PvP isn't the whole game by any means, but it's such a fundamental aspect of online MMO's that I'm surprised it hasn't been covered by the blogs yet. There's a lot that I'd love to see addressed:
1) Will there by attempts to promote "tanking"? In other words, will savy tanks be able to knock opponents down or otherwise prevent enemies from destroying the squishies? Games like WoW have simple "aggro" mechanics which it relies on in PVE situations, but PVP is a chaotic because aggro doesn't effect PC's. I think if PFO executes martial classes well, they'll be able to disrupt other player characters or keep them engaged.
2) How will friendly fire be handled?
Death actually had been covered and since death is a major part of PvP. I'd count that as at least a little PvP blog. Technically, no part of the game has been fully covered. Even the crafting blog was more about the general workings not the finute details of it. I'd rather them take their time and develope some badass PvP that can really effeect even the world of PFO (Like how EvE was effected by the first and second Great War). Still I agree with you I'd like to hear more about some of the mechanics behind it but by no means do I want to put any pressure on it.
What I am curious about is more concerning how Siege, troop movements, calvary (will their be fighting off of calvary, and grand scale PvP will work. As a veteran of the EvE Great Wars I look forward to engaging in something similar. I also will be fairly interested to see how the transportation of goods will effect PvP. It should be very fascinating to see the cordination between crafters and fighters. I am a strong believer in working out the general mechanics and building the smaller things around that. I also am highly interested in how archery will be handled. So many games have made archery just boring and petty when it comes to PvP. I hope that an archer really has a place within the PFO PvP community.
Goblin Squad Member
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What we need first, and what is far more important is a combat blog. Not just a PVP blog. What are we looking at here?
1. Skillbars: Will there be skillbars that contain abilities and items we can activate? (Unlikely to be no. Even Darkfall has skillbars.)
2. Will there be an auto attack? Your basic free attack that your character automatically spams when not using abilities. Not every game has these. Even TOR dropped auto-attack and I must say... it was a good move.
3. What kind of resources are we looking at in combat. Where there be things like WoW rage/mana/energy? LotRO power? (Basically everything uses mana.) Darkfall and Mortal Health/Staming/Mana? D&D/Neverwinter Nights Spells per day? D&D Online Spellpoints? Are these going to be designed to make us conserve resources over a fight or are they just going to be prevention of spamming our most powerful attacks, and we have many abilities that can recharge them like a Diablo 3 monk? Or will there be no resources at all like D&D fighter or ranger?
4. Aiming/Targeting. Will it be Tab target with auto-aim? AKA you can cycle through nearby enemies with tab and your attacks automatically hit your target. In opposition is a game like Darkfall that has no targeting, and you aim attacks FPS style. Perhaps a hybrid like Freelancer where you can cycle through targets with tab, but have to aim your attacks FPS style.
5. Will there be threat/threat management? Will NPCs build up a certain amount of threat over time telling them which target to attack, and we have abilities to raise/lower our threat such as in WoW or TOR? Or will there be no actual threat resource and we just have to use tactics like sending certain players in first or killing the things that target our squishier players first such as in Guild Wars, EVE, and D&D.
6. How will leveling effect our combat prowess? Will it effect what gear we can use? How hard we hit? How much health we have? How much defense we have? Or just what abilities we have like some people (Including me) would like to see.
7. How powerful will the effects of gear be? Will gear be repairable? Will it even need repairs?
There are A LOT of questions that need to be answered about combat both PVE and PVP. Being a primary PVPer... I would like to see our basic combat issues covered first. Not just exclusive PVP issues. Also being as from my understanding they haven't written a single line of code yet, these decisions don't need to be rushed just so they can tell us what it was. I would appreciate a word from the devs on the forums as to what way they are LEANING though.
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Goblin Squad Member
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PvP isn't the whole game by any means, but it's such a fundamental aspect of online MMO's that I'm surprised it hasn't been covered by the blogs yet. There's a lot that I'd love to see addressed:
1) Will there by attempts to promote "tanking"? In other words, will savy tanks be able to knock opponents down or otherwise prevent enemies from destroying the squishies? Games like WoW have simple "aggro" mechanics which it relies on in PVE situations, but PVP is a chaotic because aggro doesn't effect PC's. I think if PFO executes martial classes well, they'll be able to disrupt other player characters or keep them engaged.
2) How will friendly fire be handled?
Little has been confirmed on tanking etc... but one thing that has been hinted at by Ryan on a thread in trinity roles, was more or less a confirmation that Goblin works wants to avoid the traditional trinity roles, and that the biggest issue of such roles forming is usually tanking abilities being too strong.
Now how they are planning to directly fix that could be a number of ways. 1. Agro control being more or less just another form of CC, rather than the traditional system where a tank can hold agro 99.99% of the time, while other means of CC work only in limited cases, they could very well do something along the lines of tanking and CC both being more or less the same. IE a wizard or cleric using hold person will be equally likely to stop an enemy from hitting the squishies as a tank. Or it could mean that the difference in armor values will be drastically less significant. Anyway the point is no matte what they are doing, it sounds like a traditional tank won't likely be the be all end all of protecting squishies in PVE, which leads me to think that this will be less of an issue when making a system that is simultaneously fair for both.
Friendly fire we've had numerous topics on, lots of debate between us, but no word at all from the devs.
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Goblin Squad Member
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One thing I'd like to encourage GW to do is avoid trying to fit all the different archetypes into a cookie-cutter UI.
I'm thinking of Vanguard's Virtue Points for Paladins. There are mechanics that are going to be integral to one Archetype, but have no corollary for other archetypes.
There will be a temptation to abstract the different mechanics into Bars and Points and then shoehorn the Archetypes into those implementations. I would encourage you instead to invest the time to make each Archetype have its own look and feel.