[MUD-Dev] Re: PvP systems

[John Buehler]

gmiller at classic-games.com writes:

> On Tue,  6 Feb 2001 20:25:17 -0800 (PST)
> "John Buehler" <johnbue at msn.com> wrote:

>> The curse approach only makes you plan your PKs (or whatever) for
>> maximum effect.  A player who isn't powerful cannot accumulate
>> items of value.  As soon as they accumulate (and carry)
>> sufficiently valuable items, someone who is willing to accept one
>> player curse will PK him.

> That depends entirely on the reward for PK vs. the penalty of a curse.

Yup.  I suspect that the environments we each have in mind are rather
different, thus the different ways of dealing with PvP.

>> You also made comments about the difficulty of abuse of the curse
>> system.  I see no reason why a guild couldn't start cursing into
>> the ground the odd player that they disliked.  The victim's
>> recourse is to complain or to curse all the guild members back -
>> which is annoying and time consuming.  It serves as another means
>> of PvP attack - cursing.  And I can easily imagine certain guilds
>> in EverQuest doing such a thing to a player who is not aligned with
>> a guild.

> I don't consider that abuse... The whole point is to prevent people
> from being able to offend others with impunity. If they offend a
> whole guild that badly and have no friends of their own, there's
> likely a reason for that.  Furthermore, I strongly suggest placing
> limits on the number of curses a player can have active in order to
> create an opportunity cost. People who use curses at random would
> naturally tend to receive more curses than their victims. I also
> consider the curse approach (or any similar "both sides suffer"
> thing) a good feature to pair with an introduction system to further
> limit the potential for abuse.

My abuse scenario was that a guild acting as a spoiler group whacks a
single player that they dislike with a ton of curses.  Now that victim
has 20 curses on him while he can only dump one curse on each of his
'attackers'.  If the penalty for a curse is high, that victim is dead
in the water.  If the penalty for a curse is low, then fear of curses
is reduced, making anti-social actions more reasonable as a viable way
to play.

>> Okay.  We have a bunch of teenagers running around in adult bodies
>> with swords (and curses).  How much retribution do you want to
>> permit?

> As much as they feel it's worthwhile to suffer. The people who
> benefit the most from such a system would be those who are good at
> avoiding conflict.

I think I'm missing an important element about your system.  You've
said a couple times that the system favors those who avoid conflict.
But curses aren't only dumped on a character if it originates a
conflict.  It could be singled out for curses because of
misunderstandings or any one of a number of situational problems.
Such things are a concern because of the age of the players and their
tendency to be easily offended, etc.

>> Eh?  If a player wants to look foolish by engaging in verbal taunts
>> with some imbecile, that's their business.  I'm not going to try
>> and claim that I can come up with a system that detects insults and
>> culls them from the game.  I'm suggesting that the only thing that
>> a game should permit in reprisal for verbal harrassment is to
>> return it in kind.  And that a player choosing to do such a thing
>> is ill-advised.

> The curse system presents one way of dealing with such verbal
> misbehavior without responding in kind. People running around
> yelling racial slurs would tend to receive more curses than they
> would have available to give out.

Again, there's the issue of how effective a curse is and how many I
have to hand out.  I suppose that I could rank my curses such that
when somebody does something really offensive I make sure that curse
sticks, while I tend to recycle the curses I dumped on players for
simply annoying behavior.  But that would tend to mean that annoyance
players would have their curses lifted over time.

Curses just strike me as a six-shot pistol in a medieval world.  You
have a limited number of shots, but you can shoot anyone and they are
then shot - until you need to reuse one of your six bullets.  I
haven't gone into the potential problems with curse mules, although I
think you said that curses only apply while the cursing character
(player?) is active.

I dunno.  I guess I'd have to see the world in operation with the
curses system running, along with whatever other support systems you
have in mind.  As before, I prefer to avoid having most dirty deeds
done to me instead of being able to gain a certain amount of
retribution for them.

JB

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