I''m sorry for the overdramatic thread title. However, I firmly believe that every MMO designer needs to read this post. Or at the very least, they need to answer the question at the end. Grief players are the most important issue facing massively multiplayer game designers today. Almost any MMO system works well in the hands of a community of players who want it to work well. A reasonably rigorous system, which guides behavior by meting out in-game rewards for proper behavior, and in-game punishments for improper behavior, will work fine for the average player who is playing to get ahead in the game. What does one do about the gamebanes? A gamebane is not playing the same game as everyone else. He is not playing the game as it has been designed. The in-game rewards and punishments are not goals and dangers, but tools to be manipulated when possible and ignored when necessary. The true goal of the grief player is to reach a state in the game where he can ruin the experience of others. His goal is not to play the game, but to break it, and make the other players unhappy. In the playground of your game, he is the kid throwing the swing seat over the supporting bar so that nobody can use it. Gamebanes are immature, horribly cunning, and legion. Gamebanes are not an issue in single player games - you''re playing alone, there''s nobody else to hurt. Gamebanes are minor issues in limited-multiplayer games, where it is possible to identify problematic players from a group of ten to one hundred, and ban their IPs or perform similar player-specific remedies. It is in MMO games where they become most problematic. In a crowd of thousands, it is difficult for even the most dedicated human monitors to pick out problem cases. In a crowd of tens of thousands, difficult becomes well-nigh impossible. The problem with gamebanes is that the more freedom you give players, the more power you give gamebanes. - Allow players to communicate with each other, and a gamebane will pour vitriol, abuse, and foulness upon anyone in "hearing" range. - Allow players to retrieve items dropped by their (NPC) foes, and a gamebane will skulk behind a player and rush in and snatch their hard-earned loot at the worst moment. - Allow players to form coalitions, and gamebanes will form gangs of marauding morons and compound each other''s annoyance abilities. - Allow players to negotiate deals with each other, and a gamebane will cheat anyone gullible enough purely for the sake of cheating. - Allow player vs. player combat, and gamebanes will launch into reckless murdering sprees just to ruin the days of as many people as possible. The in-game consequences of these misbehaviors don''t matter. Any slack you give a legit player will be exploited to the fullest by a gamebane. One reaction as a designer is to deny gamebanes all ability to harm others. But that means stripping out every meaningful interaction between players, for every interaction is an opportunity for grief. Eventually you get a play experience which may as well be single-player, and then you''ve lost all the charm of MMO. Another reaction is to attempt to monitor behavior of players, checking to make sure they are using their freedoms in a responsible fashion. This is the best solution by far except for one tiny detail: it is utterly impossible. A reasonably popular game in multinational release could have at least 1000 players on line at all times. An administrator is able to properly monitor the activities of at most ten players at a time, by my estimate. That means about 100 administrators. File under Happening, Not Any Time Soon. This means that in order to give the players the freedoms you want to give them (conversation, PvP, ability to act in concert or in opposition et cetera), you have to use resources which grow in direct proportion to your game population. There are two of these. The first is processing power. The second is the player base. Godlessly common though grief players are, the majority of players still come to play the game. Those of you who have been following along at home may note that I am wending toward a question. This is the critical, all important question every MMO designer must answer. How do you deal with grief players? --------------------------------------------------- -SpittingTrashcan You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".

I would make such players accepted if not necessary elements in the game world, just like all other types of players. Make it clear from the get-go that such players will not be hindered. Hopefully this will lead to a self-policing society. Such a situation would, in my mind, be far deeper and more entertaining than any "gameplay" the designers feel fit to cram down my throat.

Instead of banning players, penalize them. Make a sign hang over their heads and have some abilities disabled for a while. The best part is you could make them show up in court. Set a time and place. If the player is not online at the right time, the penalty is set. If they are online, they can defend their actions. These rules could be applied for cheaters and everything else.

Some people argue that if the engine allows something to happen, it should be legal. If they get banned for doing it, they get really angry. If you had this court system, it might get it through their thick skull when this 50'' deamon says stop. Then if the players argues, the deamon could turn the character into a newt.

Judge) "Player X, were you spawn killing at the P sector?"
X ) "No, I am the leet dude."
Judge) "We have screen shots you fool"
X) "Oh really? What are you going to do about it, huh?"
(X shrinks to half of his size, becomes green, and his speed is reduced by half).
Judge) "Try spawn killing now!"

Player X will now quit, wait for the sentence to lift, or start a new character. If they start a new character, the time it takes to make it leet again may teach them not to do the crime. With just a penalty, they can still play the game, but not in the way that allows them to cheat.

Yes, I agree with Taulin. Bans and similar punishments aren''t very good to use because it causes a "badwill" for your game. What I mean is, if a player really is as evil as SpittingTrashcan described, he will not settle with spoiling the game for other players, he will also attempt to attack the creator of the game. If you ban him for cheating he will not have anything to lose and might trash-talking you in forums or other "community places". I''m also idelogically against banning... it feels a little like a "you are not good enough to play with us" mentality to me.

I''d to point out that in MUDs (text-based online rpgs) there is a simple way to deal with these kind of players, which is similar to what Taulin described (but perhaps easier to implement). Just add a global "mute" command that makes the player unable to talk to anybody else, except for GMs/Admins (the admins should still be able to use an ignore command on that specific user if he starts to annoy them instead). The mute will last as long as the admins have decided, such as a week.

