[MUD-Dev] Gamasutra: Online Justice Systems

[Fred Clift]

On Wed, 22 Mar 2000, Matthew Mihaly wrote:

> credit cards and seperate ISPs. All you do with a system like that is make
> it easier on the people willing to go to greater lengths, because you
> create the presumption that no one is multi-playing, thus providing
> excelelnt cover for those who are multi-playing.

There will _always_ be multiplayers in worlds that restrict it.  What it
comes down to is making things reasonably hard enough that it's not worth
the effort. You can put all kinds of heuristics in place to prevent it and
you should, but the best system that allows more than one player to log
in, will allow multi-playing.  The mud I work on (www.blackmud.com, diku
derived, some pkill, etc...) disallows multiplaying but to be honest, the
only really effective mechanisms we have right now are human beings
looking at groups of players and their behaviors.  It would be nice to
automate some of this, but honestly I can't think of good ways to prevent
it besides heavy punishments and lots of advertising about people who got
swatted.  My recent requirement for any two random players to demonstrate
to me that they aren't multiplaying is to have them both pick a different
song that I know the lyrics to and to simultaenously recite them.  Yes,
this is possible to spoof, and even funny to watch people try, but mostly,
people at that point give up and just admit their guilt...  

Note that we dont disallow multiple characters, just having them connected
at the same time, or using one to bennefit the other.  Most of the people
we catch are those reported by other players who notice odd behavior, but
we have automated some stuff that helps flag a player as a potential
violator so that people can then watch them more closely.

--
Fred Clift - fred at veriohosting.com -- Remember: If brute 
force doesn't work, you're just not using enough.




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