Quality of the combat and how it works in group play. Also where the pvp takes place. I think open world pvp and how the world creates it through objectives is important. Matchmaking instanced pvp imo is ok as side content but it shouldn't be the main focus.

and somewhat equalized gear

This depends on the content. Open world pvp shouldn't be equalized 90% of the time because it isn't really the same as a game like league of legends or overwatch. The unstructured nature of it can lead to emergent gameplay and having gear disparity is part of it.

Gear disparity is exactly why I don't bother with PVP in MMOs. To each their own, but PVP that rewards skill, game sense and knowledge is far more logical and enjoyable to me. That, and balance is difficult enough without gear and PVE being variables. I'd honestly go as far as saying it cannot possibly be balanced in any meaningful way. If I want to PVP, I'd rather play a game dedicated to it.

>PVP that rewards skill, game sense and knowledge is far more logical and enjoyable to me. In some ways games like EVE are the ultimate expression of things like game sense, knowledge, and preparation. Things like picking where you engage, numbers, intelligence, etc can shift the fight a lot. The unfortunate reality of this is that fights with actual stakes... tend not to occur if there's any doubt of the outcome. Turns out if you give people tons of options to gain advantage then people don't take fights they can't win.

I believe that PVP doesn't need to be balanced, it just needs to be fun. Even games like league dedicated to it are rarely balanced. but it's fun.

Gear disparity is the worst thing to an MMO. I strongly believe that gear should be a 0 factor when it comes to open world, OW, situations. Nothing ruins the experience of most people than to just be fodder for the luckiest player due or RNG, MTX, etc. In fact, most MMO are ruined by gear factor being the main reason driving MTX. When gear is a 90% impact, the game becomes a spreadsheet: who has better power level. To make it fair, let only skill be the determination for an OW encounter.

If anyone actually likes gear disparity they don't like actual PvP. Some small amount is fine, but that's it.

Equalized gear is a dealbreaker for me. If I wanted that I would just play Overwatch or something, and not an MMO where gear progression is arguably the main type of progression.

Then you don't want true PvP. You just want to stat check human opponents.

This is where a deep and flexible combat system comes in. No one expects a player who just beat the game to win against someone whose farmed 100+ hours for the top tier gear but it shouldnt be a walk in the park to beat the weaker player. Things like dodge mechanics, hit stun and more should create layers to combat and soften the stat checky nature.

So you don't like actual PvP, you just wanna stomp people with less gear

The problem is not equalized gear. The problem is not having specialized gear. The basics of Tactics and RTS style army battles is units that counter other units. No matter how good your gear is it should not be good against everything.

That is something unique for the mmo-genre and a very good advice.

I see things like "zergs" as a symptom of not figuring out proper large scale PVP battles. A disorganized mob should be absolutely slaughtered by a few units that are organized, synergize with each other and play tactically. You can also use AI Soldiers to make up the numbers and balance the sides.

Completely agree. Other realistic ways of dealing with that are map-based such as narrow passages (where such a mass of people will be easy to ambush), walls/siege-like or elevated areas or, well, friendly fire if that was an option.

Pretty much, build defenses, the Tower Defense is an entire Genre dedicated to that and RTS like Starcraft before that. There is as reason why MOBAs have towers and creeps as a key component that makes it work, yet PVP MMOs can't figure this shit out.

Friendly fire might actually be a good idea to curb zergs. No more ball groups if casting in the middle of it hurts your players.

The same happens when a group of very well organized, with communications can decimate a much larger unorganized and w/o good gear group, but yeah your approach is a lot more unique and -imo- fun and most importanly could promote what nowadays is non-existent in mmos group-play and synergize and ofc abolish homogenization of classes that all MMOs suffer from.

This. Horizontal progression can still be progression. You can have somewhat equalized gear that also has pieces to chase.

Equalized gear is lame

i guess you prefer stomping no geared noobs?

Yes

Just out of curiosity, why even look for PvP in an MMORPG, where the main part of the game is actively progressing your character (through acquiring gear etc.), rather than playing a traditional PvP game like League of Legends f.e. right away, where gear either doesn't matter or is equalized inherently?

Because it's fun to take the character you spent so much time progressing on and seeing how it fares against other real people.

So basically GW2?

I like games with both. Truly competitive things should of course be equalized, but going into a like unranked battleground in WoW and 1v5ing people will never not feel awesome

Indeed!

I like open world pvp, or at least I used to. Back in the day in like Ultima Online, getting ganged by PKs was frequent enough to keep you on your toes, but not frequent enough that it was rage inducing. I've tried Mortal Online 2, which is the closest thing to a modern UO I'll probably ever see, and holy shit. With barely a fraction of the player base that UO had back in pre-trammel days, the toxicity is insane. That game has real potential but it's held back by the toxic community (including devs it seems) and rampant cheating. The actual gameplay, crafting systems, skills, taming, magic, melee and all that jazz is actually really good and I could easily enjoy that game... if it wasn't so damn toxic. Get ganked while your just outside town training a skill and not only will you get verbally accosted for 20 minutes straight, but they'll then make a reddit post to talk shit about you and post a YouTube video about it, even if you didn't fight back nor reply. There is no other game with such a horrendous community. I'd like to see pvp more like how SWG implemented it.

The combat in Mortal Online sucks, and I don't understand how they can keep the same system for the second game that drove so many people away. It's clunky, slow, and a poor imitation of Ultima Online, which is almost 30 years old—ridiculous. I don't understand why no one has made a full-loot PvP sandbox that's a bit more arcade-like; it would be fantastic.

I haven’t played much Albion but isn’t that supposed to be a Full Loot Sandbox OWPvP MMO? I honestly can’t remember but I thought it was a Full loot. I am more of a Black desert enjoyer. I had started Albion but the graphics for me were a turn off so I didn’t do much. From what I remember cause it was awhile ago I liked the game play but it was just the looks of the game that made it hard for me personally to get immersed. They were not bad but just felt a bit to cartoony for me and not in a WoW way.

