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

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

- Splat

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

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.