Improving the MMO

[Uraniun235]

No, you aren't owed any compensation. Get out of the house, get a job, get a social life, and stop playing WoW all day. If you're playing a game to the point where you could claim to deserve rewards for your time investment, you have a serious addiction problem.

You've got the wrong take on this:

[Jim Raynor]

I don't know how the fuck anyone plays MMOs.

I'm a gamer, and the games I play rely on planning and a bit of twitch, not just playing on and on for a shitload of time. Even then, I would say that gaming takes up too much of my time already, and I would do myself good by cutting down. My life would probably go straight to hell if I took up a MMO.

I tried the original Everquest several years ago, when a kid at my school gave up the game and allowed several people at my school to use his account. MMOs have basically pushed the "Diablo"-type action rpg out of style, but even then I thought Diablo and Diablo II were better games. They may have been clickfests, but they were fast-paced clickfests with lots of awesome explosions and an actual sense of danger.

Leveling up and "grinding" wouldn't be so bad if MMO designers actually gave new players interesting things to do. In Diablo, you were given quests from the start of the game. You went places, explored dungeons, collected quest items, and battled bosses. In Everquest, a new character spends hours on end fighting in the designated "newbie area" right outside a town's entrance, repetitively smacking down fucking rats. After your big bad warrior gets hurt in the process of abusing the local wildlife, you sit down and heal for several minutes, before getting up and doing the same damn thing all over again.

I think one way MMOs can be improved is by encouraging teamwork, and giving players a purpose (quests) from the start of the game. Have someone (an employee player or NPC) regularly organizing parties of players, and sending them off somewhere to find an item, or kill a boss. For variety, you could set up competing teams, establish a time limit, or require a group to split and tackle several tasks at once.

[Teleros]

Except what would be the purpose of grinding constantly? If you're spending all your time NPC-ing, you're not fighting in PvP, and you don't really have any losses to cover. Sure, you might be able to brag about your huge bank account, but it doesn't give you any practical advantage.

Except that when you need to, you've got lotsa funds to draw upon to make a battle massively uneven, especially if you're willing to spread it around a little.

Again, this is the problem you get when you try to substitute game mechanics for player-driven content. Compare this to EVE, where player races are mostly irrelevant to everyone but the roleplaying groups, and it's the PLAYER organizations and loyalties that matter. Remove the focus on artificial NPC storylines, and the problem goes away. If a player group gets that dominating, they deserve it for all their hard work and organization... but they'll probably break up and turn on each other to get some action.

i) It's not about game mechanics though: it's about aesthetics. The only reason there's been a rise in the horde population post-TBC is because Blood Elves look much cooler than the Draenei do . In EVE, it's humans all round. In WoW, you can be a hairy tauren or a sexy night elf with a dance to oggle at. Factor in the usual young male gamers and voila: massive imbalance .
ii) As for the storylines, well really there's not much to choose from. The Horde is (mostly) good, and the Alliance is all good.

Don't play solo then. It's a multiplayer game for a reason.

So you have to bring along a bodyguard or two in case of an ambush whilst doing some boring solo task? No thanks. Now granted if there's nothing soloable without very good skills then this problem goes away, because it's impossible to solo, but otherwise people won't always want / have a party at hand.

But really, it's more of a problem with arbitrary class systems. With a freeform character system like EVE, Morrowind, etc, there's nothing to stop your mage from putting on full plate and tanking the rogue while you turn it into a little pile of ash.

i) And how much time would it take to get a character like that ?
ii) What would you be sacrificing for all your anti-ganking stuff?

Developer greed doesn't mean the game is good.

No, but it's still a point to consider when it comes to making games: never forget that the purpose of a game is not to please players: it is to make money.

That's a simple design problem. Of course WoW's PvP arenas wouldn't work, they're based around a respawn system. It would be trivially easy to re-balance them to work with a real death penalty. And in that case, your zerg rush would run into the natural advantages of the defending side, and be defeated easily.

i) Minor quibble: in the arenas you can't respawn, use potions etc.
ii) Why would it? Unless there's some game mechanism in place that forces players to take out the enemy base in the right order (you know, hit the towers or the boss deals double damage or whatever), people will just go for a quick finish.

It's supposed to be vicious. If you want a share of the loot, PvP with people you trust. Or just kill anyone that stands between you and your loot, it's up to you. The exact same system I'm talking about works just fine in EVE.