As you can see in my signature I am trying to make my own game, and I don''t have this mute functionality yet (I''m about to add it). There are a lot of other functions that needs to be added, and it becomes more and more important as more people join the game. This is a list of the problems people are causing each other at the moment (there is no PvP in my game since I dislike it):

Loot stealing (so-called "Vulturing")
Description: The "vulture" waits behind another player, who is fighting a monster, and tries to pickup any loot the monster drops before the killer is able to. This is especially annoying when the monster is a "boss" monster that require a whole group of people to defeat.
Planned solution: The player (or fellowship) who kills the monster will get a one-minute "looting rights" to the item that is dropped.

Harassment / Spam / General Annoyance
Description: One or more players are sending /tell messages to another player.
Planned solution: I need to add an /ignore command. Currently I solve this problem by spying on the server console, but that will get inpractical in the long run.

Shout Abuse
Description: In Akarra you are allowed to send a global chat message once per minute. This has caused an extreme amount of spam during some periods, and people are sending private messages such as "Ok, I''ll be right there" on the global channel.
Planned solution: I''ll increase the limit to one shout every three minutes, and the /ignore command noted above.

This was perhaps a little off-topic, but I wanted to share my experience.


My Stuff : [ Whispers in Akarra (online rpg) || L33T WAR (multiplayer game) || The Asteroid Menace (another game) ]

Depends on what you want to accomplish. You might select positive/negative reinforcement, and ingame/out-of-game penalty.

Personally, I prefer out-of-game negative reinforcement. Temporary suspension of the account with a warning, then permanent ban of the account. If the player persists, perhaps look into IP banning, reporting to ISP, and general retribution for cases of harassment.

No sense in prolonging the agony the other players experience; many times, the offenders are either minors whose parents wouldn''t appreciate having to re-sign up for a new account if one is banned, or folks who won''t like having to re-register for accounts repeatedly or change ISPs just to play the game.






MatrixCubed
http://MatrixCubed.cjb.net

If you can''t beat ''em, join ''em.

If, as a designer, you KNOW that a certain something will happen, don''t ever try to alter your design in order to prevent it from happening! Instead, adapt your design from the get-go to make full use of that certainty.

If you KNOW your game is going to have grief players as a gamebane (and any MMO will), make sure to give them every opportunity to do exactly that which they want to do.

1) Your game design will have a step up on your competition, because you use grief players as a feature

2) The fact that griefing is allowed, possibly even promoted, will make actual griefing less interesting to griefers. Ever told a child NOT to do something? Chances are, you just made them more curious and they''ll end up doing exactly that which you told them not to do. Good example: you don''t want your child to curse. You can tell them time and time again not to curse, but you''ll still hear the occasional "sh*t" coming from their little mouths. My parents had a nice solution to the problem. They sat all three of us down (younger sister, younger brother and me) and told us "curse all you want for the next 3 minutes". We ran out of ideas about 1 minute later and probably didn''t curse for an entire day.

One thing that designing a system that uses griefers is that you instantly gain a tremendous amount of believable villains for your game.

Let the players govern themselves. The opportunity for some of the more dedicated players to be bounty hunters or even judges would be attractive, at the same time it would be one good solution to the problem.

Gamebanes are a natural part of any massive online game. But "heros" are also a natural part of these games. "Heros" are people who have played the game to its fullest and now just simple play a superhero role where they protect the innocent and will hunt down Gamebanes. I think this aspect should actually be encouraged. The game admins could also play a policing role by having their own Hero character.

A courtroom environment is a great idea also, but make it so that the offender needs to be "captured" instead of simply sending them a summons. I think this will add to the game''s depth because the world follows some real-world examples of crime and justice.

If you try and have the game engine police the game, you''ll end up restricting and removing features that would normally make the game that much better, and for what? The results are very small in comparison. The game admins really need to be involved with the game and the people who play it. They need to use their powers and knowledge to help keep the game balanced by motivating groups of people to hunt down the Gamebanes and bring them to the court or bring justice into their own hands. Hell, I even think that some admins should be villans in the game. It''s so much more rewarding capturing/killing a human villan than it is an NPC.



Dino M. Gambone
Good judgement is gained through experience. Experience, however, is gained through bad judgement.

quote: Original post by Dino
Gamebanes are a natural part of any massive online game. But "heros" are also a natural part of these games. "Heros" are people who have played the game to its fullest and now just simple play a superhero role where they protect the innocent and will hunt down Gamebanes.

In practice it works like this: Villans kill innocent players and take their loot. Heros kill villans and keep the loot. The so-called heros end up being more corrupt than the New Orleans PD.

But to answer the question, "How do you deal with grief players?"...

The first step is identifying them. My ideas is to have each player has a buffer that records their gameplay for the last minute. If you act like an ass and someone reports you, both your and the reporter''s log gets saved and sent to an admin''s inbox.

After you have caught them, warn them once, then ban them permanently. Then publish the character names that have been banned on the games website and also in game if possible. They players who were victimized have a right to know the fate of the one who tormented them.

Finally, after a couple of months, give the person that was banned a single chance to reedem themselves in writing. If they can give some coherrant reasons why they should be allowed back into the game, let them in. Their previous characters should still be lost and they will have to start over.

There you have it... Crime, Punishment, and Redemption.

I agree with letting the game be self-policing. The minute admins start coming and banning people you get tension and anger. People begin to hate the game, and then they may begin attacking the game server, trying to cheat, or go around saying the game is bad. If everyone has a chance to play the game the way they want to, while at the same time, facing the consequences of the other players or other established game rules then that would be better. I also think it may even extend the life of the game, as when people become bored with the various elements of the story they can begin hunting down evil players. My .2$ anyway...