MMORPG with open world PvP

[Mikstl]

Actual trends in game development are focused on simplification of the gameplay process. This greatly influences how new MMORPGs are created. The majority of players are casuals, and the task of developers is to attract and hold as many players as possible. As a result, in each game, barriers are set to separate players from each other. However, old-school players tempered by the hardcore of virtual worlds, hunger to open-world PvP. There is a big problem in finding such games, so I decided to share my experience and talk about MMORPGs in which players have to face and fight for game content. There will be no games in which you need to somehow register or switch to PvP mode.

Lineage 2 Classic

Lineage 2 has always been famous for its PvP system. The mechanics of the game world are built in such way that players are constantly pushed to fight for game content. The main version of the game - Lineage 2: Orfen - became more casual and is now full of closed instance zones. Lineage 2 Classic is a relaunch of the legendary MMORPG. It returned hardcore to the PvP system.

Players try to hold spots with the best rewards for mobs in L2C. Conflicts arise at almost every turn. In general, the characters are free to kill each other without any approval to a duel by another player, as it is now customary in many MMORPGs. There is a penalty for killing a character if he/she didn’t fight back. In this case, the player's nickname is colored red and a certain amount of karma is added. If the PK counter becomes higher than 3, then that character can lose items from inventory with a some chance when dying. However, a player can remove karma by killing monsters and lower the PK counter with special scrolls that are sold for game currency.

Players create constant parties to improve their position in the fight for content and farm bosses. Epic bosses have the most delicious loot and are located in the open world. Killing epic bosses forces players to form strong clans and promote their global politics. Enemy clans declare wars on each other. If two clans are in a state of war, their members have no penalty for killing each other, even if players do not fight back. Victory in a mass pvp for the right to farm the boss is often the main goal in Lineage 2 Classic. Loot just gives reason to fight for the unique items. This is a great game for those who are interested in open-world PvP.

Where to play? I recommend playing on the official European server Skelth.

Rising Force Online

RF Online is an RvR game with unique PvP system, which is different to any other. Killing enemy race players gives Contribution Points. The character that was killed - loses CP. These points affect your rank in a race. Top five ranks become race leaders. The first rank receives the status of the main race leader and nominates 4 more. It follows that PvP is an integral aspect of RFO.

There are three races in the game: Bellato Union, Holy Alliance Cora and Empire Accretia. Players of opposing races freely kill each other everywhere, except newby locations. Characters don’t need to switch to PvP mode or something like that. The game confronts players of all races in common locations after ~ 40+ levels. Be prepared that enemy races players will raid main locations to reduce your progress. You can always ask for help your blood brothers who are usually ready to assist. Real unity within races is what strongly differ RF Online from other MMORPGs.

Chip is an regular event that starts every 8 hours. It’s the most massive PvP time in Crag Mines for the right to extract important economic resources. The race that first destroys any of the enemies’ chips wins.

If you like games like WoW, where players are divided into factions, then you should definitely try Rising Force Online. I assure you that you will get a unique gaming experience!

Where to play? I recommend the official European Zucker server.

Archeage

Initially, Archeage players are divided into 2 enemy factions: western continent (Nuians, Elves, and Dwarves) and eastern continent (Harani, Firran, and Warborn). The bloody war between them has been going on for hundreds of years. The rulers of each faction encourage brave fighters for the interests of their continent. When a player kills another player from the opponent side, he/she receives points of honor. They are not only a measure of your military prowess, but also a “currency” for which you can purchase various useful things.


The starting locations of each faction are peaceful zones. The rest of the land are constant battle zones. So, there is a principle of free PvP: players can attack anyone regardless faction. But there is a penalty for killing someone of your own faction. Particular attention is paid to the guild wars, where players can attack any enemies without penalty. The game has a whole continent on which players can capture territory and set their own rules. What can push aside from this game? It has a doubtful game store, but that depends on your preferences.


Where to play? You can choose one of the official European servers - Eanna or Tempest.


