18 replies to this topic

[headcrusher]

I was taking a shower and I had an ideia to have more control over killing (not finish with it, as it part of the game).

A "shame" factor could be added for each player. If a higher level player tries to kill a newbie (and I mean a guy with level 255 trying to kill a level 1 guy), a dice is throwed and the level 1 guy could kill the 255 guy with one hit

In the other hand, if a level 1 guy tries to kill a 255 guy, this feature is disabled, so newbie backstabing is not allowed

A very good feature and not used in MANY games was included in Diablo. If you keep killing all creatures in the 1rst dungeon level, and restarting the game, you could'nt rise up after level 11 (exp). The exp you gain per killing becomes smaller as your level keeps going up.

It's a very good way to discourage newbie killing, as the killer would get no advantage and takes the risk of dying with one strike.

The same could be implemented with levels, for exemple, if the attacker has >20 levels above the attacked. He would get no experience and have the risk to die.

So what do you think ?

[cdj5]

Sometimes I play Yahoo Gin Rummy, or chess. Both games use the USCF rating system which assigns a point system based on the level of player you are able to beat. The system uses a formula that can actually cause your rating to go down if you defeat someone with a particularly low rating. Thus experienced players are discouraged from playing inexperienced players because trouncing them causes your rating to go down.

[Zenroth]

I say let who ever kill who ever. If a newbie can ambush a highlevel character and kill hmm good for him,if not to bad. Should a high level character be able to walk around and kill low level characters that an most cases won't be able to hurt him? Yes.

[Machaira]

You're thinking like a player, not a developer. The problem with most on-line RPGs is that buttheads with that kind of attitude make it impossible to enjoy the game. How would you like it if you were a low level character and I kept killing you everytime you respawned for a couple of hours. You'd get sick of it and stop playing. That's not the way you sell a lot of copies of games. There has to be some kind of protection from PKers who abuse the ability.

[Splat]

I have always been of the belief that players should have complete freedom...

However, whenever I think about the rampaging PKer killing newbies, I always come back to this same idea: (Note, UO is the reference CRPG)

How about, instead of a reputation system controlled by stupid, deterministic computer rules (like in UO) you have a dynamic system where every player can form his/her own impression of a player. By him/her lonesome, that impression makes no difference. However, impressions are spread around the population based on trust. So if a person trusts you, and your impression of a given person is poor, then his/her impression of that person will ALSO be adversly affected, automatically.

This propogation of the impressions among the population will generally arrive at pretty stable results (I have tested it extensively). The cool thing is, take the NPC guards. They also have impressions of people. Given THEIR impression, they will attack those people that they have poor impressions of. So, if a PKer goes around and kills a bunch of newbies, those newbies will effectively "rat" on the PKer, and the PKer will end up getting his ass whooped in towns.

Another interesting example is that of a friendly duel: if by accident on of you dies, then he/she can simply explain to the dead guy that it was a mistake and, if he believes him, will not say bad things about him.

If anyone is more interested in this, I'll try to pull up my old emails (I sent out a 5-part email - about 10,000 words total I think, on this topic)

- Splat

[Splat]

Oh yeah. Whenever a person witnesses a crime, be it a NPC witness or PC witness, he makes an automatic change to the impression of that person based on his trust with that person, impression of that person, and his own global "average" impression in the world. So, crimes pass like rumors. You happen to kill a guy in the woods and a poor NPC sees it, it might take a few days before that NPC goes into town for food. OMG! he runs into his ol' pal guard Bob, who hears the sad story of the poor murdered newbie, guard tells the police force, and police force end up telling the whole world... PKer is not going back into town for awhile.

Kinda powerful, ain't it! Really cool stuff happens like this with about 500 lines of code when you simulate this.

- Splat

[Niels]

Cool idea! Could also make use of the often ignored "charisma" skill from D&D (I.e. a high charisma character is less affected by rumours).

/Niels

[Splat]

I would probably play the charisma attribute the other way: High charisma characters spread rumors more eficiently/faster/more accurate.

That way, charisma would be a GOOD attribute for a newbie to have, because it would help get revenge on anyone who bothers him

I forgot to mention one other important thing last message The NPC government is predefined as good people. Everyone should trust and have good impressions of the government. If they don't, the government doesn't like them either. This fixes the one problem with a completely free rumor system: if there were more evil people than good people, the whole system would flip-flop and guards would begin attacking good people.

That might be interesting in some games though, kind of a simulation of anarchists taking over the world through larger numbers. But for UO, it wouldn't do, because newbies spawning in towns would run a GREAT risk of simply being killed in 2 seconds.

- Splat

[Zenroth]

What happens when you get a character or group of players that come back to the town kill all the guards and take over?

Yes i do think like a developer and a player. Because i was working on a massive online rpg for awhile(with total freedom)even the destruction of cities,ect.

[xSuiCidEx]

i like your ideas and thoughts splat...i would like to read more on that from the 10,000 word email i think a government system starting off likes everyone and the community likes the government is a great idea...and if the player doesn't like the government...the government doesn't like them...having a whole working system like this in a game would be awesome...overturning the government and destroying the good players...or keeping government rule and letting good players rule....i think there would be alot of good battles over it....and the sides would turn alot....i hope i can hear more about it...

brad (xbradx_00@hotmail.com)

[Mr. Gecko]

headcrusher's second idea sounds really cool. the xp gained depending on your level would discourage pkers from killing newbies very well.

[Machaira]

It should be almost impossible for a single character to kill a guard unless he were extremely high level. Even then backup would probably be called. If the character managed to survive I'm sure there would be a price on his head and would have difficulty getting into the city or moving around freely if he managed that. A group of characters should be unable to kill all of the guards unless it was a well-planned operation as the guards would band together once word got out what was happening.

