Developer Thoughts on PvP

[Pictor]

Are you trying to speak to a group of gamers or a psychology/sociology class?

MMO design has a great deal to do with Psychology and Sociology. You'd be a fool to assume otherwise. What I wrote was a mini-essay of sorts, and I started it not with an intention of getting across a specific point, but exploring some of the implications of trying to use realism and a design paradigm for MMOs. It was meant to be one of those things which gets a person thinking. It seems I was a bit too optimistic. Regardless, I wasn't countering any specific point, beyond maybe saying that using realism as a design paradigm is often ineffective for anything non-trivial.

Look, this stuff matters. It's not just lofty pseudo-intellectual bullshit. Any MMO has its ruleset. The quality of that ruleset means the difference between a great game and a shitty one. Haven and Hearth has its problems, and those problems are not necessarily born out of some undefinable quality which demands that those problems exist. Or, to phrase that differently: Haven and Hearth is, in places, shit without good reason.

Jorb's post addresses a very important point; Specifically, that removing the ability to kill somebody lends an enormous amount of power to the "Golden Rule" I spoke of. But the question is, is that rule strong enough as it is already, or not? Or, again, to rephrase that: Are the consequences for killing somebody severe enough? I'd argue that perhaps they aren't.

If I were to identify the problems with HnH's "Golden Rule", they would be twofold: One, the consequences of breaking the rule are often so insignificant as to barely exist, and two, those who violate the rule are still protected by the rule. The first one is self explanatory. By the second I mean that Murderers can't be killed without leaving scents just as volatile as those left by the Murderers themselves, which heavily discourages lawkeeping. The game does not recognize retribution. While it may be balanced in the sense that the playerbase is not, at this moment, bleeding its numbers profusely, that doesn't mean it couldn't be better.

The entire first half of my original post was trying to go over some of the reasons why this shit is extremely hard to balance, and indeed why it might be imbalanced in the first place. I assumed the context would be obvious enough, but I suppose you really do need to spell it out for some people.

[Fagroth]

The game does not recognize retribution. While it may be balanced in the sense that the playerbase is not, at this moment, bleeding its numbers profusely, that doesn't mean it couldn't be better.

Well, retribution exist only in people's minds, but not in the world itself. The world (in physical and universal sense) has nothing to do with human-invented social concepts. That's why I'd rather prefer (according to "the social experiment in the free world" concept, pronounced by developers) NOT to include ANY social rule in the gameplay core stats and caps, to leave those rules being handled by the players, as it "is" in the "real" world. You can tell that already existing scent system actually includes social rule within itself, but, as i suggest, it could be easily avoided by denying the "summon" procedure, so one can only track the location of the scent-bearers, but not summon them regardless of their willing. That would be more balancing for law-enforcement than any possible rules being implanted in the game core, i suppose.


Furthermore, whines about PVP-limits, be them satisfied, could easily make this game another typical "user-friendly-well-balanced-MMO", actually making "free gameplay" nothing more, than a brandname attributing part of a marketing plan.
That's why I also (even being a so easily-killed noob) like the existing PVP-concept, and i think it would be very much regrettable to have it limited in any "balancing" way.

[Potjeh]

I'm not saying "big words hurt my head", I'm saying that your post is needlessly wordy while offering no new perspectives and no valid arguments other than "I don't like it". Don't flatter yourself by thinking it's some "high design stuff" that only the gifted few, like your brilliant self, can understand.

First you start of by completely misinterpreting the data. H&H is, in fact, not bleeding players. This world follows the previous worlds trends to a T, all worlds started with an inflated online player count which then gradually dropped off and stabilized at a lower level. A part of this is players quitting, as there is quite a number of players who play for a couple of weeks at world start, see that they fell behind, and then take a break until the next reset because surely the next time they'll come out on top, it was all just bad luck this time But a much larger part is that those who do keep on playing simply play less hours a day - at world start everyone and his mother plays 8+ hours a day, but only the most hardcore players (and they are a small percentage of the total player population) keep that up after a week or two. Even with these two there's still a bit less online players than in the last world, and that's because in the last world there was at the very least 100 bots online at any given time.

And even if the players were abandoning the game en masse, blaming it on the PvP system is an odd leap of logic. Permadeath and open PvP have been there since the game went public. Hell, when I started playing we didn't even have inheriting, you had to start from scratch. And yet the game's population has been rising steadily. The only different thing about this world is the curiosity system, so it would be the only logical thing to blame for loss of playerbase, if such a thing was actually happening.

