alignment based pvp

[Azasello]

the idea I want to present here is not new. in fact, I first saw it in lineage 2. however the lineage system has its flaws, so I took some time to think about it. this is what came out of it...

the philosophy:
the goal of this system is to give all players what they want. that is, player killers should get a world with lots of player killing, and coop/pve players should get some sort of (but not complete) safety from player killers. in no way should player killers be punished for their style of playing!

the basic idea:
every player has a status which I call \"alignment\" (this term is borrowed from D&D and means something similiar). the alignment is a one-dimensional value which reaches from chaotic (lowest) over neutral (initial value for each character) to lawful (highest).
the alignment is affected by the way you interact with other players and affects the way the world (mostly NPCs) react towards you.

(NOTE: I am not a D&D fan. i just use the terms because they should be familiar to some readers)

how alignment is affected:
(1) your alignment always rises over time. but only very slowly.
(2) killing players affects your alignment depending on theirs:

if you are lawful:
 - killing chaotics increases your alignment up to some maximum (you are protecting other players)
 - killing neutrals decreases your alignment quickly
 - killing lawfuls decreases your alignment very quickly

if you are neutral:
 - killing chaotics doesn\'t affect your alignment at all (self defense)
 - killing neutrals slightly decreases your alignment
 - killing lawfuls quickly decreases your alignment

if you are chaotic:
 - killing chaotics slightly decreases your aligmment
 - killing neutrals decreases your aligmment
 - killing lawfuls quickly decreases your aligmment

(3) you can not affect your alignment in any other way! this is important! if it was possible to raise your alignment by killing monsters (as in lineage 2), this would mean that player killers who are powerful in pve can always restore themselves to neutral or even lawful by bashing lots of monsters

note that killing chaotics can not get you back from chaotic to neutral? why? because player killers often fight among each other. this doesn\'t reduce their status as player killers. should be obvious.

what are the effects of alignment?
as I stated above, player killers should not be punished.
my suggestion is that there are different zones with different alignments in the world. a lawful area (for example the capital city of the world) should generally be \"a bad place to be\" for chaotics. NPC guards should attack chaotics without warning and protect others from thieves and player killers. that is, if a player attacks another player within the city bounds, the guards will interfere.
chaotic zones should have all the benefits of the big cities (i.e. there should be merchants, quest npcs and all that), but there should be complete anarchy. guards don\'t care about fights between players, and there should be some (but not too many) unfriendly NPCs (thieves, robbers, bad guys of all kinds). lawful players who enter these areas have no protection at all from player killers. if they go there, it\'s their fault.

both kinds of players should have to go to neutral areas in order to do quests and get items. this on the one hand gives player killers a chance to get some non-chaotic victims. on the other hand, the only way for a lawful player to get a reward for killing another player is to kill a chaotic player. this should make it attractive for lawful players to protect each other. because lawfuls won\'t kill each other, they will usually be around in larger groups, so outside the safe bounds of a lawful city, they are usually stronger than the player killers who are usually more busy bashing each other than sticking together.

if this system is successful (just assume this for a while before you tell me why it is crap;), then the community will consist of three major groups of players:

1. player killers and thieves. mostly chaotic players who kill and rob each other, and sometimes the other groups of players too. some will stay in the chaotic (player killing) zones most of the time. others will try to ambush pve players and steal their loot. these players are unlikely to form large groups because they don\'t like each other that much... (experience from other games shows this)

2. pve players, archievers, socializers, mostly lawful players. these players will spend most of the time near the lawful cities. if they have to go far away from safety to gain experience, hunt for items, etc, they will usually do this in large groups to protect themselves against the player killers. sometimes they might even go on raids against chaotic cities, maybe to get back some of the stolen loot. this will (hopefully) force the chaotics to stick together at least for a while and lead to big army vs army battles between players (which can be a lot of fun)

3. solo players. we must not forget about these. perhaps most of them will be neutral, only defend themselves against player killers and avoid the \"hot\" areas where lots of player killers are roaming. this is the typical behaviour of the explorer type of players.

