Proposal: PvP within existing PvE zones.

Many have written regarding negative behaviors so many players choose to indulge in. The real question becomes,
"why do they continue to do such practices?"
And the answer is: because thay can largely operate with impunity; knowing there is little or nothing that can be done to them within the game, and even if ANet is alerted, the more clever nasties will be long gone before they arrive.

Example:
Zoning into a locale in the South Shiverpeaks yesterday, I was treated to a verbal barrage by a fellow who felt it was important that everyone there know he enjoys getting high on drugs, raping "chicks" and "popping caps in the biatches". A more perfect example of someone needing a sword through his gullet I could not provide.
Was he interfering with my transaction to sell loot to the merchant? No.
Was he highly annoying and violating EULA agreements? yes.
Did it warrant a screenshot and followup to ANet. Not really.
How many of you have come across simialr situations?

Aye, ANet has been very proactive in regards to botting, scamming, duping, and other exploits; but this doesn't relieve the stress or anger that so many have felt when some toad begins screaming profanity, spamming garbage, or otherwise making a general ass of himself in the current zone.
A solution is needed.

A proposed solution: make the city/mission zones PvP.
Horrors! You say. I won't be able to run to the bank without some cretin trying to plunge a dagger into my back!
Not true.
Consider other games where PvP is allowed in most places; Lineage 2 and Shadowbane come to mind. The population quickly falls into a self-policing mode where normal courtesy and respect for each other is quickly established.
Here are several of the more common concerns, and what occurred in these games as a result of them:

1.) Player Killers sit in the newbie zones and simply grief players. No doubt, we have quite a few of these rejects on the server now. Players indulging in this behavior soon find themselves on the "hit list" for other players who will not tolerate this buffonery.
From personal habit I can tell you that anytime I saw someone 5+ levels above the other players in the zone killing them, I made this fellow my personal project until he understood the error of his ways.

2.) I don't want to have to worry about being killed while in any town/mission zone. And no doubt, you won't have to. First of all, there is no permanent xp loss in GW, so any "inconvenience" would only be temporary. Secondly, you don't drop any gear or coin when defeated, so the incentive to simply have packs of players roaming zones looking for "marks" is zero. And think, if somebody just randomly comes up and snuffs you with the obligatory, "I PWNED U NOOB"
a.) Your friends or guild is going to make this persons life a living hell for the rest of the time he's logged on.
b.) Passersby will also take umbrage at such scum and quickly dispatch them.

What quickly transpires is that the population begins to "police" itself, and a overall code of conduct is established.

3.) I demand the right to spam, yell obscenity, or make sexual statements in public so everyone can see how ubercool I am. And you still can brother! All this proposed system would do is allow the rest of us to either:
a.) Politely tell you to shut up or move along - and have a way to "enforce" our request.
b.) Allow you to correct your antisocial behaviors, by inflicting temporary death (and possible embarrassment) to your character.

4.) Players would abuse it! I can hear the stories now; "there I was, spamming the zone with my godly golden wares, when this total jerkwad just nukes me into the dirt! that is so, like, totally unfair or something!"
It's a fact of life folks, Babies cry - and most come here to do it. That they were having a temper tantrum in the first place when spanked is always irrelvant to them - and will continue to be so.

I believe PvP within city and mission zones would clear up the current negative behaviors so prevalent practically overnight.

What say you?

Talesin

Spoken like a true PK.


Whether you like it or not griefers, most likely you included, WILL abuse it to the maximum of their ability. This is the same argument PK's have been giving for "free pvp" on every online game that has ever come out. It is nothing new.

Been discussed. A solution exists. Report them.

Every one of the objections makes sense. If someone is harrassing people just report him. Being banned solves the problem for everyone, being able to kill him in game wouldn't even be an inconvenience. There would be griefers, there would be random attacks, guilds would form expressly to attack others, and you'd not be able to stop them.

Play a game that encourages ganking if you really want it, it'll never happen in GW.

See my duelling post, i think a much better solution (if i do say so myself)

Cant say i support this one. i played AO for three years. There were PvP regions of the map, but if it were in cities, argh, that would get rediculous.

It were these things that I loved about Shadowbane. Guild Wars has great PVP, arguably the best of any game out right now, but these are the things that myself and I'm sure a lot of others miss greatly. Good post, poster!

Maybe if even the high level cities allowed for some PVP in an expansion or something. Trutfully, I want the feeling of old UO, old school AC darktide or Shadowbane (as buggy as it was) back. I haven't felt that adrenaline in an online rpg in awhile.

