Firstly, I'll warn (although at this point this warning is obvious) this post is going to be quite long. Second, I'll go ahead and get the "MM setting" clarification out of the way, this topic relates solely to mechanics for a massively multi-player game, we're not talking single player or instanced multi-player, criticism is welcome and appreciated, as long as it's not criticizing the fact we're talking about an MMO - that said, this will come off as a strange post so, I'll move on to some explaining - this following portion is NOT necessary, and is serving dually as an introduction ---Feel free to skip this part--- I'm a long time lurker here, and return under a moniker for whom I work now, basically - it's about time that any discussions I start or respond to (along with a few other people who may be compelled to pop up eventually) can be related back directly to a product, ties things together and makes them a lot more legible - at least that's the hope - if you know they're all connected. I'm but one element of a group that's been so greatly endowed upon an opportunity to work a dream job, we've secured an abundance of capital to enable us to do what many others aren't as fortunate to do, and that's focus practically all our time on a project that we hope will be the realization of all parties involved, and on that same note - you will probably see some other design elements pop up here for critique. ---Continue reading, back on subject--- Alright so, recent discussions about prolonged punishments, permanent death, respawn timers and the like, have brought into question our current schema of how we intend to handle player death. Our design is open ended PvP, the only safe zone is the original starting city, which - besides being a nice place to start, offers absolutely no intriguing functions for players to remain at, the rest of the world is uncontested PvP. I understand the usual knee-jerk reaction had by many when that's stated, grief killing is abundant in any MMO it's possible in, but - I cite my elongated (since Beta) experience with Ultima Online as my reference for the system working. To anyone who did play pre-trammel, and pre-EA; back when OSI ran the show, this is going to be a refresher, anyone who didn't, this is why my point carries validity, at least with me. Way back when, UO was PvP anywhere that wasn't within town limits, once you stepped outside of the bounds of a city, you could be attacked by anyone, at any time, for any reason. For all the griefing that came in the years after it, it played really well for the time being, sure - you might get popped when you wander out of town alone and weak, but - many reports of someone murdering in a particular area, and the other players would band together to put a stop to it, it was my first experience with the incarnation of Anti-PKs, player killers who only killed player killers. I (and my comrades) believe that the typical player base can defend itself, and those that aren't particularly interested in PvP, can elude those are seek to engage them unwillingly in it, or - enlist the help of those who do seek it. That being said, all combat should inspire the player to want to stay alive more than anything else, as has been tackled repeatedly in previous discussions, players who have no fear of death will use the lack of punishment to their advantage, I'm sure several of you have died to an opponent (usually PvE in this scenario), healed up, and ran back as fast as possible in hopes the enemy was still wounded and would give you the advantage you need to finish it off. Death, or losing, should not be able to be used in such a way to gain an advantage over anyone or anything so, we've come up with a few scenarios for what can happen when you're engaged in combat. At the time of death in our world (or more accurately not death, but when you reach 0 health), the controlling powers that be, we're avoiding the word god(s) here for the time being, pass judgement on you, which renders you invulnerable for 5 seconds, during that time - you cannot be injured, or healed - you must (quickly) request an action. You can a) surrender to your opponent, who can chose your fate, b) die peacefully, or c) contest your death. Let's examine those options. A, probably the most interesting, requires a quick decision on your part, and leaves your fate up to the person who has defeated you, they are prompted to make a decision, they can choose to kill you - which forces you to choose between B and C, or accept your surrender, leaving you incapacitated for 30 seconds before you can move again or be healed, and for another 90 seconds before you can attack. Either act has consequences and rewards on attributes not visible to the player, but can be quite simply equated to, being merciful to your opponents gives you bonuses to some things, while being unmerciful gives you bonuses to others. I purposely am avoiding being more specific here, as it's a mechanic I'll touch on at a later date. We're also toying with the idea of adding a conditional acceptance of a surrender, such that - in return for your life, the controlling forces of the area will banish you from where you've been engaged in combat for a period of 30 minutes - such that, if two guilds were battling in a city for control, and you spared an opponents life, it would be on the condition that he didn't return to that battle - this would be difficult to implement, but is an idea that might be added based on input. B, dying peacefully, you allow your soul to be separated from your body, and you roam the planet as a ghost until another player creates you a new body (resurrects you), note that - as mentioned before, this world will be very, very heavily placed upon other players, the only place to have an NPC revive you, would be at the one original NPC controlled city. The bonus here is that, if you die peacefully, you could retreat to nearby reinforcements to be revived, and return to the battle quickly. Those who've been merciful in the past, may have the opportunity to be revived on the spot, their health upon their return contingent upon how merciful they have been. In this light, those that have been most, most merciful and are killed, might be able to instantly be returned to battle. C, contest your death, with all the strength of your will you resist your soul being split from your body, and the spirit world consumes you, leaving your body untouchable while the dispute is settled, this is the only part of our world that is instanced, whereby the player is thrown into an alternate world, in a quick and brutal battle against those that would allow him to die, this fight is never in the players favor, however, conquering has the same effect as above, if you are able to win the battle your soul staying in your body causes such unrest in the world, that it may spring you back to life, this is most effective for those who've had trouble controlling their tempers in the past, as they might deal additional damage to whoever it was who had slain them in the first place. Why are these options important? Anything on your character when you die, stays on your body, the periods of turmoil where you contest your death, or willingly die, offer a timer (currently we anticipate this to be 2 minutes), whereby the shock to your surroundings prevents anyone from messing with your body/corpse, if after 2 minutes you have not returned, your body becomes lootable to anyone. If you return within 2 minutes, simply coming close to your body will rejoin you with your former self and immediately reequip your belongings. Yes, these options do mean that if you're killed in the middle of no where, you could have quite a walk ahead of you to be revived, and it does also mean that if your entire guild is wiped, barring that your enemy revives you, you might also have quite a walk in front of you. This gives the players a greater freedom over how to conduct a battle, if you had two predominantly "good" guilds battling, they could in fact choose to spare the lives of those they defeat, an entire battle without a single death. On the other hand, a more vicious group could raid a busy party, slaughter them, refuse any attempts to surrender, and take whatever that party had been working towards (and, that party would most likely want to get it back, either by regrouping, or with the aid of another group). Any suggestions, improvements, criticism, questions, or request for clarification are more than welcome, again sorry for the long post.

