About PK discussions often happen, but unfortunately, every time it ends. Every time I have to recommend everyone to look at Gamasutra to see related articles, and make problems more clearly. Personally think that the following article must be read. In my opinion, this article is: "I hope that this idea is unrealistic to maintain online games. Here, I will list some control of unwillingness (Non -consensual method of PVP conflict, summarizing some general principles that should be considered when designing online gaming judicial systems. "
The article is reproduced as follows, if you want to read the original text, please search for Gamasutra.
Online Justice Systems Network Games Judicial System By Derek Sanderson Translation: 0Dysseus In order to create a successful online game, the producer must create a good team atmosphere. When such an atmosphere is established in the network RPG, the biggest problem encountered by the maker is the stealing behavior between PK and roles. This behavior is called "PVP Conflict". In the past period, the game company uses a different method in different games in order to solve this problem. This article mainly involves several companies in the game's control strategy for PVP, including SIMUTRONICS companies - that is, the strategy I am now - some of the methods used in ORIGIN in Ultima Online; finally 989 work Methods used by the creators of room - Everquest. I hope that this idea is unrealistic to maintain the order of the online game. Here, I will list some methods for controlling the non-consensual PVP conflict and summarizes some general principles that should be considered when designing online game judicial systems. First, existing solution 1. SIMUTRONICS's administrative control (Administrative Control) existing games, the control of PVP is quite ideas, but they also have a negative impact on the game. Administrative Control is a strategy used in both Gemstone and DragonRealms in Gemstone and DragonRealms. SIMUTRONICS did not have a hard restriction on PVP, but gave a lot of room for players, so that they have a variety of choices to address mutual conflicts. In these two games, the new role cannot be attacked by the old role, and they do not have enough power to hurt their opponents. Theft between the characters is limited to money and relatively small gems. The plunder body is either it is not like the Gemstone III; either some protection measures to make the cautious players can completely avoid using this approach from being injured - DragonRealms. These returning rooms give the player's great freedom, any of the responsible players, can choose their own way. However, in order to achieve this freedom, SIMUTRONICS has strictly selected its players. There is such text in its player's terms and conditional agreements: "The attack on innocent victims is not allowed, any player who uses such behavior - especially the person who is able tortured weak players from - It will be considered to violate this item. "The definition of" innocent victims "is quite difficult. A murderer is quite eye-catching, we can immediately delete the player's information. Treating experienced players, we generally give them a warning and freeze the account for a while. When you face a new player, we will explain our PVP regulations to them. If someone is not willing to follow, Simutronics generally suggest that they try some games that are right for them. SIMUTRONICS strategy is quite effective for those who are willing to comply with the player and those who want to deliberately violate them. But its defect is how to solve conflicts between two camps, and the existence of whether or not there is violations between the two camps may not reach a consensus. For example, player A published some of the blood of the player B, and the player B believed that he was offended and attacked the player A. So, is this conflict agree to? Even in SIMUTRONICS, the opinions are not uniform. Some employees believe that the conflicts of "agreement", including insults.