Hence EVE's tiny community. Which means a few people happy (until they lose everything - read and loved that job by the Guiding Hand folks that appeared in various magazines BTW) but millions more missing out on the fun. As opposed to WoW, where a hell of a lot more people are happy playing and which at least tries to cater for the PvP nuts with dedicated PvP servers and the ability to take out faction leaders and whatnot.

Blizzard fanboys are idiots. And now the fanboy base reached critical mass, where any potential new MMORPG player has a dozen friends telling him to play WoW. That just means it has inertia, not good game design.

i) Or maybe it's a damn good game but you don't like it because it's not vicious enough and is too structured .
ii) As for being told to play it I've never really noticed that - if anything I've warned people about it (didn't help, but hey).
iii) How do you think it keeps its players if the game is so poorly designed? Sure a few people like yourself try it and hurry back to EVE etc (or at least it sounds that way), but the rest play it, like it, and continue to play it. I can't say I've ever seen some sort of conspiratorial peer pressure campaign to keep everyone playing (unless you count "aww please don't leave the guild / server / game" XD ), so presumably people are playing it because they like it, which they wouldn't if it had poor game design.

Like I said, most people have real lives and can't play MMORPGs all day (if they even wanted to). If I have to give up on the rest of my life to get anywhere, I'm not giving them my money, period. Should people like me be ignored as potential players? Obviously I have the choice not to play, but it's incredibly stupid for a game developer to turn away paying customers in favor of a minority of obsessive players. Here's a hint: Blizzard would get more profit from having two people like me than just you.

i) You're not giving up the rest of your life (I'm sure WoW will wind down oneday XD ), and granted it helps, but that's why they put systems in place to help those who can't play often. Take the system whereby the hardest dungeons will only let you kill a certain boss once a week: this is a massive disadvantage for harcore gamers like myself, but it helps balance things out for casual gamers no end.
ii) Here's a hint: there's so many more gamers that like WoW's design that Blizz doesn't need to court your tiny niche market .

If MMORPGs are ever going to grow, they're going to need to branch out and invite a broader customer base. And that means removing the absurd time demands and allowing people with lives outside of the game to be successful.

i) Actually I think WoW has a much broader appeal than any other MMORPG in history. Aside from the old Blizzard fans like myself, it's attracted plenty of both hardcore and casual gamers. It's easy to get into, amusing, challenging, has an eye-catching visual design... basically it ticks all the boxes for a very big customer base.
ii) In fact I'll make a prediction for this: MMORPGs will continue to be structured and designed much like WoW, and yet continue to attract ever larger audiences - if the online world is involving enough.

So essentially I can do almost as well as you, but I'm still always going to be a second-class player. This is NOT good game design, I shouldn't be blocked out of the endgame content just because I want to have a social life outside of the game.

Sounds like a case of wanting to have your cake and eat it - could I make the claim that I shouldn't have less of a social life than you just because I want to do everything in WoW ? Ultimately how you spend your time is up to you - plus I always thought it was a commonly held notion that if you have to do something (eg work) then you're sacrificing something else (like free time). No doubt when I've got a proper pile of work to do at Uni I'll be grumbling about not enough time in the big dungeons too - but that's just a fact of life.

And the idea that lower-tiers are good enough is a joke. In a fight between two equal-level (and equal player skill) characters in WoW, the one with the best gear wins 95% of the time. Sorry, but I'm not paying $15 a month so you can have a better kill record.

I said it was harder - the main problem is getting online at the right time. And if you're comparing equal skill and level but unequal gear, well of course the guy with the better gear wins - but how many times does this matchup ever really occur? And even if I'm fully equipped in the best gear available from instances and you're not, it's not much good for me if you're a mage built for PvP and I'm a tank...

So? Why should that sense of pride and bragging rights be based only on how many hours you play the game? Rewards should be given for good tacitcs, player skills, etc, not for stubbornly playing the game for more hours than anyone else. That guy with the elite mount isn't a better player than everyone else, he just has more hours in the day available.

Head over to the arenas then (not battlegrounds) - that's the generally accepted place where people can show off their skills and claim rewards for doing so. Winning a 3-month arena season (which does NOT mean battleground-style PvP grinding) and getting the rewards from that is definitely a way of showing off the skilled from the unskilled.

No, you aren't owed any compensation. Get out of the house, get a job, get a social life, and stop playing WoW all day. If you're playing a game to the point where you could claim to deserve rewards for your time investment, you have a serious addiction problem.

