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Player vs. Player Play Examined
aws910 writes "An interesting story at news.com.com tells of the various efforts employed by various MMOG companies to abate the problem of Griefers." From the article: "Social miscreants can do more than ruin the game for better-behaved competitors. They can hurt game companies' bottom line by driving away customers and burning up support lines. Problems related to grief players often account for 25 percent or more of customer service calls, according to game publishers." Commentary from the old men of MMOGdom available at Broken Toys and Terra Nova.
Kinda fitting IMO since this is the stance that most of the GM's in the MMORPGS I play take. The usual response is "Use the in-game PvP system/It's part of the game". May sound good on paper, but when you're 20+ levels behind, it's hard getting a group together to go after that one lone griefer.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
If it were me (if I was a developer) I would create a character that had unlimited power but looked like a noobie. Sort of a sting operation. It might not work, but it sure would be fun.
Let each player give other players a single positive or negative "reputation" point, with a certain maximum number possible. When you first see someone, you can check out their reputation, and if they are +5 helpful you might trust them more than a -1 annoying player.
You could go farther, and those with negative karma might be banned from certain areas, like around spawn points.
I'm surprised developers of MMORPGs didn't realize that simulating social interaction on a grand scale introduces the exact same problems a real society has: namely violence, theft and other lawlessness. The solution is to implement exactly what the real world uses: a police or security force as a detterence.
A virtual police or secuirty force that could 1) recognize "crime" and 2) had the authority to "detain" (perhaps indefinitely, depending on the seriousness of the breach) and even fine "criminals" would solve the problem to a large degree. But like real life, there will always be those who want to break the rules and get away with it.
Just make PvP opt-in. For 90% of games, this makes a lot of sense, since the _focus_ is not on player vs player combat as compared to simple player interaction. Why force people to participate in a system that they don't particularly care for?
Variant: PvP "zones", which, IMHO, are worse, since you can lure people into them. Better to have opt-in PvP and then have PvP-Free zones.
For that 10% where player killing action is the point of the whole game, if the game is properly balanced so that players at equal level are equally good at combat, level limits would seem to work best.
An alternative system for mandatory PvP games where combat is _not_ balanced level for level:
The more a player is killed, the less experience s/he is worth. The more a player kills, the _more_ s/he is worth. This discourages people from getting killed, and encourages people to kill "griefers" (aka, jerks). This works very well in conjunction with no-looting.
IMHO, the griefer syndrome stems from the fact that modern commercial MMORPGs are not RP-enforced. On the best MUDs, this problem is solved to a large extent by administrator judgement ("no assholes on my MUD!" *deletes and sitebans player!*).
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Back in the days I was playing tribes a lot (online game, similar to cs etc), perhaps 5 years ago or so, and by then there was really no exploits to the game known. There was no cheats or wallhacks, it was a good game.
:-)
So one day, a guy invents this autoaim patch which is quite hard to install (near impossibly) and the whole community freaks out in pain, since 99.9% of the players didn't want this kind of mods. Note that this was a very respected modder, he called himself or his mods "sixpack" and was really good stuff otherwise, but nothing that really was cheating.
People on the online servers go nuts, "you use aimbots!", "these people are too good" etc. The comments if you shoot somebody in the head on first sight was almost always "cheater!" etc.
Then of course, after a week or so, the modder said that the whole thing was a hoax and it didn't work at all. Everybody realized people where just that good
Oh the good times.
Albert
They should have a special item only available to newbies.
The Dynamite Belt.
If you're being grief'ed, detonate. Only works if you're being attacked/looted by someone N levels above your own and/or several players with a combined level of N. Does not work if you attacked first.
Everyone involved is killed and loses all virtual possessions, respawns totally naked.
I really like the thought Star Wars Galaxies put into their PvP system. It eliminates almost all "griefing"
Basically, the system works like this:
No other player can just haul off and attack you, there are criteria that must be met before you can be attacked. Basically, if you are a member of a civil war faction ("Rebel" or "Imperial") and have listed yourself as "overt" you can be attacked by "overt" members of the opposite faction. If "covert" members of the opposite faction are traveling with an "overt", they can attack you once the "overt" guy does. Once the "coverts" traveling with the "overt" attack, they are fair game to you. All "overt" members of any faction are fair game to any "overt" member of the opposite faction at any time.
Another way is through one on one, or one on many duels. In order to duel, you must be challenged and accept, or challenge and have your challenge accepted. Either way, both players know it's coming.
Finally is a guild war. If your guild is at war with another guild you are always fair game to them, and they are always fair game to you, regardless of overtness or faction. This requires your guild master to "challenge" another guild and for that guild to recriprocate.
These measures really do a lot to ensure that newbies are killed off, and that high level jedi aren't just walking around killing whoever they please. You are never at risk of PvP combat unless you take active measures to put yourself at that risk on purpose.
Of course there are scenarios where a few overt rebel lure a few overt imps into a fight, then group up with a whole lot of covert rebels to gang up on and beat the shit out of the imps, but we call that tactics, not cheating. If the imps weren't looking for a fight, they wouldn't have been overt in the first place.
Be Safe! Sleep with a Marine. Semper Fi!
When death isn't permanent and you can always abandon an old account and start a brand new character
The easiest solution I see to this is to limit players to one character, per account, per credit card. If you character does something that would result in jail time in the real world, then jail the character in the game and don't let the player just abandon it and start a new character without getting a new credit card.
I don't see the game designers actually thinking about what the game citizens would logically do if they had to live in a world like that game.
Multi-Undergraduate-Destroyer....memories. :)
Anyway, how about a bounty system backed by incredibly strong "police" NPCs.
Players could have a karma modifier or something. The bounty on their heads doesn't kick in until the karma gets bad enough. The police start eyeing you when your karma dips negative, will arrest if it is too negative, and will kill you on sight if you're extra naughty.
Jail time would be real, i.e if you get arrested for robbing another player and the jail time is 30 days, that means 30 days of real time of not being able to use that character. You will also need to pay a fine which will be taken out of your possesions (gold, armor, etc.).
Bounty's get paid out upon capture or kill, depending on whether the player is wanted dead, alive, or doesn't matter.
If you are a habitual player killer and you are caught or killed in the game, your death is permanent. As in you will not be able to use that character ever again.
If you keep creating characters that do lots of naughty things, then you get permanently spanked from the game.
This would encourage people to play nice.
~X~
~X~