[MUD-Dev] PvP Systems

[the_logos at www.achaea.com]

On Fri, 16 Feb 2001, John Buehler wrote:

> Matt Mihaly writes:
 
>> Well, I can only really answer for Achaea, and if the leader of a
>> city-state decided that, he'd not be the leader very long at
>> all. I'd imagine he'd be out in a matter of a real-life hour or
>> two. The power ultimately rests at the bottom of the pyramid as all
>> city-states are democracies. In our 3 and a half years so far,
>> we've never had the leader of a city-state do anything crazy like
>> that. For the most part, they actually work really hard to make the
>> cities they lead better. But, if one of them did go a bit off the
>> deep end, the populace can simply remove him or her (through their
>> elected representatives, who choose the leader and who can remove
>> the leader (titles differ by city)).
 
> In Ultima Online, there are whole 'gangs' of kids who form
> organizations in order to PK others.  My greatest fear is having a
> large scale game (e.g.  Ultima Online or EverQuest) with your
> mechanisms such that all it takes is a whole bunch of kids to band
> together and make others' lives miserable.  It may be that the
> political PvP would keep such people busy enough that they wouldn't
> feel the need to band together in order to create even more mayhem
> than the current mainstream systems provide.

In a game that focuses on bashing monsters like UO or EQ, I probably
wouldn't advocate Achaea's style of play. It's not compatible, mainly
because the focus of the game requires most players to be running
about in the wilderness bashing monsters. We have monster bashing in
Achaea too, but it's hardly the focus of the game, and so players
don't really feel they have to go bash once they've hit a fairly easy
to achieve level. Some do of course, but many don't.

The relevance of this has to do with protected territory. City-states
have the power (at an ongoing cost to them) of instituting 2 types of
defences against player enemies. They can hire archers and telepaths
(archers are more powerful, but won't attack you if you're indoors,
whereas telepaths will hit you wherever you are) that will
automatically attack those who have been declared enemies of the city
when said enemy enters the city. It is certain death to enter a
city-state that's operating with full defences if you're by
yourself. The more people you enter with, the less harmful the
defences will be to each person (to a point. There is a set minimum
damage.) So, while this does allow groups to come into a city and
attack, it's very dangerous, as as soon as one city enemy dies,
everyone starts taking more damage, likely leading to more deaths,
leading to more damage, etc.

Now, there are players who play their entire game and almost never
leave the cities. They are, while not completely safe, quite safe, but
they are also limited in what they can do. Our theory tends to be that
the more freedom you have from harm, the more we curtail your freedom
to do things. We DO have a sort of 'pk switch', but what it does is
completely protect you from player harm, but also not allow you to
perform any aggressive actions against anyone, be it player or
NPC. You also can't do certain other things that might affect the
balance of good/evil, or chaos/order in the land.

We find that these systems on their own do a pretty decent job of
controlling things while not letting them go stale
PK-wise. Organizations such as city-states and guilds and whatnot also
have patron Gods (the Gods are in-role players though they build and
such too) who will help steer organizations away from thugishness.

Trying to regulate player behavior through using as many 'soft'
mechanisms as possible is my goal. I guess I feel that hard mechanisms
like pk switches are cop-outs.

While the physical world is not the same as the virtual world,
consider that people at 4-way stop signs are not constantly crashing
into each other despite there being no one to tell them when to go and
when to stop. There are rules of course (person to your right goes
first in case of simultaneous arrival) but even in the case of 4
people arriving at once, they'd sort it out among themselves almost
automatically.

There are no hard switches in "real life", only soft ones (law and the
threat of force from the other players), but the remoteness of
government combined with the lack of real participation that 90% of
the citizenry has makes government feel almost like a hard
switch. Yet, government alone isn't what keeps the Western world
running in an orderly fashion. More than anything else, it's the
culture of the people and you _can_ work to establish a particular
kind of culture in your world, regardless of size. It takes effort of
course, but it's worth it. You'll never get rid of all problems that
way, but you can get rid of enough that it is feasible for
administration to take care of the rest.


> That matches my attitude about PvP in general: if you want to keep
> people away from malicious PvP, give them something entertaining to
> do.  In your case, you're focusing their PvP energies into something
> that you and a bunch of other people find entertaining.  In my case,
> I want to distract them from the very idea of PvP and get them
> enjoying the world because it's a fun play to spend time.

Oh, we have lots of malicious PvP. It's part of life in Achaea. Heck,
the vast majority of our skills are focused on player vs. player
combat. Most of them don't even work against mobiles. Having said
this, we have surprisingly little random PKing. There's a bit of
course, but far far less than you might expect. Generally, people who
don't go out of their way to irritate other people, and who don't
attack other people, are very safe. There really is a culture of
leaving those who don't participate in PvP conflict alone. (People who
don't PK but participate in inter-citystate politics are a grey
area. They are directly contending with others, but should they be
allowed to affect other people's lives as they choose and yet remain
immune from the way those they affect choose to strike back at them? 
Difficult question.)

 
> Do most of your players engage in the political system, or is there
> a spectrum of players?  Some who dive in loaded for bear and others
> who generally ignore it?  Do you have a feel for the distribution?
> I'd hop into Achaea and find out for myself, but I prefer the
> horse's mouth over dealing with a text game.

Well, by engage, what do you mean. If you mean do they vote, then yes,
most vote. Do most end up in office? No. There are few political
leadership positions compared to the number of players. But, even if
you aren't an elected official, you could be appointed to run one of a
city-state's ministries (war, chancellery, trade, etc), or just work
for one. The system is interesting, but it has yet to fulfill its
promise due to the fact that we haven't had time to put in even close
to the extensive system of city management that we wish to. Having
said that, most moderately serious players do at least run for office
at some time or another.

>> Ok, that's fair enough once again. I sometimes let the player in me
>> speak rather than the designer. The player in me hates pansies and
>> the designer in me tries to ignore the player as much as possible.
 
> I am engaged in social PvP.  But I choose when and where I engage in
> it.  Some days I'm interested in punching another character in the
> nose and other days I'm not.  I see no reason why I should have to
> stay out of the game world on days when I don't feel like punching
> somebody in the nose.  It's a game after all.  Not a life.  Despite
> the classic tirade of "It's not a game, it's..."

Chuckle, I was joking about the pansy thing man.

--matt

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