[Mandrake]

The problem I have with PKers is that they usually kill without a good reason to do so. At least, not a reason that works inside the context of the game. Perhaps a good reason to kill in the context of the game would be making alignment a key component of the character. If the game allows characters to be evil, let's say, then there should be real consequences of choosing that alignment. The game should have good creatures that won't attack good players, but will go out of their way to attack evil characters. The good creatures should dynamically gang up on marauding evil parties - in other words not just waiting around for someone to attack them. Instead, the creatures work together to hunt down characters of opposing alignments. Especially if the parties contain higher-level characters.

And if we are going to implement something that will make going to town difficult, you better make sure that the players have a real good reason to go to town in the first place. I mean, if I'm a level 100 wizard, do I have a need to go to town at all anymore? If not, I can kill at will in the wilderness.

Cya,
Dave

[Splat]

To use UO as an example, towns are crucial for supplies. Period. Wizards need reagents. Period.

However, someone could have a lackey to go into town for them. However, once it became known that the lackey worked for this wizard, he would be in bad shape.

I personally think taking over a town would be okay. However, it would take a lot of strength, many deaths, and it would take even more strength to HOLD a city. Don't you think that once the guards in other cities heard about the deaths of their friends, they would come down and form an attack force?

*****
The main problem with today's CRPGs is that the developers use stupid, unrealistic hacks to solve problems that are solved automatically in the real world but they can't figure out how to in the game world. The answer is more realism. Social realism in this case, since social outcasts in today's games are rampant.
*****

- Splat

[CoolMike]

Ok, I know this is a revolutionary idea, but why not make all the characters in the game the same "level"? In fact, abolish levels! Allow everyone in the game to create a fully realistic character at the beginning of the game with whatever skills and attributes they want. That warrior may be really strong and good at fighting, but he is may also be an idiot that could be outsmarted by an intelligent farmer. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and their are no level 50 people beating on helpless level 1 guys. And not to pick on Everquest, but that game SUCKS until you get to AT LEAST level 10 or so. What is the fun of hardly being able to go anywhere because you'll die for the first two weeks of the game?
Now some of you may be thinking, what is the fun of having a character that is complete when you start the game? Well, first of all, their are always quests to go on, cities to trade in, and taverns to have a little social fun. The players could improve their skills to an extent (but perhaps at the cost of other skills). Like a warrior could go to a Wizard's Guild and eventually completely convert his character into a Wizard! No need to start the whole game over!
Also, allow everyone to do anything they want - like in real life. Yes I know their are jerks out there who will just go around killing other people. But, as in real life, bounty hunters, soldiers, or guards (real players or NPCs) could hunt the vile scum to extinction, thereby balancing the game. Or a player could initiate a vote to "boot" offending players (as in Starsiege: Tribes).
Ok, I've rambled on enough. That is my vision for the future of RPGs.

[Zenroth]

I think it all comes down to how relistic you want to get in your world. In the real world there are hundread of murders a day ,and ppl get away with it. Also guards be super powerful is generaly unrelistic(unless there like royal guards ect). Remember police/guards take money, and ppl that want to do there job(not all of thoose ppl are super powerful bad boys in real life). Also what about assasians? Instead of them directly killing someone they poison the city well and hundreads die.

It all comes down to its your world you make the rules. How about when you die you die time to start a new character. Also please forgive the grammer,and spelling in this msg(its 1am and i don't feel very well.)

[Machaira]

The problem with realism in a game is the fact that a truly realistic game wouldn't sell. Imagine you spend 6 months creating a great character and you die from rabies from a rat bite! Or you get hit with a stray arrow and die. Or a 1st level character sneaks up behind you and puts a dagger in your ribs. The problem is balancing realism with gameplay that makes people want to play the game without dying every time they turn around. I'm not going to spend $50 on a game if I have to create a new character every half hour. It's a problem that no one has solved and I'm not sure if it ever will be solved to everyone's satisfaction.

[Stalcair]

I like the rumors/charisma thing, as well as the idea of graded experience.
What about the whole different strokes for different folks cliche? Some obviously want a totally chaotic society, where might makes right, others want strict laws (read coded rules). If you designed from the beginning the ability to have variants based on this (and other argued game features) then you could better implement different shards(UO induced obviously) with different standards.
Some ingenious fellow, not me, could fit this onto each shard (diffent locations behaving differently). This would make it easy to have conquered (evil) towns, where the roles are switched somewhat.
This could be dynamically implemented by GM's and programmers. Again, it would, IMHO, be better to have designed this from the start.
But I think a fame attribute is VERY important. Asheron's Call has a good idea on this.
As far as the rumors idea goes, this would be a good start to limit abuse of game structure faults. (e.g. Ten UO "Great Lords" killing others, newbie or not, by tricking the criminal flag feature). In the example, many would see this happen, but would just have to continue on in frustration as these char's reaped the benefits of having "good" chars.
I have seen some well played evil chars out there, and I thought it added a much needed edge to the game. However, if a bunch of punks that play 24/7 go around rampaging just because they get off on frustrating others, then a rumor idea, might make it much harder do this and still be seen as a good character by the gaming world at large.
After all, if you only get a chance to play about 2-8 hours a week, you still wan't to play and have fun. The game wouldn't sell to many in this case, if it didn't protect them.
However, as stated above, many like a full dog-kill-dog world (or area) and they could have it!

btw, I agree that too much reality can be bad... after all this is an escape. Would anyone here make a game called Life Sucks, where your char spends his life driving in horrible traffic to work, is given past due deadlines that he/she is now responsible for, only to be chased by (player or NPC) rampaging IRS officials, and bill collectors?