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Sklex

PvPvE Servers - Unofficial Servers Improving The Game Design

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Since launch we have had PVE servers and PVP servers. Both are full of people complaining about the game design and how broken some key elements of the game are.

Personally I believe the Dev's have been really short-sighted in their design of this game. They took their design for Ark and expanded it but forgot that they were building a MMO and therefore we lack many of the elements of an MMO that keep people coming back for more. The devs stated early that they were taking a lot of inspiration from Eve but it's clear to me that they need to take more inspiration from Eve (see post below). I personally believe that a High Security and Low Security design with an AI Faction that maintains order within the High Security squares would go a long way to significantly improving this game. The Devs however have already said that they don't have the skill set to put that into the game currently. 

We are starting to see something new appear within the Unofficial server community. They are PvPvE servers where some squares are PvE and others are PvP, effectively allowing people to explore all elements of the game with the available time they have. The one we are playing on currently is setup per below. We love it as it allows us to explore the PvE side when we are time poor during the week and then sail out as a group into the PvP squares on the weekend for some piracy fun. The design is not perfect though IMO as it's possible to play entirely in PvE and this is a game that should create some risk for the reward and thus the design should entice people to move through PvP squares. 

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We got chatting about server design on our local unofficial server and I figured it was worth posting here to get the input of the greater community. Be keen to hear what people think about something similar to what is presented below. I would honestly love to see them do this with the official servers as the scale of the officials would really make this work and you could spread things out to make the experience even greater. 

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Design Decisions

  • PvE Squares to have carefully placed islands that do not have Gems, Crystal or Sap. This forces the PvE players to trade or leave on resource runs which in turn creates PvP opportunities. 
  • Without Gems, Crystal or Sap the PvE companies will be at a disadvantage for war preparations. 
  • No level limit on PvE Squares. Building allowed. This represents the governed islands that fall under protection of something like the British Navy. 
  • No PvE Squares next to each other. This increases opportunity for naval pvp as the pirates will quickly learn the trade routes and camp them for juicy trade ship targets. 
  • Snow and Tundra provides a challenge for PvE Companies who will need to balance the risk vs reward should they sail through those squares. This creates more PvP opportunities as it encourages the PvE Traders to spend longer on dangerous waters to avoid the deadly weather. 
  • Varied rates on squares to encourage people to play in those squares. Be it build their main bases or simply go there to gather resources, the increased rates will encourage people to move into those squares which will create PvP opportunities.
  • Server rule (and agreement between players) that players who have their main base are inelligible to raid PvP bases. I know theres nothing you can do to stop this short of admin policing but the people who are creating main bases in PvE are more likely to be the people not interested in the raiding style of PvP. Players can police this as we are all keeping track of who lives where and who moves where. 
  • Server rule to restrict flag spam on PvE squares by limiting flags to one per person/company. They are governed islands and available to all. 
  • PvE squares provide a place for people to park their ships at night. This means ships will last longer and grow bigger. This will improve naval PvP as the quality of ships in the fights will improve.
  • The different biomes are separated on different areas of the map. This ensures that all sorts of resources are limited in different areas of the map. The result is we will get more people needing to move between islands in order to gather or trade. Again this increases the opportunity for PvP and trade.

It's not a perfect idea. The hardcore PvP crowd on our server (the ones who enjoy a jolly good offline raid) are concerned that base raiding will cease to be a thing because everyone will just build in PvE squares. My response to that is the PvP style popular in Ark is incredibly toxic and won't maintain a large enough player base to keep this game running anyway. Offline raiding is not PvP; it's players versus player made environment. I also believe that the increase rates on PvP squares will be enough to entice people out into the risky waters. 

Effectively this is a way of replicating a complex game design similar to Eve that embraces both PvE and PvP throughout the world but it designed in a way to create PvP opportunities. 

I believe this will create much more meaningful game-play which can only be a positive for the game in the long term. 

Thoughts?

