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Comment by IncandescentGas | Hacker News Reader

The counter-example, in classic MMO terms, is Ultima Online adding non-PVP game instances in response to player feedback. Without the dramatic threat of PVP conflict at most times, UO was less emotionally engaging. The non-PVP players were bored without the emotional excitement (stress, danger, whatever) of ad hoc PVP. The PVP-focused players were bored when all the reputational mechanics became more or less meaningless in a world only occupied by PKers.

The release of Arc Raiders captured that original UO social dynamic perfectly. Players flooded forums with requests to make PVP optional. In that case, the devs knew better than to listen.

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Arc Raiders and other involuntary pvp games will miss out on players like me who will not try it until pvp is optional and voluntary.

Involuntary pvp is the long term death sentence for a game. It punishes new players by making them easy prey for veteran players. Player numbers will fall hard and fast, like every other involuntary pvp game does.

"I may play your game if you trim away a core appeal factor for the people who already play your game by splitting the active player base" is not that convincing a feature request to a gamedev.

Many live service games that are punishing for new players are still thriving like LoL and DOTA2. Much that punish-factor can be resolved by good matchmaking, putting new players mostly with each other.

Plus, not every game needs to appeal to every player, which I think is where games like that eventually have their downfall. WoW was talked about earlier in the thread, and Blizzard continuously trying to make it appeal to other types of players is what kept killing it.

It's OK for a game to exclude entire demographics of players. A PvP first game shouldn't try to force itself to appeal to PvE only players.

I thought the core appeal was the loot that you get from the PvE.

But I'm just an interested outsider, waiting for the crashing player numbers for the devs to come to their senses.

The loot itself is - quite literally - mostly trash. Sometimes you may find a high end weapon (although usually that comes from PvP…) - but typically you’re just bringing stuff back to put in your scrap hoard. The PvP is really the highlight - which is not to say it’s all about fighting to the death (certainly you can do that) but instead making friends with morally ambiguous strangers to fight the biggest robots. They may be a friend, they may be a jerk, they may be YOUR jerk. Sometimes the entire map will come together to take down a gigantic robot - but after that robot dies? It may be every man for himself in a huge firefight - or it might be a big party.

That’s the core draw - and it’s not necessarily for everyone.

There are much better games for PvE looting, honestly. My recommendation is the STALKER: Anomaly modpacks like EFP and GAMMA, both of which are free downloads.

Trying to make ARC Raiders into a PvE shooter would require every map and enemy to get reworked for low-population gameplay. The game just isn't built for it, and their effort is better invested in catering to the preexisting playerbase.

That's ok. They are also missing out on all the players who won't try it until it's a dating sim. Or a turn-based-rpg. Or a third thing.

Everything doesn't have to be for everyone.

Same. I don't play any PVP. I play co-op. I play co-op vs npcs. If PVP is the only option I'm not playing.

What are you talking about? The top 3 most played games on Steam are all “involuntary pvp” games - Counter-Strike, Dota 2, PUBG. These are all games with a lot of age on them as well.

None of them are easy for new players, with Dota 2 in particular requiring at least 2000 hours to have a chance of not being horrible at the game. Yet it isn’t causing any fall off. Instead it is binding people’s lives to these games, achieving retention rates that easier games can only dream of.

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