Goblin Squad Member
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I had my first major alpha game yesterday when I spend close to 4 hours gaming. One bit that got me thinking from the cold start:
There is a lot of talk about player vs player - but with resources spread wide and sooooo many different on offer it got me thinking
How much of the game is rather Player with Player (PwP) and not versus?
I started as a fighter and wanted to upgrade my club. I managed to get a wand as loot and another player came running from several hexes away to trade.
Luckily he knew how to trade.
A second attempt went without takers - I was proud to have gathered 19 ore - only to figure out I needed 20 to do anything with it. As the place I gathered it from was far away I wasn't keen on adventuring there again.
Outside of town I had a few occasions where random strangers fought the same monster with me.
At the moment I can see a lot more benefits from working together as against each other. This won't stay that way for ever - but I thought I ask others for their views.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I had my first major alpha game yesterday when I spend close to 4 hours gaming. One bit that got me thinking from the cold start:
There is a lot of talk about player vs player - but with resources spread wide and sooooo many different on offer it got me thinking
How much of the game is rather Player with Player (PwP) and not versus?
I started as a fighter and wanted to upgrade my club. I managed to get a wand as loot and another player came running from several hexes away to trade.
Luckily he knew how to trade.
A second attempt went without takers - I was proud to have gathered 19 ore - only to figure out I needed 20 to do anything with it. As the place I gathered it from was far away I wasn't keen on adventuring there again.
Outside of town I had a few occasions where random strangers fought the same monster with me.
At the moment I can see a lot more benefits from working together as against each other. This won't stay that way for ever - but I thought I ask others for their views.
That is the way that it is right now. No mechanics are in to allow feud, faction or war action. No one wants to be left out of the only towns available for training. When there are more options, there will be some more PVP.
As for working together, Ozem's Vigil is already doing it (last night) in the way of sharing things. It helps get things started. I am sure that it is going on all over, and it is great. I wish that the alpha would be open long enough to see some real trade/economy play.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The devs have always been pretty insistent that PFO should play best with other people, rather than solo. Hopefully the cold start this weekend, and again in EE, will encourage people to form parties, trade, specialize in a couple of craft skills, and generally play the social game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think PvP will occur more often when the penalties are less harsh. I think PvP will occur more often when the victor is able to loot their opponent.
I think the Cold Start essentially forced PwP play for anyone seeking any form of serious loot. Trying to find small enough groups to hit and run while solo was both time consuming and difficult.
Groups of 3 saw some decent challenge.
A group of 5 with appropriate gear was steam-rolling pretty much everything we found. Though we were largely in non-escalations hexes.
Cold start at 100 XP per hour may be kind of rough for novices and new player retention in the long term. Having areas around NPC Settlements being easy enough for solo play might alleviate that. But I do like the focus on group play in order to do more faster.
Back in my WoW days, I was also disappointed that nobody ever grouped for quests because it was "a waste of time" and would only do so for dungeon runs. I hope to see a lot more parties forming in this game.
I had my first major alpha game yesterday when I spend close to 4 hours gaming. One bit that got me thinking from the cold start:
There is a lot of talk about player vs player - but with resources spread wide and sooooo many different on offer it got me thinking
How much of the game is rather Player with Player (PwP) and not versus?
I started as a fighter and wanted to upgrade my club. I managed to get a wand as loot and another player came running from several hexes away to trade.
Luckily he knew how to trade.
A second attempt went without takers - I was proud to have gathered 19 ore - only to figure out I needed 20 to do anything with it. As the place I gathered it from was far away I wasn't keen on adventuring there again.
Outside of town I had a few occasions where random strangers fought the same monster with me.
At the moment I can see a lot more benefits from working together as against each other. This won't stay that way for ever - but I thought I ask others for their views.
Well evenso, in the ideal case, everyone will be working together and it'll be more like pwpvpwp. Otherwise it's just a gank fest.
I think there will be much more resource nodes. I would be disappointed if you couldn't node just about everywhere. Trees, for instance, should be able to be chopped upon.
I think the nodes are very, very scarce in comparison to what it will be. In fact, I would hope when EE drops there will be many more nodes.
I haven't gone exceptionally far, but it seems like the land has way more monsters than nodes. It's almost overpopulated with mobs.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Back in my WoW days, I was also disappointed that nobody ever grouped for quests because it was "a waste of time" and would only do so for dungeon runs. I hope to see a lot more parties forming in this game.
LOTRO had some pretty good systems for parties and quest-sharing, and it had multi-player instances at lower levels than the cap. Many of the group instances can now be played in multiple level ranges. In the Monster Play area, playing solo never seemed very effective to me.
Guild Wars 2 had open world events that could be completed by multiple people without forming a party, and plenty of player cooperation in Realm vs Realm battles.
I still saw a lot of people leveling without parties in both of those games, though.
The time-based xp of PFO will prevent people from binge-leveling through the early- and mid- game to a level cap (even a character left fallow for months will need achievements). Taking away the pressure to level as quickly as possible might be one factor that encourages people to form parties. (Wars and feuds should motivate people to stick together, too.)
Some folks've reported that more nodes appear--and appear with fewer close-by protectors--the further you get from the safety of town. Whether that's reality or perception is, as yet, open to debate, of course.
There are nodes, for sure. I went out with my bow and club and was able to go pretty far. I found a lot of nodes, but they aren't really... environmental. I would hope some day it will be where you can gather water from a stream, pick fruit off a tree, chop at a tree. Would be cool to see a tree fall, even.
The amount of environment and the amount of nodes is not even close. If you go out you may see something sticking out of the ground, but I really hope the game gets to the point where you can grab just about anything.
