Asymmetric PvP/RvR in a mmorpg

Games
1

We are discussing this on another forum but I’m curious about opinions here where they are probably more varied.

The problem in question is about open world PvP, warfare, RvR. A context where you fight for your realm along all other players and where what is important is the participation.

This brings to the problem of population balance.

Now, I believe that population balance is a problem and it should be addressed. But not after launch when you go “Oh shit, Alliance outnumbers Horde 4 to 1”, but instead during the conceptual phase and then testing. The goal should be that once released the game will go as near as possible to that ideal balance, and this can only happen if you start to poll players and test the game early on.

That said, the point of this form of RvR is that the difference in numbers IS the core of the game. The moment you lock numbers on either side (as when you instance a zone and only allow 20 players on each team) you lose world PvP/RvR and get something entirely different. Some call this “sport”. So this kind of variable numbers IS the game.

My opinion is that this difference in numbers is the whole point of this form of PvP and so it should not be removed (if not in the conceptual phase, as I wrote above). It’s the whole motivation you have: “fight for your realm or watch it fall”. Moreover it builds the community and makes hardcores play along and coordinate with casual players. Not one against the other, but together against the enemy.

“Everyone can join and everyone is useful” is also part of my “inclusive processes” ideal that is the point and strength of a mmorpg from my point of view. Opposed to “exclusion processes” where players are “selected”. Some are allowed in, some are excluded and suck it up (raiding in WoW is a selective process for example - inner competition). Games should “teach” to bring people in, to include, give reasons to participate. Not ignore and outcast each other.

One of the mistakes in the current form of RvR in games like DAoC is that the devs have designed it assuming an ideal balance between the three realms. While we know that this ideal balance is never realized.

My conclusion following that line of thoughts is that continuing to fight the “numbers unbalance” isn’t an effective practice. And locking numbers on either side isn’t a solution as it leads to a completely different form of PvP that loses most if not all the qualities of RvR (after all historic battles were never balanced and there was always the principle of: grab a pitchfork and fight together). Real war is a collaborative effort and this is something strong and compelling to reproduce in a game.

How to address these problems and still make this kind of RvR fun and exciting?

My idea is that when you have asymmetric PvP, then you must make it correspond an asymmetric objective-based system. Instead of giving the same objectives to all the factions, you dynamically adjust these objectives based on the current situation.

An example I was making in the other forum is about a siege to a castle. If you are defending and outnumbered you would know the castle is lost and you would just feed points to the enemy. This is frustrating and you may just decide to /quit.

What if instead the objective was adjusted to the situation. In this case of this siege instead of earning points from direct-kills, the defenders would get points depending on how long they resist the siege. The more they resist, the more points they earn when the castle will ultimately fall in the enemy’s hands.

A war could then be segmented into a number of phases. So that no matter of the situation, you would always have an objective that is viable and that keeps the action flowing, instead of dragging you to a dead end and leaving you to just stare or die repeatedly without any hope to change the outcome of a battle.

The problem is to be aware that this kind of world-PvP/RvR is bound to that variation of numbers. It’s part of the model. So once we know that we can finally start to design the game around it and try to make the game always fun no matter of the situation.

At the end the real question is: what we could have now if RvR had received in the years the same focus and numbers of reiterations that went into PvE?

2

Would it be possible for “losing” or “underpopulated” factions to be given new options like guerrilla warfare, etc.? Might be an interesting wrinkle.

3

What you mean concretely for “guerrilla warfare”?

My whole point is that once you accept it, there are plenty of ideas you can get to make the battles fun under every condition.

One thing I always write is that hopeless battles can be potentially even more fun and heroic than a battle where you are sure you are going to win and require no effort. Examples of this “feel” are some scenes from LotR movies, or the recent “300”.

