PVP and griefer concerns

[Zardulu]

A few thoughts:

• Orbus will have fewer players than the average MMO, certainly at the beginning, so assuming we aren’t already infested with an unusually high number of sadists, we should be able to self-manage better than a game like Archeage.
• I haven’t played much Archeage, but it seems like character relationships in Archeage are adversarial from the start, due to factions, nations, existence of war zones, etc. There’s no indication that Orbus will be like that. People who PK in the Wilds will become Bandits, putting them at odds with every player. There will be no safe zone for them to return to (for the duration of their status.)
• I think VR fundamentally changes the experience; it’s a lot easier to depersonalize in desktop MMOs, manipulating toons and typing into a chat window. VR, because of the perspective, scale, motion controls, voice chat – the “presence” – discourages griefing behavior. That’s my theory anyway, we’ll see what happens

Anyway, every time open world PvP is discussed, Riley emphasizes that he doesn’t want to see players getting bullied or having their PvE experience ruined. There will be plenty of dials he can adjust to increase the penalties for PK if it’s a problem, like the location and strength of NPC guards, the duration of Bandit status, the size of bounties, etc. It probably isn’t possible to build an open-world PvP system that perfectly satisfies everyone – some people will hate that it’s allowed at all and some people will insist that it’s the best part of any MMO. So far, the OrbusVR devs seem to be building a game that favors PvE players, so if that’s what you prefer, I wouldn’t worry.

I think the single best thing that can be done to address concerns on both sides will be to get organized PvP into the game as quickly as possible. Because while I’m not that interested in engaging in open-world PvP, I am very excited to fight some gladiator battles. 3v3 team arena fights sound insanely fun to me, and I can’t wait to see all the crazy strategies people come up with combining the abilities of different disciplines. The Unspoken is an amazingly fun game, but add in warriors, rangers and musketeers, let them form teams then roam the battlefield freely? It’s going to be crazy good.

[Vulcan]

I really support on having some type of tournament arena hopefully at launch so people can vent their hate or stress there.

A battle arena where you can stake the games currency on win/lose maybe or just have fun matches.

Also, possibly with rules for example: Only use Archer class, etc…

My 2 cents…

[Admino]

The main problem with griefers is that they do what they do because they get enjoyment out of causing other people misery.

That said, griefers are PVPers, but PVPers are not necessarily griefers.
It’s unfair to brand all PVPers as griefers (my understanding of griefing is when a PVP or PVPers decides to target the same person or persons continually and follows/attacks them around until they are forced to leave the game).

My understanding of the current plan is that PVP will be possible in “The Wilds” which are high level zones. It will not be necessary to enter The Wilds unless you want to access high level/end level content in which case you most likely won’t be alone. If you are alone and are just out to collect materials (which will most likely be for creating high level/end level items that you wouldn’t “need”), you’ll just have to be careful. I would expect though that you might need a friend or two anyway just handle the PVE enemies you’d find in The Wilds regardless of your purpose for being there.

Of course, this is all conjecture because OrbusVR hasn’t even been developed yet let alone released. This sort of debate is good for letting Riley know of people’s concerns and for letting the Devs avoid any potential pitfalls, but I think it’s still a little early to compare it to other games.

[Falsedemise]

Players can also feel griefed even by the game mechanics. For instance, say you’re in the Wilds farming for items and find something that’s typically considered “epic” quality. The game notifies everyone in the zone that you’ve found this item. Now you need to PVP everyone in the zone in order to get out with the item, thus a 1v25+ battle ensues. Gratz on getting an extremely rare item, however there’s almost no chance you’re keeping it.

There’s also a chance that you’ll find groups of players (probably 3-4) that team up on a regular basis that are all wanted, they’ll probably be using stealth if that’s ever put into the game, and they’ll sit near the exit of the wilds waiting for solo players to leave and jump them regardless of what they have, since they’re already wanted. If you try to get a group together to kill them for the wanted posters, they use cheap mechanics to annoy you til you give up (running in circles, disconnecting and switching to non-wanted characters, logging off for 5 mins) then go back to doing the same thing again to annoy solo players.

[Strydr_Z]

I stated my PVP concerns and I’ve been making a point of staying out of the conversation since, as I don’t want to discourage others from the game.
However, some of the commentary makes a point that should be mentioned. It has been clearly stated that you will HAVE to go thru PVP zones to get to certain, needed, dungeons. I would like to point out that this is a technique used by game developers who know that PVP will not work unless they MAKE victims. So they put the PVP zones in certain areas that CAN’T be avoided to make PVE’rs be the reluctant victims because the dev’s KNOW that there won’t be any victims for the grievers to enjoy unless they make them! It should be noted that PVP’rs that aren’t grievers, are generally happy with things like arena matches and known PVP areas. The grievers, on the other hand, will put up a REAL stink when they realize that their prospective victims can avoid them without penalty. As has been pointed out, repeatedly, this game intends to MAKE victims, while telling you that you don’t HAVE to be one. They will tell you that you don’t have to PVP, but the required areas will be in PVP zones, and they will tell you that you can bring a group; those who don’t are just screwed. The valid points against open world PVP are largely being ignored or vilified. Put simply: if a SINGLE area in a PVP zone is required for advancement, then this IS a Griever PVP game. No amount of doubletalk will change that.

Edit: I would also like to point out what someone else did, but from a different perspective. We don’t know, yet, how PVP will shape up in VR. We won’t know until we’ve had a chance to actually SEE it. So this is just my opinion, but I believe that the realism presented by VR will make PVP very, very similar to actual mugging. It is something that I have absolutely NO interest in experiencing in VR. It’s bad enough in life, I’ll be DAMNED if I’m going to allow it in my games!!!

[JamesIAm]

I agree there shouldn’t be an announcement when you find a rare item, at least until you get back to a safe zone if at all (I haven’t seen any devs talk about this as a feature yet, but correct me if I’m wrong).

As for the camping near the exits, you can very easily put a small semi circle of safe zone around the exit, this means a party can approach from a large number of directions and ambushing someone sucessfully becomes highly unlikely. Personally I don’t see even this being necessary as I don’t think there will be so many stationary people in a game with the relatively low number of people this game will have at launch. But if it does become an issue, then I don’t think an easy safe zone entry/exit will be difficult to implement

[Riley_D]

Okay, I’m going to have to shut down this thread, simply because there is way too much rampant speculation going on that has absolutely no basis in anything we’ve even said will be in the game.

For example, there is not some beacon that goes out to tell everyone that you just acquired an epic item so they can all come kill you. In addition, anything you got that was that special would likely be soulbound so you it’s not something you can even lose. The things that are tradable are crafting ingredients and the like – these are things that, while rare and valuable, are not “one in a million” drop chances.

Camping of the exit points is something we’ll be actively working to prevent via the guards stationed there.

And the goal is certainly not to provide some sort of encouragement for people to come and grief others.

Anyway, I understand that this is a controversial topic for some folks, and I am aware of your concerns. But really, until you see the whole system working in action, I don’t think it does us any good to jump to conclusions or play “what if” based on worst-case scenarios. If the PvP in the Wilds becomes toxic, we’ll deal with it. And yes, it turning into a giant griefer zone that no one wants to venture into because it’s miserable for anyone but a small group of die-hard PvP players would qualify as ‘toxic.’

Again, I appreciate the discussion but this really isn’t helpful at this stage. Let’s wait until we can actually see how it works in-game before we debate it.