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The Daily Grind: How do you like your PvP?

by Jef Reahard on Aug 5th 2010 8:00AM

Fantasy, Age of Conan, PvP, Warhammer Online, Opinion

Ah, PvP. Personally I kinda hate it, even on those rare occasions when I manage to emerge victorious. In small doses it's OK, but usually it consists of getting face-rolled by a player who knows the game systems much better than I do. That said, minigame PvP is quite enjoyable, particularly Age of Conan's variety, as well as the scenarios in Warhammer Online.

For a carebear like me, the only way to make PvP even semi-palatable is to grant control over when and if it happens. Sure, we may still lose and provide a good belly-laugh to the seasoned killers who view us as their game content, but at least they're not barging in on an otherwise productive session of questing, crafting, or exploring.

What about you, Massively readers? Do you prefer your PvP in spurts such as minigame instances or battlegrounds, or do you like the open-world FFA option common in games like Darkfall and Mortal Online?

Tags: age-of-conan, aoc, aventurine, battlegrounds, carebears, darkfall, ffa, ffa-pvp, funcom, minigames, mortal-online, open-world-pvp, opinion, pvp, starvault, the-daily-grind

Reader Comments (52)

I guess I'm kinda like you, I hate PvP lol the only time its fun to me is in big teams with goals other than killing i.e. Battlegrounds à la WoW
Capture the flag and shit like that

Lately I'm jaded against faction based PvP, as it seems to favor imbalance. I haven't played a single faction based MMO where one side didn't have a tremendous advantage of number.

I'm longing for some open-world PvP that's balanced out so that you don't lose strictly because you're a newbie. Tons of easily available gear that can be lost upon death is a good mechanism, because it allows for an ebb and tide of balance. One week you may be the guy with the big PvP sword, next week you may not. It provides all the fun of an unpredictable world setting without the grating grindfest mentality that you need to do a bunch of PvE questing to unlock the upgrades that put you on par.

Actually it'd do the opposite, it would make people farm other players for loot. And while the idea of stealing the big sword sounds good, in reality, it would be impossible to kill the +9 guy of imba gemming in your leveling gear. Sure, only the killers may be penalized to drop loot on death, but even then, a system like that would only discourage pvp.

As for me, I prefer open world pvp. Nothing adds more variety to the good old kill 10 rats quest than some good pvp, or at least the fact that you have to stay aware and look around not to get killed while doing your pve. Groups or high - level players are a problem, but to me it just adds up to make the experience even more enjoyable (no matter how good you are, there is always someone out there who is better or at least has too many allies).

I like my PvP the way I like my Zompocalypse; Non-existent.

Full loot, open world FFA pvp. Ideally with twitch mechanics and/or a very deep team tactical system.

Hence my penchant for for Darkfall and EVE, (imho) the two mmos with the best pvp on the market currently.

I agree. I need me some brutal PvP.

I am currently only playing EVE, should I pick up Darkfall for my ground pvp fix?

Not at all, or in small doses - never non-consensual or mandatory.

I have given full-on PvP immersion a go (primarily in WAR), but after the initial adrenaline rushes I just found it all rather boring and messy with longgggg periods of inactivity.

@Existentialist,

I'd highly recommend Darkfall to be the Yin to your EVE's Yang. As far as ground based mmos go its the best on the market by far currently imo.

A word of warning though, unless you get guilded straight away (NEW etc) then you are going to be looking at one loooong, boring pve grind to get your skills up to be viable in pvp.

World pvp is something I find the most enjoyable, but its hard to do right. World of Warcraft in Vanilla had the right idea, aka just focus on PvE and when theres crouds of people gathering at a new PvE event, or a something that is visited frequently, people will then PvP over it for the simply joy of doing so.

