MMOs Need More Bastards

[Unia]

There's a thin line between a "bastard" and a "griefer". A "bastard" roleplays a thief, a bandit, charlatan or what have you. They stab you in the back for profit. I'm alright with that, provided there's opportunity for revenge.

A "griefer" stabs you in the back because he can. He goes for the new players, not for the loot but because there's no chance of defeat. Rather than make full use of available skills he glitches to a rooftop, or kills you while in transition so you can't react. He's not there to play the game, he's there to break it. And possibly hear the lamentations of everyone who has to deal with him.

We all know which type is more prevalent in any given game.

 

[TheZooblord]

Hope it works out! I love it, but there is probably a reason it only boasts about a few thousand (single digits) players. Hard to get into and crappy combat mostly. But I think the free will and being able to explore the environment that players have created is worth it .

Well, that and their servers cannot really take any more load than they have at present.

On a side note, when have battering rams ever been a threat? They are so terrible at what they do that it's like trying to use an extremely large, but incredibly old man to break the door down by swinging its fist against the wood, only for him to shatter his bones after a few strikes.

Mm, maybe that server load has something to do with it, yeah. Love the game either way.

I really hope Salem takes off and becomes popular, at the very least so it gets developers thinking about free will again.

And haha, I haven't had any personal experiences with battering rams yet, so I wouldn't know. Just felt like mentioning that they existed.

On another side note, I hope Salem has better combat. Or at least more intuitive and easy to understand combat.

 

[weirdee]

To make an additional analogy, combat in H&H is like playing speed chess online using an exotic, confusing variant of the rules, except with a raging bear.

 

[bificommander]

I'd have no problem with a few MMO's being released with this model, but I strongly disagree that all MMO's should move to this model. It isn't "whiney" to not like it when far stronger players, who KNOW they are far stronger, can just pimp-slap you around whenever they feel like it. And it is NOT like real life (well, in Somalia maybe) if there is no form of police or law enforcement that gives the new players at least a degree of protection. Yes, powerfull players can probably try to form their own Player-Killer-Killer guilds and try to hunt these guys, but you'll be at the mercy of enough players enjoying doing that for fun to offer a decent amount of protection. As far as the EVE model, it sounds fun to have those huge battles and alliances waging large-scale wars, but from what I hear as an outsider, a lot of the big powershifts occured whenever a player agreed outside of the game to join another corporation and steal their old corporations assets on the way out. Such Meta-gaming might hold its own appeal to some people, but I think it is completely unreasonable to demand all MMO's arrange their worlds so that people who like this have complete freedom to do so, at the expense of all the other players.

My only experience with a game like this was Space Merchant, an old browser MMO. I will admit that, despite that combat conisted of clicking on the shoot button, waiting for the page to load, and see what the Random number gods said you did in damage, I have never had my heart-rate go up as much in any other game as when I thought I had a player on a trade-route mapped out and put down some mines on his route and waited for him to run into them and start shooting, something that rarely happened more than once per day, if that. But I wouldn't want all my games to work like that. I am looking forward to the large WorldvsWorldvsWorld PVP of Guild Wars 2. It sounds like you can have a controled version of the large scale battles run by the players, but when you're tired of it you can just go to the safe PvE areas.

And I would like to mention:
http://www.thenoobcomic.com/index.php?pos=270

 

[Cannorn]

My greatest MMO moment, Nay GAMING moment, that will stay with me forever is when I left my gambling stall by Britannia Bank in UO forgetting to drop my 3 million golds worth of cheques (NOT CHECKS!!!) into the bank first!

I take a Gate to Fellucia (The Pre Renaisance Free for all zone) and make my way home.
I see a red (Player Killer) gate camp and the inevitable COR POR (Nasty spell of pain and death) so adrenaline pumping I flee, being a trader merchant not a fighter.

A fraction of a second later the full weight of the situation dawns on me as I spy the pile of yellow in my bag and I swear I felt my heart stop for a dead second.

The next 10 minutes were at once the most gut wrenching, intense and fearfull moments of my gaming life, every bramble, every creature from the tiny birds and rabbits to the Ettins a potentially fatal obstacle.
The world never looked more menacing, suddenly my favourite path by the graveyard was at once a deadly obstcale course and a menacing forboding of my situation.

I pull every trick in the book, the Duke, the Dupe, Chaff, and the decoy pack horse, even my woefully inadequare hide skill comes into play as an act of sheer desperation, nothing works as my assailant wants my blood and nothing else will do.

