Possible New PvP Server- Post Your Feedback!

[Lane]

Image/Devnoob are taking ideas for a possible restart/new based PvP server.


http://www.eqpvp.com/index.php/topic,1713.msg9031/topicseen.html#new


Teams PvP vs FFA?

Item Loot- yes or no?

Pros and Cons of both servers?

Would be great to see feedback either here or on eqpvp.com!

[Maze_EQ]

Full loot(except bags ofc)

No level range between

K/D leaderboard

max level 50

Do it or sthu

[Tabasco]

When I first started tinkering with emu I was going to try a pvp server that could possibly refresh the attitude that you used to be able to find on Tallon Zek. Early on a lot of people had a role-played attitude about it and the server was basically PvE with real accountability.

The idea might not fit what you're wanting to do, but I'll share it because I would love to see it realized, especially by people with experience handling the issues that come with PvP servers.

Basically everyone starts out on the same team, Harmony, or whatever you want to call it.
Once you get a certain amount of people the server picks one at random and presents a popup trying to entice them to Discord. (That's where Discordant Whisper came from, which ended up being pure PvE)
You would probably need to tweak the ratio, but the idea is to maintain a pool of outlaws. I was thinking 1 in 10, but it really depends on your total population.

You could be grouped up with someone and they could suddenly be able to attack you, assuming they decide to go rogue. I figured I would announce the killer and the killed so that people are compelled to start tracking them.
The idea is to get as many kills as you can before you are taken down, or even group up with other discordants if possible. You could set up leaderboards based on longest time alive, longest streak, etc.

Once you die from any PvP encounter, regardless of team, you get put on a third team, Contemplation. In this state you cannot engage or be engaged in any kind of PvP. This way someone who is in a PvE mood can avoid being griefed, but buffs and heals would have to be set up as same team only.
After a period of time, maybe a few hours, you revert to Harmony automatically. Alternatively, you could complete a relatively simple quest to get there quicker. That way you could get back to the action with enough delay to prevent bind rushing.

I had most of it coded but I gave up after seeing how common cheats were in use just in PvE. I didn't think I could keep up with all of the necessary babysitting.

[sunbeam]

You know, maybe this is peeing on your thread or something, I don't know.

But with the population of most of these emu servers how can you possibly have a pvp server?

Seems to me it is uncommon to have more than 5 or 10 people on at a time for most. A few seem to get into the 20 to 40 range.

A very few have more, then you have the bot army servers and P1999.

PVP has always been less popular than PVE.

So how many guys can you expect to play on a PVP server?

10 people on the server... just doesn't seem very interesting. More like Spy vs. Spy.

[Lane]

Usually the PvP servers bring in a population of anywhere from 50-100 players, at least, at launch. EQ PvP has a small community, but it is very popular with a few hundred of us, who are constantly lurking forums for something new.

When Project1999 PvP was release, we saw over 600 players try out the server. Unfortauntely, it died out quite severely and now is in the 100 player range (which is still good), but players want something new due to the #1 guild on P99 PvP just dominating everything based on gear and numbers.

[Lane]

When I first started tinkering with emu I was going to try a pvp server that could possibly refresh the attitude that you used to be able to find on Tallon Zek. Early on a lot of people had a role-played attitude about it and the server was basically PvE with real accountability.

The idea might not fit what you're wanting to do, but I'll share it because I would love to see it realized, especially by people with experience handling the issues that come with PvP servers.

Basically everyone starts out on the same team, Harmony, or whatever you want to call it.
Once you get a certain amount of people the server picks one at random and presents a popup trying to entice them to Discord. (That's where Discordant Whisper came from, which ended up being pure PvE)
You would probably need to tweak the ratio, but the idea is to maintain a pool of outlaws. I was thinking 1 in 10, but it really depends on your total population.

You could be grouped up with someone and they could suddenly be able to attack you, assuming they decide to go rogue. I figured I would announce the killer and the killed so that people are compelled to start tracking them.
The idea is to get as many kills as you can before you are taken down, or even group up with other discordants if possible. You could set up leaderboards based on longest time alive, longest streak, etc.

Once you die from any PvP encounter, regardless of team, you get put on a third team, Contemplation. In this state you cannot engage or be engaged in any kind of PvP. This way someone who is in a PvE mood can avoid being griefed, but buffs and heals would have to be set up as same team only.
After a period of time, maybe a few hours, you revert to Harmony automatically. Alternatively, you could complete a relatively simple quest to get there quicker. That way you could get back to the action with enough delay to prevent bind rushing.

I had most of it coded but I gave up after seeing how common cheats were in use just in PvE. I didn't think I could keep up with all of the necessary babysitting.


