Alternative types of PvP

[Costia]

I always thought of PvP as a battle between 2 or more players on some sort of a battleground.
Things like first person shooters, the battlegrounds and the arena in WoW.
Basically killing other people.
Last night i was watching an intro about EVE online and the guy there said that there is another kind of PvP in EVE: the market.
I never thought of trading as a PvP game.
Do you consider it as PvP?
Know any other non-obvious/violent types of PvP in computer games?

 

[Qitz]

Huttball in SWTOR is one unique type of PVP, your not fighting to kill players but to get the ball.

The market is Player Vs Player in the sense of the word. It's not PVP as people related PVP to Player fighting Player.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I don't know if I would qualify playing the market as "PvP". It's a competitive environment, but it's not pitting you directly against one another in a structured contest. All forms of online gaming, even cooperative gaming, having this competitive aspect. Play 4 player ME3 and you're competing to be the best on your team, kill the most enemies, have the highest score at the end of the round. Play WoW and you're competing to be the best at your job, get in the best groups, win the most prestigious positions in the most competent guilds, get the most compliments, etc. Very, very few people play these games purely cooperatively, always putting the well being of the team ahead of their personal glory/entertainment.

Huttball in SWTOR is one unique type of PVP, your not fighting to kill players but to get the ball.

It's a unique battleground but it's very much traditional PvP. Having played a TON of Huttball, it also revolves around killing players, you just need to think more tactically about WHEN and HOW you kill those players.

 

[Rumpsteak]

Sticking with the MMO genre there is something that not many people look at as PvP; competing for a place on a Raid/dungeon team or PvP team. Everyone is fighting for access to the better guilds so that they may progress in the end game content.

 

[DrgoFx]

Co-Op games have PVP. Trying to compete against each other in scores.

 

[RJ 17]

I don't know if I would qualify playing the market as "PvP". It's a competitive environment, but it's not pitting you directly against one another in a structured contest. All forms of online gaming, even cooperative gaming, having this competitive aspect. Play 4 player ME3 and you're competing to be the best on your team, kill the most enemies, have the highest score at the end of the round. Play WoW and you're competing to be the best at your job, get in the best groups, win the most prestigious positions in the most competent guilds, get the most compliments, etc. Very, very few people play these games purely cooperatively, always putting the well being of the team ahead of their personal glory/entertainment.

Huttball in SWTOR is one unique type of PVP, your not fighting to kill players but to get the ball.

It's a unique battleground but it's very much traditional PvP. Having played a TON of Huttball, it also revolves around killing players, you just need to think more tactically about WHEN and HOW you kill those players.

Gotta agree with Guppy on this one, playing the market in an MMO is hardly considered PvP...especially when you consider the fact that there's no skill involved whatsoever. How do you win? Undercut everyone else's prices. It's what I did with the Auction House back in the days when I still played WoW. "Average price for a stack of Mageweave is 50 silver? I'll put my 10 stacks up for 30 silver." Five minutes later all my stacks have been sold, I make off with a clean 3g, does that make me a winner just because I use shady business tactics while everyone else is placing their items at the current market price? Not really, just means I had stuff that I wanted to sell and didn't mind having a lesser profit margin than the rest of the players.

PvP does indeed imply some level of competition, and while market competition IS competition, PvP's competition implies a clear winner and loser.

A better "alternative" to PvP would be, again as Guppy pointed out, ME 3 Co-Op multiplayer. Sure, it's co-op, but there's still people out there that insist that they MUST have the highest score. That used to be me with my Quarian Infiltrator. But more and more I've been playing as the caster classes...rocking the Quarian Engineer or Turian Sentinel with naught but a Carnifex Hand Cannon as a damn fine weapon and it keeps my cooldowns very low. This allows me to spam Overload and Cryo Blast every 2 seconds or so. I take on a supportive role. Every now and then I'll get on a streak where I might have a few good rounds and come out on top of the list or in 2nd place. More often than not, however, I end up getting 3rd of 4th. But no one ever votes to boot me because they can appreciate the fact that I'm not going for kills, I'm going for support. Having someone that can throw chain overload once every 2 seconds is incredibly valuable no matter which enemy "species" you're fighting. So I guess I'd fit in more with the rare group of players that Guppy mentioned that actually plays co-op specifically to be co-operative with people.

Just makes sense in ME 3...I mean we all get the same amount of exp and credits anyways.

 

[SuperNova221]

Depends on how how literal you take Player Vs Player. Most just take it as one player/team competeing directly through the game with another player/team, but if you take it further then sure, almost anything where you are activley "competeing" against another player to succeed could be counted as PvP. I've personally always considered the market in EVE as PvP because of how very, very few NPc stocked items there are.

 

[RJ 17]

Depends on how how literal you take Player Vs Player. Most just take it as one player/team competeing directly through the game with another player/team, but if you take it further then sure, almost anything where you are activley "competeing" against another player to succeed could be counted as PvP. I've personally always considered the market in EVE as PvP because of how very, very few NPc stocked items there are.

But that's not so much competition as it is "who can undercut who the most". There's not skill required to compete in a market. As I mentioned, it just depends on who cares the least about their own profit margins, who's wanting to move their product the fastest. The only way you're competing against another player is to see who can set their prices the lowest.

