Acts of war and preying on civilians is the domain of kings and countries. Individuals and groups that do this are
branded as thugs, outlaws, and bandits which causes the rulers of the kingdom to send patrols or the army to eradicate these
miscreatants in an effort to maintain order within their boundaries.
As a way to simulate law enforcement without a lot of AI code, the following suggestion is offered.
The Kings Warrent
1.a. Players can start a patition to ask the king to declare a player an outlaw.
1.b. The patition is maintained at the city hall for anyone to view.
1.c. A player may sign each patition only once at a cost of 1pp for each patition.
1.d. 1000 signatures (a suggested number) are needed to complete the patition.
1.e. If the patition is not completed within 60 realtime days, it is withdrawn. No refunds.
2.a. A completed patition causes the player named to be flaged, for 30 realtime days, as PVP whenever they are within the boundaries of that kingdom. Attacking the flagged outlaw does not confer a PVP flag to the player.
2.b. The named player is also KoS to all guards, merchants, and trainiers within the boundaries of that kingdom during the time period in 2.a.
3. Patitions are only valid within a given kingdom.
4. A list of outlaws and their time remaining can be viewed at the city hall of the kingdom.
The Kings Pardon
1. A play named as an outlaw may purchase a pardon for 10,000pp (a suggested number) payed to the king or govener of the kingdom.
2. The price of a pardon doubles with each perchase of a one for any given kingdom.
Example: Your first pardon from the Elves is 10,000pp, but your third pardon from the Humans is 40,000pp.
3. A pardon immediatly remove the outlaw status for the given kingdom.
This is community policing of disruptive players. It takes alot of people to inact and has real time impact on the annoying individual.
Options:
1. If a player kills an NPC guard, merchant, or trainier (servants of the king), they are flagged as a outlaw for that kingdom. Outlaw status is removed by purchasing a King's Pardon (see above).
2.a. If an outlaw player is killed by a king's servant, they loose all of their weapons, for the first offense, and are no longer an outlaw.
2.b. If an outlaw player is killed by a king's servant, they loose all of their possesions, for the second offense, and are no longer an outlaw.
2.c. If an outlaw player is killed by a king's servant, they loose all of their possesions and banked items, for the third and subsiquent offenses, and are no longer an outlaw.
2.d. These penalties are kingdom specific and do not transfer to other kingdoms.
2.e. After being killed by a king's servant, the player's factions for the kingdom's NPC guards, merchants, and trainiers is reduced to one point above KoS.
This is a kingdom by kingdom affect. So if you do want to be a evil (in one kingdoms view) character, feel free. But this gives that kingdoms citizens a somewhat limited tool to make your life difficult if you harass that kingdom because I don't think VR will create an AI army to come after you and the GMs have better things to do.
I'm still waiting to get in Alpha and we're already talking 10Kpp, I hope that part doesn't come true :)
I like the concept, but I think the faction system somewhat takes care of this. Once you kill too many guards and your faction drops low enough you will become Kill on Sight. Also if the player can be PvP'd, doesn't that also mean they can fight back? Like a group of thugs running around newbie areas and slaughtering low level characters? This seems like it would work only on PvP servers.
Paying to improve your local faction (a pardon) is an interesting idea. I could see some sleezy tax collector or authority figure looking the other way if you line their pockets. Like a 24 hour "get out of jail" pass, even if you're KoS.
I could get behind some of this. Would be a great way to help police the population and would make reputaion matter a bit more. Set the number of signatures high enough that it could not be used to grief an innocent and it could work. Make it so only one vote per account. I don't like the losing all you stuff rule but other than that sounds cool.
Being able to attack someone with no repercussions is not fair no matter what the crime. Especially for 30 days.
I would be ok with a 1 day pvp flag, once you attack said player they can attack you back until one of you dies.
Upon the second offense your flag lasts for 2 days. Then 3 and so on.
Also, I understand the need for a way to make this ungriefable... but 1000 is alot. I would be ok with 250. I mean that is alot of people that you have wronged.
Also you should not be able to buy a pardon.
With 250 people you only have to wrong 1 person, then their entire guild signs it. But for that matter 1000 people can be done by some guilds as well. And ultimately you don't have to wrong anyone, you could just be disliked for some reason and a guild will just make you KoS all the time.
kelenin said:With 250 people you only have to wrong 1 person, then their entire guild signs it. But for that matter 1000 people can be done by some guilds as well. And ultimately you don't have to wrong anyone, you could just be disliked for some reason and a guild will just make you KoS all the time.
