I’m not a fan of PvP (Player vs. Player combat) as found in most MMOs. The prevailing DIKU DNA, manifested in levels, gear and ganking, just doesn’t provide the level playing field that I prefer when it comes to pitting my playing skills against those of another human.
I loved Street Fighter and other assorted fighters when I was in high school. SF2 really hooked me, and I thoroughly enjoyed several derivative games like Marvel vs. Capcom 2, SFAlpha, Killer Instinct, King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown, Darkstalkers, Soul Edge, and their variants. Mortal Kombat is too exhibitive for my taste, but for a while there, there were a lot of good fighter games floating around, so there was no dearth of options. The most expensive game I ever purchased was the SNES cartridge of SF2Turbo ($70 at the time, stupidly expensive, but still a ton of fun). My friends and I spent a lot of time and money in arcades and at home with fighting games, a not uncommon thing for teens of the 90s.
My skills were never such that I could play in a tournament, but I did hold my own against most arcade players, and won far more often than I lost. It was very satisfying to play in a hard-fought match and come out on top. Steamrolling new players wasn’t much fun, and I’d often take it easy on them reflexively. I like to win, but I like it to be an honest win that requires good play on my part. Perhaps I was doing a Darwinian disservice to those noobs by taking it easy on them, but I tried to always have fun and try to let the other player have fun too. It seemed to me to be a better way to spend my time. Constantly losing to a better player is only fun if you’re learning something (and if they aren’t a jerk). Frustration isn’t fun.
The best part of these fighting games was the intricate balancing jobs they did, working with disparate characters and playstyles. Some games were better balanced than others, to be sure, but on the whole, success in fighting games when playing against other players usually boiled down to player skill. This made successes sweeter and failures more instructive. It was also a lot of fun.
Dave Sirlin has made a bit of a career out of writing about SF games and fighting games in general, and he wrote a great article some time ago about how World of Warcraft teaches the wrong lessons. Everything Sirlin writes is filtered through his SF background and his “Play to Win” ethos, so it’s not going to be a set of assertions that works for everyone, but it’s a solid read, and really strikes at the heart of what I don’t like in MMO PvP.
One of his memorable quips is the suggestion of a “level 60 Chun-li” and the absurdity that such an image presents. It’s silly to think that player time investment in building a character would outweigh player skill in the fighting game scene, yet it’s precisely that paradigm that drives PvP in most MMOs. This is why open world PvP inevitably degenerates into a cycle of bullying and “ganking“; players aren’t looking for a fair fight, they are looking to win, or worse, to give grief to other players. A game system where time investment brings more powerful characters in the form of higher levels and/or better gear doesn’t offer much in the way of a fair fight. (Notably, it also causes problems even when you’re not playing against other players… there are problems playing with other players against the computer. Levels do weird things sometimes.)
I might note that a very narrow power band might make for tolerable PvP, of course. Guild Wars gets close to this. World of Warcraft, with its endgame characters being orders of magnitude more powerful than new characters, is a bit different. It shouldn’t take 300 characters to kill one foe. (Sadly, the video has been lost on that one, and the 300 weren’t even enough, but still… the power of a end game character is absurd compared to a new character.) Maybe that makes for good fantasy power trips if you’re the powerful one (and that was a Player vs. Environment contest), but it’s awful for PvP. Puzzle Pirates has a very narrow power band, and the vast bulk of the game is based on player skill. This is a big part of why I still consider it to be my MMO home. It just feels more like my skill matters, rather than my time investment.
I want a level playing field for PvP contests. If I fail, it should be because I wasn’t good enough. If I win, it should be because I played well. It’s all about player skill.
I don’t see that in most MMOs, which is one of the reasons I’m a dedicated solo Explorer who occasionally indulges in dungeon prowling with other players. I don’t mind an imbalanced contest against the computer’s monsters (though it’s nice to have a spectrum of challenge), but when I’m playing with other players, I want to know that the contest is one of skill, strategy and tactics, not a barely disguised measurement of time investment.