[SaintNuclear]

Bad idea.
1. No one wants a machine to decide his alignment. Every player defines his char in a certain alignment, the way his char fights shouldn\'t change anything.
2. According to your idea, that a machine chooses your char\'s alignment and not you, a chaotic char could bash alot of monsters (read bellow), get himself to Lawful, go to Lawful areas, and steal and kill Lawfuls until he goes down to Neutral. When he gets to Neutral he\'ll go back to monster-bashing until he\'s Lawful again.
3. It encourages monster-bashing - PS is against that.
4. It ignores the other part of alignments completely. What about Good vs Evil?
5. Alignments are more than about fighting. Lawful Evil will usually means that you want to take over, while Lawful Good is the opposite.

[difficult]

I would like to begin by saying that well-thought out ideas should be complimented, even if some believe they are \"bad.\"  If only everyone put as much time into PS as you did we would then have a good game.

I agree with your philosophy: we need to create a game in which both kinds of players can be happy.  A sort of equilibrium, if you will.

The alignment idea is interesting and has a good deal of potential for PS.  In fact, I could see it working under the system you propose.  My only general question is this: how does this apply to duels in which both parties consent?  I would suppose that the alignment does not apply.

And don\'t mind SaintNuclear\'s post, he didn\'t bother to read yours.  You did mention that killing monsters would not affect alignment, something SaintNuclear seems to misunderstand or have missed.

I would propose a few adjustments to your alignment system and I am curious to hear what you think:

Originally posted by Azasello
how alignment is affected:
(1) your alignment always rises over time. but only very slowly.
(2) killing players affects your alignment depending on theirs:

I agree with you on the second part, but why should alignment change if a person does nothing as you propose in the first part?  What if a \"chaotic\" player stops playing for a few months, is he suddenly \"lawful?\"  I know that there are simple fixes like only counting in-game time, but I feel that any alignment should be based only on actions and not inactions.  I would equate it to automatically giving skills to players after a certain amount of time instead of success at quests (something I disagree with)

Originally posted by Azasello
if you are lawful:
 - killing chaotics increases your alignment up to some maximum (you are protecting other players)
 - killing neutrals decreases your alignment quickly
 - killing lawfuls decreases your alignment very quickly

if you are neutral:
 - killing chaotics doesn\'t affect your alignment at all (self defense)
 - killing neutrals slightly decreases your alignment
 - killing lawfuls quickly decreases your alignment

if you are chaotic:
 - killing chaotics slightly decreases your aligmment
 - killing neutrals decreases your aligmment
 - killing lawfuls quickly decreases your aligmment

This applies to all of them: how quickly is \"very quickly?\"  Does that mean a lawful player can kill 4 lawfuls before hitting neutral, or is it something stricter?

I also wonder what an NPC guard, for example, would do upon seeing a killing?  I know you said that NPCs would \"hassle\" chaotics, but would they act as policemen and try to stop killings as well?

One thing that does bother me is that the alignment only applies to killing.  This system does not take into account that one lawful might have to defend himself from another lawful and therefore not deserve a lower alignment

If this issue is solved, the alignment idea will definately be ready for full debate.

[derwoodly]

I am not sure I get how this system will solve the PvP problem.  There will be Chaotics who do not care about their alignment and will pray opon players as they step out side of town.

Smart players would stay Lawfull, untill they had enough skill points and uber magic items to be come uber.  Then when they have become unstopable they will turn Chaotic and destroy all who step outside of town.  The Chaotic tag will mean nothing to them and newbies will not be able to advance.

The problem with all of the PvP systems I know of is that for the first few months the game is out everything is balanced.  But after that you quickly have a small group of players that are \"1337\" and they destroy the game for the latecomers.  Thus your sever population never grows and the developers are burried in a pile of compaint emails.

[Ineluke]

This is a good idea. But I think that the post above me is the correct one. We should simply have areas where pk is not an option. You simply can\'t attack a player in those areas. This will allow the newbes to gain a higher level get to know the game befor being demolished by pkers.  This is on top of your system.