quote: Original post by Silvermyst

I really do think that the design system should take care of this. In games like Everquest, where most of the servers don''t even allow players to attack one another, there''s really nothing a player can do when another player harasses him/her. All you can do is /tell a GM and hope that they catch the perpetrator ''in the act'' (when it''s verbal harassment, you can actually forward the written text to the GM, making it a lot easier for the GM to determine if the harassing player should be scolded/banned/etc)

Ideally, (assuming you want a trouble-free game), all ''bad'' acts should be prevented automatically by the system. As a close 2nd place, all ''bad'' acts should be punished automatically by the system.

The problem is that there''s no technology to recognise a bad act? Obviously the name "F*ckyou" is abusive. What about "Fu-Kyu"? Sounds almost Chinese or something, but the intent is still there, and will be noticed by some people, but probably not by the system. Example 2: hitting someone with a sword is bad and easy for the system to notice. But what about piling up rocks outside a dungeon entrance so that someone can''t escape? Or simply standing in a corridor so someone can''t pass? What about running past a dragon and leading it into a herd of new players? These are all ''fuzzy crimes'' that computers are nowhere near being able to solve automatically. So, in the meantime, although doing as much with the system as possible is the right idea, you will need some human adjudicators.

quote: Personally, I favour a permanent death system for my rpg designs. That usually works pretty good with the ''I''m gonna f'' up your game'' type of players. I just consider them the ''bad element'' in the game world. They might cause some chaos, but the ''good'' players will eventually be able to bring him down.

This is an interesting point, because some MUD owners have stated that it doesn''t work that way. Why? Because ''bad'' players tend to have more experience killing people than ''good'' players do. To kill 10 bad players, you might lose 20 good players. Is that an acceptable tally in a game where death is ''permanent''? The 10 dead bad players probably laughed the whole time and don''t care, but the 20 dead good players are probably very upset that their investment in terms of time/stats/roleplaying is now lost forever.

Ultima Online is another game where they hoped that ''good'' players would police the ''bad'' players. It didn''t work out that way. Bad players tend to be better killers and can be just as organized as good players.

I do agree that permanent death goes part of the way towards the solution. But I''m still working out the balancing details.

quote: It''s somewhat sad though to see that one of the biggest MMORPG games out there pretty much comes down to a huge audience of ''achievers''. I guess my bitterness comes from the fact that I feel it COULD be so much more. But perhaps that''s just wishful thinking.

I don''t mind as such, I just think it''s a shame that the other gamer types aren''t accomodated to anything like the same extent. I do think that achievers are by far the biggest group of gamers (the 2 terms being closely related in my mind) but even so, the other gamers are still being overlooked.

quote: I really think that the player community will always be looking for something new and fresh.

Not just ''Something better than the last game I loved'', then? I think there is certainly a case of "Better Than X" syndrome. People tend to like incremental changes rather than revolutionary ones. It allows them to transfer their previously accumulated skills across to a familiar environment.

Someone once said that you need 2 new features or concepts for any new game. Fewer than that, and the game is too similar to what has gone before and won''t be interesting. More than that, and the game is too different from previous games and will be hard to understand and get into. Food for thought.

quote: I think that at the same time producers of games will be looking to create games similar to popular existing games. Myself, I think that''s silly. If an online game is popular, you have to either be 100% better to draw players from that other game to yours, or you have to be completely fresh. I''ve seen a share of MMORPG designs come by claiming to be everything that EQ is/was and then some… but they never quite hit it off

Yes, which is what I think too. People would be better served trying to sell to 100% of the 10% explorer market than fighting for their own 2% of the 50% achiever market. (Figures admittedly pulled out of the air, but I doubt they''re too far out.) It makes more sense economically, too. The problem is that it''s a risk. And yes, it will take something quite new and fresh to let the ''Big Guys'' know that these niche markets exist.

quote: (how''s Anarchy Online doing? Still buggy? The EQ messageboard community seemed to like it but seemed to agree that it was just too buggy in most cases).

