The Tides of PVP
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Skip to the bottom for a too long didn't read.
I love PVP games.
My favorite was ShadowBane (Open World PVP with city building, and sieges), and most recently Tale of Toast (Ignore the name the game was bloody open world PVP with full loot drops) and a slew of games in between.
What I notice most often sandbox games that allow open PVP is someone comes out ahead. And when the tides turn in their favor the tides are near impossible to stop. You see people jump ship into the winning sides factions/teams and it makes matters worse. You see people get frustrated and stop playing and it makes the tides even more lop sided. Then once the game is too lopsided the game starts to cannibalize itself population wise.
This was really bad on Bless Online on my server. I was in the Top Guild on my factions side on my server and we constantly farmed/xped in the best spots and if the other faction tried to farm/xp there we destroyed them. After our first 2/3 groups hit max level the other factions top group just started reaching the last xp/farming area we were still there farming on our down time and help the slower members get there and pushed the other faction further down.
We had a grand time but the tides were too much in our favor. When they released the next content patch which included a larger pvp area and instance based pvp we had no one to play with. We literally had to let people run around taking objectives so we could take them back lol. The other faction didn't have enough people level appropriate to start the pvp instances (We only got an hour to do it so bad game design as well imo)
Same thing happened in ShadowBane but much worse. In Shadowbane you could occupy mines you need for resources for crafting and could port to your cities which meant the people in charge dominated the map and resources and you either joined them, or got squashed by them.
Seen the same thing in Tales of Toast. When it launched lots of people were PVPing and it was a fun time. One side ended up destroying the other and pretty much everyone in the destroyed guild would stop playing. It got to the point where even though it was a open world PVP game I could farm by myself without a worry because I knew no one in my level range (That would attack me) existed in the game. The only people in my level range in that game were guildmates.
I know Crowfall (the successor to ShadowBane plans on solving the problem with having end conditions for their map. Ie. Own the capital for x amount of time, and offering alternate server rule sets going on at the same time so if you lose your city you can just to a different server to have fun until the reset).
TLDR; Games that allow open PVP tend to get dominated by one group/faction and tend to be what ruins PVP games. Is there a mechanic to mitigate this in this game?
Crowsfall way is a simple one but I feel it is not the way I want to see a game do it. Any suggestions?
I don't believe I saw this addressed yet.
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3 planets. limited time on another planet when you're not within the correct karma amounts.
demons can invade beastkin planet but will only have 30 minutes on the planet.
demons and humans will invade each other but more frequently.Crowfall will have temporary worlds which prevents your issue.
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@jetah said in The Tides of PVP:
3 planets. limited time on another planet when you're not within the correct karma amounts.
demons can invade beastkin planet but will only have 30 minutes on the planet.
demons and humans will invade each other but more frequently.Crowfall will have temporary worlds which prevents your issue.
So the only two factions that might have this problem is Humans/Demons. If either population got a group big enough to continuously invade the other side with coordinated attacks.
Though I guess if humans/demons cannot stay in the opposing planet it kind of takes care of that issue all together. So maybe my biggest worry for PVP game is avoided with this style. Maybe.
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@Whisper if you wish to completely avoid all PvP while wanting to experience full game content, you are out of luck i guess, because that can only be done in pure PvE game.
You said it yourself "PvP games".. the point is for PvP to happen and not to be avoided, lol.Still Fractured is kind enough to offer you a whole PvE planet. So hopefully that will be enough for you, if it's not then I don't know what to tell you. Search "PvE MMO" in google next time.
There is plenty of PvE to be done in Fractured, and you can avoid PvP by raoming around PvE planet. But if you will chose to travel to another world, then you will just have to take a risk, like everyone else.
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@gothix
I don't think the issue is avoiding PvP, but rather avoiding a game where it's all about who has the largest organization.I've always liked PvP, but it also always seems to be about who has the most numbers. Leads to pretty boring gameplay imho. If I'm roaming around with a pack of 10, it's likely nothing less than 5 will be a threat. Etc.
Edit: I suppose I should clarify. Obviously territory control and such should be all organization play. However, it seems like standard PvP also gets lumped in as well.
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@Pluto this can be resolved by limiting guild member number, not allowing guilds to have infinite amount of members, but limiting to 150-200 max.
