Goblin Squad Member
|
Lots of bits have been spilled arguing about 'PVP' in PFO. Unfortunately, many folks are talking past each other because term is ill-defined, and actually has multiple meanings.
Most often, when the term PVP is bandied about, it's referring to PVP combat. However, when those who would rather avoid PVP combat suggest restrictions on it, those who desire PVP combat falsely argue that 'crafting/trade is also PVP', and that games without PVP aren't real sandboxes or are boring.
When this happens, inter-player conflict is being conflated with player vs player combat. While those two ideas are certainly related, they form a venn diagram of actual activities. Not all PVP combat is conflict driven and player conflict certainly exists outside of the realm of combat.
Economic markets are prime examples of player conflict. However, the risks and rewards involved are very different than those of combat. Insisting they're somehow both 'PVP' trivializes the inherent complexities in the two different systems, and is usually used to advocate for unrestricted PVP combat.
I'm fairly certain most folks here (and certainly the Devs) agree that without player-driven conflict, any sandbox created is going to become stagnant and boring fairly quickly. Furthermore, that conflict needs to involve combat in some way, especially since combat is ultimately what the game engine is designed around.
However, just because combat is a possible outcome of conflict, doesn't mean it necessarily should be the outcome of every conflict.
As a quick aside, the adjective 'unsanctioned' when used to describe PVP combat is misleading. There is no overarching authority who sanctions some combat and not others. That authority falls solely to those involved in the combat. In the rest of the world, we call that authority 'consent'. Thus, if you get attacked when you're out foraging, you're experiencing 'nonconsensual PVP', not 'unsanctioned PVP'.
So, while conflict is certainly integral to PFO's success, and combat is integral to PFO's gameplay, conflict and combat can take very, very different forms. Asserting it's all the same is misleading, at best.
Personally, I'm in favor of a system that allows nonconsensual PVP combat, but only with substantive consequences. Consequence-free nonconsensual PVP combat is a system that appeals to a very select group, and has been repeatedly shown to be a commercial failure.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
There is no overarching authority who sanctions some combat and not others. That authority falls solely to those involved in the combat. In the rest of the world, we call that authority 'consent'. Thus, if you get attacked when you're out foraging, you're experiencing 'nonconsensual PVP', not 'unsanctioned PVP'.
The terms "sanctioned" vs "unsanctioned" PVP came out of the development blog about the latest iteration of opt-in pvp. Many of us have latched onto the terms as value-free adjectives that usefully divide PVP into different categories.
Here is the quote where the word "sanction" was used by Tork Shaw.
Of course, PvP is possible at any stage in Pathfinder Online, but without the sanction of warfare, bounties, feuds, or voluntary player actions—characters performing criminal or heinous acts, for example—there are consequences of reputation and alignment.
The full blog post is here: http://goblinworks.com/blog/index.html#20130925
Other than pointing that out, I agree with most of your post. Player vs Player conflict reaches far beyond just combat in the wilderness.
In our lengthy threads on PVP, most of us have gotten in the habit of using "PVP" as a shorthand for combat to the death between small groups or individuals.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Consequence-free nonconsensual PVP combat is a system that appeals to a very select group, and has been repeatedly shown to be a commercial failure....except for in EVE Online.
Just out of curiosity, what is the real number of subscribers and what is the real number of those with most or all of their toons in High Sec?
I am aware that there is no guarantee of absolute safety in High Sec. Just immediate consequence.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I am aware that there is no guarantee of absolute safety in High Sec. Just immediate consequence.
It is not an "immediate consequence" it is an "immediate expectation".
If you are referring to Suicide Gankers, they do not suffer consequences that they did not plan. Those losses were needed to get the gains they sought.
As for the numbers it is about 500,000, and growing every month. It is in fact the only MMO that is not losing subscriptions at this time, oddly left out of Ryan Dancey's recent presentation.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
No. Not even in EVE.Consequence-free nonconsensual PVP combat is a system that appeals to a very select group, and has been repeatedly shown to be a commercial failure....except for in EVE Online.