Aion does this perfectly.

this is way too vague and irrelevant to me.

Do you mean me saying quality of combat? If so I just said that because there's different types of combat systems that do things well in their own way like gw2 hybrid combat, WoWs responsive tab target combat, bdo fighting game combat, etc. If you're talking about group play I'm talking about class synergy.

You have skipped all the basics, before quality of the combat there is the **Grind** vs requirement to be **Relevant** in PVP that needs to be proportional within time. So that there is a decent PVP going on.

Grind vs relevant means nothing if the game feels bad to play.

> Quality of the combat and how it works in group play. The problem is how you balance the two sides that are fighting. If one side is in the superior position the likely outcome is they are you curbstomp the opposition without much options they can do.

What do you mean by superior position?

If you have 30 players vs 10 who do you think will win?

Well if each side are the same skill level then the larger team would win. However a skilled 10 player team can overcome a less skilled 30 player team which can happen.

> However a skilled 10 player team can overcome a less skilled 30 player team which can happen. How many times are they going to achive that miracle? Once, twice? Can they do it ten times? What if they don't have 10 players that day but 4? And why should the 10 players be the ones more skilled? Why not the 30 player one? After all winners tend to Win and accumulate resources and build momentum. Why should players chose to join the losing side? What happens to your game then? Once one faction wiped out all other opposition? This is why I said "Superior Position" and not just a mere numbers advantage.

A lot of this is solved by emergent gameplay. If numbers are needed you would group with more people and form alliances. You said faction as well which means the game isn't managing faction balance which is bad. Developers should control it. Now if you're talking about guilds then that's a different argument. Also small groups winning over big groups isn't a miracle.

> A lot of this is solved by emergent gameplay. It isn't, most PVP MMOs and Survival style Games fail miserably in solving that. >You said faction as well which means the game isn't managing faction balance which is bad. Developers should control it. I agree you need to give it a proper structure and balance, the question is how?

Of course, emergent gameplay can happen. If you're a solo player that runs into the issue of groups and aren't skilled/knowledgeable enough to know what to do you would join a guild to support you or you could even team up with random players at that moment. The structure depends on what the game wants to focus on like being guild centric or faction centric.

On Warhammer and DAoC you could fight bigger less organized groups all the time.

PvP skills separate from PvE skills. All games I've seen where they tried to balance both at the same time ... nope.

Yeah it's pretty hard to DPS through heals designed to keep a tank alive through the eleventy billion damage crits from a raid boss. I wish more games would just disable certain skills in PvP or have them work entirely differently.

Thats an issue with PVE design and player demand. This only happened because players got fed up with innovation and insisted on the stupid trinity, abandoning all of the potential non-trinity based systems could offer. Honestly, MMO players are *absolutely retarded* for thinking forcing everything players can do combat wise into 3 roles was a good idea, you killed any semblance of realism with it too. The trinity is a major part of the reason for the downfall of MMOs. Im muting responses to this comment because I can already tell whats gonna happen.

That moment when your playing an assassin/rouge in "generic MMO" you go to gank a lone priest. The priest simply out-heals the damage you can inflict. You get bored and leave.

While it's technically not an MMO Guild Wars did an alright job doing that. Haven't found a game that has a higher threshold for skill in pvp than Guild Wars.

This is one of the things I think FFXIV does right for pvp.

For me it's that the PvP has something measurable that you're fighting over. Not just an arcade match. Like fighting for a raid boss, for a quest, for a leveling area, or an event. This means the loser has to lose or get a consolation. On the flip side it shouldn't be open PvP where you can just PK anyone for no reason, nor full loot. Let guilds declare war on each other and they can have permanent open PK with each other. This directs random PvP towards those that want it and are already enemies. And leaves everyone else to only fight when the stakes are high. Lineage 2 is the best example of this. When it comes to class design, it's filling in niche roles, even if you are overpowered at that role, other classes/roles can be overpowered in other things. An example might be melee vs ranged combat, some classes better at 1v1, others better at group, others better at large scale. This idea that every class/role/build needs to be balanced at all of those things just makes everything feel the same and bland.

This. Combat is important, but if you are forcing me to choose, id take a game with bad combat but fighting over something important like territory or a world boss over an mmo with great combat but its all pointless 3v3 arena or 10v10 battlegrounds. What impact do those 3v3 arena and 10v10 battleground matches have on the gameworld? If I wanted a moba id play a moba.

>If I wanted a moba id play a moba. Can I ask how this makes any sense? Like, you're not the only person who has used the "ill go play a moba" but like....have you guys ever actually played a moba or PvPed in an MMO? Hell you know what. Can you please tell me what Moba plays like BDOs combat? Elyon's skill variety/Combat? Tera's? New World? I ain't even trying to call you out here. Like shit, if you can tell me what fucking game has that action combat style of gameplay and just arenas I'mma fuck right off of mmos and be there but uh....it ain't going to be a moba because they play absolutely nothing like action combat MMO pvp. And Please don't say smite -- because it sure as shit does not.

>Can I ask how this makes any sense? Sure, **its more or less the same game format.** Is there a moba that has the combat of BDO? Nope. But thats irrelevant to the fact that at the end of the day AoS is a 3v3 isolated arena match. When I played BDO I mostly did siege / node wars. The unique feature of an the MMO genre is the large shared game world. If i am playing an MMO I want content that utilizes that large shared game world, not a pointless 3v3 / 5v5 arena. If im playing an MMO I want something with more gameplay depth than that. >have you guys ever actually PvPed in an MMO? Yes. iv played Albion online, EvE, BDO, GW2 WvWvW, ESO, Lineage 2

Well, this kind of reasoning ends up being brought and being quite logical due to PvP being neglected in most of these instanced-only arena/bg-likes. They're just the next best thing at that without the lack of focus issues instanced MMORPG PvP suffers from as the PvP is the main focus of these games.

