vjek's page

Again, I'm one of those guys Robb is alluding to when he says "dozens of scar-brothers who are silently nodding and thinking "Amen, brother. Preach it." I'm one of them. We've never met, but from the sounds of it, we've had similar experiences. Having played MMO's since they've been available to play, and seeing all of these creative PvP experiments in action, I'll add my opinion to what has already been eloquently expressed in this thread.

In my experience with Non-Consensual PvP MMO mechanics, the following is generally true:

Customers, paying or not, will not play victims, indefinitely.
Or put another way;
Customers will not indefinitely pay to be victims, not even half of the time.
Regardless of whether or not "pay" means time or money or both.

It is illogical to presume that victims will stay around being victims forever. It's a negative experience. No-one likes it. Presuming a steady stream of loss, at whatever rate you want to use, means you're designing to fail, just over whatever time period the victim loss becomes catastrophic.

As such, regardless of how innovative you as a supporter of GoblinWorks might think these systems are, despite some very smart people over the past 15 years trying all sorts of variations on the same theme, something new is required. Everything that has been discussed so far has already been tried in other MMO's or theorycrafted to death. Flagging, item loss on death, reputation, varying degrees of "safe areas", bounties, all of it.
Obviously, I can't say with any degree of certainty that what has been described to date, put together under a new context of PFO's "world" will 100% fail.
I will say, though, that I have seen EACH of these mechanics fail spectacularly on their own, either in theory or in practice, given the deplorable state of human nature. I've seen flagging abused until pointless. I've seen item loss on death abused until the devs recant and remove it or the game dies. I've seen Reputation systems laughably trivialized even with 1 integer change per death/kill on a scale of 1000 or 10000 per rank.

Penalties for killing those with high reputation just encourages mule rep grinding, as has been pointed out and demonstrated in all the games that have it.

Safe areas are mapped and used by the very people they're meant to stop, to attack other players and have those players killed by guards. How? The griefer stands on the non-guarded side, 1 pixel away from the guarded side. They attack the noob on the guarded side. The noob retaliates, and the guards kill the noob. Never happen? Has happened.

Item loss on death also just ends up encouraging naked zerging. All professional murderers will simply never carry anything they aren't holding. Thusly, killing them nets you nothing. The only people with something to lose are the victims, not the criminals. If the system is changed so that criminals lose anything, criminals will attack naked with their fists, in zergs of 50-80 players, with multiple accounts all slaved to a small group of sociopaths. If the "justice" system is further modified to include stat/skill/badge loss, that's the tipping point at which you'll lose all those customers, but by then it's too late, because all the customers you WANTED are long gone due to taking so long to address these concerns.

Why? Because the fanatical zealots all drinking the cool-aid now, two years before this game has the slightest chance of ever hitting the public? Those folks? They WANT those features. They WANT the PvP features you are going to have to remove due to player outcry. If you take them away, you lose your core of fans/customers. Now what? You're left with a half baked cake, just like every other attempt in the genre at "getting this right".

And don't think it won't happy to you, GoblinWorks employees. History is a great teacher. Many other development teams have said the same thing you have said. Hell, they just said it in GW2 and now look at the game? All the changes they should have made during the first HOURS after launch (not days, not weeks, not months) were not done, and the game is permanently screwed because of it. That's a so-called AAA MMO failing in 2012, but I'm sure they said "We will fix these big problems immediately when we see them, never fear, our loyal fans!". Riiiiight.

On the current hot topic of item loss on death for non-criminal victims. When I first read about this system, I had the same reaction. Why would any company desiring financial success penalize customers for being victims, and AT THE SAME TIME, reward aggressors for victimizing their customers? It made no sense months ago, and it stll makes no sense.

IMHO: "Meaningful Player Interaction" does not require direct PvP combat, at all, in any form. (just like PnP PF) I'll put my tiny stick in the sand with that opinion expressed.

Lastly, it's nice to see that there is some flexibility alluded to on some of these mechanics. Up until this past week or so, the way in which these mechanics have been described and defended was the very definition of "set in stone". The recent change is good to see, but I, like Robb, will never play a game where victimization is rewarded.