Is PvP for the RB?

[KingOfPain]

I have been thinking of starting up a topic on the PvP aspect of the game but I wasn't sure what I wanted to cover

Still, the competitive aspect can be bad for us on some points. Are we going to play to win? Or are we going to play BNM and take ubervariants into battle vs other guilds? If we ever do the latter, how will the competition react if/when they realize that is what we are doing? There are a lot of things that could go wrong if we aren't careful.

Still, when Occhi first pointed out this game, the PvP and the teamwork elements were a big part of the appeal. Competitive multiplayer is something that can be very much fun under the right conditions. The odd thing seems to be that one needs to balance SP and MP in order to get stronger characters. That may tend to favor those with lots of time or a greater capacity to handle Feast Mode. We'll just have to see.

Frankly, the biggest appeal so far in SP is the tactical element. I'm afraid that the quest system, or what I've seen of it so far, is rather shallow and even boring. The combat was a lot more interesting than running around gawking at the art and trying to guess at the bonus quests. I never was one for Mario Brothers type "secrets" and puzzles.

It is late and I should go to bed soon, but that shouldn't stop me from getting the ball rolling.
Others are concerned about it too.

Someone - The thing that concerns me most about Guild Wars, besides the time thing (which may be manageable) is the PVP aspect. Is PVP integrated thoughout the game, or how does it work? As usual, I'm in the dark.

I will say that, while hoping the game has enough contents for PvE to last a while, or enough contents to come to keep PvE interesting, we would eventually partake in, maybe not so much in tournaments (only time would tell how that is structured) but the GvG aspect of the game anyway. Afterall, GvG is supposed to be a big part of the game.

Zed - Going on the basis of Diablo, Civ, and MOO, I think, in general, we in the RB crowd enjoy competing against the game, far more than competing against other players who don't understand our philosophy. Even when we gather for a more formal competition such as the Epics, care has always been taken to at least attempt to emphasize competition against ourselves and de-emphasize competition amongst ourselves.

Zed is right on in what he said in that other thread. What have we here in GW?
- competing against the game - a given, there will be BNMs.
- and de-emphasize competition amongst ourselves. - No probs. it is a team thing us vs other players/guilds.
So this takes care of one of the two major concerns we have about GW. It is a team thing, we are, as group, remain on the same side, no competition among ourselves unless we seek it.

But, there is still one more mental adjustment we (I am speaking as we because I believe that is the general attidute of RBDers) have to make. We don't like PvP, period. At least not in the world of Diablo. There could be many reasons to why that is, to each his own, but the main reason for me is that PvP is simply not balanced in Diablo, and mostly not consensual. The other reason being, I would guess, is that there is a human being at the other end of the stick. Some would have more problems with that than others, and depends on situations.

Because PvP, or GvG (what have you) in GW is consensual and hopefully balanced, because it is THE game, and because it is done in a team environment, I have no problem going semi/full PvP if that is what we want. Afterall, PvP in GW should offer the ultimate challenge in GW game play and infinite varieties.

Now, all I have to do is think of the opposing players as monsters. Maybe we should just call them Ponsters for Player/Monsters. Yeah, that's the ticket, ponsters is much more efficient than opposing-players

The other major concern is

Are we going to play to win?

Depends. We are but a small group. While we can argue that a small group of skilled players is just as good as a large group with few skilled players, There are definite advantages to be had for being big.
-They can play more game. Of course, this can be both good or bad for them depending on the scoring system, and how shrew the guild masters/rules are to limit who gets to go into battle.
-They have more resources - not sure how much items will affect the game, but they will.

In the end, we are still going to Play to Win, whether we bring in our uber team (and we will have special strike team(s)), or we choose to go to battle with a team of ScumRUs. The real question is not "Are we going to play to win?", it is "Are we going for the ladder?"

I think not.

And that alone will erase the cautionary mentioned in the other post. We are the RB and need no official score to tell us that we are good. We will not let a scoring system stand in our way of making the most out of our game(s).

Lets hear what everyone thinks.


KoP

[Sirian]

Well, the team ladder in GalCiv got more attention from RB folks than you might realize. Not sure how much you paid attention to that. I remember you got the game but I never saw that you had submitted any scores.