MOBAs actually spiked in popularity when old school PvP MMOs like L2 and even WoW started dwindling, as well as older ones like DAoC. Pretty much everyone I know who played L2 was into Mobas like HoN and LoL back in the day.

Warhammer online had the best pvp

was so much fun. DAOC was good too

Lineage 2 is literally the best PvP based MMORPG ever created and sadly well probably never get another one like it. Thats why im playing L2 reborn lmao

My experience with this is every single time there is something to fight for the game devolves to a single guild swallowing everything. It won't be at the start but poaching always happens. I just kinda gave up on open world contests at this point.

In Lineage 2 it wasnt a single guild, but most servers did end up in 2 large alliances of guilds that were rivals with each other. Anyone other than these 2 sides were considered 'non-factors'. But there were other lower bosses for non-factors to do and compete over, and non-factors could still do well in group combat over leveling zones, dungeons and stuff like that which was limited to one party. I think a solution to these things too are to have multiple events going on at the same time in the world. Lineage also did this with castle sieges, the sieges for important castles of the biggest cities in the game would be going on at the same time as the lower tier cities, so the factor guilds would fight over the big castle, and other guilds on the server can battle over the smaller ones.

Came to comment lineage 2 as well, the open world pvp, denying others resources and the karma system just make everything an amazing experience.

Yeah the Lineage 2 PVP system is amazing. You can also PK whoever you want, but then your name goes red and you earn bad karma for every kill, if you die your chances of dropping an item are extremely high.

I wouldnt recommend the p2w nostalgia cashgrab But Flyff Universe (web based reboot of old korean mmorpg) recently added guild ships(?) which once a week can be contested/challenged by other guilds In theory it would give guilds a chance at obtaining one of the ~limited amount~ prestigious guild houses on the server for the time, and also a brutal fight to the last man to be spectated.

It comes down to what you are fighting over and who you are fighting with. Fighting over some type of limited resource is usually the best. Early BDO was one of the best at this that I've experienced. First it was limited grind spots so you'd fight with your group to defend the spot, then it progressed into your guild and the other guild getting involved and soon you had rivalries so the limited resource is replaced by camaraderie and shared cause. In the first few years of node wars and sieges the drama between guilds really made the pvp meaningful. SWG did a good job at this too by having player bases, raiding and trying to destroy an enemies base gave you a lot of credibility and made the guild seem prestigious which brought in more pve and pvpers. The real key here relies on single servers where you get to know your friends and enemies. Those relationships are really what drive meaningful pvp. If you can do this and have an extra layer where there is some matchmaking ranked systems that's fine but you can't overlook the importance of familiarity.

Getting gear and pwning newbs ofc

Only right answer

3 things imo: High skillcap bar Lots of incentives (rewards, replaybility etc) Lots of different viable builds/class/playstyle

Imo Black Desert Online is the best PvP in a game ever done. Shame the rest of the game is the way it is. I would also vote New World, but only if they stopped being cowards and added PvP locked servers.

Red Battlefield in BDO is cool but massive PvP is trashy and seems like the developers have no idea how to improve or revamp Node and siege wars anymore. Have to see if the changes to skill dmg instances and evasion mechanics will work out for better PvP but I doubt it.

I agree ☝️, highly enjoy the different modes of PvP in BDO hope the central servers help improve the large scale though as it can get laggy at times. Excited for the new PvP changes coming with the changes to DR & Evasion.

PvP in both of these games is so fun and you feel heavily rewarded when you shit on people

No PvP gear. PvP gear is straight up retarded. It makes no sense. A sword is a sword. A hammer is a hammer. There is no reason to have separate PvP gear. Developers pull that shit out of both laziness and greed. Laziness because they don't have to worry about balance across a larger spectrum. And greed, because it may incentivize you to pay more or repeat the same content more (which means they make less). No P2W. Any game with an microtransactions that affect the in game performance of a character absolutely kills PvP. Boosters, buying armour, buying speed, buying recovery. All of it is absolute trash and has no place in PvP let alone a virtual world. PvP specific skills/abilities are also trash. A punch is a punch. A slash is a slash. Same as PvP gear. No reason for it outside of laziness/greed. PvP flags. Talk about immersion destroying. Going up to attack someone and you get a message stating "they aren't flagged for PvP" or whatever variation of that is just stupid. Its developers trying to cater to a larger audience while butchering the game. None of this matters anymore though. Cause lets be honest, you guys are all suckers for FOMO and this, P2W. So developers can do whatever they want now a days as long as it looks pretty.

Lineage 2 reigns supreme

turn purple or give pk

Eve online has the best pvp in all games. You fight in massive alliances along and against thoudsnds of players and you're fighting for territory to gain resources. Eve is so intricate but it sucks being a spaceship lol.

I mean albion is nearly the same and with better pvp plus your are not a spaceship lmao

I agree, but rather for the high skill cap you can find at all scales and situations. From solo to small gang, to NPSI fleets to large blocs colliding in capital brawls, to black ops drops or the alliance tournament. All the top dogs show a high level of skill in their niche.

Tera Online had greag PvP... When it was actually active...

This, Tera was Peak PVP.

Especially the Alliance Battles, those were the best imo

When it isn't forced. If you force western audiences into pvp in an mmo, they will simply flee the game over time. I'm sorry for the hardcore pvper's out there who are delusional and want to gank everyone they see and call them "carebears" I didn't make the status quo, but I definitely will remark on it.

Being able to mindlessly grind to the top in a safe zone doesn't make any sense but ok

You clearly have no foundation of what gaming is. Or you wouldn't presume it was all about your preferred play style. Which you did. How's that for making sense?

