One idea I was just wondering about: is it possible to enforce a legal code that isnt based on,v"He killed me, let's go kill him!" ?
Mostly, is it fair or too much of an inconvenience to have characters arrested for crimes they commit in law enforced zones?
A couple examples:
1) Stranger A walks into town and murders Citizen B. townspeople C and D witness, report the crime, and the guards (both PC and NPC) come running. Stranger A could be cut down n the street, but what if he's just subdued - could he be arrested and jailed? If he's jailed, is he jailed until released or until a certain time limit is up? Or is he executed? If resurrections are part of the game, death penalties lose a bit of their sting, but incarceration could become downright cruel, unless well enforced.
2) Stranger E comes into town and is caught stealing from Merchant F. He can pay a fine and return the goods, or he can go to the lockup, or he can serve time on the chain gang. If he chooses jail, his character is now bound to prison. If he chooses the chain gang, he's bound to particular work.
So, maybe in this late night rambling, my question becomes: Can a character be forced to go somewhere the player doesn't want them to go if there are laws in a community that support the character going there?
I'd like to think that an enforceable legal code beyond offend-and-be-killed could be put in place, but I'd rather not have Sheriff Balor (played by John Q Public in Chicago) go around locking folks up indefinitely/indiscriminately. (Nothing against you, Windy City.)
Shorter yet: How does a virtual town's justice system work?
Thanks!
Goblin Squad Member
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If you get busted for griefing and subsequently collected as a bounty or w/e, go play an alt for a day and think about whether you should be a jerk in the future.
Of course, as an alternative, said individual could say "Screw this game," and nix his subscription. Which probably makes this idea far less attractive to the company in charge than it otherwise might be. If you're going to let your players take certain actions, you need to find a way to punish them that isn't so frustrating that they decide to stop playing your game. As a designer, you literally control the game world. If you don't want someone doing something, put controls in place to ensure that they're not able to do whatever that thing is.
Let me highlight the difference for you.
In Skyrim, the game designers want you to be able to steal. They just want you to be good enough at it that you don't get caught. If you get caught, you have to pay a penalty of some kind. This is solid game design.
Now let's imagine this hypothetical MMORPG, wherein the game's designers don't want you to be able to grief-kill your fellow players. Instead of discouraging whatever they don't want to happen, they can simply prevent it from happening completely by designing the game in such a way that players cannot grief-kill.
Or whatever.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And if they want you to have to make the decision of whether or not to do something based on a set of not insignificant and maybe even logical trade offs?
Trade-offs are fine. Until they reach the point where they potentially put users in a situation where they're more likely to stop playing (and paying for) your game because of how harsh or frustrating you've made the penalties.
You know, kinda like the choice to wear heavy armor as an arcane spellcaster.
Wearing armor as a spellcaster is not really a stand-in for having your character jailed for a significant period of time for doing something that the game makes possible (and that the EULA does not prohibit).
The point being discouragement and harsh penalties are different for outright prevention. Furthermore there is no reason both can't be used in different areas. If a major (starting?) city requires visitors to peace-tie or otherwise prevent the use of weapons out side of sanctioned arenas and formal duels, that doesn't mean the same rules have to apply as soon as you step out of the main gate. And if you really don't want to risk it at all you may well be able to live your entire game life within that starting city. You may even be able to make a respectable living through crafting and markets in doing so.
If you are required to "peace-tie" your weapons in city limits, just have the game prohibit combat within the city limits. Or make the penalty for violating that rule not suck.
You need to be careful how these things are handled.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Banishment might work, being people in the game are effectively immortal. if you commit a crime, the Guard will kill you, but you resurrect outside the town limits. and if you try to re-enter for certain amount of time, you are flagged as Killable by PC's and guard will attack you. effectively cutting the player off form the resources of the town.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Wearing armor as a spellcaster is not really a stand-in for having your character jailed for a significant period of time for doing something that the game makes possible (and that the EULA does not prohibit).
Just because a game makes things possible and legal does not inevitably require them to make it a good idea. In WoW, as a level 1 newbie you can walk to a level 85 area, and attack the meanest boss you can find when he get's one shot, does that fall into the category of "Jailing them for doing something that the game does not prohibit". Not everything permitted has to be an optimal or good idea, and many of them can be suicidal or worthless, some ideas can be on par the normal, and some can in fact turn out above average. Just like in pathfinder offline, you can equip a wizard in full plate armor, and accept a massive spell failure chance. Because it is so unideal that few would consider it does it mean that they need to write in a rule saying "wizards cannot wear full plate"?
Just as a clarification, my initial hope was not to have this be another Pros/Cons of PvP thread, as that already exits. Not bad so far, but just in case.
