Hmmm... Just put some really-powerfull Moderators in the game (most likely going to be wizards). At first, they will simply go out hunting notorious PK''ers. After a while, people will start to recognise these Wizards (and hopefully look up to them). Those wizards can then each pick their own "home", and start to recruit players as a "police force".

The members of this "force" would gain status amongst the others, because they are protected by the wizard. But they can only keep this status by "pleasing" their wizard (and killing the PK''er whom is going too far). Heck, good Police Officers can even start to give out rewards to people whom kill a "really evil" pk''er, resulting in Bounty Hunters being born.

And perhaps, to keep things juicy, one wizard could declare war on another, meaning that the "police forces" have valid targets (and could hire adventurers to help them out with attacking the "hostile" force)....

Just an idea...

-Maarten Leeuwrik
"Some people when faced with the end of a journey simply decide to begin anew I guess."

In turn, I am not really suggesting that we expect responsible play from the players... just that we have to accept that there will be differences and we cannot wave magic wands or light sabres or whatever and simply even out the inherent imbalances between players. Not without seriously affecting true honest gameplay.

Hmmm.... Continuing the previous post (sorry, should have posted this in the same reply, but didnt occur to me yet ):

Perhaps eliminate levelling, and end up with a "promotion" system... At first, every player is level one, except for several moderators (whom pose as kings, wizards, perhaps even evil rulers). Players can somewhat advance their abilities, but not to great heights.

However, someone with a higher rank can "promote" a lower-ranking person to say... 1 level below his own (and can only do this so much times). A person whom is... 3 levels? higher then someone else, and "on the same team" (following the same king, etc. etc.) could also strip someone of 1 level (but only 1, not mroe). And lets say at the start of the game, the moderators go on an active search for nice players to help them out

In the end, this would more or less remove the PK''ing aspect as we know it. When you are a notorious PK''er, you are very likely to be "stripped" of your rank by the first person whom comes around, thus weakening you.

When you want to grow stronger, you need to find a higher-ranking person to follow. This could mean adventuring with a higher-level ranger, in the hope of becoming his friend and gaining ranks (or perhaps even getting him to recommend you to even higher-ranking people).

The players would be free to choose whom to join to gain levels (the good king, the evil tyrant), but would be expected to follow his/her guidelines. (though perhaps once you got a nice rank, you could contact an enemy moderator and try to become a spy for him/her )...

Okay, this is a very simple way to say it, it would need some working out, but could this be a good plan...?

-Maarten Leeuwrik
"Some people when faced with the end of a journey simply decide to begin anew I guess."

quote: Original post by DavidRM
Kressilac:

Wanting players of a game to be "responsible" for their actions in a simulated envirnoment seems...iffy.

The simulation determines the cause-and-effect relationship between actions. The anonymity of a player account, combined with the lack of face-to-face social pressures, means that normal social mores don''t apply...and that whatever the simulation *allows* is a valid action. That this may affect someone else''s enjoyment of the game is largely irrelevant because that player''s complaints can be either ignored with the built-in chat functions or even seen as part of the "reward" for the action.

Rather than fight this "law of nature", like 19th century "inventors" strapping on wings and leaping from cliffs, game designers should just accept it and plan accordingly.

I can certainly see your point, but that is where I struggle. Start giving players land ownership, property ownership and other rights to the storyline/landscape of your game and you get yourself into a catch 22 real quick. With ownership comes freedom AND responsibility. Sure you lead the city of Dakvia and you''re the king of all its people, but do you accept this rulership and will you work to protect it. I honestly believe that things don''t have meaning in games unless they can be threatened in some way. If I can''t take your kingdom, why would you try to build it. You hav eno need to grow to support defense budgets...

Problem I see is that many players just want to be coddled through an online experience. How are we ever going to build more meaningful communities in online games if the players don''t devote more of the brain resources to playing the game? Basically, if I follow your rule of thumb, advanced politics, advanced social systems and advanced relationships in an online community are impossible.

Kressilac

Maybe I didn''t understand your first post completely Ronin, if thats the case sorry, but I dont know about all that policing as being a good thing, PKing has a definite place in almost every MMO game I can think of, if PKers know that they''re going to get killed because they''re doing what they like to do they just wont play it. The trick in this case is to give everyone some sort of chance, no matter how much time they''ve spent online, while still holding a distinction between novice and vet.

Just take it as far as you can and let them deal with the new world they want to pretend to live in. One of the reasons they play it is to have the equal opportunities that they don''t get in RL. This is easier at the beginning when everyones a newb, the imbalances don''t start to come out until you several groups of players at different amounts of experience (I dont mean the stat I mean real time playing it) in playing the game.

