Geoff Tuffli, a Combat Systems Designer for Cryptic Studios, has posted the third in a series of articles about PvP over at Cryptic Studios Blog. Cryptic Studios is the developer of the upcoming title Marvel Universe Online. In this third article he addresses the pros and cons of persistent and instanced PvP.
PvP Considerations: Persistence and Instancing
Most MMORPG players are familiar with the concept of instancing - you (possibly on a team) enter a zone/dungeon and a separate instance of that zone or dungeon is created that only you and your team have access to. Zones where multiple groups of people can encounter each other are generally referred to as persistent zones.
Traditionally, there have been two dominant design motivations for instancing:
First, the game server architecture in some cases makes it problematic to support an unlimited number of people in the same zone, and instancing is a way of managing this by limiting the number of people in a particular location.
Secondly, in the early days of MMORPGs one of the ongoing problems was players camping valuable spawns or drops, effectively locking other players out of content.
As PvP design began to be approached more methodically, it became clear that instancing might serve a third purpose by ensuring that two sides were at least somewhat balanced against one another in terms of level band or numbers in an attempt to maintain a fair fight.
Instancing in PvP is not without its drawbacks, however. The problem with fights always being balanced is that they are, well, always balanced; there is an inevitable loss of spontaneity. In an instanced fight, whether it be an arena match or a World of Warcraft-style battleground, you will always know certain factors (depending on the system) - the level band of your opponents, their numbers or perhaps their PvP rank.
This also means that if a game is completely instanced PvP, it is much harder to sustain any kind of guild versus guild grudge. Instanced PvP - particularly if you have substantial rewards - is generally random to avoid people gaming the system. But guild versus guild "wars" can contribute to a sense of purpose and strengthen guild community bonds.
The source of PvP rewards plays a very large role in determining the optimal design path. Are characters rewarded directly upon defeating another character? Achieving an objective that may result in PvP conflict? Achieving an objective that must always result in PvP conflict? Depending on relative rank?
If an objective, what is the nature of the objective? Competitive PvE? Territorial control? Capture the flag?
Each of these when combined with either an instance or found within a persistent environment will have a dramatic effect on the gameplay, and rewards need to be matched appropriately since it is rewards that will frequently direct where and how players will attempt to break the system.
When PvP is based primarily in a persistent environment, if you reward characters directly upon defeating other characters and the reward does not change much depending on level or number of players, you can expect a great deal of griefing, including roving bands of players on the lookout for easy pickings.
If you reward characters only on achieving objectives, you will have to be very careful to avoid players figuring out how to game the system either by avoiding PvP entirely or even collaborating with other players. The former was an issue with the Warburg PvP zone in City of Heroes; the latter is an issue with battlegrounds in World of Warcraft that allowed for premade teams.
If the system is focused on equalized teams, expect it to be favored by PvPers who like the social kudos of a relative ranking system and hated by PvPers who prefer more of an organic territorial system such as used by Dark Age of Camelot.
Some of these trump others. For example, if you wish to give substantial rewards for PvP, you need to establish concrete methods to block the more obvious methods for gaming the system. If you reward directly upon defeating another character, you need to ensure that your system has some method of keeping gank squad behavior in check.
Objective-based PvP, too, is especially vulnerable to class balance. Whereas combat designers will generally spend a healthy amount of time fine tuning class versus class fights, objective-based PvP like capture the flag style games or holding capture points will favor not only certain abilities and classes, but also certain playstyles.
It is not enough to say, "I hate instances, mini-games and level-banded PvP rewards." Each of these factors is a solution, not a problem. As a designer, one first needs to examine what are the problems you are trying to solve, and then look at the various solutions to determine the impact.
Remember, too, that each factor added to the stew may synergize either negatively or positively with the rest, so one has to keep a very sharp eye on the effects of any combinations.
Cryptic Studios: PvP Considerations: Persistence and Instancing
Geoff Tuffli, a Combat Systems Designer for Cryptic Studios, has posted the third in a series of articles about PvP over at Cryptic Studios Blog. Cryptic Studios is the developer of the upcoming title Marvel Universe Online. In this third article he addresses the pros and cons of persistent and instanced PvP.
You can see Part 1 by Clicking here & Part 2 by Clicking here.
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