[MUD-Dev] Player Justice

[Paul Schwanz]

Koster, Raph wrote:

> Later on in SWG, we ended up with an elaborate switch
> system. However, there was a remnant of the original system with
> "militia." These are people who are allowed to bypass the
> switch. Named by the local government, they have the ability to
> PvP any target they want, within the confines of the town. They
> are basically police. The system was removed when players
> basically held territory that the designers did not want them
> holding (the entrance to dungeons and the like). There was no way
> to overrun a government, so players could not get back the
> territory that was held.

Yes, that makes sense.  It seems to me that giving players the
ability to do something that is immutable is asking for trouble.
Immutable creations are just the sort of things that griefers will
look to exploit.  They can hide behind the immutable and thus
frustrate the larger community.  This occurs because there is a
strong temptation to not let someone else destroy what a player has
created.  But I believe this is a temptation that should be
resisted, precisely for the sort of occurence described in your
example.  Instead, I'd favor a model where it was more costly to
destroy barriers than to errect them.  That way, it takes a small
community's resources to contravert the individual, and a larger
community's resources to contravert a smaller community.

So, in the case you describe, the larger community puts together the
resources to destroy the barriers that they think are being used for
griefing (denying access to dungeons, etc.), and then errect their
own structures and defenses to protect that area in the future.  In
the end, you still end up with relatively safe areas, but not so
safe that the many can be griefed by the few.  And the process of
handling situations such as the one you describe becomes more of a
story or history of the world and how the players' actions have
formed it instead of a story or history about SOE's perceived
customer service failures.  Moving away from the entitlement/handout
model for entertainment currently in place is a good thing, IMHO,
but I think some MMORPG designs can tend to perpetuate this model.

Of course, the good thing is that you have things in your game world
that players really care about (eg. your dungeons and the like).  It
isn't surprising that players want to be able to have some sort of
impact on something that they think matters.  They long for this
sort of legitimacy for their actions.  The trick is allowing them to
have that impact while still making them accountable to the fun
experienced by the larger community.

--Paul "Phinehas" Schwanz
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