I have never seen a serious guild with 250 unique individuals, let alone 1000.
Typically those larger guild are casual guilds, starter guilds. And hardly have the community and coordination to blacklist someone on a whim. Have a tiny faith!
Porygon said:I would be ok with a 1 day pvp flag, once you attack said player they can attack you back until one of you dies.
Upon the second offense your flag lasts for 2 days. Then 3 and so on.
I kinda like this suggestion for shorter but progressive duration.
As for the PvP, anyone or everyone could attack the outlaw if they are in the kingdom and yes the outlaw could defend.
Porygon said:I have never seen a serious guild with 250 unique individuals, let alone 1000.
Typically those larger guild are casual guilds, starter guilds. And hardly have the community and coordination to blacklist someone on a whim. Have a tiny faith!
Don't underestimate those large zerg communities, especially if they have leadership that guides their signatures.
Maybe some sort of per guild cap would discourage/negate that possibility so things aren't run by hiveminds.
philo said:We can't even have thumbs up/thumbs down on the forums without it being an issue. Player voting with actual consequences is a bad idea.
I know it's not a realistic idea that would be added. But I think it would be a cool feature if it was able to be hashed out.
Maybe having a way that other players could either vote up or down once your "petition" has reached a nominal amount of votes.
We try to build this world where we say community matters. Well this would give a way for the community to have a voice. It would make people rethink their actions.
urgatorbait said:/dislike
We don't need a potentially abusable mechanic to solve bad behavior. The player base will handle it just like we did "back in the day". Reputation matters.
We know that we dont want something that can be abused. That's why were trying to come up with variations that will prevent abuse as much as possible.
We also already understand that it will be handled in a way by "hurting their rep" but if you follow most threads on these forums. You'll see most people are concerned that this wont be enough. Concerned that larger guilds or groups of like minded griefers will just band together. Concerns that a majority of the population wont care about reputation at all.
It's fun to consider other options as opposed to JUST making a forum post about a ninja looter and spamming about him in general chat.
Back to the original topic. I think that 250 players signing a petition is still quite a bit. Maybe in order to reduce guilds just banding together, each subsequent person in a guild that wants to sign has to pay more. (1pp for the first. 2pp for the second. And so on with increasing limits)
Make it so that you cannot sign a petition against the same person in a certain time frame (once a month) but the second subsequent warrant in the same month only takes 200 people... then 150.. etc
So subsequent warrants require "new" players... but less of them and last for a longer duration.
I think if this idea was tweaked a little it could be a cool quest or a functional idea. I don't like the idea of people using this to grief others. If it were me i would take the PVP aspect out of it, but having a bounty or a death squad or a jail system for people that bent the rules or those that are generally dispised or popular. Of course on PVP servers it would work out differently, but if we are doing PVE then keep it PVE only. I think it should be regional or even city zone only. Short term definitely - so that they would move to another area for the day or two and people would be able to have some peace and quiet.
I know this is akin to thumbs up and thumbs down, but all in fun. Once someone gets say 250 votes in a 1-2day span they get a 1-2day bounty from that city, short term faction modifier, and a declaration that anyone caught grouping with them would suffer a similar fate. You would need a lockout timer on this tho so that it wont be over abused, maybe a month for the same city and a week for a different city.
kreed99 said:I think if this idea was tweaked a little it could be a cool quest or a functional idea. I don't like the idea of people using this to grief others. If it were me i would take the PVP aspect out of it.
The point of the pvp aspect is to allow the community that the person wronged a way to fight back. We enact our own punishment.
Ya. I understand that aspect. I was looking into a solution that would be more PVE friendly..... I mean no disrespect. I was thinking of a more specific PVE friendly solution for this kind of instance. Like i said initially its an interesting idea, and if tweaked it could see itself ingame. Just saying.,.......,.,.,....
kreed99 said:Ya. I understand that aspect. I was looking into a solution that would be more PVE friendly..... I mean no disrespect. I was thinking of a more specific PVE friendly solution for this kind of instance. Like i said initially its an interesting idea, and if tweaked it could see itself ingame. Just saying.,.......,.,.,....
I dont think most players that play on a pve server are 100% against pvp. Most of them just want to be able to choose WHEN they pvp. This would give them the ability to exact vengeance on their griefers and choose the time and place it happened. Besides, even if you refuse to ever pvp... a large portion of the server will absolutely kill this person.