Appallingly so. Being kicked to the desktop 20 times in 1 hour was a figure that I read somewhere. But a friend of mine swears by it. She is the type who will tolerate any degree of bugs, defects, and deficiencies. I am not.

quote: Original post by Tom
Let me sidestep these arguments and get back to the point. Everyone but Silvermyst seems to have conveniently overlooked the line in which I said, "Naturally, this means the game needs something else to offer."

The problem is, you went on to say "But that is food for another topic." Implying that you wanted opinions on what you''d said, not ideas on how to implement it.

quote: IF the game emphasizes immersion over abstraction (i.e., number crunching), WILL it attract more explorers and socializers?

If you build it, they will come. Eventually.

quote: First and foremost, first-person 3D equals immersion.

Agreed: although some of the tradeoffs you have to make end up losing you some immersion too.

quote: People now understand that first-person means the mouse will look around, and the arrow keys will move your character.

If you look at the FPS controls thread, I think a lot of people prefer to use keys other than the cursors, although in the same orientation.

quote: To me, gamepads are more intuitive than clicking where you want your character to go (especially in regards to Ultima Online; my GOD that game''s control was wretched).

I disagree, and would claim that mouse clicks (such as in Diablo) are more intuitive to most computer users (perhaps not console users, but there are more console users who have used a computer than computer users who have used a console). You also get more degrees of freedom with a mouse, which means that the game plays more fluidly: no more having to zig-zag to get somewhere. Besides, with a mouse, you can have the game do the pathfinding, which simplifies things. The player just wants to be in a certain place: why not take the burden of how to get there off his or her shoulders.

quote: Lighting is actually more important than texturing

Sure, cos if you have no lighting, you can''t see the textures

quote: If you want a good example of how lighting can be used to immerse the player, check out the real-time shadows in Diablo II.

If you want a better example, see Thief 1 or 2.

quote: Fourth, aural immersion is all about ambient sounds. I don''t think anyone can disagree with this point, and I''m pleased to see more games using ambient sound effects to good measure.

Did I mention Thief yet?

quote: Fifth, (I like to call this the Vulcan rule,) infinite diversity in infinite combinations.
...
This opens up a lot of possibilities. Building items is one of those things many people really enjoy doing, if only to say "I made this."

Easier said than done, I guess. And if you let people build too much, it overruns your world. People were complaining that Ultima Online ran out of space to put houses. Talk about urban sprawl.

I am experimenting with a nice magic system that lets people ''construct'' new spells by combining runes and keywords. Because of the combinatorial nature, adding 1 new rune adds an exponential number of new combinations. This makes it easy to add content since the content appears to grow faster than I add it.

TOM

Alright back to exploring the depth of exploration.
Or: how to make explorers out of players.

quote: I guess my hypothesis is this: IF the game emphasizes immersion over abstraction (i.e., number crunching), WILL it attract more explorers and socializers? And if so, HOW do we make the game more immersive?

I think Kylotan made a comment about this (carrot/stick). You can''t make explorers out of players just by taking their other toys away. The only good way to make explorers out of them, is to somehow give them a real motivation to explore. I''d say for now, let''s just target those players that do NOT fall under the ''achievers'' category and focus on them. What are THEIR needs?
(maybe once we establish that, we can try to get some achievers to join the team as well. In that case, we''d have to ask ourselves ''how can we make exploring into a form of achievement''?)

quote: First and foremost, first-person 3D equals immersion. While the control interface has a very big impact on this (I always say controls will make or break the game), visualizing everything in three dimensions as the character would see it is integral in creating a truly immersive environment. Thus we have problem #1: my game is isometric.

Yes, I think 1st person 3D is a must in a game where exploration is the key. This is the view where a player gets to see as much as possible of the surroundings (PS I have this dream set-up where a player is sitting in the middle of a circle of monitors, so that the player can ''look around'' simply by moving his head).
I think that 1st person 3D is the only view that a player can actually immerse himself into the virtual world. The player will be able to see far stretches of forests, will be able to see the height of the castle rising up in front of him. An isometric view limits all this. It''s easier to render your graphics I guess, but the great immersion is lost. ESPECIALLY if you want your game to be about exploring (or make exploring one of the biggest motivations in your game) you have to almost stick with 1st person 3D. Because exploring is all about seeing. About seeing new things, about discovering new beautiful landscapes, artifacts, buildings etc. An explorer in isometric view will most likely just want to explore to get his surroundings mapped.

quote: Second, controls must be intuitive to the game''s presentation. People now understand that first-person means the mouse will look around, and the arrow keys will move your character. It''s funny when you realize that this convention originated in the first-person shooter market, but it''s so elegant that it can seemlessly carry into any genre. Even third-person games like MDK and Giants use this style of interface.