Share your MMORPG discoveries with open world PvP!

 

[Gerrard]

My discoveries are that open world PvP in an MMORPG is a pipe dream that will never work and that the only people who want it are sociopaths.
Prove me wrong.

Spoiler

You can't.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

I DID NOT GIVE CONSENT TO YOU, SIRRAH, TO KILL ME. DO YOU NOT KNOW I AM LORD AVELSMITH OF THE YELLOWSTONE? HMPH, OF COURSE NOT, I COULD SEE BY THOSE RAGS YOU ARE JUST A MERE COMMON CASUAL.

FOR NOW YOU HAVE MY WARNING, SHOULD THIS EVENT TRANSPIRE AGAIN I WILL HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE THAN TO LABEL YOU A SOCIOPATH AND AWARD YOU NO FRIEND REQUEST.

GOOD DAY.

 

[Interstellar]

Imo the best open world PVP content is in Lineage Classic. I will never forget those mass PVPs for Baium, Zaken or any other raid boss on Skelth.

 

[whydoibother]

Guys, GUYS!
We make Rimworld. You know Rimworld, the game? That game. We make Rimworld, but its an MMORPG. And you play as one pawn, rather than a colony. And it has no PvP restrictions, full PvP, and permanent death!!! Guys, it will be awesome. And when you die, you get a new capsule, so you get 5 random characters in a pod about to crash, you pick who survives, and thats your new character! Better loot the corpses and run away, because other players will come to gather metal from the pod! Or maybe you can talk to them, join up with them. Maybe ambush them? Its going to be amazing, boys. No NPCs, only players, full player driven construction of cities, goods trade, factions and wars. Some democracy system so they can make decisions on a large scale, its going to be great!

Spoiler

Dies within six weeks because 99% of people who claim they want an unrestricted PvP centric MMORPG actually don't and quickly realize that.

Spoiler

And the respawn pod costs $1.99 for 10, to make you extra mad when you die, and so you can't reroll random characters until a good one shows up.

 

[The_Mask]

I can vouch for RFO. It can be pretty good for people that want a punishing open-world MMORPG, but it is VERY P2W.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

Guys, GUYS!
We make Rimworld. You know Rimworld, the game? That game. We make Rimworld, but its an MMORPG. And you play as one pawn, rather than a colony. And it has no PvP restrictions, full PvP, and permanent death!!! Guys, it will be awesome. And when you die, you get a new capsule, so you get 5 random characters in a pod about to crash, you pick who survives, and thats your new character! Better loot the corpses and run away, because other players will come to gather metal from the pod! Or maybe you can talk to them, join up with them. Maybe ambush them? Its going to be amazing, boys. No NPCs, only players, full player driven construction of cities, goods trade, factions and wars. Some democracy system so they can make decisions on a large scale, its going to be great!

Spoiler

Dies within six weeks because 99% of people who claim they want an unrestricted PvP centric MMORPG actually don't and quickly realize that.

Spoiler

And the respawn pod costs $1.99 for 10, to make you extra mad when you die, and so you can't reroll random characters until a good one shows up.

Sounds a lot like Chronicles of Elyria to be honest

 

[Beastro]

2 of the 3 you list are faction PvP.

That's the thing, it's not simply open world PvP that needs to come back, but free for all to leave it up to the players to factionlize and create their own organic rivalries.

And it has no PvP restrictions, full PvP, and permanent death!!

Perma death is fun, but in short term servers. Eventually the restarting process becomes too tired.

The advantages of attacking thers, and the punishments from losing combat, need to be there, but there needs to be enough of leeway in order to allow things like reputation and such to develop. With perma death a wellknown PK can die but once, and unless you know who they are on a meta-level that is the end to them, but with some form of respawn the scope can widen for more of a parish-hood to develop around PKs and all the fun that comes from seeing a sinister name swing into the area you're in.

 

[grimace]

$7,923,369 to https://chroniclesofelyria.com/shop ... and there are some development issues ...