This is a very cool idea but I think the idea of harmony for us is a little too passive. I really do like the "murderer" flag idea though

[Aonelyn]

Guildwars.

[knowom]

Sound interesting Tabasco I like the idea of sort of player driven load balancing for team pvp. I kind of wanted to do that for DotaQuest a bit through questing and even standard farming. Your idea is nice as well though and would likely compliment a bit of what I all ready had in mind for player driven load balancing for pvp/pve within the game.

As far as what Lane is asking with this topic I think it depends on the server and it's goals. If I had to pick which I'd prefer to see it would probably be team pvp and no loot, but it depends on how the server is setup and managed in part as well. I don't find EQ to really be the type of game that was designed well in mind for item loot due to the fact that the loot itself can either be too powerful in relative terms or too hard to acquire. The end result is your going to get organized gank flash mobs that sporadically run around grieving everyone and no can really deter against worth a damn.

UO had full loot, but it was designed just casual friendly enough in mind that even newbies could band together and feel like they were making a difference. I don't see that really being quite the same situation in EQ it's a top heavy game economy where the 1% kind of dictates and rules the 99%. That's just my viewpoint on the subject, but everyone is kind of entitled to their own. If I did provide item loot I'd intentionally make loot itself more easy to obtain in general to offset rampant loot whoring player grieving. With it being team it might not be as big a concern though and with enough teams.

[knowom]

Usually the PvP servers bring in a population of anywhere from 50-100 players, at least, at launch. EQ PvP has a small community, but it is very popular with a few hundred of us, who are constantly lurking forums for something new.

When Project1999 PvP was release, we saw over 600 players try out the server. Unfortauntely, it died out quite severely and now is in the 100 player range (which is still good), but players want something new due to the #1 guild on P99 PvP just dominating everything based on gear and numbers.

See that's exactly the sort of thing I want to avoid for DotaQuest I want a flexible server that isn't designed around hefty requirements in order to compete and sporadic enough that no one can easily just dominate and be king of the hill indefinitely.

I really want a different kind of PVE/PVP hybrid experience where it's not simply a case of a player coming along and zerging you or ganking you at low health. I'd like to design a little of that randomness into the PVE as well so it's hard to know what to expect. A group might be planning a gank then get blindsided as a result of a quest turn in another zone.

A lot of PVP/PVE gaming is a bit stale in my eyes and in need of innovation from developers daring enough to step outside the box a bit and try out brash and different new idea's. Some games are bit too linear or predictable and boring due to it.

[atrayas]

I always liked how eq2 pvp worked with the goods (qeynos) the bads (freeport)...then they introduced neutrals, this is were it got interesting, if you chose to become neutral you were kos to both sides, so it was just pure mahem from then on. Was a quest of some sorts to become neutral and they had there own little camp to go to.

I also loved the TZ style from back in the day. I hated pandemonium so much but tbh my most hated nemesis was in a guild called Liberation of the underfoot...lil guy had a faster pc than me at the time so he would just zone camp me or corpse camp me. But the 4 teams (humans, darks, shorts, elves) was pretty awsome.

[Tabasco]

my most hated nemesis was in a guild called Liberation of the underfoot

I was one of the first members of LotU. I used to hunt with a rogue that went by Pheelmi. We always used to joke that someday we would be reminiscing in public and get attacked by someone we killed.

[djlegit83]

loved TZ, was in human team guilds and a couple of 'darky' guilds.

The problem with PvP on EMU is there are so many freakin cheaters which takes the fun out of it. There were probably cheaters back in the day, but I bet there were far fewer percentage wise.

[rhyotte]

Lane,

I had a concept I started to work on for a server I was tinkering with....

--- Dragons Vs. Giants -+- Take the original premise, tweak it, and extend it.

--- Antonica:: Mod the barbarian starting areas to more properly correspond to Giants. Possibly mod *elves* DE and HE respectively for an association with dragons? Etc..
1) Extended antonica with the Drakkin and associated zones. Mainly for the Giants, but mod in some Dragons properly.

--- Kunark:: Take everone's fave Leezards and tweak in a ... neutrality tie-in / conflict for the Dragon Vs. Giants premise that was Vellious...

--- Vellious:: Ahhh good old Vellious! Loved that expansion... :) Dragons Vs. Giants anyone? In my opinion they never really finished out the D vs. G story. Take most of the quests for gear and armor etc that is in place and obviously mod things upward, and outwards a good bit.

