Ranting on Vice vs Virtue

[JC the Builder]

Highlights:

- I have come to the conclusion that it is better for you when you don't have to fight other people, which defeats the whole purpose of encouraging PvP
- Participation seems abysmal and is confirmed with the new leaderboards
- People said this was going to be a big flop when they announced the focus group and here we are today

 

[Lore Denin (GL)]

Agree with much of what you said, but have a little more positive of an outlook since pvp interaction on origin has increased dramatically since it was introduced. I do think its a light system and needs more depth. It seems we disagree on how we'd like to see that addressed but we are seeing the same issue. As they have updated the system it has gotten better but its prob at the point it needs more then a tweak but a philosophical shift.

Rather then adding items to encourage pvp, I'd like the VvV system to become the Skirmish system for Factions, moving the VvV battles to the non Virtue towns and then allowing guilds to cash in the points to conduct a faction style siege of a major city [750k]. Having three sides of Virtue, Vice and Independent. This would add back some of the elements that were removed from the game that it seems we (as well as many others) are missing.

-Lore's Player

 

[JC the Builder]

So you are saying you want them to bring back Factions and move Vice vs Virtue to the remaining towns in some sort of Frankenstein system?

 

[Kyronix]

Thanks for the feedback. Introducing some of popular elements from Factions while still keeping VvV nimble is certainly something we can explore to add more depth and make the battles more impactful.

 

[Lore Denin (GL)]

So you are saying you want them to bring back Factions and move Vice vs Virtue to the remaining towns in some sort of Frankenstein system?

Not sure I'd use the term Frankenstein but using the VvV system as the base for creating constant skirmish system, easy in and easy out pvp (VvV) and linking it to a larger scale siege system (Factions) that would allow people to take over and control towns gives options without limiting anyone's preference for play.

For simplicity sake just allow a guild with a high enough score to use points (say 1 mil) to besiege a town, which would allow them to steal the city stone (sigil) and take it to any of the 4 faction bases to defend. All VvV skirmishes would point towards the faction base where the defense is occurring.... "Hot (Vice) is holding the city stone of Britain in the Fortress of Minax. If their defense is not broken and the sigil returned to Britain in the next 3 hours, Hot will have complete control of Britain."

Up to 4 sieges could be taking place at once but there should be a cool down timer for a guild/alliance to siege again (1 day).

Breaking a siege would require breaking defenses, getting sigil and returning it to the City sigil post within 20 minutes.

Unlike before, you would retain control of the city until another guild successfully Besieges your town. The guild leader would act as the Commanding Lord and can appoint the Finance Minister and Sheriff. Link it to the Governor's system and allow controlling players access to that towns trade agreement (determined by the elected Governor).

This is nothing new, just using what currently exists in game and linking it. Sure we can debate creating a new system etc etc but everytime something like that has happened it has stalled into mindless debate and chatter. There are systems in game that can work as they are now. Factions was a good system, VvV is a good system both are lacking elements the other has and merging them into a skirmish and siege system makes sense.

PS: Yes I am for sides in game but I am a role-player and play based on the fiction provided by Dev team... if they wrote a story like "Blackthorn washes his hands of Felucca, his kingdom of Britannia is only Trammal, etc" - I'd be fine with every guild for themselves.....

But they called it Vice vs Virtue and keep writing things like "Minax and Anon join sides" which seems to be Vice..... Lord British calls on Dupre to once again lead Britannia in Felucca = Virtue.

I can't play outside of that reality so until the system changes to reflect the fiction or the fiction changes to reflect the game mechanics I can't do anything more then play as if the fiction is the game reality despite the mechanics currently in place.

-Lore's Player

 

[JC the Builder]

I think you are hanging onto the name Vice vs Virtue too much. It doesn't mean anything in the current design and is just confusing people. It makes you think there is good and evil fighting but it isn't. When I explained it to guild members every time I had to tell them it isn't just two sides.

The system name should be changed.

Sure we can debate creating a new system etc etc but everytime something like that has happened it has stalled into mindless debate and chatter.

This is happening because there is not a strong idea of what the system should be. If you have a bunch of people who don't PVP giving input to a system like this then you end up with what we have here: a terribly sanitized and uncompetative PVP system.