"The TL;DR is: we're experimenting with other programming languages and environments for our gameplay mechanics and platform in order to create a more efficient, scalable world and platform. Things are coming along slowly on that front, but will pick up shortly."

Spoiler

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChroniclesOfElyria/comments/f1bbw6/sbs_investigating_c_c_and_rust/

Quotes from Caspian on discord

We use Docker. Our initial implementation was with Docker Swarm, but we're likely moving to Kubernetes.

I'd considered the Mesos platform as well. DC/OS has some nice features, but there seems to be more complexity than we need.

Kubernetes is, so far, the right balance between Swarm and DC/OS.

We're also doing R&D on various programming languages for our service mesh.

There's a couple service mesh implementations out there that utilize a sidecar implementation. We're experimenting to see if that'll be efficient enough for us, but I don't think it will. So we're looking to integrate some of the sidecar features into our service hosts so we can get the same functionality: discoverability, short circuiting, g/b deployments, etc. without the performance cost of a proxy server.

The two main ones right now are the Linkerd proxy (Rust) and Envoy (C++). I've been experimenting with both.

Our first implementation used RabbitMQ as a pub/sub messaging protocol. We're experimenting with alternatives right now.

Heh. Ok. I'm done talking tech. Don't want to alienate people. The TL;DR is: we're experimenting with other programming languages and environments for our gameplay mechanics and platform in order to create a more efficient, scalable world and platform. Things are coming along slowly on that front, but will pick up shortly.

We're doing investigation into using C++, C#, or Rust now for our platform. We were previously using NodeJS, but the process overhead and large memory footprint of NodeJS made it unsuitable for the large scale world we're creating.

There's pros and cons to all three languages. C++ is fast but takes longer to develop in. It's also prone to mistakes. Something like 70% of all security hotfixes at Microsoft were due to buffer overrun or pointer mismanagement. However, we use UE4 for our client, so having our platform also built entirely in C++ would allow us to minimize domain knowledge.

C# is fast enough now. But it does have a slightly higher memory footprint than native languages, and even in server GC mode, can still create unexpected hiccups in execution doing garbage collection. But everyone on the team can develop in C# pretty quickly, and as about 50% of all games being developed now are in C#, it's really easy to find new people. But, it's harder to interop with UE4 and we just aren't certain yet whether the memory and GC will be a problem.

Rust has the performance benefits of C++, without the instability or security issues. It can be used with both C++ and C# with a 'C' extern library, but it requires a bit of overhead to do that. Rust is arguably the language of the future, game development in general, but it's the language the team is the least familiar with, so it comes with a learning curve.

At the end of the day, we know we need to port our infrastructure to a new language and platform to reach the scalability we want, but it's a tradeoff between performance, security, staffing, and time-to-market.

 

[Norfleet]

The advantages of attacking thers, and the punishments from losing combat, need to be there, but there needs to be enough of leeway in order to allow things like reputation and such to develop. With perma death a wellknown PK can die but once, and unless you know who they are on a meta-level that is the end to them, but with some form of respawn the scope can widen for more of a parish-hood to develop around PKs and all the fun that comes from seeing a sinister name swing into the area you're in.

I've contemplated how to go about implementing perma-death in a persistent MMO-type environment, and I've started to think the answer lies in giving the player many characters that can be played simultaneously, with it being hard to get a TPK and total wipe, but easy to lose minor characters, so a steady rate of attrition forces the player to adopt a mindset that DEATH HAPPENS, while making it still possible to grow and keep characters.

I have a few concepts kicking around.

 

[grimace]

The advantages of attacking thers, and the punishments from losing combat, need to be there, but there needs to be enough of leeway in order to allow things like reputation and such to develop. With perma death a wellknown PK can die but once, and unless you know who they are on a meta-level that is the end to them, but with some form of respawn the scope can widen for more of a parish-hood to develop around PKs and all the fun that comes from seeing a sinister name swing into the area you're in.