Gonna need that to have a real economy, imo.
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Back on the topic of PwP vs. PvP or PwPvPwP, I am honestly beginning to wonder if the game should be re-branded.
Ryan seems really intent on human interactions and, I suspect, his vision of that is way broader than PvP'ing, even in organized forms like wars and feuds.
I think the player-player interactions in this game, if it is healthy and robust, will be mostly in the PwP category and are intended (by Ryan, for example) to be such. PwP includes the party-company-settlement-nation hierarchy, of course. But it also includes the massive amount of trade that will ultimately be taking place in game between all different levels of player organization. It will hopefully also be present in the need to band together to fight back escalations that have real teeth. And, finally, it will be present in the simple joy of role playing characters in non-hostile environments.
As was pointed out, PvP will show up in the natural course of there being haves and have nots (or haves that don't have what you have and want it). But even then, the PvP will require PwP for the aggressor party. So, in a healthy game, we will rarely see PvP, but instead will see PwPvPwP. Take, for example, the settlements Aragon and Freevale (now the nation of Kathalphas). They are almost certain to be butting heads with the lawful good settlement of Ozem's Vigil. This is a natural tension that is to be expected in the game and, even, desired. It will make player interactions seem more real and forge stronger bonds between players on the same side.
I think a key to all of this is the dedication of GW to stomping out griefers and gankers and other anti-social behaviors. No one will want to have their account banned if it is 2 years old and almost at level 20! And constantly waiting 2 months to be at level 8? Not really going to be very appealing, either.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This last weekend it became really noticeable to me that when in groups, there might be some disharmony within the group considering nodes. When we came across nodes they were used up after one use. In a good group you might get people taking turns when coming across nodes, but ideally each node should offer 2+ resources gathered to allow multiple characters in the group to harvest the node.
Don't want to see the incentive for one person to rush to nodes while the rest of the group is fighting the mobs so they can get the resources.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The little bit of PvP in alpha was annoying rather than interesting.
Basically if you were gathering and players passed through it made sense to ignore them as 99% of people were helpful even stopping to ask if you needed any gear they were wanting to give away or trade.
The other 1% was usually a small group of archers or wizards who by the time they appeared on your minimap had already killed you from range.
Which firstly was pointless as you just re-spawned and went on your way and secondly was not a particularly meaningful interaction as there is minimal you can do about unexpected ranged attacks from several people at once :D
Of course once EE starts death will be far less trivial but a big part of the issue is that armor and cleric healing are sufficient to defend against NPC monsters but are seriously underpowered compared to player range attacks.
Some folks've reported that more nodes appear--and appear with fewer close-by protectors--the further you get from the safety of town. Whether that's reality or perception is, as yet, open to debate, of course.
The lack of nodes near town is probably the result of players eating them.
As far as fewer protectors. in the mountain Red lion hex a lot of nodes were unprotected but there were also a lot with half a dozen yellow and the occasional red ogres.
In a good group you might get people taking turns when coming across nodes, but ideally each node should offer 2+ resources gathered to allow multiple characters in the group to harvest the node.
For that to work the node would have to be intelligent enough to only offer itself to each character the once.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Don't want to see the incentive for one person to rush to nodes while the rest of the group is fighting the mobs so they can get the resources.
One hopes they won't last too long in a group, doing that. Being kicked out alone in nasty territory might be a marvelous behaviour-controller.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah, not everyone agrees with that opinion though....it also includes the massive amount of trade that will ultimately be taking place in game...Remember also that all of economics is PvP.
Me, for one. Economics is a cooperative cycle. Capitalism is a competitive economic system. But Capitalism isn't economics any more than Socialism is economics. The method is not the medium.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You can predict a few things about combat PvP at EE:
- melee combat PvP will be pretty much non-existant except for contrived duel situations
- the team with the most ranged fighters and wizards combined with the element of surprise will win ... every time
- the REP hits are likely to be so severe that dedicated "gatherer killers" will end up using disposable low XP characters
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yeah, not everyone agrees with that opinion though....it also includes the massive amount of trade that will ultimately be taking place in game...Remember also that all of economics is PvP.
Very true. I should've clarified that I was looking through the lens of "economics concerns itself with the effects of scarcity", which is only one of several aspects of modern economic study.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The little bit of PvP in alpha was annoying rather than interesting.
Basically if you were gathering and players passed through it made sense to ignore them as 99% of people were helpful even stopping to ask if you needed any gear they were wanting to give away or trade.
The other 1% was usually a small group of archers or wizards who by the time they appeared on your minimap had already killed you from range.
Which firstly was pointless as you just re-spawned and went on your way and secondly was not a particularly meaningful interaction as there is minimal you can do about unexpected ranged attacks from several people at once :D
It's alpha where we have nothing to lose. I've been really surprised at the lack of pvp, whether it be meaningful or not.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You can predict a few things about combat PvP at EE:
- melee combat PvP will be pretty much non-existant except for contrived duel situations
- the team with the most ranged fighters and wizards combined with the element of surprise will win ... every time...
I really do not agree with this assessment: I was able to build a fighter (longsword/shield and greatsword) that could easily keep up with the archers and wizards using gap-closers abilities that you can learn from those weapons. The three gap-closers that I used (Shield Charge, Lunge [longsword], and Passing Thrust [Pass-through Thrust? can't recall exactly the name; greatsword] all had Opportunity modifiers, perfect for stunning and interrupting the ranged/spell characters.
I will admit that the gap-closers aren't working perfectly atm (ie. the animations are off: sometimes you don't actually close the gap, but you always deal the damage/effect) but they are sufficient to hold your own in melee.