As for getting a phone call or having your cat jump on the keyboard and d/c you in the middle of a battle, they are just going to have to deal it and move on. If you try to appease them then you''ll get swamped by those who just want to redo something and have no valid claim to any compensation. Those are just variables that are outside the game''s control and as such they are not the game''s responsibility.

quote: Original post by kressilac
I can certainly see your point, but that is where I struggle. Start giving players land ownership, property ownership and other rights to the storyline/landscape of your game and you get yourself into a catch 22 real quick. With ownership comes freedom AND responsibility. Sure you lead the city of Dakvia and you''re the king of all its people, but do you accept this rulership and will you work to protect it. I honestly believe that things don''t have meaning in games unless they can be threatened in some way. If I can''t take your kingdom, why would you try to build it. You hav eno need to grow to support defense budgets...

What does it mean to "take a game seriously"? Does that imply that sometimes the player has to play, even when he doesn''t want to? Performing an action that isn''t fun and provides little, if any, immediate benefit?

I agree with the premise that ownership implies responsibility. But if it''s not a "fun responsibility", or it''s a responsibility that grows irksome over time, the game becomes too much like the real life that the player was escaping from.

People want to "play" being king...they don''t want to actually *be* king...at least not for very long. So the "tedious bits" of life have to be removed in an online game just as they are removed in books and movies.

quote: Original post by kressilac
Problem I see is that many players just want to be coddled through an online experience. How are we ever going to build more meaningful communities in online games if the players don''t devote more of the brain resources to playing the game? Basically, if I follow your rule of thumb, advanced politics, advanced social systems and advanced relationships in an online community are impossible.

How many civic-minded people do you know in real life? Did you even vote in your last civic elections? I know I''m pretty spotty about things like that--and I know a number of friends and acquaintances who vote even less frequently.

I forget the voter turnout for the 2000 presidential elections here in the US, but I think it''s something like 1-in-5 registered voters. I would guess that the number of MMOG players interested in voting about issues in the game, especially as they relate to in-game politics, is even smaller than 20%. After all, it is supposed to be a game. They''re just here to have fun.

I think some MMOGs try to include too much in the game...not just too much of what looks suspiciously like "Real Life (tm)", but too much "game". The games have no real focus and attempt to be all things to all players.

Even RPG groups eventually divide into groups that prefer a particular style of play. Hack-and-slash gamers don''t stick around too long in "boring" role-playing gamer sessions. But what MMOGs seem to want to do is force both the hack-and-slash powergamers and the pure role-players to not only co-exist peacefully, but even interact meaningfully. And that is wishful thinking.

So, no, I don''t see much hope for "advanced social systems" in a game...unless that is what the game is *about*.


DavidRM
Samu Games

You know I think its sad but I dont think many mmorpg''s can be made more open ended and still make a profit.

The sad fact of it is player deversity, some want pvp, some want to be immune and will cry to no end otherwise, other want other things.

I personally wonder if targeting isnt a bad thing, if you could make a mmorpg that hits the target you want perfectly you could probally charge more per month than other mmorpg''s.

For example, lets take a cyberpunk game generaly your die hard cyberpunk gamers(cyberpunk,shawdowrun,etc) are gonna want somewhat of a darkend world, drugs, death, murder, strippers, weapons, danger at all times, and not a 3d chat room where your immune to any danger.

Now if you could hit thoose desires good enough you probally could get off with charging more for a rpg not held back by the masses of other players.

The question then becomes can you attract enough of that crowd that with even a higher monthly payment could you turn profit and still keep the servers running?

I miss Paintball NET.

Why o why did it have to go? WAAAAHHHHHH!!!!

DavidRM, I think you and I are in agreement then. From Raph Koster''s page on Laws of MUDs/MMORPGs, I look at the triangle that descirbe what these games are. On one side we have the community, on the other side we have gameplay, and on the third side we have realism/simulation. (idea paraphrased) Somewhere in the middle is where an MMO** finds its stable point. We are attempting to push the envelope on the community side of the game, thinking that a story and a world that players can affect and interact with is where the market is likely to be headed. Our problem comes from enhancing the community aspect of the game without those enhancements feeling like window dressings on an existing game.

To that end, you need communities and motivations for those communities to exist which leads you quickly to the side of realism/simulation. As you pointed out this is just like life, but I do disagree with you to a degree about players only wanting to be king for a time. Strong Guilds in current MMO games indicate some players enjoy this for extended periods of time. The Sims was pretty much treated with, its a life simulation, we play games to escape, who would bother to play that game; boy were the doubters wrong on that one. The current crop of real time strategy game players is capable of some very advanced strategy and organization for significant periods of time... Anyway back to the point, I think it is our challenge then to make a game where realism and community enhance the community aspect of the game while trying to stretch those two sides of the triangle as far towards good gameplay as possible. Given the gameplay, will players find entertainment in interacting with real people more often then interacting with dumb AI that can be easily overcome/dealt with? If its players, then will they bear the burden of social interaction that comes with human interaction realizing there is probably a more entertaining game burried in that interaction?