I've contemplated how to go about implementing perma-death in a persistent MMO-type environment, and I've started to think the answer lies in giving the player many characters that can be played simultaneously, with it being hard to get a TPK and total wipe, but easy to lose minor characters, so a steady rate of attrition forces the player to adopt a mindset that DEATH HAPPENS, while making it still possible to grow and keep characters.

I have a few concepts kicking around.

EVE Online has insurance and Tabula Rasa allowed you to clone your character at a branching skill/class decision.


If the risk of character death makes players less likely to log in to casually play will a risk of death demotivate and disincentivize longer and more frequent play times?

To balance that healing class characters will become more important in a perma death persistent world.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

My discoveries are that open world PvP in an MMORPG is a pipe dream that will never work and that the only people who want it are sociopaths.
Prove me wrong.

Spoiler

You can't.

*cough*cough*ultimaonline*cough*

 

[grimace]

My discoveries are that open world PvP in an MMORPG is a pipe dream that will never work and that the only people who want it are sociopaths.
Prove me wrong.

Spoiler

You can't.

*cough*cough*ultimaonline*cough*

Are you playing https://uooutlands.com/ ?

 

[Gerrard]

My discoveries are that open world PvP in an MMORPG is a pipe dream that will never work and that the only people who want it are sociopaths.
Prove me wrong.

Spoiler

You can't.

*cough*cough*ultimaonline*cough*

The game being dead proves my claim is true, not the other way around. The PvP changes it got should also be a hint. If UO launched when internet was more widely available it most likely would've fell over and died even faster.
A server of 1000 autists does not disprove anything.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

this, ladies and gentleman, is how you masterly prove to the world you're a first class retard. welcome to the gerrard show!

 

[Norfleet]

EVE Online has insurance and Tabula Rasa allowed you to clone your character at a branching skill/class decision.

Yeah, these are basically things that simply water down the concept of perma-death to the point of it being "not really unless you're trying to intentionally delete yourself", though.

The core of selling perma-death shouldn't be trying to sell players on the idea that it won't happen, but that it WILL happen and that this is normal and part of successful gameplay. The problem with all current perma-death implementations is that having anyone die is still, no matter what attempts are made to bubble-wrap it, still failure states. It should be acceptable to sacrifice a character for some objective or goal, and doing so should not be seen as a defeat. With this in mind, it should be possible to lose characters and still "win", while similarly being possible to "lose" while not dying.

 

[grimace]

So all characters start at level one. Characters that kill other players gain experience and level up. Characters who kill other characters and survive are rewarded with higher stats and new skills.

Are the low level players encouraged to group together to kill off the higher level/skilled player?

Spoiler

That PVP you crave has been implemented in Fortnite.

 

[Norfleet]

So all characters start at level one. Characters that kill other players gain experience and level up. Characters who kill other characters and survive are rewarded with higher stats and new skills.

I was thinking more along the lines of "players can play with an entire stable of characters simultaneously". Rather than a player running a single character, which means a death costs him everything, the player instead has a stable of characters: A company, a mercenary band, a ship's crew, or other sort of unit that otherwise provides a framework for the hosting of multiple characters. Something that promotes the idea that there is such a thing as "acceptable losses", that characters can be sacrificed to further larger objectives, and providing an element of persistence that exists independently of individual characters. Just allowing a player to simply have multiple alts isn't enough, since otherwise most players will just zero on on a "favored main" and often neglect the option to even have multiple characters because of demands on his time and focus: He should be able to actually DEPLOY these characters simultaneously, and thus there will be spares that are simultaneously being trained up in the process of use, especially if characters can suffer non-fatal wounds that incapacitate them and put them out of action like X-Com troopers, so that a player can, and SHOULD, have a reserve.

In more traditional setups, a player is typically motivated to invest everything into one character, which means killing that character essentially wipes out the player's entire investment in the game. You then have to come up with various excuses to allow the player to keep his character, which essentially undermines "perma-death". No, in this case, dead is dead, and you carry on with your roster of other characters.