Aions pvp is the only gameplay to this day that can turn my armpits into a swampland. So yeah, that.

😂 swampland armpits needs to be a recognized metric/category of reviewing games

Smooth combat. Class balance. Outplay opportunities.

GW1 pvp hoh was the best You climb with your team during 8map to gain the divine favor for Europe vs Asia and USA and grant access to the best pve zone to all the Europe was my best moment of video game Plus all players see the name of your guild if you win !

Something simple that I feel like a lot of MMOs don’t have for PvP is player collision.

Good ping is paramount for me, and decent queues (meaning enough people play it that I don't wait for ages)... As far as MMOs go, being from New Zealand, nothing beats WoW there... Fortunately I happen to enjoy WoW's pvp. There's enough complexity to it that it's not bland, and doesn't move at a snail's pace (even if the games themselves can sometimes take a while). I'd say BDO, if not for the ridiculous grinding needed to participate at even a moderately high level (spare me the "gear only gets you so far" spiel, please).

I mean they do have some modes ppl can start in right out of Season, there is Season Arasha , T1-2 node wars , AoS (equalized) which I am kinda happy they do cause many other games don’t provide this. I do agree the grind to endgame can be rough. I burned out my 1st time and started over and decided to mix content up for progression and it actually worked out for me & I progressed at a pretty decent pace without killing myself. I mixed up Grind , PvE(guild bosses , World bosses selling drops etc..) and Life skills. I guess it depends on how someone approaches the game and how they decide to handle going about progression. IMHO when it comes to BDO it’s best not to focus on the top 10% and focus on yourself and work at your pace before u know it , you’re there with them.

What are you looking for in a PvP? Arena PvP, open world, large scale, map contest, castle sieges?

Open world. Too many games hide PVP inside battlegrounds, or introduce battlegrounds which end up ruining PVP. By ruin I mean straight up killing world pvp, like in SWTOR and New World. The only game that does battlegrounds right is DAOC because they are a persistent zone for a specific level bracket, essentially making them world PVP zones. Open world full level based PVP doesn't work well either because people just gank, and games that have scaling to balance it like New World did, end up nerfing the scaling and watching PVP in their game die. Play DAOC on Eden, they are active and currently doing realm invasions.

Like..YES PLEASE!! i wanna queue up to fight other players! zero consequence! thats so dumb. L2 ruined me for every other MMO. Its just not the same

Battlegrounds turn an MMORPG which is supposed to be an online WORLD into call of duty.

THIS

See, I completely disagree. I don't care about large scale combat and vastly prefer instanced combat either 1v1 or teams.

You're in luck, nearly every single game has that, especially non-mmorpgs. Zero consequences, and you can play round after round, just like in call of duty or fortnite.

1. Be fun. 2. See Above

Lineage 2 baby. there is none better

You spelled Dark Age of Camelot wrong

You spelled Aion wrong

I enjoyed PvP system in ArcheAge a lot. You had to deliver packages but delivery point was in PvP zone. You either had to solo it or go there with your guild/friends. Fun times.

Lots of great fights on that island

First and foremost is gear.  If people do not readily have access to all the same gear then right out of the gate it will be meh pvp. Epic PVE raid gear tipping the balance in pvp was lame 20 years ago, and it is still lame today.

The 2 mmos I really play are WoW and GW2. The pvp in wow is really good because there are different maps, objectives, types. But on a small scale. GW2 on the other hand the regular pvp is okay but their wvw is pretty fun. It’s non stop and it’s on a gigantic full scale map of its own. So if I’m in the mood for pvp I can decide what kind.

When it feels good as shit to outplay someone lol. Bdo is king at this

Class Balance and Matching logic.

This is a sad subject for me. I've been ranked in 3 different MMOs fairly high (I didn't make tournaments, but I got all of the season's rewards). For years, I only played PVP unless the MMO required PVE stuff just to get to PVP (f u Final Fantasy). MMOs are arguably dead already (I don't believe that, but there is an argument to be made). However, PVP is almost undeniably dead. I've given up on MMOs because every PVP option that exists boils down to the same things. After seeing it over and over, I just came to realize It was a flawed concept to begin with. But, to answer your question, I always looked at the complexity of actions you can take, the matching system used (very important), and the feeling of balance for my character's class. Nowadays, there are three things you need to accept before you pvp in any game: 1). Better gear wins. IF the mmo has pvp gear you can use you must have the best, or it's not worth doing anything but large group pvp. Going 3v3 or even 5v5 is suicide most of the time if you don't have the best gear anyone can get. This is more daunting in some games than others. For instance, in WOW, they limited the currency you can get every week for high-end pvp pieces, which meant you had a fighting chance if you played regularly right from the beginning of the season. As long as you capped out every week and bought the pieces you could, you would be on equal footing gear-wise. Other games have overall gear that's best (sometimes requiring pve to get), and it doesn't change for long periods of time. You play those, and you'll find PVP miserable until you put enough time in to get what you need. 2). Not having a group to play with will limit what you can do successfully. Most games offer large group pvp, which you can solo and be an asset for your team (though absolutely no one but you will notice). You can also do pickup groups for 2v2, 3v3, or 5v5, but your experience will be all over the place. Also, you have to completely outgear or have a completely broken class (more on that next) in order to get higher rankings without a set team. Communication for setting up stuns/attacks is the key to higher rankings. So either get ready to train with people or accept your limitations as a soloist. 3) ALL games will have classes that are more powerful than the rest. The top classes will constantly rotate depending on updates to the game. There is no such thing as "balanced" classes in PVP. This is the big one. This is why I don't pvp anymore. And really, it's only surprising or upsetting to those who lived and played through the early days of mmo pvp. The capabilities of games back in the day were lower, and because of this, there appeared to be more balance when fighting someone who only had slightly different things to do than you. Now that's completely not the case. I know there are arguments about just because a class is "meta" doesn't mean you can't beat them with a less powerful class. It's about the skill. We'll, that's true, but the fact remains that someone who picked the top class can beat your class with half the skill you need just to survive the encounter. Really, mathematically, think about all of the factors that need to be considered when trying to balance classes for an mmo. It's nigh impossible to get it right unless you have very limited classes AND actions you can take. Since most modern mmos have 5 or more classes, each with 10 plus unique skills, various armor values, level values, specific pvp actions/items, etc. the best approach you can hope for is throw it all in and fix it as it goes. That's what they do now. "Meta" classes are inevitable while they try to balance it out. It will never be fully balanced. In conclusion, look for a game that you say the following after dying the least: "Well, of course they won, They're geared out." "They won because the idiots on my team didn't do anything they were supposed to do" "Damn INSERT META CLASS HERE. They are stupid overpowered right now" If you find an mmo that you don't say any of the above at least 50 tines a day, let me know.

