Open PvP by a long shot.

It's basically what's keeping me in EVE Online because, let's see:

- Shooting mining lasers at asteroids for hours on end has all the excitement of watching grass grow or paint dry.

- PvE against mindless NPC pirates that are fairly easy to tank and gank has just slightly more excitement, but at least you get explosions.

- Playing the industrial game has to be done with spreadsheets, and at this point it becomes a second job.

- 0.0 capital ship and POS warfare requires endless years of training, billions upon billions of ISK, and you are at the mercy of both your alliance leaders' whim and your territorial enemy's. Plus going to bed at 5AM because the op requires you is just nuts.

- Playing the market for ISK is nice and profitable, but it is tedious and requires constant checking of the Buy and Sell orders, what is selling and what is not, etc.

So what's left that keeps people, including myself, coming for more and more: open PvP. Be it piracy, 0.0 roaming gangs, wardec-ing or factional warfare, PvP in EVE is extremely fun on both a strategic and tactical sense. You have to out-think your opponent(s) in every way, from ship fitings to finding them in space, and you have to make sure you throw the first punch and not the other way around, but even when that happens there's always a way out, and it does not necessarily mean it will be a defeat.

Of course those that want to do their own little thing like mining, doing plexes and missions are annoyed when they fall prey to some pirates or a roaming gang, but the real PvP fun is going out and finding an enemy of comparable strength (if not greater), and then throwing the gloves. There's no feeling like having a 20-vs-30 fight, and you're the 20-man gang and you win the fight 🙂

Agree entirely.

I feel like this whenever I play any of the X series games. I love the concept and graphics but after a few hours I am bored. I know I am a bit more action junky instead of a builder.

All space sims and MMO's in general should all be based on the skill of the user. Yes skills and equipment should matter but should only be 20-40% of your overall power as a player. The rest should come from your knowledge and skill playing your character/ship. But there has to be excitement and suspense in a game to make it a keeper and for you to make me pay monthly for it.

There is the fact that in EVE the character skills are very important, but I've been in many a battle where the lowly tackler (often me) had to be at the right place at the right time and EVE doesn't have a skill for that... it's called situational awareness 🙂

I think that the MMO that are on the way like Jumpgate Evolution or Black Prophecy will be more based on player skills than whatever the character level is, but it will be fun to jump from FCing fleet battles from a 3rd person overall view to doing so from the cockpit (I will NOT be flying 3rd person in JGE unless there is an advantage to be gained from it).

Black Prophecy's cockpit views look amazing. Only other view I would use is 1st person. I cannot stand 3rd person in a space game unless its a RPG/RTS. Now I do understand that skills should play a part in maybe chance on making a crit hit on a ships subsystems. But since you are lining up the shot and shooting how can ya miss 🙂

So I think skills should only enhance maybe radar detection, resources finding, scanning ships/systems, combat abilities in the sense that you can get your ship damage and systems back online and fully operational quicker.

I believe if I remember correctly both JGE and BP will have modular ship design so we will see how that impacts everything.

Open PvP is the way to go just for the simple fact that in open PvP you can call for help and you can make a 1vs1 into a clan vs clan battle 🙂

Yep, Open PvP ftw !

That's the reason why I am still playing Freelancer after 4200 hours and having the game since release. 🙂

That's roughly 175 days at playing 24hrs a day, great dedication there Bas 🙂 Personally I have always loved being called names after some PvP makes the late nights and grinding worth it in the end. Just to here people whining because you killed them.

Ah yes... to hear people crying because you tackled their ship and you're in the middle of 0.0 space. Makes my spirit soar every time 😈

Well, I have to agree with Bas, not just because we know each other from playing Freelancer but, it's great to be able top have open PvP and not have to worry about someone crying all the time. That's the reason for having shields/batts/botts and a chance to gain fighting experience.

I look at it like this, you join the game, run your butt off trading or w/e then, you set up a VHF, (very heavy fighter) then fly around doing what, pawning NPCs? What real fun is in that when you know you're on an RP/PvP server and there are hostiles on it that ARE NOT NPCs. Why waste your time on these servers?

There's been many times when I just take a pop shot or two at a player and he doesn't seem to get the picture. Just flies around you and wants to chat. To hell with chattng, I want to see how well your VHF will stand up against mine, that's why I spent the time to set it up, for the challenge of it all.

By-the-way Bas, I'm up on you for time in game. 😛 This is only since I first started using Xfire to record my ingame times. Times? That was plural only because I have 5 different Xfire accounts and you'll never know just who I am* in game. Here's my first Xfire signature for Freelancer:

I used to record up to 138 hours a week but, due to a severe illness, I had to stop that. 😮 😯

See ya somewhere Bas, I'm sure.

HK

* hooami? I don't know for sure anymore.

Agree totally, why spend a lot of time building a great ship if your not going to PvP with it.

Bas looks like HunterKiller has ya beat for total FL time 🙂

Vote Obam... sorry Open PvP.

Though I think asking for PvP is not a bad manner but no one should ever be blamed for not doing this. And of course that looks stupid when players belong to opposing factions(navy/pirate).

Bas may be up on me now, now that I hardly use Xfire in game anymore but, I use it now and then. 😆 But, all my hours in game come from just playing Freelancer and not others game too. 😉

As much as I hate being ganked when doing something, I hate anything instanced even more! I feel any MMO should encourage grouping, the bigger the groups the better. At the end of the day what's the point of calling your game MMO if all you do is instances requiring you to being in groups of 10 or 15? you might as-well be playing CoD4 or something

you guys ever play Space Merchant Realms? It is dated and minimalist but the pvp can be glorious.

You talking about this http://www.smrealms.de/login.php , yamo? This is a web based game as far as I can see. I think the topic is more geared towards graphical MMO's. But I might need to add this one to my link list don't have this one.

yup web based but the combat is real time. Death comes suddenly and in silence. Been in battles with 15-20 ships(1 ship per player) on a side--in open space or involved in planetary attacks. Mines, scout drones, jump engines, cloaks, etc...Have been solo hunted as a trader and hunted traders. Even had some nice kills solo ambushing attack fleets that did not fortify their supply lines well. The community has shrunk but when there were\are many players the pvp was\is great. think team fortress using web pages. Tight irc combat protocols were key:

"--ok, cut the chatter! gtg?

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--gtg

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etc"