The article's "Egor" operated in a world with PvP. If the article is implying that you need a government (society, community) to solve these problems, then you must allow PvP as player governments need state sponsored violence in some form. Humanity hasn't figured out any other way (yet). Except many modern games went the other way: revoking PvP and imposing more rules from above.
Early Ultima Online had the makings of the most scalable player-driven/secular solution: karma (reputation). It operated on simple rules to identify good guys and bad guys so it couldn't capture all forms of griefing but it laid out a way for players to identify and police themselves without "Gods" (for the most part). Serial Player Killers (PKs) would earn negative reputation and titles (e.g. Dread Lord). If a PK was spotted near a town, a posse would form to hunt them down.
Later versions of UO rolled back this system, unfortunately, and even introduced servers where PvP was not allowed. This had the unfortunate consequence that PvP server users were seen as asking for a fight.
> Humanity hasn't figured out any other way (yet).
Maybe we would if it was physically impossible to use violence. That we haven't figured out a way around it under realistic conditions doesn't mean that it couldn't work under the completely arbitrary conditions that a game imposes.
Without violence, it's significantly harder to defeat griefing, nonviolent but antisocial behavior. The work required to overcome griefing significantly outweighs the work the griefer puts in. An example would be obstructing someone's path so they don't have freedom of movement or "theft" of assets in the commons that the victim was trying to earn, such as dealing the killing blow for XP after another player did most of the work.
I'm using "state sponsoroed violence" in broad strokes. Without PvP in player-governed game worlds, you can't even really enforce simple jail time.
"theft" of assets in the commons that the victim was trying to earn, such as dealing the killing blow for XP after another player did most of the work.
Just give everyone the XP. (This is an example of why XP is silly.) There are already MMOs that have done this.
Without PvP in player-governed game worlds, you can't even really enforce simple jail time.
What if you teleported those player's characters into room with no doors? (Or a swimming pool with no ladder.)
> Just give everyone the XP. (This is an example of why XP is silly.) There are already MMOs that have done this.
The one such that I'm familiar with is Guild Wars 2, which is entirely designed around collaborative-only player interactions. All players hitting a mob will get the XP. All players get their own copies of resource nodes. You can just join in to group quests without being in the group, and everyone wins.
There are still ways to grief other players, though. For example, there's one world event I stumbled into where some mobs spawn, and if they're not killed in a certain amount of time, they spawn a boss mob. Not knowing this, I happily completed the first event... and got cussed out by a raid group that was waiting nearby for the big guy to spawn. I'm sure someone who actually wanted to disadvantage other players would find many more such examples.
I love it when everyone gets XP. Realm of the Mad God (2009) did this too — you don't have to formally join a group to be part of the action, public quests, coop play, everyone gets XP, everyone gets loot, everyone wins.
The XP example is just one of many creative ways of causing trouble within a games rules. You'll forever play whack-a-mole unless the community have the ability to police themselves. And teleportation is not a player driven action (I hope!). The article called this the God solution where griefers are smited from above.
I'm recalling an alternative that I experienced where a high fidelity game allowed for players to decide and carry out justice on other players. The company did not need to expend a great deal of time and energy policing the world.
Allowing groups of a certain size of players to drag griefers into prison cells could solve the problem. I agree that that's some kind of violence, but it doesn't necessitate violence in the PvP sense.
There are many ways. I've been planning a MMORPG for some time with rules to ensure player cooperation over griefing, without PVP violence. Using self-control and social pressures.
Did the reputation system work? Or more to the point - how easy was it to abuse and in which directions did it break? I gotta think if it worked as well as designed it would have been replicated more widely by now
It's been years, so I'm having trouble remembering the exact mechanics, but I recall it being non-trivial to continually murder PCs while maintaining a positive reputation. The most efficient way to do this would have been to kill dragons, and you needed to be a "tamer class" to do that efficiently. Most PKs weren't tamers. Also, having 5+ long term murders and a "red" name floating above your character was a dead giveaway that your character was up to no good.
I'm speaking to before the non-PvP zones and other stuff came about. The reputation system made things feel very organic and natural. The problem with a totally level playing field is that new players without any friends or resources were sitting ducks for the first bad guys to come through. Origin felt this hurt their growth as new players were getting turned off from the game.
I felt the system was brilliant and going on a PK hunt was the best fun ever. My brothers and I played UO from the moment it came out for another ~4 years (basically to whenever the non-PvP stuff came out, that turned us way off from the game).
The best thing about UO was how real the game was. Far more life-like than any other MMORPG I've ever seen and it came out in the 90's.
Good motivation to be bad, right? A game needs some villains, so I can see why you'd want to make room for both fame and infamy (as long as weaker players aren't totally at their mercy).
I only played UO for a month or two. The only skill I leveled up significantly was Hiding. I'd go where the loot was, and adventure for a few minutes until the inevitable gang of PKers came wandering through, looking to loot all the players like me. Some players ran, some hid, most died.
If you successfully hid, your player would be invisible to everyone else. So the PKers would walk a pattern through the dungeon, trying to step on every square. As a cowardly hiding level 1 character, I'd wait in hiding as long as I could, then jump out of hiding when I saw a chance to escape. Invariably I'd be spotted. I'd run around a corner, hide again, and the process would restart. I swear I spent more time hiding behind rocks than fighting whatever monsters the game made available to low level players. I could never tell if I was having fun or not!
> The only skill I leveled up significantly was Hiding. I'd go where the loot was, and adventure for a few minutes until the inevitable gang of PKers came wandering through, looking to loot all the players like me. Some players ran, some hid, most died.
Really expected your story to be focused on scavenging the loot the PKers left behind.
> I only played UO for a month or two. The only skill I leveled up significantly was Hiding. I'd go where the loot was, and adventure for a few minutes until the inevitable gang of PKers came wandering through, looking to loot all the players like me. Some players ran, some hid, most died.
I can't imagine how the UO devs thought this might be a turnoff for new players.
Early Ultima Online had the makings of the most scalable player-driven/secular solution: karma (reputation). It operated on simple rules to identify good guys and bad guys so it couldn't capture all forms of griefing but it laid out a way for players to identify and police themselves without "Gods" (for the most part). Serial Player Killers (PKs) would earn negative reputation and titles (e.g. Dread Lord). If a PK was spotted near a town, a posse would form to hunt them down.
Later versions of UO rolled back this system, unfortunately, and even introduced servers where PvP was not allowed. This had the unfortunate consequence that PvP server users were seen as asking for a fight.