When I finally slammed myself into my front door I am litterally panting, nose against my monitor, when did I stand up? I can't remember, why am I pressing my face to my screen as if that will help me? it's all a blur

My would be murderer, still unaware at just what a jackpot he's missed out on calmly walks into through my front door, uninvited like some kind of rule breaking Vampire, knowing that with but a press of my "I BAN THEE! hotkey he will be permenantly ejected from my home and can do nothing more to me this day, flourishes his cape (Emote) and sits at my table and pours himself a cup of my finest meade raising a toast to such a spirited chase.

I begin to calm my nerves and decide to sit with him, finger still over my macro of course, I pour myself a glass and start to laugh hysterically (IRL) and we have a nice civilised chat about this and that, nothing personal and no hard feelings.
He also had a good laugh as I "showed" him the prize he could have won as I "lock" down 3 million golds worth of Cheques on the table between us (he almost manages to grab one but misses and we decide it's just not his day).

He decides to teleport home to get some gold and we play a few games of Die as he figurs if he can't steal my gold and my life he'll try his hand at chance to win it.
After loosing a few thousand in gold to me he declares me a bigger criminal than he ever was and takes his leave but promises to "drop in on me" from time to time with a sinister inflection.

It took a while for me heart beat to slow and the adrenaline high to wear of and to this day no game has ever come close to that experience, and it was down to the fact that there was no saftey net, no rules, no GM, I was at the mercy of another player who simply wanted to kill me, not neccesarily for profit as I may have had nothing, but just on the off chance and for the lols because he could.

True he wasn't a complete douche and if he had of been it would not have been QUITE the experience but the Adrenaline heart pounding fear would have been the same and that's what stuck with me most.
Never have I been so sucked into a moment in a game before or since, and that negative made the dizzying high of success so much more.....everything!

Or as Eve-Online puts it, You have to take the risk, if you want to make the Isk
So heres a toast, TO THE BASTARDS!

 

[Althus]

So what makes the MMos different from one and other is the actual player in it?
Its us that play it, yes devs make the rules, but in the end it is up to us, to make choices.

Only if the devs offer us interesting choices to make, and the consequences of interesting choices often impact other players, who then whine to the devs, who then take away everybodies choices.

The choices players make will have a huge impact on the overall game, yes I agree whit you on that point.
But in a MMO you are mostly "free" to do things you probably will not do in real life, so you do not have fear to be a dick and "hurt" others. So if we all became dicks in a game is that really Fun?
I appreciate the idea of players decision and free choice, but I fear if we cant find a balance be-twin be good or evil.

EDIT: Yes most people have said something similar whit this.

 

[Disthron]

Firstly there is no fun with a capital F. Just becouse you find it entertaining to be a digital dooshbag dosen't mean that other people will. You know, some people find collecting stamps and playing solitare fun. Fun is a subjective term.

I have to agree with EmperorSubcutaneous that "sandbox" MMOs are a niche market, witch is why even if you only have a few more it would still saturate the market.

One thing I've noticed from reading the comments is this notion "it's not greefing, it's using my brain" As if those two are mutually exclusive. Just becouse someone is a greefer dosn't mean they are stupid, in fact the worst greefers are the smart ones. Ones that just come at you mindlessly are fearly easy to deal with in my experiance. Oh, and not wonting to play with dooshbags dosen't mean you're a brainless ideot ether.

Witch brings me to my next point witch many people seem to have forgotten, I'm not paying $20 a month to be greefed by assholes. Yea, most of these games are not free, you have to pay good hard erned money for them. Even if they are "Free-To-Play" they still require a huge investment of time and energy and by the same token, I've got better things to do.

I stopped playing MMO's years ago becouse the system you seem to think is so light on the screw-you-factor was still way to annoying for me to stand anymore.

I also noticed that a lot of the stories about "Sand-Box" MMOs are about ones that have failed.

 

[Althus]

Play EVE.

Nuff said really - plenty of bastards in that still!

That was exactly I was thinking, all the time i was reading this, and i have only played the free trial of EvE, but from what i read and saw about it this is pretty much your game there. Free to be a arse hole or a good doer.

It's not enough just to have free will. It also has to be a fun game. I'm not hating on Eve (to be fair I haven't given it too much of a chance) but its not for me. Everyone is saying Eve! Eve! Eve! in the comments, but that's akin to saying we never needed another FPS after Doom. Yeah, I get it, Eve offers many of the freedoms I'm looking for, but trust me, freedom isn't the only important factor of gameplay when I'm looking at what to spend time with.

Yes the free will its not the wining factor to you, like to me so we are both on agree there, but you probably like more Fantasy settings then space operas like me, so its a personal opinion at the end.
I understand your point of view, But I pointed EVE maybe because its the most known example or one of the most known player "influenced " MMO, but not the only one.

