ScreamingDingo

@Borin PVP itself isn't bad, and never has been; this said, the people who abuse PVP to further their aims tend to lose the narrative. More often than not PVP focused cliques grift faction to faction purely so they can get a good fight or to fight people they dislike OOC. I have found that a lot of PVP mentality is very OOC, and that a good portion of the "RP" is just bunny-hopping around. Then again, I haven't been in or led a pvp faction for over a year now so my take may be outdated.

Rampant alting killed the quality conflict a lot of these comments preach. The great battles and events in LOTC history were not pushed by PVPers. The Rise and Fall of the Johannians was RP oriented, and not goon chaos. Guard Forces were rarely PVP focused, as they were meant to keep order in a city- all because they PVP'd raiders did not mean that they prioritized it. Goons were always just muscle. I miss vassal culture...

 

@Islamadon Oh yeah I completely recognise that pvp goonery and alting is an unpleasant aspect - bad eggs and behaviours in both pvper and rper factons. But some who seriously don't want pvp at all on the server are utterly bonkers.

On guard forces, end of the day PVP and the threat of war (which is possible only with PVP) are what give them stakes. It should never be a priority all the time, but esp. now that war is actually a thing (unlike at the end of Arcas in which it completely perished in ability to do anything due to technical and rule limitations), and war can have big implications for a nation (see the Dwarf-Oren war, and the civil war in its aftermath), there are real stakes. You don't have these sort of stakes without it, which is my point - If some folk got what they wanted and pvp was abolished, war would basically be impossible, and you'd have the sort of stagnancy that damaged Oren etc in Arcas and the beginning of Almaris, unless of course staff decided that their events should be able to snap nations out of existance or smthn to that effect (you get the idea).

This view is based on my personal experience of joining the server, joining the Duchy of Adria (the village in Oren opposite Lorraine, under you-know-who), doing guard RP, and staying bc of the excitement of having stakes of fighting against Lorrainians who were banditing and raiding, etc. I think the stakes that the conflict pvp enables, and the impact this has, far outweigh the damage of excessive pvp goonery.

(Also, you visited Acre yet? :D)

@shartings I completely agree, but in all honesty I think that has very little to do with 'pvp mindset.' There are, unfortunately, just as many people that powergame excessively in CRP for the same reason. It's an overall flaw in the server.