Sure alliances can be formed, but alliances are about politics, and are very fragile. And when it comes to PvP guilds, each guild will want "stuff" for themselves, and not to share. At least true PvP guilds who are most dangerous will.
I'm a member of PvP gaming community that plays through many years through several MMOs, and we were always "our guild vs the world", rejecting alliances and just accepting a challenge.
Just let guilds have some valuable rewards that can only belong to a single guild, and can't be shared with alliances, and this will prevent large alliances being formed as there will be no point in them. As spoils will only be able to go to one guild. And then having guild limited to 150-200 people max, you will always have battle among many guilds in the world, and will avoid one alliance being able to control everything.
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@gothix said in The Tides of PVP:
@Whisper if you wish to completely avoid all PvP while wanting to experience full game content, you are out of luck i guess, because that can only be done in pure PvE game.
You said it yourself "PvP games".. the point is for PvP to happen and not to be avoided, lol.Still Fractured is kind enough to offer you a whole PvE planet. So hopefully that will be enough for you, if it's not then I don't know what to tell you. Search "PvE MMO" in google next time.
There is plenty of PvE to be done in Fractured, and you can avoid PvP by raoming around PvE planet. But if you will chose to travel to another world, then you will just have to take a risk, like everyone else.
I fear you didn't read what I wrote, or strongly misunderstood it. I love PvP games. I don't intend to avoid it at all.
I listed multiple PVP games where I dominated among top (with the help from organized guilds of course). I am not saying, "How can we hide from it".
I am asking, "What is preventing one group from dominating with such an iron fist that others stop playing or switch sides".
Because I have seen what happens in PVP sandbox games when one side/faction dominates.
This won't be like instance pvp where matches are 50v50. If one sides dominates it skews things heavily. In Tales of Toast for example (Open World PVP with full inventory/loot drop mechanics) the game started off crazy fun. Lots of people everywhere. But then slowly it really became a game of two guilds. And then as one of those two guilds started losing it gave the winning guild an advantage the 2nd guild never could recover from since every victory made one side stronger and the other weaker. Eventually everyone in the 2nd guild stopped playing except maybe like 5-10 who then joined the other guild.
Because of that the top players on the server were all in the same guild and for us it was fantastic. We could go anywhere and do anything. We would do our exp grinds and then back track to other areas and just completely wipe people out, and then do a patrol of the resource areas to get the people trying to get resources for crafting. Because of this people fell further behind in both xp, and in crafting.
There was literally 0 way anyone could compete with us.
TLDR; You have no idea what you are talking about. I want PVP. I just don't want it to destroy a server/game to the point where there is no pvp anymore.
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@pluto said in The Tides of PVP:
@gothix
I don't think the issue is avoiding PvP, but rather avoiding a game where it's all about who has the largest organization.I've always liked PvP, but it also always seems to be about who has the most numbers. Leads to pretty boring gameplay imho. If I'm roaming around with a pack of 10, it's likely nothing less than 5 will be a threat. Etc.
Edit: I suppose I should clarify. Obviously territory control and such should be all organization play. However, it seems like standard PvP also gets lumped in as well.
I believe Shadowbane made it so if a group of 100 decided to siege a city (Destroy it/take it) and the group defending it only had 50 people the defenders got a buff relative to the ratio they were out numbered by (there was an upper limit to this obviously).
It is a decent way to fight off people just relying on a zerg. But still doesn't really address what happens if one group dominates the playing field.
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@whisper
that happens when the world is one zone.how will a pure demon guild control a human planet village? they can't. How will a Human guild control a beastkin village. they can't.
there are game mechanics that prevent negative karma demons from staying on either other planet, same with other neutral or high karma from staying on other planets.
in Eve Online, it's been speculated that the developers get into big alliances and try to break them up or help other alliances to break up the big ones. CCP knew it was bad when 1 alliance controlled majority of the null space.
