Player versus player

Last updated

Player versus player (PvP) is a type of multiplayer interactive conflict within a game between human players. [1] This is often compared to player versus environment (PvE), in which the game itself controls its players' opponents. The terms are most often used in games where both activities exist, [2] particularly MMORPGs, MUDs, and other role-playing video games, to distinguish between gamemodes. PvP can be broadly used to describe any game, or aspect of a game, where players compete against each other. PvP is often controversial when used in role-playing games. In most cases, there are vast differences in abilities between players. PvP can even encourage experienced players to immediately attack and kill inexperienced players. [3] PvP is often referred to as player killing in the cases of games which contain, but do not focus on, such interaction.

Contents

History

PvP combat in CRPGs has its roots in various MUDs like Gemstone II and Avalon: The Legend Lives . While the ability to kill another player existed in many MUDs, it was usually frowned upon because of general strict adherences and heavy influences from tabletop role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons . The term PvP originated in text based MUDs played on bulletin board systems like MajorMUD and Usurper. These games had open worlds where any player could attack any other player as long as they were not at a safe spot in town like the Bank. Player versus player was coined sometime in the late 1980s to refer to the combat between players that resulted in the loser being penalized in some way.

The first graphical MMORPG was Neverwinter Nights , which began development in 1989 and ran on AOL 1991–1997, and which included PvP, which was initially limited to magical attacks in the game. Later modifications expanded its use to limited areas so that players who wished to avoid it could do so. Much of the PvP activity was coordinated events by the game's guilds, which were the first such organized user groups in MMORPGs.

Genocide , an LPMud launched in 1992, was a pioneer in PvP conflict as the first "pure PK" MUD, [4] removing all non-PvP gameplay and discarding the RPG-style character development normally found in MUDs in favor of placing characters on an even footing, with only player skill providing an advantage. [5] Extremely popular, its ideas influenced the MUD world heavily. [6] 80 percent of multiplayer games have pvp

Other early MMORPGs, including Meridian 59 (1996), Ultima Online (1997), and Tibia (1997) also had PvP combat as a feature. In Ultima Online, the goal was to allow players to police themselves in a "frontier justice" way. This system also exists in Tibia, where death includes significant penalty, and killing someone inflicts considerable harm to their character. In Meridian 59, the game tried to focus PvP by having different political factions for players to join. The later Eve Online (2003) refined Ultima Online's original approach of "PvP anywhere but in town" (where attacking another player is dangerous in and around towns due to interference from NPC "guards"). However, these games tended to be unfriendly to more casual players. With the popularity of EverQuest in 1999, primarily consisting of PvE elements (with the exception of limited PvP on one specific server), PvP became a negative for some newer/casual MMORPG players and developers looking to draw a larger crowd. In 2000, in response to complaints about malicious player-killers, Ultima Online controversially added an extra copy of the game world to each server in which open PvP was disabled.

In addition to this, not all PvP games feature a player's avatar experiencing death. An example of this type of PvP element can be found on MMOs such as Audition Online (2004) where while players are not directly killing each other's avatars as traditionally found in MMOs, they are still competing against each other during certain game modes in a Player versus Player setting.

PvP has been included in other games such as Asheron's Call in late 1999, Diablo II in 2000, Dark Age of Camelot and RuneScape in 2001, Asheron's Call 2 in 2002, Shadowbane in 2003, and Dragon Nest in 2011. While these games included PvP, they still contained large portions of prerequisite PvE, mostly to build characters.

DOOM was one of the most influential instances of PvP, coining the term "Deathmatch". This MMO-esque mode helped inspire the now-iconic PvP modes found in the FPS genre, such as battle royale and team deathmatch while popularizing PvP as a whole.

Classifications

Player Killing

Player killing, or PKing, is unrestricted PvP resulting in a character's death. Some games offer open PvP (also sometimes called world PvP), where one player can attack another without warning anywhere in the game world. A pure PK game is one where PvP conflict is the only gameplay offered. Ganking (short for gang killing) is a type of PKing in which the killer has a significant advantage over his victim, such as being part of a group, being a higher level, or attacking the victim while they are at low health.