Tish Tosh Tesh 
I get it. You want player skill to matter in MMORPGs. I’m not so sure I agree, though. For me, the RPG part is still very important, and I take the view that it’s the character’s skills and abilities that matter. And that’s how diku-like games work. They are games of character advancement, not player skill; and that’s pretty good for me as a mage, for my player skill in magic is actually pretty low: I usually can’t even pull rabbits out of hats, much less cast fireballs!
Ah, you mean my player skill at pushing buttons at the right time and reacting to what’s happening on-screen. I know. But as soon as you start thinking in those terms, all the immersion disappears.
The endless treadmill of levels and gear is what ruins immersion for me. Button pushing never does, because I can learn that to a rote level that it becomes part of the flow – I do it without thinking about the actual action, I think “special attack with sword” not “push the 1 key”.
I’m in perfect agreement with Tesh.
I quote your first paragraph for emphasis:
“I’m not a fan of PvP (Player vs. Player combat) as found in most MMOs. The prevailing DIKU DNA, manifested in levels, gear and ganking, just doesn’t provide the level playing field that I prefer when it comes to pitting my playing skills against those of another human.”
I would like to hammer this nail into the head of every player or designer who wants to add/improve PvP in DIKU MUDs like WoW, EQ and even Warhammer Online. Or well, better put it on a wall so that they can read it.
The basic system is fundamentally flawed for PvP and despite the still best working system presented in DAoC it’s still flawed and there are better options out there. Trying to balance the trinity is like trying to square the circle.
You are right that Sirlin must be read in context of his Street Fighter background and that he and Bartle are not beyond cricitism. But we can work with their ideas and comment on them nevertheless and sometimes and outside approach is also useful to uncover flaws of the system.
Time > Skill. Guild Wars was originally supposed to be a PvP based game. The idea that most people migrate to PvP after the PvE campaign didn’t work out. And “farming”, mostly a skill-less activity that rewards time spent over skill and effort, became a very popular activity. Some do it a lot more than other kinds of PvE and PvP,
The Skill > Time mantra slowly eroded to PvP and no longer applies to PvE. You can grind out Canthan Faction and Eye of the North Faction related titles that give you powerful PvE skills. I wonder where this will end in Guild Wars 2.
I am afraid the system that allows for superior player skill to show would alienate a lot of MMO players. Yes, that makes me sad. I would wish for a less time consuming game and think nothing would be lost except stupid and inane grind.
BUT … too many people seem to be in love with that, and the dumbification of an ever more easier MMO world without penalties or loss is in full swing! “Cinematic questing” was stated as design goal for EverQuest Next. I don’t think “roleplaying” should be reduced to being an actor in a play set by game designers that plays like a semi-interactive movie.
As you are playing Star Trek Online right now, the “Feature Episodes” are usually highly praised for resembling the TV series and spirit of Star Trek and being very fun and all that. I think nothing is wrong with that… unless it becomes the core of a MMO. Then it would be stupid, IMO.
Dacheng, it might be worth noting that I love the PvE stuff as well, I am an old school RPG fan, and the progression mechanics fit nicely there. It’s just that PvP doesn’t work in the same framework, at least, not the kind of PvP that I want to play.
…other than that minor clarification, agreed on all counts guys. Thanks for the comments!
Oh, and Longasc, speaking of STO… I do like the Feature episodes and a lot of the other missions… but the game has never really played like an MMO in my mind. I could do almost everything I have without other players, and the few times I’ve played with other players, that could easily have been a multiplayer lobby tacked onto a single player game, like Diablo 2. It was definitely fun fighting sehlats with you and seeing your ship, but this whole “cinematic storytelling” thing is what single player games are for. (With optional multiplayer suites, perhaps, but there’s no need for a subscription server service there, just a peer-to-peer matching/communication grid.) I’d buy and play STO as a single player offline game . Ditto for SWTOR. That’s what they play like. They are good games, just not what I want out of MMOs, and not what I want out of PvP.
