I pretty much blame this on how Blizzard handled things in WoW about 20 years ago. For some odd reason they thought that they should scramble speech between players on different factions. Their reasoning was that PVPers would crap-talk each other and they would have more reports filed for nasty language and what not.

Instead they fostered a “Red Equals Dead” mentality. You couldn’t group with different players, you couldn’t trade with them, and you couldn’t even talk to each other.

This made things as you said in your experience in essence players treating each other as NPCs.

I prefer my PVP as we did even before WoW came out. Where players could talk to each other. Does crap talk happen? Sure. But what else can happen is dialogue. You can have friendly competition. You can even reason with each other. Heck you can get into minor in-character vibes for near Role-play like interactions such as taking prisoners, bribes, and extortions.

Its one of the reasons when I do PVP in Conan Exiles, its on servers that have at least lite-RP. Encouraging that you take the time to talk with an opponent before clicking each other to death. It makes said encounters have more meaning, even makes them more memorable, and even at times allows you to make new friends.

But in the unmoderated servers, the red equals dead mentality tends to reign supreme. But it doesn’t need to. In Elite Dangerous for example, there are players who seek to PVP through Piracy for example. They don’t just interdict someone and then blow them up. They inform them they are being robbed and to drop some of their cargo.

If they run, they get their cargo hatches forcibly opened. If they attack the pirate with lethal force, then they may be killed for it. But there is at least a dialogue, and a chance for some interaction than simply being NPCs.

You said it well there. Its better when players don’t treat each other like NPCs. Its even better when they don’t -act- like NPCs towards each other. You can still fight and PVP, but make it interesting for everyone. Not simply a bad luck time sinking tax.

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