Another part of the employee believes that only the conflict after clear declaration is the "agreement". While the employees are arguing, they are also doing a war that will never win. No matter how to deal with such conflicts, their interference makes players feel unpleasant. The treatment of similar events also occupies the time they should use to develop games. This increases the proportion of developers to players. From the above we can see that in order to make the player have a relatively safe game environment, SIMUTRONICs sacrifies a part of the fiscal budget. But in this way, it is suitable for other games, depending on the goals that developers want to achieve, and their budget. 2. UO's player's autonomous developers of Ultima Online gave up administrative control on the game and put the judicial system to the player. Raph Koster - UO CEO - Say that ORIGIN is the purpose of this design game is: "Give players to manage your own game environment, they may ... our development experience shows that any administrative control is failed. Even if there is a certain effect, the player will produce great dissatisfaction with GM. "We have this consideration because traditional MUD requires a lot of, skilled manager in order to form a social custom. They used a lot of time to comfort those who felt their faults. Standing in a business perspective, we think this way is inappropriate. "(0dysseus Note: the middle of an obscure some, accompanied by text: We were particularly concerned because traditional models on MUDs for enforcing social mores were very administrator-intensive, requiring a large number of skilled administrators willing to devote a lot of time to soothing Ruffled Feathers on The Part of Players Who felt wronged.) Let your player manage yourself is a noble behavior, but it is also one of the most difficult to implement .u has a shameless result for the player's letters: Some PKERs make a gang, ambush to attack smaller traveler groups in the game in the game. "I was pk! "This kind is very common outside the game's bank (Game's Banks), the naked adventurers beg in other players, and some players organized anti-PK troops, but as Raph said:" They It is not a suitable means of solving the PK. A small amount of police has a minimal effectiveness of the PK, and the behavior of PKER and theft is not serious to the extent to which it needs to be affected. "In order to solve this problem, Origin has developed a series of tools to give the player with greater control. In the current system, all the characters are marked as" innocent "at the beginning, their names They are all bright blue. And the role of innocent - including NPC - stealing, attacking behavior or plundering innocent bodies, the name will become gray, imprinted on the criminal sign, and can be attacked by anyone The innocent person killed, is also given the right to report the opponent's murder, and even the heavy gold rewards the head. Strictly kill the five innocent people in a short time, will also be marked as "murder", and Loss of shopping and the right of bank withdrawals. UO's crime reporting mechanism UO's largest power is that it handles the management of PVP to players. This makes players a kind of own, not Origin, which is controlling the whole world. This The benefits of feelings are not to be ignored - it allows players to immerse to the game world. However, this system is fragile when faced with accidental violations.
Only after being reported five murderous behaviors, the murder will receive a large limit. And the game's record of attack behavior does not save it for a long time. If a role performs a murder behavior every eight hours, he can kill a person every day without constitute any murdere. People who harm others but have not killed, and will not be punished, but only is marked as "criminal". Insufficient attacks that are not sufficient to form murder crimes are still extremely common in UO. In terms of my own, I will be attacked almost a stranger almost every day, and I have been killed three times. (As a game designer, it will often be angry after being killed by the player. When his colleague laughed at him, this situation would be more serious!) 3. The designer of the PK tag (Player-Toggled Flags) eQUES has designed two tags for the role. One is PK, which means you can attack others, or you can be attacked by others. The second is -pk, neither attacked others, and will not be attacked by others. This way of controlling violence is a common method of testing the MUD. But in my experience, I think there is a large-scale "THROWAY" Troublemaker, Also KNown as "Mule" in a game that is large and anonymous. They have -pk identity, complete immunization of physical attacks, and often do some non-violent but indeed anger. These include: Cheng Tianhe followed by other characters; plugging in the intersection; attacking other characters are playing monsters; orally insulting other players; saving stolen goods in pk characters; singing against the room, etc., etc. EQ's manufacturer Brad McQuaid said they have noticed the possibility of PK tags that are abused and ready to prepare. There will be a "Squelch Command" in the game to counterattack oral insults. Infringement of non-role-playing will incur a penalty on the account. (0dysseus Note: The last original: Out-of-context (non-roding) Harassment Will Result in Punitive MeasureS Against the offender's account.) For the situation, Brad said: "... to cause the enemy to cause maximum damage The roles and teams will get the right to plunder their bodies, and the experience is also fully owned by them. In this way, those who follow others and try to give a deadly hit will not get any experience. "EQ solves the problem of the problem It's very good. But if a high-level -pk role comes to a lower level, and how will the low-level role? They will cause the biggest damage, and the low level role of struggle will not have any experience! In this area, the situation of the senior role intersection is blocked? How to prevent advanced roles from attacking lower monsters? Is it just a warning? Some of the above games designed to use the game design show that the use of PK tags is quite dangerous. It manufactures a group that cannot be hurt and cannot be punished, thus giving the baggage to GM. However, I think the PK mark will be welcomed by a large part of the EQ player. Because it allows players who don't like PVP to avoid attacks that are more attacked than them. Second, some basic principles If there is still no way to solve the PVP, how should I control it? A complete system design has exceeded the scope of this article, which is the factors that should be considered when designing the "anti-PVP" system design.