Edited by Sklex
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The pvp serves are actually pvpve.  Freeports are PVE servers, lawless is pvp with no claims and fast decay, everything else is full pvp.

Server even says its pvpve when you hit escape while in game.

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15 hours ago, Viscos said:

Is this server a thing? i would love to join this

 

The second picture doesn't exist. It's just my pipe dream for the direction I think this game should go. 

15 hours ago, mndfreeze said:

The pvp serves are actually pvpve.  Freeports are PVE servers, lawless is pvp with no claims and fast decay, everything else is full pvp.

Server even says its pvpve when you hit escape while in game.

No where near the same thing though. The Freeports are level capped and become ghost towns. They need to design this game better.

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The second picture is just so badly designed. Why would anyone who wanted to play PvE step foot on that server? You already neuter their ability to fight by depriving them of resources, so every ship that leaves a PvE square will be outgunned every single time. 

 

You don't want 'trade ships' you want easy targets. I guarantee you within the first 24 hours of that server being set up every PvE square will be surrounded on all sides by players camping the borders, waiting for their easy kills. 

 

There is zero reason for anyone to trade with the PvE players either. Why would anyone in their right mind HELP an enemy company get stronger? You even nerf their ability to gather things compared to everyone else, so what possible value does being a PvE player on your map idea have? Slowest to get a ship, can't get the weapons needed to put up a fight, I'm gonna go ahead and assume you won't let PvE players have any decent tame spawns either, so what possible reason would anyone ever choose to play PvE on that server? The only things those squares will be good for is a giant ship parking lot. 

 

The only way you could get people to want to play PvE on that map is if they are given unique resources that only spawn in PvE zones. Then people actually have a reason to trade with them. Otherwise you might as well just make NPC ships that don't fire back, and only spawn 1 NPC ship for every 3 you build. 

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In a game like this there needs to be an element of Risk vs Reward. To put all the PvE together creates too much safety. The point is to avoid a situation where players can remain self sustainable in a single square. Granted I agree, the map is too small. This really needs to be done on officials to make it the best possible experience. 

Personally, I'm more interested in the PvE side of this equation. So no, I'm not interested in easy targets at all. I want to be chased. I want to feel the excitement of risk without the sheer destruction that comes with the current design. 

Trade is already occurring so I disagree with you. Do this properly and people will find themselves in greater supply of somethings and lacking in others. Thus the reason to trade is created. It's becomes more efficient to trade and safer than it does to gather the resources in some situations. Keeping in mind market places are coming. 

People will build in both PvE and PvP. That much is certain. Just gotta design the game in a way that it's balanced across both for different tiers of game-play. 

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can standard buildings be created in the game such as a fort? (and have it to respawn if broken) 

 

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@Sklex  I like the design but I would not call that a PvPvE server. That's a full blown PvP server with help starting out. I agree with most of what Applecrayon wrote above. The pure PvE players you are looking for are basically cannon fodder. There is no incentive for them to play on the server. Consider the gameworld as an ecosystem - in your world the predator always wins and when that happens in nature, the predators starve. In gameplay terms, everyone, PvEr or PvPer should have at least 1 win condition - they would be different in aim and methodology to achieve but still wins or otherwise there is no sense in playing.

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I also suggested this in the suggestions forum but have a different plan for the layout. It's obvious to people who have experienced EVE the advantages a system like this would have in terms of dynamics and emergence.

 

 

TLDR: Double size of map, big PVE circle in centre.

 

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@Strategos I come from EvE so the design resonates positively with me. I think the biggest limitation is the size of the map. Then again this is still EA so there's time to expand.

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14 minutes ago, Fefu said:

@Strategos I come from EvE so the design resonates positively with me. I think the biggest limitation is the size of the map. Then again this is still EA so there's time to expand.

Yeah I would imagine as it's really a grid of separate servers you could enlarge it easily. In my suggestion post I proposed doubling it which may be a little excessive  , but you could combine the PvP and Pve servers into one and have say a 20 x 20 grid (approx double the amount of grids) and have an approximate circle of PvE grid in the middle ... say around 8 squares in diameter.  Then around that a band approx 3 grids thick of hybrid zones. finally the edges full pvp.

