RP PK solution

[SaintNuclear]

While the current method of PvPing (the defender must agree to the challenge) got it\'s pros, it got this one major con:

Let\'s say your character, player Y, is a loansharker.
Player X is in need for some fast money. He knows that you can give him money, and that he\'ll have to return it (+10% interest or something).
You give him the money he wants, make sure he\'s well aware that he better return the money in less than a month or you\'ll send your thugs after him.

A month passes, and he still didn\'t came back. You send your thugs to find him.

Your thugs find him, and challenge him to a fight. He disagrees.
 ?(
Now what? They can\'t really do anything. He chose to disagree the challenge, and it\'s his right to do it.

So disagreeing a challenge can harm many possibilities of RPing, not only loansharking, but countless of more.


So here\'s my solution:
Contract-type RPing (such as loansharking) will actually have a simple contract.

The contract will be made of IFs, WHENs, dropdown menus, and text boxes for integers.

Let\'s take the loansharking as an example again: ( ||\'s mark dropdown menus, []\'s mark integer boxes)
|Player Y| |gives| |money| [100] |hexas| to |Player X|. By |24|/|June|/|2004| |Player X| |gives| |Player Y| [110] |hexas|.
Incooporation will result by |death| and |money| [200] |hexas|.


It looks kinda messy, I know, but it\'d look much better as an actual menu in PS.
Each of the things in ||\'s can be replaced according to a dropdown menu. So you could switch between Player Y and Player X in the places where the player names are, you could switch between money and items (in case of choosing items you\'ll have a dropdown menu for type of item, and a dropdown menu for the particular item).

As you can see, if one of the sides don\'t do what he was supposed to, the other side is allowed to either kill him himself, or send mercenaries after him. Also, the incooporating side will have to pay a certain fee for breaking the contract (just like you can get sued IRL for breaking a contract).

Of course, both sides have to agree on that contract. Only in case one of them breaks it, he gets punished.
If he breaks the contract, he can expect mercenaries to knock on his door and kill him. He won\'t be given a choice whether to accept the challenge or not, because he already did it by signing the contract, and made a terrible mistake by breaking it.

It looks kinda crude now, because I haven\'t gave much of a thought to exactly how this contract will be built. But if it\'s built in that way of dropdown menus etc, the server will be able to monitor the contract and act accordingly.


Think of all the RP possibilities contracts can bring us. It can also be used for simple trading. I give you this, and you give me that.

[sashok]

I like this idea and will try to expand on this, see if you agree.

The player who borrowed money(or anything for that matter)  shold be given a deadline date to return the goods. I like your idea of contracts, only there is no need to specify what sum of money or how many goods are at stake, just a simple contract with deadlines, the rest of the info is between players of course..
Well you might disagree here because loansharking requires money, but that becomes a hassle when it comes to items, everything would have to be recorded, I think it would be too much for the game to handle..

Look at this scenario.. A player wants to borrow a weapon from another player for some time..  There should be a contract established that if by certain date the player doesn\'t return weapon to owner, the owner is allowed to declare pvp war on another player..

Hey who knows, maybe contracts are the answers to all pvp problems and hussles.  This gives jobs to mercs, for example both parties of pvp war would be allowed to hire anyone and once they are in the same group, they are allowed to fight.

So how does one of those pvp wars gets resolved?  I think time limit should be set after how long the war can go on.. and this can be set in the contract...

So in this case, the player can try to run away for the set period of time, hiding from the owner, the loanshark, etc. etc.

So what about wars giving grief and all that crap,  wel HAHA, that will be the whole point now, people sign up for contracts and knowingly sign up to either kill each other after deadline or remain friends..  And if one player gets to kill another, he gets EVERYTHING in the other guys inventory, storage, etc.. and the other way around..  So people would be wise to study upon the players before not following the contract.


