Ruminations on instanced pvp

Malefactour · **Joined:** Fri Jan 14, 2011 4:13 am **Posts:** 503

Rules to live by

Whenever instanced pvp is involved there are always those who love it or hate it vehemently. The pro to having it is it gives players something fast they can do if they only have a little bit of time to play to get stuck in immediately. The con that most people cite as the worst is it devalues world pvp. The carebears love it because it "evens the playingfield" and the hardcores despise it because they tend to believe the only "true" pvp is open world pvp. In todays MMO market, no game can truly consider itself fully featured without both modes, in my opinion.

Since we do not have a full grasp of the incentives of pvp in DMO yet, I will make this as generic as possible to get my points across. It is safe to assume that there will be some form of honor/renown mechanic in DMO, possibly alongside experience points available for pvp activities as well. Assuming that we will be able to advance ourselves through pvp, here is a list of things that I feel Vigil needs to consider with regards to advancement and instanced pvp.

Incentives

People like to be rewarded for activities in MMO's and the playerbase of DMO will not be an exception to that rule. So lets assume that DMO will run the gamut of incentives, here is a list of some of the most common forms used in games today:

-experience points
-honor/renown points
-equipment currency (this can be a catch all currency or broken down into types, armor and weapon currency, for example.)
-reputation/influence points
-achievements/unlocks

Now with all of these different methods available to devs, the way they are implemented becomes very important to overall player satisfaction. This is especially important with regards to such a hot button topic as instanced pvp. First and foremost, NOTHING should be exclusively available to any one activity. WAR dropped the ball in this regard by implementing armor currency available in ALL forms of pvp, but having weapon currency ONLY available in instanced pvp. As I've said before, specific currencies are fine, but they need to be available in ALL forms of the activity, whether open world pvp or instanced. The RATE at which they are accumulated can be weighted to encourage certain activities for certain rewards, but all rewards should be earnable for all forms of pvp. (I've stated in other threads that Mythic should have adjusted the ratio of armor/weapon currency in world pvp to 70%/30% and armor/weapon currency in Scenarios to 30%/70% to give players the freedom to do what they want to most without feeling forced into activities they do not enjoy just to feel competitive.)

Scenarios, Battlegrounds, Arenas, oh my!

To me, the beauty of instanced pvp in all its forms is the balance and parity it affords versus the gank or be zerged approach common in open world pvp. I also appreciate the "mini-game" aspects involved, simple, clear cut objectives that even the carebeariest of players can get their heads around. Fundamentally, the primary objectives of players in open world pvp, whether solo roaming or warband/raid versus warband/raid has always been to KILL the enemy. There may be secondary objectives like the capture of objectives in zones or the collection of campaign resources and there may be strategic objectives like capturing and dominating zones in the world, but this is all predicated on the KILLING of enemies. Where this breaks down in instanced pvp is when its counter to the spirit of the mini-game withing the scenario/battleground/arena. I'm all for people earning, or having a chance of earning, all of the aforementioned incentives in open world pvp, but when it comes down to an instance of capture the flag, these need to be subsumed into the ruleset of that instance.

In Warhammer, there is a scenario infamously know as Serpents Passage. This is a 12 vs. 12 capture the flag (c.t.f.) instance with a 15 minute timer. There is a scoreboard with the winner being whichever team can get to 500 points through player kills or flag captures first or whomever has the most points when the clock runs out. Anyone that has been in this scenario knows that the best fights are the ones that go right down to the wire with both sides battling it out to run flags and keep the enemy from doing such. Unfortunately, the over world pvp paradigm holds sway over the instance rules and if one faction has a slight advantage in power or numbers what will most often happen will be a spawn camp where they will spend their 15 minutes just killing the other team until they hit 500 or the timer runs out. Suffice it to say, the reward for this can be quite lucrative, but its horrifically boring for the underdog faction and most often results in people leaving the scenario or just not queuing up for any more afterwards. So how do you put the incentive into the scenario and encourage proper play?

1. NO incentive for player kills outside of the area of influence of the flags spawn location unless they are flag runners. The only "incentive" for taking out a player whom you happen across is sending them back to their spawn and possible taking them out of the fight for the duration of the respawn timer.
2. FULL potential incentives for player kills withing the area of influence of the flag, SO LONG AS the flag remains unclaimed by any players. Once it is successfully picked up, the incentives for player kills disappear.
3. NO bonus incentive for traditional things such as damage done, killing blows, healing, etc. If you want bonus incentive, it should be tied directly to the objectives in the scenario. Flag claims, flag carries, flag captures, killing flag carriers, etc. should be the only things that give you bonus incentive.