PvP can also create additional facets in the community. In Ultima Online and Asheron's Call , a rift formed between those who enjoyed PKing, those who enjoyed hunting the PKs and those who simply did not want to fight at all. The Renaissance expansion later added a Trammel facet where PvP was not allowed, giving some out to the UO crowd that did not wish to engage in PvP at all. Asheron's Call contained a server that was completely unrestricted in player interactions where massive "PK" and "Anti (PK)" dynasties formed.

Character death in an online game usually comes with a penalty (though some games remove it from PvP combat), so habitual PKers can find themselves ostracized by the local community. In some games a character will die many times and the player must often sacrifice some experience points (XP) or in-game currency to restore that character to life. Permanent death (such that the player must create a new character) is relatively uncommon in online games, especially if PKing is permitted. An example of such a mode is Hardcore mode on the game Diablo II .

Anti-Player Killing

Anti-PKing, also known as Player Killer Killing, PK Killing, or PKK, [7] is a form of in-game player justice. Often motivated by an overpopulation of in-game player killers, vigilante Anti-PKs hunt Player Killers and Player Griefers with vengeance.

Some players, known as "friendlies", choose to befriend other players with pacifism. Voice chat or in-game emotes are often utilized to demonstrate peacefulness and keep others from attacking.

Dueling

Dueling is both voluntary and competitive. Dueling ladders and leagues set up by fans are common for most MMORPGs that have PvP. Dark Age of Camelot was the first graphical MMORPG to debut a formal dueling system in-game (Ballista); other MMORPGs such as City of Heroes , Anarchy Online , World of Warcraft , Guild Wars , Lineage 2 , Wurm Online , and RuneScape feature PvP as competitive dueling in a group setting.

Flagging

Through various means, "flags" can be turned on or off, allowing PvP combat with other people who have also turned on their flag. In EverQuest , there is no way to turn the flag off once it has been turned on. In Star Wars Galaxies , the flag may be turned off by interacting with faction specific NPCs located throughout the game or by typing an in-game command (/pvp). In World of Warcraft, flagging is selectable or can be activated by attacking certain flagged players until a cool-off period ends, though this can be exploited by griefers via corpse camping. Some games have a bounty system where players that kill or heal other players open themselves up to being killed in return. This is sometimes called the "revenge flag". Use of this 'bounty' system is not standardized among MMORPGs, and there are debates raging about how to 'police' the system to avoid abuse.

Sometimes the PvP flag gets automatically 'ON' on any player who initiates a PK. Other players who attacks a player who has the PvP flag on will NOT get their PvP flag 'ON'.

RvR (realm versus realm) combat

In 2001, Mythic Entertainment introduced a new team-based form of PvP combat with the release of Dark Age of Camelot. [8] In RvR, players of each realm team up to fight against players from the opposing realms in team-based combat. This can include normal skirmishes between rival groups that is common in other PvP systems, but also consists of objective-based battles such as taking and holding keeps or capturing enemy relics.

This was a new concept to graphical MMORPGs, but was first introduced in the game that preceded DAoC, Darkness Falls: The Crusade , which has since been shut down in favor of building on DAoC. Other MMORPG games now also feature this type of gameplay. [9]

PvP in tabletop role-playing games

Tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) have also often featured PvP action. These are usually considered a reasonable part of play so long as the fight is based on "in-character" reasons. Games are often written to balance playable characters, ensuring that the players are able to pick their favorite characters rather than being forced into a metagame to succeed.

This approach to PvP in tabletop games is not universal. For example, in the highly satirical Paranoia , lethal PvP conflict is a core game element, considered normal and heavily encouraged by the rules and support materials.

Ethical issues

Player-vs-player dynamics involve ethical issues with players. Because of ganking, some game developers view PvP with contempt. Despite the advantage experienced players have over new players, many game developers have assumed an honor code would prevent PKing. [3]

See also

Related Research Articles

A multi-user dungeon, also known as a multi-user dimension or multi-user domain, is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, usually text-based or storyboarded. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat. Players can read or view descriptions of rooms, objects, other players, and non-player characters, and perform actions in the virtual world that are typically also described. Players typically interact with each other and the world by typing commands that resemble a natural language, as well as using a character typically called an avatar.

