Avenging angel

Tobold wrote something really interesting, explaining why PvP games fail. Losers in impact PvP games don't come back playing, so soon there will be no one left to play with! Remember, that if "the losers" leave the game, among the remaining players the weaker ones (who were stronger than "the losers") now become the new "the losers".

On the other hand a PvE game is "a better investment, because even while losing the other player was still very much involved in the game, and having fun up to the last turn, and who got the most points in the end didn't matter all that much. So even the loser was eager to play again." Very true and very annoying when I see the same morons showing up in WG doing the same nonsense again.

On the other hand, real life is not a fluffy "everybody wins" PvE game where everyone ends up kingslayer corporate manager if he farms long enough and wait until the game is nerfed to the ground. Still, most people don't end up emos cutting their own wrists for being such a loser. Actually most people are OK with their lives and not planning to quit it. Considering that RL is a nasty PvP game with permadeath, impact PvP, player-driven economy with no NPCs handing out rewards for easy tasks, it's strange. What is the trick that RL has, and impact PvP games do not?

The solution (which most probably the Holy Grail for PvP game designers) is simple: at first, while PvP in RL gives much-much better rewards than PvE, especially since most PvE players are constantly farmed by PvP-ers, they still get rewards. With other words: The shop owner makes $200K a year, reaping the profit of his workers who make only $30K, but hey, they make exactly $30K more than 0, and it allows them to raise kids and be happy with their lives.

But more importantly, the PvE players get "social" rewards. The shop owner would never tell his workers "lol u nabs i pwnd u good go farm som more $ 4 me :D". Actually he'd say "You are a valued member of our team and without your hard and honest work, our shop could not exist. Thank you!" This trick works on socials so good that most of them do not even want "to progress", they prefer to be "casual". Who would like to be Bobby Kotick instead of some zone designer?

The working impact PvP game has both slow progression and social rewards for losers while fast progression for PvP-ers. I'd like to introduce an implementation, however it's just for example. Several implementations can exist as long as the two mentioned "rewards" are there. So, here it comes:

• The basic activity of the game is some kind of farming. It doesn't matter if it's grinding monsters for loot, doing errands for quest givers, gathering resources guarded by monsters, teaming up and attacking bosses, or there are no monsters at all and you must plant herbs, chop trees or herd cows. The point is that the wealth comes from some kind of grind.
• The basic progression type is soulbound and non-negative. It can be gearscore or skill points or building player housing in the guarded (no-PvP) city, but the point is you can't lose it to other players.
  
• The progression is wealth-driven. You must do the farming in order to buy the progression: you craft gear from gathered materials / monster drops or you bring the materials to the city to build your house or you pay it to some NPC to teach you skills. The point is that the PvE way to progress is doing the "basic grind".
  
• If you kill a player, you can loot his non-soulbound stuff, like gathered ores and skins and gold in his pocket. The fastest way to advance is to kill players. One cannot farm in safe zones (besides the newbies on tutorial quests), so anyone who wants to do the "basic grind", must go out to the null-sec.
  
• If you attack a peaceful player, you are flagged as "aggressor". If you heal/buff an "aggressor" or even if you trade with him, you are flagged too. UI elements make sure that you cannot be flagged by accident, like you can set "I'm peaceful" option that disallow your character to do anything that flags him. The "aggressor" flag stays up for 15 mins after the combat ended. You cannot log out during this time, if you do, your character stays in the world AFK until the flag goes off. You can also not go to the no-PvP zones flagged, the guards would kill you. You simply have to hide until it wears off.
  
• Attacking an "aggressor" does not flag you one. You are free to kill and loot them. Aggressors can kill each other too. However attacking a flagged player does not elongate his flag either.
  
• If you are killed (and looted) by an "aggressor", upon resurrection you get some totally unbalanced PvP buff like "you were killed by an evil villain, so an avenging angel arrived to help you give rightful retribution. The angel leaves after X time or if you flag yourself aggressor". The angel can one-shot a player, so during the angel buff, the guy is free to both hunt aggressors and farming, he is practically in god-mode against the aggressors. Of course the player can't instantly resurrect with the angel, so the aggressor has time to run away with the booty.
  

The point is that unless someone is totally noob and holds all his fortune in his backpack, he can gather 2-3x more wealth under the protection of the angel than he loses when killed, even if the PvP-ers gank him whenever no angel is around. Also, there are unique titles and non-combat rewards for players who did not do any "evil" in their career (there is some no-impact PvP tournament so they can PvP too "for fun"). This way the PvE players can feel socially superior to the PvP-ers, and progress, so they don't leave despite they are behind the (successful) PvP-ers in terms of progression. Also, they have the occasional fun when they manage "to angel" some aggressors. They have their "heplfull fun gulds" where they can keep telling to each other how much they are better people to those filthy thieves who jump on the players and rob their wealth sometimes. They can farm together to protect / avenge each other against the villains and the pure fact that they were not farmed today give them the sense of victory.

Please note that "gathers more wealth on average than he loses in PvP" is totally different from the loss-rewarding fluffy-PvP of WoW. In such system one would lose wealth in a lost PvP encounter and would be motivated to not lose (or avoid the encounter). He simply wouldn't lose enough to not progress and can't be chain-killed so he never logs out with "I'm just farmed here" apathy.

Since most players will choose the peaceful way, the good PvP-ers will have their fast progression by killing different players (including each other). They will have better stats/GS/house than any PvE player, they can hover on their so-expensive-that-no-honest-work-can-ever-get mounts and so on. Just like in real life. However the bad PvP-ers, who simply get beaten by their "victim" or dumb enough to be around when the victim returns with his angel will progress slower than PvE players. Again, just like in real life: businessman > honest worker > lowly thief.
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Ciprian found this specimen, who has GS and agility and AP, but no DPS: