PvP and Skill-based Systems Don't Mix

I've long been a fan of RPGs that use skills instead of classes. For one thing, they usually offer more ways to develop a character. Want to be a wizard who uses a sword? Go for it! I also like the idea that you progress in the skills you use and that quests can be more about completing the objective than sopping up every stray experience point. The Elder Scrolls games are a good example, though they do incorporate some level-based mechanics. Ultima Online as it originally debuted was also purely skill-based. Since they're taking so much inspiration from UO, it's no surprise that Darkfall is also a skill-based system.

I'm starting to think, however, that skill-based systems and PvP are a bad mix. Maybe Darkfall just does it poorly, I don't know, but it doesn't seem to be working out well. Part of the problem could also be that players have seen and experienced a lot of MMOs since the advent of UO and our expectations are different now. Here's a few of the problems with skills and PvP as I see it.

The Grind:
In a skill-based RPG that's focused on PvE, like Oblivion, you progress in your skills as you use them against computer-controlled foes. There's little incentive to sit in a town and use the same skill repetitively just to increase it when you could be out raising your skills while having fun. In fact, in Oblivion the monsters level up as you do to provide a suitable challenge, so there's sort of a disincentive to grind skills.

By contrast, because Darkfall is focused so heavily on PvP, there's a great incentive to "grind" skills to a higher level so that you can be competitive with the other players who might want to kill you or who you might want to kill. Magic is particularly bad in this regard as in its earliest stages it's simply not competitive with a guy in armor wielding a polearm. But grinding, to put it mildly, isn't fun. It's makework, a time-sink. It sucks. You could go out to a camp of monsters and PvE to raise those skills, but you're at far greater risk of getting killed by other players who come looking for inexperienced characters to kill. You can also "spar" with clanmates, which can be more fun and provides an incentive to join with other people. This works well for melee skills.

The need to grind out skills is why we see ridiculous things like people running in place against a wall in town for hours, or swimming against a wall, or splashing around in acid pools to raise their resistance, or (as I have done) casting Mana Missile over and over again at trees.

Character Diversity:
One of the fun things about PvP is seeing the different tactics people use, even if you're on the losing end of those tactics. That's assuming, of course, that the tactics are a clever use of positioning, character skill, and player skill and not just some abuse of game mechanics. In early UO, though, the PvPer's PvPer was the tank mage, a guy in full armor who also used magic. There was also the naked-with-a-halberd guy. But for all the freedom of the skill-based system, there were a lot of folks who were practically identical. They had to be to be competitive.

Maybe it's just the infant state of Darkfall, but I'm seeing the same thing. If you want to do PvP and do it right, you need to be in full armor and wielding either a polearm or a two-handed sword. You also have to use bows, both for closing action and for giving chase. Unless you've progressed to the elemental schools, magic is probably out of the question. Oh, Heal Self and Mana Missile can come in handy, as will Mana to Stamina. I'll do another post on the problems with magic in Darkfall. The point here is that, for all the skills made available, there's really only one or two "builds" that work.

I dearly hope this changes over time. Darkfall is already geared towards the "nasty, brutish, and short" mindset. If the only thing that's viable is butchers in full plate, it's going to be a tedious game.

Endgame:
I don't know about the MUDs that preceded it, but in UO I don't remember there being a concept of the "endgame." This is the idea, particularly prevalent in World of Warcraft, that the real action happens after your character's level and/or skills are maxed out. Everything leading up to that is a series of hoops you jump through to get to the endgame. To me, this seems to be a perversion of the idea of fun. I'm glad there's more content and higher level action to look forward to, but if I'm racing through a game to get to that content, then I'm spending an awful lot of time going through the paces before I get there. I kind of have this idea that a game should be fun from day one and that it ought to offer fun all along the way.

In a PvP game like Darkfall, the endgame is really the ability to be maximally effective in player v/s player conflicts. For some it includes large-scale clan warfare, city building, and conquest. For others it's just being able to wtfpwn anyone they come across. Either way, it means that developing your skills, rather than being the game, is all the shit you have to do before you can play the game. Shadowbane, although a class-based game, had a similar mindset; if you hadn't reached the maximum level, you couldn't really be competitive with those who had. Ergo, get there as fast as possible.


In addition to these issues, Darkfall also has the problem that they've implemented their skill system in an inconsistent and unsatisfying way. For most of the skills, it's hard to see the benefits that higher levels accrue to the basic functioning of the skill. For many of the skills, you only see significant improvements at the 25, 50, and 75 skill point levels, and the main benefit of attaining higher skill levels is that they allow you to purchase different, augmentative skills. This is really a level-based system in drag, without the classes, cross-bred with the worst aspects of a skill-based system. I get the feeling that Darkfall's developers were more enamoured of the idea of a skill-based system than the reality of it. The result, at this point, appears to be an unholy mess.

Darkfall also violates one of the most fundamental ideas in good RPG design: give the players interesting choices to make that have consequences. We often see this is single-player games as it applies to quest branching and the choices you need to make at each level. But I think the principle should hold true for MMORPGs as well or they're not really RPGs at all. As it stands, Darkfall has no caps on skill or stat points, so every character can learn every skill and max out every stat. I presume this is slated to be changed, but that's where we are right now. Further, they've removed the restrictions that prevented someone skilled in Air magic, for instance, from learning Earth magic (and the same for Fire and Water) so that those choices no longer have any meaning either. It's great that Darkfall is a "sandbox" and you can choose anything you want, but being able to choose everything simultaneously makes those choices meaningless.

As a fan of skill-based RPGs, I hate to say it, but I'm starting to think they don't make good PvP MMOs.