[MUD-Dev] A Question on PvP and PK

[Dave Trump]

Ron Gabbard writes:

> Why is it that 5% of the EQ players (slightly more for AC) want to
> participate in PvP combat while 95% of the DAoC players want to
> participate in PvP combat when the games are pretty similar with
> similar customer bases?

Players combating players or players combating A.I.  I'm going to
propose that to 90%+ of the population, apart from the relative
difficulty, there is no difference.

Take a player and ask if he will join your group to combat a tough
group of clearly defined opponents, on a clearly defined
battlefield, over a meaningful prize.  9 times out of 10 he will be
happy to.  Relvealing then that the opponents are all player
controled or AI will not change his mind.

Take the same player.  Tell him you want him to play a game where
all the humans he encounters are likely to attack at random,
sometimes teammates will attack in the middle of a co-op fight.
Tell him that roving bands of characters as powerful as his will
attack him while he is shopping, resting or any other time it is
inconvenient.  9 out of 10 (probably more) will not be interested.
Relvealing then that the opponents are all player controled or AI
will not change his mind.

These 2 situations are DaoC PvP and early UO PvP respectively.  But
the first one really applies (more or less) to any popular PvP game,
Quake, AOE, etc.  While the second applies to the unused PvP servers
of a number of "bluebie" games, EQ, AC, UO, etc.

In the end it's not a matter of players being interested in PvP,
that's as silly as asking if players are interested in quests,
because the answer will always be the same: I'd love to do some well
designed quests.  I'd hate to do ones built by a moron.




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