---+--- Ok so, the premise that ties in PvP and PvE is that players start out sworn to Dragon or Giant Faction / side via their choice of deity. Lizards, Cats, Half Elves, Halflings, and probably Humans can swear to a neutral path that straddles the story line in a nicely blurry / grey way.
-- Here is the PVP tie in... A Dragon sworn player kills a Giants sworn player... said player gets approximately 10x the faction hit that killing a PvE mob would generate, plus the player gets to loot the fallen Giant Sworn's body of a varied amount of slots. This variance would be level dependant. Low level players: you get 1 item from them, and it is a non critical slot. Medium level players: you get 2 items and 1 can possibly be a main type slot. High level players: you get 3 items from pretty much any non Bags-Inventory slot. The amount of faction and experience you get from a player uses the standard CON system already in place, but obviously modified for a PvP _+_ :)

This faction can be not only Dragon / Giant related, but Deity as well. The spell system would be worked over to have a GREY area of base spells, and then the really interesting spells are Dragon / Giant / Deity related. Well, spells and/or gear etc... :) Btw.. Player (A) kills Player (B), gets a Main Slot Loot: Brestplate baby! This is Dragon Vs. Giant btw, Player (B) was Giant faction, and his breastplate was his spankin' new Quest one! Congrats to player (A), you just got an item you can turn in for your own Dragon Quest Breastplate! ... PvP BABY! YEAH!

Just a few old ideas that were rattling around in my musty, dusty brain.
Gary

[knowom]

I honestly feel MMO's are better when they cater to more than two sides. Utilizing Dragons vs Giants as form of peace treaty alliance with opposing deities or factions belong to them would be nice though. Something like having each faction at war with one another then using Dragon vs Giants a a deity that can make you neutral to opposing faction members of the same deity.

[rhyotte]

Adding in Deity dimensions to the mix would certainly make matters interesting, which is why I mentioned them as both a faction thing and a Spells Thing.

[Lane]

Thanks every one for the great feedback. I'm not the one designing the server, just a player, but figured some one needs to poll together what the general population would like to see.

From what I gather most people want something innovative and at least 2-3 teams (haven't heard any one vote for FFA yet,)

I played on VZ so I loved race wars, but ultimately I feel due to emu population 4 teams would be a bit too much. I was more in favor of what rhyotte said and go for a SZ themed server were your team is based on your diety. The problem with diety based PvP is evil is at an advantage is classic. It becomes not so bad in Kunark due to Paladin's becoming a heavy hitter for the good side though xD.

Also, on P99 forums, Nilbog actually had a cool idea for geographical mapped PvP. The only problem with that is the server, from what I gather, is going for more of a classic approach so I'm not sure how the lore would tie in. Here's the pic he made.

http://i41.tinypic.com/23l12ck.jpg

[Lane]

loved TZ, was in human team guilds and a couple of 'darky' guilds.

The problem with PvP on EMU is there are so many freakin cheaters which takes the fun out of it. There were probably cheaters back in the day, but I bet there were far fewer percentage wise.

Dev them have disabled maps so you can't use MQ2 maps. Also, they have some sort of anti-hacking logging method that if you loaded MQ2, they would know of it pretty quickly and you would be either suspended or banned.

[satora54]

The problem is, I'm not going to take all the time to max out any toon just because it's a pvp server.

Not sure why most people have avoided a custom server instead of being like every other server with the small added bonus of pvp.
Frankly, i don't want to play another progression server, they're a dime a dozen.
A new idea is needed in my opinion, higher xp rate, gear drops to balance pvp etc.
but I do think that teams could be a good idea, Whether it's based on race or deity.

[atrayas]

With the small population of emu and the proposed deity faction war's, i'd suggest going with maybe 3 teams with 3 factions.

So Starting off you would be agnostic. evil, neutral or good. The later on you could do some sort of quest for the deity you choose to be. Make Deity's evil, neutral or good as well. So in the end you have a pretty big pool of possible outcomes.

Evil race, good god
Evil race neutral god
Evil race, Evil god

etc etc.

[knowom]

With the small population of emu and the proposed deity faction war's, i'd suggest going with maybe 3 teams with 3 factions.

So Starting off you would be agnostic. evil, neutral or good. The later on you could do some sort of quest for the deity you choose to be. Make Deity's evil, neutral or good as well. So in the end you have a pretty big pool of possible outcomes.

Evil race, good god
Evil race neutral god
Evil race, Evil god

etc etc. With the DotaQuest server my aim is 3 to 5 teams most likely maybe even higher 6, 9, 10, or 15 though I'd like for it to divide by either 3 or 5. I really don't want a 2 sided pvp system though. I don't mind utilizing restricted 2 sided pvp battle encounters between factions, but collectively I want to use a more complex strategic social warfare pvp system. Setting it up pvp in a good vs evil faction standing that determines who they could attack or not attack would be cool to do I believe.

I'd love to see something like pure evil unable to attack anyone with a negative standing below neutral and pure good unable to attack anyone with a positive standing above neutral. Neutral itself would only be able to attack others up to about 50/50 good/evil faction standing.

