PvP, PvE, PvPvE?

[ShowNoMercy]

Wow, some total PVE bigots in here lol.

The PVE generated events would not be THAT bad guys, just like with black ops in PS1 you can opt out by not participating. The events shouldn't be so frequent and rewarding that they become people's primary means of xp, but should be fun little side battles for people who enjoy that stuff to participate in. It would also make it fun in the respect that you could team up with individuals across empires.

On the other hand, adding situations where SMALL groups of comp controlled animals (or even aliens) get into buildings and hurt resource production would make for fun side missions. Of course people could opt out of that as well just like people didn't HAVE to go get the ANT in PS1, they could just wait for someone else to do it.

Additionally (this wouldn't really be optional), there could be randomly generated computer attacks on bases being capped that have no enemies in the vicinity, which would cut down on the boredom associated with a 15min base cap. They would warn you in advance and would have to make it a smaller force than the one present in the base to ensure it didnt ruin the assault. Since the computer generate players would attack enemies as well as friendlies, any enemies who showed up during this period would have to kill the NPC creatures before attempting to retake the base. Essentially it would reduce the likelihood of enemies capitalizing on the creature attack.

I'm not going to give my opinion on IF PVE should be incorporated since that was not asked for in the OP, but I have presented 3 different ways to incorporate AI creatures into PS2 with varying degrees of opt-out-ability.

[Bags]

You can't say something isn't bad and then compare it to Black Ops to make a point. Black Ops were a worse idea than how BFRs were implemented. lol

I'm sure I wouldn't mind a lot of it if it did not waste developer time that could be spent on PVP content, but it will so that's the deal breaker for me.

[Aractain]

If you kill an AFK avatar, is that PVE?

Having AI "NPCs" as in other humans (in game) is definately a no imo though.

[Infektion]

I wouldn't mind PvE if it referred to random herds of animals and such. If we could use their corpse as shields, that's even BETTER!!!! But NPC's like... to fight, that's a big no.

[Tool]

Originally Posted by Bags

You can't say something isn't bad and then compare it to Black Ops to make a point. Black Ops were a worse idea than how BFRs were implemented. lol

I'm sure I wouldn't mind a lot of it if it did not waste developer time that could be spent on PVP content, but it will so that's the deal breaker for me.

That's a very understandable gripe and I share similar feelings. In those videos they mentioned they're releasing a core MMOFPS experience then building other elements on top, sandbox. So if they have the PvP nailed down either from the get-go or shortly after release, developer time may be abundant.

It's amazing how difficult it is to simply discuss a concept with people, even one I oppose myself in Planetside lol. Should ask Hamma to purposefully change a bunch of Avatars to mules.

[Manitou]

Originally Posted by Tool

Should ask Hamma to purposefully change a bunch of Avatars to mules.

Classic...

[Rbstr]

I'm OK with incidental critters as I've said.

But there shouldn't every be a reason to shoot them except that they're getting in the way of you shooting real people.

[ShowNoMercy]

Originally Posted by Bags

You can't say something isn't bad and then compare it to Black Ops to make a point. Black Ops were a worse idea than how BFRs were implemented. lol

I'm sure I wouldn't mind a lot of it if it did not waste developer time that could be spent on PVP content, but it will so that's the deal breaker for me.

I compared the opt out aspect of black ops to an opt out aspect in PVE that could be added to PS2. I am well within the bounds of logic to say that because you can opt out of something it is not bad.

Being shot in the head is bad, being able to opt out of getting shot in the head makes it not bad.

Eating a turd is bad, being able to opt out of eating a turd makes it not bad.

Being molested by a clown in bad.... see where im going with this?

No matter how shitty the feature, if you can get around it by not participating while still having fun then it doesn't matter. Not to mention black ops was an event that happened every so often and only for a few hours. Adding a similar thing to PS2 in the form of PVE events wouldn't be THAT bad.

Also, support your "black ops in worse than BFR in terms of implementation" argument because I'm not seeing it. You could only opt out of fighting BFRs on Oshur, the rest of the time they were bending you over every time you stepped out of a door. Not many options to avoid them and they were not events, they were constantly there.

