Filtering player temperament through game design
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@Kestrel Competitiveness is not the only reason people might prefer a PvP game, no. But then, as long as people are not being toxic jerkasses, does it matter, from a game design point of view? It’s not the people who play nice with others that we need to worry about as admins.
Personally, I’m pretty competitive. I prefer a PvE environment, but I am unable to stop myself from looking at word counts and whatnot. And because I have a strong competitive streak, I stay the hell away from environments where I might not be able to keep it under control – for example, despite being an equestrian in real life, I have never started in a competition. Wouldn’t be fair to the horse or anyone else, having to listen to me bitch about not winning.
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I don’t think that liking PvP in a creative writing game is necessarily about being competitive.
It doesn’t have to be, but for a great many people it is.
Couple that with the extreme amounts of OOC bleed in this community and you get a very explosive brew.
Does that mean those people are bad players, or that PVE players are in some way superior? No.
But it does mean that, for me, allowing PVP in an open game with Internet Strangers is just not worth the headaches.
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To add to the PVP conversation: I’ve met more than a few players in online RP situations (forums, MUs, and similar) who prefer PVP because they aren’t getting the kind of villain / conflict they are looking for from the PVE elements (be it stuff they run themselves or stuff run by other players / staff). In one particular case they felt weirdly selfish in trying to participate in the PVE conflict of the week.
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@Kestrel I agree that liking PvP in a creative writing game isn’t necessarily about being competitive. But what you’re describing isn’t, to me, PvP. I mean, it is, but not the way it usually (in my experience) plays out. What you’re describing isn’t two players competing, it’s two players cooperating so that their characters can get RP that they enjoy. It’s also a) the minority of PvP/CvC RP that I see, and b) the kind of PvP/CvC that I really enjoy.
I would honestly expect to see that sort of story being told in that OOCly-cooperative manner on a PvE game (I make sure to put some tension into the various factions in any game I’m running exactly because I like this kind of RP, even if there’s a greater threat causing them to work together).
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What you’re describing isn’t two players competing, it’s two players cooperating so that their characters can get RP that they enjoy. It’s also a) the minority of PvP/CvC RP that I see, and b) the kind of PvP/CvC that I really enjoy.
It’s not uncommon to meet people who say they love PvP. I don’t think I’ve seen them making characters who are in opposition to their PvP loving friends’ characters so they can play that out, but I would presume that it happens on games that are more PvP-friendly than ones I’ve been playing.
I enjoyed a period when I played a few official antagonist characters, with the understanding that the whole point is to challenge the good-guy PCs and be fun for them to hate, not mess them up as hard as you can. And the understanding that you’re gonna tend to lose.
If you wanna have a bad time, approach something thinking everyone understands that that you intend to fail to foil the other PC’s plan but want to give them a fun hard time, when the other player thinks it’s competitive PvP.
“This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard!”
– A. Bertram Chandler -
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It’s not uncommon to meet people who say they love PvP. I don’t think I’ve seen them making characters who are in opposition to their PvP loving friends’ characters so they can play that out, but I would presume that it happens on games that are more PvP-friendly than ones I’ve been playing.
Yeah. Most of the games I’ve seen that have been CvC friendly and succeed at it have built up a lot of OOC tools and methods to make that work. I have yet to see the OOC techniques and tools for that really catch on in the MU hobby, but I have seen it work in other online RP formats and in live play (the strongest examples of this were LARPs where workshops and care were given to make sure the players understand that their characters are in conflict where as the players are not).
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What other methods have you seen used?
Official antagonists seemed to work pretty well. There was a regular thing where a new player would try to Leeroy Jenkins the antagonist for no particular reason except that they’re an antagonist, but the games where I played those roles basically just didn’t allow it. Or rather, the new player would get a chat explaining that randomly murdering the antagonist in the mall wouldn’t really be taken as heroism IC, and would piss everybody off OOC, because the antagonist creates a lot of fun.
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@Gashlycrumb Most of the methods I’ve seen used to success were all OOC transparency techniques. Players would have OOC conversations prior to conflict scenes between their characters to coordinate the conflict. It was sort of like pro wrestling in that the scene would be somewhat planned out prior to it starting, but the ultimate end result was left up to the dice (or other mechanics depending on the actual system being used). In some cases, the OOC conversation led to one player deciding that this was definitely their character’s loss, and the entire thing was somewhat pre-planned. Also, in all cases, the end of the session included a decompression exercise so that everybody could properly deal with whatever bleed they might have.
One of the biggest first steps a game can take toward a more healthy CVC environment is to stop calling it PVP. PVP is for Rainbow Six Siege or League of Legends. CVC is one avenue where roleplay meets conflict. CVE is another (though, as an IT professional, referring to PVE as CVE causes me to double take because CVE is a special IT term). I only call it PVP if the story of the characters doesn’t matter at all.
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referring to PVE as CVE causes me to double take because CVE is a special IT term
Try being a therapist talking about CBT at a kink-friendly clinic…
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I’m super unconvinced by the term CvC, tbh. Just seems like a company marketing themselves as “ethical capitalism”, I’m not sure the verbal rebrand makes any kind of difference.
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I’m super unconvinced by the term CvC, tbh. Just seems like a company marketing themselves as “ethical capitalism”, I’m not sure the verbal rebrand makes any kind of difference.
if you’re competing against a player, it’s no longer a cooperative game
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I’m super unconvinced by the term CvC, tbh. Just seems like a company marketing themselves as “ethical capitalism”, I’m not sure the verbal rebrand makes any kind of difference.
if you’re competing against a player, it’s no longer a cooperative game
i don’t think anyone’s confused about the definitional semantics. i agree with kestrel’s point in that i think both terms aremostly seen synonymously in practice and it doesn’t make any real difference to make up a new, less recognizable term for it. most people when talking about PVP in MUs are already talking about it being an IC thing between characters.
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I guess it would eliminate any kind of game labeling preface. Like “what do you expect we’re a PVP game” or “of course we allow conflict in our PVE game!”
Presuming PVP and PVE both have character versus character in some fashion, even if the characters aren’t always played by staff.
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@Kestrel It’s definitely a semantic difference, but I also think that it’s an important semantic difference. I think that seeing/using them synonymously can contribute to bleed and to feelings of competition rather than cooperation.
I don’t use CvC instead of PvP, I use it alongside PvP. You can have both on the same game (people working cooperatively OOCly to create a good story of competition between their characters versus people competing OOCly to have their characters win). I don’t even see PvP as a bad thing… it can be really fun sometimes if you’re doing it with folks that you trust. But I do think that it’s valuable to have terms for each, because they’re very different and—to bring things back full circle to the point of the thread—appeal to and bring in players of very different temperaments.
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