Ofc when TBC hit, they started focusing on PvP which ended up doing more harm and good, which is the same up until this day. World pvp is all but dead, while Arena's were (until more recently) the most focused on thing, and hated by majority of the community for turning epic battles into a wait around a goblin tuxedo for a small instanced match which is just as much to do with class combinations than it is to do with individual player skill.

Your first paragraph exactly sums up how I feel about PvP.

I hate all PvP in games like WoW where its not player against player, but gear/time spent in game against gear/time spent in game.

I have been playing APB a lot though where at least thats a bit fairer and comes down to skill rather than loot although some may argue that as the weapon/upgrade imbalances in APB are ruining the game but at least a skillful player has a good chance to beat an average player regardless of upgrades!

I prefer team-based PvE, and totally dislike PvP in instances and scenarios. If there is PvP in a game, I want there to be a point to it. That's why I'm into Darkfall. PvP matters--it is integral to the game's style. They didn't just throw it in because that's what people wanted or they just thought they should, its in because it has to be for the game to work. Its awesome. That said, I wish they had better PvE content.

The only PvP I ever really loved was DAOC back when it first came out. You had to go to a gate and wait to go to another realm but you could do so at anytime. That means your realm could gather for a group assault or you could sneak in on your own and explore and hopefully pick off some weaker players before you were discovered.
I was just a mid level cleric so every battle was tough but it was still fun try!

Agreed. Zone-wide PVP but only in specific zones. It was near perfection as far as I'm concerned.

Making it even better (if unintentionally) was that early on they had not set up loot tables for Mobs in their PVP zones. So all of the mobs dropped coin only which made it a great hunting spot.

That brought tons of folks into the frontier looking for coin giving the PVP folks something fun to hunt.

I also can't stand PvP. I really wish that there were more MMOs which were entirely free of it. In most games, you can't effectively opt out of it. People say that, if you don't like PvP, don't play PvP games, but these days there is some level of non-consensual PvP in most triple-A MMORPGs.

I think a good solution that would make most people happy is to run games with separate PvP and PvE servers. I wouldn't really mind playing a PvP-centric game like Aion or Darkfall if I could play it on a PvE-only server.

Open FFA World PVP.

Everything else (instanced, battlegrounds...etc) is just plain dumb.

If you want to PVP in instanced limited environment - than play MW2,BFBC2,Starcraft2,DOTA -

All those games are about skill neto. While PVP in MMO is only about who played more time and has better gear.

THE best ever...was DAOC.Faction conflict still unmatched.

Two things I'd like to point out.

1) People complain about gear being too influential, but who do you think has the good gear? The people who play and practice more often. Chances are if you lose 90% of the time you did something wrong that would have helped you win.

2) The open world pvp let's people settle their disputes through fighting rather than GMs, and that makes for a much more fun game.

gear does matter

when i used to offhandly play wow

on the test servers running the same gear and based purely off how we were skilled i could nrly always beat my mate in a 1v1 duel with the same class types we had in game

but when it came to our in game chars i didnt raid because i didnt have the time nor the patience to sit around w8ing sometimes and in the duels he always had the upper hand

sometimes they were close other was obvious but there was a stark comparison to gear differences

RvR is the best!

Generally I don't like it at all. But I've been playing World of Tanks and having a good time and all that is is PvP. It's odd how playing a vehicle instead of an avatar makes things so much less 'personal', I guess? And it helps that even if I'm stuck in a light tank at the moment that will get one-shot by a medium, heavy or arty, I can still contribute to the team.

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The Daily Grind: How do you like your PvP?

Reader Comments (52)

Posted: Aug 5th 2010 8:07AM (Unverified) said

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Posted: Aug 5th 2010 1:12PM kasapina said

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Posted: Aug 5th 2010 11:14AM Existentialist said

Posted: Aug 5th 2010 8:20AM Minofan said

Posted: Aug 6th 2010 2:51AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 5th 2010 8:26AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 5th 2010 8:28AM Snichy said

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Posted: Aug 5th 2010 10:24AM (Unverified) said

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