Grogbeard Devlog
Grogbeard has a new Devlog over on the Pirates of The Burning Sea website. In this log he talks about his thoughts on PvP in the genre.
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05/25/2004
Findar
quote:
The Case for Player versus Player
Today the drunken pirate will ramble about game philosophy, as all of us MMO pundits are wont to do every now and then…
I am often asked why I like Player versus Player (PvP) games. I played Ultima Online for three years, and played Shadowbane for a long time as an anonymous player, both during beta and for many months into the game’s release. It is not the case that I’m a superb skirmisher, in a fact, I get owned in most conflicts and rarely pick out the most competitive character configurations.
Rather, I’m attracted to PvP because of what it provides to the greater context of a game. The fulcrum of a story is conflict, and any story with wide, sweeping conflict is ideal for a cast of thousands. Enter the MMO.
A mistake frequently made by game developers is the assumption that a given game device is the end, and not a means to an end. Player versus Player combat is probably the worst offender here. Only a narrow demographic of players will play exclusively to attack other players, and they tend to have distinct tastes on who they like to cross blades with or hurl spells at. A PvP game without context has no appeal over your average frag-fest (in fact, it has less appeal because it charges a monthly fee).
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