Finally, you go on to present mass appeal as some kind of a Holy Grail of game design, despite saying it's not the primary goal at the beginning of the same paragraph. PvP is *the* defining feature of H&H, the only thing that makes it stand out from the crowd. You want it ripped out because of a mistaken belief that appealing to the lowest common denominator will bring in swathes of players (which the server couldn't handle, BTW). Thing is, there are other sandbox MMOs out there, and they tend to have higher production values (H&H's interface is anti-ergonomic), so why would those swathes of players pick H&H over other MMOs? The only thing that restricting PvP would do is drive away the current players. I sure as hell wouldn't continue playing if they messed up PvP, nor would any of the long-term players that I know.

So yeah, the only valid thing you got left is "I don't like this, change the whole game to fit my personal taste because the world revolves around me". So maybe you should focus on that rather than the same old "bleeding out players" argument that everyone rehashes every time they want to give more weight to their idea (which never worked, and never will).

[Tonkyhonk]

*applauds potjeh with a standing ovation*

im not a combat oriented player, and i still prefer the system of this game to the others available.
of course that does NOT mean i enjoy being killed/raided or commiting crimes.

[Jackard]

http://www.facebook.com/frontierville

[Pictor]

I never suggested you had poor linguistic skills; Simply that your views were potentially linear. A lot of what you've now said confirms that.

Firstly, I never actually said or even implied that HnH was bleeding players. I mentioned it as an example of fan zeal being potentially blind. Secondly, I observed that player numbers have apparently halved since the end of world four, not the beginning of world five. Thirdly, 100 bots doesn't make up for a 300-500 player defecit. Fourthly, none of this was relevant to the points I was trying to make. It was an aside.

Fifth, I never suggested that PvP in and of itself was detrimental to the player population. Sixth, I never suggested that PvP was a bad thing in MMOs. Seventh, I never suggested that PvP was insignificant to the appeal of HnH. Eighth, I specifically stated that one of the key distinctions of HnH is its PvP, although I didn't word it quite so bluntly.

Ninth, I never implied that my personal taste was against PvP. Tenth, I never implied the world revolved around me. Eleventh, at no point did I even come close to implying that the developers could curb their will to my personal desires.

Finally, I did not respond snidely because I believe myself to be a brilliant genius. I responded snidely because I firmly believed that you were incapable of absorbing what I wrote.

You then went on to validate that belief by somehow managing to draw a dozen erroneous conclusions about my post whilst also completely missing all the issues I was trying to draw attention to.

You couldn't have missed the point harder if you were using a negative quality ranger bow. So, no, my post wasn't actually content free. In retrospect, I'm not even sure you read it.

[Potjeh]

Congratulations, you can count.

[Jackard]

You couldn't have missed the point harder if you were using a negative quality ranger bow.

Are you attempting humor?

[burgingham]

I think it is cute how he tries to impose the pop-psychology he got from god knows where onto MMOs. Makes for a fun read, although I am probably just one of those Joe Averages who are too dumb to follow his superior intellect.

[Pictor]

1: I post reflective thoughts
2: I get snide remarks from moderators
3: I counter remarks with other snide remarks
4: Moderator makes a big list of why I'm wrong
5: Moderator gets applause
6: I point out that more or less every single thing the moderator said was wrong
7: I get snide remarks from moderators

Jorb, Loftar; Your moderators are circle-jerking fuckwits. Like, holy shit, I don't think you realize how stupidly incompetent they are. A good moderator keeps his mouth shut, does his job, tries his best at all times to remain impartial, and above all, they're humble. How do I know this? Because I've been a moderator, and I've worked with good ones. These guys are not good moderators. They are complete and utter tools, and an embarrassment, not just to this game, but to the industry in general. Nobody else points this out because either they're smart enough to realize that they're irrelevant to the actual game and thus to keep their mouths shut, or else they're too busy trying to join in on the circle jerk. And it's not just one or two bad apples, either; Have you seen the post histories of these guys? God damn.

I respect your design choices, but holy fuck, these guys are golden examples of why you don't fucking hire people just because they have high post counts or are community veterans. The people with high post counts don't give a shit about the community, they give a shit about popularity. That's why they have high post counts.

My impending ban at this point is irrelevant. I will point out one thing before I'm given the heave ho;

You have a rule against Mod Sass.

Hahahaha, holy fucking shit, this would be hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic. You have a rule which says, in effect, "Be nice to us or we'll ban you".

Here's a clue, children; If you can't take abuse, you shouldn't be moderators. If people don't feel comfortable calling you on your bullshit, you breed a community of people who agree with you. If you breed a community of people who agree with you, you end up never actually getting any useful feedback, because nobody's going to stand up and say, hey, dude, you're full of shit. And you may be full of shit. But you'd never know, because as any 9th grader will tell you, admitting that you might be wrong, even to yourself, is a sign of weakness.

This may be my last post here, but fuck me, it was worth it to get that off my chest.

Come at me, motherfuckers.