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@jetah said in The Tides of PVP:
@whisper
that happens when the world is one zone.how will a pure demon guild control a human planet village? they can't. How will a Human guild control a beastkin village. they can't.
there are game mechanics that prevent negative karma demons from staying on either other planet, same with other neutral or high karma from staying on other planets.
in Eve Online, it's been speculated that the developers get into big alliances and try to break them up or help other alliances to break up the big ones. CCP knew it was bad when 1 alliance controlled majority of the null space.
https://fracturedmmo.com/feature-spotlight-7-towns-governors-politics/
We can take towns by force. Say Guild A is a Human Guild. The best human guild. The largest Humand Guild. And they decide every town that is on their planet will belong to them. Lets say they accomplish this goal. Every Town belongs to them, and they decide every town will be a guild town (They can kick people out). They will have a lot more resources to themselves than any other guild and people on their planet and likely the other planets. The people not in their guild are going to have to either A) Join them. (They Get Stronger) B)Accept they will never get a town for themselves or as a guild C) Switch Planets and hope the same thing didn't happen over there (In Which Case Guild A gets stronger with less competition or D) Stop playing. (Still strengthens Guild A but also a lost for the game in general)
My point. Is what stops this above situation?
And people can change their alignments if I am not mistaken. So it is completely possible a human/demon/beastman guild does what I suggested. Takes over every city on their planet and then start shifting their alignment so they can do the same on the other Planets they want to take over next (Or does changing alignment not allow that kind of transfer? In which case we would only have to worry about one guild taking over an entire planet).
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@whisper the best way to handle it is to make it impossible to do so
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Good thread!
Snowballing in PvP almost seems like monopolies eliminating competition: you need a trustbuster. 
One theory I have is that it's too easy to project power in MMOs; logistics aren't nearly as important as they should be. Defending should be easy; projecting power should be hard.
I think that's partly because in MMOs, no one can be online all the time, and so an organized attack squad is much likelier to have a local advantage, wherever they decide to travel.
A couple possibilities to make projecting power harder:
- Realistic food requirements. The farther away from home you travel, the more food you've got to carry or scrounge. Make this hard enough, and big armies will need to slow down to bring carts of supplies with them, reducing the likelihood of "stacks of doom" blasting remote, weaker cities.
- Always online defenders. Allow "ghost" versions of citizens to always be defending the city, regardless of whether or not the players are online.
Since Fractured has horizontal progression instead of traditional leveling, however, I suspect that snowballing may not be such an issue. We'll see.
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@roccandil said in The Tides of PVP:
Realistic food requirements. The farther away from home you travel, the more food you've got to carry or scrounge. Make this hard enough, and big armies will need to slow down to bring carts of supplies with them, reducing the likelihood of "stacks of doom" blasting remote, weaker cities.
I think for Fractured the survival system ist not that punishing. It does not take much to be able to run aroung for hours / days.
@roccandil said in The Tides of PVP:
Always online defenders. Allow "ghost" versions of citizens to always be defending the city, regardless of whether or not the players are online.
Well, Towns can only be taken over from Guilds of the same planet (which does not have to mean the same race, but the same planet).
So, the worst that could happen is what @Whisper describes here:
@whisper said in The Tides of PVP:
We can take towns by force. Say Guild A is a Human Guild. The best human guild. The largest Humand Guild. And they decide every town that is on their planet will belong to them. Lets say they accomplish this goal. Every Town belongs to them, and they decide every town will be a guild town (They can kick people out). They will have a lot more resources to themselves than any other guild and people on their planet and likely the other planets. The people not in their guild are going to have to either A) Join them. (They Get Stronger) B)Accept they will never get a town for themselves or as a guild C) Switch Planets and hope the same thing didn't happen over there (In Which Case Guild A gets stronger with less competition or D) Stop playing. (Still strengthens Guild A but also a lost for the game in general)
As for why I think this won´t happen, has different reasons on each Planet. Also there is one uncertainty that we have... the max member count for Guilds. But let´s assume it´s somehwere around 100 - 200.
One reason, which is the same for all Planets, is:
One Guild can´t really control a lot of towns. Every account can only have one house per Planet. So the best, or worst, that could happen is that each Member of a guild is Governor of one Town. (The Pre - Alpha map as about ~ 40 Town Spots, so I think the whole currently planned complete map would be about 150 - 200). Now.. you need 5/10/20 residents to make a Town Spot into the first "level" of a town (called Hamlet; where it can then be declared a Guild Town). So you would either need 2000+ guild members, or you attract NPCs and you have to make sure every one from the Guild get´s voted for Governor. This would be a hell of a lot of work, and surely not desireableas it would surely be boring for that Guild anyway, to have no "enemy". But.. this will never happen because:
- Assuming all town spots are free, and the Guild tries to occupy every spot, other players could just go and build their house in those town spots and organize themselves to vote one of them as Governor.
