Fallen Earth Diary #2

RPG Vault continues their series of Fallen Earth diaries, this time with writer Wes Platt telling us about the team's decision to remove PvP from the town of Terance.
Terance became one of two PvP towns - areas where players interested in participating in the later dynamic of conflict might get a taste of battle against their peers.

In practice, it just didn't work. The rewards for playing PvP as a battle zone just didn't have enough mileage, and the open PvP mechanic in the region left the town open to griefing by over-leveled troublemakers. As a result, we turned it off, and just let Terance become a combat-focused town. This created some new design issues.

First, the town's mission content didn't work as well. When it was PvP location, we had relied far more on repeatable missions that would send players into danger zones over and over again. Most of the storylines, except for the TETRAX arc, were very short, straight and to the point.

Second, the layout of Terance and the surrounding region left us wanting. Players now had to run all the way across Brenhauer Gorge - over the bridge that we thought would be such a fun place to snipe people - to get to the old LifeNet / GlobalTech facility for the TETRAX and zombie-killing missions.