 

[Kyronix]

I think you are hanging onto the name Vice vs Virtue too much. It doesn't mean anything in the current design and is just confusing people. It makes you think there is good and evil fighting but it isn't. When I explained it to guild members every time I had to tell them it isn't just two sides.

The system name should be changed.


This is happening because there is not a strong idea of what the system should be. If you have a bunch of people who don't PVP giving input to a system like this then you end up with what we have here: a terribly sanitized and uncompetative PVP system.

Vice and Virtue plays into two fundamentally important concepts that will form the basis of the fictional construct for this, and other events moving forward. We chose Vice to juxtapose against Virtue because it has not been fully explored within UO and allows us a lot of freedom to do with it what we can. I've mentioned in other threads that early feedback about forcing players onto a side was met with a lot of outcry. People did not want to be forced to ally with people they did not choose to ally with. This is the primary reason why we opted to organize teams based on guilds, as they can police themselves. We also left it open so that players could have the freedom to roleplay, if they chose to, their participation as Vice or Virtue. Moving forward one of the goals is to make the choices made for supporting Vice or Virtue in a battle more impactful, while still allowing players the freedom to play as they want. We also understand that at it's heart, Vice vs Virtue is a PvP experience, and some people are not interested in roleplaying at all - they just want to fight.

I've seen a couple times where you call out the focus group for not being "real PvPers" or people who "don't PvP." We had an open invitation for anyone to apply. We invited those to join that could coherently share constructive ideas as well as had some background in participating in PvP, whether it be open world, factions, or guild wars - yourself included. The choice to join the focus group was yours alone, and although we couldn't get you in the group at the onset, I'm happy to see you providing feedback on VvV at this stage so we can make it the best it can be. Belittling the efforts of a group of people who volunteered their time to do exactly that, however, is uncalled for.

 

[Lore Denin (GL)]

Vice and Virtue plays into two fundamentally important concepts that will form the basis of the fictional construct for this, and other events moving forward. We chose Vice to juxtapose against Virtue because it has not been fully explored within UO and allows us a lot of freedom to do with it what we can. I've mentioned in other threads that early feedback about forcing players onto a side was met with a lot of outcry. People did not want to be forced to ally with people they did not choose to ally with. This is the primary reason why we opted to organize teams based on guilds, as they can police themselves.

I hope the idea of "teams" at least gets re-addressed. Don't make them mandatory just make them possible.

QUICK FIX: Allow Alliances to merge. This will instantly help guilds form teams to cooperate. Right now we don't have the tools to coorperate with others and police ourselves. Many of my allies remain "orange" because we have pre-existing alliances with 3-4 guilds. This requires breaking alliances contacting GM's waiting for all the right people to be available in the game at the same time, etc. One GM uses vent, another teamspeak, others only icq, some don't have icq, others only check stratics, some don't use stratics at all, etc etc.

Keeping allies orange causes issues of confusion where people are attacking each other when they are allies, etc.

That sounds like it creates pvp but it creates 1 fight, a ton of drama and people no longer participating.

BETTER FIX If there was an option to play cooperatively (Virtue) under Dupre, semi cooperatively in Vice under Minax/Anon and Independently where guilds police themselves it would be extremely helpful. It would also reflect the fiction being put in place whereas now there is a disconnect between the game and the story.

Thanks again for the great work,

Lore's Player

 

[JC the Builder]

We also left it open so that players could have the freedom to roleplay, if they chose to, their participation as Vice or Virtue. Moving forward one of the goals is to make the choices made for supporting Vice or Virtue in a battle more impactful, while still allowing players the freedom to play as they want. We also understand that at it's heart, Vice vs Virtue is a PvP experience, and some people are not interested in roleplaying at all - they just want to fight.

How can you design a serious PVP system then turn around and say concessions have to be made for role-playing? This is ridiculous.

Only some people are interested in purely fighting? Try most or the vast majority or basically everyone.

 

[Kyronix]

How can you design a serious PVP system then turn around and say concessions have to be made for role-playing? This is ridiculous.

Only some people are interested in purely fighting? Try most or the vast majority or basically everyone.

I'm not sure what concessions you feel were made, but whether or not it interested you, Factions was woven into the fictional fabric of UO and that was important to more than you may care to acknowledge. A system that provides a fast paced, easy-in/easy-out PvP experience and a system that has impacts on the fictional constructs of the game are not mutually exclusive.