- A Guild with a lot of Town Spots won´t be able to take over a Town from a Guild which has only one spot in a Siege, because that one Town Spot will be better advanced and have far better defences, more players to defend...
On Tartaros it´s all about full on PvP. So there is one additional reason I could think of which will prevent one Guild dominating the Planet:
- While guild members can still fight each other in open pvp, not having guilds as enemys takes away too much PvP fun
On the Human planet I would say an additional reason is the variety of gameplay one can choose from, which will automatically create different guilds with different goals.
On Arboreus I don´t really know... since it´s a full PvE Planet, are there even Town Sieges? If not then it´s most likely just first come first serve there? <- Which also leads to one guild won´t control all spots, unless you manage to get every governor to join your guild. But... since there is no pvp anyways, only having one Guild on Arborues does not seem to be a problem anyways.
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The single best method to this is complex political and economic concerns. In short, without there being negatives to war there is no reason not to war.
I picture the following scenario as the ideal way that avoids this: You have groups 1-6 here. Group 1 wants to fight a war. Group 2 is nearby, and a potential target. However, Group 2 shelters Group 3 from Group 1, and Group 3 provides a key resource in trade that Group 1 really needs and is not getting elsewhere. Group 4 is also a potential target with a border. It has relations with Groups 5 and 6, but those are only trade based and attacking would not lead to issues with supply or create border threats toward them.
Group 1 decides to fight Group 4. They fight for a while, but once a critical point in the fighting is reached Groups 2, 5, and 6 all step in for their own interests. After a while of combat, some of the group maybe have a little territory gained or lost, but they all need some time to rebuild stocks and prepare more weapons, armors, etc. So the fighting winds down for a while.
The keys to this are: Interests of various groups not being best suited by mega-grouping for the wins, complex economic factors and stocking up goods not being too easy, and benefits to the economic production when things are relatively peaceful (an easy example is that craft focused people left as war starts up need to continue work, but have bandits and monsters interfere and cannot do nearly as much as normal).
How feasible all that is, and how forgiving players are to the limitations thus created, is a giant question at this point.
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@eurav said in The Tides of PVP:
As for why I think this won´t happen, has different reasons on each Planet. Also there is one uncertainty that we have... the max member count for Guilds. But let´s assume it´s somehwere around 100 - 200.
One reason, which is the same for all Planets, is:
One Guild can´t really control a lot of towns. Every account can only have one house per Planet. So the best, or worst, that could happen is that each Member of a guild is Governor of one Town. (The Pre - Alpha map as about ~ 40 Town Spots, so I think the whole currently planned complete map would be about 150 - 200). Now.. you need 5/10/20 residents to make a Town Spot into the first "level" of a town (called Hamlet; where it can then be declared a Guild Town). So you would either need 2000+ guild members, or you attract NPCs and you have to make sure every one from the Guild get´s voted for Governor. This would be a hell of a lot of work, and surely not desireableas it would surely be boring for that Guild anyway, to have no "enemy". But.. this will never happen because:
- Assuming all town spots are free, and the Guild tries to occupy every spot, other players could just go and build their house in those town spots and organize themselves to vote one of them as Governor.
- A Guild with a lot of Town Spots won´t be able to take over a Town from a Guild which has only one spot in a Siege, because that one Town Spot will be better advanced and have far better defences, more players to defend...
On Tartaros it´s all about full on PvP. So there is one additional reason I could think of which will prevent one Guild dominating the Planet:
- While guild members can still fight each other in open pvp, not having guilds as enemys takes away too much PvP fun
On the Human planet I would say an additional reason is the variety of gameplay one can choose from, which will automatically create different guilds with different goals.
On Arboreus I don´t really know... since it´s a full PvE Planet, are there even Town Sieges? If not then it´s most likely just first come first serve there? <- Which also leads to one guild won´t control all spots, unless you manage to get every governor to join your guild. But... since there is no pvp anyways, only having one Guild on Arborues does not seem to be a problem anyways.
