26 Aug, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 1st comment:
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I recently encountered this in another MUD. I won't name names or get into specifics because that's not the important part to me.

It came to pass that recently in this MUD, it was decided that the rules for player-killing (henceforth for simplicity's sake, PK) would simply not apply if the person on the receiving end of the death was consenting to the death. In theory this is fine and whatever as it means you don't have people getting enemied to organisations over pre-arranged duels and such. However one player in the MUD essentially paid players to die … I think it was 500 times? … each, several players, to essentially game the thing and circumvent having to do legitimate hunting/PK to gain the top experience.

There's a lot of reasons this is bad: aside from player ill-will that kind of thing garners over how "lame" it is, it ends up making an experience advancement system much less effectual when there are ways to so easily railroad past it.

My question isn't so much if people think this is a bad idea so much as how would you approach it from an admin perspective? Seeing it in another MUD had me wondering how exactly I would handle it if it happened to me, and I can't say Im 100% sure.

Maya/Rudha
26 Aug, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
It depends on the kind of game. In my mind, there are two scenarios:

Is your game focused on playerkilling?

If so, make it so that players can't consent to death. Anything else makes the whole system far too exploitable (like the above scenario). It occurs to me that you could also just put a timer on whichever command you use to consent to death. Maybe "consent" couldn't be used for a real-life day after you come back to life, so people couldn't die/resurrect spam it.


Is your game focused on roleplay?

If so, remove the mechanical incentivization for PK. I'm not saying remove the incentivization totally: when you do that, even roleplay games suck terribly. I mean to say that, in this case, playerkilling shouldn't be able to advance you extremely far (or extremely quickly) just by killing other players. The thing is, players will always metagame. That's life. If your game allows them to, it's probably a problem with your game– not the players. Players remain a pseudostatic entity, and you can always assume that entity will try to game the system. Either your system is gameable or it's not.
26 Aug, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 3rd comment:
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Many MUDs, including the one where this occured, have some sort of arena or other place where consensual PK can occur, sometimes with mitigated losses or incentives for winning. It makes me wonder why, when this is the case, consensual PK is given the complete leeway some MUDs give it.

I guess it kind of goes both ways - trying to take the teeth out of legitimate and consensual PK is going to aggrivate a lot of people, but how would I disincentivise gaming the system like that while, at the same time, minimising how much that also disincentivises legitimate PK?

Maya/Rudha
26 Aug, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
Rudha said:
….how would I disincentivise gaming the system like that while, at the same time, minimising how much that also disincentivises legitimate PK?


That depends. First of all, ask yourself this: why are people gaming the system? From your above post, it sounds like they're doing it to get exp really fast.

Now ask yourself: should pk be a large source of exp for the average player? If your answer is no, I'd say you should just make it so PK doesn't reward the victor with exp. Instead, it could give them gear– in the form of looted items, status, etc. If winning consensual PK gives you an inbuilt, mechanical leg-up, the fact is that there's no incentive not to abuse it.

Or! How about this: make it so that the first time you kill someone consensually, it gives them full exp. The second time they kill that person consensually within X amount of time, it gives them 50%. Then it resets the timer. If they kill them again within the same span, it gives them 50% of that 50%. Eventually, repeat-killing people will become more hassle than it's worth.

Orrr you could make it so that no one wants to let their characters die a thousand times to help their friend out. Make it so that the more you die in a short period of time, the more likely bad things are to happen. If someone is dying many times repeatedly, start to permanently penalize their stats? But that seems maybe a bit too penal, and could just end up hurting players who aren't cheating (and are bad at not dying).

You could also take the old-fashioned route and just deny/ban offenders, but I'm not a big fan of that. It shows that you can't make a game where cheating isn't the profitable thing to do.
26 Aug, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 5th comment:
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I remember once playing a mud where I created two characters, and used them to kill each other over and over - as soon as one gained a level I'd switch them around, so that they'd both earn decent exp. I got them to…I think it was around level 30 or so (out of 50) in a few minutes, then decided I should probably stop before I drew too much attention.