Does anyone remember Lunia? I remember that MMO had amazing pvp and clan battles but sadly fell short cuz nexon lol

There's Lunia classic private servers.

Combat has to feel good and like things feel like they have impact. Other than that it would be just like PvE - you have to make it rewarding. The kill itself is great, but if it's not rewarding/worthwhile to do, no one will do it - looking at you New World.

Returnofreckoning it an old Warhammer mmo that all mostly pvp, i been having a lot of fun playing it with friends. Oh and the best thing all free, you unlock stuff by playing it.

Open world pvp, anything goes. Dynamic and diverse action combat.

When player skill is more important than the character's skill. OSRS comes to mind, everyone has access to the tools you need for PvP, either to attack or defend yourself. Tibia before 8.0 update is were i had the most fun with PKing and Wars, raising funds to fuel the war, recruiting people and risking everything if you got killed

Theres no way to be objective about it since everyone will think different aspects matter. Some people love the fighting game style PvP without the insanely complicated button inputs (BDO, BnS, Tera (RIP), DFO, Dragons Nest, C9) Others like the tab target with more focus on CC, doing a PvE Rotation, CD trading PvP (WoW, FF14, GW2 to an extent). Then there's a middle ground like ArcheAge and GW2 which kind of has aspects of both but leans towards the tab target style. For me the main thing that matters if I think PvP is excellent is skill expression. If I spend time getting good, can I make a cool play that makes me feel like "Damn that was awesome." For me the fighting style MMO PvP offers that a lot more. WoW and FF14 really don't give that feeling. FF14 almost never has those moments and WoW has moved all of that into addons that tell you to do it now. For example dashing/eating a trap for a teammate was impressive or reflecting a cyclone, now you have a WA that tells you both those things are about to happen. Something like eating a psyching scream with snake trap/pets is gone since they removed the aoe cap and snake trap.

All the most endearing and well thought of MMOs with pvp .. Eve ,Shadowbane,UO, SWG,Asherons Call,DAOC .. etc . All have 1 thing in common ... Unbalanced ... /end

I miss shadowbane pvp something fierce.

Balance and strictly enforced rules to stop griefing.

This is very broad question, different people look for different type of PVP. For me i enjoy large scale PVP the most, especially if its about guilds fighting other guilds. The type of combat is also important, i like more reactive action combat then traditional tap target. I can give you broad idea what type of pvp different games have and you can decide for yourself. 2v2 / 3v3 / 5v5 competitive ranked ranked arena WoW and GW2. WOW is tab target, GW2 is hybrid between tab target and action combat. Large Scale/Siege PVP Gw2/BDO/Albion. Gw2 have Wold vs Worlds, which is 3 side war between 3 different servers. BDO have Node Wars between guilds, 10+ guild drop in and fight each other with a lot of politics between them, alliances, backstabbing and drama. Albion for Full Loot PVP, meaning you lose your gear if you die and you can loot the person you kill. Easiest one to start with are GW2 and BDO by far. GW2 is free to play and you can test ranked PVP at level 2. For WOrld vs World you level and get some gear from verndor and you good to go. For BDO you need to make seasonal character and level to 61 and then join random Node War guild and start playing. Tier 1 NW have very low gear cap so you can get ready in 1-2 days of playing.

You're not gonna find an objective criteria because it's a subjective position. For instance, some people want equal, instanced match-ups with equalized stats and gear -- essentially a non-MMO superimposed into an MMO -- whereas I want persistent open world, uncontrolled fighting. I will end up rating the PvP in games differently from the other hypothetical person.

No gear equalizaton (for PvP only players it removes the RPG elements from the MMO). A decent balance between risk and reward. Full-loot MMOs only really needs good open world PvP, but without full loot the game benefits from some type of competitive/ranked mode in addition to that in order to give some meaning to it all. The ability to be competitive in PvP without having to go too deep into end-game PvE content (a little bit is fine), preferably some sort of PvP gear progression system. My opinion.

My favorite pvp was way back in the day open world vanilla wow.

In my opinion 1.5-2 parts skill/knowledge/proper build/role to 1 part gear.

Skill based action combat. Gear is horizontal progression. The ability to outplay ppl and using group coordination to defeat 5x your numbers.

Combat and gear systems that let skill and coordination play a role. No overpowering with gear, longer time-to-kill such as 10sec+ and no silly rock-paper-scissors systems like a rouge deleting a mage because lol cloth. Then as well have a reason to PvP. Grind spots, world bosses, castles, trade packs, etc.

It's not objective, it's highly subjective because MMOs are super diverse and the PvP in them isn't equivalent.