 

[JC the Builder]

What seems to be the vast majority of the PVP community (what is left of it) does not like the way this system has turned out. Yet here we are discussing how roleplayers fit into all this.

It is no wonder that players have become so jaded they don't want to participate in trying to improve PVP anymore. Denin and myself are the only ones posting on this forum for over a week now. There are barely any posts in this forum to begin with and the system has been out for 2 months. This is compared to over hundreds and hundreds of posts when the first design was posted last year.

Vice vs Virtue needs a total revamp and it needs to focus on PVP first.

 

[Lore Denin (GL)]

Only some people are interested in purely fighting? Try most or the vast majority or basically everyone.

If that were true everyone would be in VvV playing non stop because it allows people to purely fight all the time.

I don't disagree with your points that pvpers should be able to get similiar rewards/items as pvmers.... (rather then pre-set properties on the VvV armor you could just allow it to randomize an item with properties like you kill a boss, etc.) but I do think you underestimate the impact fiction, plot and the good ol' good vs evil can have on players and participation.

I am not sure what you think RP is or how it would negatively impact a pvp system.... Order/Chaos and Factions systems were both heavily rp'd regardless of how many people were rpers within the system.

Maybe this is what you are thinking I do in game.......

Lore emotes *Slashes Link with his sword*
[Sends party message, ok I am Lore Denin the Commanding Lord and the best sword fighter, so you have to die. Use your trap box and drink a dp poison potion]

Link, "O' you've got me, I shall curse your name to the grave!"

[Link takes potion and trap boxes himself to death]

Lore looks sadly over the fallen body of his foe, "Virtues guide you to your rest and may you at long last find the peace you could never find in this life"

*salutes*

............

This unfortunately is what people sometimes think when they hear rp and pvp and not at all what is being discussed here...

When Hot/Heat joined Minax regardless of if you were or were not an rper, you would be considered evil or at least thrown in your lot with evil. Maybe you just like defending the base or red horses, but regardless there would is a pre-existing context that would create the base of my interaction with you and your guild regardless of your acknowledgement of its existence.

Had we met in factions I would have told you that "The Cities are the rightful domain of Britannia and any armies sworn to the enemies of the Kingdom would be removed."

It didn't matter why you joined Minax, only that you had pledged your sword to a sworn enemy of Britannia. It created context for the conflict, a reason beyond simply fighting for the sake of fighting. We all have our groups and subgroups we work with, that is the type of context I need to inspire/involve the groups I work with.

Participation increases participation. The more you get rpers standing around guarding towns and sigils for the "good" of the Kingdom, the more it brings in "pure" pvpers who want to kill them.

Just a small way in which rp works to increase activity for both rpers and on rpers.

-Lore's Player

 

[JC the Builder]

As you said our guild joined Minax back when we tried to get Factions going again. Our decision to join Minax had nothing to do with fiction or role play. It was based on the base design and people liked the red color.

I am not saying there is no room for story and role playing. But you can't say design shortfalls are due to leaving room for people to role play.

 

[Lore Denin (GL)]

I am not saying there is no room for story and role playing. But you can't say design shortfalls are due to leaving room for people to role play.

I am not sure where the idea came from that rp created the shortfalls, if anything my arguments for change is the opposite. Shortfalls exist because they overlooked rp and went with what "people" said would be popular..ie no ability to join Vice or Virtue.

RP types of things include -

-Vice guilds and people hue red in Fel because they have sworn themselves to evil [travel to tram ruleset would still be determined by murder counts]
-Virtue players can't be red and hue green to each other. Killing another Virtue player [outside your guild or alliance] gives murder counts and subtracts from your silver, score and kills.
-Winning a town allows you to actually control it with things such as guards, vendors, prices, and trade agreements, etc

If you create a context and mechanics to support it, you can then do extremely interesting things in game using fiction and EM events.

Take for example, One EM playing Minax and gathering Vice in her stronghold, while another EM playing Dupre summons all the Virtue players. Each EM gates to a location and the two sides meet in a huge battle, etc.

If you did that with the way the system is now, it would be an absolute disaster... Everyone would be orange, fields cast by your allies would effect you, area effects would kill your allies, etc etc.

Then you add in the types of rewards you like... metals of courage for winning team, maybe a few metals of distinction for the MVP's of the battle. A Plague commemorating the battle of Delucca. A guild reward for a group that were instrumental in the victory etc.