Seems like a better way of getting rewards for gaming than "I want to have my cake and eat it" though . And besides, most activities that people put lots of time into do give yield better rewards than those that don't: should the next generation of MMORPGs be any different because a small part of the fanbase can't commit as much time to them as other parts of the fanbase can?

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I still think that an MMORPG with an action-style interface (like Oblivion or Dark Messiah of Might and Magic), lightning fast progression, and permadeath is one of the great untried ideas. I've never seen or heard of it being done by either a big budget game or tiny MUD project, but I do think it would be awesome. Kind of a "let's see how far I can get and how far up the social ladder I can climb with this guy" mechanic.

[Darth Raptor]

I have to agree with the grinding thing. I played FFXI once, and that was enough for me. I "cheated" my way to level 10 (had a much more powerful character on hand to heal me, so I could take on more powerful monsters than I should have been able to), yet even that took me a few hours of boring, repititive gameplay. I can't imagine what it would have been like to do all that by fighting those stupid rabbits and landworms.

The first ten levels of any job blows serious amounts of ass. Actually, the first twenty levels suck something fierce. 1-10 you're soloing. It's tedious, dangerous and boring. Some jobs have a much easier time than others. Monks, red mages and beastmasters solo very well- especially early on (beastmasters can solo for their entire career). Other jobs, it's a nightmare. Black and white mages are all but helpless on their own. 11-20 you're dealing with a high concentration of n00bs who have no idea what they're doing. I don't mean they just have gimpy equipment or a gimpy job/race combination (because they do)- they just have no fucking clue how to play the game. From twenty onward though, it gets much, MUCH better. In fact, the farther you get, the better it gets. Since only intelligent people can get past 50 (literally, there's a cap. The n00bs will NOT get past 50) you'll be in good company in the highest levels.

Then there was the almost total lack of social interaction. Maybe I was on at a bad time, or in a lousy server, or something like that, but honestly all the people who were there? Couldn't give two shits about me. They were either sitting around that auction place buying/selling (and doing nothing but stand there) or were only in various places to pick up quests and shit. With no time to spare for someone like me.

I'll bet gil to donuts they were mules. Most people keep characters that they use for nothing but crafting, storage space, and to peddle their crap while they're off at work or school. The engine's running, but there's nobody behind the wheel.

The significance of the three starting cities practically disappears once you can safely make your way to Jeuno. That's where anyone who's anyone hangs out. Also, San d'Oria sucks. Seriously, every server I've ever been on, Sandy is always dead last in the Conquests. LOL let's be uber elite elves! The smart, helpful people are in Windurst.

And really, I don't have time for all that. Grinding, even by "cheating" was horribly boring. And yet I'll pay out every month to do it? No thanks. Maybe the dungeons and stuff are more interesting, but I doubt it. I saw my friend do that; it was the same shit as before, just with more people. Maybe not to get to new levels, but to get some shiney new artifacts or cash. Whoopee.

I can't say that I know how to fix it, nor do I think this article has all the answers (some of the "solutions" really sound like just taking it back to more limited multiplayer games, just with a big world instead of generating your own match-ups). But if FFXI is any indication, I'm glad I stayed away from the MMOs.

I'd say you passed judgment before you got to the meat of the game, but whatever. MMOs in general and FFXI in particular definitely aren't for everyone. FFXI is actually more grind-intensive than most MMOs. In your case, I would highly recommend Guild Wars. It would be much, much more to your liking.

[Covenant]

Tel, time should not equal a reward. What that does is merely a designer-unbalanced idea that, while appealing to a designer, is not indicitive of good design. There's way too many logical fallacies claiming that since the Maker says it's good or since the Masses say it's good that logically it is good. You can't back up these statements, all you're saying is that we should never as a developer to make anything other than a money-absorbing leech of a product.

Anyway, time should not equal reward. If time is the metric you use to indicate success, then time trumps skill. If your own skill at playing the game is inferior to the gear, the stats, and the level you bring to the table then you're destroying whatever level of gamesmanship there was in the first place and replacing it with a non-game, especially in a multiplayer game. In a singleplayer game this doesn't matter as much, since the damage done is minimal--if someone sucks and just grinds through happily, they're happy. If they try to do something risky, they may reap greater rewards than by grinding, and therefore further increase happiness. The only problem is when grinding is enforced to the point when there's no element of advancement not tied to mindlessly repeating the same undesired actions.