Scott, you made mention of the EULA, which is a good point - someone may feel that their purchase/subscription is being influenced too heavily by another person who is not the company if they are in game being forced to do something against their will after dng something completely permissible. (Though I'm not a lawyer, it makes sense to me.)
Maybe a refinement of the question is how to get players to understand the seriousness with which some folks take the player-created in game legal systems that they come up with, warts and all.
At that point, talking about grifters likely dosn't make sense, because they aren't going to buy into any particular system that won't satisfy their need to disrupt. That might be an over-generalization, but I feel like its a fair assessment.
Perhaps then it becomes incumbent upon each community to make its laws quite clear and accessible for anyone visiting the town - an NPC whose role is to be the town crier of legal affairs, perhaps?
Or, I'm just over thinking this. If I do something in game and get caught for it, I'd like to think that I'd play along with whatever kind of trial or punishment they set up for me, but maybe I, too, would just get indignant and quit if my PC were jailed for too long.
Though really, a fellow faction member getting jailed might be fodder for a jail breaking guild to make a tidy profit, if they know how to do it correctly.
Thanks for enduring the musings. Mostly curious rather than saying it has to be a particular way.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Or, I'm just over thinking this. If I do something in game and get caught for it, I'd like to think that I'd play along with whatever kind of trial or punishment they set up for me, but maybe I, too, would just get indignant and quit if my PC were jailed for too long.Though really, a fellow faction member getting jailed might be fodder for a jail breaking guild to make a tidy profit, if they know how to do it correctly.
I really cannot imagine a situation where jailing can work on an MMO level. Almost any situation I can think of, results in very bad results.
Laws/jailing controlled by players: Players will abuse it, arrest innocent people just to grief
Laws/Jailbreaking controlled by NPCs: Players will find ways to trick other players into getting jailed.
Jail sentence unavoidable: Players will just make alts to play while one is in jail, no change to behavior.
Jailbreaking possible: Now players actually have incentive to be more annoying, once they master whatever is needed to do to jailbreak, they begin breaking laws on purpose. If players have control of laws they will do everything in their power to prevent arrests, crime becomes incentovised by the joy of jail-breaking rather then decentivised by the threat of jail.
I can't think of any situation where jail yeilds a positive result towards discouraging griefing. Everything I can think of either encorages it, or gives new methods to harm those this is implemented to protect, while remaining completely ineffective at best, at worse actually encourage the behavior it is intended to reduce.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My 2 cents...
"Griefing" as in one PLAYER attempting to harrass another PLAYER should be handled by mechanisms outside of the game. Namely GM's and account banning. That's not really something that should be an accepted part of gameplay...in any sort of game, whether PvP focused or not... so it's not something that need be dealt with with in game systems, nor would they really adequite to deal with such behavior.
Anti-Social behavior that is an accepted part of the game (i.e. directed from one CHARACTER to another CHARACTER) such as when some-one is playing a brigand or an outlaw should be allowed but should have in-game consequences. I'd favor a multi-pronged approach to such a system...
Firstly you have the social consequences from other players....if someone is generaly playing an anti-social character....then they are going to have a more difficult time obtaining assistance and or goods & services from other players. In most MMO's today this is somewhat of a non-factor because in almost all of them characters are largely self-reliant and don't depend on others for much of thier needs....but if that were not the case, this certainly could be a detriment.
Secondly, you could and SHOULD in most civilized areas have some form of law enforcement. You break the laws of the local community and get caught...you suffer the consequences. This could easly involve a fine in terms of in game currency and failure to pay the fine could involve some form of incarceration...for some not too lengthy period of time...and maybe even possibly some forced labor (i.e. doing some sort of menial task for the community). Note there is a pretty historical basis for the use of fines as punishment...even for rather serious crimes. In some socities in the Middle Ages, even killing certain classes of people only involved paying recompense....it's where the term "Blood Price" or "Blood Money" derives from.
The third type of system I would impliment is what I would call more of Kharmic Justice type system. Essentialy whenever a player killed (or maybe stole from) another player outside of some specificaly sanctioned conditions (say a guild was "at War" with another guild), the victem could /PUNISH the offender. /PUNISHMENT would be a stacking game-player hinderment. It could take the form of an exp. penalty, a debuff of one sort or another (possibly an increased chance of critical failures) going beyond a certain threshold it could even prevent the offender from engaging in harmfull actions to others. The /Punishment would be at the discretion of the victem....so if they felt the offenders actions were in keeping with the spirit of the game or justified, they could forgo it. A person could get a certain amount of /PUNISHMENTS within a given time period without penalty (essentialy for free) before any sort of penalty would be applied....after crossing that threshold they would get an ever increasing penalty with each subsequent offense...to the point where they eventualy were mechanicaly prevented from harming anyone. Of course, the penalties would expire after a certain amount of game time had transpired as well.
