To Those That Do Not Favor Non-Consensual Player Combat

I support an open world that uses consequences to guide or deter actions instead of placing arbitrary restrictions on those actions.

What consequences would you accept to allow full and open non-consensual player combat?

 

None. As 15+ years have gaming has shown. This doesn't work. The risk/reward is asymmetric because the "good" players don't want to take on karma. If you have rules, the winner is the one who plays best by the rules. If you remove them, the winner is the most ruthless. The person willing to do what the other doesn't. The PK runs multiple accounts, hides his good gear with friends, knows how to wash his Karma or just keeps resetting the character as needed.

PvPers play the game like athletes, PKers like bullies. I want a game build like a sport.

 

Many old MUDs used permanent death for "murderer" it worked there with huge players base for it's time I think something like that would work now to.

The penalties must be hard enough so the killings are at a level so you still get the experience of a some what civilized world. If the killings get to common it will ruin the role-playing aspect of the game for a lot of players.

 

What I've been trying to say all this time.
This is a game, and games need rules to keep it fun for everyone.

 

With a significant portion of the PvP player base who have griefing other players as their primary method of enjoyment in a game there are no penalties that you can enact that will deter them.

 

I greatly agree, but i think perma-death for PKers would be a nice start

 

If they introduce the PvP a few month in and make make it with permanent death penalties I think most of the PvP will hesitate to start non-consensual PK career. Then will the type of PvP I like to play have some extra fun when you know you permanently kill a character

 

A limited number of PvP slots, where anyone that wishes to PvP must take that slot from another PvPer.

 

First off, I'm coming from a background of having played nearly every play style in MMOGs at one point or another, especially variations of PvP. I appreciate them all because I think they are all important to a well rounded game. When considering open PvP - I want it. I accept, however, that because morals go out the window in video games, there must be in game mechanisms to balance the game. I think a lot of supporters of open PvP acknowledge this.

While I'm not advocating for all of the following, I think they are ideas worth exploring:

• A bounty system where quests are generated for good characters to hunt down murderers (any bounty hunters should not be able to have murderer characters).
• A way to prevent or penalize anyone from aiding murderers.
• Speech between opponents should be squelched - It would help put a stop to griefing. (Perhaps murderers speech should convert into another language, much how ghosts did in UO?)
• Character degradation upon the death of murderers or even in game jail time. (Jail time would suck, yes, but it mimics reality and we have other characters to play).
• Perhaps if you drop into a murderer status it should lock any of your other characters from being played. If you are going to be a murderer, fully commit to a character.

So a lot of these suggestions may seem harsh but one of the large loop holes that they should try to address if they allow open PvP - is the interaction between murderers and other non-murderers. There is nothing worse than a friend of a murderer who is a 'bounty hunter' collecting on his bounty and then splitting the money with the murderer. Or a murderer who walks home, dumps his loot in a chest only to log off and then back on with his good character to sell the loot. Those are just a few thoughts I had, obviously we need to find something balanced.

 

Restricting player movement is the only form of punishment I would ever consider punitive enough to deter anti-social behaviour (other than Wsye's suggestion of permaban, which is essentially the ultimate form of "restricted movement").

Since the only punishment we can incur on the outside user is to expend their time, the only way to do so in game is to force their character into a position where their time is essentially "wasted". Sitting in a jail cell would be the worst, though for lesser crimes, perhaps the ability to escape and spend your time hiding out in the woods would work just as well.

Anti-social behaviour against another user (be it in the form of killing them or stealing their stuff) effectively robs that user of game-time. The punishment should be of a similar ilk.

 

Well stated. It's funny, had the exact same argument with Developer Dragon way back in UO days on their forums, since the problem isn't a game balance one, it's a -player- behavior one. Open battles and even the normal PK experience was fine, until you had the jerk ones who took it too far, and ruined the experience for others.

The joke "this is why we can't have nice things" is appropriate. Sure, they should offer and have that experience and availability for folks who -DO- enjoy it, but gaming's own history has shown adamantly you can't force everyone into that quagmire, they'll pull up and take their money with them, as there are so many other choices that are not as punitive to the average player.

I always wanted to see some actual "policing" style tools available for players, like if you managed to beat down that PKer who was terrorizing the place, you could lock him up for awhile or have a hefty fine tagged for his crimes. Alternatively, the PKers could overthrow a township, requiring players to mount an assault that could be bolstered by NPC support as more time went on. Some folks like playing villains, and as long as it's not intentional griefing, they should have some methods, and we should get to fight them with a reasonable defense.

