Why PvP Games are Lame and Need Revamping

What is wrong with player versus player video games? This is a question I asked myself a few years ago when I was gaming on a daily basis. PvP is always limited to a nice little box or a specific mode in a game. The argument about this or that being real PvP(Minecraft, WoW, ect…) is out there, but in short, PvP has failed as a true concept in the video game world, in my opinion.

I want to suggest an idea I have to possibly solve this problem, but I don’t want to reveal much,  as I would like to pursue it privately before talking it up too much. Here it goes:

Imagine a game where players fill almost every role, from store owners to farmers to warriors to guards. But each role is an entirely needed position and a farmer can make a living in the game without having to be a warrior. He can spend hours on his farm raising crops and animals to support himself and to sell at the markets.

But here’s the best part: the markets are run by players too, so that farmer is actually employed by a store owner in town. That store owner needs the farmer to produce food so he can sell that food at a higher price to the big beefy warriors that pass through town. And the big beefy warriors are employed by leaders of townships and such. The warrior’s job is to protect the city as well as wage war to gain new land for citizens to live and generate new forms of revenue.

And in the end, if warriors march into your town and destroy your farms and shops, then so be it. Your city was not protected well. You did not employ enough city guards or have a good trade relationship with the nearby city.

Here’s the deal; if a game wants to truly have PvP, it needs to be PvP all the time. The system has to balance the game so it is not normally beneficial to slaughter people. A player-run justice system is what I am hinting at, but I won’t expose more.

I hope a great conversation can be sparked in the comments. Hopefully a conversation that can bring about better ideas than the current state of the repetitive and boring massively multi-player world today.  And if you are interested in funding or developing such a game, please let me know in the comments!