I cared about the ladder up to a point. Having my name listed among the top ten in eight or ten different categories was cool. I felt that it reflected my diversity, my range of performance. Anyone could clearly see that I was not hiding in some niche exploiting a formula not applicable elsewhere, but was actually playing the game and doing very well at it.

The key for me was not to allow ladder concerns to ALTER the way I would play. I stuck with that, not caring when those who figured out ways to score points more easily began to edge past me. For instance, we learned that playing only on the largest maps advanced the score faster and improved per-game average score. I changed nothing, continuing to play a wide variety of map sizes. In fact, I learned that playing on the medium size maps was probably the hardest, and I won some kudos from others who understood the difference between scoring and real difficulty. However, there were some RB folks who cared a bit more about the ladder than I did, and they invested more into it, including (I think) letting it affect how they played.


Let me tell you a story about Descent. My first two years playing, I played with keyboard-only controls. In anarchy game, pickup matches on open sockets -- pubbie games -- I could more than hold my own. I even dominated much of the time vs players using mouse and joystick. I would use hit and run tactics and I mastered the art of watching my six. As long as nobody was behind me, I could safely seek out other players who were actively engaged with one another and shoot at any or all of them. When Player A and Player B are fighting, shooting only at each other, and along comes Sirian as Player C, we've got nobody shooting at Player C and multiple ships firing at Players A and B. Is C going to get killed? No. He might even wipe out both A and B in one swoop. So I had fun like that for about two years, and I even founded the first-ever multiplayer league for Descent 2, based on anarchy games involving three to five players, first to reach score X wins, and then a league scoring handed out based on where you ranked. Number of players in the game equals the "Game Points" for a match. Your ranking on the scoreboard equals your "Kill Points". If you win the game, you score as many Kill Points as Game Points. Low man on the scoring would only rack up one Kill Point for whatever number of Game Points. Thus the scoring ratio would vary from 20% to 100% for any given game. It was a flexible scoring system that withstood the test of time and many thousands of these games among hundreds of players.

However, through all of my time doing that, I eschewed one vs one Descent. My inferior controls did not hinder me greatly in anarchy, but one on one, my handicap would reveal itself. One on one dogfights, I just couldn't do it. No way to match the response times and maneuverability of a top notch joystick. My only chance to compete was in the tunnels, the tight spaces, where their advantages melted away to a large extent. But playing like that meant lots of mind games, and I hated playing like that. I was addicted to the action. Playing mind games felt cheap. I was doing a lot of it anyway, in the "A vs B, here comes C" variety, but that seemed different.

After much cajoling, a friend persuaded me to "give ladder play a try". Just TRY it, Sirian. If you don't like it, you can quit. He kept coaxing me. Finally I gave in and agreed to play him one on one, no ladder, just us two, on the condition that we would each pick a level and play one game in each other's level. Well, he owned me in his level, but despite his controls advantage, I played him to a tie in my level. Turned out that he was right. I -DID- enjoy the chess match with him. The key was gearing myself up appropriately. When I accepted that the mind games would be part of the action and all parties understood them to be fair game, they stopped bothering me. In fact, I came to appreciate them as a whole other element of the game.

I went out and bought myself a joystick, spent the whole summer playing Descent in single player, training my reflexes to the new controls. Once I got out from under that disadvantage, things became even more entertaining in one vs one. That decision ended up more than doubling the life of that game for me. My strongest bonds from that community formed with my most intense rivals. Competition has rough edges, but it doesn't have to be ugly. In fact, nearly all of the ugliness arises out of those who exhibit poor sportsmanship. So the key to avoiding that is culture: peer pressure. If you throw tantrums, if you make excuses, if you denigrate the successes of others, if you go nuts every time you lose, you develop a bad reputation, and you lose face with your peers. Competitors want recognition, at least to a degree that is fair and justified, so it definitely bothers them when people start to talk about them as poor sports. They may even get yourself barred from the elite ranks, if they prove to be a lost cause.


Griselda worried about RBCiv when I was organizing the Epics. Would the cat drag in poor sports and disruptive personalities? Would the competition add to our community or sap its strength? I think we'll be fine, so long as we stick with the notion that good sportsmanship is essential. Don't overdo trash talk with the other guilds. Don't let them troll-bait you if they misbehave. Don't get bent if a teammate makes a mistake. Don't boss other people around. Treat others with respect. All the obvious stuff.