IMO, in a FFA PvP game...you want to support a certain level of character conflict in the game....you want people to be able to play villians, brigands, rogues, etc. But you do want some level of control over the amount of conflict occuring....a situation where people are incessintly being victimized or someone is incessintly victimizing others does not generaly make for a good/freindly play atmosphere for an RPG.... at least outside of certain expected circumstances (i.e. a War between 2 factions). The above sort of system would allow for a mechanism which supports a certain level of conflict without letting things devolve into an unhealthy cesspit. In a fantasy game, there is even some world logic to support a FATE or KHARMA based system.
Note, I'm an old school MUD'er. In those games the people who played villians well did kill people...but they did so rather sparingly...and the victem almost always knew the reason WHY it was happening. They also often made sure that the PLAYER knew it was an action directed at the character not the person. Often a kill would be followed immediately by a private tell of something to the effect of: "Hey nothing personal, but my character really hates X and when you refused to pay the toll, he had to make an example. Don't let it ruin your day, and let me know if you need any OOC advice about the game"
That's the sort of FFA PvP, I wouldn't mind seeing in a game....but I don't think I've ever seen anything like that in an MMO yet....even though it was pretty common in MUD's.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Jail and force Labor won't work, and would basically be a moot punishment.. i get jailed, i log off Bob1, and log on bob2 and do the same thing until I'm jailed on bob2... and hope bob1 is out of jail.. or have to log on bob3.
forced labor won't work for simmilar reasons.
De-buffs, Aggression counters and Banishments work more so.
if you Aggress a Member of a Guild in Wild areas, it flags you as someone who has harmed a member of your brotherhood. enough times being Flagged like this and you'll be ripe for an butt-whooping from a combined Guild force. do the Same thing in Policed lands and you might cathc the wrath of the guards... and said guard will ignore the allies of the person you attacked or killed when they come to beat on you.
Break the laws in a City, and you'll find your self on a timer that amkes you KOS to the Guards...
one must realize the difference between a PnP rpg and an MMO, Death as a punishment isn't the same in either one. in PnP its reserved for the most heinous crimes... in an MMO the guard will Kill Pc's easily, since they are gonna resurrect later. heck in EQ 1, some guard would kill you for begging from them... and would definitely kill you for trying to pickpocket and fail on them...
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like everything else that you said, but I have a question about Alts. Why not disallow them? If the penalties for Griefing specifically happen to be balanced, then why not limit Alts? I believe that any player that would leave because their one character is in jail, or hard labor, or pays an in-game penalty, then good bye and glad to see you go. And not allowing Alts, or only having one or two, would help to deter such behavior in the first place and may even deter Griefers from joining in the first place.
1. Assuming specialization is going to be an option, people are going to want breaks from their specialization... eventually it gets dull playing the same function, but many people like to have that specialty 80% of the time, but need that 20% break.
2. There are no ways to truely identify the same player from making multiple accounts. IP address is cheatable by proxies, anything left on the computer can be hidden/removed and some people can have tons of computers around their houses. Second flaw with IPs is they do not represent 1 person. Entire college dormitories will have 1 IP for thousands of users. Home users may or may not have siblings, spouses kids etc... Credit cards in addition to having the same siblings/spouses issue people can also get multiples of them.
I am against punishment for greifing, instead make the game so it doesn't let you do actions that would be greifing, because the former opens a can of worms to new forms of greifing. For example, rather than punishing freindly fire, deactivate freindly fire or some *genius* will find a way make himself targeted so it can make their comrades take the penalty for greifing.
Humbly,
Yawar
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am against punishment for greifing, instead make the game so it doesn't let you do actions that would be greifing, because the former opens a can of worms to new forms of greifing. For example, rather than punishing freindly fire, deactivate freindly fire or some *genius* will find a way make himself targeted so it can make their comrades take the penalty for greifing.
Humbly,
Yawar
Unfortunately, there is no effective way to do this, because pretty much ANY action in a game can be used for "greifing". Most times, greifing depends on the context in which something is done.
For example, talking isn't generaly considered griefing.....using racial slurs directed at another PLAYER (as opposed to thier character) certainly is.
Anyone remember back in EQ when players would greif by purposefully training mobs into other players?
@GrumpyMel - thanks for taking me back to the days of walking into Blackburrow and watching 43 starved Gnolls running at me when their aggressor ran right by and zoned out. I remember plenty of /corpse for corpse runs back in the day.