EMC PVP - Preliminary community discussion

This topic has come up many times before, but I would like to turn some light on it with a more official discussion. We get many requests from players to do PVP a server (many are scared to post on the forums anymore because of how against PVP we have been). EMC took SMP and made something awesome out of it, our unique Town system across integrated servers has pushed us to being THE community for SMP. The question is should we try and do PVP as well?

For those that don't know, a PVP server is a server where players kill each other. Hunting down, killing, and raiding other players and their bases is the purpose. In true PVP you don't have protected areas and sometimes you don't have the ability to lock chests.

Publicly we (staff and I) have been very much against PVP. The reason for this was we believed it would have a negative impact on our awesome friendly community. That if people had a legitimate way to thieve, grief and kill, it would still result in hurt feelings. We also recognized that PVP has many flaws (camping the safe areas, etc).

However over the last few months Jeremy and I have experimented with playing on some PVP servers. I must say, it can result in hurt feelings, but it is also a ton of fun. It is a completely different game and I can see why so many people like it. Of course it is not for everyone

So this is sort of a first discussion, do you think EMC should take on PVP? If we did what could we do to make PVP awesome the way we did SMP?

One idea I have is a system where you start every month with a certain number of points. When you die you lose a point and if you kill someone else you get one of their points. Then it could have a leaderboard. Perhaps the server would just be a Wilderness (no Town) with more outposts (like 20).

Disclaimer to all of this, I am not promising we are doing PVP or not, just wanted to start some discussion on it.

I was thinking PVP would be cool with something like an official arena where competitions could be held.

If there is a separate PVP world, flag, option or something that meant I could opt out of it and still have all the fun in the wilderness I do currently, then assuming there is enough demand I'm all for it, let people who enjoy that thing enjoy it in their own space.

I think instead of a town, why not an organised PvP area - for example, you could have wilderness as a kind of free-for-all PvP area, and town you could set up timed games, maybe one idea would be a kind of capture the flag idea (have a block spawn in the area, players mine it and carry it to their base, when at their base it is placed on another particular block and despawns causing the center block to respawn.

add factions and let us build the towns and have wars

The only way I would feel comfortable with PVP is making it 100% separate from the SMP servers. As in its own server entirely. I never want to impose or even hint at PVP on the SMP servers.

Yea, I think it is a great Idea, I've always wanted to start PVP, Maybe have PVP enabled on dystopia if you decide to make dystopia? That would make dystopia even more fun! while keeping the SMP's clean

The trouble I see with PVP is that you will end up with a wasteland around the spawn and people killing newer players as soon as they enter the game with diamond armor/weapons. The simplest solution to this would be to randomise the spawning location for each player ( I dont know how possible this is ). As for longer playing players ruling the game too much I think the world should be reset once a month to stop anyone getting too far ahead. With these in mind I would suggest:

* A fixed world size ( you wouldnt be able to build outside the world boundries ). This will stop players simply running off into the wilderness 10k blocks and never being seen again. Encourages players to play the PVP world.
* Randomised spawn coords every time you die ( and when you first start ). This will stop the wasteland effect and stop players getting ambushed.
* Monthly reset. To further stop the wasteland and to give everyone a fair chance.
* The point system suggested by Justin.

Something like that would be perfect for leaderboards imo.

I can see this for me...

Against it.
It comes out, i log in to watch from safe zone but dont play.
I get bored one day and decide to try it out.
I find out people with transparent texture packs have all the best equiptment and can find anybody
I decide not to be a cheater and die over and over
I quit and go back to smp

So i say no, just because the balance of cheaters to non cheaters.
But i also acknowledge that people will enjoy it so say its worth a shot. If it doesnt work out, remove it

yeah this needs to be made in hardcore server

These suggestions! Amen!

Oh I can definitely see that happening. It will be DCUO launch all over again lol - it was seriously fun PvP, but when the glitchers outweighed the people playing by the rules it got much less fun.

I have never enjoyed PvP on Minecraft. It's one of the reasons I ended up here. I realise that having a PvP server wouldn't affect my SMP1-7 experience much, but I don't think I would join in with PvP in Minecraft as it is at the moment. Reasons include:

• The potential of less players around when I log on because having more servers available spreads the players wanting to play a bit thinner.
• The advantage that supporting will provide over people who support less. I think a diamond supporter gets enough rupees each day to buy a full set of Diamond armour. A free player would either have to go out and earn the money, or wait 12 days for the same money. I like PvP to be fair, so possibly remove rupees and the vault from the PvP server?
• The glitchy nature of minecraft doesn't lend itself well to PvP, I expect people will complain about lag, want "their stuff back" and there will be "PvP logging issues". (If you are about to die, just log out and log back in later on)
• Also, people play from all over the world on connections of varying quality which doesn't make for a level playing field.

Personally, I won't be joining any server offering PvP in the current Minecraft style, and I'm also wary of a PvP server having effects (probably very subtle) on the other servers (market prices/player count/animosity etc).

If the next version of MC has a capture the flag option or other collaborative modes of PvP play, I think I might find that quite fun, but MC PvP in it's current form wouldn't interest me.

So for now, I'd vote "no".

Somehow, this would remind me of pvp in runescape.

Standing on the spot closest to any outpost waiting for players to fight with.
Starts to fight, about to die, dives into outposts to heal. (assuming the outpost is non-pvp)
Runs back into battlefield and repeats process.

If this method were to be heavily used, many would feel discouraged from PVPing, as it can be rather frustrating to again deplete the health of someone you just fought seconds ago.

I say no. I just feel like a PvP server doesn't represent what EMC is all about. I, personally, haven't enjoyed PvP when I tried it out in the past and think it will end up causing too many arguments between players. I think we should just let the other servers out there handle PvP and we focus on making our community thrive even more than it already is in SMP alone.

Put me in the "Opposed" column. I just don't think we should be encouraging PVP anywhere in the Empire.

Great feedback so far. My feelings change every day I can't decide if I am for or against...

Perhaps EMC could make friends with a PvP-only server, then we could encourage PvPers to play there when they feel their bloodlust rising, and they could encourage PvE players to come here to escape the violence?

Or even an entirely seperate version of EMC perhaps RMC to keep with the starwars theme with it's own set of rules and commandments?

I think this should be done in the hradcore server and it encourage ppl we could like increase the ore rate

Wait a minute, can't anyone see the other side of the equation? Let's not turn into pavlovs dogs! Most of us have been playing EMC for awhile, and enjoying ourselves with SMP gameplay. But where we're we before that? Sure, some of us actually started on EMC, which is great and all, but if PVP doesn't work out, what does that mean for us? It means we simply take it away if Not a single person cared during the time of the nazis, and let hitler take over, where would we be? Maybe it's not two negatives in our case; but what about those who started with minecraft referenced "humble beginnings"? Here's my idea for a PVP Number one: give us fake or nonexistent names Number two: do the above stated. If we can't tell who's killing us..... NO harsh feeling! EX: "I hate you 2486735151549!!!!!" Take away any chance of protection. You get into the world by falling into one of many lakes. You wake up with armor and a sword. A single message is displayed: FIGHT OR DIE