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A full size server would be bloody incredible. The one I posted above was only posted at that size due to the restriction of funding. Tbh I would make the PvE zones larger with clusters of squares together. Effectively creating PvE regions in different locations across the map. Even go as far as to have different AI factions that rules them. Possibly even a high end PvE end-game where they can sign up to fight for their faction and help expand their area of control with a way for the pirates or other factions to fight back. 

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I'm thinking your design appeals to PvP players, but not the hard core PvE player, they do not want or like the high risk of playing in a PvP area. Maybe they don't have the time, or some other reason.

I'm a hard core PvE player. I've played a few 4x4 servers that were a combination of PvE and PVP, similar to what you show above. I've always left them. My experience has been I only play in the PvE section anyway, so the PvP squares just limit me, because like you have in your design, they contain vital resources I will never get. I've also found that some of the PvP players tend to keep playing PvP even in the PvE zones. In those zones, their style of play most resembles griefing, not PvE play, where players normally cooperate with each other.

Another complication you create by combining PvE with PvP, is that nothing in the game stops a player from having a base in PvE where they build and stock up weapons and ammo in safety, cross over to a PvP zone, raid and destroy and then run back to the safety of the PvE zone where all their gains can not be contested.

Edited by wildbill

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I see you are still continuing to insist on your failed theory from your other thread. You simply cannot have PVE areas and PVP areas in the same cluster and expect the game to not become instantly hollow and meaningless. Everyone is simply going to build their base, anchor their ships and store their loot in the PVE zone. Only an idiot wouldn't. With this kind of setup there is little to no incentive to engage in PVP. At best you will most likely sink a super cheap throwaway transport ship carrying goods that you already have in abundance back at base.

A setup like this creates hyper inflation because its all gain and no loss. Every time you farm something and take it to your base in the PVE zones its basically now for all intents and purposes permanent yours. As a result of this everything becomes worthless and there is even less reason to engage in PVP.  Effectively you are removing all the risk vs reward gameplay that makes a game like Atlas fun and exciting to play and  replacing it with pure reward and risk only when you want to gameplay.

The only reason the PVE Freeports work in the Atlas PVP servers is because of how limited they are. Living their long term is highly discouraged via limits on XP/Levels that you can obtain, limits on materials, high decay rate on ships in the area and finally the fact that you cannot build anything meaningful there.

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1 hour ago, wildbill said:

I'm thinking your design appeals to PvP players, but not the hard core PvE player, they do not want or like the high risk of playing in a PvP area. Maybe they don't have the time, or some other reason.

Agree completely. This is a more robust version of a PvP game designed to make meaningful PvP occur. It's clear the Dev's never designed this as a PvE game and want to take it in a PvP direction though. 

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1 hour ago, Bullet Force said:

I see you are still continuing to insist on your failed theory from your other thread. You simply cannot have PVE areas and PVP areas in the same cluster and expect the game to not become instantly hollow and meaningless. Everyone is simply going to build their base, anchor their ships and store their loot in the PVE zone. Only an idiot wouldn't. With this kind of setup there is little to no incentive to engage in PVP. At best you will most likely sink a super cheap throwaway transport ship carrying goods that you already have in abundance back at base.

A setup like this creates hyper inflation because its all gain and no loss. Every time you farm something and take it to your base in the PVE zones its basically now for all intents and purposes permanent yours. As a result of this everything becomes worthless and there is even less reason to engage in PVP.  Effectively you are removing all the risk vs reward gameplay that makes a game like Atlas fun and exciting to play and  replacing it with pure reward and risk only when you want to gameplay.

The only reason the PVE Freeports work in the Atlas PVP servers is because of how limited they are. Living their long term is highly discouraged via limits on XP/Levels that you can obtain, limits on materials, high decay rate on ships in the area and finally the fact that you cannot build anything meaningful there.