1. Try to minimize the interference of the player's transaction to reduce the development expenditure. The most important one of the various factors that should be paid attention to when the player is interferon, and it is also the most correct way to control PVP. Players will continue to look for vulnerabilities in game design and use them. The best way to solve this problem is to modify your game to avoid similar events. In DragonRealms, there is a good example of a player's original intention of the designer. In this game, the priest can resurrect other roles. When the role dies, a counter starts calculating time, and the role skill will continue to be lost. Therefore, the longer the role is dead, the more skills are lost. The pastor has a SOUL BOND skill for stopping the loss of skills. For a reason, a dead role hopes that the priest uses Soul Bond as soon as possible. However, in the early days of the game, players who play pastors deliberately do not use Soul Bond and directly resurrect the deceased, which makes the deceased suffers a greater skill loss. Although such behavior is allowed by the system, it has exceeded the original intention of the designer. Some priests that use this vulnerability have been deprived of a period of application until we have modified the game code. Although our intervention is temporarily solved, the victim is happy; but the players who are punished by our punishment are quite anger. Similar interventions may cause players to fight emotions against designers. The intervention behavior is occupied by development time, and it will also increase budget. Of course, we can also create an atmosphere, that is, players hope to handle their disputes by designers. But this consequence is a massive help phone - with the increase of players, even more - and the average cost required to solve these problems. 2. UO's reward wanted system in a hard control judicial system, try to provide as many ways to report PVP behavior. Players should be able to report all possible PVP behaviors to the judicial system, and the feasible methods include the use of the victim -uo that displays murder cases with a window. (0Dysseus Note, the last original text: Possible Methods Include Presenting Murder Victims with a pop-up window, so as the one Ultima Online Display) or allows players to report to NPC guards or security judges in the documentation. But no matter which way you use, the most important thing is that it should cover all possible PVP behavior. These include: stealing, plundering the body, using weapon attack, showing aggressive spells, hurting by the range attack; or by a player controlled NPC (or biological). The reporting mechanism should be simple, but there should be some restrictions on the reported players to ensure that only true PVP behavior can be reported. Range attack spells hurt all monsters and roles within a certain range. When facing it, be careful. In UO, a commonly used PK strategy is: deliberately entering the attack range of others, the system detects that the caster's injury to the PKER, that is, the caster is marked as "criminal". The latter can kill it in the emperor. If you can't detect such drilling system vulnerabilities, a feasible solution is to cancel the range spell, or the range of spells cannot hurt other roles. The latter will lose some authenticity to your game, but this loss is relatively worthless than the control effect of PVP behavior. Another place to pay attention to is theft detection. Here is a very common scene: A has a bag of gold coins and encountered B, B stealing a gold coin.
A detection skills did not find B's theft, but the player found that his gold coin was reduced, so he thought that B stole his money, and launched the latter, I hope he will return his own money. In an existing game system, A. The right to retroce with gold coins. Therefore, the system is marked as "criminal". Such aft event is easy to make players feel depressed, because thieves often use their immunity to the immunity of the judicial system to mock other players. The solution is that the victim is allowed to report any possible PVP behavior, but if he is reported, he will be punished. Note that your judicial system will only react after the player makes requests. Only when the victim clearly knows that the attack behavior is for him, it can get feedback from the judicial system. After that, an victim may be a friendly duel with the murderer. Otherwise, victims may use private retaliation, while violence may also lead to a live PK. UO has an extremely beautiful judicial system - although there is still some vulnerabilities. For example, the role of attacking innocent people will be marked as "criminal", even if this attack is unintentional or the parties are willing. Once, I accidentally attacked my friend and was marked as "criminal". A stranger doesn't me me, and immediately killed me and plundered my body. As a result, I was even more poorer than the landing. However, if it is murdered as an innocent person, I can not only report this murder, but you can wanted him. 3. UO's guild mode and EQ race setting UO also have a PK method that makes the player completely restricted by the judicial system. If a guild leaders will declare war to other rows, and the latter accepts challenges. Then the roles of both parties can attack, theft, and plunder, and will not be considered to be crime. Another level of war is even more confusing. If the leader of the guild has enough prestige, he can announce that the Bank will be in the order or confusion, so that the bank will enter the war state with all the papers. Members of both parties can fight anywhere at any time. "This can give players a '10-sided ambush' feeling," Raph said, "This war system is quite popular. After the 'Free to ALL' mode is open, there is ten percent of the guild to use it immediately. This model. "UO's guild system actually provides players with a normative PVP mode. In EQ, the role of PK can be freely attacked, but some ethnic settings will determine the consequences of player PK behavior. In general, the role of an OGRE is evil. If he killed the role of the ELF - a just camp, such as BRAD said "When he returned home, he was considered a hero ... In this case, PK is actually in EQ. It is encouraged. "But when a wizard defending an OGRE is attacking an ELF, he will intervene in this battle. And killing the characters of themselves, I will find that the NPC of my hometown is quite cold. 4. This part of the chance to revenge to players is even enough to be alone, so I will only make a brief comment. A very easy question is that players prefer to immediately counterattack immediately after being hurt, rather than reporting to the judicial system. When the player is infringed, the farewell should be marked, so that the victim has an opportunity to counterattack and not punished, and the player also has a choice to immediately counterattack or a later way. In UO, attacking the roles of others, each attack will be marked. This tag will last for two minutes, and the victim can be free to counterattack without punishment. But in my experience, two minutes is far less than enough. The first thing I have to do after being attacked is the damage caused by the restoration. When I recover, it is often over two minutes.