…I think I’d really enjoy PvP in the 3D space we see in MMO game engines (Soul Edge and Ergheiz were fun, after all), but I want it balanced and normalized like a fighting game. I want player skill to be the whole point of PvP. That simply doesn’t work spliced onto the standard RPG progression mechanics.
Unfortunately I can’t comment on the newer
PvP games ad I haven’t played them (League of Legends and such) but as a player who enjoys contests of skill agree with you on many points.
I wrote about relative power curves in the past and still believe in them – even in a MMO environment (perhaps especially!) I’ve argued in the past that all that should separate a level 1 to level 85 character should be as low as 4x. In essence, 4 new characters would have a fair chance of taking down the maxxed out character all skill being equal.
This creates the opportunity for some neat things. Instead of 5v5 matches you can matchmake on power curves. That 5v5 match may turn out to be 5v2 (5 new chars vs 1 maxed out and 1 new player) which changes dynamics of the match and the winner is now a mix of skill, team play, and decision making. Not gear grinds, etc.
Battlefield 2142 as a competite shooter does this well. While their unlocking system does give benefit to longer term players is doesn’t take long for new players to catch up – those benefits level off pretty fast and can still be overcome by skill.
I’d suggest that PVP in WoW/Rift and the like is a waste of design time and would be better left for a completely separate game (even if based on the same IP) that could be designed correctly with PvP purpose in mind, instead of an afterthought.
I originally took my pseudonym from a guy who called me, “you psycho child” when I gave a victory whoop after beating him at SF2 on the SNES. Blanka and Chun Li were my favorites, he was a Ryu/Ken and Dhalsim fan. So, I know SF and I know MMOs.
That said, Sirlin is way off the mark. A level 60 Chun Li is just as silly as a Guile with a Colt M4A1, but that doesn’t mean Counter Strike is stupid.
It’s the nature of competition to get any advantage possible. That fact is the source of “ganking”, not gaining power. It’s just the fact that gaining power through levels and gear is an easy way to gain that advantage is irrelevant. That’s just how a lot of RPGs work, where character skill stands in for some aspects the player cannot provide (such as heroic levels of strength required to bend bars when spinning a shared story over Mountain Dew and Cheetos).
Not to say that the power curve in modern RPGs is a good thing. I’d like to see that flattened, too. But, from a PvE point of view, there is something potent about people being able to gain a huge amount of power over the lifetime of a character that is appealing.
I’ll also argue that there is some player skill in level/gear-based system PvP. There is some skill required to plan out a character and then implement a way to get the gear you need. The “skill” is mostly in the planning. Which is a legitimate test of skills. The problem is that this type of skill leaves some people cold, especially those of us that figure out that in order to realize our goal we’ll have to invest 3n time into the game, where n is a stupid amount of time we can’t afford.
Finally, a comment on…
Frustration isn’t fun.
No, but it leads to fun. My favorite games were the ones that had me on the edge of shouting obscenities at the screen, shaking my fist in barely contained rage at how stupid the thing is. But, once I conquered the challenge, expecially if I got good enough to do it repeatedly, then that was a LOT of fun, and the form of some of my best gaming memories. Honestly, if a game doesn’t frustrate me a bit it’s probably not something I’m going to enjoy, either because it’s too shallow or there’s just not enough interesting in the game to make me want to overcome the next obstacle so bad.
My thoughts.
“Frustration isn’t fun.”
“No, but it leads to fun. If a game doesn’t frustrate me a bit it’s probably not something I’m going to enjoy”
A little bit is the key part. If a game is too frustrating, it will be only that, frustrating. The frustration drowns out the fun, possibly leading the player to quit before overcoming, or quit after overcoming and thinking “not worth it.” Or they cheat (who me? no idea there…), which isn’t so much fun as removal of frustration.
