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.

A Pacifist Plays Darkfall

This week I managed to purchase Darkfall. I say "managed" because the publisher, Aventurine, has made the unusual and somewhat controversial decision to limit the number of subscriptions it sells in the online game's first weeks. The idea, as I understand it, is to prevent the game's single server from buckeling under the stress of tens of thousands of players logging in at once. Most developers of "Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games" (MMORPGs) would have done similar testing and adjustments throughout their closed beta testing, possibly capping it off with an open beta period just before launch. Then again, few such games have launched without account management and server issues anyway, so maybe Aventurine has hit on something.

Besides, the game's development hasn't been exactly conventional at any turn, so why start now? Announced roughly two weeks before the World Trade Center got ganked (for the second time) and the US economy looted (for the first time this century), Darkfall has seen a long and rocky life while in development. That, combined with the independent developer's ambitious feature list and its fans' rabid boosterism, made the game something of a running joke among those gamers who follow MMORPGs. Many thought it would never launch. In that, at least, Aventurine has proved the naysayers wrong.

But the question for today isn't really how I came to be playing Darkfall, but why. The game, since the very beginning, has been a Holy Grail for those who prefer a particular style of PvP (or Player v/s Player) conflict that they style "hardcore" and others describe as sadistic. Hardcore PvPers, like the rest of us, vary in their intensity from those who simply crave the danger and challenge of matching wits and skill with other human players...to those who don't enjoy a game unless they're ruining somebody's day. Darkfall allows PvP combat anywhere in the game's expansive world. Although there are consequences for attacking allies, there's nothing preventing you from doing so. There's also nothing preventing a highly experienced character from killing an absolute newbie, or five characters from attacking one, or any situation, really, where most gamers would say the match-up is less than fair. Hardcore PvP isn't meant to be fair. The game is also "full loot," meaning that when a character is killed, anything he was carrying can be taken by anyone standing around, while the character is ressurected, essentially naked, at a distant "bind point." It's not for everyone.

Most gamers don't like this style of play, and I'm one of them. People play MMORPGs for all kinds of reasons, but few of them include getting killed and looted by a squad of higher-level characters or getting killed over and over again by the same character whose out simply for the lulz. Early in its lifespan, Ultima Online figured this out and split the world into mirror images of mostly-lawless and mostly-safe. The hardcore PvPers have never been happy since, and Darkfall offers a chance to return to their own twisted Garden of Eden in which anyone can kill anyone else anywhere at any time...and take their shit.

I was ecstatic over the introduction of Trammel, UO's "safe zone." In games like Everquest II, City of Heroes, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan, and others, I've stuck to those games and servers that offered consensual-only PvP and mild, if any, penalties for dying. This, by the definition of the hardcore PvPer, makes me a "carebear." So be it. I enjoy playing MMORPGs, both in solo mode and grouping with others. I like to explore and see what the next quest holds. And I pay my monthly tithe to the gaming gods like everyone else. I like what I like.

But I also played Shadowbane, the hardcore PvPers previous Holy Grail. It had some safe areas, but was mostly open PvP. It wasn't full-loot, IIRC, but you did drop whatever wasn't equipped on your character. And the game had its share of PKs and griefers. Even in this game built for conflict, I played a healer and a scout, support classes not really designed to "own" at PvP; a carebear in a world of wolves. But I loved the politics, the rising and falling empires, and the sense that there was something at risk in all the warfare. I found a place within that world where I could fit in, and for a time it was good.

That's what's attracted me to Darkfall, the idea that there may be some greater stories to experience in and amongst the dickweeds, griefers, and d00ds. There's also the challenge of being a nonagressive person is an aggressive world. Although people have done it in World of Warcraft, the choice, to me, seems to have little meaning in a game that's essentially on rails. But in a sandbox world layered in violence and ass-hattery, how do you make a place for yourself if you just want to explore and experience? To call myself a pacifist is a bit of hyperbole. I have killed PCs and I will kill PCs. But what else does Darkfall offer? I'll let you know.