In multiplayer online games, a MUSH is a text-based online social medium to which multiple users are connected at the same time. MUSHes are often used for online social interaction and role-playing games, although the first forms of MUSH do not appear to be coded specifically to implement gaming activity. MUSH software was originally derived from MUDs; today's two major MUSH variants are descended from TinyMUD, which was fundamentally a social game. MUSH has forked over the years and there are now different varieties with different features, although most have strong similarities and one who is fluent in coding one variety can switch to coding for the other with only a little effort. The source code for most widely used MUSH servers is open source and available from its current maintainers.

A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a video game that combines aspects of a role-playing video game and a massively multiplayer online game.

<i>Asherons Call</i> 1999 video game

Asheron's Call (AC) was a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) for Microsoft Windows PCs, developed and published by Turbine Entertainment Software. Though it was developed by the Turbine team, it was published as a Microsoft title until 2004. The game was set on the island continent of Dereth and several surrounding smaller islands and archipelagos on the fictional planet of Auberean. The game was played in a large seamless 3D virtual world which could host thousands of players' characters at a time.

<i>Asherons Call 2: Fallen Kings</i> 2002 video game

Asheron's Call 2: Fallen Kings was a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) for Microsoft Windows which was released on November 22, 2002 and shut down on December 30, 2005 before it was relaunched as a beta for active Asheron's Call subscribers in 2012. It is a sequel to 1999's Asheron's Call, although content, graphics and gameplay dynamics differed greatly from its predecessor.

Twinking is a type of behavior in role-playing games that is disapproved of by other players. A player who engages in such behavior is known as a twink. The precise definition of twinking varies depending on the variety of role-playing game:

DikuMUD is a multiplayer text-based role-playing game, which is a type of multi-user domain (MUD). It was written in 1990 and 1991 by Sebastian Hammer, Tom Madsen, Katja Nyboe, Michael Seifert, and Hans Henrik Stærfeldt at DIKU —the department of computer science at the University of Copenhagen in Copenhagen, Denmark.

<i>Ancient Anguish</i> 1992 video game

Ancient Anguish, abbreviated AA, is a fantasy-themed MUD, a text-based online role-playing game. Founded in 1991 by Balz "Zor" Meierhans and Olivier "Drake" Maquelin, it opened to the public on February 2, 1992. It is free-to-play, but has been supported by player donations since 1994.

LPMud, abbreviated LP, is a family of multi-user dungeon (MUD) server software. Its first instance, the original LPMud game driver, was developed in 1989 by Lars Pensjö. LPMud was innovative in its separation of the MUD infrastructure into a virtual machine and a development framework written in the programming language LPC.

A persistent world or persistent state world (PSW) is a virtual world which, by the definition given by Richard Bartle, "continues to exist and develop internally even when there are no people interacting with it". The first virtual worlds were text-based and often called MUDs, but the term is frequently used in relation to massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) and pervasive games. Examples of persistent worlds that exist in video games include Battle Dawn, EVE Online, and Realms of Trinity.

A griefer or bad-faith player is a player in a multiplayer video game who deliberately and intentionally irritates, annoys or trolls other players within the game. Griefing is often accomplished by destroying things constructed by other players or stealing items. A griefer derives pleasure from the act of annoying other users, and as such, is a nuisance in online gaming communities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Online text-based role-playing game</span> Role-playing game type

An online text-based role playing game is a role-playing game played online using a solely text-based interface. Online text-based role playing games date to 1978, with the creation of MUD1, which began the MUD heritage that culminates in today's MMORPGs. Some online-text based role playing games are video games, but some are organized and played entirely by humans through text-based communication. Over the years, games have used TELNET, internet forums, IRC, email and social networking websites as their media.

Player versus environment is a term used for both single player and online games, particularly MMORPGs, CORPGs, MUDs, other online role-playing video games and survival games to refer to fighting computer-controlled enemies - in contrast to PvP which is fighting other players in the game. In survival games a large part may be fighting the elements, controlling hunger and thirst, learning to adapt to the environment and exploration.

A mob, short for mobile or mobile object, is a computer-controlled non-player character (NPC) in a video game such as an MMORPG or MUD. Depending on context, every and any such character in a game may be considered to be a "mob", or usage of the term may be limited to hostile NPCs and/or NPCs vulnerable to attack.

Gekkeiju Online was a 3D MMORPG developed by a Finnish indie software company, Coolhouse Productions in 2003. The game incorporated anime-style characters into a medieval fantasy world.

