[MUD-Dev] PvP Systems

[John Buehler]

rayzam writes:

> Well, one issue is the lack of cross-sets. That is, currently only
> thieves can steal from thieves. Or a thief could set himself to no
> combat type aggression. I'd suggest having some hybrid settings. So
> thieves can steal, and your 'law' people can attack thieves. This
> lets the thieves steal from the law, and the law fight back with
> damage, death, incarceration, whatever skills are flagged
> appropriately.  But doesn't give the law rights to attack
> anyone. And this allows the thieves to steal from the law, instead
> of only from others who set themselves to theivery.

Actually, thieves can steal from anyone who indicates that they are
interested in being challenged by thievery PvP.  That's not
necessarily just other thieves.  In any case, it's a feature.  If I
don't want PvP thievery to be part of my game experience, then I take
it out.  If everyone takes it out of their game, then rampant thievery
has been voted out of the game.  There still remains the possibility
that there could be a rough-and-tumble area where everyone's thievery
settings are wide open.  Entering that area means that you are taking
chances.

The whole notion of escalation is dangerous and the jury is still out
on that for me.  In truth, a justice system is a separate, but closely
related topic to the sorts of PvP permitted.  So long as escalation is
limited, and is combined with an effective justice system, I can
imagine escalation being permitted.  I think.

I believe I used the example of owning land and having trespassers.
The escalation there is that assault is permitted by the owner.  The
trespasser can return the assault, permitting the owner to escalate
again to attack.  The elevation of aggressions is in the hands of the
owner, which is the desired behavior.

As applied to thievery, the victim has control over escalation.  If
unwilling to try for escalation, the victim can turn to the justice
system.

The justice system that I have in mind permits those who are the
victim of unlawful acts (typically these will be PvP actions) to
report a crime and have members of the justice system undertake their
version of justice.  This might be swift or slow, depending on the
faction of the victim with various entities, the severity of the
crime, etc.  Players can be part of the justice system for the purpose
of hunting bounties.

> We had a system similar to this at one point in the past. A thief
> steals from someone, that theft is noted in the game. If the person
> stolen from noticed, or someone there noticed and informed them,
> then they could get retribution. That is, they could hire a
> player[s] to hunt the thief. If that player killed the thief, that
> player got whatever was on the thief at the time of death [normally,
> eq goes with you/resses back with you, so you don't have to go hunt
> your corpse]. That one death cleared the bounty. This means that the
> bounty hunter could be anyone in the game, and would have to pick
> the right time to attack the thief [when he had the item, or enough
> of other value].

In the spirit of 'measured response', I would argue that the bounty
hunters are limited in the actions that they can take, and I wouldn't
expect a 'dead or alive' treatment to be applied to thieves.  My
(current) death model ejects a player from playing their dead
character for some number of *days*.  Using that death model requires
that death not be handed out as cheaply as in many current games.  The
'measured response' of multiple levels of PvP interactions permits
bounties to be offered in such a way that the bounty hunter must
disable the criminal, and not kill him.

> Of course, the loophole is that the bounty hunters could be bought
> off.  Or thieves would kill [or get their friends to kill] bounty
> hunters, or those who they stole from, [if you send anyone after me,
> I'll kill you into oblivion]. Two specific incidents escalated it to
> a huge scale, a might makes right, Lord of the Flies place, which we
> didn't want, which ended player thieving.

The whole bounty system has the potential of producing a 'farming'
effect.  I commit a crime, you kill me, get the bounty, we split the
proceeds.  Repeat.

In any case, remember that 'thievery' is what happens when one player
'adjusts' the set of possessions of another player (a subtraction)
without the other player noticing.  The 'thievery' PvP action is
useful for other friendly tasks, thus the need for granular switches.

JB

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