You are aware that there is non-consensual, consequence free PvP in high-sec space right? That the people in high-sec space are still subject to quite a lot of non-consensual, consequence free PvP? And that EvE online is a commercial success despite this?
And I'm not talking about wars, or suicide ganking. I spent a year and a half committed to high security piracy, basically freely killing mission runners and miners by using the games aggro mechanics to my advantage.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
No. Not even in EVE.Consequence-free nonconsensual PVP combat is a system that appeals to a very select group, and has been repeatedly shown to be a commercial failure....except for in EVE Online.
You consent to PVP as soon as you log in. Pointing to population that "lives" is High Sec does not mean the absence of PVP, most of my PVP was High Sec War Decs. Most of my Low Sec PVP roams, started from Hi Sec bases. Every major pirate corp in EVE Online has a Hi Sec support corp.
|
CEO, Goblinworks
|
Darkfall (1.0) was a potential success. It was such a success that at launch, demand to play the game overwhelmed the payment system, and the patching system. The result was months of poor quality experience for early adopters. It never really recovered from its botched launch. But the fact that it had a botched launch because demand was stratospheric PROVES that there is a huge demand for a fantasy sandbox with extensive PvP.
Darkfall has other problems, most notably a failure to develop the rest of its game systems rapidly enough to create a functioning economic system, or to provide meaningful territorial control on a large scale for a large number of powers. But the demand was clearly on its side when it launched.
So far, since Ultima Online, EVE has been the only game to get a good mix of PvP combat, territorial control, and player-driven economy. The others have missed the sweet spot,
|
CEO, Goblinworks
|
No. Not even in EVE.
Errr - characters, not players. Not good data good data for this discussion.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
@Morbis and Bluddwolf
So are you stating that the level of consequences combine with the methods of bypassing them present in EVE's high sec space allows for a level of non-consensual / consequence-free PvP you are ok with?
If yes, well... I personally hope that everyone in PFO is basing themselves somewhere with more danger and freedom than high sec within 48 hours of play. While I would gladly support high sec as a system with enough consequences to discourage over-abundant killing for the sake of killing, I oppose it on the grounds that it is too restrictive to allow for the level of meaningful PvP I desire.
If no, then you seem to be splitting hairs.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
No. Not even in EVE.Errr - characters, not players. Not good data good data for this discussion.
They go on to present this graph, and state that a significant portion of players are lost before reaching 5 million SP in the presentation those graphs came from.
I would welcome data on accounts instead of characters were it present but would you not agree that this suggests a strong majority of players prefer not to live in an area with absolutely no mechanical consequences for any form of PvP, even within a major player driven sandbox like EVE?
|
CEO, Goblinworks
|
and state that a significant portion of players are lost before reaching 5 million SP in the presentation those graphs came from.
Free trials. The attrition rate is severe. These are not people likely to engage. They are often Asian players seeking a F2P experience and when they realize EVE isn't F2P they exit and never return. Since virtually none of those players ever leave Hi Security space, they bloat the high-sec population figures.
would you not agree that this suggests a strong majority of players prefer not to live in an area with absolutely no mechanical consequences for any form of PvP, even within a major player driven sandbox like EVE?
No, and I doubt CCP does either. The data you are not seeing is % of time a given account (not character) spends in various security levels. I can have 3 characters on an account. Since I can make a character, train it up to be minimally useful as a transporter, and make another character trained to efficiently buy & sell on Jita or another trade hub and leave them in high security space only to be used when I need to ship useful stuff down to lower security space or buy or sell stuff, they will count on the census as high-security characters. I may not use them more than a few hours a month. Meanwhile I spend most of my logged-in playtime on a null-sec character. The data would show 66% of my characters in high security space but that would not tell you anything meaningful about my play preferences.
