You know it’s going to be a bad PvP match when you see all the opposing players have the same guild tag over their head. Many guilds, mine included, enjoy group PvP, yet very few games support it natively. Group PvP is fun in that you have now taken the game to a completely different strategic level, on top of whatever landscape/npc/event challenges the developers have built into the zone/event/area. I’ve been in one or two truly epic guild vs guild battles.
I know as a pick-up PvP player, getting repeatedly beat into the ground is not fun. I don’t mean because I need to “learn2pvp carebear”, but because the other team is well versed in each other’s strategies, abilities, and works well as a team while I am trying to figure out if my teammates can find the attack button. At least, I would hope that the other team is not enjoying it. Bullying usually stops being fun around third grade.
“At least, I would hope that the other team is not enjoying it.”
Of course they are enjoying it. They’re winning. To some people that is the heart of having fun.
“Bullying usually stops being fun around third grade.”
Nonsense, adults bully all the time – they just use different words for it.
Watch the news:
Murder = Bullying
Rape = Bullying
Litigation = Bullying
Afghanistan = Bullying
People love bullying. Online video games sanitise bullying by allowing it to happen without real physical injuries being caused and without fear of consequences. For some people that’s the best of both worlds – you can dominate and be cruel and you don’t get punished for it.
I actually never found the group PvPers that much of a pain. It was those working on their own, who expected to just wander up and kill you straight out.
Playing as a Ranger as I do, I often find I get branded a “runner” in PvP, as I often cripple and then kite the enemy to death – interupting any healing/condition removal they might try to cast.
This was particularly bad in Hero Battles (when they still existed), as players only had themselves to blame if they died. They would usually blame everyone but themselves, even if your hero messes up – you have to be able to compensate.
I’d tend not to know the other side were all in the same guild, since I play most MMOs with almost all overhead names/tags off. I only see someone’s name if I mouseover or target them. Guild tags, titles and similar on-screen advertising I have switched off completely, where the game permits.
If RL bullying had rewards, titles and rep tracks attached to it the schools might as well give up. It’d be impossible to stop.
Let me get this straight… you’re complaining because a pickup group usually loses against a guild group?
And you call bullying joining PvP games as a pre-made?
Seriously?
I’d also add that I bet the guys who are PvP’ing as an organized group wish people who are terrible/unorganized/just-here-for-the-lulz at PvP would stop queuing up so they can actually get a decent match rather than yet another stomping.
Two sides to the coin and all that.
Because it would be fair for the New York Jets to play a local high school team on a lark right?
Pickup groups are like your afternoon basketball game in a lot with a hoop – anyone can join and skill is all over the place – communication is poor.
Pre-mades are like having a professional team come down and run the score 120-0 then teabag your face as to why you suck.
Seriously no where else in life is this acceptable for a ‘fun’ passtime – and people who do it are considered douchebags:
http://backporch.fanhouse.com/2009/01/22/dallas-high-school-runs-up-100-0-score-on-disabled-opponents/
I’m not against having pre-mades in pvp – however they should only be allowed to go against other pre-mades.
Rolling random PUG pvp groups into the dust for easy points is not fair, or fun – and frankly only happens because it’s easy.
It happens because bad game design allows it to happen. In any game that values its PvP (SC2, LoL, etc), matchmaking and ranked play is very important. In many MMOs, it’s an afterthought.
(This assumes of course we are talking pre-set, instanced PvP. In world PvP all is fair, since skill can be overcome by numbers, and looking for a ‘fair’ fight means you are doing it wrong)
So is game design about trying to create avenues to fun – or about trying to build walled gardens that keep the inmates from throwing poo at each other?
I don’t know how much you can blame game design when people go out of their way to do this type of thing.
Case in point: WoW decided to implement arena style pvp. This happens *only* with premade groups – in a small arena no one else can interfere with.
The first several seasons saw people rank up as high as they could to get the equipment that made them competitive at that level – however after this they would reform as a new team and tank their rating so they could beat on lower ranked teams.
This was easy to verify as a newbie team with a sub par (lower than you get when you form a new team) would fight people with a similar ranked team (you see the rank at match end) but both people had weapons and armor you could not get until the top tier.
Now that your rank is tied directly to your character it’s not as easy to do.
That’s my problem with any “mmo pvp” – is that it’s *never* about skill – it’s *always* about gear.
The reason that FPS pvp is so popular is that everyone has (within reason) the same equipment and thus skill is *way* more important than gear.
In LoTRO, to a very large extent, skill matters over gear as you are not playing vs other players using their own players, but using game-generated characters. Of course, you can level up and gett better abilities but they are not as game changing as most MMO ones are. DCUO takes this a step further and you are playing another character, with the only thing that carries over being your heal pots.
FPS pvp does seem more fair. My son, a rabid FPS pvp fan, despite his ranks and whatnot, gets a graphical change to distinguish his rank, like a special hat or title. There’s nothing that gives him any in-game edge for the next game based on his performance in this one.
GW (and, it is expected) GW2 aims to alleviate this issue by reducing the dependency on gear in determining the outcome of combat.
More accurately, GW makes it relatively easy to get max-statted gear (especially for PvP) and unlock all powers, which removes gear discrepancies.
Note that even with GWs formalised “random entry” system, some enterprising teams still “sync-enter” to try to get on the same team.