I agree... and I disagree at the same time. I still think that the standard mouse+keyboard is too limited. I can''t come up with much better ideas myself right now, but I just ''know'' that there''s a perfect new interface waiting just around the riverbend. But for now, yes, the ''mouse look around + arrow keys movement'' will work. Especially for an exploring game. Because exploring is all about a) movement and b) sight.

quote: The question becomes, what is the most intuitive control interface for an isometric game?

I agree. I hate the ''click where you want to go'' because it requires some intelligent AI control. If I point to that area across the bridge, the AI should know how to get there. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn''t.

I guess the control interface would depend a lot on the type of actions your character is going to have to perform. If we''re talking ''exploration'' I envision a lot of walking. If I have to actively guide my character with buttons through each step of the way, I DEFINITELY need a ''lock movement'' option. (press ''on'' when you''re moving forward and your character will continue moving until you press another button or until you press the ''off'' button).
And maybe a combination of the two is completely possible. Maybe the regular movement should be done with the standard arrow keys, using the mouse to control menu''s, point to items etc, and then a ''switch button'' could be activated which would momentarily switch mouse to ''movement'' control. (imagine just pressing SHIFT to use mouse as ''move to'' interface)

quote: Third, graphical immersion is all about textures and lighting! Every (non-fraudulent) graphic artist in the world will tell you this. Lighting is actually more important than texturing, but in modern graphics you need both to make a believable immersive setting. If you want a good example of how lighting can be used to immerse the player, check out the real-time shadows in Diablo II.

Yes, and if you want to create immersion for an explorer you will NEED that graphical immersion.

quote: Fourth, aural immersion is all about ambient sounds. I don''t think anyone can disagree with this point, and I''m pleased to see more games using ambient sound effects to good measure. High-quality sounds are also important. The day of 16-meg machines is long gone. We can start using 44KHz 16-bit Mono voices now. This will only help the game in the long run.

After visual effects, sound effects are probably the next step in immersion (too bad we just can''t create a ''smell'' effect).
An explorer will not only want to just see new things, he''ll also want to hear new things. Walking through a new forest might give new bird sounds, walking through a creepy swamp might give some ominous, spooky sounds. Sound goes hand in hand with graphics in creating that immersion you desire.

quote: Fifth, (I like to call this the Vulcan rule,) infinite diversity in infinite combinations. While I don''t literally mean "infinite" combinations, I expect any truly-immersive game to allow players to do just about anything they can imagine. We should be able to pick up and play with any moveable object in the game world. This doesn''t mean they have to react completely realistically (e.g., glass should break, but papers don''t necessarily have to flitter to the ground). It just means there should be an incredibly wide variety of things we can manipulate and apply to good use.

Exactly. This is one of the reasons why I''ve left the design ideas I had for huge virtual online world behind. I think that if you put anything into your virtual world, the player should be able to have some influence on it. A tree is just a graphic picture if the player can''t cut it down or write into it. Once the player knows that he can do something with each and every individual tree... each and every individual tree will be more alive. I understand that this is SO far out there (influencing literally hundreds of thousands of virtual objects) but it is the goal to aim for I think.

About infinite diversity... if you want to give an explorer a motive to explore... there should forever be things to explore.
Current MMORPGs usually pride themselves for their huge world size... but in a week or so, every inch of it has been discovered by its players/characters. To keep thing interesting for the explorer, you either need a world hundreds of times bigger than the biggest virtual world now, or you need to keep changing the world, so discoveries disappear and new, undiscovered placed/items/buildings appear.

