[MUD-Dev] PK vs. PvP (was: UO rants)

[Ananda Dawnsinger]

> From: "Tess Lowe" <tess at havensong.com>
> Reply-To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 01:05:51 +0100
> To: <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
> Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] UO rants
> 
> 
> John Buehler wrote:
> 
>> Being on the receiving end of a PvP encounter is never
>> fun, and that's why I don't like PvP worlds.  In the end, only the most
>> powerful players are able to enjoy the experience.  And those tend to be
>> the hardcore gamers.  Like yourself.
> 
> I would take issue with that on the basis of my own personal experience. It
> seems commonly accepted that in PvP worlds, the powerful players kill those
> who for whatever reason haven't learned to (or dont want to) fight. I've
> often heard it said that PKers don't like to kill other PKers, they like to
> kill socialisers, who are satisfyingly offended by the experience. However,
> this must be a cultural thing, because in Achaea the reverse is true. If you
> don't attack anyone, you are almost never attacked at random. I am very much
> a socialiser type player, and achaea is very much a PvP world. And yet the
> only time i was ever attacked was in revenge for killing someone who
> attacked my friend. (i survived, and the attempt on my life was not
> repeated). It is very much "an eye for an eye, (and no more than that)". I
> dont really understand why, but there is a great culture of respect for
> non-fighters, and if one of them is killed, all their more pugilistic
> guildmates will surely wreak revenge on their behalf. So I would say that in
> achaea at least, it is those players totally given over to PKing who have
> the hardest time of it, if they care about being killed at all that is. The
> socialisers mostly feel quite safe, and the battles around them give them
> endless new things to talk about.

This was my experience in Dragon's Gate as well -- another small,
PvP-oriented commercial roleplaying MUD.  (Whew!)  I ran two prominent and
non-violent characters there when it first opened.  And one of them was the
leader of the Leuian Pride -- Leuians being the honor-bound cat warriors
more or less set up to be at war with the quasi-vampires.  (How a pacifist
healer ended up leading the honor-bound cat warriors is a story better left
for another time.)

Not only was I rarely attacked, the most prominent PKers gave me a wide
berth.  The most notorious feral/grief player specifically set up a
non-aggression pact with me -- which *I* ended up breaking because I got
sick of his attempts to co-opt the game, but I digress again.  (One of my
characters did get singled out for certain types of roleplayed "assaults,"
though, but those were quite different.)

I'm certain this is because DGate, despite its PvP-oriented design (with
"good" races like Leuians set against "evil" races like the San Elves and
the Muatana-al), was strongly oriented toward roleplaying and community.
Because I was a well-known member of the community, and because I tried to
be responsible and constructive, and because I argued for a working balance
between "good" and "evil" (rather than being a "whiner" who wanted to make a
statist game out of an inherently anarchistic design), PKing me would have
brought more grief on their head than they wanted to deal with.

It ended up getting put to the test early on, actually -- fortunately I
wasn't the guinea pig.  But during a time of great uncertainty and flux, a
small group of Muatana-al (the aforementioned quasi-vampires) decided to try
their hand at random PK.  They ended up killing the most beloved character
in the game.  And they never lived it down.

I think essentially PvP -- as a shorthand for contextual PK -- is
fundamentally different from the Quakealike sport you might find on a place
like AC's Darktide server.  PvP is less about "wins" or "kills" than about
cementing your role and position in the gameworld.  As such, it owes at
least as much to the Socializer and Explorer as to the Killer.

Though honestly, more PvP takes place on Darktide than you might think...

The RP/GoP game with the strongest PvP bent I know of is Inferno.  There are
three "realms" (Dark, Light, Twilight) and conflict among all three.  I
gather it's considered very bad form for interaction between a Dark PC and a
Light PC to not end in violence.  And though I haven't tried it out
personally, it has a very good reputation as a roleplaying environment in
the pay-text-MUD (aka Gemstone) community.

I think MUME's been brought up in this context before as well.

   -- Sharon

(Note: ananda at greyrealms.com is defunct.  Please direct e-mail to
ananda at winterreach.com.)




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