NPC's in planetside?

**Malorn** · 2012-04-20, 01:35 PM

Can't serve two masters. Either they make a game for PvP or they make a game for PvE. Games that tried to do both succeed in doing neither well. It also splits the playerbase between those who do PvE and those who do PvP. Energy spent on one is energy that could have been spent making the other better.

Do less; do better.

Planetside was awesome because it was PURE PvP. It's one of the very few MMOs that has been pure PvP. That is one of the reasons for its success. The developers don't have to balance PvE crap. They don't have to try to equalize rewards of PvP and PvE. They don't have to balance abilities for PvE and PvP. They don't need to bother with that whole level crap. This has been a thorn in the side of games for a long time. When you try to balance two fundamentally different things one or both suffer.

Planetside also showed us that Pure PvP can thrive and be awesome. It showed us that we didn't need PvE. It is a losing prospect in a PvP game to have PvE. Why? Because you want all of your players engaging in PvP content. Anyone not engaged in PvP is effectively removed from the game. That's one less person in the big battle. One less person in the squad. It takes the focus away from the core concept of an endless war among players and distracts them with something completely unnecessary.

Players are the content in Planetside. All they need to do is focus on making our interactions more rich. Any effort spent deviating from that core principle is the wrong direction for Planetside.

Garem · 2012-04-20, 02:02 PM

Originally Posted by Malorn

Can't serve two masters. Either they make a game for PvP or they make a game for PvE. Games that tried to do both succeed in doing neither well. It also splits the playerbase between those who do PvE and those who do PvP. Energy spent on one is energy that could have been spent making the other better.

That simply isn't true. Many, MANY games have been quite successful with both.

A few come to mind off the top of my head...
FPS: Call of Duty series, Battlefield series (to a lesser degree), Gears of War series, Halo series
Fantasy MMO: DAoC, Guild Wars, (from the looks of it) GW2's WvWvW

You may not like these games. Many, I don't. But they work and they're successful.

Co-Op Shooters have been wildly popular ever since Perfect Dark for the N64; I'm sure it wasn't the first, just the first to get major attention. And, for its time, Perfect Dark was great PvP fun too. Halo went on to rule the console gaming industry for what, 6 years? It wasn't just the PvP multiplayer, it was the single player greatness too, the PvE.

If the game is balanced for PvP, that's all that matters. PvE non-major imbalances make no difference whatsoever, as virtually all successful PvE MMOs have shown, and exactly as you say.

This is in no way an endorsement for NPCs. Or PvE. I'm absolutely neutral to the whole idea; won't phase me either way. I will play this game for PvP. However, it deserves a fair discussion at least- if it can and has been done, please don't say that it hasn't or can't. We know it can. This discussion is a question of whether we want it, what kind, and what priorities come first.

**Malorn** · 2012-04-20, 04:37 PM

Originally Posted by Garem

That simply isn't true. Many, MANY games have been quite successful with both.

A few come to mind off the top of my head...
FPS: Call of Duty series, Battlefield series (to a lesser degree), Gears of War series, Halo series
Fantasy MMO: DAoC, Guild Wars, (from the looks of it) GW2's WvWvW

You may not like these games. Many, I don't. But they work and they're successful.

First I said MMOs, not single player FPS games that get shat out every year whose single player is only played when the internet connection is down or for shits and giggles.

Just because a game is "successful" doesn't mean it has good gameplay or that they made good design decisions.

DAoC was a decent PvP game and it had very shitty PvE. Guild Wars had shitty PvE. Wow had good PvE but shitty PvP (I'm sure people will disagree but I don't really care, it was terrible to me). WAR tried to do both and ended up with decent PvP and shitty PvE. SWTOR could have had good PvP but not enough PvP content. Rift had some good potential with all the class combinations but again a split between PvE and PvP caused the PvP to run stale real fast.

As someone who yearns for good PvP I've been consistently disappointed by every MMO in existence except PlanetSide. And the reason is because PlanetSide doesn't half-ass player-vs-player and designed the entire game around it. They didn't try to cater to "casuals" or "pvers" to try to widen their player base. Every game that's tried to do that leaves both sides dissatisfied because they halfass one thing at the expense of the other.

Zenben · 2012-04-20, 04:44 PM

WTF is up with the necros lately? Knock it off people. When a discussion has run its course, let it die.