MMOs Need More Bastards

[cefm]

The fundamental difference between even the most "free" and therefore "grief-tastic" MMO and the real world is the absence of REAL consequences and the ability to log-off and get a good night's sleep just to wake up and grief again.

The behaviors this article pines for exist in the real world, but only among the sickest, evilest, most twisted bastards that are hated and feared by 100% of the population. And for good reason.

A lot of people play MMO's to try a different reality, and in that world there are no real consequences and there's annonymity and safety so they act as pricks. So instead of balancing out to the real-world norm of 100-1 good/bad balance, you can end up with a pool full of nothing but pricks. And nobody likes a sausage party. Nobody.

I don't blame MMO's from implementing rules - it's supposed to be fun for players after all, and it sucks if there's no fun to be had.

 

[Fensfield]

EVE Online.
You have failed.
End of discussion.

Except EVE Online is about spaceships.

Sure it's great, and that's great too!

But.. why should everyone wants a dynamic online world have to play one about spaceships? Can't their be a fantasy one, too?

Not to mention there'll be a modern-ish one and all in World of Darkness.. okay not really modern, but I don't think it's exactly the medieval-esque of your average Everquest derivative.

Just because one game does it doesn't mean no others ought - it's true there are no such MMO's with the quality of a high-ish range studio behind them that are set in a fantasy world. And that is a huge shame, even if it is kind of difficult to pull off with current technology and in the current market.

Some day though, probably..

.. Also as others have said the potential for griefing really does need a counterbalance. I suppose until someone works out a way to get permadeath comfortably into a mainstream MMO, however, it'll be hard to provide a workable scale of consequences. Meh, rambling now.. but still, I think something like that would solve a lot of issues witht he genre in general - but I can't imagine how it'd be done comfortably.

 

[Mike Kayatta]

My game was neither UO nor EQ - it was Asheron's Call. It had a hardcore, lawless PvP server. The tales of those who lived on it were truly epic [http://www.schattenkind.com/past-present/history.html]. But - and this is important - the number of players on the PvP server was always very small compared to the populations on any of the eight PvE servers (the balance has changed somewhat in recent years, since the PvP hardcore have stuck with the game while more casual players left). People voted with their wallets. They didn't want to live in a world full of bastards.

I think others have said this well enough that I don't need to belabor it further. I'll just add this; many like to say they want more "freedom" in their MMG, but fewer stick it out when other players with freedom hand them the crap end of the stick.

I'd like to add that UO faced an unenviable choice that I don't believe the article addresses. UO appealed to two very different types of gamer. Under normal circumstances, the two would have never come in contact with one another, but UO was literally the only game in town.

On one hand there were the "bastards" and simulationists who enjoyed the PvP and criminal games. On the other hand were the casuals, socializers, and MUDders who wanted to play The Sims Online before The Sims was a twinkle in Will Wright's eye. They wanted to roleplay, craft, and decorate their houses. They treated the game as a digital Renaissance Faire. Few had much interest in serious fighting, or in having to deal with pickpockets, murderers, and burglars.

In other words, they were sheep. The "bastard" wolves slaughtered them. The sheep started to quit the game, and Origin was left with a fairly clear-cut choice - bet on the wolves and leave things as they were, or bet on the sheep and build a fence to keep the wolves out.

They bet that the sheep would be more reliable and less troublesome customers. Purely from a revenue/numbers perspective, I find it difficult to dispute that judgment. The wolves were fenced off. They could still prey on each other if they wished.

Though the hardcore continue to bemoan Trammel, I submit that it kept UO relevant and profitable for many more years than it would have if Renaissance had never been released.

Actually, I'm glad you brought this up because it was something I was hoping to clarify. I really don't think it counts when you split servers into PvP and PvE. If you offer players the option, then all of the jerks will go to PvP, making the PvP server filled with a much higher percentage of asswads than normal. Even I, who you have now read bemoan this very topic, chose the PvE server in UO when the split took place. You have to keep it all together or nothing, the simple reason being that you NEED to have the good guys to balance out the bad. Reluctant heroes, if you will, that aren't playing to stomp the PKs but still, by default, stem the tide by their very presence. There are more good than evil players in the world (just check the studies done on karmic choices on SP sandbox games) by far, so you have to force both parties into the same room to have a fun system.

 

[Mike Kayatta]

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.

 

[Stormwaltz]

You have to keep it all together or nothing, the simple reason being that you NEED to have the good guys to balance out the bad. Reluctant heroes, if you will, that aren't playing to stomp the PKs but still, by default, stem the tide by their very presence. There are more good than evil players in the world (just check the studies done on karmic choices on SP sandbox games) by far, so you have to force both parties into the same room to have a fun system.

I think that's a solid theory, but it seems to fall down in reality. The majority of rule-abiding, inoffensive players come to a game to have fun. Being a town guard isn't fun for most of them - it's work.

On AC-Darktide, the Antis were always wildly outnumbered by the PKs. The Antis tended to have a higher proportion of skilled players, but they couldn't be everywhere at once to protect n00bs from griefers and gankers.

