ID:154584
 
Since there's lots of new players around who weren't partial to our last discussion, I was wondering if any of them have any thoughts on allowing or disallowing player killing?

Personally, I dislike it. To such an extreme that I'll penalize players for doing it, unless they were justified in their actions, or the game is designed specifically for going against other characters, and even then only if those two characters are evenly matched.

Under no circumstances is any player to be attacked by one much more powerful... for example, if one of the GMs from the game came down and started chopping you to bits, I'm sure you'd scream "Bloody Murder" and never play the game again! It feels the same way when you're just getting acquainted with the game, when suddenly BAM! some dips*** teenager with an attitude problem (I'm a teenager, but I'm far from an attitude problem) spoils your fun, and repetitively spoils your fun.

It's happened to me before. I've been really PO'd by it. So I'm not letting it happen to other players. It's a two-way street, though. People play games to kill each other quite often, and if that restriction is raised they have to actually get a life and do something constructive. Which in their eyes is the worst possible thing imaginable.

What are your views on it? Is player killing good, or bad? When someone kills you, should they be penalized? Or rewarded? Or not given anything at all for it, just that idiotic feeling that they've really made someone mad?



(Sorry about the underlying hatred... This post is dedicated to one particular a*hole, though I'll retain his anonymity merely because I'm an upstanding member of society. Unlike him.)
Pk should be allowed but with controls. It should be framed in the context of guild wars or special quest. Some form of levelling control should be allowed for the newbies to protect themselve from the experienced players (killing for gold or equipments).
So I would suggest that:
1. Pk be allowed as guild wars.
2. Lower level players be protected.
3. Rewards for PK should be low or non-existence. But it should be allowed.
That my idea on PK. I have never been killed by a player and would not know how it feels.
My current philsophy is to put no restrictions on PKilling. Instead, I do two things:

1. This is my favorite analogy, "A knight in shining armor climbs the tower wall after killing the evil wizards best minions, climbs through the window and sees the maiden he has come to save. With a florishing bow he says, "Milady, I've come to rescue you! I claim only a single kiss for my heroic effort before we live happily ever after! The maiden approaches him and, with a blind jab towards his abdomen, sticks him with a dagger and he falls down dead."

In most RPG systems, the maiden could never kill the knight. His skill/class levels being so high he would have dodged or parried the strike without having to do anything. In my game system, it is entirely possible for the most skilled character to die from a less skilled character.

2. Various penalties to those that kill others, be they NPCs or PCs. People are ranked by karma levels - if a character kills others who have a positive karma balance, then the killer recieves the difference in bad karma.

Bad karma means many things - resurrection becomes impossible. The evil spirits may be reincarnated as undead (still working on this) and when the undead body is destroyed then the player will need to create a new character.

If the laws of the kingdom are such that murder is a crime, then that character will not be welcome in any part of that kingdom. Shopkeepers will not serve him, the lawkeepers will chase him, and any good karma balanced player will be free to hunt him down with no penalty to their own karma.

What I'm hoping is that such a system will provide everyone with the ability to retaliate against unjustice, and promote an atmosphere of respect.

Killing NPCs or PCs does not garner experience - you can't go slay a dragon and come out of it with experience. In the same way, you can't kill another character and do the same way. Instead, experience is gained by time spent in the game and contributing to the community.

It's not that experience and skills to not mean anything, it's just that the system is designed so that even the lowest of maidens and farmers have a good chance at doing anything a normal human could do in real life. Increasing skills helps considerably, but it translates a bit differently than many game systems. About the closest analogy would be the ShadowRun game system, with a lot of tweeks and differences.
On 1/31/01 7:12 pm Spuzzum wrote:
Since there's lots of new players around who weren't partial to our last discussion, I was wondering if any of them have any thoughts on allowing or disallowing player killing?

I'm not new and I've responded before, but I will mention one very important thing that all the studies and the experience has shown:

If you want women to play your game, don't have PvP.

Even a game that was intentionally aimed at meeting women's gaming desires such as UO couldn't keep women around because of PvP.
My personal take on PKilling is that it should be allowed, but only in VERY limited and VERY controlled situations.