What PVP are you talking about, Tesh? Like open world PVP or tiered battle grounds?
To me, the former is broken because there is no win condition. Just mutual torture, forever (oh yay, the game never ends…oh, the torture never ends…). But the tiered battles in wow seemed alright to me when I played.
Eventually you largely catch up with their stats.
And the fact is, it isn’t pure PVP. It’s PVE + PVP. Your choices vs their stats, which may as well be the stats of a monster or such.
For myself, that works. If I want to engage a game world, it means engaging a certain amount of uneven/unbalanced ground. Because how is it a game world when it’s balanced everywhere, utterly – what sort of world is like that?
Further, when the other guy is statistically unbalanced against your stats, that doesn’t mean you can’t have skill enough to win.
I totally grant, the greater the difference between stats, the more skill it requires or even that statistically it’s impossible.
But there can be some lack of stat balance and yet you can still win.
It’s just you haven’t developed your own skill enough.
I’m not accusing you of this, but if you think there are lots of people who agree on the balance issue, it might be that they are simply using an excuse of inbalance for why they lost.
I remember an account of someone dueling in wow and because the guy giving the account didn’t really know how to duel, he was unpredicatable. And he beat the other guy!
And the beaten guys started raving and calling him a noob, for not making all the moves his class should (which he had anticipated the answers to). The beaten guy called him a bad player and a noob…for winning.
Excuses come so easily, it’s not funny.
And balance is not that pivotal.
I get the level 60 chun-li thing, but that structure assumes you enjoy some PVE. After all, guild wars gave the option of going straight to 20 if you just wanna PVP.
Mind you, they were more inclined to because they weren’t sub based. Which we both have similar thoughts on, I think!
players aren’t looking for a fair fight, they are looking to win, or worse
You know Sirlin is playing to win, not playing to have fair fights, right?
*chuckle*
Indeed, and therein lies the deep irony of Sirlin’s take on the game.
Thanks again for the comments, guys. Not much to add… but Isey, absolutely, they really should be developed as separate games.
Not really irony. IIRC he calls such ‘sit on your bum piling on stats’ games degenerate. But really he’s refering to what would happen to himself if he played them. He’s pretty much an olympic grade street fighter player right now, but if he played the bum sit games, he would degenerate from that. It’s not the game that’s degenerate, it’s what it would do to you over time, I think, that he is actually identifying.
The funny thing is on his forum someone brought up the Akuma unlock codes and whether that makes that edition of street fighter degenerate. He got quite nasty at the suggestion since it’s a valid part of that edition of street fighter, it actually makes the game degenerate. He even encouraged people to downvote anyone saying that, when he supposedly put in the downvote system simply for people who swore at other posters and is supposed to be a ‘free speach’ advocate. Though, to paraphrase the old saying, sufficiently questioned personal values is indistinguishable from personal attack.
http://www.primeonline.com/ Prime: Battle for Dominus
Interview with Sanya Weathers here: http://www.scaryworlds.com/?p=13
There are also some nice videos on their webpage. The game uses the same engine as SWTOR, interestingly named the “HERO engine”.
If this game doesn’t work as PvP MMO I would say it’s time to give up on PvP in MMOs. It looks very promising.
EVE lowsec and Ultima Online have something in common, once you left the city you were in the dangerous wilderness. That is the same area where people go AFK nowadays, be it WoW, LOTRO, EQ/EQ2. Our fantasy worlds have become too safe to be exciting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfleet_Command_III <- people decried the dumbed down mechanics of Starfleet Command 3 compared to previous SFC games. Well, STO's space combat is a somewhat dumbed down and more action-oriented version of SFC3. 😉
Funnily I could already have voiced Star Trek missions in 2002 for fractions of the price of STO. Without a monthly fee or shop.
Prime Online does look like it might be promising. The sub will keep me away, but I do hope that they get PvP right. I want to see if it’s viable.