Would this be acceptable in God of War? Or Mario? F-Zero? How about Street Fighter or Supreme Commander? If I level up my Nod to level 10 by killing the Ultimate AI 500 times, do I deserve to have access to a noticably superior version of Nod?

Do we really need an artificial Ladder system based on time, rather than skill? Won't some people always be the best, based on skill at the game, rather than the gear they've gotten? And isn't that not only a more egalitarian, more accessible type of gameplay, but also much more rewarding? The appeal of these games comes in great part by the fact that you can show off to the other people on the servers. Why are people so resistant to the idea of someone else showing off because they're better than you? It seems like a destruction of a Meritocracy to supplant it with a Plutocracy. Those with the most money to waste (and the least obligations to real life) are those that advance the best.

Not only is this a dangerous positive feedback loop that makes people destroy relationships and occasionally fall over dead, but it's also the most pointlessly, cowardly money-centric choice a designer can make. People can ALWAYS play the game for hours and hours. If they want to get better, they may train as hard as Rocky just to get better and start taking on the top ranked guys. But by rewarding time spent over skill you're removing the element of training whatsoever, since skill isn't important, it's just time. Time and gear.

There's no reason to make time equal rewards. None. You do not deserve jack shit for playing the game longer. It's not about dedication to a game. It's not about being hardcore. If you play the game 10 hours a day, every day, devote your life to it... and still are such a waste of space that you can't even beat someone who plays once a weak, then you're a sack of shit who deserves to be as low of a rank that you are.

Skill should trump hours played, every single time. If someone plays that much and isn't increasing in skill then they aren't being challenged. If someone who hasn't been challenged to improve his skills has gotten to level 70, has a full set of uber gear, and feels that he deserves his power because of the time he's played then really the game is just broken. Progress Quest should not be a PVP game.

[lPeregrine]

Except what would be the purpose of grinding constantly? If you're spending all your time NPC-ing, you're not fighting in PvP, and you don't really have any losses to cover. Sure, you might be able to brag about your huge bank account, but it doesn't give you any practical advantage.

Except that when you need to, you've got lotsa funds to draw upon to make a battle massively uneven, especially if you're willing to spread it around a little.

Then don't make a battle system where you can scale up your power infinitely. For example, in EVE, there's a limit to how much money you can practically spend on a PvP ship. Anything beyond that, you're talking about staggering amounts of money for 5% advantages, and that limit is easily reached. The only thing your huge bank account and hours of grinding will give you is spare ships to fly once you lose your current one (but you're grinding all the time, so you won't lose it often).

Again, this is the problem you get when you try to substitute game mechanics for player-driven content. Compare this to EVE, where player races are mostly irrelevant to everyone but the roleplaying groups, and it's the PLAYER organizations and loyalties that matter. Remove the focus on artificial NPC storylines, and the problem goes away. If a player group gets that dominating, they deserve it for all their hard work and organization... but they'll probably break up and turn on each other to get some action.

i) It's not about game mechanics though: it's about aesthetics. The only reason there's been a rise in the horde population post-TBC is because Blood Elves look much cooler than the Draenei do . In EVE, it's humans all round. In WoW, you can be a hairy tauren or a sexy night elf with a dance to oggle at. Factor in the usual young male gamers and voila: massive imbalance .

Wrong. It's ENTIRELY about game mechanics. In EVE, your race is completely irrelevant. Your NPC standings are nearly irrelevant. Your PLAYER faction is what matters, and those have nothing to do with the NPC factions.

In EVE, you are free to pick whatever race you think looks best, and then pick whatever (player) side you want to fight for (or make your own side). WoW's arbitrary "you're an elf, you fight on this side" racial PvP restrictions are just painfully bad game design.

Don't play solo then. It's a multiplayer game for a reason.

So you have to bring along a bodyguard or two in case of an ambush whilst doing some boring solo task? No thanks. Now granted if there's nothing soloable without very good skills then this problem goes away, because it's impossible to solo, but otherwise people won't always want / have a party at hand.

It's simple risk vs. reward. If you want maximum efficiency at farming your NPCs, go ahead and make a focused PvE character and take the risk of dying to PvP characters. Or go with a group and lose some income, but gain safety. Or build a PvP character yourself, and lose a bit of efficiency, but gain the ability to fight back.

