Discussion: PvP Deaths (Item/Coin/XP Loot/Gain)

[greatdane]

Originally Posted by Yukahwa [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Greatdane your argument doesn't hold up against the reality of item loot servers like Rallos Zek.

I don't like the fact that without item loot, it will be a race to level 50, a race to get the best items, and then make a twink at whatever level you want to dominate and you never have to think twice about that twink again, he is maxed out and almost impossible to kill. It doesn't require skill to do this, it just requires miserably surpassing those lowbie levels once and then camping all the junk you want. It means level 1-50 for first timers that hit the game a month after server release will be a miserable time simply avoiding these nonpunishable twinks and their whole goal will be to get to level 50 so they can start having a fighting chance too.

Not good. If anything is bad for server population, it is that. For those players, PVP without item loot is basically PVE except you also get killed by a twink in unrest sometimes. Whats the point? You dont get HUGE exp for killing a hugely hard to kill twink, and he'll be right back anyways.. so its just a nuisance. When you have a possibility to steal that rubicite BP its actually worth fighting back.

No. If anything is bad for a server population, it is the high likelihood of losing your best items on a regular basis. It hasn't worked since the early days of RZ where the concept was already on its last legs and little more than an homage to Ultima Online. The difference is that Ultima Online was designed for itemloot to function because the entire itemization and character development system was so fundamentally different from Everquest's. You'll also notice that much of RZ's population refrained from engaging in PvP, unlike the other PvP servers. It got to the point where PvPers were a frowned-upon minority, and I have to assume that this isn't a desirable goal for a PvP server.

As for twinks, you're not going to prevent them one way or the other. If someone decks a level 20 rogue out in the best possible gear, ten newbies in crushbone aren't going to beat him. The much more likely scenario is that ten newbies in Crushbone will lose their best items. In a game that's all about itemization and working for weeks and months to achieve some goal (usually in the form of items), the possibility of losing said items will deter many who would otherwise play the game. It's the choice between catering to a small group of people who think itemloot is necessary, or a much larger population who wouldn't have played on an itemloot server. The latter will lead to much more PvP, and much less dispute and incentive to cheat.

Without itemloot, people are able to play the game at their own pace. With itemloot, it'll be a mad dash to no-drop planar gear, and since it's a PvP server, you can bet one guild will claim the raid content and prevent anyone else from participating. With a small population, that is fully possible and has been seen repeatedly throughout the history of VZ/TZ. It's bad enough (and sort of inevitable) to have two demographics within the playerbase where one has all the raid gear and the other just has whatever can be acquired through group content or the market. It'd be quite a lot worse to have one population that can PvP freely without worrying about their own gear while routinely cashing in on weaker opponents. It amplifies the lopsided PvP environment that is already guaranteed on an Everquest PvP server, and it is painfully likely to lead to its own atrophy as eventually the latest incarnation of Heresy rules everything and takes everybody's lunch money to the point where nobody else can even enjoy the game.

Itemloot could work on a custom server where the gear is much more accessible and dying doesn't mean the loss of hours, days and weeks of work. In classic Everquest, it hasn't worked since the beginning where people didn't really know better. You'll notice that itemloot was removed from RZ and hasn't been attempted in any noteworthy MMORPG ever since, and that ought to be enough validation of its problems if the above arguments don't suffice.

I for one want a PvP server where I can PvP freely and whenever I want without having to worry about losing the only thing that distinguishes my character from others and the sole factor that determines how my character performs in combat, which is the only thing this game is about. Everquest's gameplay design is so profoundly counter-intuitive to the ideal of itemloot that it really should be obvious to anyone why it won't work. It hasn't worked since it was first attempted, and it could easily be argued that it didn't even work then. If you want your PvP environment to be one where beating your opponent isn't enough of for you, you'll also have to accept that the population of such an environment will be a tiny fraction of what it would otherwise have been, likely not enough to sustain Everquest's core gameplay.

A healthy, popular PvP server hinges on the incentive to fight as often as possible, and a disincentive to grief, cheat, and repeatedly kill people for reasons unrelated to the actual skill of winning in PvP. At the end of the day, it's a question of what the goal of the server is. If that goal is a small arena-like PvP game where the actual Everquest game is largely pointless, itemloot and weird custom rules are fine as long as you accept that it'll be nothing like Everquest. If you want p99's success and vast population (as close as you'll get with PvP, anyway - it's guaranteed to be less popular than p99) where the main purpose of PvP is competitive fun and a way for players to deal with problems like poopsocking, douchebaggery and inaccessible content, then a ruleset similar to Tallon or Vallon is the only real way to go. Character development has to be more or less secure if you want more than the small, destructive core of VZTZ griefers on the server. Do you want 50 or 300 players? That's ultimately the defining question.