- Bic Lighter

In city ... I like ... In mission ... I disagree ...

now you get spikes in pugs ... and not all pugs are all that bad ... people holding missions for money saying pay us 5 plat now or the 4 of us will kill you off ... I think in the citys it would be good .... because that is mostly where the problem lies.

proper reporting is in place ... just people are to lazy to take screen shot, email with atttachment of proof. God ... I'm too lazy to sell my wares on the vent sell forum because I dont want to chop my pictures and make it one lol.

In the end we can only blame ourselves for letting this happen already. We can stop it ... we just dont. I think it would be funny though. I would enter lions arch and see 32 meteors, 17 chain lightnings, and 56 heal areas lol.

I sympathise with the sentiment, truly I do, but I do not want nonconsensual PvP in cities, it wouldn't help with the problem at hand. We do not need lvl 20 ganking-parties roaming Ascalon to "pwn nubbs", but that is exactly what we'd get.

Actually I'm pretty much what most would term a "care-bear" - I PvE almost exclusively. But I do thank you for the moniker!

Uhm, why you think that kind of behaviour does not deserve a ban, i dont know. Should definately have screened it.

(sarcasm)Yeah... UO's "self policing" worked real good, back in the day.(/sarcasm)

It then becomes a matter of joining the big bad "ultimate" guild (or top five guilds), or just dying repeatedly, for no reason at all.


Also, BicLighter, what some people get a rush of adrenaline for, many of us feel only contempt and frustration about. I did not get "excited" when 5 people came out of the woodwork and put me down like a dog. I only got frustrated and annoyed by it, until I finally quit trying to play, since clearly playing the game was impossible.

Rather than making all city districts PvP, just make a certain "PvP district" you can enter. Then, if someone becomes a moron, you can stab them to death

Manadar: Not a bad suggestion. However, you'd also want to make sure that you did not get exp for killing in a PvP district.

Otherwise: Level 20 in Ascalon City PvP district takes off his armor and tells people in his guild to take their new characters and come kill him over and over again to gain EXP and gain levels very rapidly.

It'd be very exploitable, in that regard.

So, the only safe way to do it, would be to make the 'in-city' PvP operate in a district, and offer no benefit.

However, this would not solve Talesin's problem, since he was dealing with verbal grief. The verbal griefer probably would not be willing to go into the pvp district, nor could Talesin force him to.

So, there would be nothing gained at all from this.


A duel system could be rather cool, though, just for the sake of practicing. Especially if parties of equal size could duel.

Of course

It would solve his problem, as he could simply go to PvP districts rather than hanging out in non-PvP ones. Then, he could /ignore the person if they are whispering, or kill them if they come to the PvP district

Manadar. Alternatively, he could just change districts when there is a problem player shouting about something stupid.

How much Lineage 2 did you play, exactly? The 'Chaotic' system was horrible. Even if you were white, you could still lose items, and if you ganked a red, you eventually would get killed yourself in becoming PvP active, perpetuating the cycle.

So some bunghole decides to set a barb trap around the merchant then drop a meteor storm or something on the crowd gathered...

Hmm... bad idea imo.

not a bad idea ... but I dont think in towns now ... it would be a nice pvp idea ... but not recreate what we got ... say an expansion? that would be a good reason for pvp players to buy it. Hell if there was a royal rumble free for all in a town ... surely I would buy it and gointo it ... lol ... imagine all the traps meteors maelstroms chaos storms etc going off constantly ... sheez it would be a natural war all day long lol ...

If there was a free-for-all in a town, I would just spam AoE spells and evasion skills and run around.

Maybe they could have one town that is a total free-for-all all the time, and leave all the other towns alone. Although this wouldn't solve the op's problem.

What about all those "towns" in the wilds that were abandoned, make them warp to zones but open season combat? But I would not want to see them in the main towns unless there was a special pvp version of them.

Thank you for the replies all!
The problem still persists however - it is very common to come across people indulging in all sorts of EULA-bannable offenses daily. I methodically began reporting violations (ANet probably knows me on a first name basis by now :P ) but to be honest, its like the old hydra of greek mythology; for every head I cut off, 2 more grow back - and I lack the proper "fire" to prevent it from happening.

Also, simply "leaving the zone" isn't a solution, rather it empowers these idiots to continue their stupidity. It's your $50 too - and you are entitled to a decent and enjoyable game experience -the EULA states as much.