Now these 3 items are specifically aimed at c.t.f. matches, but the same methodology could be applied to ANY instanced pvp. King of the hill? Have a flag on top of the hill that must be claimed and then ONLY allow for full potential incentives while it is claimed, simple. By making it unprofitable to do things like spawn camping, you remove it from the game. Of course deathmatch instances would follow all of the incentive methodologies of open world pvp, but any instance that is NOT specified as a deathmatch game needs to be carefully tuned to award those who join the game as it was intended and make the system as a whole more resistant to exploitation. None of what I've mentioned is particularly revolutionary, its just that devs have been too afraid to step outside the box and sever the cord between world pvp and instanced pvp and make them separate beasts. Make us proud Vigil!

009miky · **Joined:** Sun Jan 30, 2011 2:50 pm **Posts:** 348

Interesting thought. I can certainly agree that SP did have a lot of boring wait time when one side clearly out matched the other. Still the best ,out of city, SC fights were SP if you could get two evenly matched teams.

Still there will always be spawn camping no matter what you do. It is a hard problem to solve unless there is no spawn. Who knows maybe we will see deep striking in SC.

Malefactour · **Joined:** Fri Jan 14, 2011 4:13 am **Posts:** 503

While its possible that spawn camping could occur, if there is no profit in it, its going to be a rare thing. People tend to gravitate to behavior that improves their characters, so it's simply a matter of not giving them any incentive outside the "spirit" of the encounter.

Avathos · **Joined:** Tue Mar 22, 2011 10:11 am **Posts:** 9

I also would like to see a PvP ladder on which hardcore players (guilds) compete for ranking. Similar to Guild Wars.

Sabot · **Joined:** Sun Jan 30, 2011 6:36 am **Posts:** 263

Avathos wrote:

I also would like to see a PvP ladder on which hardcore players (guilds) compete for ranking. Similar to Guild Wars.

I'd rather see one that ranks the races, as it would be more in the spirit of WH 40K..

009miky · **Joined:** Sun Jan 30, 2011 2:50 pm **Posts:** 348

Sabot wrote:

Avathos wrote:

I also would like to see a PvP ladder on which hardcore players (guilds) compete for ranking. Similar to Guild Wars.

I'd rather see one that ranks the races, as it would be more in the spirit of WH 40K..

I could get behind that

Dreadcall · **Joined:** Thu Mar 24, 2011 3:32 am **Posts:** 5

Malefactour wrote:

1. NO incentive for player kills outside of the area of influence of the flags spawn location unless they are flag runners. The only "incentive" for taking out a player whom you happen across is sending them back to their spawn and possible taking them out of the fight for the duration of the respawn timer.
2. FULL potential incentives for player kills withing the area of influence of the flag, SO LONG AS the flag remains unclaimed by any players. Once it is successfully picked up, the incentives for player kills disappear.
3. NO bonus incentive for traditional things such as damage done, killing blows, healing, etc. If you want bonus incentive, it should be tied directly to the objectives in the scenario. Flag claims, flag carries, flag captures, killing flag carriers, etc. should be the only things that give you bonus incentive.

Another soultion would be granting full rewards for kills in a radius around the flag , wether it is in it's spawn location or being carried, and make it so that taking it to a team's capture location will score for the team even if the enemy carries it there. Also make it so the spawn area is only accessible through the capture location while granting alternate ways to get out.

This would mean that the only way to spawn camp with a reward would be to carry the flag to the other team's spawn, but if you try to do that the flag resets to it's spawn AND you score points for your opponents.

Malefactour · **Joined:** Fri Jan 14, 2011 4:13 am **Posts:** 503

Dreadcall wrote:

Another soultion would be granting full rewards for kills in a radius around the flag , wether it is in it's spawn location or being carried, and make it so that taking it to a team's capture location will score for the team even if the enemy carries it there. Also make it so the spawn area is only accessible through the capture location while granting alternate ways to get out.

This would mean that the only way to spawn camp with a reward would be to carry the flag to the other team's spawn, but if you try to do that the flag resets to it's spawn AND you score points for your opponents.

So long as there is no chance for a superior force to take the flag and just hold it and camp the inferior force for rewards, this would be ok. Having seen all manner of questionable tactics used, I'd still be wary of any incentives for anything other than the stated objectives of the instance.

Dreadcall · **Joined:** Thu Mar 24, 2011 3:32 am **Posts:** 5

Malefactour wrote:

So long as there is no chance for a superior force to take the flag and just hold it and camp the inferior force for rewards, this would be ok. Having seen all manner of questionable tactics used, I'd still be wary of any incentives for anything other than the stated objectives of the instance.

They just have to make it so that actually capturing the flag is more rewarding the standing somewhere with the flag waiting for the other team to come and get themselves slaughtered. Any decent reward for the capture should work.

Malefactour · **Joined:** Fri Jan 14, 2011 4:13 am **Posts:** 503

So with all the discussion on factions, why not have the over-arcing storyline of a tentative coalition of forces (Order and Destruction factions in world pvp) be counter pointed by free for all (factionless, race specific) pvp instances?

These skirmishes could be added to create flavor and emphasize the fragile nature of the factions.

Ruminations on instanced pvp

Who is online