[MUD-Dev] PVP and perma-death

[HRose]

Mike Sellers wrote:

> What "well designed games" are you thinking of that don't have
> griefing issues?  I'd be very interested in examples of which
> games you're thinking of.

I play in DAoC from two years and I never had griefing problems in
PvP. Griefing happens if there's space in the game for it, this why
the structure is both the reason and the cause of the griefing and
why it's a duty of the design to remove it.

This is also why I say that the design should remove the griefing
and not create gameplay around it. Because you are creating gameplay
after a mistake.

Another example: right now in World of Warcraft beta the griefing is
basically the whole scope of PvP. In fact there's currently no
purpose nor reward for killing enemies, aside killing important
NPCs. So everyone tries to grief simply because it's the only way to
produce a valuable "consequence" in the PvP, till the point that
Blizzard had to put silly rules right in the Terms of Services to
forbid particular behaviours.

In this case the design isn't complete and the fact that Blizzard
was forced to change the TOS is a demonstration of flawed design.
In fact the players not only are in a scenario where griefing is
possible, but where it's also rewarded.

The design of a game is a structure, if the structure has "holes" it
means that the design is flawed and so griefing is possible. The
exact same thing happens with money dupes (even if they are a result
of both design and implementation). The model is the same, duping is
a "bug" in the same way griefing is. They are both bugs. The duty of
a designer is about isolating and removing those issues. Not create
gameplay after them.

-HRose / Abalieno
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