Has there ever been a "successful" bandit system?

[rickyriot 1009]

This is sort of linked to my other thread and the actions of KoS'ers.

From the outset, I do not wish to criticise people who KoS, it's part of the game. Over time though, several 'bandit systems' have been developed in order to mitigate blatant KoS'ing. For those who haven't encountered one of these (and I have to say I've not noticed many recently), it generally revolves around who shot whom, with the "offender" being punished in some way, usually with some sort of bounty on their heads. Perhaps access to certain traders is limited to those of "good standing". You get the idea.

It is fraught with problems though, this example being an easy one: Someone raises their gun towards you, you fire and kill them. I think most people would accept that kill was fair, yet in these sorts of systems you are punished because the system simply can't know the context of that interchange.

With all that said, the question(s) I have are...

1) Have you ever played a server with such a system, and if so did you like it?
2) Do you think such things, in general, would benefit the game?
3) How do you think such a thing could be specifically implemented in order to be "successful", or is it just too nebulous a problem to really get to grips with?

[rickyriot 1009]

I think it's only fair I answer these myself, and I'll put them here in a reply in order to separate my opinions from the questions themselves.

1) I have, and sort of. I liked the idea of it, but I am not sure if it did what was intended.

2) In general, yes, although I also think expanding survival/PvE elements that may offset the amount of PvP'ing.

3) It's really tough, like the example I gave, each exchange is open to many interpretations and I don't think anything other than hundreds of hours of player statistics and a lot of machine learning would bring us close to a properly working system.

[lemmac 99]

The consoles are constantly recording gameplay so issues of who was in the wrong can be solved by sharing the relevant bit of video. Not sure if this is possible without external software on pc?