5. Let the PKER unprofit map allow the players to be obtained from the PVP behavior than the profit in the game (Player- vs. -Game Activity). A large part of the person killed or theft of other roles is because the profitability from this behavior is higher than the attack monster or NPC. Reduce the profit from the player from the PVP behavior, you will greatly reduce this behavior; provide a fixed, more PVG activities, and even less PVP. Reducing the most obvious way of PK profit is to limit the plunder of the role body. At the same time, it is also necessary to retain the player to help him die. One way is completely canceled, but also has a corresponding mechanism, so that the burglary has the opportunity to take back its own equipment from the thief. Another way is that only the body can only be plundered in a particular environment. UO labeled the plunder as a criminal, thus making them easy to attack other role; or killing by NPC guard. Until this paper, EQ has not completed its plunder system. But BRAD said that developers will give players several choices. "... If you are a -pk role, then only you or you give him right can plunder your body. If you are a PK role and encountered a PK role body, then you can plunder He. However, we are experimenting with a more flexible plunder limit. In this test system, a murder can only plunder a deceased, can only take one of the equipment once. "If you use the above limit, Please provide enough monsters and NPC to meet players' needs. And there is a lot of treasures on them, giving players a "worth" feel. Thus put the center of gravity of the player activity in the monster. If the monsters and NPC are too poor, or if they refresh the speed is too slow, the player will attack each other. Similarly, the thief is given more theft opportunities when designing monsters and NPC. Otherwise, those thieves that only steal the player's role will turn to other players. Limit new roles to harm to other roles. Players will always use system vulnerabilities to maximize their income. If a new role can get the same benefits as the old role, even if this behavior is high risk, there will be many players to implement the above behavior with "scorpion". When an account can apply for multiple characters; or if the player can buy any product, you can get the account free of charge. The most common means of "scorpion" is to avoid the original intention of system design, theft and fraud. In DragonRealms, "scorpions" often plundered the body of the deceased, and passed the boot to his friends, and finally give him another role. In this way, the real thief does not look for it, and the victim cannot save his losses. They also use the vulnerabilities of the player to translate, and pass the boom to another role after being able to do. It is not just Simutronics that is troubled by "scorpion". In UO, a commonly used theft means that two characters stand together at the door of the bank. If a role is discovered, the victim will call the guards, and the other role will immediately pick up the equipments of the companion, so that the victim has no loss of his loss. Recently ORIGIN has modified this vulnerability. If a thief is within two minutes after theft, he is guarded, and the stolen goods will be directly returned to the victim. Let the character pay a certain amount of money for their PVP behavior. When an act of a behavior is obviously perceived, the frequency it will fall. This is a very simple supply and demand relationship, increase the cost of PVP behavior, and people who use it will necessarily decrease. Selecting a PVP player will measure whether you are worth doing this before each action. Let the fine increase with the increase of the frequency of infringement, you will avoid the rich old players to constantly complain. You can design a constantly increasing fine system.
