Originally posted by Thethrax Originally posted by anarchyartNumber 1 reason why Perma Death is a bad idea: Hackers What if you reported a hacker and that person was caught, and you gained a 100 death credit reward for reporting him? Solutions people!! Its ok to escape from the drone worlds and think of ideas now and then
THis is not a solution, it's a nightmare for the CSRs. 99 out of 100 'reports' of hackers are false alarms from folks who think anyone better than them must be cheating - and that's without offering rewards for reporting them.
It's good to think of new ideas, but it's bad to criticize the creativity of others when your 'solution' is a steaming pile of garbage.
The solution is to simply make it not worth the effort. Decent security, instant banning and (if possible) prosecution, and a system that doesn't promote the 'buy your way to power on eBay' scenario will do far more to stem hacking than your 'report a hacker, gain credits' approach.
Originally posted by Ranma13 As I've stated earlier, implementing permadeath in any MMORPG will ensure permadeath of the game.
Asserted, but never actually supported.
Let's take an example like EVE Online. Now, EVE Online doesn't have permadeath, but it does have quite a severe penalty for dying. Now, imagine this scenario. You can only get podded, say, 100 times before your character is permanently deleted. What will we see? It's easy to predict the end result. Nearly all of the population will move to high-security space, where they cannot be killed by pirates. Heck, even the pirates will move to high-sec space. 0.0 will become nearly empty. Griefers will increase and corp wars and random war declarations will increase to compensate.
If everyone conglomerates in high-security space, the griefers will either have to a) move there themselves and come up with new ways to grief or b) move on to a different game where they can grief more easily.
If they're doing (a) then 0.0 becomes the griefer-free zone. If they do (b) then there's an actual reduction in griefers. Personally, I think they'll do (b) simply because I doubt griefers have any more courage than anyone else in general. They proliferate now because there's not much you can actually do in-game to drive them away; kill them and they just respawn and come back.
Make a game where they can't respawn, and encourage anti-griefers to come play, and the griefers will move on to greener pastures.
We will also see the collapse of the economy as high-sec space gets an influx of too many miners. Essentially, people will become 'carebear' in order to protect their lives.
Again, you're assuming everyone wants the same thing.
This example can easily be applied to other games. Permadeath COULD work if implemented correctly, but the number of people who'd want to play the game will be very low. It works on pencil and paper games because you're playing with a small group of people you're familiar with. It works in MUDs because MUDs focus a lot more on roleplaying. But it does not work in MMORPGs where most players have a grinding mentality rather than any sense of roleplaying or adventure.
See, I don't want a game that encourages the grinding mentality. I want something that breaks away from it, even if it doesn't quite make it to "massive." I'd rather have a low-population server where the average person is there for the adventure than a high-population grind-happy server.
Originally posted by anarchyartNumber 1 reason why Perma Death is a bad idea: Hackers
What if you reported a hacker and that person was caught, and you gained a 100 death credit reward for reporting him? Solutions people!! Its ok to escape from the drone worlds and think of ideas now and then
THis is not a solution, it's a nightmare for the CSRs. 99 out of 100 'reports' of hackers are false alarms from folks who think anyone better than them must be cheating - and that's without offering rewards for reporting them.
It's good to think of new ideas, but it's bad to criticize the creativity of others when your 'solution' is a steaming pile of garbage.
The solution is to simply make it not worth the effort. Decent security, instant banning and (if possible) prosecution, and a system that doesn't promote the 'buy your way to power on eBay' scenario will do far more to stem hacking than your 'report a hacker, gain credits' approach.
Ahh yes, true enough. But what if you were limited to 1 report per month per account, or something similar? Problem solved. No more steaming pile of garbage eh? Having 'decent security' just isnt enough, all software has bugs and is hackable. 'Instant banning' I could see happening, but instant is a bad word considering sufficient investigation should be done before banning someone. Having permadeath would probably alleviate some of those ebay problems, because who would want to buy a developed character, if it only has less than 20% of its lives left, and the player buying it has no experience with it?
Ahh yes, true enough. But what if you were limited to 1 report per month per account, or something similar? Problem solved. No more steaming pile of garbage eh? Having 'decent security' just isnt enough, all software has bugs and is hackable. 'Instant banning' I could see happening, but instant is a bad word considering sufficient investigation should be done before banning someone. Having permadeath would probably alleviate some of those ebay problems, because who would want to buy a developed character, if it only has less than 20% of its lives left, and the player buying it has no experience with it?
What about players who are genuinely experiencing bugs? One per month is completely absurd.
Originally posted by BlueCoyote Ahh yes, true enough. But what if you were limited to 1 report per month per account, or something similar? Problem solved. No more steaming pile of garbage eh? Having 'decent security' just isnt enough, all software has bugs and is hackable. 'Instant banning' I could see happening, but instant is a bad word considering sufficient investigation should be done before banning someone. Having permadeath would probably alleviate some of those ebay problems, because who would want to buy a developed character, if it only has less than 20% of its lives left, and the player buying it has no experience with it?
What about players who are genuinely experiencing bugs? One per month is completely absurd.
