quote:Original post by solinear
...
Can you tell me what the difference is between a cable being yanked and a power outage? Oh yeah, none. ...

You''re absolutely right--if you try to design your game around online only battles, and buffer against "cable-yanking" cheaters exploiting this, you run the risk of punishing those with an untimely yet real problem that, from a network perspective, is 100% equivalent to a yanked cable.

The only valid solution I can think of to counter this is to do a more statistical analysis. Find out when the player is disconnecting, and how often. If he always disconnects during battles, then chances are he''s cheating, especially if battle is only a small percentage of gameplay. This system would only be able to protect against "abusive cheating" tactics.

In the real version of the solution, the cheater himself also gets to think about how to cheat to avoid detection. For example, he can toss in a few manual disconnects when he''s not fighting in battles. Thus, this becomes a game (in a "game theory" sense of the word) between the cheater and the detector. (As a side note, the cheater''s connectivity may not be stable, but I''ll ignore this detail since it''s equivallent to intelligent cheating; just keep in mind that the poor player who simply has a bad connection that you''re trying to protect in the first place, could also coincidentally be an opportunist cheater who knows he''s under the radar). Due to the fact that the cheaters are intelligent, and that AI on this level is extremely difficult if not impossible, the only working option that I see is if the detector is human (eg, log the disconnects, have the game master review them and take appropriate action).

Also, I''d like to point out some other aspects of cable-yanking as food for thought. Yanking your connection when you''re loosing a battle isn''t the only strategic scenario you have to consider. Consider, for example, that I''m a cheater, and want to kill player Y. Maybe I find out that even though Y is more powerful than I am, over time I can weaken him to an arbitrary degree simply by initiating an attack, hitting him hard, then logging off of my ISP before he hits me back. In this case I wouldn''t really be losing a battle, but I''d still be exploiting the "online only" system. The point here is that if you''re going to code all these features, and you''re concerned about cheaters, you need to make sure you cover all possible scenarios, and it may not be that easy to do so depending on your game design.

Note also that though I think this is feasable to do in practice (ie, it''s possible to design a game with online only battles to protect against people who accidentally disconnect, that also has some sort of abuse filtering), I still reserve all of my ill feelings against actually designing a game this way. From a game design point of view, it makes more sense to me to design the game in such a way that yanking the network connection is not strategic in the first place, which to me means that the "online only battle" scenario isn''t too good at all. In addition, I''ll repeat that "online only battle" isn''t attractive to me as a _game player_ due to the fact that I (being from the US) want to be able to play against the guy in Australia.

-- Joshua Lusion           | If you will tell me why the fen Sr. Software Engineer/  | appears impassable, I then hobbyist game coder     | will tell you why I think that I                         | can get across it if I try. (M. Moore)

-- Joshua Lusion           | If you will tell me why the fen Sr. Software Engineer/  | appears impassable, I then hobbyist game coder     | will tell you why I think that I                         | can get across it if I try. (M. Moore)

i think its a bad idea..especially if u happen to lose a character u'r spent hundred of hours to develop. also, assuming u can kill other players, what stops a couple of assholes from taking pleasure in that
.i think it would be a better idea to have a temporary death that lasts for, say... 24 hours. that was it gives the player time to think of what they've done without causing the problems stated above

[edited by - mentalstatement on January 12, 2003 1:25:55 AM]

quote:It''s constant hard-core play in a permadeath system.

You have to realize though that it will definitely be a lot harder to die in a permanent death system than in current systems. When I played EQ, I died about once every few hours. When I play a permanent death game, I expect to die once every 20+ hours. There will be ample opportunities to avoid death. Even during combat, you will have plenty chance to retreat. It will not be a ''one-hit'' permanent death. If you have to think in EQ terms, think about two characters starting a fight with plenty of hitpoints. At one point, the hitpoints of one or both fighters drop below 70%. Do I stay or do I go? Then it drops below 50%. Stay or go? 20% 10%... The fight itself might take a minute, 5 minutes, or 15 minutes. The point is that characters will have a chance to escape, and that permanent death will most of the time be brought on by a simply bad decision. Fear of permanent death will not keep anyone from doing anything. Fear of permanent death WILL keep people from taking stupid chances while in combat.

quote:Permadeath won''t help either of the first two though and only make the ''jerk quotient'' more prevalent.

