Anyone play Runescape back in the day? If you did any PKing then you know what risk was. For the ones who don’t know, Runescape is an MMO which uses the ‘all or nothing’ principle when it comes to world PvP. Two players walk in, wager everything they are carrying/have equipped, and one player walks out with both players’ stash. Almost everything in the game is not bound to your account so most everything you have on you becomes your wager in a fight against another player. I’ve not played too many high-risk PvP games out there so I apologize if there is a better example than Runescape, but I will be using this game as my example for the article.
What high-risk aims to achieve:
I believe this system of PvP offers the player two things: 1) the ability to bet on their skill, and 2) have the player feel a sense of worry/risk when PvPing. Contrary to PvP in WoW, which has virtually no punishment for death, Runescape offers a sense of horror (and extreme excitement) when PvPing. The goal of this dynamic is to give the player something to care about. Instead of just jumping into a fight and not caring if he or she died or not, the player is forced to care about if he lived or died, mainly because it could represent hours of work put into the game to have the items that he or she has. To some extent, the ability for Roleplaying is more accessible because of this. The goal is to make death feel like death.
What it succeeds at delivering:
Risk-based PvP definitely delivers on the side of fear. You’re usually risking quite a bit if you plan on actually succeeding at PvP. It also succeeds at being exciting…50% of the time. When the player dies, it is usually tragic and wounding not only to his pride but to his bank. On the other hand if the player scores a kill on another player, it usually ends in extreme excitement, in which the player is filled with joy when he just won a fight that doubled his bank account.
What problems it offers to the game:
Possibly just a card game-
The problem with high-risk high-reward PvP is that it can sometimes be too fair. “Too fair? There’s no such thing as too fair!” I disagree. Watch a game of professional poker. Yes, some players have a higher ability to read hands over another player, but this is usually overshadowed by huge level of luck. In the end it becomes almost a 50/50 until enough cash has swung in one player’s direction enough to consider him the winner. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe there is skill involved in Poker, but the large degree of randomness creates such an inconsistent level of play that it is so fair it becomes a 50/50, which in my mind defeats the point of a competitive game. Games like Runescape offer a combat style that also has a very high level of randomness. I’d agree that randomness is fun, it definitely is, but it can also be extremely frustrating when fallen victim to.
Does not create reward-
When one player falls to another player, the winner receives the spoils but, in the end, no reward has been produced by the game, only transferred. Let’s not talk about gold or currency, but rather let’s talk about ‘fun’ as a currency. When a player dies, that’s -10 fun. When a player scores a kill, that’s +10 fun. The net fun in an outcome is still zero, even though a major event (in the player’s eyes) just occurred. Not only is this bad design from a typical video-game standard, but it also doesn’t make for the ideal competitive setting. The goal, in a perfect world, is for the player to still be having fun whilst losing without diminishing the fun of winning.
So let’s just give PvP a positive net reward:
Let’s jump back to WoW. When you die, at the absolute worst it’s merely an inconvenience, but when you score a kill it has the potential to be epic, but in the average it is usually dull. If I am to do the same as I did previously, with ‘fun’ as currency, I’d say that WoW shoots for more of a -1 → +2 kind of trade. It’s nowhere near as drastic, but it does have a positive net reward.
So here’s just a thought: let’s just make it so when you score a kill, you gain currency, and when you die you lose almost nothing! Well, other than the problem of cheating and exploitations (see old PvP worlds in Runescape: kill trading) this creates the idea of winning as a task, rather than competition, and adds another inflation factor to the online game. This would be just another reason why currency numbers keep getting higher and higher without control, while also making PvP less and less fun.
The solution != math:
So what is the conclusion? Is risk-based PvP doomed? I personally don’t think so. We just need to do a different take on it. Imagine this scenario: Two players get into a fight and are both risking 100 gold. In the ‘Runescape method’ the winning party would leave with 2100 gold. I’m going to offer the idea that what if the winning party receives 0100=zero=null=nothing. “Hey, that’s zero! How can people have fun without a reward?!?1one!!” Well, I believe that the solution is as follows:
1 - 1 = 3:
Solution: remove the reward from combat alone, amplify the events taking place, and deliver rewards in a competitively positive way. In my Runescape example, I would have it that, when a player dies, he loses his items and the slayer receives nothing. Rather, since the main incentive to PvP is gone, the best solution is alternatives. Give large rewards for player-controlled zones in PvP worlds. Give rewards for killing a PvE event in a risky PvP world. With these new incentives, the question changes from “How can I kill another player” to “Why should I pick a fight with this player”. Since there is no longer any direct benefit to fighting other players alone, the experience becomes a lot less ‘gimmicky’ while offering the incentive to cooperate with other players and drive more consistent and healthy competition. There will still be plenty of PvP however. Even though the incentive to do a standalone 1-vs-1 another player is gone (outside of extreme competitive drive), the points of interest I listed above should be rewarding enough to have people step out of their comfort zone and ‘risk it for the biscuit’ in a fashion that isn’t around ruining someone’s day, but rather a healthy competition by fighting over an objective. In my opinion, the dynamic of the game would be a lot more diplomatic while still offering that sense of risk and reward.
Should high-risk PvP be avoided in online games? Do you have a better idea than mine? I’d like to hear from you! 
TLDR:
I’d appreciate it if you read the article if you plan on commenting. TLDR: High-risk PvP (like in Runescape) approaches reward in the wrong way. It should be used as a means of risk and sense of self-value, but reward should come from the non-PvP events that are fought over via PvP, not by kills.
Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. -George S. Patton
Edit: Formatting
