This is it really. I've tried a few such games over the years and it felt like a majority of people were just trying to get powerful enough to kill & loot other players a little under their strength and then repeat the process to bootstrap themselves higher & higher. Players that want to play that way are attracted to such games, and they inevitably drive out players who want the balance shifted a little in the other direction.
I don't see how game design can easily shift this balance because it's more about attracting a different balance of players than in how you design the game itself.
In UO, you could spend your whole character career in towns (although there were other ways to mess with people in town). In SWG too, where Koster was also involved, there was an entire life outside of combat.
In WoW, for example, everything revolves around combat - and any secondary skills (mining, enchanting, etc.) are support for combat, or require combat to advance.
I don't see how game design can easily shift this balance
several options, tweak values to taste:
- Give defending players a boost/advantage against attackers until the winnable spoils are too lame to be worth the effort.
- Let there be a magical force which returns 90% (x%) of a loser's stuff to their magic box. Therefore the winnable spoils are too lame to be worth the effort.
- Allow "titling" of real estate and expensive personal possessions. Upon death, the title would be transferred by pre-set rules to someone specific, or in estate court to next-of-kin (respawned player). NPC Shops call the guards if they see mis-titled sales. Guards do random searches at the city gates and confiscate mistitled items. Those are then eventually returned to the next-of-kin/etc.
- Provide an option for mutual "yes lets fight!" where no taxes/boosts/etc are applied and winner takes all/most. (maybe they could agree on custom % of spoils too).
It works when it's the only game in town - and everyone is playing on the server so the PK crowd is diluted, but once there are options people who don't like dying move to servers where they won't die, and the ones where PK is allowed become nothing but PKs.
Comments
>it attracts almost only PKs
This is it really. I've tried a few such games over the years and it felt like a majority of people were just trying to get powerful enough to kill & loot other players a little under their strength and then repeat the process to bootstrap themselves higher & higher. Players that want to play that way are attracted to such games, and they inevitably drive out players who want the balance shifted a little in the other direction.
I don't see how game design can easily shift this balance because it's more about attracting a different balance of players than in how you design the game itself.
In UO, you could spend your whole character career in towns (although there were other ways to mess with people in town). In SWG too, where Koster was also involved, there was an entire life outside of combat.
In WoW, for example, everything revolves around combat - and any secondary skills (mining, enchanting, etc.) are support for combat, or require combat to advance.
several options, tweak values to taste:
- Give defending players a boost/advantage against attackers until the winnable spoils are too lame to be worth the effort.
- Let there be a magical force which returns 90% (x%) of a loser's stuff to their magic box. Therefore the winnable spoils are too lame to be worth the effort.
- Allow "titling" of real estate and expensive personal possessions. Upon death, the title would be transferred by pre-set rules to someone specific, or in estate court to next-of-kin (respawned player). NPC Shops call the guards if they see mis-titled sales. Guards do random searches at the city gates and confiscate mistitled items. Those are then eventually returned to the next-of-kin/etc.
- Provide an option for mutual "yes lets fight!" where no taxes/boosts/etc are applied and winner takes all/most. (maybe they could agree on custom % of spoils too).
It works when it's the only game in town - and everyone is playing on the server so the PK crowd is diluted, but once there are options people who don't like dying move to servers where they won't die, and the ones where PK is allowed become nothing but PKs.