I''ll forever disagree that it makes the jerk quotient more prevalent. The one thing I hear players complain about is that there is nothing they can do against jerks. A correctly implemented permadeath CAN (not saying WILL) be a (not saying THE) solution.

quote:This only works if your friends stay around the same city and never get involved with something that is in-depth and that they can''t get out of. If they leave the city that you''re in while you''re offline, you have to travel to where they are.

Yes. So? Make more friends. Prepare to travel a lot. I don''t see a problem. If you are afraid to play on your own, or aren''t good enough to survive, you''ll have to make friends. If your friends move around a lot, and you don''t like to move, make more friends (so that there will always be some nearby). Guilds have already been established in current MMO games. Portals have already been established in current MMO games.
And why is the area around a city so dangerous? Are there no people brave enough to patrol the area? Why is the city created then? To be a prison? And what''s so important outside the city? What''s the motivation to leave it?
I ask these questions, because besides permanent death, the entire way of thinking has to be changed. The game will not just have cities like in current MMO games, where some AI guards patrol the city, and perhaps part of the wilderness. There will not be an endless list of stupid AI monsters to slaughter and loot in the wilderness. Players have to create their own cities (very primitive, more like gatherings) and find ways to use their numbers. They should patrol the area around their home.

Stop thinking about EQ + permanent death. Start with permanent death only. Then go from there. What needs to happen to make permanent death work. Not ''what needs to change in current games to make permanent death work''.

quote:I''m sorry, PvP doesn''t work for me no matter what the way.

Well, then there''s really nothing I can do for you. PvP is and will forever be at least part of my design. I guess I''m the complete opposite of you, in that PvE doesn''t work for me.

quote:I don''t like competition being defined as ''go out and slaughter each-other for permadeath''.

That''s not how I define competition with permandeath at all. I''d define it more as ''go out and compete, but be careful''.

quote:You can''t fix your mistakes in a permadeath game though.

Not with the dead character, no. That''s the whole point of permadeath.

quote:You can just start over again with nothing, spending 2-3 weeks getting back to where you were before.

With nothing? Who ever said you''d start over with nothing? Besides the wisdom you''ve no doubt gained, having learned from your mistakes (Man, I shouldn''t keep fighting when my health drops below 20%), the children of your dead character will probably have gotten something from their now dead parent, be it physical properties (DNA) or belongings.
And why should it take 2-3 weeks to get back to where you were before? Why do you want to get back to where you were before? Don''t you want to go somewhere else this time?

quote:No ''beating'' it, just waiting to see how far you can get before losing again.

Beating it? Are MMO games about beating something? I wasn''t aware of it. And if death equals losing to you, then a permadeath game where death happens once every 20 hours must be much more pleasant to you than your average MMORPG where death happens much more often.

quote:It''s a no-win game, just a game about who doesn''t lose the longest.

I agree on the ''it''s a no-win game''. That''s how I see MMO games. But ''nobody wins'' doesn''t equal ''everybody loses''.

quote:I''m sorry if you can''t come up with better solutions than ''let''s just kill them all off'' to the level cap, exp grind problems of EQ and UO.

Better solutions? What''s your solution to money sinkholes? To economy problems? Could it be item degradation? Why not apply the same principle to the uber-character syndrome: character degradation. Just like items can be destroyed, characters can be destroyed.

quote:The droves of hardcore, non-roleplayers will ruin the game for the roleplayers, except for a small minority who will generally band together.

I''m counting on the large majority to band together. And I''m counting on the hardcore, non-roleplayers wanting to ruin the game for others by attacking them. That''s one of the principles of my design. That''s how I can eliminate AI opponents. That''s not to say that the game will focus on combat, though.
The challenge is to create a game that is good enough to keep players around to start to understand that they have many, many choices as to how they want to play the game. The design has to get them out of the MMORPG mindset. It has to show them an entirely new way of playing. It has to find a way to keep them playing after their first character dies and they find that they cannot resurrect that character in any way. I know all the complications of permanent death. I just don''t think they''re all that big a deal. The game just has to be good. If it''s not good, players won''t play it anyway, permanent death or not.

quote:Nobody will stay in that game because permadeath is only for the hardcore players.

Let''s find out if that''s true.

From other thread:

quote:But I don''t see how you would like to see your 10/50/100 hours of game wasted in 1 minute, because you died.

So, you''re just wasting time while playing? If we can switch the focus from ''gotta play to level my character up'' to ''man, I love every second of this game'', then permanent death wouldn''t really be a factor, right? I mean, if you wouldn''t consider the 10/50/100 hours of gaming wasted, just because your current character dies, then permanent death wouldn''t be a problem, right?