Some of my basic guidelines for PKilling:
1> It must be moderated by a Referee/GameMaster
2> It must be consensual with all parties involved
3> There should be a reason for the act. If it doesn't drive the game forward, it shouldn't go that far.
4> The player that kills another player is in for some SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES

However, this only works in a world where there are game moderators. In an unmoderated world, I would lean either towards never having PvP, or only having PvP between people that consent to PvP. This can be implemented by:

1> Having all player mobs set with a flag: PvP = 0
2> If a player tries to atack another player, it is IMPOSSIBLE if either one has PvP = 0
3> A player can activate PvP for themselves: PvP() which sets PvP = 1
4> A player can NEVER set PvP back to 0, so once a player becomes a player killer, they can never be safe again.

Well, that's my take ont it...

Mr. Sanity
In response to Mr. Sanity
On 2/1/01 10:55 am Mr. Sanity wrote:
However, this only works in a world where there are game moderators. In an unmoderated world, I would lean either towards never having PvP, or only having PvP between people that consent to PvP. This can be implemented by:

1> Having all player mobs set with a flag: PvP = 0
2> If a player tries to atack another player, it is IMPOSSIBLE if either one has PvP = 0
3> A player can activate PvP for themselves: PvP() which sets PvP = 1
4> A player can NEVER set PvP back to 0, so once a player becomes a player killer, they can never be safe again.

I agree with your take on it -- there are a bunch of additional considerations, which led EQ to take this approach:

PvP players cannot be buffed/healed by non-PvP players. Otherwise too many exploits are possible.

Duels among normally non-PvP players do not provide experience or loot to the winner.

PvP players are clearly identified as such at all times (in EQ their name is red).

Personally I think PvP will be part of the perfect MUD, but that no one has yet cracked the nut of how to do it without alienating most of the player-base.

An upcoming MMOG I'm excited about is Dark Age of Camelot, which has done a lot of work to support intelligent PvP.

You belong to one of 3 or 4 realms, each of which has it's own large area of geography. You cannot attack others in your realm.

For the equivalent of about 35 EQ levels (I've been playing EQ for over a year and only recently got a character over 35...though insane players can do it in a few weeks), the game does not involve any PvP.

After 35 or so, the game becomes one of PvP wars between the realms. Each realm has magic artifacts that give people from that realm enhanced powers. If you invade another realm and steal their artifacts, you get those enhancements instead of them.

You invade by killing all PCs and NPC guards in key areas -- when they are all dead, guards for your own realm spawn in the area and you own it until they are killed.

I think this is really interesting and definitely plan on checking it out when it comes out...however the issue of not alienating the mainstream -- particularly women -- probably still remains.
In response to Mr. Sanity
On 2/1/01 10:55 am Mr. Sanity wrote:
My personal take on PKilling is that it should be allowed, but only in VERY limited and VERY controlled situations.

Some of my basic guidelines for PKilling:
1> It must be moderated by a Referee/GameMaster
2> It must be consensual with all parties involved
3> There should be a reason for the act. If it doesn't drive the game forward, it shouldn't go that far.
4> The player that kills another player is in for some SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES

However, this only works in a world where there are game moderators. In an unmoderated world, I would lean either towards never having PvP, or only having PvP between people that consent to PvP. This can be implemented by:

1> Having all player mobs set with a flag: PvP = 0
2> If a player tries to atack another player, it is IMPOSSIBLE if either one has PvP = 0
3> A player can activate PvP for themselves: PvP() which sets PvP = 1
4> A player can NEVER set PvP back to 0, so once a player becomes a player killer, they can never be safe again.

Well, that's my take ont it...

Mr. Sanity

The problems I've delt with in the MUDs I've played over the past twenty years [EDIT: Correction, 14 years of MUDs], at least in regards to PvP, are as follows:

1. If there is no PvP, and you get a player who's sole purpose is to disrupt the game and/or ruin the fun of others, there is no course of action short of contacting the Staff. Additional complications arise if the game is pay-to-play. Characters who are nuked, or locked out just cause the player to create a new character. There was a time when you could block the IP address, but these days everything is pretty dynamic.

2. If there is concentual PvP or flagged PvP, there are those who will take advantage of their no-PvP flag. For example, a player will steal something from someone else and will refuse to engage in combat and thus will escape punishment. Scams and workarounds to abuse the mechanics become the main attraction of the game.

3. Full PvP allowance gives players the feeling that they can do anything they want. I've only been on a couple of MUDs where the community enforced a standard of etiquitte and enforced it. These are the games I tend to enjoy due to the respect shown to people, and the low tolerance for abuse.

In the end it all depends on what sort of game you want to administer or play. Some non-PvP and concentual PvP games I actually enjoyed for a time, but the most enjoyable for me were the full PvP where the community did not tolerate killing sprees.