It's hardly a failed theory it's been proven by over a decade of refinement in EVE.

What it does is make the game better for both the PvP players and the PvE players and provides a niche for those in between.  At least in my description i linked above , perhaps the OP wouldn't agree - sorry if i'm hijacking your thread...

1: There is a PvE zone where care bears can play and never get attacked if they don't venture out of it. They can build fancy bases without the risk of getting destroyed etc. 

2: There is a middle zone - the equivalent of Low Security in Eve. Lets say for arguments sake, you can attack people out in the ocean - ship to ship.

3: There is a PvP only outer area, which has rarer resources in different areas.

The more people you pirate the higher your infamy becomes. High infamy makes it harder for you in the middle region and stops you from entering the PvE area completely.

Area 3 becomes a war zone. Companies vie for control of the lucrative rare resources.  You can't just build in PvE because you have to secure these resources if you wan't to keep them.

 

Area 2 is interesting. Companies may have bases here to raid  into area 3. Or they may have posts to trade with the carebears. Or they could be pirate hunters, bounty hunters - good guy type players who try to protect traders etc.  Now the PvP players in area three have bases where they can harvest materials you cant get elsewhere. They can monopolise it not letting anyone else have access, or they can trade with area 2. Who in turn trade with area one. This sets up supply and demand. 

Example: you live in PvE and build ships which you sell to PvP players who prefer fighting to grinding matts. But to make the best ships you need the materials from different areas, some of which may be in the PvP area. So you trade to get the mats, build the ships and sell them to Pirates for good money. The key thing here is supply chains. Trade routes, the matts have to come from area two or three and the finished ships or tiems come back out. Which provides 2 really important things.

1: Targets carrying high value goods for pirates,

2: Lucrative trade routes and opportunities for companies to specialise in transport, or protection.

 

This model not only works for everyone, but it actually improves it for everyone. How much better for a PvE player to have a market to sell to. They could choose to support good guys or bad guys, and although they are safe their action could impact what goes on in some distant war. Furthermore their lives are affected by outside factors, prices rise and fall depending on how effectively trade routes are raided, or what prices some company in the north charges for yeti spleens.

Players that like some risk but not 24/7 fighting can sit in the middle , risking their ships and the contents of their holds but not everything.

PvP players can war non stop trying to take areas which actually mean something. And not only that they get an opportunity to kill carebears in trade ships.

White knights can hunt the bad guys , be bounty hunters etc.

It creates meaning and drivers for the game and unexpected things emerge from these kinds of mechanics, events that are much more interesting and unpredictable than the current set up.

 

Edited by Strategos
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16 minutes ago, Sklex said:

Agree completely. This is a more robust version of a PvP game designed to make meaningful PvP occur. It's clear the Dev's never designed this as a PvE game and want to take it in a PvP direction though. 

I would not say anything is clear about this game at this point, it is only maybe 1/3 complete.

So far I've only seen PvP players say things like "it is clear". 

The game has both PvE and PvP  elements and can be configured for both. I would think, just like ARK, large numbers of PvE players will play the game (and already do). 

If I was to judge the game's suitability for one style of play or the other, I would think it is more suited for PvE, since the majority of complaints seem to come from the PvP side of things 🙂

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5 minutes ago, Strategos said:

It's hardly a failed theory it's been proven by over a decade of refinement in EVE.

What it does is make the game better for both the PvP players and the PvE players and provides a niche for those in between.  At least in my description i linked above , perhaps the OP wouldn't agree - sorry if i'm hijacking your thread...

1: There is a PvE zone where care bears can play and never get attacked if they don't venture out of it. They can build fancy bases without the risk of getting destroyed etc. 

2: There is a middle zone - the equivalent of Low Security in Eve. Lets say for arguments sake, you can attack people out in the ocean - ship to ship.

3: There is a PvP only outer area, which has rarer resources in different areas.