In the OP I stated:
"there is no permanent xp loss in GW, so any "inconvenience" would only be temporary. Secondly, you don't drop any gear or coin when defeated, so the incentive to simply have packs of players roaming zones looking for "marks" is zero."
And there it is, the scream and wail about losing something if PvP was implemented. What? Pride?

And yes, no doubt people will find all sorts of interesting things to do in city zones (or wherever) that might make things unpleasant, but take the scenario 10 seconds further down the road - retribution. Your little prank isn't going to be much fun when somebody you ticked off makes you his new hobby.

So that said, what solutions do you suggest?

Whenever anyone swears or is vulgar, have them automatically die, and spawn in 5 seconds. (maybe increase this time for every offense after the first)

Or just have the Op's idea, I would rather have a variation of his.

Talesin: Seriously? My suggestion would be a function to alert GM's. With the caveat that I don't even know if Anet HAS any GM's watching the game.

While I think this is a cool idea... I doubt it would work as well as we'd like it to. So, I think a better idea would be for ANet to give certain people that they've decided are intelligent enough to handle it the ability to kill people in towns. Giving people the ability to ban is never going to happen for obvious reasons but giving them the ability to kill people? Now that would just be great. I suppose more effective though, would be the ability to warn people. The reason I think this is neccessary is because reporting just doesn't fit most circumstances. For example, you see a bunch of people trade spamming the all channel. This happens so incredibly often that reporting them doesn't really do much. But if there were a bunch of in-game GMs? They could just warn all the people trade spamming, and if they didn't stop they could have their own special report ability that would make things go quicker. Though I still like the idea of them being able to kill people, that would just be hillarious.

I'm not sure I understand the problem.

If someone's bothering you, why don't you just put them on your ignore list?

All I have to say is: Play the game and quit throwing a tantrum over every person that does something stupid in the game.

You could implement the PvP in towns as a checkbox when you log on denoting if you are available for PvP or not. And there would only be 1v1 fighting. AoE spells would be pretty useless as would Barrage.

As soon as someone challenges you, you have 15 seconds to choose skills, then they are locked. Or within 15 seconds you would need to zone out. Dying would cause your head to be displayed on a spike in the middle of the town for about 5 minutes with a plaque saying who killed you.

I don't think limiting it to a PvP district would be fair to the people who just want to watch. Although I do support a PvP only zone where you would be fearful of your life if you're not rollin with your guild. That would be awesome to see 2 full guilds fighting. Calling in a sister guild would surely tip the scales. If you are at -60 DP you wouldn't be able to be rezzed. To limit exploits you couldn't zone back in for something like 20 minutes, even if you logged out.

I fully support PvP in towns.

Oh lord i hate open PvP. The reason i play guild wars is because people can't use me for a pinata! I'm serious in Conquer online we got candy for the holidays and i got pked and exploded into a pile of candy ^^; I guess it would be ok is it was extremly controled and limited but otherwise T_T

My pure healing monk will pwn every Enemy...
mhm...
mhm...
Maybe I can give them a devastating look?
mhm...
mhm...
Nope, there is no way my healing monk can beat any char. I may be able to outheal the damage, but I will never be able to hurt some one bad enough.

And for making someone's life a real hell: sorry, I'm too old to bear with this 12 year old kids that have a guild of 500 guys and just kill me each time they see me.

I want to put the annoying guys on the ignore list, maybe report them to anet and never think about them again.

I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY...

want some new form of PvP.

Right now it's dull and empty, without any motivation at all...to PvP...why do it? It's boring, it's crap.

PvP districts would be AWESOME.

The things I hate most about PvP right now are:

Countdown timers: Who CARES about having to wait for that friggin' clock?! We want to PvP, we want to fight fights, we want to fight for something and have some battles...who cares about clocks?!!!

Set ups: Ok, you start behind the gate, timer is up, the gate opens, go at it.

No no no no no! What in the world would you do that for?! You can't "flank" somebody like that! You can't have open battles when you're guaranteed to collide in the middle. Who cares about "arenas" and "set battles". If I see you and I don't like you I want to kill you.

It would be great to like go in and take control of a town.

Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What if like, for each character you got to choose a "faction"---say Dwayna and Grenth

And in every town (or say, the last half of the towns), there were districts for PvP. In these PvP districts---the two factions were able to fight at will, if they encountered one another---they could fight. You get the idea.

I think it would be AWESOME to be like "Reds---go to Lion's Arch and take the city from the blues!" So then a load of people go to the PvP districts in Lion's Arch and fight the blues there with their faction comrades.