I agree with you completely in regards to Arboreus. I don't think this will be an issue there at all.
On Tartaros your reason why it shouldn't happen is the reason I am bringing up this discussion. I want to maintain that fun.
And on the human side it still just takes one slightly large guild to get that edge to snow ball into more. And if one sides starts dominating it becomes easier. At a certain point I imagine they won't even need to fight to get some cities. They could just tell someone, "Join our guild and make your city guild only or we will take your city by force and you lose it".
I think two solutions come to mind. I don't know if anyone here has played Civilization 6 but they have these events called Emergencies that are triggered when a civilization takes another players capital and everyone else in the game is given the option to fight back that player and give back what they took. People who join in on the fight are given slight buffs. And if they win they are given a huge chunk of gold/rewards. I can see this working if Guild A keeps taking city after city and a server wide emergency is given and people who try to 'liberate' the last city are given a buff and an incentive to help in it. This encourages PVP and acts as a natural counter-balance for trying to control the whole map. If people lose the emergency in Civ 6 the player who triggered it gets rewards based on the people who joined to try and stop them. Not sure if that would be needed here but... Not a bad idea either.
Or.
Another decent solution if a guild takes a control of a whole planet. Maybe a GM event where the rules/limitations from other planets is removed on that planet and havoc is allowed against that specific guild and their cities. As you said a guild that takes control of a whole planet will be spread thin so the likely hood that they can defend against the two other planets AND their planet mates would not be a likely situation. So as they lose their cities/claims others from their planet can sprout up there. When the event is over I feel like they should be given a reward buff wise, or in game resource wise since triggering the event is akin to saying, "We won the game but don't want to destroy the game".
I think both of those scenarios would work pretty well to fix this issue.
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@whisper said in The Tides of PVP:
I think both of those scenarios would work pretty well to fix this issue.
And I don´t think issue exists...
As I explained there is no way that this is actually going to happen, with the current system in place. And additionaly to what I explained in my previous post a guild "needs" to make a big city, because that gives a lot of advantages (advanced buildings...). And for this you also already need a lot of work and people.
There is no way one guild is going to control one planet, unless there are only 5 active players and they downscale the map to one city spot
@whisper said in The Tides of PVP:
And on the human side it still just takes one slightly large guild to get that edge to snow ball into more.
I don´t see how one guild can snowball... maybe you can explain this to me?
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@eurav said in The Tides of PVP:
@whisper said in The Tides of PVP:
I think both of those scenarios would work pretty well to fix this issue.
And I don´t think issue exists...
As I explained there is no way that this is actually going to happen, with the current system in place. And additionaly to what I explained in my previous post a guild "needs" to make a big city, because that gives a lot of advantages (advanced buildings...). And for this you also already need a lot of work and people.
There is no way one guild is going to control one planet, unless there are only 5 active players and they downscale the map to one city spot
Can a guild take/destroy a city by force? If they can than the size doesn't matter, unless I am missing something. It's a sandbox PVP game. If you can gain resources you will gain resources. If you can limit others from a resource you will limit others from a resource. Or at least any guild trying to be #1 will do this. Which is the type of guild that will want to control a Planet. These guilds will take a spot even if they have no plans to make it a huge city.
@eurav said in The Tides of PVP:
I don´t see how one guild can snowball... maybe you can explain this to me?
Sure. Lets use the current guilds as an example. Demon Planet.
Exploited 96 Members.
Demon Kings 46 Members.
Demon King has half the members and 1/4th of the points (We will use this as resources)
All the other Demon guilds have 20 or less members.If at the start of the game both Exploited and Demon King rush to make the best cities and expand their territory they will both grow in power. People will flock to them because of their numbers and sphere of influence.
This will result in some pretty fun PVP for all involved. When Exploited wins they would destroy/take Demon Kings capital. So now on top of their number advantage they have a resource advantage (Building up like a snowball does). People who haven't joined a guild will see a guild who won a huge battle on stream, on youtube, or on reddit and will try to join that guild as well.
At this point Demon King would still have a lot of members and might try to take it back. Now they have less resources though, and less people and less likely to win that battle.