Last thing i want to touch upon.  Contracts should be written in NPC contract offices, this would prevent anyone coming close to anyone in game and asking for a contract or something...  And after all the data is filled(which will be like  \"how many days from now contract expires... how many days the pvp war lasts...)
Both parties read the contract on a pop menu with \"Do you agree YES/NO\"  If both press yes, contract is in power.


the only problem i see with this is when players will deliberately not want to take the money or stuff back and the contract will remain in power OR if player will deliberately not return stuff because he wants a pvp war...
Well for the first problem if there was some kind of holding storage where it records the items that were taken or borrowed(or sum of money or both) during contract and if before deadline same thing OR more is returned(as long as theres same items and sum of money), the contract automatically expires.

For the second problem, the the loanshark, the owner of goods from whom they were borrowed, can, AT ANY TIME, rip the contract, the only time when this is not allowed is when a fight is taking place(the pvp war is in power)

eheh, some rough ideas here, an addition to yours

[Shariom]

Sounds good, but you would have to fill in the amount of money etc, and do all trading \'through\' the contract.... otherwise if you go the lazy way of paying somoene back (drop the money on the ground and have them pick it up), you HAVE paid them back, but the game doesn\'t know that, and the player who loaned the money could still kill them without repercussion from the legal system.

However, I think if you are going for an immersive world, you should just be able to attack anyone, anytime with appropriate repercussions from the games legal system. No guards in town or anything, but simply have the game record each time one player kills another. If any player kills more than one character within say, a week (realtime) (you have to allow some leeway for collection of debts and so on, if you don\'t use the system mentioned above), guards in all towns try to arrest them on sight - perhaps just all towns in a certain country / realm, so players can be exiles, fugitives and so on.... that would be a nice feature ).

I also think it should be set up so you can\'t attack another player unless they attack you, or you go into a menu and set PK on. When you set PK on you should be able to set it to Kill or Knock Out (knocking a character out instead of killing them would bring much softer penalties from the games legal system - perhaps one knockout allowed per day.

Then you should be able bribe officials to let the paperwork slip..... though this would be VERY expensive.... something only very rich and poweful characters can afford...

[SaintNuclear]

Shariom, most of what you said there was already discussed. Read This, and This.
Besides, this thread is about contracts, any other PvPing ideas please have in another thread



Sashok, all the problems you mentioned can be solved if the contract won\'t have only a deadline like you offered.

Originally posted by sashok20
[...] players will deliberately not want to take the money or stuff back [...]

If the contract specifies what, and how much should be returned, this can be prevented by a command that will finish the contract and give the stuff to the other player.
E.g. if the contract stated that Player X must return 10 trias to Player Y, and Player X is ready to return the money (he got enough, and some spare too so he won\'t be broke), instead of giving the money he enters the command. Player Y gets the trias, and everyone are happy.
Player Y can\'t disagree to recieve the trias back, because it was returned to him through the contract.

Originally posted by sashok20
player will deliberately not return stuff because he wants a pvp war

Yes, this could be a problem. If the player don\'t want to return the money because he wants PvP, and he\'s weaker than the loanshark\'s thugs, he\'s stupid. Not only he\'ll get himself killed, but he\'ll have to pay more than he was supposed to in the first place.
If he\'s stronger than the thugs, the loanshark shouldn\'t have made a deal with him in the first place, and it\'s also part of the RPing.


I don\'t think this should flare PvP wars, only fights.
E.g. the player didn\'t return the money to the loanshark, so the loanshark sends thugs after him. Either they kill him and take the money, or he kills them. In the first case, it\'s ok, no problem. In the second case, the loanshark lost, he\'s not gonna get the money back, and he won\'t send any more thugs, he had his chance and blew it.

Originally posted by sashok20
if one player gets to kill another, he gets EVERYTHING in the other guys inventory, storage, etc..

I disagree.
What if you got alot of stuff, and money, sign a contract you couldn\'t fulfill (things happen...), get killed, and everything you had is taken?
It sucks. You lost everything. All those things you worked so hard to get, are gone.
That\'s why I think the contracts should also have a part that states what punishment the player that broke the contract should get.
Options would include death, payment, and more stuff that I can\'t think of right now.

