pvp vs pvp
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@RedRocket said in The 3-Month Players:
I’m going to go on a little rant here but stick with me, I promise it is on topic.
DarkMetal was the most well designed WoD MUSH to ever exist. Wanna fight about it? Here we go!
The reason your players are burning out after 3 months is that there are no stakes in your game.
I hate to sound like one of /those/ people but… game devs today are too soft on their players.
It practically takes an act of God to kill off someone’s character so they get stuck with the same character for long periods of time, or they make alts and that results in burn out just as quick because they can never find in-depth character development with their focus divided between multiple alts.Dark Metal got a few things right that no one else did.
- Anyone could die at any time.
- There were safe zones for each sphere if you wanted to just do soft RP. You never needed to be in danger as long as you stayed in your zone.
- Making a new character was fast and easy! If you died it wasn’t a big deal.
- Staff didn’t give a s*** what you played, as long as you played, so approval was automated.
On Dark Metal you had to fight tooth and nail to survive long enough to get to a point you could walk in the mixed spaces without being in danger of being made into someone’s midnight snack and you were never fully safe.
You had to struggle to become enough of a bad-ass not to have to live in fear all the time. I can not emphasize enough how important that feeling of progression is to the health of a game.
People want their actions and choices to matter.
When they don’t, people get bored and they wander off.
It’s the same reason people add stakes and drama to TV shows. If nothing changes, there is no point.If you want your game to survive, learn to crush your players hopes and dreams. Learn to let players kill each other off.
Character churn will save your game from player churn.
I couldn’t agree with this take more. It’s frustrating that overall, there is no real active game at the moment in the WoD genre at least where things are truly dangerous. The stakes are abysmal, and those of us who crave actual danger and grimdark stuff don’t have any PVP-focused options. There’s a lot of talk on this thread about how you don’t -need- to have PVP to make a fun game, and how PVP isn’t for everyone – but what about for the people that it is, and who crave conflict and competition?
This issue is amplified by the general disdain non-conflict players have in relation to PVP. Even if you have no problem with people who want to play on WoD games with low conflict, low conflict players tend to have intense issues with those who want a game with stakes and higher conflict, and yes, PVP. There’s been a significant trend of WoD games moving towards low-conflict type setups over the years, and game runners get surprised when people don’t stick around. How can they not see that what attracts so many gamers to World of Darkness is the grittiness of the setting, and the fear that comes with it?
There needs to be a game that embraces PVP instead of tossing it aside and acting like there isn’t a real audience for it.
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@Cygnus I want conflict to come from the environment and NPCs. I don’t want to worry about my character getting ganked because another player thinks it’s fun.
If I want PVP, I’ll boot up Rivals or something similar.
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@catzilla That’s cool, have fun!
There’s still players who want this in WoD though.
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@catzilla I think there’s a spectrum, here. With No PvP At All on one end and Character Whim Gankery at the other. Inter-PC conflict is an inherent part of WoD muing, especially when you’ve got all kinds of splats running about. Should they have kill on sight orders? No, not to my taste. But there should still be conflict that can escalate.
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Pvp doesn’t drive story conflict, it drives player conflict.
Characters with conflicting goals creates interesting situations. Players with conflicting goals creates butthurt. I am just too old for this shit.
let it be a challenge to you
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There’s space for games all along the PvP spectrum to exist, not everything has to be for all of us.
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@sao said in The 3-Month Players:
Pvp doesn’t drive story conflict, it drives player conflict.
Characters with conflicting goals creates interesting situations. Players with conflicting goals creates butthurt. I am just too old for this shit.
This is the kind of absolutism I’m talking about, I completely reject this. I’ve had much better stories on games that supported PVP almost always. But you wouldn’t see me go to a non-PVP game and talk about how they don’t have PvP and it’s boring to me. I just don’t make characters there.
Low-conflict players always feel the need to come to PVP games and try to change how they are because they are usually quite popular and they want to be involved without any of the risk. This starts the slow slide into tone-policing and blandness which affects games that try to cater to both sides of the community.
Some people dig a more bland game without risk. All the power to them, all the games are like that now so no shortage of spaces for them. But we need a space built for PVP-oriented players that does not cater to the PVE mindset.
This isn’t just a MU* problem by the way. Check out the Dune: Awakening discord to see how modern triple A games also have this problem. They tried to capitalize on the hardcore PVP players as well as the PVE players, and that entire discord is just people fighting about how PVP or PVE is superior.
Neither is. Both are valid.
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I think there are actually 3 groups of players. PVE people, IC-PVP people, and OOC-PVP people.
PVE people don’t like PVP, or accept that it happens but do everything they can to avoid it.
IC-PVP people are going into a game playing a character they know will get into IC conflicts with other characters and want that conflict to provide story to the other players on the game.