I know you won't think it's a fully-applicable comparison, but it's the best I have.

 

[Thurston]

The problem with allowing the dickheads to run rampant, is that newbies willing to try the game get ganked/cheated/screwed etc. So they are likely to leave. The non-dickheads and other newbies become increasingly harassed, since they are the only available victims, so they are likely to leave.

Then the dickheads can only prey on each other, which means they may actually lose the fight, as they are not fighting newbies. So they leave.

Dead world.

Business failure.

I don't go online to my favourite MMO to balance in a web of carefuly crafted alliances, and use my cunning to set various groups at each other's throats JUST ENOUGH to raise the price of my crafted healing gimcracks. You can do that if you like. But doesn't sound like much fun for my limited leisure time. Given the numbers in these theme-park MMOs as compared to cut-throat worlds like EVE, I have some agreement.

I think the real world has enough dickheads for me. It's nice to escape to a world for a bit each day where all they can do is mouth-off, and even then, I've got /ignore

 

[marurder]

I hear you,WOW being a perfect example of how 'safe' things really are (no xp loss, keep all your items etc). EVE on the other hand has safe guards but not to the baby coddling extremes WOW has. Meaning that there are CONSEQUENCES for mistakes, not 20g for a repair bill...so cheap.

 

[Callate]

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmeh.

As long as everyone keeps mentioning Eve Online, it's worth noting that its player-based economy also allows players to do things like engage in thefts of goods worth $45,000 real-world dollars.

[link]http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/707481/huge-eve-online-theft-amazes-45000-worth-of-in-game-cash-looted/[/link]

Part of me thinks that's sort of neat, I'll admit, but I think the weight of my opinion comes down on the side of "Holy shit."

Valuing freedom chiefly as an ability to do harm to other player characters without their consenting to PvP activities seems extremely myopic to me, at best. I'd much rather that games embrace player freedom in enabling players to create content that expands the bank of options available to other players, much like City of Heroes started doing with its "Architect" expansion.

When PvP or other antisocial acts (theft etc.) are something players don't have the option not to consent to and the norm, there's a real danger of "griefing" becoming an art form, as it's likely to be the highest-profit activity available to players- and having divested themselves of responsibility, there's little incentive for the designers to re-balance things so the same tactics won't always succeed. You can sneer about people who claim about "cheap" tactics all you want, but they aren't always wrong to complain.

I don't necessarily object to there being other experiences available like UO at its genesis, but I wouldn't just prefer that not be the norm, I think I would fight fairly hard against it if I thought there was any real chance of it becoming a reality.

 

[Rad Party God]

I think that the only game that's gotten very close to this is Age of Conan. I know that many people will scream "EVE" out loud, but to me, EVE is boring and I played it for 3 months.

Simply put, I like to see fully bodied characters, not just staring at spaceships all day and no, a simple, little character portrait won't do for me. I know that they're implementing their Incarnia expansion and that's a step in the right direction, but that sound more like an afterthought than a main feature of the game.

Now, for Age of Conan, say what you want about Funcom and that the game won't properly run at 60 fps on your über gaming system, I simply haven't played a game like this in my life. I started playing right when they opened up their F2P floodgates and almost at the same time, they launched their Blood & Glory server, I started there with a Priest of Mitra.

To some, this may have been a huge mistake as it is widely known that it's one of the weakest classes, but I took it as a challenge. I loved that I had to take care of my environments for gankers, even if it was very frustrating at first, it made the game really interesting, even if I died a lot. I needed to be on the lookout for anything suspicious and make friends whenever I could, heck, the only way I could survive was by banding together with somebody else and even then, we all had to be on the lookout.

Sadly, I don't play it any longer, as I don't have the money to keep playing (if you want a decent character, you need to subscribe).

 

[Awexsome]

I can get into a more role-playing atmosphere in those situations sometimes... but you're very wrong when you said a vocal minority spoke out to change things. It was a majority.

Minority if you include only the long-time "hardcore" veterans but we've seen with every community how good they are at improving a game they think is perfect and their tendency to have a, "fuck you if you disagree ******" mentality.

I do agree that some added sense of danger could be fun... but you need some type of system so that corpse camping and constant griefers can be avoided. Maybe like giving the player a full minute of invulnerability from PvP attacks to prevent corpse camping on a revive...

But during my trial time in WoW my fondest memory was when I logged into the starting horde area and some lvl 70 alliance griefer was slaying the 30-some low level players like flies. Eventually after so many respawns from the adjacent graveyard he got low on health (some lvl 40/50-some happened by and helped as well) and bailed. A massive swarm of the 30-some tiny level players chased him across the wasteland... eventually catching up and delivering sweet karma to the last inches of the rogue's health bar...

Then everyone danced for like 2 minutes on the guy's corpse celebrating the victory.

Good times...

 

[keideki]

If you want a world like that play Eve online. Although I would be interested in a fantasy MMO with the same kind of system.