The more people you pirate the higher your infamy becomes. High infamy makes it harder for you in the middle region and stops you from entering the PvE area completely.

Area 3 becomes a war zone. Companies vie for control of the lucrative rare resources.  You can't just build in PvE because you have to secure these resources if you wan't to keep them.

 

Area 2 is interesting. Companies may have bases here to raid  into area 3. Or they may have posts to trade with the carebears. Or they could be pirate hunters, bounty hunters - good guy type players who try to protect traders etc.  Now the PvP players in area three have bases where they can harvest materials you cant get elsewhere. They can monopolise it not letting anyone else have access, or they can trade with area 2. Who in turn trade with area one. This sets up supply and demand. 

Example: you live in PvE and build ships which you sell to PvP players who prefer fighting to grinding matts. But to make the best ships you need the materials from different areas, some of which may be in the PvP area. So you trade to get the mats, build the ships and sell them to Pirates for good money. The key thing here is supply chains. Trade routes, the matts have to come from area two or three and the finished ships or tiems come back out. Which provides 2 really important things.

1: Targets carrying high value goods for pirates,

2: Lucrative trade routes and opportunities for companies to specialise in transport, or protection.

 

This model not only works for everyone, but it actually improves it for everyone. How much better for a PvE player to have a market to sell to. They could choose to support good guys or bad guys, and although they are safe their action could impact what goes on in some distant war. Furthermore their lives are affected by outside factors, prices rise and fall depending on how effectively trade routes are raided, or what prices some company in the north charges for yeti spleens.

Players that like some risk but not 24/7 fighting can sit in the middle , risking their ships and the contents of their holds but not everything.

PvP players can war non stop trying to take areas which actually mean something. And not only that they get an opportunity to kill carebears in trade ships.

White knights can hunt the bad guys , be bounty hunters etc.

It creates meaning and drivers for the game and unexpected things emerge from these kinds of mechanics, events that are much more interesting and unpredictable than the current set up.

 

I have never played EVE, but I assume the PvE/PvP mix works there because that is the only mode of play they offer. I don't think there are unoffical servers either for EVE.

I don't think the carebears as you call them would play a version like this when they have other options that give less risk. Same for the PvE players, they will play on a PvE server. So if this mode of play is only going to attract true PvP players (plus of course griefers who will exploit the PvE areas), what is the point? Why not go full on PvP?

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2 minutes ago, wildbill said:

I have never played EVE, but I assume the PvE/PvP mix works there because that is the only mode of play they offer. I don't think there are unoffical servers either for EVE.

I don't think the carebears as you call them would play a version like this when they have other options that give less risk. Same for the PvE players, they will play on a PvE server. So if this mode of play is only going to attract true PvP players (plus of course griefers who will exploit the PvE areas), what is the point? Why not go full on PvP?

 

The point is a pure PvE player can play it without risk, but I as you haven't played EVE guess you will have to trust me when I say having players drive the economy of the game makes it much more interesting for everyone. 

The choice is the important thing,  if you get bored of PvE you can try something more dangerous,but you don't have to. that makes a great deal of difference to the game. The binary choice of PvE or PvP is pretty poor to me. Not to mention unrealistic. 

 

 

 

 

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49 minutes ago, Bullet Force said:

I see you are still continuing to insist on your failed theory from your other thread. You simply cannot have PVE areas and PVP areas in the same cluster and expect the game to not become instantly hollow and meaningless. Everyone is simply going to build their base, anchor their ships and store their loot in the PVE zone. Only an idiot wouldn't. With this kind of setup there is little to no incentive to engage in PVP. At best you will most likely sink a super cheap throwaway transport ship carrying goods that you already have in abundance back at base.

A setup like this creates hyper inflation because its all gain and no loss. Every time you farm something and take it to your base in the PVE zones its basically now for all intents and purposes permanent yours. As a result of this everything becomes worthless and there is even less reason to engage in PVP.  Effectively you are removing all the risk vs reward gameplay that makes a game like Atlas fun and exciting to play and  replacing it with pure reward and risk only when you want to gameplay.