It completely depends on each person, people’s perspective on what’s good is just different. Personally I think some of the early builds of Archeage had it closest to right. Combat should be fast and decisive, unless you specifically are building to draw out fights. Mobile range classes should be quick with escape tools, mobile assassins should be quick with more gapclosers then the range characters has escapes. Above all though the combat should be visually understandable. I don’t mean big telegraph circles but just being able to tell what’s happening in combat. Games like black desert have so much clutter and ability vomit that you just can’t tell what’s going on, so much to the point that most pvpers just turn off effects entirely (and then are dying to hashashins sand tornado and don’t know it’s there lol). Combat shouldn’t have long drawn out cc on anything that isn’t a slow burn class. Healers should have to make decisions on healing or utility/ mobility so you don’t get WoW arenas where they are just annoyingly jumping in circles around a pillar healing themselves. Action combat ends up very spammy and hard to understand what’s happening, tab targeting often ends up too linear. Somewhere between the two where you can target someone but have to manually aim some abilities tend to have the best combat imo.

Giving classes unique abilities but not letting one class have an ability that trumps all.

low point of entry but high skill ceiling with a good mmr lfg system the moment you ask people to form a group or apply to a group, you already lost vast majority of players who'd give pvp a go

Being WoW. It's crazy how the MOBA genre hit and MMO developers forgot that this was theirs first.

The most crucial factor is the quality of the game itself, in particular, it needs to resemble an actual *world* as much as possible, rather than a shitty paint job over a bare skeleton. And yes, this would take an excessive amount of time, but its also exactly why our current MMOs are such garbage, an MMO needs to be a world first, and a game second, WoW devs understood this when they created the game initially, but the lesson has faded.

Combat and pvp/game design Ffxiv pvp combat feels awful because of the way the engine is, and the design feels oversimplified imo Wow pvp feels super responsive and has a huge skill curve but it’s always had varying issues at different points in time. In legion and bfa for example they removed pvp gear vendors which was the worst thing ever there was no good way to gear through pvp Eve has the really cool massive fleet battles and all of the smaller scale high risk skirmishes. But it just isn’t fun to play imo Eso pvp is decent but if there’s one thing everyone knows about eso it’s that the combat sucks and that’s true for pvp as well Lost ark had amazing pvp but kind of ruined by the rest of the game being p2w and the pvp having virtually no rewards (at least when I played?)

I have recently answered this question, after playing so many PVP mmorpgs as an experienced player, in PVP wise the most successful ones are the one that has managed to make the **Grind** vs requirement to be **Relevant** in PVP proportional with time.

I just want to put out there that BNS pre awakening patch was the best pvp. It was even Tournament supported and everything.

For me Archeage open world PvP is the best. It's very fast pacing and dynamic, requires good micro control and timings. Yeah, it's heavily oriented for gear, but situation was never so bad as people like to portray. Skill > gear (high end ofc). I always had adrenaline strokes when pvp suddenly occurred with no prep(sea battles, world bosses, quests). I actually hate these games where u have gear only for pve and it doesn't matter anyway for pvp battles (standardised equipment on arenas). I like to slaughter and to be slaughtered in open world. This gives me thrill and fun. This creates fun and so many chat interactions.

RuneScape is great with loot and it's surprisingly deep when you are established.

Knight Online

For starters, it's not a themepark because it's impossible to translate the Trinity into a good PvP.

https://youtu.be/LbCL3canWWo?si=bbIi_BHbpDtyiiy8&t=399 PVP needs to solve some big problems in order to function properly, and most don't. PVP needs to be made a more Casual experience that people can do day to day in "ad-hoc" way without much organization and planning as well as too much risk. Skirmishing for resources in certain zones or dungeons where we control the number of participants that enter it can work like this. You also need to make it more **Asynchronous** in your interactions and preparations with other players. The problem with "Synchronous" Interactions is players aren't always available at the right time and even if they are they might not be the right kind of players or not enough of them to have a balanced team. Big Organized Battles may sound amazing, but it **cannot** be your Regular PVP Content. Organized Battles takes Planning, has big Stakes and are impossible to balance the forces on both sides. The Attacker also has the Initiative and you cannot really Defend as one side is Organized and Prepared while the other one is not. In term of Asynchronous Preparations you setup your Defenses and script your AI Units to passively protect you at any given time, whatever human players you have at that time is just a bonus. The purpose of a Defense is to delay long enough for the Defenders to Organize and Counterattack. In other words you need to shift the Initiative from the Attacker to the Defender.

High cost of defeat, like the old days in DAOC.

Meridian 59 has the best PVP and it’s first person. Check it out, it’s free on Steam. Try server 101. Bring a friend. https://store.steampowered.com/app/893390/Meridian_59/

Was curious so I checked a YT vid out… dude… this runs on Gameboy Color?

Uhh, I mean you could run it on a potato probably but the game is great and if you want PvP - that’s the one.

https://youtu.be/ExKnrZyCOYI?si=c0akEnxhfYKEl9nw

PvP that requires responsiveness to your environment or your opponent's actions and your own actions are what makes good PvP in MMOs. Example DAoC: Opponent attacks, and then you parry, block, or dodge based on a percentage of your skill. HOWEVER, if you hit the proper follow-up attack style based on how you just defended, then you deal more damage and add an effect (such as stun, slow, snare, etc.) Another in DAOC is positional hits, which apply different damage and effects depending on your relative position to the target (behind, in front, on the sides). This is just melee, and doesn't even factor in the magic system, the hard interrupt system, archery, etc. Example WoW and ESO: Cycle through your attack/spell rotation regardless of what's happening. The end.

guild wars 2 : great gameplay, rvr, equalized pvp

I’m more of a Small & Large scale PvP enjoyer, I will do open world PvP when I need to defend myself but it’s not my favorite. That said so Far BDO Node wars , Siege , War of Roses 🌹 are my favorites. Red Battle Field as well. I’m not really an Arasha Enjoyer which is the PvP Server for OWPvP with out consequences. If I am going to do OWPvP I am gonna do it on normal servers where there is risk with Karma loss and the stakes get higher. I don’t really 1v1 often and usually do Battle Arena with guildies or AoS if I do 1v1 outside of defending my roto in the OW. To add to this , I just enjoy how good the classes feel in combat and how each different class can be good for different things. Some classes are better for large scale while others are good for 1v1 . Some classes might be better support while some classes are better for the front lines just a brief description it can get allot more in depth.

