[MUD-Dev] PvP Systems

[John Buehler]

Federico Di Gregorio writes:

> i think the system you propose is well tought. but i don't like it
> anyway. let me exaplain why. imho, player vs player interaction are
> an area of the mud that should be left to humans. by that i mean
> that you decide if to rob another guy, then you pay the
> consecuences. the mud should allow for about anything. the people
> should then enforce some kind of law. let the players manage
> justice. anyway here are some comments on your system:

I was hoping to avoid getting into this particular discussion, but I
guess it's a necessary postscript to the original topic.

The reason that people play these games is for entertainment.  A
single player game provides a certain form of entertainment for each
player, and that entertainment is completely controlled by the game
publisher and the player.  Nobody else has a say in what happens in
the game.  In contrast, a multiplayer game has the characteristic that
the entertainment of any one player is derived not only from the game
and the one player's actions, but also from the actions of other
players.  This is all obvious, but it's important to keep it in mind
when considering PvP.

Ultima Online only permitted a certain kind of player to find
entertainment in their world.  Those who didn't find player killing
entertaining left the game.  But player killing wasn't the original
goal of the designers of Ultima Online.  At least, rampant player
killing wasn't.  They were shooting for a real virtual society,
assuming that conventional checks and balances would truly balance out
the society to be something like our own.  But the players were GAME
players and they were after their own entertainment.  As a result, the
balance point was a bit more like the Lord of the Flies than Middle
Earth.  Because the players had such a large degree of control over
other players' experiences, many players left - myself included.  The
PvP system that I'm describing is an effort at letting each player
indicate what variation of the game they want to play *with respect to
other players*.  Where players agree on various 'rules of engagement',
they can mix it up.

>> The reason for having a range of such actions is so that players
>> can resolve conflicts (or initiate them) at the level that they and
>> their prospective opponents are interested in.  This means that
>> players might be perfectly willing to get into a bar fight, but
>> have no interest in dueling or thieving, etc.

> this is true only if the players play the mud as a game and not as a
> *role-playing* game. but we can start another thread on that if
> somebody is interested.

I've heard this argument countless times and it simply doesn't hold
water.  The word 'role-playing' is only a reference point for us to
refer to these games.  When we go to a large base of players, most
people are roleplaying themselves in the virtual world.  The players
are going adventuring, not roleplaying.  Most people simply don't have
the energy or skill to be actors.  Roleplaying is supported, but
hardly compulsory.

For what it's worth, roleplaying will be far more common when the NPCs
outnumber players 10 to 1 and are far more intelligent and interactive
than they are today.  That will establish a framework in which players
will be encouraged to act 'in genre'.

> i am not sure i like this one too. if a player is interested in, say
> bar fights, it would be very strange for him to be able to kick only
> some of the guys involved in the fight.

But if it's a private fight, then you aren't invited and you don't get
to kick anybody.  Remember that the whole switches approach is geared
towards letting players declare their player conflict preferences and
have them be enforced by the game.  So if you were to kick somebody
that didn't want to fight with you, that wouldn't be entertainment
that they were interested in and you'd be working to annoy another
player.  If players are interested in mixing it up with other people
occasionally, perhaps they all have the 'maybe' option set, and you
can issue some kind of blanket request to dive in with all of them.

I can imagine doing a wipe select over a bunch of characters in a bar
fight and asking for permission to join in.  Those with maybe settings
will get a little window pop up asking if you can join in at a certain
PvP level.  On your end, you'll see some of the people who indicate
'maybe' switch over to 'yes', while some will just ignore your request
or say no.  When enough people are set to 'yes', you can dive in.

By the way, if you're roleplaying, why are you randomly pounding on
people?  Because your character loves a good fight?  Strange, it would
seem that there are LOTS of players who are roleplaying that
particular role.  Just like in Ultima Online there are lots of people
who are roleplaying serial killers.

> [maybe setting and grouping cut]

> but i like the grouping stuff. makes the players feel more the fact
> that they are part of a group (guild.)

I believe that grouping should be much like the arbitrary grouping
mechanisms that one finds in graphics editors or in logical name
tables in VMS or any one of a number of interesting 'hierarchical set'
implementations: groups can be created, as can groups of groups, etc,
and that each group can be assigned various attributes.  In EverQuest,
there is guild chat.  Why can't I have an out of game conversation
channel for everyone in my family?  Or the six buddies that I
occasionally get together with?  Or one of the six in-game guilds and
organizations that I belong to?

>> All constructive commentary is welcome.

> all the other stuff is pretty clear, but implementing it all (and
> all the special-cases that will surely pop up during the testing)
> would consume a lot of resources, i think. is all that work
> necessary? isn't much more simpler and elegant to let the *player*
> decide if it is necessary to jail a guy that kills to much without
> reason?

Which player decides that it's necessary?  Who is known to be
responsible enough to carry the authority?  The only authority figures
in the game that are at all really trusted are the gamemasters.  One
of the goals of this system is to reduce the load on gamemasters
having to make judgement calls and monitor players who are running
around killing people.  Antagonistic actions are a popular outlet
among players, especially the young ones, and neither gamemasters nor
vigilantes provide a good solution to the problem.  Gamemasters should
be spending their time designing and providing the game publisher's
entertainment content, and no in-game justice system will stop a
disgruntled or malicious player.

As for implementation and consumption of resources, consider that
these games are complex to begin with and consume lots of resources.
In the future, they'll be more complex and consume even more
resources.  I'm looking for games that are massively more capable than
current games.  Huge worlds, hundreds of thousands of intelligent
NPCs, physical simulations, and so on.  I'm not worried about the
physical technology so much as how the heck we're going to get all
this to work at all.  That is, assuming that we have the bandwidth,
processing power and storage capacity, how do you use those
capabilities to provide new games that are a couple generations more
advanced than current games?

JB

_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev