@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?