#30 Law and Order

[Kwil]

I think you're barking up the wrong tree here with the idea of guilds controlling griefers.

There's nothing stopping guilds existing in any MMOG right now. Consider the formation of actual guilds.. were the leaders able to mystically bestow power down to their underlings? Of course not. The way the guilds got organized is people who were good at something got together and did that something. Period. They can do this in any MMOG, and in some of them even do. But this doesn't impact the griefer problem at all

So why doesn't this seem to work so well to control the society of MMOG's out today from griefers? The answer is both simple and depressing.

In real life, griefers are punished for their actions.

In any MMOG, they're not. What's more, I'd go as far to say that they can't be.

Oh sure, their character might be inconvenienced to some degree (though most don't even do this to any significant amount -- after all, that's a good way to lose a payer) but the person behind the character? They don't suffer a thing, because this was just leisure for them anyway. Worse comes to absolute worst, they find some other game to go on and grief there.

As a result, the answer as to why a guild structure won't control griefers is because *no* in-game structure will. When the worst punishment that can be imposed is simply not being allowed to play the game, there really is little incentive to change behavior patterns -- there's always another game.

[Holliday]

This is a good point. When players arrive whose goal is purely to cause trouble for other players, the worst that you can do to them by game mechanics is annoy them. If you annoy them enough, they leave. So you lose a player, and they go grief elsewhere. However, from the standpoint of your game, wouldn't this be cause for celebration?

On the other hand, they could just restart and begin the process again. This is my point. Build game mechanics so that the power required to grief others comes from first fitting into the community. You force griefers each time to build inter-personal relationship that will then be lost - forcing them to start over again.

Like I said, I haven't really seen it. I think it might work, and there are other possible answers out there too. It hasn't all been tried yet. In fact, many of the attempts so far weren't thought through or were only half-hearted. And if it's the unreachable goal, if none of the current plans work, game developers everywhere are still going to keep trying.

[nigirimeshi]

*sigh*

I don't mind griefers all that much. I know, everybody else hates them, but for me they aren't so bad, provided certain other things.

1. In-game recourse. The victim needs to have some recourse against criminals, be it police or the ability to go vigilante and attempt to kick the offender's ass themselves.
2. Roleplaying. Skotos is awesome because its games are some of the more rp-heavy MMORPGs. If the griefer is to act like that, they should act like a sneaky bastard all the time and not be mad when others roleplay well and have their characters kick the perpetrator's ass.
3. Equality. Don't reward theives and murderers more than you would an average character for following the law. They could kill a character or friendly NPC and alienate the police force. Or they could go vigilante and get the underground after their hide. A good example of this is the game Neverwinter Nights. You harm a commoner and the police chase after you.
4. Neutrality. Make being law-abiding or criminal a neutral issue. Don't glorify one or the other.

Merely providing for these four points would help to turn an annoyance into a nice additional layer of complexity and realism.

[shentino]

Suppose that all of us mudmins that got tired of griefing decided to make a cooperative blacklist?

Sorta like the buddy system.

If Player X decides to be a griefer, and winds up banned or expelled, then the blacklist system will prevent him from joining any OTHER muds listed in the "anti-griefing" treaty.

With regards to griefers that create other characters after being banned, I simply prefer to invoke the IIPA, in a way, and consider their refusal to stay off the system as a case of trespass, and this usually doesn't go over very rosy with their ISPs.