On my site I was writing other more concrete ideas about how you could play with those elements and make it a strength instead of a weakness:

Music

  • Develop a system similar to Lucasarts’ iMuse (music tunes dynamically adapting to the situation in the game). The zerg approaches and you are outnumbered, and a special epic badass music starts to play.

War skills

  • The Horn

Mechanic: This is a commander skill. It can only be used when the team in a zone is outnumbered. When used it works like a simple trigger, enabling the “Braveheart” skill on all the players in the same team and in the zone. The horn is also a huge physical object that cannot be transported, so a commander must reside at a castle in order to use it.

Metaphor: The horn is played and its deep sound will be heard through the valley. You hear the sound, your realm is calling you. Fight for your realm!

  • Braveheart

Mechanic: after you hear “The Horn” your “Braveheart” skill lights up ready to be used. When pressed your character is locked into place, building up a morale boost that enhances your stats. If you are hit in combat you’ll be interrupted. This “buff” has a cap, so once filled it won’t pass that limit (you get the visual cue of a bar filling up, so you always know the status of this buff). Around five seconds to go from zero to cap. Your morale will then slowly decay over time and go down every time you deal damage, proportionally to the damage you deal.

Metaphor: You hear the calling, your realm is calling everyone to arms. Your character rises his fist into the air (animation) and SCREAMS THE HELL OUT OF HIS LUNGS (sound). You are answering the calling. In a castle “The Horn” is played and all defenders answer the call by screaming at unison.

4

I think RvR viability depends alot on the game it’s based on. Outside of mmos, in a FPS for example, skill frequently trumps numbers. A team of 4 players, playing together can beat may times their number of players that aren’t as organized or as skilled. This kind of dynamic isn’t really possible in a game like Wow where level tends to trump numbers which tends to trump skill.

Additionally, i think rewards need to be better thought out. I think more consideration should be given to the battle, or contest, than the outcome. Rewards should also be scaled to the risk, with perhaps incentives thrown in for the first person to achieve (attack or defend) something.

5

Wow isn’t really a good example of a non-skill based MMO. PvPing in
Everquest and DAoC against differing levels and gearsets was outright impossible.

WoW was the first time I was able to fight and kill someone who wasn’t an even con or lower to me in a PvP MMO.

The gear, and level gaps are still there and all, it’s just definitely somewhere between old MMO ideology, and the new one.

This guy illustrates how you can still pull it off pretty well:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7505574532023614998
Apologies about the music in advance, but yeah you totally can outskill players in an MMO as well as long as it’s designed properly for engaging combat.

Also, isn’t this whole idea what The Warhammer MMO is touting already? Segmented battles, incentives for the underdog, etc?

6

This kind of dynamic isn’t really possible in a game like Wow where level tends to trump numbers which tends to trump skill.

While questing I’ve killed people up to seven levels above me with different toons and at least once a party of 3 that were all within 2 levels of me (one of them was a level above me, the other two were 1-2 levels below). That really doesn’t support that idea I’m afraid. Just because you have a character higher than I am doesn’t mean you know what the hell you’re doing.

It becomes slightly harder to pull that up the higher you get, but it’s still plenty possible as there are many bad players out there. I’m quite interested in more refined world pvp though, as it can bring a sense of banding together against a common enemy at times and that’s leads to some very cool gaming moments.

7

I’ve started to think that dividing MMOs into ‘realms’ is a bit of a waste. Half of the art might never be seen by many of the players, and sides just never get balanced. Let players form their own teams and fight, like EVE, or UO, whatever. Balance doesn’t matter in this situation.

8

Eve has an interesting model, but following it you fall in the other case of “accessibility barrier”. I’ve written above how this form of open PvP has the advantage of bringing all players together and cooperate. Being included instead of being excluded.

An open faction PvP system that relies on guilds (like Eve) becomes again a selective process, hardly accessible for a casual player who cannot commit to a guild.

An explanatory example is quite simple to make: I’ve played Eve for a few months here and there, but it never happened to me to join a “random group”.

