@Pavel See I never said want a cybersphere where you die as soon as you step outside the safe zone, just something inherently more dangerous. People tend to blow these things out of proportion – if there’s any PVP at all, diehard PVE players have a tendency to distort things and overstate how bad they really are. This happens in all games.

@Livia I agree that making friends and socializing is fun, hell I even remember when we had several chats in the past (on HM too I think lol). I still have many friends from the old MUSH days so I suppose taking it TOO far for metagaming protection purposes might be kind of lame and missing the forest for the trees.

Out of curiousity, would you be interested in a game that has such communication semi-public? Or would you need the private @mail/page system for it to be the kind of communication you want? Maybe keeping it to channels would be a good medium ground, with subchannels for coteries and such?

@mietze I agree with both sides of this sentiment. There’s got to be a good tension-building middle ground between jumping people for their misspelled descs and needing to ask permission for every interaction.

@Pyrephox I’ve been fiddling with Rhost in my spare time, I do have a cool concept for a game like this. But about halfway towards amping myself up to learn Rhost’s finer details, I started learning Unity for a video game and have put my creative juices there for the moment. This has been a constructive conversation about what is needed in a MU* with pvp though and I’m thankful for those that helped me notice some of the stuff I may have missed; I’ve scribbled various house rules trying to tackle many of the issues that were brought up today.

Maybe the ease of newer systems comparatively is why so many devs go towards those languages, or maybe from the various reasons Ashkuri posted. I do get the pain of doing it from the ST side of things, been there as a staffer and it’s not always fun and sometimes outright painful.

I do completely agree though that the game I want to exist cannot exist unless I make it a reality. I’ve basically given up on most games at this point because they don’t hit the way they used to. There are no turn-key solutions, I just have to get my hands dirty with the code and challenge myself past what I’m comfortable with code-wise. And making games is challenging no matter what it is you’re making.

@MisterBoring I’d actually argue that of the MMOs I mentioned, EVE Online in particular maps really well to the MU* experience. It’s actually not a PVP game, it’s a single shard social sandbox with very strong PVP elements. You can be a miner, an industrialist, a spy, a propagandist, an admiral, a pirate, etc. Yes the devs do occasionally sprinkle in some lore, but it’s the players and the conflict between them that creates the engaging stories there. There is TONS of RP – when the Triglavians came out, people were talking to each other in triangle script and everything. Wars between thousands of players happen. Sometimes you go out looking for content. Sometimes you -are- the content. In the end, people are fairly chill with the people they’re fighting because it’s so easy to get back into the action.

What darkmetal and EVE Online had in common:

• Fast to remake characters/ships and get into play
• A large safe area for players to PVE in
• Relatively hands-off staff within the parameters of the game
• Player-driven storylines and plots
• Robust character-driven skills and stats to spend your XP/training time on

I think these similarities are touching upon what makes a good PVP game, and it’s my view that its why the EVE Online devs wanted to make a game with the World of Darkness IP so badly.

@Faraday No argument with this, but there is toxicity in PVE environments too that is well documented on many games. WoW is egregious for this. My point is that we shouldn’t shy away from pvp game elements just because of a percentage of bad actors that can be found in any sufficiently large hobby. I realize your experience with this has been bad and that really sucks. My only argument is that devs should learn from what makes a good PVP game and integrate it into MU* for those that enjoy PVP MU*s, not that everyone has to like it or that it’s always going to be a good experience. Just that it CAN be for the reasons RedRocket posted originally. Devs in the end can make whatever game they want after all, I just wish more wouldn’t shy away from what made early WoD games so special to so many of us.

@spiriferida how is it weird to not like the current games out there for different reasons? You’re right that this one is less specific and more just a bad impression, but why are you policing what I can and can’t say on a public forum about criticizing MU*s? THAT is weird

@spiriferida We’re in Rough and Rowdy – check out this topic if you want to avoid reading someone else’s mild criticisms https://brandmu.day/topic/69/opting-out

@spiriferida I would never app after reading that house rule. But where else would I comment about it? Not a lot of forum posts about Dies Irae out there.

@bear_necessities Some say that elderly romance novelists are the best at PVP, book sales confirm this

@Faraday It’s not that they don’t exist, but older gamers have PVP communities as well.

