Value of Kill vs Rate of Killing

[Slamz]

I like the middle-slower, because the fights are so much more technical, its not just a bunch of button mashing.

IMO that's a separate discussion, which is "how long does it take to kill someone once the fight starts". Technically you could end up on the right side of the chart if every fight took 15 minutes but they were all back to back and largely without value (that is, it was a long fight but you didn't get any loot or lose any XP, and the next fight is right around the corner).


EVE vs POTBS is a good example of the difference.

POTBS fights take even longer than EVE fights but they occur much more frequently, so POTBS would be further right than EVE. The value of a kill is less and probably for that reason there are more kills.


Or you could move around on the chart within the same game depending on what you were doing...
- WOW Battlegrounds would be extreme far right: rapid, lossless kills.
- WOW open field PvP would be further left: dying means a little more (interruption to PvE) and fights are harder to find.

So the mechanics are completely identical but battlegrounds are further right because it's more killing for less value (I'm defining "value" mostly in terms of what the loser risks).

- EVE militia combat could be more towards the middle as well: people engaging in a lot of combat but only in ships they intend to risk in PvP (and thus represents less loss for them -- they trade away value in favor of frequency).


I think I prefer things towards the far left but I don't know what percentage of gamers enjoys that. Maybe a useful overlay would be like:
   

That's just my impression -- that when it comes to PvP, WOW has like a 1000x as many players as EVE. Probably more than a 1000x. Whatever EVE's population, only a small portion seems to have any interest in PvP.

I'm just not sure if fewer players enjoy "high risk PvP" or if fewer players engage in it because so few games offer it. I mean, there are plenty of reasons more people don't play EVE. It's hard to guess how much of a factor "PvP risk" is in "game popularity".



So the bottom line question, I think, is this:

Do you kill your game by making PvP involve too much value?

That is, is it necessary to mimic WOW/WAR and have "no loss on death" style PvP in order to be popular?