I've been thinking of ways to promote this sort of community (since the advent of DOOM and Diablo on the Internet the community has seemed to suffer in many games - a different kind of player was introduced into the genre) and the only way I can think of is:
- promote community
- penalize killing
- do not award killing
- offer alternatives to killing
Well, I can sympathisize with your anti-PK sentiments. I quit playing Ultima Online a long time ago due partly to rampant PKing. However, I think some core pro-PK aruments should be addressed.
1) How can a game be realistic without PK?
Okay, I love this one. First of all most games strive to be BELIEVABLE, not realistic. Realistic games would eliminate magic and fictional weapons. Taken to its furthest, a realistic game would use only real cities and people. Remember realism is an attempt to accurately represent reality.Games, on the other hand, seek only to emulate reality enough to be engrossing. A game can be believable even with magic. Or without murder.

2) But there are murderers/bad guys in the real world!
So too are there in nonPK games. They are called NPCs. Anyhow, real world murderers/rapists/molesters are generally ruthlessly hunted down by the offended parties and society in general. Murder is something the most advanced nation in the world will still kill a citizen for. Why anyone would have a desire to portray such deviant behavior is somewhat alarming, especially since it implies knowledge of the victimization of others. In law that is called premeditation and is characteristic of sociopaths in psychology....

3) But its just a game!
Okay there are two ways to look at this one. First, if its just a game, then don't worry about it and follow the rules as you would in any game. But I don't buy that it is just a game. Anything people invest time and money into with goals ceases to be a 'game' and becomes a pursuit. In this case, one may be justified in saying that it is actually a pursuit of happiness via electronic means and just as most people think it wrong to deny another's pursuit of happiness at the movies (by rudely talking), so too is this unjustified interference. This is not an issue of gamesmanship, it is an issue of personal freedoms and liberty. Overly dramataic? Perhaps, but it goes a long way to explain why people are so turned off by such antisocial behavior.

All that being said, I do not feel all of this applies to consensual PvP. So in Destiny Online, players will have to complete a moderately difficult quest in order to become PK at which point they may freely harass other PKs. This change is permanent. Also, social consequences for attacking 'good' characters are still in effect. (Town guards don't care if the fight you had with the local hero was 'consensual' or not!).

-James
You will have PK'ers as long as there are no BIG reprocussions.
If you make death permanant, PKers won't last long as they will be hunted down by people. People will be very angry and their friends will as well. Eventually there will be a large linch mob after them. If you make a game where when you die you come back and the loss is a little exp, well I hardly call that a huge penalty and thus the PK will generally ge away with it since the only one pissed off would be the killed player.
One way to stop or at least deter PKing might bw to make a supercharacter that you ay play time and again whose roll is a bounty hunter who will kill the PK and take all his stuff.
...Then's mah thought's


On 1/31/01 7:12 pm Spuzzum wrote:
Since there's lots of new players around who weren't partial to our last discussion, I was wondering if any of them have any thoughts on allowing or disallowing player killing?

Personally, I dislike it. To such an extreme that I'll penalize players for doing it, unless they were justified in their actions, or the game is designed specifically for going against other characters, and even then only if those two characters are evenly matched.

Under no circumstances is any player to be attacked by one much more powerful... for example, if one of the GMs from the game came down and started chopping you to bits, I'm sure you'd scream "Bloody Murder" and never play the game again! It feels the same way when you're just getting acquainted with the game, when suddenly BAM! some dips*** teenager with an attitude problem (I'm a teenager, but I'm far from an attitude problem) spoils your fun, and repetitively spoils your fun.

It's happened to me before. I've been really PO'd by it. So I'm not letting it happen to other players. It's a two-way street, though. People play games to kill each other quite often, and if that restriction is raised they have to actually get a life and do something constructive. Which in their eyes is the worst possible thing imaginable.

What are your views on it? Is player killing good, or bad? When someone kills you, should they be penalized? Or rewarded? Or not given anything at all for it, just that idiotic feeling that they've really made someone mad?



(Sorry about the underlying hatred... This post is dedicated to one particular a*hole, though I'll retain his anonymity merely because I'm an upstanding member of society. Unlike him.)
Well, some of the ideas are good that I've heard from this forum and I've heard others from forums not related to Byond. To put it simple, a multiplayer RPG is not made to be a place where you kill monsters and gain treasure, only to use what you've earned to either kill more monsters or for nothing. If you want to put your power to good use then you use it to prove that you're the best. Competition is something every game needs, and PKing is the best solution.