I would recommend keeping an eye on "World of Darkness" then, as it's CCP first venture towards Fantasy. An MMO based (for now) on the White Wolf "Vampire" Pen and Paper RPGs, with the option to add the rest of the White Wolf supplements (Hunter, Mage, etc.)
A very similar system to EVE with meta-game politics, territory control and all that. As well as EVE's real-time skill training system, so no classes as such and just skills to train.
Not sure on the economic side of things, as CCP hasn't been that forthcoming with details about the game at this time. But it is coming, not to mention that it'll look gorgeous using the Incarna Engine that powers EVE's Walking in Stations component.

Yeah, I've been following the news on that one. Vampire the Masquerade however is set in modern times, so rather than traditional fantasy, its modern fantasy. I was thinking more along the lines of what Ultima online was like, like the article said. More of a medieval setting.

 

[Quesa]

Been debating against this theory for more than a decade now. MMOs need more elements to prevent stagnation, simply 'you can lose everything you have in the game at any second' or 'if they beat us to him we don't get another chance for a week, in which case they'll probably beat us again' certainly hit nerves with people (latter being EQ), but I call BS on the notion that there's anything particularly redeeming about adding anti-social elements. I left UO specifically to get away from that reality, and I left EQ primarily due to its anti-social leanings (designing a zone to be closed when you kill a boss, really Sony?)

 

[Nurb]

Eve might be CLOSE but c'mon, folks... If I want to make a character you can see, work them up to start a company without needing to be a cog in a player corporation as a second job, build a factory you can see, and establish a city you can see in environments that have more than rocks and debris, there's not much if any to choose from.

Star wars galaxies (Which I stopped playing after the initial "jedi holocrons" were introduced in 04ish) had a lot of good ideas that were done really half-assed. Though they were the only one's to do Jedi characters right before they were an initial class.

Mixing world building with story content that allows for player content hasn't been done all that well just yet

 

[nothingspringstomind]

Personally, my problem with this type of game is that there are so many[/b] arseholes in the game worlds. It'd be fine if every now and then, you got attacked by a random bandit or thief, but typically, i'm usually the only person attempting to make an honest living within the game world.

i mean, i'm playing a few space empire-style rts's online at the moment, and only a few of them aren't populated by people who will pound you planet into dust on a daily basis, never giving you the chance to retaliate. You end up joining guilds merely to offer you a modicium of protection, based soley off the name in those little brackets. Your guild might not be the best, but people think twice when seeing that you're part of one.

[/mini rant-opinion dump thing]

 

[Something Amyss]

Play EVE.

Nuff said really - plenty of bastards in that still!

Or *pick your free MMO game of choice*.

I feel like the word "free" could be omitted and still be mostly true.

 

[lowkey_jotunn]

The problem is comeuppance, in that there isn't any.

To compare UO to real life is flawed in that real life has real consequences, and I can't see another human being's "level" just by clicking on them. In UO or any MMO, people intentionally grief lower leveled players because they know it's safe, or at least, they hold a sizable advantage. In the real world, picking on someone smaller than you works some of the time, but other times gets your nose broken or worse.

Also, there's the whole concept of "real" punishment. In MMOs it's easy to say "well if I steal from or kill 20 people, I'll probably get arrested once and have to pay a fine, but net profit." Whereas in real life, you get caught once and you might be doing hard time, playing hide the salami with Bubba in the showers.


You institute real punishment for the griefers, and a system where you can't tell someone's "power level" by clicking on them ... and you'll have a world where those griefers don't need to be strictly monitored, or replaced with carefully crafted NPC aggressors

 

[Helscreama]

Play EVE.

Nuff said really - plenty of bastards in that still!

First post ninja'd!!!!!

 

[Karavision]

This reads like the ramblings of some asshole who misses the chance to fuck up other people's gaming experiences for his own pleasure. Like people who loved the undead event in WoW that became a griefer's Holiday for a week.

Age of Conan basically lets this guy see why is argument is bullshit. People are not going to pay to be pissed off. If you allow people to killed as soon as they begin the game, the game will collapse.

This guy should just go back 4chan. It was made for people like him.

 

[keideki]

Guys I found a game that looks like it might satisfy the requirements mentioned in this article!

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/06/09/e3-2011-first-look-at-wizardry-online/

 

[Charli]

Sorry guys we're in a minority. Some people might like to be masochistic about their gaming experience and get a thrill out of that but most of them are going to whine that they can't do it and it's just not good business for the MMO companies to make a difficulty level only set for the hardcore.

Blizzard is SLOWLY starting to realize that there needs to be a difficulty leaver but they're only implementing it for raiding at the current time (there are now going to be 3 difficulty settings for raids), but trust me a few in their team does feel that the content in WoW is way too bloody easy for gamer-gamers. I don't expect anything to be done about it in the near future but... the consensus is there, at least the few I've talked to.

I'm hoping this becomes something they address about their overall leveling experience/servers/game model.

A couple of really difficult servers could be really entertaining.

This reads like the ramblings of some asshole who misses the chance to fuck up other people's gaming experiences for his own pleasure. Like people who loved the undead event in WoW that became a griefer's Holiday for a week.

Oh come oooon. That was hilarious. And I died like a bazillion times.