My only test against that theory (from thread after thread on combat systems as a central focus of MMO*s) is that players in general seem to want nothing to do with anything more than a whack-a-mole type game and couldn''t be bothered with engaging in a significantly more involved game. We give more attention to The Sopranos on television than we do to the games we play. Why is this? Guess I am going to have to ponder this a bit more and see if there is a way I can come up with an approach to make an engaging MMO* type game that is not about beating monster after monster while walking around free from harm because the server dictates no one can attack you.

Kressilac

quote: kressilac
DavidRM, I think you and I are in agreement then.

I think so...but you''re more optimistic about it than I am.

You see the problem, and want to solve it. I see the problem less as something to be solved and more of a law of nature to be worked with (or compensated for).

The Answer (tm) is probably somewhere in between. Or maybe we''re both wrong and The Answer is somewhere else entirely... ;-)

quote: kressilac
...To that end, you need communities and motivations for those communities to exist which leads you quickly to the side of realism/simulation. As you pointed out this is just like life, but I do disagree with you to a degree about players only wanting to be king for a time. Strong Guilds in current MMO games indicate some players enjoy this for extended periods of time.

I fail to see the connection between guilds and wanting to be king.

"Guilds" in nearly all cases are meta-game concepts, even when they are strongly supported within the game itself. That''s because all guilds are created equal, so to speak. They have to be, because they are created by players for players.

The primary point of "guilds" or "clans" in a MMOG is to provide a sub-community for the players. With 1000-3000 players on an EQ server, you are "alone in a sea of faces..." There''s no way you''re going to get to know all of these players. Guilds provide a way to reduce the number of people you interact with, allowing a sense of community to develop.

"Being king", however, is very much within the game. And that applies to any position of power that is within the context of the game. Not a "guild leader", or even an admin/moderator. Your character is part of the story. Obviously, there are going to be a limited number of these...

quote: kressilac
The Sims was pretty much treated with, its a life simulation, we play games to escape, who would bother to play that game; boy were the doubters wrong on that one.

Were these the same doubters who panned "Deer Hunter"? ;-)

The Sims isn''t a life simulation...it''s Populous at the personal level with SimCity''s lack of competition.

And UO proved that people *are* willing to pay to be online butchers, bakers, and candlestickmakers. But the designers of UO failed to stop there, and decided that the world also needed serial killers...and since serial-killing bunnies only goes so far, they shifted to more exciting prey: the aforementioned butchers, bakers, and candlestickmakers.

And UO is, therefore, a great example of a game having no focus: In a world where you can play both wolf and sheep, go figure that the wolves end up dominating and setting the tone of the game...even after the wolves are belled and branded...

quote: kressilac
The current crop of real time strategy game players is capable of some very advanced strategy and organization for significant periods of time...

Yah, and they get really tedious after a while, unless the designers provide a way to automate the more mundane tasks once the player has mastered them.

Example: The end-game of Civilization...when you have more military units than you can reasonably use...and having to cycle through them all each turn. Thank god (or somebody) for the "sentry" command (aka, "Sit here and doing nothing until I think of something useful for you to do"). Civ2 added the nifty "automated settlers" that did a lot to get rid of the endless strip-mine-irrigate-road-railroad chores. I haven''t played Civ3, as yet, so I have no idea what new automation features have been added.

Of course, some people think accounting is fun...so obviously, one man''s tedium is another man''s richly-detailed entertainment...

quote: kressilac
I think it is our challenge then to make a game where realism and community enhance the community aspect of the game while trying to stretch those two sides of the triangle as far towards good gameplay as possible. Given the gameplay, will players find entertainment in interacting with real people more often then interacting with dumb AI that can be easily overcome/dealt with? If its players, then will they bear the burden of social interaction that comes with human interaction realizing there is probably a more entertaining game burried in that interaction?

My only test against that theory (from thread after thread on combat systems as a central focus of MMO*s) is that players in general seem to want nothing to do with anything more than a whack-a-mole type game and couldn''t be bothered with engaging in a significantly more involved game.

Now you''re beginning to sound like an unappreciated artist. ;-)

Seriously, though, besides UO with its misguided attempt to host both Jack the Ripper and Martha Stewart gamestyles in the same small arena, has any major MMOG attempted to provide anything besides hunt-the-wumpus-so-you-can-level? I would guess that most MMORPGs follow this track for the same reason most dice-and-paper RPGs use "murder-based" experience point systems: It''s easy. After all, how *do* you award XP for "meaningful inter-player interaction"?

It''s definitely a challenge...


DavidRM
Samu Games