Hey everyone! o7 o/ :slightly_smiling_face: I have been playing this game since 2013, and it's where I met my wife. And while I see PVP as a legitimate part of the game, the uptick in griefing...
I would go beyond "difficult" to "has never happened and is inherently contradictory". Most people who do PvP live for PvP. The skill gap between someone who is a dedicated pvp player and someone who isn't is almost always insurmountable. Given equal equipment the pvp player is probably going to win, easily, every time. Then whem you add ships/characters/whatever specced for pvp it becomes a completely one sided massacre.
Ultima Online tried all the things you suggested 25 years ago and the griefing was so bad it almost killed the game. The solution, in almost every mmo that isn't strongly pvp focused, is to not have non-consensual pvp bc there's no way to win the arms race against griefer shitstains who get off on making other people feel miserable and powerless.
I'm ok with that being the outcome provided that players are choosing to fight or not. What you're describing is not dissimilar to New World when I played that, being a fighting game player I adapted extremely easy to its systems and could win practically any 1v1 duel, things got different when scaled up of course but you're right about a fair fight, the better player always wins and the better player is the dedicated player who learns.
Pointing to Ultima Online seems a bit unnecessary, we have much newer games that have achieved varying degrees of success and failure in implementations, much much better than UO's extremely poor implementations. I have seen griefers practically eliminated just by making it a largely negative cost outcome.
is to not have non-consensual pvp
Well yes, that's largely the implementation that I've described here? The point is that the pvp becomes consensual by nature of the player not retreating from a fight when they had plenty of warning to do so.
Yes, a PvP marker and free withdrawal is also a method. WoW had this in most zones in PvP servers (though ultimately most people ended up turning the flag off due to PvP mostly involved being Rogue ganked and PvP servers population dropped rapidly)
I would go beyond "difficult" to "has never happened and is inherently contradictory". Most people who do PvP live for PvP. The skill gap between someone who is a dedicated pvp player and someone who isn't is almost always insurmountable. Given equal equipment the pvp player is probably going to win, easily, every time. Then whem you add ships/characters/whatever specced for pvp it becomes a completely one sided massacre.
Ultima Online tried all the things you suggested 25 years ago and the griefing was so bad it almost killed the game. The solution, in almost every mmo that isn't strongly pvp focused, is to not have non-consensual pvp bc there's no way to win the arms race against griefer shitstains who get off on making other people feel miserable and powerless.
I'm ok with that being the outcome provided that players are choosing to fight or not. What you're describing is not dissimilar to New World when I played that, being a fighting game player I adapted extremely easy to its systems and could win practically any 1v1 duel, things got different when scaled up of course but you're right about a fair fight, the better player always wins and the better player is the dedicated player who learns.
Pointing to Ultima Online seems a bit unnecessary, we have much newer games that have achieved varying degrees of success and failure in implementations, much much better than UO's extremely poor implementations. I have seen griefers practically eliminated just by making it a largely negative cost outcome.
Well yes, that's largely the implementation that I've described here? The point is that the pvp becomes consensual by nature of the player not retreating from a fight when they had plenty of warning to do so.
Yes, a PvP marker and free withdrawal is also a method. WoW had this in most zones in PvP servers (though ultimately most people ended up turning the flag off due to PvP mostly involved being Rogue ganked and PvP servers population dropped rapidly)