PVE: a look at the failure of game design and how to make it better

  

If you think that PVE is more fun than PVP, feel free to stop reading now. But for everyone else who is a PVP fan and thinks that PVE sucks in comparison, it's not your fault. It's the fault of the game designers. I believe that PVE can be fun, provided the game designers gave a shit and actually put in an honest effort for once.

The typical path of PVE combat design failure:

1. The single "Boss" paradigm is the single most destructive concept to PVE in MMORPGs.
   This automatically makes a "Boss" fight a many-vs-one fight --- the "many" being the group, and the "one" being the PVE boss. For the sake of discussion, let's say that the group consists of 6 human players.
2. Boss fights are required to be challenging. But in order to be challenging in a many-vs-one fight, the "one" must be much stronger than each individual human player. Consider what the group brings to the fight: 6 players who can do damage, take damage, heal and/or CC. How can one "boss" counter the damage of the group? Or the healing? How can it prevent being chain-CC'd? To address these issues, game designers continue making bad decisions and travel further down the path of failure:
3. Silly game design decision: "We can't have the boss chain-CC'd the entire fight. That'd be too easy. So let's make the boss immune to all CCs."
   CCs are the spice of tactical combat, and opens up a gameplay of interactive attacking, defending, timing and counterattacking. CCs also serve to provide some balance between classes. When game designers decide to make an NPC immune to all CCs, that is a cop-out that nullifies a significant chunk of every class' abilities. This means that every healer will only mash heal/defense abilities and every damage-dealer will mash damage abilities. The secondary effect is that no one has to move. In PVP, squishies kite with CCs and non-squishies chase with counter-CCs. By removing CCs from the equation, everyone simply stands still and mashes buttons. Designers: if your attempt to make a fight 'epic' includes removing CCs from the fight, you are doing it wrong.
4. Another silly game design decision: "With 6 people nuking the boss, he will take alot of damage. But yet, we can't let him go down quick since it's a boss fight. So, let's give the boss a billion hitpoints, and perhaps toss in some uninterruptable heals or defensive buffs to unnecessarily draw out the fight even more.
   In PVP, the direct counter to damage is healing. However, the boss cannot be given the same healing abilities as regular players, since the designers already made the boss immune to CCs. If the boss could chain heal but not be uninterruptable, the boss will never die. So the typical scenario is to give the boss a billion HP to draw the facerolling encounter out.
5. "Aggro", "Enmity" or "Hate"
   What happens in a PVE encounter? A tank runs up to the boss, and "tanks" it. He then holds "hate", and the boss focuses on the tank the entire fight, and no one else.
   What happens in PVP? The complete opposite. Everyone runs by and ignores the tank and goes for higher-priority targets. The tank is not able to get someone's attention by simply spamming "taunt" abilities. Instead, the tank is always running, using positioning, infiltrating the enemy lines, using tactical retreats, and using timely CC abilities to be a threat to the opposing group... all while supporting his own group defensively. The concept of "Aggro", along with CC immunity nullifies everything that's interesting about being a "tank" class. Like everyone else, the tank just stands there in front of the boss, "tanking" it.

The above issues are what I think the key failures of current PVE design are. They are responsible for boring, stationary button-mashing fights, as well as the dichotomy of PVE and PVP gear. Why can't it be better? Why won't game designers try harder?

For instance:

• Allow CCs back in the boss encounter.
• Lower the HP of the NPCs.
• Give the boss some helpers. Give him a healer, a nuker, etc. Allow them to be CC'd.
• Have the healer heal and require the players to counter the heals.
• Allow the NPCs to CC the players too.
• Have every class use every ability in his arsenal to win.
• Then, remove the concept of "aggro" or "hate". The biggest threat to the "boss" should be the one who gets hate.
• If the healer is healing so well that the "boss" can't do any damage, the "boss" should go after the healer.
• The tank should not be able to "taunt" the boss back. CCs are required since they are now back in the picture, just like in PVP.
• If a nuker is hurting the "boss" badly, the "boss" should target the nuker.
• Allow the "boss" to perform "tactical retreats". If he's hurt, he should CC the players and kite away, to buy some time to heal up. It is up to the players to counter him.

PVE doesn't have to be boring, and it does not have to suck. Come on designers! Try harder! The door is wide open for you to deliver the world's first engaging PVE experience.