Before I get too far into this post let me just say that I am a mixed gamer, part achiever and part explorer. I love the sensation of discovery and immersion but I also like trying to be better then everyone else, or at least convince myself that I am. This means stats and story are important. In my opinion explorers are achievers of a different sort. They dont achieve there vision through fighting and stats so much as a sense of wonder, story experience and/or interaction. This is my personal definition and I doubt it applies to many explorers out there but based on this I have a few ideas.

Achievers can be part of the active socializer/explorer community if they have different things to achieve. For instance something for them to go out and search for or discover. In an RPG this could be anything, but in this case I''m refering to discovering part of the story. If you have a lot of backstory for the world you create you could have players searching for lost history or even making it up themselves. Ifg you allow them to take some sort of credit for it then achievers might like that. Perhaps some sort jounal thats available for everyone else to read. This gives a sense of achievment without involving any number crunching attributes at all. As far as player written history, this would have to be evaluated by admin before release, but it could encourage participation. In the end I think you''ll still end up haveing to have some numbers in the game but youd reduce dependence on them. Like I said I''m basing this on my own opnion of what an immersive RPG is like. I want to know what everyone else thinks about this(I''m talking primarily to explorers but achievers are welcome too)? Does this type of option add immersion?

KYLOTAN

quote: Ideally, (assuming you want a trouble-free game), all ''bad'' acts should be prevented automatically by the system. As a close 2nd place, all ''bad'' acts should be punished automatically by the system.

And then 3rd... some bad acts shouldn''t be punished at all. There is almost a need for an evil community of players within a virtual world. It''s just the ''bad act''s'' that you as a designer do NOT want to see happening that need punishment.

quote: The problem is that there''s no technology to recognise a bad act? Obviously the name "F*ckyou" is abusive. What about "Fu-Kyu"? Sounds almost Chinese or something, but the intent is still there, and will be noticed by some people, but probably not by the system. Example 2: hitting someone with a sword is bad and easy for the system to notice. But what about piling up rocks outside a dungeon entrance so that someone can''t escape? Or simply standing in a corridor so someone can''t pass? What about running past a dragon and leading it into a herd of new players? These are all ''fuzzy crimes'' that computers are nowhere near being able to solve automatically. So, in the meantime, although doing as much with the system as possible is the right idea, you will need some human adjudicators.

Example 1: Don''t like the way someone talks? The current way of dealing with that in a game like Everquest is to put that person on /ignore. No messages from that person will reach your character''s ears. But I think a better way would be to set an active feedback system in place. If you as a player don''t want to be seen as a rude player/character, you should avoid talking to ANYone in that tone. You might just offend someone who has a really good standing with a lot of people. Word of mouth spreads fast. Before you know it, telling one player ''f'' you'' will get you a very bad social standing.
Example 2: Piling up rocks so that someone can''t escape. Hm, that''s low. But in my design permanent death is included. I''d consider blocking someone inside a dungeon to be comparable to killing someone outright. And who knows, maybe there are multiple exits, or maybe the character has a power to get rid of the rocks.
Standing in a corridor so someone can''t pass? Kill the offender.
Running past a dragon and leading it to a herd of new players... I know the ''tactic'' from my EQ days (never actually experienced it). I''d think that with permanent death, people wouldn''t try these things, because the chance of themselves dying is just too big (but I''d have to set up a system to prevent one newly generated newbie from running past a dragon on a suicide mission, just so he can get some higher level characters killed while he''s at it).

quote: --Permanent Death--
This is an interesting point, because some MUD owners have stated that it doesn''t work that way. Why? Because ''bad'' players tend to have more experience killing people than ''good'' players do. To kill 10 bad players, you might lose 20 good players. Is that an acceptable tally in a game where death is ''permanent''? The 10 dead bad players probably laughed the whole time and don''t care, but the 20 dead good players are probably very upset that their investment in terms of time/stats/roleplaying is now lost forever.