With their main rival hurt Exploited can decide to finish them off taking every city they had (if they had more than that one) or move to the next person on the list of guilds. A guild with nearly only a 5th of their members and a 6th of their resources. These people won't stand a chance.
With each victory they get they have the option for more resources (Snow balling) and even worse though is their competition loses out on those resources (Snow balling). And then you will have people joining them because they are doing well (Snow balling) and if the people who are losing their cities have no way to take them back now that they are weaker there is a chance some of them will stop playing (Snow Balling advantage).
And this keeps compounding with each victory. Each victory nets them more people/influence/options for resources.
And this is not even taken into account some of the shenanigans that tends to happen in sandbox pvp based games that have cities that can be built/taken (Ie. Join my guild and have your city join my empire are we will destroy it)
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@whisper said in The Tides of PVP:
Can a guild take/destroy a city by force?
Well we know that there are sieges, but we don´t really know anything about them yet. I think the only thing that was mentioned is that you can build buildings which can help you defend. Not entirely sure on that though. We don´t know how many and who can participate in a siege etc...
Yeah so, Exploited has 96 Members. I can´t remember numbers on how many players you need to make a town to a city but let´s take 50. So.. as a high end guild, you will have at least one city, as this will give you rewards in advanced buildings and other stuff ... So ~50 players already live in that town.
Now, assuming they can easily take cities from other guilds (which we as of know can´t say because we don´t have much info on sieges), they would need (going with a small Town Area) at least 5 Players for each City they overtake, to keep it at least as a Hamlet (which they need, otherwise other people have the chance to get governor). So with 46 Members left they could overtake a of maximum 10 other cities and then they would run out of people to keep the towns alive.Now we know the alpha map has ~40 Town Spots and is I think it was 1/3 of the currently planned Syndesia map size. So we can assume ~160 Town Stops. One guild owning 11 of those does not really seem to be a huge problem / snowball for me.
Now of course, if they can easily overtake the Cities of other guilds (which I don´t think wil be the case, but we will have to wait on more info on sieges for that) the only limit they have is the guild member count (which we also don´t know). But for 160 Town Spots (where you need 5/10/20 people to keep it at least as a Hamlet; let´s go with an average 10) you would need at least 1600 people in one guild and I don´t think that this is going to happen
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@eurav said in The Tides of PVP:
need (going with a small Town Area) at least 5 Players for each City they overtake, to keep it at least as a Hamlet (which they need, otherwise other people have the chance to get governor). So with 46 Members left they could
Well, I was going with the current population guild wise. I imagine when the game releases there will be more members that are currently interested in a game that is in pre-apha.
But even assuming the game was released today and no one new came (Not enough people to populate every city on a planet) the situation would be exactly the same.
Except instead of owning every land plot they would own every major city spot. The situation would still be the same with new players going to them so they can experience the major city, and smaller guilds joining them so they don't get theirs destroyed, etc.
I am not sure if you noticed but in my example I never stated their member size would stay the same or decrease, I think I mentioned with every victory their member count would increase. Dramatically if they get a steadfast hold on content. Even more dramatically if entire guilds/cities start joining them for safety.
And if member count is all they needed it becomes an easier for them (and more problematic). I have seen people spend thousands of dollars on games for slight advantages. But like I said previously they wouldn't even need control of every plot. Just the control of every major city (theirs) and the ability to destroy anyone else who starts progressing toward their own.
But like I said, with each victory they would get more members, and eventually they would start absorbing entire cities/guilds to their team.
In a snowball like effect of starting relatively one size and increasing exponentially as they progress.
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Well, but I expect there to be a member limit... just like in every other mmorpg...
Also we still don´t know how sieges work...And... every city has a value
And... just like there are people who would want to join the best guild, there are also those who do not want to...@whisper said in The Tides of PVP:
maller guilds joining them so they don't get theirs destroyed
Cities can´t be "destroyed", they can only be claimed / overtaken. But I guess you coult take a city and then kick every player out, which will make the city go back to a hamlet, or even the thingy before that, so destroying is kinda possible...
Well, I doubt anything I say is going to change your mind, so I will stop here.
But, if there is not member limit on guilds I am with you, that this will be a problem
