On Building And Policing MMO Societies

Thanks to GameSpy for their feature on the history and continued shaping of MMO communities. The article discusses lessons learned from Ultima Online's "growing pains" over conflict resolution ("There was a group known as the Dread Lords who went around attacking other players, decimating the population of entire towns and forcing the developers to change the rules for PvP, which ultimately minimized its role in the game"), and points out that "...subverting developer intentions is a significant part of an MMO, whether for good or ill", referencing The Sims Online Mafia as an example. When should 'authorities' step in, if ever, in massively multiplayer games?

gameplay

[tmp_user]

Simple: whenever not doing so prevents the game from being played as intended

Re:gameplay

[Anonymous Coward]

It's too late once it gets to that point. It's better to harness the emergent behaviors, and futile to fight them.

The developers need to put a lot of thought into what behaviors they want to allow, why, and what their effects might be. Early play testing should be agressively pursued with wargames style, probably with bonus money on the table, breaking the game in the most horrendous, buzz killing, obnoxious, show stopping ways they can coopratively manage.

It's not wishful thinking and esoteric moral pl

Re:gameplay

[tmp_user]

Your refutation only supports my statement. If, when released to the public after "testing", a horrible situation that hadn't been intended to be able to happen does, then those "emergent behaviors" mentioned should be looked at to decide what needs to be done to restore the intended gameplay. Also, solid engineering would be based upon using some well thought-out ideas for solving a problem and becoming more inventive only after the base was thoroughly stable - if after gameplay breaks, despite best effort

Re:gameplay

[jefeweiss]

I think that, unless what is "broken" is more like an exploit of the games rules, the people in charge of a game are better off providing tools for players to help take care of the situation. I played EQ for awhile, and it got pretty boring. It could have done with something like the Dread Lords going around killing off townsfolk. Perhaps when something like that happens a "Special Edition" of town newspapers could go out saying where they were and encouraging players to help come and defend the town.

I

Re:gameplay

[skinfitz]

what makes open MMORPG's interesting is the fact that emergent behaviour and gameplay will always be unpredictable.

I'm sure that many developers have designed an MMORPG only to discover after a while that players do things they never ever intended.

A successful developer will observe this behaviour and work with it rather than against it.

Ultimately it's the players that pay developer's wages - keeping them interested and happy is what it's all about. Preventing PvP play for example will cause many people who enjoy that sort of play to leave. From what I see many MMORPG developers try to keep people happy by having "no PvP" zones. The developers of Neocron [neocron.com] have implemented this, however they received that many requests for no "safe" areas that they provide an entirely seperate server where there are no safe areas.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

A potential solution.

[illuminata]

I would be interested in a method that either did away with or greatly reduced the role of experience points. Make the characters more mortal, and if the other players feel the need to handle the situation, they can. No single player could become omnipotent and little to no intervention from an outside party (game admin, etc) would be necessary.

With this solution, players would feel more in control of their destiny. They wouldn't have to cry to an admin to settle problems for them, as they would be able to handle things themselves. The focus of the game would then be the use of ingenuity and problem solving skills, rather than the usual contest to see who can play the longest and level up the most. Focus on the players and the adventures that they have created themselves, not their stats and predetermined storylines.

A player shouldn't be limited to what a game developer intended. I've played many games where I've had more fun inventing my own sub-game or objective than the one that a developer made for me.

Re:A potential solution.

[eggstasy]

Then try Second Life [secondlife.com] where there are no experience points and the whole point of the game is to be creative and come up with your own stuff :)
You can build anything in there using basic 3D shapes, textures, sounds and there's also a powerful scripting language that lets you make your objects do just about anything.
The tools are so powerful that there is already an entirely player-built amusement park featuring ridable rollercoasters with realistic physics, a giant pinball game where you are the "ball", a sp

Re:A potential solution.

[DigitalSpyder]

I disagree.

Many players get into gaming for a chance to accumulate some measure of power and that is part of the escapism experience. If people want a sense of reality they can go weave baskets and dance in SWG or play The Sims.

A player wants a sense of power and making them more "mortal" does not grant it. Ensuring that players do not create situations that a player cannot avoid (like rampant PKing) and that admins are not called in to settle every agreement is the answer.

Admins should only get in

Re:A potential solution.

[illuminata]

I'm not saying that a player shouldn't be able to obtain some sort of power, but my solution would change how one would go about obtaining it.

I think that if a player is going to be better than another, it should be because they truly have more skill rather than have more free time to level up.

Now, I'm not against initial attribute settings. A player should be able to customize their character to their liking within reason. But, I don't like it when a player can sit around, find different ways to level up

Good Fictional Example

[malverian]

This was mentioned in one of the linked to articles, but I think it's a very valid example of how to deal with misdemeanor in a virtual world.

There is an anime called .hack that is a story about characters playing in a virtual world called... "The World". In this world, there are player killers, which really are able to do whatever they want- but there are also fellow game players which take on the role of the "authority" (Crimson Knights), so it becomes a self-balancing fight between good and evil.

Obviously this is just a show (about a game), but the concept is still a good one.

Re:Good Fictional Example

[phlyingpenguin]

The other thing about .Hack is that the players all seem to know how to make their own adventures. In the manga (Legend of the Twilight, different storyline), there are admin run events. Even in that they stress that the guild has no real authority.

I think that before we have these types of things, we almost have to rid ourselves completely of NPCs and make monster hunting something you do mostly on a quest instead of just to level until you're the most powerful person in the world.

