A Counterattack

Introductory remark: To understand the context of this post it is helpful to have read the previous two.

1)
When trying to make the players behave in a specific way there are two basic methods.

- The elegant one and
- the messy one.

The elegant one consists of a few very-easy-to-understand rules that make players behave in the desired way. The messy one consists of a lot of rules that mostly exist to close loopholes and side-effects that wouldn't even exist without them.

Obviously, if anyhow possible a designer should always use elegant rule sets. An example for a non-elegant one would be World of Warcraft's arena rating system. Look it and its history up, if you are interested. I cannot explain it here, because it is too complex. Which is exactly the point.

Sometimes, unfortunately, there is no elegant solution, but you still want players to behave in a specific way. In these cases you can try to keep a messy rule set as un-messy as possible; how? By trying to have rules that work independently from each other. Never try to fix loopholes with rules that potentially open up other loopholes. This is most often a race to the bottom. In the end one loophole found out by one IQ:164 student, with enough time at his hands, is enough to destroy your entire system.

If there are some loopholes left, always consider to use a “It's not a bug, it's a feature” strategy. Be warned that any try to keep rules hidden will only work for a few weeks – if your game is successful.

2)
So, let's get to the meat: An open-PvP, full-loot MMORPG that makes players police themselves and makes them want to be nice to each other. *taking a deep breath*

The approach uses a lot of independent features and rules that each stands on their own. Each of these measures is meant to decrease the significance of the problem without solving it completely. What remains of the problem will be declared “not a bug, but a feature” and will be dealt with by expectation management.

Here's the list:

- Accountability: Just one character per account. You want another one, buy another account or delete your previous character. Paid name/appearance change possible once per account. Just one world-server.

- Strong horizontal character power progression. A very powerful player is at best 2x as strong as a relative newbie.

- No teleport.

- Restrictive weight limit. To take with you all the belongings (especially armor) of another player, requires that you didn't carry with you anything, but armor and weapon to begin with. If you want to transport more, use a cart (slow, requires a street/path).

- Impossible to figure out the 'power level' of another player before attacking him.

- Impossible to know who somebody is, unless he introduced himself to you or you recognize his face / shape (modern graphics ftw).

- Basic armor and weapons are cheap – especially the ones used for open-world resource gathering.

- Special mercenary/bandit skills to better track down players in combination with specific equipment that needs to be used to access and improve these skills. This equipment is expensive.

- Players don't automatically kill you. They first defeat you. To take your stuff, however, they need to kill you after you have been defeated. If they don't, you revive five minutes later with low health. If you want, you can kill yourself in that time.

- Should you be killed by a mob, it takes all your stuff / eat your body / tear you apart. You won't be able to get your stuff back.
Explanation: There's no hoping to not die by the hands of a mob. Mobs are meaner than players. Also, you are used to lose stuff. Mobs always attack non-defeated players first.

- Looting another player takes time during which you are very vulnerable.

- No teleport, except due to death: death means you resurrect near a holy place. You respawn with basic equipment.

These are the basics, now some special features:

- Parts of the map can be claimed as influence regions of groups of players. These regions are tied to central player-group-owned buildings, like castles. Within the influence region, the members of the owning-group receive a 10% combat bonus; enemies receive a 10% penalty. The leadership of the group can declare an infinite amount of players / other groups as "not-welcome", persona-non-Grata. Should one of them enter the influence region, all members of the group in control that are in the vicinity, are notified about who entered their region where. The whereabouts are broadcasted repeatedly while the intruder is in the region.
Player-employed guards attack non-welcome players on sight.

- After having been killed by a player in defeated mode, players can mark any player in their vicinity as "murderer". Marking a player 'murderer' has a seven-day cooldown. The mark is removed after half a year. You can remove the mark before half a year is up. Once somebody has been marked a murderer, he emits a frightening aura whenever he is in the vicinity of the location where he was marked. You cannot mark a player of a group that your group is at war with. You can only become member of a group once per week. (little race to the bottom, once again ..)
Effect of the aura: other players are notified that somebody scary has entered their vicinity. Nearby patrols are attracted to a marked player that enters the vicinity of the marking. These guards are hostile and not to be joked with.

- Guards in NPC-cities and other important places. In NPC-cities and many other places you need to sheathe your weapon / caster staff / etc. If you draw your weapon the guards give you a 10s warning. If you don't sheet the weapon in time, they attack you. Guards are about as powerful as a very powerful player. Guards can call for reinforcement that spawns quite far away. Players survive long enough that no single murderer can possibly kill another player before he has been killed by the guards himself. The guards snare the player and knock him down. The best option is to just not do anything if you are attacked.

- Expectation management: new players run through an extensive tutorial that explains the world and the consequences of one's actions.


So, what do you think? Overkill? Or still not enough? Do you see unwanted side-effects / loopholes? Or do you have an idea of an additional feature to fight Lunatic-PvP?


Edit:
This was a non-iterated brainstorming. I've already found two ways to abuse these rules. But I also have a few more nice ideas. For what its worth: I'm still interested in as much feedback as possible ;)