The Ideal Purge Game

[Hoofhurr]

Ok then to take it one step further you have to decide how wide spread and how plentiful those objectives are or you run into a situation where conflict can easily be avoided to achieve objectives e.g. the fort swapping in WAR. How do you deal with fluctuations in server population relative to map size and number of objectives? It might be super easy to take a base at 3 am on the other side of the planet and nearly impossible during prime time. Or in Eve there are so many valuable resources that conflict is easily avoided and only experienced by choice.

This is something that all open world games struggle with and I've never seen a good solution. I'd advocate for a world that opens up or closes down with the number of people on the server but I've never seen it done. Instancing of zones in Conan I guess but frankly I hated that solution and it's negative effects on community.

I feel like this is really one of the central, unresolved issues of pvp online gaming. I think psychologically people want conflict in their gaming but more so than fighting they want to win. People will avoid conflict in order to feel like they are winning. This is key and a problem imo.