 

[Sprinal]

See in this article we have now established why the internet should never EVER be censored.

Because if you make it so the "mums and dads" are happy. It completely ruins the environment.

So as a result I agree.

More games like Ultima Online.

I did see an interesting approach to this recently. It was APBR

Sure if you saw asomeone on a street you couldn't shoot them outright (unless you saw them commiting a crime, they saw you commiting a crime, ur in a mission against them or they are killing everyone so the whole zone could shoot them). But it worked.

Sadly not to many people play that style game.

 

[strawberrycreme]

I think it goes a lot deeper than this.

There is very little that is more thrilling and cathartic than ganking another player. Especially when you know that you've completely ruined their day and possibly made them ragequit the game entirely. There's usually a bit of guilt that tinges that thrill, which just makes it all the sweeter.

There's also very little that is more thrilling and cathartic than narrowly escaping ganking, either by means of killing the ganker first, clever mechanics use, calling in your friends or the city brute squad, fleeing to town, or even just hiding and waiting for the ganker to go away. It means the "bad guy" loses and the "good guy" (you) wins.

On the flip side, there is very little that is worse than being ganked by another player, who kills you for no reason other than they can. Some people suck it up and chalk it up as a learning experience, but others become enraged and all too often they do stop playing in anger and disgust.

In both cases, ganking (or being ganked by) another real human being can be, by far, one of the best and/or worse experiences in online gaming. There's just something about it that amplifies emotions ten thousand fold, where the exact same thing done by a brainless NPC is forgettable within an hour but we often remember a particular ganking years and years later. The stakes are just so much higher for some reason.

The ideal environment for a ganker is one where ganking is allowed, few other people gank, and many many people are around for other reasons. I believe this is why free-for-all PvP servers of any MMO tend to have much lower populations than regular servers. Everyone wants to be the ganker, but no one wants to be the gankee. PvP servers start out full of people wanting to be gankers, but no innocent population to prey on. Eventually, the bastards leave the PvP servers and try to figure out ways to gank people on normal servers, or go to different MMOs with a better balance between ganker and gankee.

MMO Companies have tried to deal with this aspect of online gaming in various ways, ever since the days of MUDs. Some ways are quite a lot more effective in others. A free-for-all like the writer wants is very dangerous, because you get people angrily quitting and eventually the place is a ghost town. Some smaller MMOs and MUDs have "regulated PvP" where players can complain to mommy if they got killed "inappropriately", but that takes a lot of resources to do. I'm personally a fan of having separate "sides" and free-for-all PvP zones where it's kosher to stomp on each others' faces and hunt them down but you can still do normal quests and the like. Entirely PvE MMOs like most of Everquest 2 can be nice, but even then there's still some ganking.

One thing I am very glad most MMOs have gotten rid of is the "lose all your stuff" mechanics. Getting ganked in PvP is painful enough without it.

 

[Bostur]

Apart from the obvious EvE Online there is also Darkfall a ground-based game based in a Fantasy setting.


I find it a little odd that the term 'bastard' is being used for engaging in competitive gameplay in MMOs. When a chessplayer tries to win we wouldn't call him a bastard, or when someone tries to kill you in CoD he isn't a bastard either, just a player following the normal objective of the game.
Maybe MMOs are too closely linked to pen and paper RPGs which are designed for non-competitive cooperative gameplay. I think there is something about the traditional linear progression seen in WoW or EQ that interferes with conflict. Adding player conflict to that kind of game will either result in a lack of consequence, or very harsh penalties for dying. EvE probably did this right by almost completely removing the traditional character build and progression element.

Unfortunately the idea that conflict is for bastards, tends to attract real bastards who use the mechanics of a game to act like jerks. There is a difference between killing someone for the purpose of a game objective, and killing someone with the purpose of trying to make the opponent miserable.
If we have more high quality competitive MMOs, players may get a more relaxed view of conflict, and thus less griefing and less real bastards.

 

[Locutus9956]

I wouldnt touch wow etc. with yours but Eve interested me for exactly the reasons mentioned in the article. Having said that the idea of playing and the act of playing were poles apart. It just felt like a second job without the pay, having to log in at set times to change skills, mining, etc.

Painful.

QFT man

Eve sounds great on paper and as a concept its superb but theres just too many things that are just not implemented in a way thats FUN for me to ever really get into it and believe me I've tried

 

[Ford-Prefect]

I am a veteran of Eve and often a victim, but I can understand the true adrenaline fix you can get when the stakes are high having experienced it, I have also experienced the crushing losses you can incur which can equate into real time losses.

