The Road to MVP-PVP

The truth of becoming better at any game is to fail. The repeated repetition of failure and recognition of this failure allows us to become stronger. It is because as humans, we have the capability to understand flaws and weakness in structure. We withhold knowledge which contains the power to repair these flaws. 

So what are the flaws that I am so prominently referring to? In a suggestion thread I posted on the official Fantasy Online forums not long after the initial release of Player vs Player (which will be referred to as PvP throughout the rest of this thread,) I commented the feel of a "Spaceship like fighter"

Although this may seem like a horrible interpretation, FO PvP truly resembled a button mashing war between two combatants. This portrayal may take away from the serious mood I am hoping to embroider into this post, I surely hope the point is not corrupted within by pixels. 

I believe any player who joined in the PvP festivities within the servers of FO would agree that the idea was horribly executed and lacked proper strategy. The free for all arena easily allowed players to jump in, uninvited, to pick up not one, but two weakened kills. The handful of skills that were incorporated into the mini-game were useless and no there was no diversity in the usage of these skills. These along with many other problems dominoed to the fall of PvP which was never recovered from.

A new year invites not only a fresh start, but brand new opportunities! On that note: Welcome FOLEGACY! Due to the saddening close of the original Fantasy Online game lead by Gamer, the aftermath left behind a reminisce of players who hungered for the good old days. We have regrouped here. As we speak, Llama is constructing salvation (along with several hundred crab-seeking-missiles in his basement. But it is not time to unveil that yet.) We have witnessed the fall of a good game and we can now see where we, as a community, went wrong with that game. We have the duty and privilege to rebuild that. 

While hopefully I will constrain myself to focusing on my main topic, PvP, I will still touch on a few other elements of Fantasy Online game that I personally felt were wrong. I will be analysing other games and their aspects of PvP to hopefully conclude an optimized PvP system that as a community, can agree will fit our needs. 

Please before reading further, I ask you to consider elements you would like in PvP. Keep in mind that we are restricted on players and will in no way be able to add a multitude of game modes that would thrive, let alone survive due to this fact. We would like something we can all participate in and have a good time.

Before Gamer's revealing of what PvP was going to be, it was anyone's guess. This is due to the wide field of PvP experiences games off. What am I talking about? Lets dig deeper into a few games and look at their pvp in a broad view.

The almighty and revered World of Warcraft. Many games have come to claim to be a "WoW-killer" but all challengers have failed to this day. Instead, the game is desolating on its own. None-the-less, World of Warcraft is known for its teamwork-to-victory playstyle. Whether you are playing in battlegrounds which range from 10 to 40 players per team or participating in anticipating 2v2, 3v3, or 5v5 arenas, you never have a dull moment in the PvP. All forms of PvP allowed you to include your friends if desired.

The PvP was based on a progression system with barriers of limitation. Gear was PvP-specific and required currency only obtainable through PvP. However there were cheaper alternatives to this gear which could be purchased through the market for the general gold currency. The main idea was to continually allow players to buy new PvP gear but protect more laid back players by capping the currency for the elite gear with a currency known as conquest points. The weekly cap allowed players under all circumstances to keep on par with the rest of the players. 

         

Gold                             -         Uncapped PvP currency           -         Capped PvP currency

World of Warcraft played on a safe progression system which only required time to participate. The excluded penalty for death in PvP allowed all players to enjoy themselves without worry. However this left the exhilaration of PvP to the gameplay itself which is no in way a bad thing.  

Arenas will be covered and considered in-depth later in this thread.

One of the most despised games of today, Runescape offered a unique PvP solution which captured over 200,000 players at any given time throughout the day. However this number has quickly dissipated due to the harsh removal of PvP to attempt to clone a more WoW-related PvP within the limitations of Java (which has now been moved to HTML5) However, Runescape based their PvP on a dangerous wilderness system. A certain portion of the world map was designated to PvP only (The Wilderness). Within the confines of this area, players may fight within a certain range of levels. The deeper you are within the wilderness, the higher the range of levels. Few sections of this map were labeled multi-combat in which more than one player could attack another player. This was ideal for clanwars and large battles. 

Armor in runescape was in no way PvP-specified and allowed players to carry over any gear they wanted as long as they were willing to risk it. Runescape did not offer tier items and thus items were easier to come by. This truly opened up the market in an economic sense.

Another interesting feature Runescape offered was the combat triangle. It worked like the following:

Runescape was in no way class specified until the introduction of Evolution of Combat which attempted to duplicate World of Warcraft while leaving a Runescape feel. Until then, the combat system ideally worked like the following: Any combat style both had a single weakness against a combat style and a single strength against a combat style. Since players could openly train all stats without any negative effects (regarding gear or skills being subtracted from the overall product) players could easily transition between the three as they pleased or even combine them within a PvP scenario.

Runescape did not incorporate skills for each of the combat styles. Instead, beyond the random hit generator was "special attack" which was integrated on only few weapons. You can review the entire list of special attacks Here.

All these games consist of different elements which sum to their "PvP". Whether you are in the Runescape wilderness fighting players for their items or teaming with your friends to control objectives in World of Warcraft, you consider yourself to be in PvP. Now some of the elements from the games listed above are in no way realistic to this game such as on-use special attacks for the controlling majority of PvP due to the use of skills. 

I am sad to say, there is no perfect formula. Although this post is an attempt to get the community's input together and see if we can resolve a solution. At this point, I will now be breaking down elements which make up PvP and offering up multiple alternatives to those elements (such as dangerous vs safe PvP) Some of the other elements I would like to touch on:

• PvP-specific gear
• PvP-specific classes
• Guild wars
• Strategy
• Incentives and rewards
• Locations / zones
• Ranked PvP
• Level Differences
• Teamwork