How does it work in a MMORPG?

[Jeff]

@beowulf03809

In order to limit the capabilities of abusive players, you have to set hard limits within the game. There are always cases where those limits will impact someone that had a legit problem or reason. But an honors system just does not work when people have no reason to be honorable.

Im not disagreeing with your theory, but this can be taken to extremes and be a real problem for the player.

It used to be that, when you died, in many games you had to get abck to your corpse or suffer server penalties. It could take hours to return to your corpse. People in the real world have schedules. After they get stuck staying up until 2:30am because they were palnning to log at midnight but died at 11:53 they are that much less likely to play your game again. Similarly sometimes real life just takes precdence. If I my wife comes home really upset about something I need to deal with that-- now!

These are things you have to consider, The msot successful games are turning otu to be ones that DONT put huge time comittment costs on the players. Ones where you can drop in and drop out on pretty much a moment’s notice.

CoH/CoV does a fair job of this at lower levels. At high levels though it starts to break dow wtih the longer mroe difficult missions…

This happens as much in real life as it does in the game world.

Never a good comparison. Most people play games to escape the issues of the real world. And in the end, to any healthy player, your game is far less important then the real world.

[beowulf03809]

Jeff, I agree completely with your counter points. In fact, the reason I haven’t played any current MMORPGs is simply because I do not have the time. My only currentl online game activity is a browser based game that I can play with about 2 - 5 minutes of activity at a time. It cranks along in real time ( one tick per hour ) and I just check it now and then thru the day, issue a couple orders and log off. When work spikes up to 50+ hour weeks, or my home life has an increase in responsibilities, or I simply need a break from anything computer related, I may be off line for a few days at a time. I don’t even think twice about this.

A key difference is that it is a strategy game and my territories continue to exist and may still be attacked while I’m off line. My choice to depart even when my enemies of tens of thousands of forces heading my way does not in any way effect their attack. The game offers a “holiday mode” which can be used to suspend and protect your territories for an extended period of time. In holiday mode you cannot log in, you cannot issue orders, all growth and development stop, etc, and no one can launch new attacks against you. If you go into holiday mode after an attack has been launched, it still goes thru but no new ones can launch.

But, believe it or not, players have still found ways to abuse holiday mode and the developers have been trying to address those weaknesses.

In a more “live” game, perhaps having the game keep track of how many times a player logs off while in a “bad situation” would be a good option. If this happens very infrequently then the game just assumes “that’s life” and lets the player go on as usual. If the player starts getting a higher ratio they may be warned that it is looking like a pattern. If it continues, then they start getting time penalties. Play long enough without doing it and your ratio starts going back down.

Again, this leaves room for abuse such as “saving up” and only doing it when thigs are REALLY bad. But as we can see, there is no mechanism that can be put in place to deter abuse that does not in turn abuse the innocent. It’s just a matter of degree. The same goes for cheating in other ways as well.

[DavidBoBavid]

@beowulf03809

On the other side of the coin, let’s say someone has been playing for a couple hours and needed to log off. They were no where near a “safe zone” so they found a nice, quiet spot in the wilderness well off he travelled routes. When they log back on the next day, they discover that a group of hungry trolls has set up camp at that spot to feast on a group of dwarves they captured. Do you:

1. Automatically give players entering the game a few seconds of invulnerability to “look around” and get their bearings.
2. Set a “ENTRY_SAFE” flag to “true” if the player logged off from a safe location. If the location is no longer safe at log in, move the player a short distance in a random location so he’s still in a safe zone. If it was “false” at logout then he stays where he is. No invulnerability period is granted.
3. Just let fate rule. If it’s a safe spot to login then great. If not, well, that’s fate. No invulnerability. Think fast or become stew.

My thought is to lean at #2. There would be complexity to the random movement to keep the character in an area already explored by them and that they could have gotten to from the entry zone ( don’t want to put them on the other side of a locked door for example ). But it seems most fair.

in WoW, there are no wandering bands… so that sort of thing can’t happen. however, if you log off while in the wilderness, and not a town, whn you log back in, you’ll be in exactly the same place. i’ve heard of people logging in and getting ganked before they know whats going on, because they just appeared in front of a group of players…haha.

as to not being near a safe place, every character in WoW has a hearthstone, which is sort of like a magical portal to an inn. you can change the inn it brings you too when you’re visiting it. so normally people hearth back to their inn before logging out. the hearthstone also has a 1 hour cooldown, and you can’t use it while in combat, so you can’t use it as a quick travel while you’re playing, nor to save yourself from an asswhooping. except paladins. they can do all sort of cheap stuff. lol.

anyway… not totally sure this is what you were looking for, but that’s how wow works, so hope it helps you get some ideas.

[Demonpants]

@Jeff

Nope its not as bad idea…

But I think its ironic that peopel are paying fro a service you then reward them not to use…

I was not paying for WoW for 3 months then reactivated my subscription and I had 2 levels (the maximum) of “rested” or double xp time. So you don’t have to pay to get the level xp bonus. And I think the rate at which it goes up is the same for being offline or in an inn/town. It doesn’t double if you are doing both. If you are in a town while playing, the bar goes up, and if you are offline anywhere, the bar goes up.

[Demonpants]

[quote=“DavidBoBavid,post:23,topic:27344”]
And also, about this: the cooldown (1 hour) for the hearthstone is not the issue. It’s the 10 second casting time. If anything hits you while casting, the casting time goes back down to 0. The reason a “paladin can abuse this” is because a very high level paladin can put up an invulnerabiliy shield for 12 seconds. This may seem imbalanced, but generally it does not factor down to a true 12 seconds - 10 seconds = 2 extra seconds with a shield. Generally the hearthstone spell doesn’t start casting until a few seconds after the shield has been on, and so this doesn’t even work. Plus, many other classes have similar ways to keep the enemy off them long enough to hearth (a thief can sap, a mage can polymorph, etc. etc.) so in reality it is not paladins that are cheap it’s just that if you really really want to you can generally get a hearth off at high levels.

That being said, there is asolutely NO penalty for being killed by another player other than the long walk back to your body, which is at most 10 minutes. The real penalty would be hearthing to get away from death, because then it may cost you up to 45 minutes to get back to where you were. Payoff? No. I have a level 57 paladin with probably 300 hours of playtime (I know, it’s pathetic) and I have never once used the “bubble hearth” technique, because it’s a pain in the butt and has no payoff. Similarly, using it as any other class has the same lack of payoff, and therefore it shouldn’t even be factored in as something players can potentially abuse.