Laylyn

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Right there is something I hate about PvP. PvPers called PvEers carebears. I don't know why but I just hate when PvPers say that like its a bad thing that some people don't like PvP. I have yet to see a PvEer call a PvPer a "hatebear" or something to that effect. There are PvPers that don't help PvP much because of they way they act.


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I agree with this, "Carebear" seems to say "I'm soft because I don't pvp". This is simply not the case, I know several people who love Cox but they quickly came to hate pvp. Why? because pve there is a community that supports each other, even perfect strangers will seek each other out to reach toward a common goal. That sense of community for many disintegrated the moment they stepped in a zone and suddenly the guy you were helping accomplish goals before is laughing at you and calling you names and or defeating you repeatedly simply because he can and you know he is getting his rocks off.

So people left and slammed the door as they did so with no intention of returning. I have a friend who plays wow and he pvps quite a bit and appears to be very good at it, When he tells me the Horde and Alliance cannot talk and that there are queues to enter zones all I can think is that "I wish we had such things".

Now Laylyn has done a fine job of getting the Guardian community togther and keeping people interested and deserves a lot of credit for the effort but I am not so sure it is the health or lack there of pvp that keeps the game afloat. I would say it is how the two are synergized into their worlds that is the true sign of the health of the game. The problem is that the Dev. team has been working out with their pve arm only and their withered pvp arm has been purposely ignored. Maybe the recent communications indicate that this will change. I for one hope so.

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I've never been a big fan of the word carebear myself. I will use it aginst a pvper that enjoys degrading others, but generally I think anything that retracts from your future player base is a bad idea. I've seen pvp games reach such a level of negative domination that the other side gives up for a time and I don't see that as a positive. I see that as a lose, lose.

The whole thing works best as a win, win. It's a fun white knuckle experience on it's best days and I've seen plenty of people who swore they'd never pvp change their mind and then become rabid pvpers. You have to engage people's imaginations. You also have to bring out the best sportmaship on both sides, but also realize that being human, everyone has bad days.

As for the Guardian war thing, you are giving me way too much credit. There are too many people on both sides that keep the event going and make sure it's fun for everyone. That's not a person, that's a community. That's also something you've been a part of Helmkat, even on the opposing side. I firmly believe it will endure and that playstyle will endure long after I'm gone.

Good things grow and prosper. That's just the nature of things.

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PVP pays the bills. PVE does not.


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didn't get the wub you need in Castles thread so reposted it all here?

While your statement may be accurate for all MMOs (giving you the benefit of the doubt) - and possibly good advice for any new MMO in development - its not remotely accurate for the current income generation of CoH/V.

And there is no massive infusion of resources coming to recode 9 releases of software that had PvP to a game not designed for it balance wise, for a MMO that has clearly peaked.

It would be great to see PvP attract enough NEW sources of revenue to bump up the sub rate, but it hasn't happened yet, and NCSoft/Cryptic aren't going to piss off the majority player base (most of whom don't even read these forums) starving content in issue 11 and 12 to overhaul PvP and *hope* it brings enough new subs. So its bandaids, promises, and then MUO.

ps before you try to label me, not a PvP hater, a number of my alts dabble in PvP.

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See my answer above. For your stuff that got buried in the other thread, SOE is the lead developer for DC, it's should still be due out in Dec 2007. SOE has a standard business model of developing games with pvp optional for people that don't like to pvp. PVP is a basic set of the game and it is always there in the end, for any of their major releases.

It was my understanding that, from the Marvel side, as the Intellectual property holder they wanted everything DC could make and better. Marvel also has a long history for developing pvp games all the way back to the arcade days. Marvel is still slated to go live in Jan 08, from my last verification.

You can verify virtually everything else from the various pages here: http://www.mmorpg.com/

Any other questions?

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numbers such as this: http://borkweb.com/story/007-of-the-...ld-of-warcraft

This: http://www.shadowsinmotion.com/news-...tion-revealed/

or this: http://www.mmogchart.com/





Then again, you may have meant comparitive anaylsis with sites such as this: http://www.mmorpg.com/index.cfm?fp=1024,768,993829437,20060129112952&bhcp=1


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You threw some stats up there to support your case. SO lets just work with those.

The mmorpg.com page. well when you click on the player posts on both CoH (1348 of them) and CoV (405) of them, they dont seem to wash for you. I read through 200 villain posts and found about 15 that even mentioned PvP while the majority mentioned fun, and character creations and costumes and power variety and ease of play. The same demographic trend broke out for the CoH posts. No hue and cry for PvP, not even a wimper of complaint about the existing system.

Now lets take the MMOGCHART: Good numbers. CoX experienced their startup spike, another in around the April May timeframe of 2005, and another on release of CoV. Each time it leveled back down, including the current trend to return back to the point before the release of CoV. So in essence the statistics you pointed out to support your case do not show that the CoX playerbase has an interest in PvP. Those stats do point out that some games that have PvP have large subsciber bases. It seems especially interesting that since CoX is the only superhero game in town (currently) that there would be this lack of upward trending if PvP was so important.

We shall see if this bears out when MUO comes online. Many CoX players PVE and PvP alike will roll over to see what its about. Some will stay some will come back. If they have PvP and it is "better" than in CoX and their subscribers blow through the roof, your point will have been made. If not, it will cement what the majority of the players of CoX, not the game magazines or the PvP minority say . . . CoX is PvE.

Peace and axle grease.

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That wasn't my point with the numbers. You can use the game site to verify the numbers for yourself, but of the 13 million plus people that were playing online games in July 06, less than 400,000 players were playing PVE only games. Of the PVE only games you can track, all but one, disney's toontown for kids (with 110,000 subscribers), has been dying.

I probably did a poor job of explaining that. That would be my fault.