I''d hope that the same principle would apply to ''evil'' players that applies to criminals that run from the cops. The criminal can only make one mistake, that''s it. The 10 cop cars chasing him can make 9 mistakes. As long as one of them is left, the criminal will get caught.
If a player decides to go on a rampage, he might be able to kill 20 good players, yes. But eventually, he''ll end up dead himself.
I guess the only true good players in danger would be the true newbies. They could be targeted by newly created ''evil'' characters.
Those players that invest hours of their time gaining power for their evil character, to then go on a rampage until they get killed themselves... that''s actually just what a game needs: the occasional psycho.

I think that a permanent death system CAN solve a LOT of the current problems. It has to be a secure system though.

quote: Someone once said that you need 2 new features or concepts for any new game. Fewer than that, and the game is too similar to what has gone before and won''t be interesting. More than that, and the game is too different from previous games and will be hard to understand and get into. Food for thought.

I sometimes wonder how long it''ll take before the music industry is satieted. How long before each combination of tones has been used?
Back to gaming industry... with all the games out there, I think every new game design is almost guaranteed to have some similarities to other popular games. If only just the label. I mean... make ANY game with skills in it and you''ll draw some rpg fans to try it. I believe in the ''need at least 2 new features'' concept. A new game with less than that will just keep me playing the old game. But I think that a new game can have as many new features as you can think of... as long as the overall genre is known to the players. Or is that once again just my wishful thinking?

quote: Original post by Silvermyst
And then 3rd... some bad acts shouldn''t be punished at all. There is almost a need for an evil community of players within a virtual world. It''s just the ''bad act''s'' that you as a designer do NOT want to see happening that need punishment.

I wouldn''t necessarily agree with the ''need'' for some bad people. On the communities I have been in charge of, the consensus is almost always to remove the players. It''s not so much a case of "adversity brings us together". It''s more like cutting out a cancer before it spreads to the rest of the game. If a small minority of players manage to annoy some others, then those others may leave or come online less often. Then the friends who used to play and socialise with the people who left will end up doing the same. New players that would replace them get harassed and put off by the bad ones. If left unchecked, the bad players damage your game.

quote: Example 1: Don''t like the way someone talks? The current way of dealing with that in a game like Everquest is to put that person on /ignore. No messages from that person will reach your character''s ears.

It doesn''t help much for their character names, or anything else they can customize.

quote: Word of mouth spreads fast. Before you know it, telling one player ''f'' you'' will get you a very bad social standing.

And among other players, you gain respect for being tough and saying what you think.

It''s tempting to think that good players stick together and bad players fight each other. It doesn''t usually work out that way. Even some good players end up having some weird admiration for players who are disruptive. I don''t agree that you can rely on the self-policing aspect without a significant degree of population selection and approproate tools for that population to use.

quote: Example 2: Piling up rocks so that someone can''t escape. Hm, that''s low. But in my design permanent death is included. I''d consider blocking someone inside a dungeon to be comparable to killing someone outright.

Yeah, but (a) Trapped person has to be able to report this problem, and (b) There has to be evidence that the ''Bad Guy'' did it. How are you gonna prove these things? Even if you coded your system to log every movement of every rock (pretty much impossible if you want to support anything other than a tiny world), then you still need a human to adjudicate whether it was intentional or not.

quote: Standing in a corridor so someone can''t pass? Kill the offender.
Running past a dragon and leading it to a herd of new players... I know the ''tactic'' from my EQ days (never actually experienced it). I''d think that with permanent death, people wouldn''t try these things, because the chance of themselves dying is just too big (but I''d have to set up a system to prevent one newly generated newbie from running past a dragon on a suicide mission, just so he can get some higher level characters killed while he''s at it).

What if the guy who was blocking the way was link-dead? Or severely lagged? In another window chatting to his girlfriend on IRC and forgot about the game? And the dragon problem: the guy could have been trying to kill newbies, or he could have been legitimately scared of it. Maybe he would have been able to kill the dragon easily, but didn''t know this. Maybe he knew he could kill the dragon easily, meaning there was no threat to his own life, but led them into the newbies for a laugh. The system can only make a good call on intent in the most trivial of cases. So all I am saying, is that the design of the system can only go so far: when there are people involved, you have 2 choices: Either need to have other people in the adjudication process, or leave everyone to their own devices. The latter will see ''survival of the fittest'', which is usually the anti-social 13 year old boys who find killing everyone else fun, and easy too, since they spend 12hrs a day on your game.

quote: If a player decides to go on a rampage, he might be able to kill 20 good players, yes. But eventually, he''ll end up dead himself.