Permadeath or permanent death is a game mechanic in both tabletop games and video games in which player characters who lose all of their health are considered dead and cannot be used anymore. Depending on the situation, this could require the player to create a new character to continue, or completely restart the game potentially losing nearly all progress made. Other terms include persona death and player death. Some video games offer a hardcore mode that features this mechanic, rather than making it part of the core game.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bartle taxonomy of player types</span> Classification of video game players

The Bartle taxonomy of player types is a classification of video game players (gamers) based on a 1996 paper by Richard Bartle according to their preferred actions within the game. The classification originally described players of multiplayer online games, though now it also refers to players of single-player video games.

The history of massively multiplayer online games spans over thirty years and hundreds of massively multiplayer online games (MMOG) titles. The origin and influence on MMO games stems from MUDs, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and earlier social games.

Realm versus Realm (RvR) is a type of player versus player (PvP) gameplay in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) where the player base is divided over multiple preset realms that fight each other over game assets. This differs from normal Player versus Player combat in that Realm versus Realm usually involves a combat-based game, as opposed to one where sporadic Player versus Player combat occurs. In this context, "realm" generally means a geographic territory or political affiliation.

Genocide is a MUD, a text-based online game, focused exclusively on player-killing. Founded in 1992, it was influential as the first such "pure PK" MUD, and has met with positive critical response. Genocide's ideas influenced a number of MUDs that emulated its pure player-versus-player orientation.

References

  1. ↑ Bartle, Richard (2003). Designing Virtual Worlds . New Riders. p. 407. ISBN   0-13-101816-7. Player(s) Versus Player(s) (PvP). Players are opposed by other players in a game. In a combat situation, this means PCs can fight each other.
  2. ↑ Bartle, Richard (2003). Designing Virtual Worlds . New Riders. p. 407. ISBN   0-13-101816-7. PvP and GvG both assume PvE.
  3. 1 2 Sicart, Michael (2011). The Ethics of Computer Games. MIT Press. pp. 179–184. ISBN   9780262261531.
  4. ↑ Reese, George (1996-03-11). "LPMud Timeline". Archived from the original on 2012-02-26. Retrieved 2010-04-14. January 1992 ¶ _Genocide_ starts as the first MUD dedicated totally to inter-player conflict, which is a fancy way of saying that its theme is creatively player-killing.
  5. ↑ Towers, J. Tarin; Badertscher, Ken; Cunningham, Wayne; Buskirk, Laura (1996). Yahoo! Wild Web Rides. IDG Books Worldwide Inc. p. 149. ISBN   0-7645-7003-X. Genocide is a breakneck-paced, brutal MUD that has none of the mobs or quests you might be used to. It's a bloody world of kill-or-be-killed where you battle your fellow players in a savage race to the finish. [...] The only advantage the veterans have is experience and the knowledge of where to find the good stuff fast.
  6. ↑ Shah, Rawn; Romine, James (1995). Playing MUDs on the Internet. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. pp. 98–99. ISBN   0-471-11633-5. Some Muds are completely dependant on player-killing, and have wars that start every half hour or so. These Muds are becoming more common, basing a lot of their ideas on the extremely popular LPmud known as Genocide.
  7. ↑ Bartle, Richard (2003). Designing Virtual Worlds . New Riders. p. 518. ISBN   0-13-101816-7. Vigilantism, defending the innocent from PKs n... The killing of PKers is known as PKKing
  8. ↑ Bartle, Richard (2003). Designing Virtual Worlds . New Riders. p. 407. ISBN   0-13-101816-7. Group versus Group (GvG). Players are members of groups that are in conflict with other groups. In a combat situation, this means PCs can fight any PCs who are members of enemy groups but not those who are members of their own (or a neutral) group.63 [...] 63 This is often known as Realm versus Realm (RvR), as it was popularized under this name in Dark Age of Camelot.
  9. ↑ Bartle, Richard (2003). Designing Virtual Worlds . New Riders. p. 411. ISBN   0-13-101816-7. The term RvR comes from Dark Age of Camelot, but it's not the only virtual world to use this approach; indeed, it's not the only big, graphical world to do so. Anarchy Online has characters divided into three groups, with people meeting in PvP areas for combat. Lineage has clan-like groups called bloodpledges, which can conquer castles from one another in (scheduled) sieges; success here has material results, in that owners of castles get tax income they can invest in preparing for the next siege.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.