Anti-Aliased: You don't need PvP to be successful, honest
Player vs. player combat has always been a double-edged sword, in my opinion. While it has the ability to be an amazing part of a game, I find that it usually falls flat thanks to a few loudmouthed jerks and people who exploit their way to "fame." Please note the use of fame in quotation marks, as fame through PvP isn't exactly fame as we understand it by dictionary definition. It is something far less desirable.
So, I knew my stance on the issue. I like well executed PvP, but I don't like PvP in general. But I wanted your opinion, readers of Massively, and I got it thanks to a spot on The Daily Grind this week. What resulted from that story was a very interesting discussion on the place of PvP in MMOs, and if PvP is really the staple we think it is as a community.
First of all, no, you do not need PvP in your game
If you're making an MMO, you don't need to have PvP included in your package. If your game design isn't targeting people who would be apt to PvP, then why waste precious development time and resources into putting it in at launch? This is doubly true for games that may consider tacking PvP on to their game so they can shut the forum whiners up. If PvP really ranks that low on your development list, then don't feel pressured to put it in.
The market of MMOs suffers right now because every developer feels that they have to have every feature that every other game does. Every game has to have quests, every game has to have PvP, every game has to have huge expanses, every game has to have color-coded items that drop off of every mob, right? No, that's silly, but yet that's what we do. We spend millions of dollars making sure that one game has everything kinda there instead of making sure that one game has a few things that are really there. Why be a jack-of-all-trades when you can be a master of a few?
Even more interesting, ever notice how PvP almost always feels "tacked on?" Certainly a few games avoid this feeling, like Darkfall, Lineage II, EVE Online, and Warhammer Online, but the others never truly merge PvP with the core game design. Even the great Warcraft has this feeling happen, especially on the PvP servers when you're getting your face floored by a level 80 while you're trying to level.
Proof is in the pudding, or, at least, in Final Fantasy XI
FFXI is a game many people loathe for some odd reasons, yet is one of the best examples for this case of not needing PvP. It is a successful game, catering to over 500,000 people for 6 years, and completely avoided PvP as we know it at launch. In the beginning, there was not player vs. player combat where people smacked each other in the face, with the game instead relying on the "conquest" system where players could take control of zones for their country by beating up monsters.
Later, XI added Ballista and Brenner, two "conflict" games that allowed players to smash each other's face in while searching for skulls in the dirt to throw into rooks. It was like rugby or soccer, except with swords and summons. Still, the game never really caught on with XI's mainly PvE crowd, and now sits in the game relatively quietly.
But XI's conquest system brings up another point -- a better point, if you ask me. A point very worthy of discussion.