OOC-PVP people are going into a game looking to generate a body count, with no regard for the story, and they don’t honestly care what happens story-wise (but are sticklers for the mechanics of the system) in the long run, as they’ll just create a new character and start over when they die.
I’ve seen all three groups, and I probably am in the IC-PVP group. If my character gets into a conflict that, because of storyline reasons, involves another PC, so be it, I just hope the staff on the game adjudicates it fairly.
The OOC-PVP people need to just leave and go play a MUD rather than trying to generate massive body counts where others are trying to create story.
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@MisterBoring There is also a fourth kind of person; the PVE players who are incredibly toxic, but use the protections of PVE-oriented game policies to get away with bad behavior. Without PVP acting as a failsafe, these players often cause games to fail because no one can stand not being able to meaningfully stand up to the bully.
If left unchecked, they cause WAY more problems for staff and the playerbase than they’re worth.
I think the OOC-PVP people are the minority, and easily caught/dealt with. No one is advocating for them on games, least of all me. Toxic PVE players are really just as bad though, if not worse because they often fly under the radar, and often are left alone by staff due to the whirlwind of shit they cause with brigading and such.
Outside of these outliers, most people realize that competition is fun, and so is losing sometimes. There should be a place for mature players to throw dice at each other and still be friends afterwards.
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@Cygnus said in The 3-Month Players:
Without PVP acting as a failsafe, these players often cause games to fail because no one can stand not being able to meaningfully stand up to the bully.
The failsafe against toxic players should be staff action. Going PVP just because a player is toxic seems toxic in it’s own right.
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
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I mean, if you could show me a pvp game that DIDN’T devolve into players being shitty OOC I would probably be fine with it. It’s just that every time I have been on a game with PVP elements, players were shitty OOC and tried to game systems to “get” other people’s characters regardless of story, whether it was trying to exploit times that people were offline in order to fuck with their stuff, using staff access to cheat their way to better stats / gear, etc., or just… being incapable of their character losing ground on anything without turning into a toddler throwing a tantrum.
If a player is toxic, PVPing them is a terrible idea anyway, btw. If someone is awful, I don’t want to play with them regardless of whose character is going to “win” the interaction.
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@Cygnus said in The 3-Month Players:
There should be a place for mature players to throw dice at each other and still be friends afterwards.
One of the most fun TTRPG campaigns I was in involved a bunch of backstabbing (figurative and literal) amongst PCs. My reporter PC stuck her nose in where it didn’t belong, and ended up getting killed by my BFF’s PC. Good times!
The difference between that and MUSHing is that we were all friends.
You say there “should” be a place for mature players to throw dice and still be friends, but that presumes:
- You’ll be able to create a game with only mature players.
- They were even friendly in the first place.
Ample experience with MUSHes over several decades shows that getting either of these things (let alone both) on an open game is nigh-impossible. PVP games have all the same inter-personal drama as PVE games plus the drama inherent in players working against each other. That’s just objectively more drama, and I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t want to deal with it.
The good news is, that with the cheapening of cloud computing and the advent of newer platforms like Evennia and Ares, it’s easier than ever to spin up your own game where you can PVP to your heart’s content.
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@MisterBoring We’re both talking about IC toxicity right? Because that’s what I’m talking about.
If someone does something toxic to me ICly, they should fully expect to get capped ICly.
OOC toxicity should be handled by staff, but let’s be real. That toxicity doesn’t usually happen in the open in ways that staff can easily handle. That’s assuming that the staff who made a game which caters to this type of thing isn’t in on it. Sadly that is often the case, see RetroMUX, Haunted Memories, Fallcoast, or the Reach for examples.
Anyway, the laws of FAFO are a great equalizer. If everyone has a gun, everyone is a lot more polite.
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@Faraday I don’t know much about Evennia, but Ares sadly does not offer the OOC masquerade that is necessary in PVP-type games. Ares caters to a sort of PVE experience that is going in the wrong direction for me personally, more for low-conflict games IMO. I’m sure it’s great for those that like it, but it’s not for me. And that’s ok! There’s no problem with people that prefer PVE oriented games.
RhostMUSH is a great codebase that easily allows for OOC masquerade. And for the very reasons you mentioned, it’s really important to protect people’s personal information in a PVP style game because there are people who take it too far.
Regardless, I often see people who like PVP-oriented games getting invalidated in the MU* community, which is what my and Rocket’s post is about. This forum is a small fraction of an already small community, yet those coming into this space would think that there isn’t a desire or need for a PVP-type game and that’s just not the case. There’s so many benefits to PVP in a game that have been outlined which are generally ignored by game-runners based on personal preference – the reason they’re the only people making text-based MU*s is because the PVPers have been driven away from the hobby due to a rather vocal minority and lack of gameplay which they find engaging.
