After reading this article, I can come up with a number of criticisms. But first, one positive statement; I think the bounty hunting idea is a good one, only give it to the players, not NPC's. Have things like bounty boards in major cities in an MMO, listing flagged player's names, their class and level, and put some kind of icon over the player's avatar that would be visible when the avatar was clicked on. Any player who then killed the griefer would get some kind of item they could turn in for a reward.
Now I admit I do see the downside here, where players could deliberately become griefers to build up a bounty then let someone take them down and split the reward with them. So such a system would need to be monitored carefully. However, I think it has merit because it would make griefers the targets instead of the targeters. It would make them have to walk a mile in their victim's shoes to have to constantly worry if someone was about to curb stomp them to collect the price on their head.
Now, for the actual article, I've got some criticisms.
"Furthermore, game operators' current best practices actually empower griefers. Today, every operator who spots a griefer brings down the banhammer, blocking the user's account and IP address. Banning, though, is just a stopgap that provokes the griefer to create a new account, route through a proxy and start again. Such stalling is unproductive."
I don't see exactly how that "empowers" them. Really it just makes it more difficult for them to be annoying.
"Then there's the World of Warcraft approach: Force-feed content to your players so diligently, so irresistibly, in such a constricted design, that they never find time or temptation to grief others."
Yeah...which then alienates players like me who want to take their time an explore...not to mention since WoW has griefers out the ass, this approach is obviously an abysmal failure.
"Could we turn griefers, despite themselves, to productive ends?"
Mmmmm....no. Not unless you set up a system were quest rewards were crafted by griefer slave labor. Actually that might work, some questgiver accepts a turned in quest. "Excellent work! Now just wait here and I'll get your reward..." and the questgiver walks into a blacksmith shop where three or four griefer's avatars, stripped to their underwear, are chained to an anvil. The giver picks up a whip and cracks it, "GET UP! I WANT A SWORD AND I WANT IT NOW! MAKE IT FAST AND MAKE IT GOOD OR IT'S A WEEK IN THE STOCKS!"
"The community benefit would arise from entertainment value. Flag and announce each battle in progress; let bystanders witness it remotely and provide color commentary. Or, if the game engine allows it, record the battle for later replay and remixing with entertaining captions."
The problem there is it's going to required a fair amount of complex programming to broadcast the battle remotely to a million plus players every time one breaks out. And what happens when multiple fights are going on? The screen could become flooded with announcements of one jack ass beating on another one.
"To the griefer, the server presents weak characters or inexperienced players as intimidating and powerful. Conversely, the server shows him powerful peers disguised as weaklings, likely targets for the griefer's sport. When he attacks, the opponent's true strength becomes unpleasantly clear. The enterprising griefer would need to simultaneously play a second account - a "witness" - to perceive correctly. Over time, due to their ongoing proximity to known griefers, even witnesses could be flagged and deceived. Ideally the griefer soon grows frustrated and leaves the game."
Ahhhhh nnnnnooooooo, any griefer with a brain is going to recognize he's being deceived the first time he suddenly gets his ass handed to him by a lvl 5 avatar that suddenly transforms into a lvl 100. So if it just swaps low level appearances for high ones, the griefer's gonna know to attack the ones that look powerful and ignore the ones that look weak. You'd have to make it random, so some get transformed and others don't, so the griefer wouldn't know for certain who's powerful and who isn't.
Even so, that's not gonna do much if the griefer gets himself to top level. At most he'll wind up with an unexpected fair fight, which he won't mind if he can continually make the same person fight him over and over and over until that person gets so sick of being perpetually ambushed he logs off.
"The only other actual players he sees are the ones who have, like him, been marked as griefers. Dangle the possibility he can escape this oubliette and return to the larger community by harassing the other griefers into canceling their accounts."
Whaaaaat?! That's not discouraging griefing behavior, that's just rewarding who gets best at it! Not to mention it won't even limit the number of griefers since, as stated earlier in the article, they can create a new account and start over again.
"In reaction, "users will elect from their own ranks worldmasters, patrollers armed with mighty server permissions and a direct line to the ban list. These Judge Dredd-like beat cops will mark, ban and report malefactors on the spot, in real-time." These worldmasters might eventually unite to pass local laws, initiating a true online world government."
Yeah, that -might- work except that worldmasters can't be logged in all the time, so there'd have to be quite a few of them to effectively patrol an MMO world and/or handle the ticket volume for dealing with griefers. There would also need to be a system in place to depose a worldmaster who starts abusing their authority, such as ones who would start taking bribes and favors to ban a selected person who hadn't broken any rules, but someone just wanted to make miserable. In fact, if a griefer was -really- enterprising, he'd manage to con people into electing him and would BECOME a worldmaster. Then he'd be in the ultimate position to grief people, not just harassing them in-game, but actually destroying their account for nothing more than petty, mean-spirited amusement.