By that definition, you're playing PvP while doing PvE raids and rolling for loot. Someone's gotta win the item, right? By such a broad definition of PvP you can turn pretty much any multiplayer experience into PvP.

 

[MailOrderClone]

Subtle PVP in cooperative games is my favorite kind. In broad terms, players work through an objective together, but the player who does more of the heavy-lifting during the completion of said objective gains the greater reward. You can split the rewards up into different sections, like a reward for dealing the most damage, and a different one for completing side objectives, or saving your comrades, but that's sort of a secondary thing.

 

[SuperNova221]

Depends on how how literal you take Player Vs Player. Most just take it as one player/team competeing directly through the game with another player/team, but if you take it further then sure, almost anything where you are activley "competeing" against another player to succeed could be counted as PvP. I've personally always considered the market in EVE as PvP because of how very, very few NPc stocked items there are.

But that's not so much competition as it is "who can undercut who the most". There's not skill required to compete in a market. As I mentioned, it just depends on who cares the least about their own profit margins, who's wanting to move their product the fastest. The only way you're competing against another player is to see who can set their prices the lowest.

By that definition, you're playing PvP while doing PvE raids and rolling for loot. Someone's gotta win the item, right? By such a broad definition of PvP you can turn pretty much any multiplayer experience into PvP.

I don't know enough about the EVE market to even bother trying to argue for it, I only know the basics of how it works and how much depth there is to it. I hold the opinion that it could be considered as indirect PvP, but it's purely subjective.

Other than that, I agree with you. I even explicitly said "almost anything where you are activley "competeing" against another player to succeed could be counted as PvP." Although one thing I'd like to ask about is what you mean by rolling for loot? I've never done raids before, and I assume it literally means some sort of random number generator, or even a simple die being rolled to decide who gets what from a raid? In which case it couldn't be considered competetive, anything that's based entirely on chance is, by nature, not competetive and therefore not PvP.

 

[RJ 17]

Depends on how how literal you take Player Vs Player. Most just take it as one player/team competeing directly through the game with another player/team, but if you take it further then sure, almost anything where you are activley "competeing" against another player to succeed could be counted as PvP. I've personally always considered the market in EVE as PvP because of how very, very few NPc stocked items there are.

But that's not so much competition as it is "who can undercut who the most". There's not skill required to compete in a market. As I mentioned, it just depends on who cares the least about their own profit margins, who's wanting to move their product the fastest. The only way you're competing against another player is to see who can set their prices the lowest.

By that definition, you're playing PvP while doing PvE raids and rolling for loot. Someone's gotta win the item, right? By such a broad definition of PvP you can turn pretty much any multiplayer experience into PvP.

I don't know enough about the EVE market to even bother trying to argue for it, I only know the basics of how it works and how much depth there is to it. I hold the opinion that it could be considered as indirect PvP, but it's purely subjective.

Other than that, I agree with you. I even explicitly said "almost anything where you are activley "competeing" against another player to succeed could be counted as PvP." Although one thing I'd like to ask about is what you mean by rolling for loot? I've never done raids before, and I assume it literally means some sort of random number generator, or even a simple die being rolled to decide who gets what from a raid? In which case it couldn't be considered competetive, anything that's based entirely on chance is, by nature, not competetive and therefore not PvP.

WoW (and I'm certain most other MMO's) has a dice-roller built in. /roll 1 100 essentially generates a random number 1-100, highest "roll" wins the loot. And I'd argue that's just as much indirect PvP as "market PvP" if we're using this broader definition of the term. Playing the market is based entirely on chance as well, the chance being "what are the odds that someone's going to undercut my price which is already undercutting someone else's?" It's not competitive because it's not regulated by anything, there's no rules saying "This item must cost at least this much". An example of how it could be turned into a competition would be if all prices were set for, just as an example, enchanting. This enchantment, no matter who's making it, will cost this much for them to put it on one of your items. The playing field thusly leveled, the way you'd attract customers to you and not the other 100 enchanters out there would be to sweeten the deal: "Buy this enchantment and get a couple stacks of Mageweave for free!" for example. Then you could consider it indirect PvP because it becomes a competition of "who can offer the sweetest deal". Just directly selling stuff isn't indirect PvP because there's no competition, it's just looking at the prices and deciding how much (if at all) you want to undercut the other people's prices to ensure that you get a sell. Yeah, you "win" because people bought your item instead of the other guy's item. But after your item is gone the other guy will still likely sell his item (if the price is fair) and make more money than you made. So who really walks out the winner? The person who sold first or the person who made the bigger profit?

 

[Costia]

RJ you are playing the market wrong
the guy who buys your stuff for the lower price is going to resell it at the average or higher (at night or on weekends)
What happens is that you play,kill and loot. sell your stuff for 3g. now comes the guy who knows how to play the market, immediately buys your cloth for 3g and resells it for 5g - and pepole do buy it over 48 hours.So for waiting - he got 2g without killing anything
In real trading the sums are much higher, you can make a few K of gold a day by buying from people who try to undercut and then resell it when the demand is higher.
And the game is not between you and other regular sellers, but between the people who know how to manipulate the market

TLDR - undercutting is not playing the market, you are the one who is getting played by people who have patience and know the in game value of items and not just their current price