I'm not a big MMO fan, and decidedly not a big pvp fan so my experience might be limited, but I'd suggest that your experience with a self-policing userbase was influenced by being in the beta/early life of the MMO. Beta testers tend to have a fair interest in the game and are less likely to be asshats. Developers have less inclination to put up with crap because people didn't pay and are not thus somehow due service.

Not to say it can't happen. Puzzle pirates has had an excellent self-policing userbase for years despite allowing heavy pvp.

All that said, there are some bits which are interesting and good. The usual caveats: Having to get with a bunch of competent people (to resurrect you or dissuade pk-ers) just to play a game you're paying month by month for sucks. Having your corpse looted so that you can no longer effectively play the game until you grind effective gear again sucks (and is made especially more difficult if you're killed by people camping the good drops in the first place).

Both of those of course can be mitigated based on a variety of other design points, but those were not discussed so much.

The mercy thing immediately appears exploitable to me; two people could just take turns surrendering to each other to max out their mercy points and get that free rez, and then go gank someone and win because of their free insta-rez.

Requiring player involvement for something as fundamental as a rez sounds poor in my opinion, unless you somehow have a system that doesn't require actual player interaction, like a ressurection auction house. Otherwise every chat channel will constantly be full of "plz rez" "looking for rez" "l4rez kthx", etc. Many people like to solo or at least play somewhat antisocially in MMO's, and while I think it's fine to encourage grouping, I think disallowing the player from being able to play at all because he's a ghost unless he goes out and makes friends is going too far. Sometimes you just want to kill some monsters for a little while before bed and don't feel like begging random strangers for favors.

These ideas make me think of the punishment thread. I guess my question is what do you think the game gains from ensuring that players have a more miserable time when they die? The "spiritual battle" could be somewhat fun, but the long walk to the corpse, the long walk to the starting city, or spamming general chat asking someone to rez you are not fun for anyone at all.

I've been thinking about something similar, though it would be more like a giant RTS where players can act as the units...

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For a possible player-policing method

1. The player population is divided into factions (say Red Team, and Blue Team) these act basically like warring sides in an RTS (like the Horde and Alliance in World of Warcraft) and there will be a sort of 'unaligned' group as well.

2. players are have honor points assigned to each faction not just the one they are in. This is affected by how they act with other players in those factions. So if player from Red Team kills one from Blue Team he loses honer with Blue team (like -20 points) and if the two sides are at war he may gain honor with Red Team. Also, if that same player merely captures or knocks out a player from Blue team, he may lose points but not nearly as much (like maybe 5). If he attacks or kills a member of his own faction he loses alot of honor points and if he loses too many he may even get kicked out and be unaligned.

3. Everyone can battle everyone else, but they get warnings or notices on who they are against. The player who killed a whole bunch of players from Blue Team might have a huge 'Wanted' over his head that members of Blue Team can see. He still has this if he moves factions.

4. So essentially, this makes it so that instead of people going around killing AI monsters that are all out to kill you, they are up against Player controlled characters that are out to kill members of their faction. Success doesn't give XP so much as it gains Honor points that result from that particular enemies 'danger' to members of their group.

