isn't a "real" RPG then.

Plenty of MMOs don't have a level cap (BDO) or have some kind of post-cap numerical progression like AA or Rep that could be hit instead. If you have a BDO-like model where level gets soft-capped, then a %-based loss can be loving brutal for high level players.

I mean, also it's not clear why losing XP at level cap wouldn't be bad since I imagine most people at level cap watn to stay there.

# ? Jul 1, 2021 21:21

Jokerpilled Drudge: Jan 27, 2010; by Pragmatica

The xp thing is just way too arbitrary to endorse as a necessary game mechanic. It's simply a way to abstract progression in lieu of actual material and personal growth for your character. This becomes a really obvious problem where high and low level characters can't even interact because of xp disparity vis a vis game mechanics such as crafting or fighting.

# ? Jul 1, 2021 21:29

CuddleCryptid: Jan 11, 2013; Things could be going better

30.5 Days posted:

Plenty of MMOs don't have a level cap (BDO) or have some kind of post-cap numerical progression like AA or Rep that could be hit instead. If you have a BDO-like model where level gets soft-capped, then a %-based loss can be loving brutal for high level players.

I mean, also it's not clear why losing XP at level cap wouldn't be bad since I imagine most people at level cap watn to stay there.

IIRC Destiny does that kind of thing where you hit max functional level and then every time you "level" again you get tokens for gear and cosmetics, but the ultimate issue is that the primary currency for real upgrades can't be earned that way so it wouldn't be a big deterrent.

If you started it where you lose XP if you do bad things then you'd have to actually start removing functional levels, otherwise you would end up like the WoW arena where you'd have tons of players at the max level for the bracket and just staying there forever, but instead you'd just have PKers at 0 rep

# ? Jul 1, 2021 21:35

Freakazoid_: Jul 5, 2013; Buglord

Chev posted:

Probably worth reposting A brief history of murder in Ultima Online at this point.

It's a good article, but he suspiciously left out the UO volunteer program lawsuit. It's kind of like emergent gameplay escaping into reality.

# ? Jul 1, 2021 22:32

Ra Ra Rasputin: Apr 2, 2011

I think MMO's would do well to get rid of levels, they are often arbitrary for segregating the population into those at max level where experience no longer matters and those on the grind and the power disparity means the two can't really interact in any meaningful way because almost every MMO is about killing things by smashing your numbers into eachother and the low level will have 1000x lower numbers.

Think how many times you wanted to get a friend into some game of yours but you know they will be stuck in newbie town for 100 hours and unable to join you in the content you are doing.

# ? Jul 2, 2021 03:28

30.5 Days: Nov 19, 2006

Ra Ra Rasputin posted:

I think MMO's would do well to get rid of levels, they are often arbitrary for segregating the population into those at max level where experience no longer matters and those on the grind and the power disparity means the two can't really interact in any meaningful way because almost every MMO is about killing things by smashing your numbers into eachother and the low level will have 1000x lower numbers.

Think how many times you wanted to get a friend into some game of yours but you know they will be stuck in newbie town for 100 hours and unable to join you in the content you are doing.

You're not really talking about getting rid of levels, you're talking about getting rid of advancement.

# ? Jul 2, 2021 04:02

GI_Clutch: Aug 22, 2000; by Fluffdaddy; Dinosaur Gum

Good news! We're going to offer a level boost soon so your friend can skip all those hours of leveling to join you in the exciting endgame content! What do you mean that probably means our leveling content sucks?

# ? Jul 2, 2021 04:04

Jokerpilled Drudge: Jan 27, 2010; by Pragmatica

30.5 Days posted:

You're not really talking about getting rid of levels, you're talking about getting rid of advancement.

Nah it's a holdover from dungeons and dragons where mechanics being limited to just killing things isn't really an issue. You can see why it holds the social experience back when its applied to a very limited online computer program

# ? Jul 2, 2021 04:55

Aerox: Jan 8, 2012

Jokerpilled Drudge posted:

Nah it's a holdover from dungeons and dragons where mechanics being limited to just killing things isn't really an issue. You can see why it holds the social experience back when its applied to a very limited online computer program

How do you propose people better their characters in a meaningful way that doesn't just simply recreate the problem of brand new characters not being able to do current content?

# ? Jul 2, 2021 05:09

Jokerpilled Drudge: Jan 27, 2010; by Pragmatica

Aerox posted:

How do you propose people better their characters in a meaningful way that doesn't just simply recreate the problem of brand new characters not being able to do current content?

Participating in social structures, getting gud, scavenging, fabrication

# ? Jul 2, 2021 05:25

30.5 Days: Nov 19, 2006

Love to play my new MMO where everyone is either a government minister or a cosmetics crafter.

# ? Jul 2, 2021 07:57

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# ? May 25, 2024 00:32

Ra Ra Rasputin: Apr 2, 2011

Easily replaceable and disposable gear is one way.

There are really many ways to allow for a feeling of character advancement without just "make number go up and add a 0 to the end of the damage numbers"

Or ways to advance characters that isn't "genocide a thousand monsters that respawn forever within 30 seconds and sell what's in their pockets" or "collect 10 x parts from x monsters a thousand times"

Ra Ra Rasputin fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Jul 2, 2021

# ? Jul 2, 2021 09:01

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The MMO HMO > MMO CHAT: I'll probably buy and play that game even though it looks like dogshit

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