But really, it's more of a problem with arbitrary class systems. With a freeform character system like EVE, Morrowind, etc, there's nothing to stop your mage from putting on full plate and tanking the rogue while you turn it into a little pile of ash.

i) And how much time would it take to get a character like that ?
ii) What would you be sacrificing for all your anti-ganking stuff?

Obviously you give up stuff, that's the whole point. A freeform character system makes it your CHOICE to give up defense in favor of playing the equivalent of 'eggshells with sledgehammers'. There should be nothing in the game rule stopping you from diverting some of your training time into heavy armor, swords, whatever you feel like doing.

That's a simple design problem. Of course WoW's PvP arenas wouldn't work, they're based around a respawn system. It would be trivially easy to re-balance them to work with a real death penalty. And in that case, your zerg rush would run into the natural advantages of the defending side, and be defeated easily.

i) Minor quibble: in the arenas you can't respawn, use potions etc.
ii) Why would it? Unless there's some game mechanism in place that forces players to take out the enemy base in the right order (you know, hit the towers or the boss deals double damage or whatever), people will just go for a quick finish.

Why should there be arbitrary rules forcing you to avoid the quick finish?

And you seriously over-estimate the value of the zerg rush. Unless you have superior numbers, the defending side has all the advantages (especially in a properly done fantasy MMORPG, with terrain, cover, etc).

Blizzard fanboys are idiots. And now the fanboy base reached critical mass, where any potential new MMORPG player has a dozen friends telling him to play WoW. That just means it has inertia, not good game design.

i) Or maybe it's a damn good game but you don't like it because it's not vicious enough and is too structured .

It's an awful game, if it hadn't been published by Blizzard, nobody would've given it a second look. But instead, the rabid fanboys have pushed it to critical mass.

ii) As for being told to play it I've never really noticed that - if anything I've warned people about it (didn't help, but hey).

If you're new to MMORPGs and you ask your friends for a suggestion, odds are they're going to suggest the one they're currently playing. Social aspect and all that, remember? Once a game becomes popular enough, it's going to get new players just because it is popular.

iii) How do you think it keeps its players if the game is so poorly designed? Sure a few people like yourself try it and hurry back to EVE etc (or at least it sounds that way), but the rest play it, like it, and continue to play it. I can't say I've ever seen some sort of conspiratorial peer pressure campaign to keep everyone playing (unless you count "aww please don't leave the guild / server / game" XD ), so presumably people are playing it because they like it, which they wouldn't if it had poor game design.

Because many people play MMORPGs for the social aspect. The game itself is a distant secondary concern compared to being in the same game as all their friends. So even if other games might be better, unless all their friends/guildmates/etc move over as well, they're going to have a lot of motivation to stick with the old one.

Like I said, most people have real lives and can't play MMORPGs all day (if they even wanted to). If I have to give up on the rest of my life to get anywhere, I'm not giving them my money, period. Should people like me be ignored as potential players? Obviously I have the choice not to play, but it's incredibly stupid for a game developer to turn away paying customers in favor of a minority of obsessive players. Here's a hint: Blizzard would get more profit from having two people like me than just you.

i) You're not giving up the rest of your life (I'm sure WoW will wind down oneday XD ), and granted it helps, but that's why they put systems in place to help those who can't play often. Take the system whereby the hardest dungeons will only let you kill a certain boss once a week: this is a massive disadvantage for harcore gamers like myself, but it helps balance things out for casual gamers no end.

How much time do you think people have? Use a little common sense here, playing WoW at a truly competitive level means making huge sacrifices in the rest of your life. Unless you're unemployed and out of school, you just don't have enough free hours in the day unless you give up the rest of your social life. And I'd much rather have real-life friends than a game.

So essentially I can do almost as well as you, but I'm still always going to be a second-class player. This is NOT good game design, I shouldn't be blocked out of the endgame content just because I want to have a social life outside of the game.

Sounds like a case of wanting to have your cake and eat it - could I make the claim that I shouldn't have less of a social life than you just because I want to do everything in WoW ? Ultimately how you spend your time is up to you - plus I always thought it was a commonly held notion that if you have to do something (eg work) then you're sacrificing something else (like free time). No doubt when I've got a proper pile of work to do at Uni I'll be grumbling about not enough time in the big dungeons too - but that's just a fact of life.

And how is that an unreasonable request? Most normal people don't want to be forced to devote vast amounts of time to a GAME. We have much better things to be doing, and WoW's 24/7 grinding just doesn't fit with that. A system like EVE's works far better, since we can play when it's convenient without being stuck far behind all our friends.

