Online survival games are getting more popular each day and I think that’s the direction PvP in aRPGs should orient to.
While the aRPG genre isn’t new, it couldn’t deliver adequate PvP all those years simply because PvP was always built to be a sub-component of the PvE game obeying the PvE established rules. And such scenario won’t ever achieve the status of MOBAs thus it kind of loses purpose besides the marketing hype at launch.
We’ll have PvP in our game guys (just buy it)! Cool, but let’s do it properly this time.
If we give PvP a main role with its own rules making it a separate mode to which the PvE to obey to, we’d actually make the first step to a coherent PvP focused experience. Combining it with a survival like rules is a natural follow-up to completely satisfy the “hunger” of the players choosing this mode.
Here are some of the core differences with standard PvE mode:
Different balancing of items, skills and monsters
Survival stats like stress, stamina, energy, rest, infections etc
Lowered drop rates
Free for all loot
No monster difficulty/stats/rewards scaling in multiplayer
No party buffs in multiplayer
Friendly fire
Corpse looting
Durability on items and increasing cost on repair
The above would serve for more challenging co-op since there won’t be any party buffs, you would be able to damage the other party members and monsters won’t drop more loot. Players may suddenly decide to assault the group if an item they wanted was picked by a weaker member.
Players would have to care for their characters’ physical and mental health, and for their items’ condition with carefully picking the right items for each fight in order to preserve durability.
I personally think there is big potential in such mode. Would you enjoy it and how would you further expand it?
More modes at game launch would bring more interest and attention to the game.
I’d say modes are more important than story completion and content at launch. You can launch with first act of story only easily, but if you launch without any modes you’d be in trouble since players expect these to be present in your game after 7 years of development.
This won’t rival the MOBAs. It would just “fill” the PvP space with PvP always being less important as long as it isn’t a separate mode with its own rules.
In OP I am talking about something that may ultimately become more played than the core PvE mode, something that may beat the MOBAs dragging player base from these games.
I am not saying leave the story unfinished.
I am saying give it to the players Season by Season - act 1 in S1, act 2 in S2 etc with players being able to “revive” their characters from previous Seasons and continue with the story from where they finished. That’s even more engaging and something the HS team is doing since a few years - they give the solo adventures piece by piece throughout the Seasons.
So long as it’s on a separate server, optional, doesn’t give a drastically huge reward that defines one’s strength and merely for people to ‘show off their prowess when it comes to outsmarting another player online for the sake of one’s ego’, then sure, by all means.
It would be very interesting to witness how something like this would evolve on HC. How much would players choose to co-op and how long the parties would last when we have FFA loot, friendly fire and corpse looting.
Are you fully trusting your comrades fighting on low health or are you waiting for them to make that mistake so that you take advantage of your insane AoE skill you never showed?
Are you a lone wolf welcoming every opportunity of wealth increase or you want to unite people behind ideals and goals?
What would you do when you witness a random fight between two characters of equal power to yours on the world map - wait, interfere, run away or try to communicate with the folks?
A lot of situations that would never be present in a PvE environment would be a daily sight in the PvP Survival mode.
Maybe you are bored of that high drop rates on the PvE server farming the same monsters every bloody day just to increase your power with a percent or two - then why don’t you try the PvP server where the danger is constant and the perfection is non-existent? But are you ready to lose your loot and equipment? Are you ready to be betrayed? Are you ready to survive on all cost?
The problem is not in zones. PvP, to be interesting, needs special skills, special items, and special character progression, as Dota shows. In an ARPG everything is wrong is this sense. Skills are not designed for pvp, loot is not designed for pvp, progression is not designed for pvp. For this reason pvp won’t work in D4 and never worked in any other arpg that tried to do it.
Blizzard should make survival online game. Full economy/trading, exploration, building, a bit of combat and of course loot and xp-progression etc.
Survival Online genre has been quite succesful, ARK, FO76, Conan Exiles, Dune on the way etc. At least the ground-work is done for Blizzard. All they need to do is to hit homerun.
Yeah, Diablo should be progressive hack and slash game, almost like Racing game.
Btw, wheres Left 4 Dead 3 kids are ready for survival PVP.
They can do it in D4 for really short time since all the major components of the game and systems are already in place. It would be like a job for modding the already existing game with adding a few new mechanics.
D4 would gain a lot from such mode - both player base and income.
That kind of stuff has been tried in game industry, you can add tons of different modes but it doesnt make your series any more succesful. Imho, you gotta look at the market and find your own place in that. The fact is players play all kind of games, its better to excel at whatever you do.
ESO is damn good example of tons of different kind of stuff. Old but good saying sometimes “less is more”.
I wouldnt mind if there was Survival Seasons. But I wouldnt integrate survival elements into the game itself.