The only reason the PVE Freeports work in the Atlas PVP servers is because of how limited they are. Living their long term is highly discouraged via limits on XP/Levels that you can obtain, limits on materials, high decay rate on ships in the area and finally the fact that you cannot build anything meaningful there.

I disagree so much with this. Right now the game is hollow and meaningless. You see people build so they can destroy each other and then repeat the process over and over again. The game lacks long term progression that is the primary ingredient that keeps people coming back to play MMOs. I believe that the biggest failure of the game so far is they picked up an multi-player game (Ark) and expected the same formula to work in an MMO environment. 

People are leaving because the game is appealing only to the griefers and people who can play for endless hours at a time. Majority of people in my experience don't like the pure risk game-play we see now. In our head we do, we would all love to be able to pump the hours in and claim success but ultimately it's simply not possible for the average joe that actually has a life. Server Admins literally advertise their wipe dates in order to attract people back to the server knowing that people leave once 'Alpha' companies have begun to dominate. It's a true indication that this is not yet a MMO. 

With the number of servers required to maintain an official server and the associated cost you can be sure of one thing. The game does not appeal to enough players to make it financially viable to keep the lights on. 

This idea absolutely needs balancing in regards to resource availability to make it work though. The risk comes from the need to gather specific resources which in turn creates the PvP opportunities. Do this right, on a very large (aka official size) server and that's where it would really begin to work. The distance and time required to travel will see companies venture out into PvP waters in order to settle. Just have to look at Eve to know this is true because it's been happening for years. They will do it for the increased resources and they will stay there because its not time efficient to keep coming back into a safe port. 

What I'm talking about here is nothing more than trying to set the game up so that it replicates the real world environment. Areas of civilisation that had law and order. Areas that had yet to be civilised that did not. 

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22 minutes ago, wildbill said:

I have never played EVE, but I assume the PvE/PvP mix works there because that is the only mode of play they offer. I don't think there are unoffical servers either for EVE.

I don't think the carebears as you call them would play a version like this when they have other options that give less risk. Same for the PvE players, they will play on a PvE server. So if this mode of play is only going to attract true PvP players (plus of course griefers who will exploit the PvE areas), what is the point? Why not go full on PvP?

The thing that most people miss when discussing this sort of concept is the different types of game-play that it unlocks. Right now for example, game-play for a PvE player involves harvesting, building, levelling and perhaps some PvE combat against ghost ships and maps. 

The Eve design however means a heap of other types of game-play open up. 

  • Harvesting for profit
  • Playing the market (buy low, selling high)
  • Becoming a trade merchant (moving stock from one port to the next)
  • Building for profit (create things to sell to the PvP players)
  • Player run businesses (Eve players run banks, gambling dens)
  • Eve even had players playing solely in the meta game. Gathering intel from one side and selling it to the other for example. 

People who have never experienced it obviously can't understand why this works. But it does. It takes the game to new heights and the reason why some of us are excited and having these conversations is we can see the foundation exists for this to work. We want this game to be incredible and believe it's possible for that to be achieved. 

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What the current game needs is for the players to get reputations., and for there to be an NPC Royal Navy (Police). Then for those players that like offline raiding and attacking targets that they are not in an official declared WAR with, they would get a worse reputation. If they are seen on the seas by the NPC royal Navy they will be attacked.
The Royal Navy should (like the Ships of the damned), come in various sized ships. But the Royal navy unlike the ships of the damned should only attack ships with players on that have a poor reputation.

Obviously the worse the reputation the longer the aggro range of the NPC royal Navy should be.
Reputation should not reset when you die, but should only reset when you die of old age or fountain of youth regen.
To regain your reputation, you should get a reputation increase for every game Month that you don't attack someone. The worse your reputation the longer it takes to get rid of it.

This would force more official wars to be fought, and get rid of a lot of the offline raiding.

Edited by Critor
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