And the idea that lower-tiers are good enough is a joke. In a fight between two equal-level (and equal player skill) characters in WoW, the one with the best gear wins 95% of the time. Sorry, but I'm not paying $15 a month so you can have a better kill record.

I said it was harder - the main problem is getting online at the right time. And if you're comparing equal skill and level but unequal gear, well of course the guy with the better gear wins - but how many times does this matchup ever really occur?

It happens all the time. Gear in WoW is directly based on how many hours you spend playing the game. Since the level cap is a lot easier reach than a full set of the best gear, gear is the deciding factor. It doesn't matter if I'm better at the game than you are, as long as you spend more hours grinding bosses, you win.

So? Why should that sense of pride and bragging rights be based only on how many hours you play the game? Rewards should be given for good tacitcs, player skills, etc, not for stubbornly playing the game for more hours than anyone else. That guy with the elite mount isn't a better player than everyone else, he just has more hours in the day available.

Head over to the arenas then (not battlegrounds) - that's the generally accepted place where people can show off their skills and claim rewards for doing so. Winning a 3-month arena season (which does NOT mean battleground-style PvP grinding) and getting the rewards from that is definitely a way of showing off the skilled from the unskilled.

And how do you win those 3-month arena seasons? Here's a hint: grind bosses for 16 hours a day to get the best gear.

No, you aren't owed any compensation. Get out of the house, get a job, get a social life, and stop playing WoW all day. If you're playing a game to the point where you could claim to deserve rewards for your time investment, you have a serious addiction problem.

Seems like a better way of getting rewards for gaming than "I want to have my cake and eat it" though . And besides, most activities that people put lots of time into do give yield better rewards than those that don't: should the next generation of MMORPGs be any different because a small part of the fanbase can't commit as much time to them as other parts of the fanbase can?

This is just silly. If you are putting so much time into a GAME that you think you deserve rewards for your loyalty (a few hours a week doesn't deserve anything), you aren't a normal person. You have serious addiction problems if you can give up the rest of your life that much, and it shouldn't be rewarded or considered normal by the game developers.

And you're crazy if you think it's just a small part of the potential player base that can't invest that kind of time. Most people have jobs, families, other social activities, etc. Someday you'll join the real world and discover this fact.

[SAMAS]

One possible way to help counter griefers/gankers/jerkasses who pick on n00bs:

Bounties.

Let players request or even freely set bounties on each other. Make them cumulative, so if six seperate people set bounties on the same person, it becomes one big bounty.

Maybe have arbitrators/mods set aside to review all bounties to make sure people aren't falsely hunted, and if deemed right, can even add to the amount set forward for the original bounty.

And to drive the bounty home, give it tangible penalties. A person bounty hunted gets locked out for a certain period of time, or the bounty hunter gets free looting privileges on the target(or the game "confiscates" it).

[General Zod]

One possible way to help counter griefers/gankers/jerkasses who pick on n00bs:

Bounties.

Let players request or even freely set bounties on each other. Make them cumulative, so if six seperate people set bounties on the same person, it becomes one big bounty.

Maybe have arbitrators/mods set aside to review all bounties to make sure people aren't falsely hunted, and if deemed right, can even add to the amount set forward for the original bounty.

And to drive the bounty home, give it tangible penalties. A person bounty hunted gets locked out for a certain period of time, or the bounty hunter gets free looting privileges on the target(or the game "confiscates" it).

Or make it so that if so many people file a complaint, the bounty is enacted. That way one person alone isn't enough to get a bounty set on someone, and will only really work on repeat behaviors. XP thieves pissed me the fuck off with low-level PCs in City of Heroes.

[Stark]

Games like Guild Wars and EVE have at least tried new things to move the focus of the game away from time played. However, I honestly don't see things like griefers as a problem in a decent game: if there are no cops, no community, and no organised defence, I think it's actually quite natural that MMO players would grief. So what? It's the wild west.

The disconnect between gaming and 'real life' is amusing, because many devs don't seem to understand it. Since the game has no real consequences, if you want to control player behaviour you can't use 'real world' motivations. If you want a stable economy, you can't just keep generating money and items as quest rewards. If you want an interesting world, you can't keep 'moderating' anything awesome that players do - and yes, anything awesome players do is probably going to upset, piss off or inconvienience other players. So what?