The real strength of DAoC’s RvR was that you didn’t go anywhere without a group, but it was also very easy to join a completely random group forming in that instant at your home keep. And still, much, much, much better than WoW’s battlegrounds, where you join and fight alone without never knowing your mates and maybe never see them again.

So the problem is that without a “directed” form of PvP you hardly get mass market appeal and all these observations I’ve made aren’t to build another niche PvP game, but instead to try to reach that larger market.

There’s an idea I was working on a few years ago that is a decent compromise:

  • Three hardcoded factions (Order, Balance and Chaos), with the middle faction having a “special” role, while the real war front is between Order and Chaos. The Balance players are basically either merchants or mercenaries and their role is to work like a “cushion” between the other two factions. In a war they join either faction as mercenaries and their goal is to help the weakest faction and keep things balanced (as the name would hint). Being merchants means that they have a strong influence on the resource system, and the resource system influences the way territories are conquered, upgraded and defended.

These three factions provide the overall structure of the game. The “directed” PvP that is necessary to make it easily accessible for everyone. A shared ground.

Then players have the possibility to form an “house” that is an independent guild that will be considered by the game rules exactly as one of the hardcoded factions. This along the possibility to “betray” your initial faction and pass to the other.

So from Order you could pass to Chaos (like betrayal quests in EQ2) and through a guild you can tell both to fuck up and play for yourself and your guild interest by creating your own player-driven faction and declare war to the rest of the world (or join other guilds who decided to go both against Order and Chaos).

Moreover there’s a mechanic I liked in UO and that I wanted to carry over: Even within the SAME faction you could declare war to another guild. If both sides accept the declaration of war then you would have the right to attack the enemy guild every time you want, everywhere. For example right into the towns without the guards coming to stop you. PvP always, everywhere. But still consensual (as both guilds have to accept the war).

So: more power to the player, more choice, but also trying to still keep the “directed” game that is essential to “jumpstart” the players into the system and have fun even if they aren’t completely dedicated to it.

9

Yes, but special cases really have little importance when the reasoning is about the overall structure of a game.

In general (there was a dev blog somewhere that explained this perfectly, but I cannot remember where, probably Ubiq) over time the “skill” players have in a game will “flatten”. The more time passes the more the players will “equalize” their competency in the game. This because of how documentation is handled. It’s quite interesting from the game design perspective and that I’ve seen rarely discussed, but the internet had a HUGE effect on the game competency (skill) of the average player. We are much, much, much better at playing games today.

So “skill” is tricky, also because RPGs move away from “twitch” kind of skill. At best they are tactical and even in that case, as I wrote, skill will flatten over time.

I’m quite interested in more refined world pvp though, as it can bring a sense of banding together against a common enemy at times and that’s leads to some very cool gaming moments.

Yes, and the point is that this form of PvP is also IMMATURE. Because aside Mythic (who barely scratched it) no one give it any development time.

It’s a form of PvP with a huge potential and that has a lot to offer once it gets enough attention and reiterations to refine its structure and gameplay. This is what I’m pushing for. Welcoming it and giving it work.

WoW demonstrated concretely that there’s a HUGE demand for world PvP.

Huge demand concretely means: HALF of North American players and MORE THAN HALF European players.

That’s the count of PvP servers compared to PvE servers in WoW. And the only difference between the two is solely world PvP (as the BattleGrounds are available in both).

Now think if instead of an afterthought this world PvP became a major dev focus. That’s exactly why I believe that there’s market space to make a TRUE RvR game with a massive appeal.

10

And yet returning to your original idea of asymmetric warfare it’s been made to work in Eve. The guys behind the Goonswarm took an out-of-game asset (the recruiting platform offered by Something Awful), and leveraged it into an in-game asset of a real swarm of newbie players. The swarm has gone on to topple established old world powers through the unorthodox tactic of real zerging, using tons of newbie ships to tie down and destroy the capital fleets of the older powers.

