Ok, this thread is going to circle around aimlessly, due to it having quite an open-ended question.I would separate two ideas here:
- PvP, as a concept, can definitely be roleplay. Or rather, roleplay is channeled and performed through violent means, e.g. PvP. The lore is clearly not against it, on the contrary, homins have been shown to be quite xenophobic and war-like several times in the past. Killing someone for good, or damaging them until they can't get up (coma) should be a favorite pastime on the planet.
- PvP gets murky in the practical implementation. The game allows great freedom in attacking homins -- tagged pvp, for example, allows you to attack almost anyone except guild members. As usual, roleplayers will have an issue when killed by someone who is clearly doing things with no RP reason, just because the mechanics allow it. That's the crux of the issue.
Does this answer the question? I believe it does. Does it help? No, because there is not way to restrict PvP mechanically while still leaving options on the table for all the roleplay combinations where it might be needed / useful.
Most games with lots of players solve this issue by having separate servers for PVE and PVP, because the two crowds are quite different. Obviously Ryzom cannot afford it, so instead we get this unhappy recipe where we *can* kill each other, but people will frown really really strong at you if you do it in the "wrong" way. In turn, that just shuts PvP down as an option, except in highly controlled scenarios (outposts, supernodes etc).
That would be all.
- PvP, as a concept, can definitely be roleplay. Or rather, roleplay is channeled and performed through violent means, e.g. PvP. The lore is clearly not against it, on the contrary, homins have been shown to be quite xenophobic and war-like several times in the past. Killing someone for good, or damaging them until they can't get up (coma) should be a favorite pastime on the planet.
- PvP gets murky in the practical implementation. The game allows great freedom in attacking homins -- tagged pvp, for example, allows you to attack almost anyone except guild members. As usual, roleplayers will have an issue when killed by someone who is clearly doing things with no RP reason, just because the mechanics allow it. That's the crux of the issue.
Does this answer the question? I believe it does. Does it help? No, because there is not way to restrict PvP mechanically while still leaving options on the table for all the roleplay combinations where it might be needed / useful.
Most games with lots of players solve this issue by having separate servers for PVE and PVP, because the two crowds are quite different. Obviously Ryzom cannot afford it, so instead we get this unhappy recipe where we *can* kill each other, but people will frown really really strong at you if you do it in the "wrong" way. In turn, that just shuts PvP down as an option, except in highly controlled scenarios (outposts, supernodes etc).
That would be all.
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My home is always sweet Yrkanis..