*sigh*...that would be cool. And then if you wanted to kill someone on the team you were on, you could just switch to another one of your characters of the other faction.

Oh oh!

And even PvP only characters could enter these districts!

That way the towns could just be like---giant arenas! With no timers, no "blue team wins" or any of that!

Just districts where battles were always going on and people were always fighting the opposing faction!

*sigh* Now THAT would be great.

Oh, oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh !!!!!!

Also, I think this would REALLY REALLY REALLY get PvP and PvE more intertwined! With so many people having the greatest gear wouldn't really matter or anything, so it would just be waging war against the opposing faction! It would add more PvP battle zones, it would add more motivation for PvP, among other things!

Or how about each of the two "factions" as a whole gets points for how many times they kill the opposing team and/or take control of a town. And then those points unlocked something for everyone of that faction if they had more or something...say like a small UW/Fissure sort of thing. And people from all over the world could join each faction so it would be sort of a balance to the War of the Worlds.

*sigh*

I can dream...

The point of PvP isn't what you perceive. TThink about an RTS game. Same maps. Same Victory condition. Yet they're very popular for one reason: Strategy.

By your opinion, chest is a bad game, which it isn't. It's really not about progressing the story or anything, it's all about outwitting, outmanuevering your opponents.

The joy of PvP is PvP itself, it needs nothing more. Everything else is merely a sidedish.

So the ones with slower bandwidth and slower computers are out of business. Some guys in our guild just finish loading when the clock hits 0, so we sometimes really have to hope that they are here on time.

If they will appear 30 seconds after the battle started, we effectivly down one or 2 people - so we stand no chance...


And I really must say: you haven't understand PvP in GW. You are better off switching to another game if you don't like the GW way of PvP.

PvP in GW is not about killing (allthough it helps ) it's about strategy and teamplay.

First I just need to ask...what the hell is "chest"?

If you're referring to "chess". I ADORE chess. I love it. Why? Because you've got to think long and hard about some decisions, it takes a lot of strategical thinking and it really can be a beating on the mind during a tough game of chess. It's that sort of tough thinking and outwitting that makes you get so immersed in the game you almost lose yourself to everything else.

That's not the case with this game. Sure it takes a little bit of strategy---but the strategy is NOT in the actual fighting, the strategy is before the fight, trying to figure out the right skill set/team build and what not. The chances of actually out-maneuvering someone (if I spelled maneuvering right, probably didn't), are very very rare. Every single time I've lost in the tombs, it's been because our team build had a tough time countering the skills the opponents were using. It rarely, if EVER was because of lack of thinking or strategy on our part. The strategy in this game is MINIMAL. It's about knowledge of the skills, you get a good skill set and get used to using it and BAM you'll do fine. It doesn't require an immense amount of thinking or anything like that when the battle is actually happening. (And yeah, I DO understand the way PvP works in this game, I've exhausted any and all PvP options.)

Also---RTS games, they're popular because they DO require a lot of thinking and adaptation in the battles. You simply CAN'T do that in the current system of GW. You have all your skills set BEFORE you go in and fight. Thus meaning if your build is getting countered, you have to stick with it. Where as in an RTS game---if someone counters your attacks, you can in the middle of battle, choose to start fighting another way. You CAN'T do that in the current system of GW, it's just you've got your set and you go.

In RTS games you don't just have x amount of tanks/infantry. No, you can choose WHILE you're battling to create different things, counter different attacks differently and adapt to what's happening. If you encounter a group that's got the exact counter to your group's build...you're screwed.

And I think you kinda...overlooked the entire point of my post.

No countdown timers would not, in ANY way, affect the people with slow connections. In NO way does it matter when the HELL you decide to join the fight. It wouldn't be a "alright two teams---GO" sort of thing, it would be a battle that is ALWAYS going, and one that NEVER stops in each PvP district. As in, you could go in SOLO at any point in the fight, just spawn somewhere in the city and help your faction beat up the other faction. It doesn't matter when the hell you spawn. And being outmatched by one or two people?

Yeah, right, like that's actually going to matter. If this were ever to be implemented you'd see fights of like 25vs25 or larger, it's possible your faction would be outnumbered by 10. It's about pulling together in your faction to take out the other team. And that is what will get you motivated.

Also this style wouldn't be like "Alright SWEET! We've got a spike team so we can just knock people out!" Actually it'd be more like "Who cares, both teams have at least one spike party. But we've all also got ways of countering it".