Stellaris comes to mind as a really good game with a competitive scene and older playerbase, with fighting games coming in close to strategy titles. MMOs are so big that there’s multiple groups in them, so they’re a bit of a microcosm in general. Many toxic WoW guilds for example, but just as many ‘gamer dad’ guilds. MMOs are also closest to MU*s, hell the WoW Classic and Everquest games were based on MUDs. Monsters and Memories, a new PvPvE MMO similar to EQ and WoW Classic, actually goes back towards MUDs with a MUD command panel which you can use to /listen in a room and /pry coins from between walls and stuff.

Case and point, MnM has a PVE and a PVP community which has remained fairly segregated but both supported. That game in general is less toxic than say, Pantheon, which largely supports PVE and PVP is an afterthought. In that community, PVE players have distinct hatred towards PVP players. All communities are different so it’s hard to put a pin in any one, but I think it’s all about how the devs approach things – if it’s handled correctly, PVP can work. If it’s ignored or tacked on, it sucks.

@Autumn I think this is close to the real center of things – the subjectivity of the WoD rules make it really tough. But power imbalances I don’t think are a bad thing inherently.

EVE Online, whose former owners I will never forgive for dropping the WoD MMO they were developing btw, really did things right in terms of PvP in a lopsided universe where people’s power levels are not equal. Sure you can fly the battlecruiser into low security space / take the elder into the streets, but you can get got by a group of frigates with warp scramblers / neonates looking for diablerie. There is also high security space for the people who just want to mine rocks all day / bar RP.

I think the dev time would be better spent on designing systems that allow players to hide/fight back with existing rules, and really support the creation of coteries and give people stuff to do. I always like the +map stuff on MU*s with territory control, that gave people stuff to do other than kill each other. Requiem for Kingsmouth also had an awesome influence system for more social/mental pvp, though that was not without problems too, it needed to be automated.

There’s also somewhat unique problems to MU*, like spawn camping someone who just apps in (that sucks), or the issue of people showing up randomly and brigading scenes, or just logging off the moment consequences or pvp starts to happen. These things would need to be accounted for somehow. In EVE there was a 30 second timer, but what’s the answer for MU*? Handing control to a staffer?

@Autumn This is so very true, and why I loved RedRocket’s post about this so much RE: Darkmetal. It had a lot of those things, and I feel that’s why it became such a cornerstone of the hobby for a time. A PVP game would definitely need all these things, but I don’t think we should throw away the narrative aspects as well. Just maybe keep backgrounds to a page or so during approval so people manage their time better.

I know I’m guilty of writing long ass backgrounds for no reason even for PVP games, but I can totally understand how it could be super frustrating to lose that work and potential in a pvp setting.

@Tez Those games were just examples of where developers had went, first internationally popular PVP games that came to mind. I’m talking about PVP games in general, not the toxic COD lobbies of xbox past which is the worst possible representation of those communities.

@bear_necessities said in pvp vs pvp:

Oh yes please I want my MUSHes filled with dozens of teenagers calling me every slur in the book because I didn’t play right, please please please make my MUSHes more like these video games that are held in such high regard.

So deliberately misrepresenting PVP games is ok? I was just throwing the ball back in their court and meeting their energy.

PVP games are not filled with teenagers throwing slurs. That’s nonsense. There’s huge communities of PVP gamers that aren’t like this.

@bear_necessities MU’s are already like this, just replace teenager with elderly romance novelists

@Taika I don’t mind the PRP thing actually, it’s that it’s the ONLY way you can get killed. Yes I want pvp to exist in MUSHes, there was a forked topic about it today actually. Crusade is a little extreme though lol

@catzilla I misunderstood, I thought this was your played-by list. I also played with Isrieal, iirc that changeling was originally a vampire on a game before the concept was reworked.

@Faraday The exodus wasn’t arbitrary, it didn’t happen in a vacuum. PVP players went on to play PVP video games mostly because video games became a thing in the first place. It didn’t have anything to do with people being unwilling to run games, it’s that those early devs switched their medium and made extremely popular video games. Now many PVPers play Rivals, League of Legends, COD, etc, and for those who didn’t make the switch to video, they went to MUDs which have always been more popular than MUSHes.

What you’re describing is selection bias which has been building on itself for many years via the types of people who didn’t move on to begin with. But the PVP players have not disappeared, they still exist and many would be interested in a WoD game that had PVP especially with the recent resurgence in tabletop games. That’s really all I’m trying to get across with this post, that this playstyle is valid, liked, and is something players are looking for. Look no further than the millions of people across the world playing PVP games for an example. MU* could learn something from those genres rather than dealing with compounding blandification.

@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!

@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.

Hard pass

@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.

@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.