Here''s something I been wondering about: Imagine an online game where there is opportunity for players to advance in social hierarchy. The top most powerful/infuencial 50 people could actually get paid to play. However, every character death would decrease their monthly profit (but won''t effect next month''s profit if they keep their position). How do you think this would effect the player community? Of course, there would be methods for less influencial people to join forces and beat one of those 50 people, gain their position. Would that have positive or negative effect?

That depends on how seriously a given individual takes it.

If I worked hard to reach a certain place only to become usurped by a group of people that decided to unanimously target me for no real reason (other than just being the chosen target), I probably wouldn''t be all that happy about it.

But, if those are the rules of the game, then all who play are fair game.

quote: Original post by berserk
However, every character death would decrease their monthly profit (but won''t effect next month''s profit if they keep their position).

I don''t understand the sentence above.

What I meant to say was: lets say you get 100 bucks a month for playing the game as some big king. If somebody kills you once, then by the end of the month you get only 90 bucks. If somebody kills you 10 times during the month, you don't get anything. Or if somebody kills you 11 times, you pay 10 bucks just like everbody else (it won't go lower than that). But if next month you make it without dying, you get your 100 bucks.

The reason why I thought of including this is to discourage powerful players from going into "killing sprees", cause while they may kill a lot of others, they'll still get killed once in a while.

The whole point of rewarding influencial players with money is to make they play more responcibly, to abide by socially acceptable rules, make the game more interesting for others. And simply act the way a real person in that position should act.

That will also give an additional motivation for regular players to form into groups and obtain power. Having players organize into groups and fight is exactly what you should expect from a good game. Groups add to community and fighting just makes the game fun.

[edited by - berserk on May 13, 2002 11:49:37 PM]

That could be considered gambling, or even a lottery and is probably illegal without proper authorization from the authorities.

i think something like that would just motivate more people to cheat.

It''s no really gambling, it''s mostly a competition with prize winning. It would take real effort to achieve, nothing random.

And I was speaking theoretically, assuming there are effective ways of identifying powerful people and assuming there''s no way to cheat, what kind of effects would the payment system have on community? If it''s decided that positive effects are unlikely, then there''s no need to bother finding good and cheat-free ways of identifying those people.

I like the innovativeness of this idea. It creates a genuinely co-operative "pull" in the game without leading to massive costs. But how stable would a social structure be if only ten people actually got paid?

How would you measure which players are more powerful/infuencial?

The ones with the largest score could probably be people PKing their way to the top or perhaps camping near a creature respawning spot to kill it over and over again. I wouldnt like that guy to be paid to play :-). You could give the price to the players that are most helpful with the others, but i cant think of a way to do that :-(. Maybe a voting system?? i dont know.

You probably dont need to "pay" those top players. You could just let them play for free. If the game costs $10/month just give them a $10 credit. That way you could give many more smaller prices (a $5 credit, a $2 credit ...) and tempt (sp??) more players to be commited to the community without the increased costs of having several big prices.

Z.

PS: Sorry about my bad english ;-)

I agree with the comments about gambling and the money involved being an increased incentive to cheat.

The idea simply isn''t feasible, and wouldn''t have the (stated) desired result of making players play the game more responsibly. Once *real* money is involved (no matter how little), gaining the money becomes the goal of the game. And anything the game allows is "fair".

You won''t like how people start acting in a setup like that. You''ll be amazed at the depths to which they will sink.


DavidRM
Samu Games