The whole good vs evil vs neutral (grey area) is a great system though for pvp though. I really feel pvp is at it's best in a mmo with that type of environment. Could always be done in other ways as well. You could probably take the standard UO blue vs grey vs red system and incorporate that into a form of EQ pvp around your faction standing.

Blue you'd earn over time, but killing a innocent player would revert you all the way back to neutral/grey after so many kills in that manner you'd turn red and the more of them you accumulate would raise the severity of it and penalties upon death. The murder counts themselves could decay and atrophy over time like they do in UO.

Blues could probably earn special items, but they could be murdered for them. Reds probably couldn't earn special items, but any of the ones they acquired maybe they could be augmented if they met the faction standing requirements. Reds would probably lose like a 10% of stats/xp if killed maybe just stats if killed by anyone other than a fully aligned Blue player.

I hate WoW style PVP it was too much of a pure gear check with no real adrenaline rush to it. What made games like UO and DAOC great is that rush of being blind sided and just being unexpectedly steamrolled or running for you damn life to escape or overcoming crazy odds that you outright should have probably succumbed to.

[rhyotte]

When Velious came out...the struggle of Giant Vs. Dragon became a major focus...then the next expansion it seemed to just dry up and blow away unfinished. I know a lot of us old timers who would enjoy a continuation of that. It also lends itself nicely to PvP with PvE added in for spice.

Neutrality is nearly chaos personified if done right... take the cat city and mod it a bit, make it a neutrality city where all kinds of stuff can happen... maybe even take shadowhaven..?

Personally, I think base spells should be "grey" and speciality spells should be Faction // Deity to make things most interesting. A lot of the old quests from Velious were reasonably cool, but could be made really excellent with the addition of PvP carefully mixed in.

[devn00b]

Watching this and the thread located @ http://www.eqpvp.com/index.php/topic,1713.0.html

and will be taking in some ideas and fleshing them out over the coming week. If anyone has any ideas to add to that thread please do.

Thanks


/dev/n00b

[haggzor]

I'm looking through the new server data and I can't seem to figure out which data flag you even set for creating a PvP server. Is it the GuildWars flag? Something else? Thanks!

[knowom]

Wow been awhile since I made some posts in this thread, but it's nice to see some of the stuff devn00b did with the ideas talked about. Love the town wars and bounties thing you've got going on and team pvp in general though it could use better balancing. I've got additional idea's in mind to expand upon what your all ready going on with Rolfron Zek a bit further somethings to think about. Those are nice custom touches and I think that's a step in the right direction along with additional mixtures of nostalgia meets customizing a little bit of a 50/50 blend to me is quite ideal one part familiar one part new and exciting. This server is very intriguing.

Instead of breaking teams up into Good Team: Erudites, Humans, Half Elves, Halflings
Neutral Team: Barbarians, Dwarves, Wood Elves, High Elves, Gnomes
Evil Team: Dark Elves, Ogres, Trolls, Iksars

Keep the general premise of Good/Neutral/Evil, but make it so it isn't class/race dependent limit deity choice to 3 options each one representing good/neutral/evil guilds at /guildwar against each other. Also then make it so race/class can pick any of the 3 deity options.

This way class balance is not at all a problem you don't have the issue of a certain faction alignment being w/o a certain class role nor do you have a real issue of small/medium/large either your simply picking.

That's one option or something more like this with Humans having 3 deity option determining alignment due to the monk issue.

Good Team - Barbarians. Erudites, Half Elves, Halflings, Humans
Neutral Team- Dwarves, Wood Elves, High Elves, Gnomes, Humans
Evil Team - Dark Elves, Ogres, Trolls, Iksars, Humans

Lastly if you introduced Vah/Froglok race options you could do the following by enabling Froglok to play Monk class like was recently done on live. I'd probably insert Froglok class in place of orc camp in Sro and Vah located underneath Aviak tower in South Karana both those locations would actually fit fairly seamlessly and believably for those two player races types actually.

Good - Barbarian, Dwarf, Gnome, High Elf, Wood Elf
Neutral - Erudite, Froglok, Half Elf, Human, Ogre
Evil - Dark Elf, Halfling, Iksar, Troll, Vah Shir

[Ketzerei84]

Teams PvP vs FFA?

Item Loot- yes or no?


I'm an old hat Sullon Zek player. 3-team deity based PvP would be awesome, but hybrid it with an RZ-style level range restriction as well - say +/- 3. One of the suckiest things about SZ was max levels griefing newbs - it helped destroy the server population. So my answer: Hybrid PvP =p

Item loot was always a source of nuisance to me, and frankly with everything being no-drop in later expansions it's pretty much moot. Don't bother, or people will whine the second luclin is available.