Most players who progress past their first few months tend to migrate out of high security space, or split time between high and null security space. Since 80% of players attrit at some point and usually quickly, any snapshot census will show a higher population of high sec characters to low or null sec characters. But that doesn't tell you anything about the play preference of the people in the 20% who stay which after 10 years is a vast majority of all active players in the game. CCP has never to my knowledge released play time % information, but if they did they'd likely show data the inverse of the raw population graph you linked to.
Dark Souls has consequence-free* nonconsensual PvP combat, and that's the part of the game I hate.
* = The only "punishment" you get for killing people was getting other people chasing you (which in turn means more opportunities to PvP), which isn't even that discouraging since it just gave you more people to fight against. People who just want to PvE in peace aren't given much comfort knowing that the guy who killed them is still having fun, and some other jerk is waiting to pounce on him on the way to the next boss. The only way to avoid PvP is to keep yourself in undead form, which in turn disables the summoning of allied Players and NPCs to help out with bosses, which in turn makes the game less fun.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
The graph I linked in my last post is characters with SP greater than 5 million so that should rule out trial accounts, most extra-character slot haulers, and a lot of the other players who quit very early on. I haven't done the math but he seems to suggest in the presentation that 5 million SP is about a 3-month old character.
Still Null Sec and Wormhole pop only grows from about 20% to 27% with high sec population still over twice that.
I don't really feel that rate of growth is large enough to suggest that even half the hours being logged are logged in null-sec / wh-space, much less an inverse of the original graph. And this is all pretty recent data.
Here's a link to the full presentation.
Also, given this was an official presentation by CCP I would have to believe they have access to info like how many players are logged into what level security system at any given time, and how many hours people spend playing in each security level area. I find it hard to believe they would choose to present this data in the manner they did, if their other data didn't back it up.
To me at least they seem to be using it to make the assertion that high-sec is where people spend most of their time, but he presents both graphs in the first few minutes so I would urge you to make that determination yourself.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I find it hard to believe they would choose to present this data in the manner they did, if their other data didn't back it up.
I believe they wrote the presentation to put whatever impression they chose into the minds of its viewers; for example, showing a large high-sec population might convince some reluctant gamers to give their game a chance regardless of some of the "it's a jungle" stories that abound. I find it hard to imagine an incentive that would lead them to give anyone outside the company data as useful as those Ryan mentioned.
Ryan, as Chief Marketing Officer at CCP, most likely had access to something very like--or exactly--the data he described, and more beyond. I admire CCP's success at continuing to grow their game over the years, but I also frequently remember that Ryan's building our game to address weaknesses he perceives in EVE.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
...except for in EVE Online.Where 75% of the population stays in H-Sec, and ech player has 3 accounts minimum. All in all, I don't think there's so much REAL players outside H-Sec.
So, none of those hi sec characters face any danger once they undock? They can not be suicide gankers, can't be lured into PvP combat innocently, can not be war decd, be never travel through low sec, never go to 0.0 space, etc.....
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
In theory ? Yeah. In fact… H-sec is pretty secure.
I don't mean to be rude when I say this, but if that was your experience then you didn't do anything particularly worthwhile in high security. Or you got extremely lucky. Or you were tucked away in some backwater system that no one ever visited.
War-decs being so incredibly cheap meant that our high security pirate corp (and the many others like it) were constantly at war with 'care bear' corporations. If we found someone making even a lick of considerable profit they instantly became a target.
May I ask what in particular you did in EvE?
Goblinworks Executive Founder
|
PvE and mining, around Providence. PvP roaming in L-Sec. Yeah, we had a few war-dec. It was a mere disturbance. And when it was a little too much, we just had to quit the corp for a few days with our mains ! XD
But I agree, the south is, pretty backwater.
Addendum : Anyway, war-dec hasn't the impact as random frag does. It's not free or permanent. It's something that happens. When I say H-sec is pretty secure, I mean pretty secure from the "I took a gate and exploded for no reason".