Are the low level players encouraged to group together to kill off the higher level/skilled player?

I actually don't think players should be ENCOURAGED to kill each other at all. The violence should flow organically from circumstances, personal grudges, and factional conflicts, not be something that the game tries to goad players to do. If players kill each other over local conflicts and personal animosities, that's all fine and good, but there shouldn't really be a reason to just have people murder each other, especially in a perma-death environment. Just like in real life, you shouldn't really benefit from randomly murdering people.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Haven't played a pvp game in ages. I play perma death but pvp perma mmorpg???

Don't you eventually end up with uber god on the server who just massacres everyone as they spawn. Reroll and continue. Pretty soon people abandon the game?

Maybe random spawn spots so the Death gods don't get insta kill since they'll have to camp at one spot?

Is pvp the only level up in these servers or are there quests and pve shit? These can be fun for a while. How many of you play those horror get the fuck away from the boogie monster before it 1-3 shot kills you. Survival horror as oppose to survival whore which is a separate genre.

still, most mmos fizzle out as far as playerbase.

 

[Beastro]

My discoveries are that open world PvP in an MMORPG is a pipe dream that will never work and that the only people who want it are sociopaths.
Prove me wrong.

Spoiler

You can't.

*cough*cough*ultimaonline*cough*

The game being dead proves my claim is true, not the other way around. The PvP changes it got should also be a hint. If UO launched when internet was more widely available it most likely would've fell over and died even faster.
A server of 1000 autists does not disprove anything.

Ignores culture.

Release UO today and the mindset of everyone would be different.

It's the reason why I fear classic servers are doomed to fail, because the people are different playing it. I saw this replaying EQ years ago, where most everyone is max level within a couple weeks and going directly for the raid "content" to clear it asap rather than experiencing the game the way we originally did back then.

I actually don't think players should be ENCOURAGED to kill each other at all. The violence should flow organically from circumstances, personal grudges, and factional conflicts, not be something that the game tries to goad players to do. If players kill each other over local conflicts and personal animosities, that's all fine and good, but there shouldn't really be a reason to just have people murder each other, especially in a perma-death environment. Just like in real life, you shouldn't really benefit from randomly murdering people.

This so much.

It also ignores the "ideological" outlook some people formed their guilds around.

Some guilds on EQ Rallos Zek were openly antagonistic, like the PK guild Darkenbane which unironically larped being Saturday morning cartoon villains (Their guild leader constantly exclaimed that he was his guild's god so much it became clear the guys ego was showing through), while others set an outlook and stuck to it that would result in conflict though they didn't seek to antagonize anyone for the hell of it.

Guilds like The Begotten and Peace of Formosa took the self-sufficiency outlook: They refused to ally with other guilds and always put their own interests first, so when it came to killing raid targets, meant they constantly ran into trouble with guilds trying to form spawn rotations and compromise. Their refusal to compromise resulted in the big guild wars of the server in classic and gave the server a feel people must of had going about their lives only for armies to roll in and butt heads.

Others, like the Anti-PK guilds, loved to live and let live, but would form up and band together should PKs swing into a zone as they loved to fight as much as the PKs did, they just didn't want to be predatory and sought to roleplay defenders and stereotypical fantasy good guys.

Don't you eventually end up with uber god guild on the server who just massacres everyone as they spawn. Reroll and continue. Pretty soon people abandon the game?

Once PvP becomes big enough it becomes a matter of coordinating numbers and finding the games most efficient means to DPS down the enemy. In EQ that was the assist train: Set people are main assist, usually just one, and the guild rolls through targeting the enemy one by one using overwhelming force, first to take out the healers, then the DPSers, then everyone else.

Once one guild establishes itself, so long as it doesn't get bored, it will maintain top spot, especially with its access to raid loot. They continue the DPS train and rolling through in packs of 2-4 groups (12-24 people) hounding leveling groups until everyone gives up and leaves.