I simply can't play Diablo-alikes - they're too boring. Get a +5.2 sword to beat your current +5.1 sword? Guild Wars, with it's low level cap and emphasis on PvP, is entertaining and matches really are decided on skill and coordination rather than level (everyone's is the same) or items (everyone's is at a similar level), and the low moderation and high player participation in the universe makes EVE interesting. Neither of them require any kind of consistent 'commitment' to be competitive.

[Covenant]

This could still lead to guilds poisting bounties. Multiple players do not equal a sound consensus.

What I'd do is just make it a non-legal thing, and just a thing people do. Putting a bounty on someone should be something you can do, regardless of the legality of the act made. If someone wanted to put a bounty on JoeSchmo for ganking PrincessKitten, that should be as fine as for anything. Abuse like that is something you can't ban. If you want to avoid ganking, make more places that don't allow gankers in (team-only instances) or disallow combat (a friendly city/zone) or have such a high concentration of police that it's not benefical to the assassin (high security areas in EVE).

I'd rather make it difficult to gank someone in a situation where you don't want them to be ganked than make an abusable legal system... that is, if you're hoping to cut down on gankings.

Otherwise, just call it Frontier Justice, and allow people to retaliate against gankers the same way they did in Unforgiven.

[lPeregrine]

One possible way to help counter griefers/gankers/jerkasses who pick on n00bs:

Bounties.

Let players request or even freely set bounties on each other. Make them cumulative, so if six seperate people set bounties on the same person, it becomes one big bounty.

Maybe have arbitrators/mods set aside to review all bounties to make sure people aren't falsely hunted, and if deemed right, can even add to the amount set forward for the original bounty.

And to drive the bounty home, give it tangible penalties. A person bounty hunted gets locked out for a certain period of time, or the bounty hunter gets free looting privileges on the target(or the game "confiscates" it).

Well, the main problem with that is alts collecting the bounty. EVE has a bounty system, and I love it when people put one on me. Because within a few hours, that bounty is going to be in my wallet after my alt kills me. I just love it when I kill people and then they give me free money!

So yeah, bounties aren't the answer. Though really, it's an answer in need of a question... an MMORPG doesn't need strict limits on player behavior beyond the limits other players want to enforce.

[RogueIce]

If you want to avoid ganking, make more places that don't allow gankers in (team-only instances) or disallow combat (a friendly city/zone) or have such a high concentration of police that it's not benefical to the assassin (high security areas in EVE).

I'd rather make it difficult to gank someone in a situation where you don't want them to be ganked than make an abusable legal system... that is, if you're hoping to cut down on gankings.

Otherwise, just call it Frontier Justice, and allow people to retaliate against gankers the same way they did in Unforgiven.

Honestly, how I'd do it is make an NPC Town Watch/Police/whatever. The more ganking, thieving, whatever you do gets you a negative rep. The patrolling NPCs will deal with you if they see you, but you can escape. Of course the more you do it, the more infamous you become, and you start to get some Elite NPCs on your ass. Sort of like a GTA wanted star system.

However, this applies only within the main cities and towns and such. Outside of that, you're pretty much on your own. Either get good, get in a guild, or pay for protection. But the towns are your safe zone (I would give a limited radius around towns too, with a reduced infamy penalty than the town itself).

This would be a bit more like real life: sure you can go thieving and kill random people in Ney York City. But eventually you will attract the attention of the NYPD (or if you get bad enough, the FBI and other feds). They may never actually catch you, but you'll have to constantly hide from the law. Whereas if you do your thing out in the middle of nowhere, your chances of being caught (or anyone even knowing it was you) is far, far lower.

How this works is up the setting I guess. A more modern/futuristic setting is probably going to be more dangerous, whereas a medieval setting, you can do almost whatever you want out in the woods. I think it's a decent enough compromise.

Also, for player actions mattering, rather than a thousand Great Heroes and such: make the way there harder, and more random. SWG used to do it the Jedi, that you had to do certain stuff to unlock (though IIRC people eventually mapped it out and they got it anyway). I'd say do something like that, except there's only, say, a 1/100 chance that it will bestow that power or reward to you. You can't forever lock it away without pissing people off, but make it a random chance...sure you can probably do it eventually, but if you want to do nothing but try for the Great Power... Of course some could get lucky and get it first shot. You never know.

Anyway, just a couple of my crazy ideas.