10-15-2009, 01:30 PM
Aion has these guard towers -- basically little outposts with a tesla-coil tower that does high damage and a couple NPC guards. It's all killable stuff but you need a decent team to completely overrun a location like this. Most of my fights have been near these things. It really got me thinking that this should probably be a component of any MMO PvP game (especially if it's "PvPvE") -- not "safe spots", but defensive areas that can give you some sort of advantage against overwhelming numbers.
e.g.
6v6, you'll tend to fight in the field. 6v8? Probably still in the field. 6v12? Now you're looking for somewhere to fall back to. This is why Tauren Mill tended to be fun in WOW, back in the day. Those towns were not an ultimate protection and if the enemy had you outnumbered well enough they'd overrun the town too but it allowed for a sort of variable resistor in PvP: That is, if you were having a good, even fight, it would range all over. If you started being pushed back, the fight would get closer and closer to the town, which would start providing more and more resistance to an enemy advance. In a slightly uneven fight you can still push out a bit and only receive small help from the NPCs on the very edge of town. In a very uneven fight you could retreat completely into the town and receive the full help of all of the NPCs, not to mention the cover of the buildings. Sometimes that wasn't enough either but this "variable resistance" with both teams having their own fallback location allowed this area to become the prime spot for PvP in WOW, pre-battlegrounds. It helps even out an uneven fight.
Thinking about our "open world" faction based PvP game, the ability to construct and equip small outposts like this would probably be an important design element. You'd dot your landscape and favorite hunting grounds with guard towers. The guard tower isn't good enough to stop 20 people but it's good enough to stop 6 and no solo ganker will even come near it. You can't really DO anything while you're penned in there by an opposing force but at least you don't have to die every time a fight starts to get out of hand -- the survivors of the ambush run to the guard tower, try and hook up with some allies and counterattack to rez the fallen.
Without these "guard towers", something which provides a variable resistance, MMO PvP is just too unstable to be much fun. People like even fights and guard towers like this give them a way to try and create their own fairness, based on how far away from these towers they choose to engage in combat.
e.g.
6v6, you'll tend to fight in the field. 6v8? Probably still in the field. 6v12? Now you're looking for somewhere to fall back to. This is why Tauren Mill tended to be fun in WOW, back in the day. Those towns were not an ultimate protection and if the enemy had you outnumbered well enough they'd overrun the town too but it allowed for a sort of variable resistor in PvP: That is, if you were having a good, even fight, it would range all over. If you started being pushed back, the fight would get closer and closer to the town, which would start providing more and more resistance to an enemy advance. In a slightly uneven fight you can still push out a bit and only receive small help from the NPCs on the very edge of town. In a very uneven fight you could retreat completely into the town and receive the full help of all of the NPCs, not to mention the cover of the buildings. Sometimes that wasn't enough either but this "variable resistance" with both teams having their own fallback location allowed this area to become the prime spot for PvP in WOW, pre-battlegrounds. It helps even out an uneven fight.
Thinking about our "open world" faction based PvP game, the ability to construct and equip small outposts like this would probably be an important design element. You'd dot your landscape and favorite hunting grounds with guard towers. The guard tower isn't good enough to stop 20 people but it's good enough to stop 6 and no solo ganker will even come near it. You can't really DO anything while you're penned in there by an opposing force but at least you don't have to die every time a fight starts to get out of hand -- the survivors of the ambush run to the guard tower, try and hook up with some allies and counterattack to rez the fallen.
Without these "guard towers", something which provides a variable resistance, MMO PvP is just too unstable to be much fun. People like even fights and guard towers like this give them a way to try and create their own fairness, based on how far away from these towers they choose to engage in combat.
