I have been pondering this dilemma over the past few days while playing KZ3 and well I thought it was very related on my experiences with Fonline and perhaps most Multiplayer games with players competing with other players
It goes like this, you see a guy with a 29 - 7 record (me
) however that makes you think by extension if there is a guy with a 7 - 29 record? Now thats a bit of an overstatement, by paying attention to the scoreboards I noticed that while a few scores soar, they do at the expense of SEVERAL other scores, as in, for that 29 - 7 score, there were 5 - 10, 3 - 7, 10 - 14 and so on, and like any competitive-like game, the fun proportionates itself around the players, and while a few people enjoy a good bashing, theres a bigger lot of people that suffer frustration (Then theres the odd bunch that enjoys getting killed but those people aren't adressed in this post, nor do I care about the mediocre way of life)
Now this phenomenon evens itself out as the skill level improves, and you end up with some rather close scores in the higher ups (namely tournaments) and thus the fun is evenly spread, not to mention those who win enjoy the experience far more since they actually hard earned it, and those who lost feel they gave their most and hope next time they will come up top (and boy they do come up eventually and enjoy winning the most, thus who he laughs at the end laughs the best)
Now it doesn't take much thinking to know this happens a lot in Fonline (perhaps this is the one game that happens the most out of all the games I have played in my whole life) and as I have posted on previous posts, this game involves a lot of situations where a someone does something out of a whim and gets a giggle out of it, while the guy in the receiving end of the prank suffers an unproportionate amount of frustration, namely the classic bursters who take down people on protected towns (And face it, theres absolutely no safe way to avoid that) and thus the protected towns become nests for grievers who for shallow moments of joy, end up screwing the hard work of other people
This people is the equivalent of throwing rocks at a crowd of people, sure its gotta worth some laughs, but at what price?
My conclusion is this, why the
OVERLY forced PVP mechanics? when you can avoid an immense amount of frustration for the cost of a few kids laughs. Bring matchmaking on random encounters, keep the ever present danger of a harsh wasteland while avoiding the IM FUCKED scenarios that plague this game. A lvl 4 guy killing molerats shouldn't be murdered by 3 lvl 21 guys jumping into his encounter. Have the thieves actually have something at stake while stealing instead of just lulzing their few fails. Actively punish those people that random burst 3, 4, 5, 6 times in a row just for the lulz in protected cities. Keep the obviously dangerous zones (I.E. Unprotected towns and the squares that surround them, and around San Francisco) the way they are, so people know they are risking a lot for going there and will only go when feeling like risking their own necks.
I dont mean to cheapen the experience, just asking the developers to show a little sense on the kind of game they are building, if they want to keep this little nest for immature kids and off the charts mean people, then fucking say so, dont toy around with the bigger, saner population of this game with this, for the lack of a better word, idiotic excuse of freedom
The examples of how to proportionate the fun around this game are wide and varied, and its not my intention to draw them out on this post, im sure theres plenty of people who have thought of that, my point here is sending a word out for the developers, asking them why do they insist on keeping this game the little nest for grievers it currently is.
Im sure we can live off without the few giggles of a random burst, or the few laughs of murdering a defenseless lvl 6 chump (or Alt). At least the bigger part of the community thinks the same (This I dare say, I hope im not wrong about it)