The thing is, the bad players don''t tend to care. They tend to regard their character as a tool for having fun, and the fun in this case was to kill the good players. So when they die, they don''t care so much. But your 20 good players might have lost a hell of a lot more, in personal terms. Is that a price you are willing to pay on your game? (Consider how many people left Ultima Online for Everquest based on similar problems of being killed.)

quote: But I think that a new game can have as many new features as you can think of... as long as the overall genre is known to the players. Or is that once again just my wishful thinking?

By ''feature'', the meaning was ''significant feature''. You can add as many trivial ones as you like. But if you add more than 2 big changes to a game, then you run the risk of making the barrier to entry too high. Pretty much every classic game has followed this kind of rule and has been an iteration of what has gone before. The only exceptions I can think of are games that are so simple, that they almost only have 2 features anyway: eg. Pacman, Tetris. If you can think of any exceptions, I''d be interested to hear.

KYLOTAN

quote: I wouldn''t necessarily agree with the ''need'' for some bad people. On the communities I have been in charge of, the consensus is almost always to remove the players. It''s not so much a case of "adversity brings us together". It''s more like cutting out a cancer before it spreads to the rest of the game. If a small minority of players manage to annoy some others, then those others may leave or come online less often. Then the friends who used to play and socialise with the people who left will end up doing the same. New players that would replace them get harassed and put off by the bad ones. If left unchecked, the bad players damage your game.

I love the idea of ''evil'' players though. And I''d love to be able to design a gameplan that actually uses the common knowledge that certain players are ''grief'' players. I also think that IF you START OUT designing your game USING the fact that some players WANT to be ''evil'' you might actually solve the problem right then and there. Current games seem to start out forgetting that some players might abuse the game design. The many, many, MANY patches that EQ has already gone through to prevent players from ruining the game experience for others... still haven''t really resulted in anything.

The only solution EVER to deal with ''grief'' players in a MMORPG is to let the players themselves deal with it. And to accomplish that you HAVE to give them the tools. The simplest tool I can think of is permanent death That also happens to be my favorite feature anyway, so... it''ll make it into my game design no matter how I turn it.

quote: --Example 1: Don''t like the way someone talks? The current way of dealing with that in a game like Everquest is to put that person on /ignore. No messages from that person will reach your character''s ears.--

It doesn''t help much for their character names, or anything else they can customize.

No, it doesn''t. But nothing will. Name filters won''t... you''d almost need to hire a person to constantly check names logged in. Again... somehow I think that permanent death will help. I don''t think Mr.Death favors those with idiotic names.

quote: --Word of mouth spreads fast. Before you know it, telling one player ''f'' you'' will get you a very bad social standing.--

And among other players, you gain respect for being tough and saying what you think.

It''s tempting to think that good players stick together and bad players fight each other. It doesn''t usually work out that way. Even some good players end up having some weird admiration for players who are disruptive. I don''t agree that you can rely on the self-policing aspect without a significant degree of population selection and approproate tools for that population to use.

Still... permanent death is the best tool available. If it turns out that evil players still dominate the planet because good players don''t stick together... then so be it. In my own designs I usually try to come up with a system that keeps ''good'' players from hurting other ''good'' players, but that DOES give a reason for ''evil'' players to kill other ''evil'' players.

I realize it''s hard to come up with an airtight, waterproof idea... but I think you have to. It only takes one smart player to spread the word, and before you know it tons of players will be disrupting your carefully prepared design.

quote: --Example 2: Piling up rocks so that someone can''t escape. Hm, that''s low. But in my design permanent death is included. I''d consider blocking someone inside a dungeon to be comparable to killing someone outright.--

Yeah, but (a) Trapped person has to be able to report this problem, and (b) There has to be evidence that the ''Bad Guy'' did it. How are you gonna prove these things? Even if you coded your system to log every movement of every rock (pretty much impossible if you want to support anything other than a tiny world), then you still need a human to adjudicate whether it was intentional or not.