In the example I gave in my first post it included both killing and taking a certain amount of money.
So the thugs will kill the guy, and if he carried money on him, the amount stated in the contract (in this case, 200 hexas) will automatically be transferred to the loanshark.

It brings a problem though:
What if the player carried no money, or only part of the sum?
If he carried only part of it, that part will be transferred, and he\'ll have to pay back when he gets more money.
If he carried no money, he\'ll have to pay back the full amount.
Every time he\'ll get some money, it\'ll automatically be transferred to the loanshark, until he paid his dept.
Or, he could sell the loanshark an item(s).


I\'m not sure about the NPC office, because then people won\'t be able to trade far from town. It\'ll also ruin the whole atmosphere that comes in the RP (e.g. a loanshark that sits on a big golden armchair eating meat with a thug standing on each side and servants everywhere ) because both sides will have to go all the way to the office.

[sashok]

I don\'t think devs will consider your method because you only worked out contracts for loansharking, sums of money, very limited operation to the game.  I think your idea of contracts of any type is great, but you have to give it big purpose since you ask for so much to implement from the devs.  You know what i mean?

[SaintNuclear]

Yeah, well, this can be a system used for general trade of items, and it\'s a good host for RPing...
The game is about RPing, isn\'t it?
Loansharks, merchants, debts, banks, mercenaries, bounties.
Many games don\'t have a good system for all these, but this contracts system can be used for them.

It doesn\'t solve all PvP problems, but it doesn\'t try to either. It focuses on PvP in RP games.
You can\'t have one system for all PvP problems, it\'s impossible.

Besides, I don\'t think it\'s that hard to implement. I don\'t know much about programming, but still.
It needs a menu so people will be able to make contracts, the menu will be mainly IFs and WHENs. A contract that is aproved by both sides enters the database. If you think that the databases will be huge, then no, it probebly won\'t be more than 100 bytes per contract.
If the contract isn\'t fulfilled, the one that was scamed is allowed to kill \\ send someone to kill the one that broke the contract.

If you worry about complication, we shouldn\'t have combat, nor quests. Actually, the game should be scrapped, it\'s too complicated

[sashok]

I don\'t see why trading should be so complicated as contracts.   Regular trading should be able to take place in few seconds, without having to type up contract.

So contracts should remain a tool for something else, like loansharking...
Why I proposed npc offices.. well where is it seen that contracts are made on the fly in the middle of forest, it\'s just not valid... it\'s gotta be stamped by city official or at least written in front of witnesses.

I strongly believe contracts should be just with deadlines only.. and the materials borrowed or loaned, recorded with storage inside the npc office.

the whole pvp issue, ofcourse can be debated

[SaintNuclear]

I don\'t think it should be typed, I think it should be a small pop up window (like the one that pops up when you click Connect from the main menu) with dropdown menus and stuff.

And if it only has deadlines it\'s useless. Ok, so I set a deadline, but how does the server knows if the contract was fulfilled or not? It\'s useless.

[sashok]

I said to have a storage box in the npc office.  The loanshark or anyone puts the items that he loans, that could be money or items.. and once the items are taken from the box by the person whos borrowing them or loaning, the contract begins.  It\'s a rough idea, but at least it\'s more open towards any kind of item and money.  Otherwise there would be no way, u\'d have to type out the name of the item?  money value.. etc.

[SaintNuclear]

You won\'t have to type the weapon name, you\'ll have to choose it from a dropdown menu....
And there\'s no need to type the money value of the item. What I meant is that incase the borrower wants to give an item back instead of money, the loanshark decides if to accept it, and if he wants more besides it.

When you make it using this box thing, anyone could come and take the stuff, and you have no guarantee that the person you wanted to get the stuff will actually get it.

And again, if you have to go to some npc office just to make a simple contract, and drop stuff to a box, it makes things alot more complicated than my offer, and it makes them impossible to be made far from towns.