PvP game design

[Uncle Shags]

1. Dump class based games. Let people decide themselves how to play their characters. It doesn't take a genius to prevent the Plate Wearing Mage Healer with Duel wielding swords.

Absolutely. You could train or retrain for anything and be reasonably good at it. Experience killing other players makes you better at that type of combat. If you untrain something you lose some, but not all of your experience based skill.

2. Holy Trinities are pve based concepts. When you take care of number 4 you will solve number 2. First start with healing. Planetside had very little healing. You just don't need it.

Agreed. Healing in a PvP game quickly turns it into a game of "who has the most healers".

3. You can impliment FPS theories to the RPG chaundra. AoC did some of that. If you want to hit something with a sword you walked up to it and hit it. If it runs you follow it and hit it from behind. Dump AOE concepts totally. They break every game. If you want to hit something with spells you have to aim and hit it. If it moves bummer for you. Same with friendly spells. You need to aim to hit it.

AoE can still be done, but it should hit friendly targets that are in range. The idea that your flamethrower is going to hit your targets, but NOT your buddy standing right next to them is ridiculous. If you want to use aoe, go for it, but you just can't use it indiscriminately or you'll wipe out your own team as fast as the enemy.

4. PVE reliance breaks every pvp game. I am not saying you can't do both but very few people have ever gotten this right. If I can't log in and with in 5 minutes be pvping and can actually tell I am contributing your game is broken.

Yep. Warhammer is by no means perfect, but they got some things right in this department. I played Shaggles from 1-40 with hardly PvEing at all, and had much more fun doing it that way.

5. Build the game so that 200 people can stand in the same place and pvp. Games that look good never perform well. Spell effects and fancy graphics make pvp games worse not better. If you are looking at the pretty lights when you are in the midst of a pvp fight you are not a good pvper anyway.

Yes. Effects need to scale down depending on the load. Fireball on one person? Big graphics. Fireball on 50? Much less. One thing that is difficult is that a large part of MMO strategy tends to be recognition of what your opponent is about to do. If they go into the 3 second animation for "Head Exploder" you know you have to do something quick or you're hurting. Somehow that ability to react to opponents needs to be done with minimal strain. An example from Warhammer is the system shuts down other players effects when there is a high server load. The downside of that is that you can be standing in a Purple Pit of Death and never know it because your gfx got turned off.

As long as RPG games are in the Fantasy chaundra I don't expect any of these things to change. The next really good pvp we ever play will probably be of a different chaundra or something completely new anyway. If you are building a fantasy game you are automatically competing with WoW. That means you have real money behind you and pressure to fuck up your game.

The next great game will be something we totally didn't expect. The Wild West, Sci Fi, Japanese Samurai or something crazy like that.
Vllad

I have had some ideas about a armagedonish/horror based MMO. Werewolves, vampires, zombies and armored marines. Each with a different style of play. All versus eachother. Remember that car ride home from Vegas, Blhurr?