There would be multiple parties on each side, both fighting against the entire opposing faction. Not "party against party" or person on person, it would be faction against faction in a fight amongst the cities.

And that is why it would be cool. Never ending fights, would just rock. They'd get people more involved, they'd be of larger scale and less-dependant on gear, and just as a whole be...larger. Bigger. More meaningful as opposed to "two 8 man teams---fight". If you know what I mean.

More styles of PvP is definately a good thing for this game, because I believe Anet could pull it off BETTER than those other games.

You can't decide what you are thinking, right?

On the one hand you love strategy, but on the other hand you want fast less-strategic action. So what do you really want?

Nah thanks, the absence of mindless PKing is one of the major reasons why I play this game. Enforcing the EULA is A-Nets job (with the help of our screenshots that is). The situation you described above would perfectly warrent a ban, enough said.

I love being immersed in whatever it is that I'm doing. Whether it be by extremely in-depth thinking (currently absent in Guild Wars) or by the need for quick-thinking and adaptation, it makes no difference so long as I can become motivated and immersed in what it is that I'm doing. Since GW is closer to the option of being a game with large-scale intense battles that require quick thinking and a lot of quick thinking and movement of the fingers adapting to the massive battle. Guild Wars is already very very far away from the "move pieces around" in-depth strategic thinking, so the only logical way to move is for more intense largescale battles with a purpose.

I sure as hell can decide what I'm thinking. And to correct you..."but on the other hand you want less-strategic action", not at all. It won't be any less strategic than right now, if anything it will be MORE strategic as you'll actually have the option of fighting for a few deaths, switching out to another character in about 10 seconds and then hopping back in the match to better suit what your faction needs/is fighting against. You'd actually have to adapt to such a massive battle, and would be able to do this EASILY because the battle wouldn't END, and you wouldn't have to worry about missing anything.

Just because something's bigger and more intense does not by ANY means mean that it requires less "strategic-action". If anything, it requires MORE. Have you ever TRIED one of these sorts of battles I'm describing? It takes a hell of a lot more thinking and adaptation than the current system in GW where you choose your skill set, and if it doesn't work your screwed for 20 minutes until your GvG battle is over while the rest of your team runs about attacking/retreating over and over. Guild Wars would pull of large-scale battles better than ANY other game though.

So don't tell me to "go play another game" that suits my wants better because there ISN'T game out there that does it properly. RYL had a similar PvP system but you'd get ganked by the lvl 94 who decides to solo-raid your lvl 5 town. WoW a similar situation. Guild Wars is miraculously capped at lvl-20, and nearly everyone has a lvl 20 character, a decent build, and the best-stat armor. Which means everyone would be able to participate a lot in such a battle.

I don't now if brute force is the solution to the problem at hand.
As much as I agree that some folks need a good "talking to", I feel that more agression in the game is not desireable.

Ok, I wish I could've stabbed some sharp objects into some jerks back when he sat his butt right on my Ranger.
And I do wish that ANet had put colours on the minimap so I could've identified that penis painter on a mission I did yesterday.

But ignoring sometimes helps a lot.
Eventually the painter stopped painting (nobody on the team complained)
And the big fat worrior who had put his behind into my Ranger's face left after a while.

Did I wish them dead. At some point in time I did.
But ignoring them helped.

One has to deceid between what's right, and what's easy.

I like the idea, but like some others are saying, it can get out of hand. I think they should still implement your idea, but add it as a seperate distrtict. Example, you can go into the PvE areas like normal, but once inside, you can switch over to the 'Open PvE' or whatever they call it. Nice suggestion.

For me, strategy is not about to have the possibility to get everything you need when in demand.

If you are running a damage focused build and someone outdamages you, I think it is far better to try to counter the enemy with everything you have with you. It would be very easy to switch to a complete different build to exactly counter what the enemy has. But the enemy would do the same, so you are constantly switching builds...

And for big fights: who would need monks, mesmers and rangers? 15 air spikes will throw out so much damage that everyone will instantly die. combined with a nice edge of extinction everyone will die all the time...

If you are fighting an 8 people air spike team, you can defeat them by shutting them down, splitting them up or just plain surviving the first few waves. But what if you are facing 20 of them? How would you counter it?

Because there are so many people, the air spikers can go back behind the frontline and recharge, then attack, go back recharge,...

with 8v8 this isn't possible, but with a 100vs100 it is easily doable...

I don't think you will have much strategy here...

and if you can switch team anytime you want - how can there be a strategy? People will keep switching teams all the time for easy kills...

My ranger does not fear air magic.