On the other hand, there are those that are anti-pk. They don't like being killed because they lose their items, experience, etc. Well, these guys might start off thinking, "PK? Shouldn't be too bad..." Then all these people that are high levels start whomping on them. It gets boring and they start to dislike it. In most cases this is how I have heard they started hating it.

The only solution I can really think of is to allow the player to set a flag, either on or off, that allows them to pk and be pked. This is a decent solution, but those who do pk won't recognize those who don't, and vice versa...
First...

<<If you want women to play your game, don't have PvP.>>

I think I'll chip in here with my woman's perspective. I haven't noticed any differences in the way men and women react to PvP, but I play different types of games than Deadron does. There's plenty of PvP in GemStone, and the player population isn't much under half female... this goes for many RP MUD communities I've been in. Probably just a different type of person than plays graphical games anyway. Or maybe a different type of PvP.

Onward...

My PvP preferences wholly depend on what kind of game I'm playing. If it's more of a hack-n-slash thing I don't care what kind of PvP regulations they have as long as I can avoid being killed when I don't feel like dying. Sometimes there's nothing better than going up against actual PCs, but often I just want to kill things and take their stuff endlessly.

If it's more of a roleplaying game I like having it unrestricted, and I don't favor no PvP at all or PvP flags, as I don't like putting up with idiots who annoy the hell out of everyone and can't be "taught a lesson."

If Cerulea ever gets up and running I imagine I won't have too many problems with PvP. It's not the type of game that attracts the, uh, illiterate-white-male-with-nothing-to-do-after-junior-high-g ets-out crowd.

Z
In response to Zilal
On 2/12/01 2:35 pm Zilal wrote:
<<If you want women to play your game, don't have PvP.>>

I think I'll chip in here with my woman's perspective. I haven't noticed any differences in the way men and women react to PvP, but I play different types of games than Deadron does.

Right...pure text games are a very different beast from graphical games.

For context I should mention that my comments are based both on much personal experience of receiving comments from women on such issues (I hear stuff, being the guildmaster for an EQ guild), on various reading, on Raph Koster's discussion of what happened in UO, and on a recent in-depth academic analysis of EverQuest players (which I can dig up if anyone is interested).

UO is a good example. The game was designed to appeal to women (Raph's wife was on the 3 person design team), and to do that they worked hard to provide the things that women had most often asked for:

The ability to create things for other players, to customize your own little world space, and various other such features that are frequently missing from the non-text MUDs.

What they saw was women join the game because of these features, then instantly quit when hit with the unavoidable PvP situation in UO.

Now UO had the worst possible PvP situation. You couldn't opt out, and there were no real barriers to 12 years olds sitting there and killing newbies over and over for the mini-power rush.

In fact, because there were no barriers, UO became a game of PKing and nothing else for quite a while.

They changed a lot of things, and it's gotten a lot better, and now more women play. But PvP is still a big part of the world, and they still don't get many women players, relatively speaking (far less than they expected).

EQ does not support PvP on regular servers (in any real sense). On the whole in EQ, hardly any of the male characters are played by women, and 40% of the female characters are played by women. EQ has PvP servers, and I don't know actual statistics, but I will venture a guess that almost no women whatsoever play on them. I believe the EQ study showed that interest in PvP and all the little power games is pretty much directly related to age.

All that said, I still think the ultimate game will include PvP but in a structured way that does not force everyone to be involved and that supports roleplaying. This is why I'm keeping an eye on Dark Age of Camelot, which looks to be the only game that I think might make PvP work on a more mainstream basis.
In response to Deadron
My perspective is that PvP should be allowed freely. The way DBZ-Spar is going to be set up is so when you die you go to a place called snake way, and you have to walk it, which may take a while unless your a high level character. However, Players that kill other Players do not go to snake way, they goto "Hell". It is a very large place and its hard to get out of. This contributes to persuading players not kill eachother, unless they are "Sparring" which in that case the dont die anyways.

But actualy, I have noticed the penalties for PvP may work themselves. There have been high level players on my game that go around killing the pkillers. So when a newbie gets killed he just goes and tells a higher level guy and he goes and defends him. I figure this will work nicely when I add "Hell" in since after they get kill they will not be able to come back, meaning they did all that hard work on their character for nothing!