I also don't have anything against PVE people. I do have something against people trying to eject PVP from this game.

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Wow, that explains why almost all of the population is running PvE content, and the PvP zones are almost empty most of the time.

Wait...


(Tip: the importance of PvP in a game designed from the ground-up to be based on PvP is not the same as the importance of PvP in a game designed for PvE. Also, claiming you know the population behaviour for your servers when you aren't a dev and have no access to that information makes your entire message suspect.)

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numbers such as this: http://borkweb.com/story/007-of-the-...ld-of-warcraft

This: http://www.shadowsinmotion.com/news-...tion-revealed/

or this: http://www.mmogchart.com/





Then again, you may have meant comparitive anaylsis with sites such as this: http://www.mmorpg.com/index.cfm?fp=1024,768,993829437,20060129112952&bhcp=1


Some of sites are not printable here due to disclosure agreements. But no, I have no idea at all...

PVP isn't optional for COX's long term survival. The PVE is stale and most people in the anti pvp crowd turn to badge hunting just to keep themselves entertained. Most of the people I talked to had servers that went through a shock when the zone bugs effectively shut down pvp on most servers from november to february. Most people stopped logging in and serveral people quit, who are only now coming back. Since COX is a game of many alts, these people turned out to be a lot of toons people had known in other venues.

On one of the first four pages on this thread someone brought up that SWG had been pvp centric as it's end game and had then switched to pve for a bit. They incorrectly assumed that's what hurt that game. By contrast, in 2003, SWG had the biggest openning of any MMORPG which it lost by being eclipsed by WOW. It's numbers dropped overnight and half it's servers closed by becoming a grind game with Jedi and the CU. It numbers were harmed even worse by becoming even more PVE centric NGE. SWG had to suck up that PVP paid the bills to begin regrowing now.

While approaching 9 million paying subscribers, which is more than the Nelson rating of most tv shows, WOW has servers that are labeled PVE and Roleplaying, which have pvp zones and have pvp hot options. Eve Online, MXO, Guildwars, COX, Vanguard, and every other game have the pvp components. Warhammer, Age of Conan, Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, Star Trek Online, Marvel, DC, Firefly Online, and World of Darkness Online, are being pre built with PVP in mind and that's every major game being released from 2007-2009.

PVP pays the bills. PVE does not.

That's not me saying that. That's the entire video game industry saying that. They are saying that now. They are saying that through 2010 and quite possibly beyond.

In fact, PVE does the opposite of pay the bills. PVE only develops a core of players that burn through 3 month of development in a weekend. Does that make them happy? Not at all, they go on to cry on whatever forum board that another 3 months of development can't be done instantly to stop their boredom.

As much as the anti pvp crowd might stalk these forums and scream endlessly in the throws of obsessive compulsive disorder that they don't like pvp in this game. This game will have to have it and balance it to survive.

If the developers of this game ever get silly enough to listen to the screams of the anti pvp crowd, this game will have its life support plug pulled much sooner. Right now, without the balance issues being fixed, this game is expected to only edge out a suvivable profit by the time Marvel and DC come out. Paradoxically, NCSoft is developing Marvel and I'll bet real money it's being required to be absolutely balanced from the beginning.

PVP creates long time rivalries. PVP creates player driven content. PVP communities are the group that stay with a game for years in the highest numbers.

You might believe in your heart pvp doesn't pay the bills. But all the industrial side market research for the past two years says that you are saying the world is flat.

Here is your proof from just one major developer, watch all 7:26 minutes: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZOTRjWGxmjI

Nice job Hex.

Name- HAUNT
Server- Guardian
Faction- Villains
Size- Medium 40 member cap by guild charter
Recruiting- By invite only and only after agreeing to the rules outlined on www.ghost-pa.com
Contacts- @Laylyn
PVP Preference- Zone (After 2 years of 2-4 hours of nightly base defense in SWG, bases raids don't appeal to us. Also, Arena is like fighting WW III inside a small McDonalds. Much of the guild is active military or former military, so for us, no search and destroy equals boring.)

History- HAUNT / Ghost was the largest Imperial guild in old SWG on Bria, which was also the largest server. We averaged 300-500 active members and had the first metropolis not only on the server, but in the game. Most of the core members have been playing together since at least 2003.

We were an active member of the Imperial Coalitition which spanned 28 guilds, consisted of over 1,800 pvpers, covered the globe, and the IC / ID dominated the pvp scene of Bria even while typically outnumbered 3 to 1 by the other side. We are actively involved with the Dominion again, which is what that organization evolved into, meaning we aren't always on Guardian and COX, if there is pvp elsewhere.

As many of you know, SWG killed itself. We moved on to other projects, since our former game is worth less than used toliet paper now.

We are currently here as a villains only group, in WOW, and in Guildwars. Being tired of large guild politics, we have capped our membership to avoid click problems and we are really, really strict about recruitment, having turned away over 200 applicants since January. That doesn't mean any of them were bad players, it just means they weren't what we were looking for. Wierdly enough, sometimes good players don't match with good guilds, it's just play style differences.

We've been lucky enough to part time here and have found some good opponent guilds. We are currently happy to be pvping against many of the Guardian Hero guilds and enjoy boughts with the servers largest Hero guild TA, which has proven to be a lot of fun and generally is a good sports thing overall. Several other local SG guilds are stepping up as well. So, I never see Guardian becoming the prime time ghost town I hear about on other servers. It's always good to develop your enemies, we've got more groups trying to fight us now than we normally have time for in a week.

We like playing the underdogs. We like flipping the game on its head. We like winning when the game mechanics are designed to prevent this.

We are also looking at other games being developed in 2007 and 2008. Large scale battles and flipping the controlling PVP faction of a server with allies is our thing. We're looking to blow people up here and elsewhere for years to come.