Also, as an added caveat to prevent this from happening, you can make it so every death while the player has a warrant out... will actually make them lose exp etc.
I think the mere fact that the OP came to the boards with a suggested solution to a problem many are concerned about is great. I grow tired of people asking how xyz is going to be prevented, but don't bring any ideas to the table. Devs are trying to build a world for us to play in, their minds are likely not yet focused on how to police it. Plus, the OP is providing something that's actually workable with some adjustments.
My thoughts:
1) Permanent loss of gear should not be a consequence of being disliked by a community. I would remove or rework this in such a way that wasn't permanently impactful. Maybe a temporary seizure of assets?
2) I think 1 month out the gate is too much, and 1 day too little. I'd say 1 week (or better, imo, "x" number of played hours).
3) Voting: It makes me wonder if there should be a counter-balance in place (allowing players to vote AGAINST the petition)? Would this just create chaos and would rarely allow this system to result in any real repercussions.
4) I would say there needs to be some level guidelines on this, as well. Maybe post-20?
To address this being on PVE servers... back in EQ you could be flagged PVP on PVE servers, and if I remember correctly there was some insane GM issued quest to remove the flag? Am I remembering this correctly? I don't see any issue what so ever with this being in PVE communities. People who do not wish to attack bandits don't have to just becuase they are able to. But oh how I remember wishing I could just rage on someone back in the day... instead, people got trained. This system could help address the ridiculous behaviors of players taken in/out of frustration.
Overall, I really like what this could develop into and think it has real worth and potential.
It could be all based on faction so the system would run by itself.
If Player A attack an NPC that belong to a City, to a king, to a community, Player A will lose faction and become KOS if his faction is too low.
If Player A harm Player B (train, steal camp,...), Player B could spend his own faction that he built to report that person to a guard NPC. The issue would be to spend his own faction to report someone and the risk to become KOS himself. So we would need another type of ressource tied to the faction itself, we will call it 'influence' for now.
If Player B kill NPC (enemies of a faction), and run quests, he will earn faction and rank within that faction and build slowly influence (a valuable ressource). Players would earn more influence the higher with the faction they are. Now, Player B can report Player A with that influence. Player B would spend influence that would result on removing a lot of Player A faction on this part of Terminus.
Reporting someone cost influence. Player B influence would slowly increase with time because Player B still has a strong faction and high rank with that faction allowing him to report people if needed. Player A will be KOS on this part of Terminus and will need to regain faction to become friendly again.
Instead of a cost to remove the KOS tag, I suggest a long series of quests. Like the one in EQ2 to change faction. It was so long and required a lot of efforts that you would not want to do it often. I can definitely be done if needed but pretty frustrating.
Would a system like that work? What flaws can you guys think of?
SoWplz said: Hah. Kind of a neat idea. But not sure how to really implament it, little out there for an MMO. I could see this on something smaller. Would be cool to see them even hire hitmen for a player. Just random encounters, as a group walks out of dungeon they see 5 mobs.. " we are looking for Joe blow" then attacks whole group. If your not ready you could die from just hanging with the wrong guy. Hah
The biggest aspect of it, is that only the "warrant"ed player can be attacked. So if I'm with him... nothing I do can make me stackable. So there wouldnt be any collateral damage (unless this guy is like the healer if your group). But I also think it should be easily visible on the PC plus in any "who" searches.
Pradah said:1) Permanent loss of gear should not be a consequence of being disliked by a community. I would remove or rework this in such a way that wasn't permanently impactful. Maybe a temporary seizure of assets?
2) I think 1 month out the gate is too much, and 1 day too little. I'd say 1 week (or better, imo, "x" number of played hours).
3) Voting: It makes me wonder if there should be a counter-balance in place (allowing players to vote AGAINST the petition)? Would this just create chaos and would rarely allow this system to result in any real repercussions.
4) I would say there needs to be some level guidelines on this, as well. Maybe post-20?
Idk if you read some of my posts in this thread but I agree that 30 days is too much. I think just 1 day is enough as a first time offense. But it would grow each subsequent time.
I agree there should be no loss of gear. But I think the deaths resulting from this 24 hour pvp window should be handled just like any other death. Loss of exp + corpse run.
I don't think there should be ways to vote "against" the warrant. That would just create a system where a guy who griefs just gets friends to vote against it.
And I haven't thought of level guidelines. I honestly say no to them. Since if I'm a griefer and I know I need to be level 20... I can just stop at 19 and endlessly grief to my hearts content.
Good questions tho!