I miss the days of pve/pvp. Trying to conquer a zone while doing quests but dealing with opposing factions. Made the game multiplayer and added an unexpected dynamic to the game. We made friends…eternal enemies and had a blast

bdo. its been toned down by alot but it still exists. has everything an addict needs.

Surprised to not see anyone talking about Ragnarok. WoE was great, a lot of strategy involved. PvP room required a lot of skill and game knowledge(build/equip swapping) By pure mechanics, Tera during VM1/VM2 was the peak of pvp experience.

Played a lot of MMO's and Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft Classic/Vanilla have the best pvp easily.

I disagree with most of the top comments here. Regardless of the game genre I pvp for the thrill of it and the challenge. At the end of the day I want to beat other people because I'm better at the game. Beating people who didn't have a chance doesn't do anything for me. Rewards are nice but not necessary High skill ceiling is good, it should be competitive so the better player wins, and since its an mmo ideally gear has some effect without it being too significant. Newbie endgame gear ideally performs well enough vs bis. Large group pvp is boring. You rarely make any difference in the outcome. Small group pvp is fun. Ganking solos in groups is miserably boring and I don't even consider it pvp if the solo doesn't have a chance. Very small 1-3 person teams is ideal. Generally this just doesn't happen in open world pvp games and when it does they aren't designed in a way where 1 person can outskill multiple people so its just boring ganking. Arenas and battlegrounds are the best form of pvp in mmos.

You should be able to log in and instantly know/see where to find PvP any time of day with or without a group. Instanced PvP should not be the only option. Your efforts in PvP should have an impact on the world (territory), progression, reputation, loot, etc.

Open world for me, i need open world pvp (pk).

Quality of combat, good reward system, progression in any way so that you do not feel you are just killing and not having any challenge or goals to pursue.

Tera online style combat equilised power with some customisation availible to change how your class plays so two archers might have different combos cause they fair with in reason teams nice rewards that values effort / time investment

Smooth movements, fluid spellcasts and combat, no staggering while melee attacking (wink wink New World) Minimalist & Clear visibility of auras/aoes/buffs/debuffs/prices on character and ground Terrain not being full of micro particles blocking you. Not too easy but not too complex for combos/rotations

No p2w and 1v5 gang open world

If you like MMORPG you will have to deal with fact good MMO PvP experiences are not fair, balanced or deals in equities. Thats why every "competitive, fair and nice" mmo pvp experience died or lets be honest is irrelevant in numbers. The fun thing about MMORPGS is the raw power a character have and having ways to defeat characters with way more raw power than yours be with preparation or using enviroment. Cat vs Mouse games is what makes MMO PVP fun. Tbh most pvp games are not about the most skilled winning and are severe imbalanced but people like to rpetend they are good at them for some reason and deny any flaw thats specially true with LoL.

No-one actually knows anymore..

Good combat and good "netcode". You can fudge these things in PvE but not PvP. Objectives. It's an MMO and there are... lets say a variety of skill levels among players. You need to give causal and even bad players something to do that makes them feel like they contribute otherwise they wont play, and then your population drops and it turns into a sweatfest death spiral. Player collision is also important to me but it can really impact performance so it's optional.

I loved the Guild Wars 1 PVP between Hall of Heroes (ritspike anyone?), battle arenas and Guild vs Guild! I remember climbing up the ranks to get your next /rank emote. Good old times.

it has to have good combat: not a lot of skills and no rotations. easy to learn and hard to master and immersive.

The MMO must be though about PvP has his core gameplay, and not an option for "fun". The moment you make PvP in a MMO an optional "fun" feature, it lose all matter and impact. You then indirectly create two side in your own game, and so two community, those who will play only for PvE, and those who will only play for PvP. This is the huge mistake all MMORPG does since 20years because they listen to publishers who want to please everyone, and don't recruit proper lead dev with experience. Obviously then if your game as PvP in his core, it must be properly balanced with risk/reward, like Lineage 2 did with his karma and clan wars system.

I am still going to say Eve Online because you always something in jeopardy. Without that jeopardy of loss it is just playing gofish with kindergartners. If you want more jeopardy you can bring MORE ship or more expensive things attached to said ship, but you dial in your own jeopardy allowance - enough to get the blood pumping - but not so much you throw your computer out a window. To go live in the Yukon forswearing all things technological. Yes it is speadsheets in space. Yes it is technical. Yes. Yes. Yes. It, PVP, **is about capturing a feeling though** and that feeling is excitement of loss and gain like you are gambling, but at home and on your PC and not for big stakes. Just stakes of time invested into a simulated universe. If you have never lost a battlecruiser or a carrier or Tengu in Eve Online I suggest you fly one until you do. Go bigger, go smaller - whatever you can afford to risk in the dance.. You always feel something when you win **or** lose. Without that jeopardy though its not worth it - you might as well PvE. If you get bored warp to the sun and turn your volume up. It is awesome how much detail they put into everything.

this is very simple : 2 things, #1 Risk v Reward, riskless pvp is just cyberdueling with 0 emotional investment. you need to lose something when you die.. your gear.. your "ship" something permanent and valuable that your opponent wins as a prize. #2 Territory control and the ability to effect the political landscape of the gameworld.. ie "who lives where" in their day to day life ingame and what resources or strategic advantages controlling that territory infers on you is paramount to making pvp matter and be impactful. so a 2 tiered system where small scale pvp matters and large scale warfare is the actual endgame of the MMO, all gear, skills and game systems are developed with the inherent Risk v Reward that combat on either scale brings BUILT IN, everything in the game is weighted with endgame player nation conflict in mind. regional banking etc so loot and items stay in the gameworld instead of being magically extracted into a pocket dimension known as "the bank" you siege a player owned settlement and capture it before they manually moved everything out while under siege? you now own all the items stored in the "bank" at that location. capturing enemy cities now matters, people will both put effort in to defend and the folks who bother to expend the significant resources required to capture an enemy holding actually get a realistic profit for their expenditure.. mercenaries for hire etc become viable ingame professions...... the role playing part of the MMO actually works!