[Kietharr]

The only AI units I'm OK with are deployables, turrets, and possibly drones/workers depending on how they do resource gathering. Might be kinda fun to kill AI workers, pretend I'm playing Starcraft and we're doing dropship harass with Galaxies

But the fun there isn't in "woot xp for killing spacepigs!", it's "Get bent Prot....Vanu, have fun harvesting minerals without workers!"

[Death2All]

Originally Posted by ShowNoMercy

Being molested by a clown in bad.... see where im going with this?

Clowns have very delicate hands, I assure you.


I see your point and agree with it. So long as one is able to opt out of an event, it's not quite as bad, although resources could be better spent elsewhere on the game.

Assuming that PvP is perfectly balanced and the game is masterpiece and they could afford to put resources in other places, I wouldn't mind a PvE event element where I fight off space turtles over a continent SO LONG as I can choose to not participate in said event.

What really frustrated me in PS1 was when they chose to do an event on the one and only fight in the game. So I either had to participate in being raped by a shitty game event or just log off entirely. THAT IS STUPID. The worst was when you were on your last leg defending your LAST base on a home cont and they'd thrown down a BO event. I'll never forget the time we were defending Leza and a GM turned the entire NC empire into BO without even asking.

I feel PvE could be well received given that it's implemented under the right circumstances, but by no means should it be their primary focus for the game. A lot of the fear and backlash from PvE simply comes from the fact that most people associate it relating to WoW or possibly GA.

[Tool]

Originally Posted by DeeTwoEh

I feel PvE could be well received given that it's implemented under the right circumstances, but by no means should it be their primary focus for the game. A lot of the fear and backlash from PvE simply comes from the fact that most people associate it relating to WoW or possibly GA.

Yes and that's part of my point here, it's never the primary focus because of that. It's strange that developers wont or aren't allowed to focus a large portion of attention on things like AI even though they're going to have it in their games and sometimes in great abundance, wouldn't you agree?

It's that feeling the AI will be crappy or useless that needs to be changed, and the only way to change it is by not making useless or crappy AI lol.

I want innovation in games today and because technology has grown leaps and bounds over the years I fear much of that innovation is lost when profit becomes the driving factor in major game development even though we have the ability. AI is one area that suffers from that.

[Volw]

Originally Posted by Tool

It's that feeling the AI will be crappy or useless that needs to be changed, and the only way to change it is by not making useless or crappy AI lol.

Mind they're using the same engine for the new Everquest, so SOE will have a AI module for the engine.

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by IDukeNukeml

For the love of God no.. NO PVE, NO PVPVE, i dont want an instance for sure.. I dont want to have to fight off a bot for sure.... I want people.. 100% pure people.... Frail an AI

heh, no one is saying to put in instances. Also I think it's clear that most people don't want humanoid bots. Would you be more open to AI creatures outside in the territory?

I'm with you 100% though about no humanoid bots in the middle of combat. I honestly don't think that part would be necessary since we have real life players for that. I'm more into the idea of adding things that players can't do to spice up the battles.

I've never been imagining this idea as a release feature. It seemed more like an item in the 3 year plan to bring new things to the game. I mentioned this in the creatures thread though.

[Tool]

Originally Posted by Volw

Mind they're using the same engine for the new Everquest, so SOE will have a AI module for the engine.

Sure but how their AI performs, what systems they use, and what, if any, new additions have been made from previous engines isn't known yet. To think that if they have made some impressive improvments in AI with Forgelight or within Forgelight, they would've used that in their recent presentation and/or/will publish/ed articles on their technology.

That's one thing developers love to do is show off new engine capabilities, usually before there's even a game released using it.

[Sirisian]

This comes up a lot but I just made a comment in IRC to someone's thought:

<Kwintus5> it's normal that it's such a ginormous war that all animals are extinct :P
<Kwintus5> we just KILLED THEM ALL
<Sirisian|Work> Kwintus5, omg like we killed all the players!
<Sirisian|Work> I guess I'm the only one that assumed trees were invulnerable because of the NTU revival mechanism :P

I also linked him to this.