Issues like that are abound in this idea. I think it could be functional on a small scale but on a large mass marketable scale small issues become game breaking. Unfortunately I don't think a smaller community could afford the technology and staff to keep a game based on the OP's idea sustainable.
Originally posted by BlueCoyote Ahh yes, true enough. But what if you were limited to 1 report per month per account, or something similar? Problem solved. No more steaming pile of garbage eh? Having 'decent security' just isnt enough, all software has bugs and is hackable. 'Instant banning' I could see happening, but instant is a bad word considering sufficient investigation should be done before banning someone. Having permadeath would probably alleviate some of those ebay problems, because who would want to buy a developed character, if it only has less than 20% of its lives left, and the player buying it has no experience with it?
What about players who are genuinely experiencing bugs? One per month is completely absurd.
First, to TheThrax: now you're moving from useless to bandaid. You're also doing what you accused others of doing: not reading the whole message. Decent security *plus* TOS enforcement *plus* a system that's not worth the risk and effort. No single item alone will suffice. Without solid enforcement, you'll have folks breaking the security just to see if they can because it won't matter if they get caught. With a strong market on eBay for virtual goods, you'll have folks breaking the security for the profit regardless of how hard it is or what they face for getting caught. The right medium between the three is what keeps hackers out.
And yes, items/characters on a permadeath-server are far less valuable on eBay. Which is one of the reasons why I think this (hackers) would be no more of an issue (and possibly even less of one) than they are on any other MMOG.
And for BlueCoyote: bugs are not hacks. They're symptoms of malfunctioning code (hacks are deliberate triggers of obscure malfunctioning code) and would require a somewhat different process to deal with.
Comments
THis is not a solution, it's a nightmare for the CSRs. 99 out of 100 'reports' of hackers are false alarms from folks who think anyone better than them must be cheating - and that's without offering rewards for reporting them.
It's good to think of new ideas, but it's bad to criticize the creativity of others when your 'solution' is a steaming pile of garbage.
The solution is to simply make it not worth the effort. Decent security, instant banning and (if possible) prosecution, and a system that doesn't promote the 'buy your way to power on eBay' scenario will do far more to stem hacking than your 'report a hacker, gain credits' approach.
Asserted, but never actually supported.
If everyone conglomerates in high-security space, the griefers will either have to a) move there themselves and come up with new ways to grief or b) move on to a different game where they can grief more easily.
If they're doing (a) then 0.0 becomes the griefer-free zone. If they do (b) then there's an actual reduction in griefers. Personally, I think they'll do (b) simply because I doubt griefers have any more courage than anyone else in general. They proliferate now because there's not much you can actually do in-game to drive them away; kill them and they just respawn and come back.
Make a game where they can't respawn, and encourage anti-griefers to come play, and the griefers will move on to greener pastures.
Again, you're assuming everyone wants the same thing.
See, I don't want a game that encourages the grinding mentality. I want something that breaks away from it, even if it doesn't quite make it to "massive." I'd rather have a low-population server where the average person is there for the adventure than a high-population grind-happy server.
More compatible company and less lag
THis is not a solution, it's a nightmare for the CSRs. 99 out of 100 'reports' of hackers are false alarms from folks who think anyone better than them must be cheating - and that's without offering rewards for reporting them.
It's good to think of new ideas, but it's bad to criticize the creativity of others when your 'solution' is a steaming pile of garbage.
The solution is to simply make it not worth the effort. Decent security, instant banning and (if possible) prosecution, and a system that doesn't promote the 'buy your way to power on eBay' scenario will do far more to stem hacking than your 'report a hacker, gain credits' approach.
Ahh yes, true enough. But what if you were limited to 1 report per month per account, or something similar?
Problem solved. No more steaming pile of garbage eh? Having 'decent security' just isnt enough, all software has bugs and is hackable. 'Instant banning' I could see happening, but instant is a bad word considering sufficient investigation should be done before banning someone. Having permadeath would probably alleviate some of those ebay problems, because who would want to buy a developed character, if it only has less than 20% of its lives left, and the player buying it has no experience with it?
Issues like that are abound in this idea. I think it could be functional on a small scale but on a large mass marketable scale small issues become game breaking. Unfortunately I don't think a smaller community could afford the technology and staff to keep a game based on the OP's idea sustainable.
First, to TheThrax: now you're moving from useless to bandaid. You're also doing what you accused others of doing: not reading the whole message.
Decent security *plus* TOS enforcement *plus* a system that's not worth the risk and effort. No single item alone will suffice. Without solid enforcement, you'll have folks breaking the security just to see if they can because it won't matter if they get caught. With a strong market on eBay for virtual goods, you'll have folks breaking the security for the profit regardless of how hard it is or what they face for getting caught. The right medium between the three is what keeps hackers out.
And yes, items/characters on a permadeath-server are far less valuable on eBay. Which is one of the reasons why I think this (hackers) would be no more of an issue (and possibly even less of one) than they are on any other MMOG.
And for BlueCoyote: bugs are not hacks. They're symptoms of malfunctioning code (hacks are deliberate triggers of obscure malfunctioning code) and would require a somewhat different process to deal with.