[MUD-Dev] Re: CGDC, a summary

[Koster]

on Monday, May 18, 1998 12:23 PM cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA
[SMTP:cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA] said:

> :3.  Bullies.  These players PK because they enjoy messing things up
> :    for other people.
> 
> Allow players to have a 'bully' command. This
> lets them identify another character as a bully. Having done that
identification,
> the bully can no longer kill the character. However, the damage (and
note of
> kill if it would have happened) is still computed, and the motions of
the
> combat are still gone through. The result is remembered. At some later
point
> in town, an admin, or possibly a representative of a player-run
justice
> agency, has to make a choice as to whether or not the call of 'bully'
was
> justified (don't ask me how!). If it was, the remembered damage, etc.
is
> discarded. If not, the damage is made real, including possibly killing
the
> character and dumping the corpse at the site of death, and giving the
> aquitted bully first choice of loot.

Shades of UO's new reputation system, which is entering final testing
with an anticipated publish to the public later this week.

Under this new system, everyone is an "Innocent" at first. Doing damage
to an innocent (either directly or via first-order indirect agents
(walls of fire spells, pets or hirelings, summoned creatures, etc) that
contributes towards their death results in a chance for the victim to
report you, and contribute money towards an eventual bounty. Five
reports, and you're not an Innocent anymore. You're a Murderer, show
with red all over you to others (you become a big target), and will
start to incur serious penalties between 5 and 20% of all stats and
skills) when you die until such time as you are no longer a murderer (a
lot of playtime can reduce killcount by 1). Kill a murderer, take his
head to any city guard in the game, and get the money players donated
towards that person's bounty.

In addition, there's the "gray area" stuff. These are handled by putting
a 2 minute window of vulnerability on people who do questionable
activities, which we term flagging someone "criminal." I have no doubt
that overzealous players will kill these people on sight too, but at
least it's up to the players, not the admins.

There are considerable many other wrinkles to the system, but that's the
gist of it.

I think in terms of three things when considering measures against the
PKs in a game: who determines who is a bad guy; who catches the bad guy;
who punishes the bad guy. In an ideal (virtual) world, I wish the answer
were "the players" to all three. But I am settling for "the players" for
the first two. To my mind, a playerkilling toggle model puts none of the
burden on the players at all, and that's a bad route to go down
admin-wise.

On the other hand, it took a programmer a solid three months full time
to catch all the possible wrinkles in the reputation system. The curse
of a complex environment is the number of ways players can do harm to
one another by indirect means...

-Raph



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MUD-Dev: Advancing an unrealised future.