Right now almost all EM events are PVM based, it would be nice to have pvp events (outside the occasional pvp tournament) that work within the context of the fiction and allow players to engage in a large scale war type scenario. It seems from posts this is the direction they might want to move in but they system needs a few changes to allow that to happen.

-Lore's Player

 

[mghtyshark]

I think what we would like to see in our shards are more EM events that draws out PVP as well as PVE citizens. Lets say for example that instead of creating one of your morph bosses for an event, an em simply start up a champ spawn in "Fel", oh no the word that most trammies hate, add some fiction arc story and then allow the Vice group or PVPers to engage on a fight over the champ spawn, and then make the drops available for the group that emerges Victorious by slaying the Boss that the EM created. Then allow the Governor position to be available to those people that participated on the event either trammies(Virtuos) or PVPers(Vice) either by kill/assist kill points accumulated during the brawl. In addition to this, you should allow for the town to create a Army (virtue) under the command of the Governor to be challenge by member of the opposing team (Vice) and in this way either defend their town or give it up to the opposing team. However, this should be applied to both facets of the shard. In this way you can address two different growing problems with one cool integration. I only mention the Governor thing since now the system has become corrupted by people transferring shards in order to buy votes for Government position on different shards......

 

[Lord Arm]

the system is about guilds, not 2 sides. if u are alone or in small group, all others can be your enemy. everyone orange lol. I enjoyed my red killing blues or my blues killing reds/murders. on my shard, there are no reds, everyone turned blue with the royal pardons and stay blue because they just eat another royal pardon as needed. wish they were one time use. lame. if u are not in VvV, blue VvVs come and raid u, lame. u start attacking/defending your champ. next thing u know is, everyone orange, u got 4 or 5 murder counts, lame. all non VvV people have been screwed. I really enjoyed killing murders. also, without reds, it took away from getting justice. in general the way VvV is set up, it took away the fun for my friends and I. why we need VvV? I had better fights when there was no VvV.

 

[Scribbles]

1. get rid of the big bulky window. No PvPer has room for that on the screen.
2. Make the usable rewards... crimson for example more expensive to get. After someone joins and gets the free 500 and buys a crimmy there is no reason to continue.
3. make it harder to stealth in these towns. put a timer on it.
4. put the alters in a place where choke points can be built.
5. give a monthly or quarterly special reward to the player with best kd ratio or most kills for that quater or most alters won... etc...
6. Put red healers in fel towns...
7. Get rid of towns with out moongates close by
8. make traps last until they are broken.
9. make the turn in for sigils stolen a timer like alters. probably not as long but they should have to wait making it possible to catch thieves.
10. get rid of all the junk arti rewards... They are useless no one uses them, especially since the new loot system has been in place.
11. make rewards harder to achieve. let us store more points past 10k.
12. add clean up dyes to rewards, or new pvp specific dyes. PvPers love their colors...
13. spawn monsters at each stage of an alter being held.
14. give a scroll if an alter has been fought for. If possession changes once, give a 105, twice 110, 3 times 115, 4 times 120. Make it unscriptable. Good luck with that part...
15. perhaps tie in vvv with champ spawns... bring both back into popularity...
16. spawn a harby if 5 alters are won in a row.
17. If towns are won by a certain guild over and over make a public gen chat announcement to everyone on how bad ass they are...
18. If someone enters a vvv area their bar gets put up to everyone else in the area... and vice versa
19. make a high end reward that gives a random legendary item.
20. try to get more non vvv players into those area for more killing. Risk reward scenarios.... fel thunts, champs, harbys... anything to make it worth it for pvmers to try and compete
21. make a reward a runebook to all vvv towns thats blessed in the name of the toon that receives it. let it gain a charge every 6 hours.
22. Dont ever stop changing or updating the system. As soon as you stop it gets un popular.
23. Take advice from actual pvpers... These are the people you weeded out because they had reports on their accounts. These are the people you constantly disregard even though they pay the same subs. wipe all reports and start clean for everyone. I guarantee the reports are from a time when you actually enforced the rules.
24. Do something with the name VvV... what is the point of vice vs virtue.... from what i can tell there is none.


Thats about all i can think of for now.

 

[Lord Arm]

a char on the leaderboard has 0 kills 0 sigils ect but has nearly 20 mil points lol. another guy doesn't kill many others but kills his other chars and or kills his friends chars to get massive kills lame.