It’s the equivalent of nerds defeating the cool kids in a bad 80s high school comedy. Even now the nerds are challenging the coolest kids in the history of this high school, Band of Brothers, and though it’s doubtful, they may win.

They’ve jumpstarted the process in something close to the manner you suggest: anyone with a Something Awful forum account can become a goon, will receive a base and a ship, and can be attacking battleships with his newbie frigate within a week.

11

This discussion spawned on the other forum exactly as a dissatisfaction for the details coming out of Warhammer.

In their last newsletter there’s a link to a podcast with a quote that sounds more or less like this:

“'Scenarios (instanced PvP with capped numbers) will be the most varied, most balanced, most fun form RvR, and so will carry the most victory points”.

So it’s quite obvious where they are focusing their attention. Discarding the winning points of DAoC (where BattleGrounds had the unique trait of being persistent and not with multiple instances to fake a war) to be a little more like WoW.

This thread is to try to demonstrate that once you cap players joining a battle the RvR is over. And all those qualities wiped.

12

Yes, but you cannot rely on the players goodwill to make a guild that accepts and trains noobs. That’s a duty of the game and a duty that shouldn’t be “outsourced” to players.

In the idea I posted above I tried exactly to keep the game directed in a structure and yet offer the players the flexibility to make their rules.

That example of the Goonsquad is just a good demonstration of the interesting things that happen when you give players more control over the fabric of the game.

13

Are we here to discuss your perfect design for an mmo, or are we talking about asymmetric warfare in multiplayer gaming? ;)

14

Timers, control points, ‘as needed’ spawning of controllable and advantageous resources, and sliding values for whatever ‘points’ are racked up during a ‘siege’ or whatnot.

The thought I had earlier was this, and of course it’s pretty unrefined and probably has glaring holes in it:

The group wishing to initiate would attack or trigger some sort of item outside the strategic target (for this instance, a castle.) This castle is, of course, has a very strong front gate that requires a battering ram to bring down. Triggering it initially sparks a world-wide message for both sides indicating that the area is under attack and siege is on the move, beginning a timer that ticks down for a set amount of time, based on the location of the castle to whatever travel hubs are near.

At this point, the game immediately declares the castle a combat area - anyone entering the castle area during this time is moved instantly to their faction’s respective ‘prep’ area - eg. a zone outside the castle for attackers, or in the courtyard of the castle for defenders. This is where the typical buffing and such would go on, blah blah.

Once the timer ends and the people are set loose to kill each other, the game assesses the amount of players each side has, triggers the activation of the control points - depending on which side is outnumbered and by how much, there may be more or less, simple ‘king of the hill’ ones or more complex ones - and any ‘resources’ such as controllable cannons, locked doors that need to be beat down, repairing tools, etc. It also uses the ratio of attackers:defenders to calculate just how many points each side racks up, again in a different method depending on the castle/outnumbering (an outnumbered defense might gain increasingly more points the longer they hold, while an overpowering defense might only gain them each time they recapture a control point, etc.) and how quickly each side will ‘revive’. Anyone can enter the battle at this time, and the player balance will be reassessed every so often (30 seconds-1 minute) to check if anything such as control points or resources need to be deactivated, preventing abuse such as sending 5 people to trigger it and wait for the countdown, and then flooding it with people once it’s ‘locked in’.

Ultimately, with the proper wide-reaching circumstances of taking/losing a castle implemented, it could end up being something both enjoyable and highly valued to everyone - of course, lag issues from a castle battlezone being overpopulated and issues with class balance would probably become prevalent, but… that’s not the question, is it?

15

People were talking about DAoC and saying that skill became less relevant to being able to destroy your enemies.

This is not true, at all.

Gank groups in DAoC, of which I was a part, were perfectly capable of taking two, three, four times their number out. They were capable of single-handedly blockading reinforcement lines, and turning the tides of many battles.