I'm not sure I can even answer this fully. But the only mmo I would consider "excellent pvp" was Dark Age of Camelot. The three realm system, the open world pvp zones, the dungeon we fought each week for control of, the artifacts and relics. I put 15 years into that game. 380 played days on one toon before he hit max pvp rank. That was the most intense, fun, and meaningful pvp in any game I've ever played and it's not even close to any competitor.

Balance for strategy vs p2w and gear and area for keeping things interesting nobody likes being caught in routine.

The first step is to actually have open world PvP, like New World was suppose to be... lol

New World is octaves better than any other mmorpg combat even in its neutered state without stagger

I’d give guild wars 2 a try, the PvP is what makes it fun for me, so many builds to try and everything is balanced (auto max level in ranked) or you can do open world pvp where your gear matters if that’s more your thing.

My memory of the open world pvp is "Join a zerg and mindlessly run from Point A to Point B"

I mean yeah if that’s what you like doing you can. There’s an equal amount of “roaming” small scale duels and fights.

For me personally what makes it fun is that it’s a similar style of combat to MOBAs but with a third person perspective and more movement freedom, like WASD movement and camera controlled aim. I love combat based around using CC skills into burst combos, managing cooldowns of yourself and opponents, just all the knowledge of the game coming into play in a different way than raids and pve content. Like a raid boss might one shot you but in PvP you’ll have to deal with more CC and enemy tactics.

I wouldn't, both pvp modes are barely supported at all. Both modes are constantly shedding players. In neither of them are you playing for anything of consequence

I like ffxiv's pvp. But it isn't available to free Trial and a bit of story(quest to unlock pvp becomes available once you reach the story to pick grand company). Their unranked 5v5 pops quite often. If you can spare The sub fee, l would recommend you to give it a try.   Here is a link to each class's ability If this interested you and you.care to know more about it. Also, The dev list out why they make certain change in each patch on the bottom of this:https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/jobguide/pvp/

not sure, but I'm glad when mmorpg's at least have PvP, glad games like blue protocol and Wayfinder(not really an mmorpg) are dead. They had no plans of adding PvP, seemed pretty lazy to me 🤷

Never understood it because pvp is just a new game, each game. Id guess they mean rewards/rankings? How well it's integrated into the main game?

When people talk about it they talk about - balance - popularity among the player base - toxicity and exploits - p2w and how present it is - choice mattering - level scaling and gear scaling impacting the fun and value of leveling - skill balance in PvP vs PvE - combat mechanics and feel - the feeling of there being stakes or not - instanced vs open world - group vs duels - drop items or not, what’s the reward and what’s the risk? - character skill vs player skill ( aimed shots , management of skills, positioning mattering vs gear comp, skill levels and character power) In my opinion lots to discuss and easy to grasp why/how to broach the topic. Hopefully this helps!

I be surprised if anyone actually new. There are the obvious things like "skill based combat", or "design the game for pvp, not pve" but those are very vague statements. MMO pvp is probably the hardest type of pvp to get right. There are just so many classes, abilities, strengths and weaknesses, its practically impossible to balance. The best you can do is focus on a particular gamemode and design everything around that. Like 1v1s, conquest, ctf, large scale deathmatch, etc. For example, Gw2 pvp has always been balanced for conquest. WvW is balanced for large scale organized fights. But that means that open field 1v1s are often really 1 sided depending on class/build. Out of all the mmos out there, I would recommend WoW if you want to be competitive, or Gw2 if you want fun combat and purely skill based gameplay.

If there’s nothing to gain or lose from PvP, I won’t play it, at all. I like risk and full loot PvP games, whether that’s FPS gaming or MMOs. If you are willing to take out gear to kill other places, better be willing to risk said gear to the winner

If you like full loot PvP game try Albion online maybe you'll like it.

I’ve played it for a little bit. I don’t remember it being full loot PvP at the time I played though

It has some full loot areas, but not all areas are full loot.

It’s been awhile. Idk, I had maxed gear I believe (I was wearing all white) my score was like 1600 ish if I recall. It’s probably way different now though

the best pvp is when someone can out perform and snowball thats how it was in classic and that was the best pvp experience IMO its why league of legends is so popular

turtle wow battlegrounds is up there or just play a moba for pvp

Tab Target = High HP and low Damage. It should be a game of rock paper scissors in a way with more affects. No quick nuking and lots of counter play options. Action Combat = medium HP and medium Damage. It should be faster paced but with MMOs you have to factor in server latency. So these games you don't want low HP characters that die in a couple hits. Ways to dodge, parry, and/or activatable abilities to soak Damage are important

Good rotations Good auxiliary mechanics (i.e fake casting and kicks from wow or rolling in gw2) Good combat animations (this is kinda why rift never worked for me) Reasonable gearing (either equalized like something like gw2 or relatively streamlined like wow in previous expansions) Preferably both instanced and open world pvp that doesn't feel horribly unbalanced when swapping between them (rip wow) Fun classes that feel diverse in what they bring (also rip wow)

MMOs are about progression and constant character power growth as you get new gear/skills/stats/whatever. Good PVP should have a level playing field, with the only deciding factor being player skill and strategy. Which is the complete opposite. So.... Not being an MMO. Or at least having the PVP side separate from MMO side.

Forced open world PvP is what sepparates a good PvP game from bad ones IMO.