 

[Lins]

the system is about guilds, not 2 sides. if u are alone or in small group, all others can be your enemy. everyone orange lol. I enjoyed my red killing blues or my blues killing reds/murders. on my shard, there are no reds, everyone turned blue with the royal pardons and stay blue because they just eat another royal pardon as needed. wish they were one time use. lame. if u are not in VvV, blue VvVs come and raid u, lame. u start attacking/defending your champ. next thing u know is, everyone orange, u got 4 or 5 murder counts, lame. all non VvV people have been screwed. I really enjoyed killing murders. also, without reds, it took away from getting justice. in general the way VvV is set up, it took away the fun for my friends and I. why we need VvV? I had better fights when there was no VvV.

I love this post.
VvV is an addition to the game where is your orange or not. Royal pardons screwed the PvP experience because you can just solo your own guild, join VvV, buy a royal pardon for 6 mil...eat it.. 436 murder counts gone, quit VvV....why the **** would you give an option to do that?... the whole point of making a choice to be a murderer....u pay the price --8hrs of game play equals ONE long term murder count subtracted. There is no accountability... Now you have 99.5 percent of the players blue and in VvV. I just enjoyed a year ago or so when you would see a guild of Reds 7 -10 at a time lurking for the Pk. Blues fight with them and your Criminals in that scenario ...... AND...might i say AND 4 DIFFERENT FACTIONS IN THE MIX.... you killed an awesome backstory with theses factions. It HAD more meaning.
Now its just an orange free for all.
@Kyronix How did you all let this slip away? How at any point then & especially now since the obvious outcome did or still think this was a clever idea.

 

[Shawn of Atlantic]

I love this post.
VvV is an addition to the game where is your orange or not. Royal pardons screwed the PvP experience because you can just solo your own guild, join VvV, buy a royal pardon for 6 mil...eat it.. 436 murder counts gone, quit VvV....why the **** would you give an option to do that?... the whole point of making a choice to be a murderer....u pay the price --8hrs of game play equals ONE long term murder count subtracted. There is no accountability... Now you have 99.5 percent of the players blue and in VvV. I just enjoyed a year ago or so when you would see a guild of Reds 7 -10 at a time lurking for the Pk. Blues fight with them and your Criminals in that scenario ...... AND...might i say AND 4 DIFFERENT FACTIONS IN THE MIX.... you killed an awesome backstory with theses factions. It HAD more meaning.
Now its just an orange free for all.
@Kyronix How did you all let this slip away? How at any point then & especially now since the obvious outcome did or still think this was a clever idea.

Amen.

 

[Deraj]

There are a few things I find curious about VvV, and which I hope might be expanded upon in the future. Even though it's called Vice vs. Virtue, a name which in my mind implies a kind of karma-based faction system, it is simply a guild vs. guild auto-wardec system. Here is my problem with that: we already have a notoriety/karma system, and we already have a non-consensual PvP facet. So why not use it? Here's a very rough idea of what I'm talking about:

1. Do away with the opt-in - if you're in Fel, you're in. Welcome to the non-consensual PvP facet.
2. Your "faction" is based on your karma if unguilded, or on the average karma level of active players in your guild (active being defined as what, played x amount of time in the last 30 days?).
3. No orange highlights. If you're virtue, you're blue. If you're vice, you're grey. If you're a murderer, you're red. In other words, karma tied to notoriety.
4. Let guilds actually control conquered towns for longer periods of time. Create more 'control points' across the land to fight over. The time cost of conquering a control point can be scaled based on proximity to enemy-controlled control points (less neighboring enemy points = higher time requirement).
5. Reconfigure the guard system to work in favor of the controlling entity, whether it's "vice" or "virtue".
6. Bonuses (similar to trade deals perhaps) that scale based on guild purity (average karma and guild size), unique resources, titles, whatever. Anything but deco.

The point I am trying to make is in a similar vein to earlier comments about reds being obsolete. Vice vs. Virtue is a consensual PvP system in a non-consensual PvP facet that has nothing to do with Vice or Virtue. The systems are already there, now we have VvV's town fighting system. Combine it all into a big, robust system of meaning and consequence.

I'm sure the devs have ideas lined up for where VvV will go, but I guess if anything, what I hope to see VvV become more than anything else is a system of consequence.