PvP game design

[Dustie]

...

I'm pondering some kind of "preparation" mechanic. Like something you can do beforehand to prepare for a battle and that preparation has a big impact on how you can fight, perhaps not unlike deck building for a strategy card game. So maybe the fight itself is over in 5 seconds but somewhere beforehand you spent a lot of time thinking about what all you wanted lined up and ready to go.
..
Perhaps not unlike what I originally thought the Warhammer "tactics" were going to do. Like if you knew what was coming, you could prepare in a very specific way and give yourself a tremendous advantage. Of course, Warhammer's "tactics" skills were kind of diluted and didn't achieve this goal as I had envisioned it, but maybe that's an idea that can be built on.

..
Is there potential in something like that to work and make for a fun game?

I think the game your talking about would be a combination of Planetside, a locational or situational augmentation of abilities, and some other limiting element whereby a massive amount of output could be unleashed under very specific conditions (conditions which you had to plan ahead for). In other words, if you can plan, scheme, trick, entrap or create the conditions for such an event to occur via massive preparation, then perhaps you could add such an element to a game without pissing off 95% of the game population. The key, to use your example, is to allow for such rare events to occur (i.e. winning a 5 v 1) without causing the majority of the game population to cry foul. Rather, you need to majority of the game population to say: "yeah, that makes sense, that guy owned us because we fell directly into his Rambo style trap."

Games have started along this path. Think of spending hours camping an item, spending days creating "utility belts", re-running potion quests etc. I know you're talking about something more then that but this is not totally unlike what you're suggesting.