Never underestimate the power of eight fully twinked people working together in the right place at the right time. :D

16

I’d also agree that hardcoded realms (or sides) is a bad idea. It’s much easier to achieve in the short-run (pick your side), but in the long-run it leaves you with the problems you touched upon (side imbalance, realm caps).

Let your players align themselves through their actions and ingame choices. Give them mechanisms to change their allegiances. Then have your sides offer up rewards which scale with how badly they need players - you offer the right incentive and the market will balance itself.

I think you’d find that appealing to the masses and building this kind of mechanism are conflicting goals. This is the point where you strongly consider what your goals are and build game mechanics that support them.

IRL, Craps has among the best return for players knowing how to play the game but it’s also one of the least popular games. This is mainly due to people being intimidated by it and that it’s just not as ‘easy’ as sitting infront of a slot machine and pushing a button. Craps is niche, slots are mainstream. Which is better? Depends what your perspective is…

17

Dude, you’re on the wrong side of the power curve and farming the zerg. What oink was saying is that a group of 8 guys on vent who *don’t * have all the best gear and similar RRs will likely have no chance against you.

18

Good luck getting a game to force people to do something that’s against human nature. Especially in a competitive situation. If you suck, you aren’t going to be used. Because if you suck, you bring the whole thing down. It doesn’t matter if you build in to the game a spot for sucky players. Those spots are always better given to good players.

My conclusion following that line of thoughts is that continuing to fight the “numbers unbalance” isn’t an effective practice. And locking numbers on either side isn’t a solution as it leads to a completely different form of PvP that loses most if not all the qualities of RvR (after all historic battles were never balanced and there was always the principle of: grab a pitchfork and fight together). Real war is a collaborative effort and this is something strong and compelling to reproduce in a game.

Collaborative effort it may be, but unless you have player built factions the collaboration is artificial and meaningless. Corporations in EVE are far better for what you want because they are groups of players who play together for a common purpose by choice. An artificial faction (like horde vs alliance) doesn’t mean anything to most players because they don’t choose who to fight with, because you don’t choose your wars. With a corporation, you really do.

What if instead the objective was adjusted to the situation. In this case of this siege instead of earning points from direct-kills, the defenders would get points depending on how long they resist the siege. The more they resist, the more points they earn when the castle will ultimately fall in the enemy’s hands.

The problem is that without player/player collision, there’s no room for the strategy that would allow a smaller amount of players to defend a castle. That’s one of the biggest problems with WoW’s pvp. In real life, ten people can hold a hallway against hundreds. In WoW, ten people can hold a hallway against ten people and no more – since people can just walk through them.

At the end the real question is: what we could have now if RvR had received in the years the same focus and numbers of reiterations that went into PvE?

Well that’s easy. You’d have EVE Online.

Player made and run factions are the way to go. Players able to hold and keep territory is a necessity. An artificial setting with artificial goals (flags lol) can’t do what you want. It has to be a real setting with real goals as defined by players.

19

I’m hoping that Mythic – who really have a great deal of experience doing what you describe – is adding instanced fighting in a good and relevant way. Either that, or just as a feature for WoW addicts that can be ignored in real RvR. The value of combat details that they’ve released so far, though, make the latter sound less likely, so I’m hoping they have the skill in-house to produce this and build on the good parts of DAoC, rather than blowing it.

Charles, I don’t think player-defined goals are a requirement. One thing about static and (at least in theory) equally distributed conquerable assets (a la DAoC RvR) is that you know where you stand / can see how you’re doing, and you have clear targets that (again in theory) should be attainable. It’s a different sort of thing than Eve, and I wouldn’t dismiss either based just on the existence of the other.

20

ciparis, I see your line of logic, but if the player has no vested interest in the actual goals, what reason does he have to play well?

It’s like how in WoW’s BGs, a lot of people don’t work for the goals, they just grind HKs.