Community Column: Competition Between Players

In Sean Bulger's latest column, he looks at the idea of competition between players as part of building an MMO community. Every other Wednesday, Bulger chimes in with a new community focused column here on WarCry.

One of the most controversial topics you'll run into with online game development - but certainly far from the only one - is competition between players. The very idea of Player versus Player (PvP) content can scare off a number of players and make plenty more question the potential community of any game with it. It would seem that a fairly large amount of MMOers believe that PvP is detrimental to their enjoyment of the game, that it draws in a fairly bad crowd, and it hurts the community for a game. Between the PvP severs of most games and the popularity of primarily PvE games and PvE content, tends to showcase this mindset.

Read more after the leap.

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Thanks for the read.

This should never have been attached to Darkfall, this is flat out insulting.

And furthermore, would a lil spell check/proofread be too much to ask?

~Manaburn

I'm going to be fair (haha) and look at it what he said from an open point of view (no bigotted opinions here!) I have NEVER been a fan of PvP unless im playing an assassin type character class or a Berserker as both give me insatiable bloodlust and I need to kill everyone I see even if they're on my own side.

When you talk about PvP and gaming communities you have to look at the communities themselves and not gamer's as a whole.
World of warcrafts PvP communities attract alot of gankers who Im still hoping will die fomr something incurable as THEY are the ones who set out to spoil your fun by killing you needlessly. Controlled PvP area's like Wintergrasp in Northrend or Battlegrounds actually makes a game pretty clean because then if you get your head sawn off it was out of you going into the battle knowing what to expect.

I'll admit as well that Age of Reckoning set out it's PvP system fantastically well, you earn experince and Reknown which actually rewards you for playing with PvE and PvP useful items. They also made their Core server's with a certain touch of Genious. They made it all open world PvE but in certain territories you get flagged and once you leave again your fine.

The most Balanced PvP system I ever saw was in Guildwars where it doesn't matter if your running around in the best gear around with the best runes, if your setup isn't right your not going to get anything done meaning for once its the skill of the player sitting down and chaining their skills with their attributes who win and not the player with the biggest nastiest sword. I once took my necromancer in without any runes as a Necro / Dervish and with the spells I had running any damage I took was mitiged by 75% between my minions and they also took all debuffs and negitive affects off me giving me insane survival versus the better players and then those same minions stomped the attacking players. Quite entertaining actually ^^.

Personally When it comes down to seeing who the bigger jerks are in MMO communities it's not the PvP crowd, they're usually ok guys to talk to (as long as we're winning haha) its the PvE crowd I keep an observant Eye on. PvP players will usually grade you on how well you managed to defend the flag or base, how fast you took down that twink in green gear or how effectively you helped an ally. In PvE you get judged on your gear more than your skill and most elitest bastards will say "sorry your not good enough to come here, your gear suck's" never mind the fact Im a much better player than you for being able to do big things in this gear but the fact Im not shining like a piece of polish glass means IM the bad player?
PvE players usually have a much worse attitude towards each other, be it because you won an item they wanted, or you couldn't do your job in a dungeon (was silenced as a healer or stunned as a tank) or because you just don't feel spending 9 hours a day gearing up is a fun course of action they will have something to say.

That's just my own personal experince as someone who has played every aspect of mmo's be they F2P or P2P. Warcraft is a prime example of this in all fairness down to the fact it has the most interesting gearing up system but also because it has one of the worse communities online. While eveyrone says Guildwars is nothing but Children they atleast respect each other and the only time you see Hostility is in the Alliance battles and even then it's just trash talk and you don't take it seriously.

So yeh, my final conclusion in this reply is that you find more jerks in PvE than you do in PvP but again I tihnk it's down to personal experince in the game you play as opposed to which of the 2 major branches you play. I won't discuss player economics now as I think this post has gone on long enough ^_^.

Dragunai

But...I like to attack other players...