[MUD-Dev] A Question on PvP and PK

[Damion Schubert]

From: szii at sziisoft.com

> I believe, simply, that PvE is structured.  It's the SAME.  It's
> static.  The mobs are dumb (AI).  The game is too easy.

> PvP can be chaotic. It's unpredictable.  You have REAL LIVE
> THINKING PEOPLE instead of broken mob pathing and "just flood
> them" mentality.  PvP is HARD.  It adds an element of the unknown
> to the mix and, well, people just don't like that.  How many
> people picked Diablo on the "easy/normal" setting and never bumped
> it up?  How "hard" is NWN(SP), really?  How many cheats exist for
> people to use/abuse in just about every single game?
 
> The game industry caters to the llamas and the lowest common
> denominator in the pursuit of profits.  Easy = more people.  Big =
> more time.  Easy + big = lots of online time spent = more money mo
> money mo money.

Okay, think about this.  A coworker bought WarCraft 3 here recently,
and we played a spawned network game where 3 of us played against
the computer.  All three of us are RTS junkies, and have a fair
amount of experience playing past RTSes, such as Age of Empires and
StarCraft.  The computer opponent was so insanely hard, that it took
three of us down without breaking a sweat.  (And no, there is no
difficulty setting on computer opponents in WC3)

There is easy, there is challenging, and then there is unacceptably
difficult.  Easy is fun.  Challenging can be fun, if the actual
conflict is fun.  WC3's unacceptably difficult coop play against the
computer has probably guarunteed that I won't pick up a copy.

Cut back to a couple years ago, when Counterstrike came out.  Again,
I do quite well at FPSes, and was an old hand at both LMCTF as well
as vanilla Unreal: Tournament deathmatch.  When CounterStrike came
out, though, I missed the boat and didn't start to play until 6
months after ship.  By that time, the people who had been playing
since it first came out were so good for it that I had no chance.
Death was near instantaneous, learning was impossible, and the game
was quickly removed from my hard drive.

Given my own gaming experience, I hesitate to imagine Joe Sixpack's
experience in either situation.

What we witness with EQ and DAoC is _not_ the case of "llamas" that
just "can't hack it".  PvP in EQ, UO and AC is unacceptably
difficult to a large percentage of the player base, and easy to a
small percentage.  DAoC's primary difference is that, since it was
actually built for PvP and therefore has safe learning areas and is
better balanced, moved that bar down to 'challenging'.

For other genres, 'deathmatch' play is the bread and butter of the
genre: FPSes, puzzle games, fighting games, RTSes, etc.  People are
used to fighting other people.  The excitement about doing so was
very noticeable before the release of UO.  The problem is mostly
that so far, it's been unacceptably difficult.


--d

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