Most PvPs in EQ quickly focus around the initial rush trying to get to the raid targets first, lock in that content and then try to get the gear disparity going. By the time of Red99 the fate of the server is determined within the first week or two, as everyone else largely gives up by then and whines for the server to be wiped as the dominant guild says everything is fine (which is what the server wipers would argue for if they'd won the rush).

The end result of that is the PvP is determined very little by the PvP itself but the PvE gear rush.

 

[laclongquan]

Open world PvP sounds like license to hunt down noobs for your pleasure~

Thus it never work, commercially.

Dream on, noob-hunter! Even if you kickstart it to live, there's no flood of noobs coming in to be your preys~

 

[InD_ImaginE]

FFA Open World PvP is a waste of time for everyone involved. Its there for PK to kill noobs because dick waving. It's a waste of time for the new player because some level 80 will camp on your levelling spot. It's a waste of time for the dev because it will kill the game sooner or later.

Faction PvP like WoW or Rising Force (RF) is much more manageable because there are communities to counteract the reatardation of Open World PvP players.

If you wanto FFA Open World PvP play PUBG or something.

 

[Norfleet]

Open world PvP sounds like license to hunt down noobs for your pleasure~

It basically is, although for reasons other than merely pleasure. You don't need fun for it, strategic motivations are sufficient: If, in an open-world environment, you don't actively work to suppress all potential opposition, you will lose any technological advantage you have. This is why in a game like Starcraft, it's generally not an ideal strategy to simply turtle in your base trying to max out the tech tree: Actively harassing your opponent to gain an early advantage and keep applying pressure to maintain that advantage is much more effective. And what is open-world PvP except a fancier RTS in slow motion?

FFA Open World PvP is a waste of time for everyone involved. Its there for PK to kill noobs because dick waving.

Dick-waving isn't really a strong or necessary motivation. When a guy builds 6 Zerglings and rushes you, he's not just looking to wave his dick in your face, he's looking to actively impede your economic development so that he can gain competitive advantage. If anything, the dick-wavers are merely nuisances, because eventually they will get bored of griefing the area and leave, or be taken out by those who are actually organized and see them as a potential strategic threat...or an obstacle to them expanding their own clan.

But yes, this is the problem of FFA Open World in a persistent environment: What you have is basically a game where SOME people are playing World of Warcraft, and OTHERS are playing Warcraft itself.

All this, of course, assumes there's some degree of consequence to the PKing. If you're not actually doing anything to anyone except causing them to press F to respawn, then it's simply there as a petty nuisance and serves no actual purpose in the game.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

So camping on newbs is a way to lure emotionally charged challengers? Yeah, i guess that is dick waving. Or is it more? I wouldn't know as I've always pve (m) or vs cpu. I guess there's a thrill when bored of cpu. I have to admit i don't know much on raids or clans/guild either. Hmmmm... no wonder esports seems a big thing. The betting rings must be fantastic. (As in betting with real $$$ on gamers esp in team competitions).

What consequences are administered to griefers besides banning?

 

[InD_ImaginE]

So camping on newbs is a way to lure emotionally charged challengers? Yeah, i guess that is dick waving. Or is it more? I wouldn't know as I've always pve (m) or vs cpu. I guess there's a thrill when bored of cpu. I have to admit i don't know much on raids or clans/guild either. Hmmmm... no wonder esports seems a big thing. The betting rings must be fantastic. (As in betting with real $$$ on gamers esp in team competitions).

What consequences are administered to griefers besides banning?

In RF Online if you grief your own faction iirc you are "outlawed". Everybody can attack you without penalty and get rewarded to do so. I can't remember what the reward is tho. I think you have chance to get the outlaw equipment to drop or something like that.

And really some people camp on noobs for hours in these games until they are killed or get bored. Somehow they find it fun just to one hit kill people 75 levels lower than them for hours on end. So yeah its just dick waving.

At least Faction based PvP is justified that you get reward for it.