 

Some people enjoy playing trolls and don't care what happens to their toon, so punishment doesn't dissuade them. Even if you could adequately punish griefers/trolls in game, they've potentially done their damage in driving away new players.

The merits don't outweigh the costs for such a system because of how players abuse it.

 

This will never work! When the bounty is high enough your friend kill you and then you split the reward.

You will probably only get one character per account, at least if you listen to what RG says, and it's far from sure all will have multiple accounts. Therefore I think if you commit enough murders a permanently death are in order. Instead of some role-playing in and about a jail why not public executions?

 

That's very true. The punishments could deter and balance some of it, because face it, you want to play the character you've put time into, but it would not prevent the determined trolls, as you said.

I'm not against there being hardcore, Siege-like servers where if you multiplayer on those, you can expect a horribly painful and challenging existence. But I definitely can't see it for everyone lumped together.

 

True true.

A single bad experience in game could result in that user deterring any number of potential number customers, or moving on to a game with a friendlier environment, taking their business (and possibly their entire group of paying customers) with them.

How to deal with that effect has driven the development of every MMO.

EVE for instance takes the approach of "consent upon purchase" : There is no such thing as non-consent in that game, and customers are informed of such right at the beginning.

The original form of UO took the same approach. You bought the game, and immediately consented to PvP action. Later updates changed the method of consent.

The issue comes down to how does a game market themselves : If the customer is aware of the consequences of playing the game from the get-go, they are less likely to take offense when something happens.

Shrouds is being marketed as a game with a myriad of consent levels. You can consent to playing with no players at all (offline), consent to seeing players in game (SPO), consent to seeing only friends, consent to seeing everyone.

And most likely there will be a means to consent to PvP actions as well.

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This thread is mostly a thought excercise in my opinion, there is no way this game will have any form of non-consent, it simply does not fit the existing pattern.

 

Eve was better than UO in that new players usually didn't get griefed immediately. But apparently PvP and griefing was hurting that game, and even Eve has shifted away from their model.

 

I want the PvE'ers to have their watered down PvE Server with restricted PvP such as Dueling Arenas and Guild V Guild Castle Sieges without the loss of any loot.

and

For us Hardcore PvP'ers I want a second server with 100% Full Loot and 100% Open world PvP with no safe zones except for the starter NPC City that should have UO style guard system.

I believe this game will have more than enough players to have 2 separate server to make both gaming communities happy. PvE'ers though don't want this, they want us Hardcore guys to suffer and Play on their PvE server with restricted PvP. I find that to be very selfish on their part.

 

Actually you dont. You have a single character per account.

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I wouldnt kill them. I would stick them in jail for 40 in game years, which is roughly 10 real world years. Effectively locking up their single account used to play the game.

All you pkers want risk/reward? There it is. You can fully murder players in non-pvp designated areas, and get full loot. You get caught, your account is basically locked up for 10 human years.

Love the game that much? Reinvest for a new account and help P continue the game development.

The height of risk/reward.

Cheers.

Then give P the money to provide that. Sounds like there is more than one side being selfish in the request of "play my way or get out"

 

EVE is very different in two ways:
1) You don't really get anything for killing someone. Lineage2 was the same way. You could kill a innocent, but all you got for that was bad karma. (I'm sure there were a few nice things for the freedom, but the unintended consequences were just loads of exploits.) In both EVE and L2 the innocent also took losses, they just weren't transferred.
2) Realistically, it was consent by location. Because you were giving up something of real value to kill someone you got nothing for in a high security area. This was not like PKing someone naked with a cheap weapon where you could either get away with loot or lose very little.

I'm not completely opposed to elements of an EVE style system, if the losses were lowered (EVE is simply not for the casual player). But it gets really, really messy when compared to a faction / guild war system.


I'd really like to see SotA innovate on how you got tagged to one faction or another and an interesting system for floating between them. As in, not locked at creation like other games. I'd just rather see clean rules of engagement for actual combat. The clan war / siege tagging system in Lineage2 was great, the "open" part just didn't work well. It's difficult to have open world objectives (like castles) without guild / faction tagging vs karma.

 

Yes, the potential loss of your ship is a serious concern in EVE, it provides the critical offset when deciding whether to engage in such behaviour, and works very well in a game where things are bought for real money.

However, the business model for the game would need to be developed from the ground-up with that in mind, and is certainly not a game I would ever participate in myself.