a) Being trapped is not a reportable problem... it''s part of the game design. If I made it possible for players to move rocks around, I should''ve predicted that players might block someone in. If I don''t think that''s fair, I need to find a solution in my design. If I think ''tough luck'', I''ll leave the design as is. If one player wants to spend hours putting together the rocks to block one person in, and if that other person doesn''t have the tools to get out and if he''s unlucky enough to find no other exits... tough luck.
b) The only way someone will know who did it, is if someone spotted the perpetrator in the act. If the person trapped inside saw who did it and found a way to escape... you better believe he''d tell his friends about it. And those friends would tell their friends...etc.

quote: What if the guy who was blocking the way was link-dead? Or severely lagged? In another window chatting to his girlfriend on IRC and forgot about the game?

If you design a game where a corridor is small enough for only one player to fit through, you should come up with a solution for link-death and lag (maybe automatically move character up against wall). If player is in another window chatting to his girlfriend on IRC... well, tough luck. In my design, death is not kind. Don''t play and talk. In other designs... You still should have the decency to realize that you might be blocking other players and move aside before changing to IRC.

quote: The thing is, the bad players don''t tend to care. They tend to regard their character as a tool for having fun, and the fun in this case was to kill the good players. So when they die, they don''t care so much. But your 20 good players might have lost a hell of a lot more, in personal terms. Is that a price you are willing to pay on your game? (Consider how many people left Ultima Online for Everquest based on similar problems of being killed.)

Still... I tend to think that those evil players will get theirs. I know I''m hammering the same argument, but in my own design, permanent death wouldn''t allow the evil player to go on a real rampage. The only players he''d be able to kill would be newly created players. If a high level player plays evil... so be it. He''s evil. That''s what he is. My game counts on players like that. I''d almost say I encourage it. I want players to have distrust... because that''s the best way to build up trust. If you know that any player might be ''evil'' and might stab you in the back at any moment, you''ll make sure you get a group of really close friends that you know (think) you can trust.

I WOULD make it VERY clear to my players that death IS permanent...

Players leaving EQ for being killed? First off, there are only certain servers where players can actually kill one another. If you join one of those servers, you should pretty much realize that there is only one rule: there are no rules. The EQ designers have tried to implement some rules to prevent grief players from completely ruining the game for others... but it still comes down to one thing: the game wasn''t designed for PvP. Same thing with Ultima. Any game that''s not specifically designed for PvP will not be able to handle player death in PvP in a good way.

quote: By ''feature'', the meaning was ''significant feature''. You can add as many trivial ones as you like. But if you add more than 2 big changes to a game, then you run the risk of making the barrier to entry too high. If you can think of any exceptions, I''d be interested to hear.

My designs

(of course... those will probably never make it. So your point is proven )

I agree you SM on all your points about evil characters and perm death except on the point of newbies getting killed by rampaging evil players. Now you may say tough luck for the newbs but if it happens many times to them its going to be tough luck for your game. Why? Because newbs get frustrated if they constantly seem to have ''tough luck''. And what about those good players whove played a while and after a month or two died? Yes they will be willing to spend another month or two rebuilding their char BUT by this time maybe there are a lot of high level evil chars that end up killing these vets before they reach suficient strength to keep that from happening. Yes there are those that will put up with it but there are still many who will not. I don''t totally disagree with your ideas but at the same time I feel there are many design issues that have to be addressed before it solves some of the problems MMORPGs face.

Replicate life behavior.
If the player is known as being evil, people will reject it, guards will keep him our of town, price will suddenly increase for him...

Also add areas where justice and law is strongely enforced, making sure a player killing another will be in serious trouble.

Game balance is not that hard, just use your brain and innovate instead of imitating blindly.

-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-

TECHNOHYDRA:

quote: I agree you SM on all your points about evil characters and perm death except on the point of newbies getting killed by rampaging evil players.

I agree. The newbie area is the one area that suffers from the permanent death system. But I''m sure a good design can take care of this (no permanent death until character gets to certain point, except for when he''s engaged in combat with other characters). I bet there are tons of solutions to this particular problem.