Re:Good Fictional Example

[MMaestro]

The only problem with comparing MMO games with .hack is how the anime fails to explain so much or fails to bring to the audience. For example:

1. ALL the players are logged with a user name, IP address, and e-mail address. The anime fails to note the fact people can't just "erase" their identity and start over if they find out they pissed off too many people.
2. The anime presents the Crimson Knights as a force that is more powerful than most players in the game (the anime does show that some players are more powerful). Not only that, the Crimson Knights have and maintain a relationship with the system operators allowing them to do things such as check logs, close servers, set up barriers, etc.
3. The anime assumes a large majority of players do not PK, and on top of that they assume the few PKers are not numerous or powerful enough to make their presence felt. This is not the case in real world MMO games where PKers are sometimes extremely powerful (read: buy stuff on eBay) and are quite numerous. (In Asheron's Call 2, some people like to camp the exiting portal where newbies come out of the training area. Not a pretty sight if you're a newbie.)

Re:Good Fictional Example

[SuiteSisterMary]

Pick some people who seem trustworthy, deputize them, and let them help keep the peace.

If they start screwing up, you undeputize them. MUDs called this 'trust,' as I recall; seems to be the .hack style, as well.

Re:Good Fictional Example

[MMaestro]

Actually, no. In the anime .hack the "Crimson Knights" are actually nothing but a group of players -acting- as moderators.

Actually, in the sequel to the first .hack/SIGN (Toonami airs this on Saturday nights), .hack/DUSK actually continues the storyline with the fact that the "Crimson Knights" have been disbanded because they lacked the power to moderate widespread incidents.

Without buffing up these "trustees" (ie. be able to teleport anywhere, heal anyone, disable/freeze/kill anyone) these "player modera

Except..

[Kwil]

..in the real world who wants to pay to pretend to be a cop all day?

One of the problems with trying to develop a good society in a game is that any good society depends a large amount on a lot of people doing work. Except people generally don't pay money to do work, people pay money for entertainment.

Aside from this, there's also the issues that being a griefer (as opposed to a simple player-killer) often has a much lower penalty in the virtual world than it does in the real world.

Say you've killed the griefer in the virtual world. What does he care? His only purpose was to get on there and get attention and piss people off. By having a force dedicated specifcally to getting him, his existance has been validated, and he'll likely just come back and do it again. After all, in the virtual world, if the cops hunt you down, you have an exciting battle, and if you lose, you lose a few stats or something, oh well.

In the real world, if the cops hunt you down, the battle probably isn't very exciting as cops generally come in with a superior force of numbers and weaponry, so that you submit rather than permanently die, and then the consequences likely involve you being placed in uncomfortable positions by large men who'll happily cause you severe injury. Not fun.

Re:Except..

[Qzukk]

Say you've killed the griefer in the virtual world. What does he care?

(for this I'll define griefing as one or more high-level people killing a low level person, once or repeatedly)

I think this got covered in Snow Crash, where Raven's head got cut off and placed in a case that protected it from the server cleanup, preventing the user from logging on again.

Solving the problem of griefers is probably an extremely difficult task. I've been thinking of a few ideas that may or may not work...

First would be

Re:I think

[Incoherent07]

Dawn is the definition of the term vaporware... I've been playing the "warm-up" game [racewarkingdoms.com] for about two years now, and Jeff (the admin) has recently quit talking about Dawn at all, when they were almost up to beta testing it 18 months ago.

I tend to agree, though, that some of the problem with MMOGs in general is that they place no stigma on death. You die, you respawn somewhere, you might lose some of your experience or equipment, but nothing too valuable that you can't get back relatively quickly. So people

Look to real life

[SuiteSisterMary]

Elaborating on what I said elsewhere.

What do you do in real life when the average person is unable to legally stop criminals from performing crimes? Elevate some people to above-average status, with legal enforcement powers granted, and let them deal with the problem.

The ability to throw an avatar into a featureless 'jail' room for an amount of login time (not a week of real time; the avatar must be logged in and active for the amount of time of the sentance; 24 hours means being logged in sitting in 10x10 grey room for 24 hours, not logging in a day later) would certainly stop the 'joyriders' or casual greifers.

Re:Look to real life

[Lord_Dweomer]

"not a week of real time; the avatar must be logged in and active for the amount of time of the sentance; 24 hours means being logged in sitting in 10x10 grey room for 24 hours, not logging in a day later"

And how would this be any more effective. So they log in, leave their comp on, and go watch TV until their sentence is up. Then go back to griefing.

Re:Look to real life

[SuiteSisterMary]

Then, as they re-offend, the sentance lengthens. Imagine a week of logged in time. Then a month.

Tie accounts to credit card numbers to make it more difficult to simply abandon an account and make a new one; "We're sorry, but you can create no new characters until L0rdSuxx0rZ6969!!!!1!!!!1!! has completed his jail time."

Perfect fix? Of course not. Might help? Definately.

Of course, the other option is to allow for lynch mobs; if fifty players all click the 'lynch' button for a specific char within,

PvP and the reason I droped UO

[Metex]

I was and continue to enjoy PvP in MMORPG's however after UO made changes to make it almost impossible to PVP I droped the game.

Why? Well for me when I pvped it wasnt ooo I have the most spells. Or wow I can hit harder then you. Nope for me it was all tactics. I trained an anusual skill set and had some intresting ways to fight people. I was a Grand master hider/magician which allowed me to do some very intresting things.

One way I would pvp people is throw a bomb into a group of 5-6 people and open up a p

The problem with MMORPGs is:

[crazyphilman]

They're too much like High School.

Why play a game where gangs of bullies roam around looking for weaker people to prey on? Why play a game where another group of people pick on you just to annoy you and ruin the game? Why deliberately subject yourself to hassles and aggravation and abuse, cliques and popularity contests and all that rot? More to the point, why PAY to re-experience high school?

Multiplayer sounds great in principle, but until the game companies change the setup so that griefing and PK-ing a