09-07-2016, 09:37 PM
I'll chime in, here...
This thread reminds me of Ultima Online, one of the first successful MMOs (and one of the only ones I played.) To balance the load they put players on different servers ("shards"), some of which had different rules. On some shards, there was basically no PvP. On others, there were PvP areas, for special events and for guild wars. When it started, the standard setup was for there to be no PvP in towns, but once you went out into the wilderness anyone could attack you.
This was frustrating for newbies, who were easy meat and had no gangs or guilds to help them out. But it also made venturing out into the wilderness genuinely dangerous and interesting! In effect, players were the most dangerous kind of wandering monster you could encounter out there. Traveling from one town to the next became a significant task, with different tactics. Taking the main road would be fast, but would mean near-certain ambush. Taking the back ways might avoid attackers, but could also mean getting cornered somewhere far away from help.
I was killed many times, including once where my attackers resurrected me on the spot, as a way of making up for stealing my valuables. And I finished many trips with a mad dash into civilized areas, just barely escaping from some gang of griefers. I had fun! But there were enough complaints and issues that they started shifting the rules. They set up a reputation system, so that if you kept killing people, then you'd be flagged as a renegade and others could not only attack you on site (wherever you went), but they'd earn a bounty. Stuff like that.
And there was a "masters shard" where PvP was wide open, where monsters from the wilderness areas routinely wandered into town, and where skills took 10x as long to increase. Succeeding (or even just surviving) on that shard carried a lot of street cred.
This thread reminds me of Ultima Online, one of the first successful MMOs (and one of the only ones I played.) To balance the load they put players on different servers ("shards"), some of which had different rules. On some shards, there was basically no PvP. On others, there were PvP areas, for special events and for guild wars. When it started, the standard setup was for there to be no PvP in towns, but once you went out into the wilderness anyone could attack you.
This was frustrating for newbies, who were easy meat and had no gangs or guilds to help them out. But it also made venturing out into the wilderness genuinely dangerous and interesting! In effect, players were the most dangerous kind of wandering monster you could encounter out there. Traveling from one town to the next became a significant task, with different tactics. Taking the main road would be fast, but would mean near-certain ambush. Taking the back ways might avoid attackers, but could also mean getting cornered somewhere far away from help.
I was killed many times, including once where my attackers resurrected me on the spot, as a way of making up for stealing my valuables. And I finished many trips with a mad dash into civilized areas, just barely escaping from some gang of griefers. I had fun! But there were enough complaints and issues that they started shifting the rules. They set up a reputation system, so that if you kept killing people, then you'd be flagged as a renegade and others could not only attack you on site (wherever you went), but they'd earn a bounty. Stuff like that.
And there was a "masters shard" where PvP was wide open, where monsters from the wilderness areas routinely wandered into town, and where skills took 10x as long to increase. Succeeding (or even just surviving) on that shard carried a lot of street cred.