The solution I use in my mud is that players don't earn exp from PK - they steal it, and they can't steal what isn't there. If two players take turns killing each other, they're just passing the same exp back and forth. If someone allows you to kill them, you're just taking the exp they've already earned, and once it's gone you have to wait for them to go out and earn some more before you can take it (so you might as well just go out and earn it yourself).
26 Aug, 2010, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 6th comment:
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I concur, just make so repeating killing does not pay off…
The simplest solution is 'close economy' as stated before. IE: each player get a pk gain potential.
Let say each player worth 1000pk point. Make so gain is only half the potential of a player at max, decrease gain from one another so after a death it is 1500 for one 500 for the other and so on.
Also modulate it depending on numer of pkkill, number of pkdeath etc dependings on your goals.
It kills off the reason to repeatidly kill the same person (except to piss him off, but you can also prevent that by looking at logs and makes a simple rule about harassing (who initiate the fight is easy to check))
Problem solved.
26 Aug, 2010, Kline wrote in the 7th comment:
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I've liked to add systems in my games that reward skill or experience slightly over time. Like perhaps +1 to your max health/mana/move cap for every 10pks. Things that will give an experienced vet a slight edge over a newcomer, but by no means by unbeatable with skill. This has, of course, led to similar situations such as the one you described. While I am generally a fan of "if the game allows you to do it, it's permissible", this has been the one instance I've set an actual rule to be adhered to by my players in "don't feed each other PKs".

I was able to mitigate some of it by introducing a penalty to dying, though not as much as the gains for killing. So while it may be 10:1 for a stat raise on kills, it takes 20:1 for a loss via deaths. Most legitimate players are too concerned with their own kill:death ratio to bother "allowing" themselves to be killed as there is no gain in it for them long term. The few people who I've ever seen do this were from the same IP (yes, I know, not always the same person) and very obviously going back and forth every minute. Detailed logs of kills that are available publicly to players have led to reports for me to act on easily. No one likes to see somebody else get away with cheating, so players are eager to report it.
26 Aug, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
Rarva.Riendf said:
It kills off the reason to repeatidly kill the same person (except to piss him off, but you can also prevent that by looking at logs and makes a simple rule about harassing (who initiate the fight is easy to check))Problem solved.

Introducing rules to patch design flaws isn't solving the problem, it's addressing the symptoms, and should be your last resort, not your first - particularly when those rules are as vague as "repeatidly kill the same person" [sic]. Far better to prevent undesirable activity through code whenever possible.

As far as decreasing gains are concerned, they can work to a degree, but they can also be worked around (eg with alts). They may also have a negative impact on other parts of the game (eg botting becomes more viable if other players can't repeatedly kill you).
26 Aug, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 9th comment:
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To be clear: in the case I am mentioning the person had paid people who arent really combatants a large amount of money to die some hundred odd times (i was counting for a while but lost count around 220). That just seems like gaming the system in both players cases. The player dying is gaming it to a degree in that theyre gaining a large amount of money for losing sacrificing experience that obviously has little value to them, and the player doing the killing is basically "farming" experience.

When this first occurred on the MUD in question I was pretty miffed that the admins did nothing - but that got me thinking: what shluld be done?

Of course you can sanction players who game the system and anyone who suggests you shouldnt would be setting a dangerous precedent - but it is also correct to say that such sanctions are a bandaid and systems should be designed to minimise the possibility of how to game it.

I considered remiving mechanical ibcentives to pk ie gaining ecperience but that makes experience gain incredibly slow. Making pk steal experience only mitigates tgings and in this scenario I dont think it would change anything.

Maya/Rudha
26 Aug, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 10th comment:
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Making PK steal experience I don't think would completely solve the problem, depending on the lengths to which people are willing to go to help somebody out. Perhaps they will ask to be paid a little more, and then be willing to go out, gain XP, and then come back to be farmed.

When does PK become consensual? Perhaps it only happens in formal duels and the like. In that event, why not simply remove standard combat gains from duels? They're more for "street cred" anyhow, represented by a leaderboard, perhaps. If you're killing non-combatants, you won't be advancing in rank (because you aren't gaining enough points). Combatants won't want to get killed, because that reduces their standing in the leaderboard. Of course, all this depends on how this consensual PK system is used.
26 Aug, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 11th comment:
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The real difficulty for me is defining consent. It needs to be done in a way that meets three criteria to be acceptable for me. It needs to 1) be clearly defined that consent was given 2) break game flow as little as possible 3) be as much a part of otherwise "normal" combat. Why yes, i do ask for the moon and the stars and all the heavens, why do you ask?