EDIT: I do find it’s easier to deal with conflict at a small scale in tabletop. Even then it needs to be approached carefully, but it can be very fulfilling. At the same time, I think it’s even harder to do it right in tabletop: generally you have 4-6 players who trust each other with a Storyteller who is attempting to get them all on the same page for something, whereas on a MUSH you can actually have different factions/groups duking it out without as much overhead on a singular ST to make them all get along once a week for four hours. I personally think MU* is a great medium for PVP games. Not everyone has to be best buds in order to have memorable RP with each other, they just need to be civil.
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@Cygnus said in The 3-Month Players:
but Ares sadly does not offer the OOC masquerade that is necessary in PVP-type games
I disagree with your assertion that OOC masq is necessary for PVP games. (The TTRPG PVP games I’ve been in certainly did not require any such thing, and if we imagine the hypothetical mature playerbase you described, they wouldn’t need it either). Nevertheless, you are correct that Ares has OOC transparency baked in and it would take a lot of custom code to undo that. Rhost and Evennia would probably be a better bet.
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@Cygnus said in The 3-Month Players:
Anyway, the laws of FAFO are a great equalizer. If everyone has a gun, everyone is a lot more polite.
What about my character that doesn’t have a gun getting ganked just for funsies?
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@Faraday it’s a damn shame it doesn’t because there’s so many features I like and which make things easy, and I wouldn’t have to relearn semaphores after years of trying to forget.
In terms of why I think it’s necessary, we all know that MU* players can be immature sadly. Certainly not all of them, but if I can remove the ability for people to see each others alts or staffers to not see jobs that don’t pertain to them, I’m going to do it rather than wonder about whether it happened when it comes up. That kind of granular control is important for me, for many different things. Ideally for me, players wouldn’t be able to communicate anywhere but ICly, not even in pages or @mail or OOC Bboards/channels. There would need to be other ways to facilitate RP that didn’t involve OOC communication, but that’s doable – +events for instance is fairly benign, or ‘Looking for RP’ tags.
Players would just log in to roleplay, and log out when they’re done. I’d make it against the rules to share any information, including alts, discord usernames, sheet information, or basically anything at all even about yourself to another player. Because in a PVP game, you don’t want people knowing that stuff. How much of that is accomplishable in Ares, I don’t know.
This is one of the things that Liberation did right by not having a Discord for their game. It breeds that kind of mean-girl stuff which is anathema to a game’s lifespan IMO.
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@catzilla You get a gun for free by signing up to play on a PVP-oriented game. It’s up to you whether to load it, but if you don’t, you shouldn’t be surprised when it doesn’t protect you. Your ‘gun’ could be socially influencing muscle-heads to protect you, getting actual retainers on your sheet, a fortified Haven/place of business, etc, rather than an actual gun. But just like I wouldn’t randomly walk down an alley alone at night in real life, I wouldn’t do so on a PVP game.
The fear of potentially getting ganked is part of what makes this exciting for some players. It’s not for everyone, and that’s ok. You don’t have to app in!
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@Cygnus said in The 3-Month Players:
There’s so many benefits to PVP in a game that have been outlined which are generally ignored by game-runners based on personal preference – the reason they’re the only people making text-based MU*s is because the PVPers have been driven away from the hobby due to a rather vocal minority and lack of gameplay which they find engaging.
You talk about game-runners making games based on their personal preferences like it’s a bad thing. But people have always run games that they’re going to enjoy playing on.
I remember a time in MUSHing where there were a lot more PVP games. There became fewer and fewer not because of some arbitrary exodus, but because the people willing to run games became less willing to play on PVP games.
Why is that? You blame a vocal minority, I blame the extra toxicity and headaches involved in running a PVP game amongst internet strangers.
How much of that is accomplishable in Ares, I don’t know.
I mean, anything’s possible. But Evennia gives you a pile of LEGO bricks and says “build what you want and have fun”. Ares gives you a LEGO castle and says “here’s a castle already built for you, have fun.” If you want a spaceship, it’s far more sensible IMHO to take Evennia and build a spaceship than it is to try to turn Ares’ castle into a spaceship.
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I remember when I joined a oWoD game for the first time as a mortal and was told “hey, try not to go out alone because there are a lot of assholes on the game who will just kill you”. As a result, the little RP I did get was inside a private room and ended up leaving the game pretty quickly.
Maybe that’s fun for some people, but it’s definitely not fun for me.
I’ve yet to see a situation in a game where PVP was solely an IC thing and there was 0 OOC influence involved in it. The problem with PVP games will always be players, and while there are bad players on PVE games too, at least they can’t just kill you for being in the same room with them.