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For combat:

1. During combat, by default players may collapse when either their health drops to 10% or bellow or they have some kind of status effect (like sleep, paralysis, etc.) So during pvp combat, by default players might stop attacking when their enemy collapses but can kill them by attacking them when prone. Or some very damaging attacks could kill them outright like a High explosive, or a headshot or whatever.

2. They get XP for defeating foes, and can loot them while they are knocked out. Normally players can recover and may just need time to escape and heal.

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For Death:

I sort of had an interesting idea about player 'respawning' I actully though about it while re-watching the Matrix films. Basically in the towns which are safe from PvP, there will be wandering NPCs with only basic equipment and just a little starting money. When a player first starts the game or respawns after dying the 'take over' that NPC and have a little start up money and equipment to go again. Just a little flavoring I guess.

As for what happens after dying:

Players have bank accounts, after an experienced player dies he takes over the body of a new NPC villager with the basic starting equipment but gets a letter saying how a 'relative' of his passed away and left all their stuff to them. They basically get to keep all their banked equipment and money but get a new character to use it with. Like they can get a new name, character class, or whatever.

If a player wants to, they can clone at a cloning lab (kind of inspired by the spell 'Clone' in Dungeons and Dragons). After death, they wake up in the lab without the armor and stuff they had on but they keep all their skill and can still get the stuff in their bank.

Finally, if they really want to they can come back as a vengeful spirit thats basically a monster. They can only attack or be attacked by the person that killed them. If defeated, they can regenerate a few times to get their revenge but if finally defeated they just respawn as usual.


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Just a few ideas

Quote:

Original post by makeshiftwings The mercy thing immediately appears exploitable to me; two people could just take turns surrendering to each other to max out their mercy points and get that free rez, and then go gank someone and win because of their free insta-rez. ...

Thanks for the response, and I should have elaborated a bit more to include that, not only is the instant resurrection not a guarantee, so - charging into battle expecting to use it to your advantage could turn out poorly when you charge in headlong expecting a second shot, and not getting it. Your chance increases as that particular value increases, but also - you could not just surrender to and fro with another player, there will be fail safes in place so that you cannot simply gain points (in either direction) by fighting the same person or small group of people repeatedly, both by the fact that the server shall remember the last set number of people who you fought with, and will not allow points either way to be effected by those you've already fought with recently, you can never gain points from people in your own guild, or gain mercy from someone who you attacked when they were below a certain health (stumbling across someone who's in a weakened state and finishing them of, is not in and of itself merciful, at least not to the average person, some I suppose could argue you were putting them out of their misery.

Also, along with several other things, those particular values (we haven't named them, but since you stated mercy points I'll use that), aren't shown to the player, you have no numerical indication of your standing in that regard, so no farming for mercy points to sway you in one direction or the other.


@Randel
All good ideas, although I've never been a fan of permenant death so, I don't know if we really want to explore an option where you lose your body. Thanks for your input.

@Telastyn
You hit on two points that I need to expand on, but this isn't the thread for it, they're large topics that should be split off on their own, both on grinding for gear (which won't happen), and even a monthly fee, both of which we've got an interesting twist on, I'll update this thread with links for both of those topics once I post them, I was trying to avoid flooding the Game Design topic with a bunch of threads by me, I was going to spread them out a bit.

You also make a very valid point about the typical quality of beta testers, but I think it's not so much that the quality of players decreases solely because the game goes public, I think the trick is attracting and keeping those people whom enjoy and care about the game enough to participate on that level. However in my particular example, Ultima Online, the users policed themselves right up until the time EA broke the system by making a non PvP copy of the world for every single server, but that's a different discussion also.

Quote:

Original post by SGPriest Way back when, UO was PvP anywhere that wasn't within town limits, once you stepped outside of the bounds of a city, you could be attacked by anyone, at any time, for any reason. For all the griefing that came in the years after it, it played really well for the time being, sure - you might get popped when you wander out of town alone and weak, but - many reports of someone murdering in a particular area, and the other players would band together to put a stop to it, it was my first experience with the incarnation of Anti-PKs, player killers who only killed player killers. I (and my comrades) believe that the typical player base can defend itself, and those that aren't particularly interested in PvP, can elude those are seek to engage them unwillingly in it, or - enlist the help of those who do seek it.

Yet in UO, it was quite clear to the designers that the so-called Anti-PKs came nowhere near being powerful enough to discourage griefing. I can probably dig up emails from the lead designer which say this if I go far enough back in my Inbox. PK problems seem to be the main complaint people have about UO, looking back. I'm intrigued that you seem to think it was different.

EDIT: one quote from Raph Koster says the anti-PK militias were "inadequate for handling the problem of player killing. The actions of the few police were both insufficient in quantity and inadequate in severity to curb the activity of the player killers and the player thieves."

[Edited by - Kylotan on June 20, 2007 5:49:15 AM]