Its a tricky thing. The closer you make it to normal combat, the more blurred and difficult to gauge consent becomes, I think.

Maya/Rudha
26 Aug, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 12th comment:
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I guess I was assuming that if it was formal consent, it was triggered by some in-game command. I don't really see why you can't make it otherwise identical to normal combat, without blurring the lines at all.
26 Aug, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
Rudha said:
I considered remiving mechanical ibcentives to pk ie gaining ecperience but that makes experience gain incredibly slow.

Only from PK. It wouldn't impact others mean of earning exp.

Rudha said:
Making pk steal experience only mitigates tgings and in this scenario I dont think it would change anything.

It changes things in that PK no longer "creates" exp - if you pay someone to kill them, and the exp you earn is stolen rather than earned, you are effectively buying their progress from them. And in a mud where exp is spent rather then hoarded, so that players don't usually have much of it stored, this can make the scenario you described infeasible; if your willing victim has to go hunting for more exp after you've killed him a few times, you might as well skip the middleman and go collect the exp yourself.
26 Aug, 2010, David Haley wrote in the 14th comment:
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No, the middleman is still useful, in that they save you the time of hunting. You need merely fight a willing opponent.
26 Aug, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 15th comment:
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I dont see encouraging people to farm quests instead being a viable solutuon. Cutting off one source will just make people farm other sources. Spendable experience gives both ways - it decreases the number if pwople who would willfully part from it, but it also gives stronger incentives for the people who would want to farm it, to do so, as presumably they would be "spending" it on something which offers game benefits.

Sorry for the poor typography, iphone typing leaves a lot to be desired.

Maya/rudha
26 Aug, 2010, Ssolvarain wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
Wouldn't it be easier to just say "don't do that"? A person who's playing the system like that is most likely better off on a different mud where they don't bother to monitor the game at all.
26 Aug, 2010, Gatz wrote in the 17th comment:
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I guess the trouble I have with this is that the person is paying to kill them. Meaning, at some point this individual had to accumulate the wealth to afford it. So, why stop them? Yes, they are 'gaming' one aspect of the game, but if they spent 30 hours to acquire the money, and it'd take 30 hours to acquire the experience, maybe this is just a way they found they prefer to go about it?

I realize this isn't the intended design of the game, but have you contacted said player and asked for their motivation? I realize it might seem silly, but it might expose an aspect of the game which isn't working the way you thought it was or group of players who'd prefer an alternative route to leveling up. It could also mean that the way experience is gained doesn't sync up well with how wealth is accumulated. If I could spend 5 hours grinding gold, instead of 60 hours grinding NPCs and get the same net affect on my level, I'll probably grind the gold.


Also, is there a specific reason why this bothers you? Is it just that they have discovered a sort of 'loop hole' in the system or are other players truly bothered by this? I guess the follow up question would be, "does this need to change?"
26 Aug, 2010, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
particularly when those rules are as vague as "repeatidly kill the same person" [sic]. Far better to prevent undesirable activity through code whenever possible

Err repeatidly in a row is not a 'vague' rule, and you cannot really prevent it by code without a LOT of side effects (grouping and autoassist , area effect, suiciding chars etc as an example) you really do not want to have. Because code cannot see 'intention' it only see actions.
26 Aug, 2010, Rudha wrote in the 19th comment:
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To clarify: This is not my MUD that this has occurred in, it just has me thinking of the design issues, and how to handle things to prevent that sort of thing from happening, or at the least mitigate the chances of it happening.

I can't say I have too much sympathy for people who game the system whether the complaints are legitimate or not. If you have a complaint about something, the proper thing to do is to tell me, so that I can fix it, not fuck with it as much as they can to try to get ahead.

Maya/Rudha
26 Aug, 2010, Tyche wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
Gatz said:
I guess the trouble I have with this is that the person is paying to kill them. Meaning, at some point this individual had to accumulate the wealth to afford it. So, why stop them? Yes, they are 'gaming' one aspect of the game, but if they spent 30 hours to acquire the money, and it'd take 30 hours to acquire the experience, maybe this is just a way they found they prefer to go about it?


I wasn't quite sure whether this was real or virtual money.
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