As you said, KoP, the consensual aspect is key. If folks put themselves into the right frame of mind and embrace "what the game allows" as the accepted standard, then we'll do fine. We won't be able to impose rules on anyone else, so if the game allows it, it's fair. Period. ArenaNet seems to have a plan for fixing exploits, but what they consider an exploit and what we would consider one may differ.

The ladder system is supposed to do the Warcraft III thing and match you with someone of comparable record. That's important. It should reduce the number of dud matches. During the next beta weekend, we need to make a point to get out there and do some PvP. I would have led such an effort last time, but I couldn't play without a Preorder disk.


- Sirian

[Occhidiangela]

I think we'll be fine, so long as we stick with the notion that good sportsmanship is essential. Don't overdo trash talk with the other guilds. Don't let them troll-bait you if they misbehave. Don't get bent if a teammate makes a mistake. Don't boss other people around. Treat others with respect. All the obvious stuff.

As you said, KoP, the consensual aspect is key. If folks put themselves into the right frame of mind and embrace "what the game allows" as the accepted standard, then we'll do fine. We won't be able to impose rules on anyone else, so if the game allows it, it's fair. Period. ArenaNet seems to have a plan for fixing exploits, but what they consider an exploit and what we would consider one may differ.

The ladder system is supposed to do the Warcraft III thing and match you with someone of comparable record. That's important. It should reduce the number of dud matches. During the next beta weekend, we need to make a point to get out there and do some PvP. I would have led such an effort last time, but I couldn't play without a Preorder disk.

1. We can do internal PvP matches to test out tactics. We can mix and match team mates. We can have free for alls, I think, maybe not.

2. We can play in the ladder.

3. Should I buy a joystick for these matches? I expect I need to get in on the Roger Wilco type utility you all are using. That will be KEY to smoothe teamwork, and IMO, laughs.

My experience with golf. Playing for money.

I used to play with a bunch of my friends, bets that could pay off up to 16 dollars for a morning's work, or 25 if you won it all. Typically a few bucks changed hands.

I have also played pick up games with bets. The advantage of the second is you really want that guy's money. You also can assume he is lying about his handicap, or has sandbagged it in the handicap system. That last is why I stopped engaging in the latter activity.

Back to competing with friends. As Sirian points out, with good sportsmanship the guiding principle, all is well. I still play the occasional two dollar nassau and greenies on the golf course with my friends. We are good sports, and good friends before we are bettors against one another.

The attitude we bring with us will define our success, or failure, since

Fun is where you find it.

Occhi

[Zed-F]

I think if we are going to do any sort of GvG play we will want to consider how we can get variant characters into the mix, because I know there are at least some RB players who generally play nothing but variant characters (myself included.)

[Hawkmoon]

1. We can do internal PvP matches to test out tactics. We can mix and match team mates. We can have free for alls, I think, maybe not.

2. We can play in the ladder.

3. Should I buy a joystick for these matches? I expect I need to get in on the Roger Wilco type utility you all are using. That will be KEY to smoothe teamwork, and IMO, laughs.

*snip*

The attitude we bring with us will define our success, or failure, since

Fun is where you find it.

Occhi

I agree with those (and previous) sentiments. I seriously doubt that Guild Ladder play is going to be a threat to the cohesive community that is RB. I expect that we will all continue to behave like adults.

I've never gotten into PvP play before, so I expect I'll suck at it, at least at first. You have to promise not to kick me out of the RB Guild! Heh. I dunno how I'll like it in the long run, but I'm looking forward to giving it a try. I agree with KoP that the major draw is that it's always consensual, and if the system matches you up against only comparable opponents, then so much the better. I find it interesting that many of the facets of the GW monster AI that we've commented on approvingly (going for the healers, expecially) is something that we'd expect a human opponent to do. So I think it'll be challenging.

Occhi, you definitely need to get TeamSpeak installed - it's very useful in D2 games, and as you say, will be essential during GvG play.

We need to give PvP/GvG a try during the next beta weekend. Sirian, did I hear you volunteering (sort of) to organize some teams?

Cheers,
Hawkmoon