The Daily Grind: Why don't you like PvE?

It all depends on the game I'm playing.

Most PvE to me is extremely boring. But sometimes it can an absolute blast.

Grinding PvE is the worst but in some cases, you need to.

In my opinion, PvE is generally quite boring. When you spend as many hours playing these games as most of us do, the same old PvE routine gets really tedious.

I've played many different games and the PvE doesn't really change very much among developers. Once in a while you'll get a nice little surprise or a neat twist, but it's not really enough to make it a lot of fun.

Because there is no real challenge in it and on top of that it's completely repetitive. You can argue that things like themepark raids aren't easy, but in reality it just comes down to the gear your raid is wearing. If the average is too low for the content everyone can be doing everything right and still fail.

To be fair combat parts of "pve" are just as dumb in a lot of singleplayer games. Bioware have made some big blockbusters, and all their combat is fucking easy as well. They pull through because of dialog and story which most MMOs have none of.

I wonder whatever happened to randomly generated floorplans though? I mean the Diablo games should be prime examples on how to design floorplans for your dungeons to keep them from being too repetetive, and if you add some "stairs down" you'll still be able to do all those "amazing" Boss encounters.

So unless developers man up and start creating Demons Souls styled combat gameplay they could at least start pouring more storytelling into their pve and possibly spice it up with random floorplans.

Personally I'll probably just stick to pvp.

I'm particularly interested in how the life of games can be tied to its balance of PvP and PvE. I'll never be an "either-or" person when it comes to PvP/PvE, but there is no doubt that MMO "themeparks" are dangerously thin in longevity. Ultimately, a game comes down to other players, and that means PvP in some form or another (even if it's economic warfare like in EVE).

I play LOTRO a lot, so it's a testament to how GOOD its PvE is that I've kept at it. But its PvP is pretty shoddy. And yet I stay there, because the PvE world is so damned beautiful and I am hopeful changes will come. That may be naive, but in LOTRO's case, the PvE keeps me HOPEFUL for the PvP. If that makes any sense...

I need some spice.

PvP as an option - a meaningful one - makes the game come alive.

I game with all PvP and subpar PvE winds up like WAR.

A game that's all PvE just lacks that certain punch, that rush, that can provide excitement. With just PvE it becomes too social and too much about chatting and getting loot and bragging about loot.

I love open world PVP and the potential for vicious skirmishes.

What I don't love? The endless epeen grind of arena (or instanced) PVP and how those kinds of "battles" end up playing out like two (American) football teams lining up, taking two steps towards the ball, running back when the other team steps forward, until someone gets frustrated and runs in to get zerged.

I also don't like losing which is apt to happen in PVP. Immature, I know.

Factional PvP is just a lot more fun than the predictable AI responses you get in PvE.
Even if you're just an explorer. In a pvp environment, it's a lot more immersive. in PvE you just have to avoid aggro radius...big deal.

I don't PvP much at all; I'd rather be helping, and I don't need to be exposed to the 'tudes. But I will start to lose interest in PvE when the fights get too gimmicky, which is the number one thing that kills my interest in a game.

Almost all PvE gimmick fights disfavor melee DPS in one way or another. They tend to be full of interruptions. They force you to break off attacking so you can stand somewhere else. They force you to leave the boss to go fight something else. They feature mobs that don't take full damage from physical attacks. They require you to monitor events that take place in some distant corner of the room, which will disfavor players who are up close to the enemies.

Finally, and most importantly, most player bases in my experience respond to gimmick fights with gimmicks of their own, such as timers, scripts, and voice chat. These automate or at least relieve most players of monitoring the gimmicks. And all of them are to one extent or another immersion breaking, especially voice chat.

I love PVE and believe the good outweighs the bad, hands down. My gripe would be NPC's handing out quests in the form of walls of text...

Honestly I don't understand people who say they absolutely hate pve.....I highly doubt the majority of them have never liked any single player games from atari2600 to current generation etc. Tell you what, those are all pve games.

That said, I can find pve in mmo's quite annoying for a multitude of reasons.

1. Have you ever ran a dungeon or a raid with other players?
I get so tired of people whining that they cannot beat scripted encounters lol
Or people who are unable to move out of fire etc
I mean honestly, its not brain surgery(or maybe for some it actually is?)

2. All these people who won't use their brains to take on an encounter, They want to be over geared, over leveled etc to even try.
Come on, its a program, its based on parameters, It doesn't actually sit there and think to itself, "Wow this person is skilled, how can I out do them."

This isn't to say I enjoy pvp more though, as I rather enjoy large scale pvp, however finding large scale pvp that is fun, and made up of intelligent skilled and mature players is honestly harder than finding players who know how to move out of fire.

Off-topic...

...but there sure are many recent articles discussing PvP or PvE or a comparison of the two.

Of course, all the articles have gotten MUCH responses from both supporters of both camps.

Nothing wrong, just seeing how this is sorta dragging us out into reply/conversations of gigantic proportions. :)

Only thing I don't like about PvE is that if you are doing quest chains with people, there are times when you WANT to read the questline and the lore.

That's about the time those kids start going "GOGOGOGOGO.. the PvP matches are starting in 15 minutes. Can we HURRY UP?!?!?!"

So many times that puts you in a solo mode of play because you don't want to be with impatient A.D.D. people who want to shoot each other's faces off.

Other than that, you can have a MMO without PvP period and it can work and make tons of cash (FFXI).

But you can't have a MMO without PvE no matter what and hope to make any real money as a company. That shows you right there what is the most important of the two.

I generally enjoy PvE, especially PvE that is challenging with a full group of friends.

One aspect that is bad, however, is the predictability. Now, it's true in the past 11 years, small steps have been made towards making AI/scripts for mobs be better. Small steps.

But it needs to be huge leaps. AI needs to be devastatingly smart, like an omniscient reaper-bot good, I'm talking. It's not like there aren't servers with the resources available.

Example? Dell PowerEdge R815: 48 CPU Cores, 512GB of RAM, 3TB of storage, all in 2U's.

http://www.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/servers/poweredge-r815/pd.aspx?refid=poweredge-r815&s=biz&cs=555

No more excuses! Use that CPU Power!

Since MMO technology has gone from lines of text, to nearly photo-realistic graphics, little has been done with enemy AI. Some console games have developed insanely capable AI routines with sophisticated multi-tiered behaviors, compensation for player styles and all that you'd expect from a 21st century game. MMOs, however, still mostly feature enemies that stand in small groups at equally spaced distances all over the environment, and yet never bother to notice the huge firefight going on 30 yards away.

I think it's time to focus on more interesting NPC lives and behaviors. Have enemies actually doing daily tasks, like hunting food, or chores around camp. Have them respond as a group when someone attacks a village. Force players to make smart, dynamic decisions while playing, instead of simply pounding out their attack sequences and/or anticipating the next stage of a scripted fight.