I think that a deeper player interaction can only be a good thing for an MMO, if anything its the only true meaning of an MMO. With that I do feel their is a role for the bastard or evil player but often the game mechanics are in their favour.


1) Multiple character and accounts undermine any possible game inflicted consequences. In Eve if you kill lot of players you get negative standing and can't enter high sec systems. That isn't a problem as you have another character that can and you can freely trade with them.

Another aspect while you are camping that gate you other account is mining, trading building in high security space essentially funding you illegal behaviour. This anonymity reduces the effectiveness of player lead consequences. You corner a pirate in a station, they log out and into a different character and does some mining or something else. They can play the game while you stare at a station.

Essentially this point means that for players to stem the tide of crime they have to dedicated themselves to it. Where as the criminal can choose when and where they strike.

2) Risk assessment, nearly every MMO I have played has a means to establish how much better or poorer another player is compared to you. Level 5 versus 60. Ships they are flying etc. Eve actually does something to hide this fact but you don't require a great deal of experience to see that its a tech 2 frigate (and therefore what skills are required to fly it).

Again another mechanic that puts the lawful at a disadvantage, any thief, murderer, mugger worth his salt will pick out the weak and the easy. Why are pensioners and teenagers biggest victims of muggings? Because they are perceived as weaker I can't think of an MMO I have played where I can't tell my opponents abilities, at the very least have a decent understanding of my chances.

This all boils down to Risk-Reward importantly the perception of risk and reward. Two players can look upon an identical situation and have a differing Reward/Risk value. The more game mechanics make this ratio clearer the more it will encourage optimal behaviour, i.e killing noobs, camping spawns etc.

The whole point is that this freedom in MMO must come at a price I would suggest that ways to pay for this price are single account-character presence, the world is persistent so why should you the player not be? (Okay you might want to have multiple characters just have a penalty in swapping, i.e you can only log in to a different character every 24 or 12 hours).

Remove mechanisms that easily identify players abilities, even allow for decoys and false information. How about a replica Excalibur everyone knows that sword is powerful and by extension its wielder so I buy a plastic one people might think twice about kicking my lvl 1 arse, equally calling your bluff can be interesting. My point here is let player infer risk from the environment and interaction with other players. Ultimately make the player conflict just as uncertain for all parties involved then at least you really have to be committed to been a bastard.

 

[Strazdas]

MMOs need less bastards. i dont know what kind of games you play but the earliers graphical mmo "tibia" (that came couple months before ultima online and is still working) is really full of it. you cant go a coupel hours without somone randomly killing you because "their bored". same goes for eve, peopel find enormous amount of ways to kill you bending the rules. it really is amazing.
ofc if you play wow you may say that, but wow players are the whole other race and arent really human to begin with.

Tibia was like that at first. Ultima's bastard son, seeing as it was made by a bunch of german dudes using the a modified ultima 6 engine.

Exept that tibia got there for online gameplay before. UO was already in the making by then though so could say they are brothers.

. Everyone is saying Eve! Eve! Eve! in the comments, but that's akin to saying we never needed another FPS after Doom. Yeah, I get it, Eve offers many of the freedoms I'm looking for, but trust me, freedom isn't the only important factor of gameplay when I'm looking at what to spend time with.

Eve is fun if you let it be fun. yes eve is not the only game like that and its not the only one we need. but eve is the biggest, most known game that does that, and as far as MMOs goes it is pretty darn unique.

 

[Arppis]

The biggest problem with games like these is the levels. Why shouldn't I be able to kill a warrior in his platemail with my rogue who doesn't have any armor? Instead make the combat more dynamic and action oriented to show real skill. Then I might consider playing. Too bad people still have this notion that levels are somehow needed and must have in games. They aren't.

 

[Mike Fang]

A lot of what this guy said makes sense. There's a real feeling of accomplishment if you manage to succeed at a genuine challenge and not just some artificial scenario that's practically designed to be beaten. Getting to beat a challenge that actually takes some forethought and cleverness, as opposed to just going through the motions that you know will inevitably lead to victory.

Hampering players from harming one another is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand it prevents griefing and harassing, but on the other it also prevents true conflict from developing, and that takes away a lot of the challenge in a game. Now there's no doubt nobody likes getting one-shot by some asshole 40 times as powerful as you, but at the same time, you do have to accept that sometimes it will happen if you're to have the same personal freedoms. As Ben Franklin said "People who sacrifice freedom for personal safety deserve neither."

 

[Zakarath]

Don't worry, I'm not going to brain you with a mace... I'm just going to give you a broadside of six 1400mm artillery cannons in the middle of high-security space. Sure, the police will kill me, but by then it will be too late for you.

(Like everyone else, I'm talking about EVE.)