Quote:

Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom Quote: I'm also not sure what your design does to combat griefers. Any game elements that slaps people with a huge penalty is a gift to them. Griefers don't gain prestige for killing lower level toons. While the combat difference between a level 1 and a level 25 isn't as extreme as in most common implementations, for a griefer to make a decent run of mass murder they're going to need to be a bit higher than a level 1. This means the first time they meet their match they're dead and rerolling, likely rerolling at a low level. Alternatively a decent level griefer could respawn as a mad troll in which case his behaviour is ideal for his new role. Point being what makes a griefer such a chore is the fact that they're immortal.

I'm mainly going from what I've read of the genre (I don't play MUDs, MMORPGs or online games in general), but I thought griefers get their kicks out of annoying real live people. They don't particularly care about prestige or the official rules of the game. As long as they cause someone to suffer, they are enjoying themselves.

If high level characters are not that much better to low level, I would expect griefers (or teams of griefers) to constantly harass high level players. The griefer won't lose much if they die, but the high level player will.

However if high level characters are nigh invulnerable to low level, then I would expect even non-griefers to massacre new players just to ensure it is difficult to get up to their level.

There is also all the indirect methods of killing, such as leading dangerous monsters to other players, or making use of environmental damage (getting hurt if crushed in a door, for example).

You probably can deal with this if you plan very carefully; for small player bases you could possibly get away with a social contract and very judicious use of the banhammer. But you will need to factor in that some players will just be immoral antisocial bastards who will do everything in their power to make the game worse for everyone else, and any rules that allow a severe penalty to be given to a player will be ripe for abuse.

"Alternatively a decent level griefer could respawn as a mad troll in which case his behaviour is ideal for his new role."

Actually, this is a pretty interesting concept -- don't try and design the game so people can't be griefers. Let them do it.

They want to run around the map burning villages down then, hell, let them try.

Give them something to do. Don't spend yonks programming AI goblins who try and burn villages down when there are players who can. You could give the griefers something in return; let them teleport about the map. They can jump into the AI goblins. When that goblin gets killed, they get a selection of currently unoccupied goblins; they pick one to jump to. They get the local map, they can see where the village is.

Griefers don't get characters because they're not interested in them, they don't want to be levelling up and stuff. What they get is endless mayhem opportunities. What's not to like? The game *wants* them to organise into bands and go burn villages down.

If they die, it doesn't really matter to them. Yeah, they just got killed as a level 2 orc with a big axe. But hey! There's an option to go be level 3 undead mounted warrior with a scythe for the next fight!




For the next trick, let some people play it as an RTS ordering the NPCs about :-)

Quote:

Original post by Dreddnafious Maelstrom One concept I haven't explored much but put a bit of thought into is the "mercy" ability. Where once, you've defeated a player character you can knock them out and take their gear and such but spare their life. The reward would come in the form of "honor points". Honor points would grant titles and up your reputation with NPC's and such. But again, I haven't fully explored it, and it would only seem logical for "good" aligned characters. [smile]

If you created a strong enough world fiction and systems for enforcement I think you could pull off the notion of honorable combat even for evil players provided that the punishment for violating traditions was heavy enough. Alternately, you could build it into the foundation of your magic system, similar to the D&D "sanctuary" spell. It could kick in automatically for lower level characters, similar to auto-eject in vehicle combat games.

Quote:

Original post by Katie Actually, this is a pretty interesting concept -- don't try and design the game so people can't be griefers. Let them do it. They want to run around the map burning villages down then, hell, let them try. Give them something to do. Don't spend yonks programming AI goblins who try and burn villages down when there are players who can. You could give the griefers something in return; let them teleport about the map. They can jump into the AI goblins. When that goblin gets killed, they get a selection of currently unoccupied goblins; they pick one to jump to. They get the local map, they can see where the village is.

I think this is a perfect idea. It's the unfulfilled promise of the old Bullfrog game, Dungeon Keeper, which was supposed to be evil overlord vs. normal human players. I'm not a griefer, but I'd love to do something like this in an MMO, partly because I have no patience with the level grind and partly because I like playing the villain even though he's meant to lose.

I think the idea of running a town would be very appealing to some gamers, too-- the gardener types-- if they could be attracted to playing. Save a ton on AI.

I think perma-anything is really a niche thing and you can only expect the most hardened and hardcore of gamers to stick around after a catastrophic event. Personally, I love the risk-reward of permadeath, and having something to lose...but the reality is that most gamers do not feel the same way...not even remotely.

I think one of the best examples is Shadowbane. There's no permadeath (if there was, it'd be fine seeing how easy it was to level a toon), but guilds spent months building up their cities, then those cities could be torn down in a matter of hours. When large guilds started warring, and massive cities started being sieged, the player base dropped to almost nothing as people just flat-out quit the game once their city was burned to the ground.

Quote:

Original post by jesot I think one of the best examples is Shadowbane. There's no permadeath (if there was, it'd be fine seeing how easy it was to level a toon), but guilds spent months building up their cities, then those cities could be torn down in a matter of hours. When large guilds started warring, and massive cities started being sieged, the player base dropped to almost nothing as people just flat-out quit the game once their city was burned to the ground.

There was another bad aspect to this game. I was in a smallish guild in allegiance with the "bad guys" of the server. Since the "good guys" vastly outnumbered us, accepting the siege at prime time would be suicide even though we could easily beat twice our numbers. What we did was to start the siege right after the daily server reboot. This meant that once or twice a week, we'd all get up way too early to smash the bane before the invaders had time to mount an assault and defend their bane.

Worst gaming experience ever. And that wasn't even permadeath. It would have been much worse.

I ended up quitting after a few months of this nonsense. Last I heard, our parent guild got invaded and the invaders used a bug to trigger a chain reaction where guards would attack each other and their city got razed. Yep, they lost everything because of a bug. I bet they weren't happy.