[MUD-Dev] Real Life Consequences

[rayzam]

----- Original Message -----
From: "J C Lawrence" <claw at kanga.nu>
To: <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2001 2:13 PM
Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Real Life Consequences


> On Sun, 18 Feb 2001 09:26:45 +0000 (GMT)
> the logos <the_logos at www.achaea.com> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 18 Feb 2001, Corey Crawford wrote:
>
> >> I'm talking charging real life money (via credit card, most
> >> likely) because of rules broken.
>
> > If you're going to do it by credit card, then there is no need to
> > do it at all. You just ban the troublemaker and ban his credit
> > card. He might use another one, but most troublemakers are not the
> > sorts to have multiple credit cards at their beck and call I find.
>
> There would seem to be a different in motivation betwee:
>
>   I got kicked off.
>
> and:
>
>   I just got penalised $200.
>
> This if course doesn't prevent chargebacks, or more formal
> contesting of the penalty (recourse etc?) which could be more messy.
>

Aside from real life money, what about in-game consequences? Penalize
gold, experience, remove items from that NPC/skill/etc in specific,
have it be a mark against someone's record that prevents them from
running for office for a period of time, etc. We've done that in the
past, when there was a bug that was being abused by a part of the
population. Use logs to find out who abused it, and penalize them
accordingly.

Now, aside from a real life credit card charge, even this becomes
messy.  These are the responses given by players to these incidents
[and often players who weren't even involved] and others I've added
myself, along with comments and questions about each:

  A) How are players to know it's a bug? an abuse?

    -If it's an effect of a skill that stuns the opponent, are they
    responsible to track how often it stuns, or to figure out if the
    formula was reversed and more powerful monsters get stunned more
    instead of less [linear function, players without a way of telling
    monster level/power directly, etc].

    -If it's armor sold in a shop, that is more protective than 1/3 of
    the armor off of monsters, and also twice more protective than
    anything else buyable? But it has no magical powers or
    bonuses. [wizard set this up illegally].

  B) Do you scale or threshold the punishment?

    - A person who used it once or twice, decided it was suspicious
    and didn't use it again. Do they get no punishment, the same
    punishment, or a scaled punishment versus a person who always uses
    it?

    - Some exploits are major, such as dropping a $20 bill, and
    picking up 2 $20 bills. Some are minor, such as an NPC AI routine
    bugging and only choosing non-lethal or less powerful responses,
    or never attempting to protect or self-heal. There is a continuum
    of severity, is there a continuum of punishment? If there is, then
    it becomes somewhat arbitrary and in the staff's hands. This is
    more of a problem if you charge real-life cash. Now you're setting
    a price on your value judgement. Sounds like an extremely sticky
    legal issue.

  C) Reporting.

    - A person uses it, considers it suspicious and reports it to the
    staff. Of course, they shouldn't get punished.

      * But, after reporting it, they consider it the 'staff's
        problem', because they don't even know if it's a bug [first
        point, above], so they continue to use it. This person ends up
        gaining the most from it, because he found it first, and used
        it as often as possible until it was fixed.
 
      o Is reporting enough? Is reporting required [by EULA]? After
        reporting, is it now the staff's responsibility? Can people who
        report it, subsequently benefit without reprisal?

    - A person reports it to a wizard, who either misunderstands, or
    makes a mistake [or doesn't care] and says 'No problem, don't
    worry about it'. Granted, this is a staff problem, and shouldn't
    be taken out on players. But what if a player reports this is what
    has happened, after you charge them [rl $$, or in-game
    points]. The staff member denies it. One person's word vs
    another's.

    - A person considers it suspicious, asks other players, and get
    told that 'it's okay, the staff knows and doesn't mind'. This may
    either be the social effect of players who are exploiting
    something, wanting to keep it quiet from the staff for as long as
    possible, or the previous point, where a staff member is at fault.

    - A person knows about it, doesn't use it themselves, but benefits
    indirectly, with in-game currency [gold, experience, items,
    what-have-you]. Do you punish them? Everytime I drop a $20 bill, I
    pick up 3 $20 bills. I then give Boffo one of them. Boffo says,
    thanks!

      * If Boffo knows what you're doing, he can be an accessory. Is
        that as bad as the crime itself? Does he get the same
        punishment, less or none?

      * If I just give Boffo money later, so he doesn't know where
        it's from, is he at fault? In this day of multiple p2p
        communications, how do I know he doesn't know? Boffo might not
        have been told in-game, but the player running Boffo might
        have been told via ICQ, AIM, IRC, email.

    - Bob knows Joe is using the exploit. Bob is not getting any
    benefits from it whatsoever. Is Bob required to report? This is
    equivalent to an Honor Code. Is it enforceable via EULA?

    - What if Bob is telling people how to use the exploit? If he's
    explaining it's an exploit? If he's hiding the fact it's an
    exploit and is trying to get Harry to use it as a way of getting
    Harry punished?

Overall, it becomes very difficult to assign punishment, or at least
assign it fairly with a simple algorithm that doesn't require a series
of judgement calls. Granted there will be cut-and-dried cases and
other cases that are too hazy to do anything about. But any policy
adopted should be stated in advance and available to the players. This
policy would tend to be a guideline.

In the case of attempting to charge real-life money based on a
guideline, I would think it would be a legal nightmare.

    Rayzam
    www.retromud.org


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