Incentive structure favoring cooperation, not punishing PvP

[TheCoconutChef 9]

They are two things a player is after in this game, which are fun and inventory, which is to say that these are the two things each player tries to maximize. This means that the behavior one is most likely to see in the game are those which maximize those outcome or, said another way, minimize their opposite and it thus follow that the way player act will be in line with the way they are rewarded by the game in those areas.

The basic problem of this game when it comes to player interaction is that:

Incentive to kill > Incentive to cooperate

Both of which relates to fun and inventory.

The incentive to kill are higher in terms of fun because the risk of trying to cooperate is too great, which is to say you're all too likely to get killed and so maximizing pleasure is equivalent, in those instances, to killing the other guy, since it will minimize your unpleasure.

They are also higher in terms of inventory for a couple of reasons. First, cooperating means the possibility of loosing all of your inventory. Second, cooperating means renouncing the other dudes's inventory, which is often better than what you can get in any other places. Third, teaming up with people means splitting found inventory, so that the overall build up is much slower.

In order to fix these problems, we need a situation in which:

Icentive to kill ~ Incentive to cooperate

Which can be done in three ways:

1) Reduce risks associated with cooperation

2) Reduce the reward of killing other player (which I'm against)

3) Increase reward of cooperation

The second option is not to be considered, since punishing certain behavior only breaks the game for some without fixing it for all the others, while a blanket punishment on murder would be too imprecise to satisfy anyone. Furthermore, the goal is not to prohibit but to encourage. We still need maniacs to make the game interesting, after all. And I even believe that my system would encourage the cooperation of several maniacs, which is better than having several lone ones.

As such, I believe certain new game mechanics could accomplish these goals.

1) The creation of a group entity. This is only important to the extend that it is prerequisite to suggestion 2 and 3.

2) The creation of an "invite" or "cooperation" command, associated with certain statistics.

It would work as follow: a player could come closer to certain player and send a "cooperation" command to them, which would be a way for him to include them in his group or to demand to join their. As soon as this invitation is sent, being killed will not be as badly punished as it normally is (for the inviter) and the position of the inviter will be revealed, as well as his stats*. Upon your (the inviter) possible death, some of your item would respawn with you and those that did would disappear from your body. Furthermore, at a certain range, one would be able to see the response stats I'm talking about, which would be:

i) Positive response

ii) Refusal

iii) Violent refusal

iv) Betrayal

A refusal is a "no" without killing. A violent refusal is a "no" with killing shortly after. A betrayal is an acceptation and then killing. The game would not punish nor reward anyone based on those, but, at a certain range, this information would be avalaible to other players. The effects are twofold:

i) It reduces the risk of cooperation by making death less costly

ii) It reduces the risk of cooperation by making relevant information avalaible (as of right now, lack of information skew the balance toward undiscriminated killing)

As implied, a timer would be set from the moment a cooperation invite is refused so as to allow the other players to go away safely. You can still kill him, but some of his gears will go away with him (randomly), more if he was in a group (see below) and this information will be known to other players who comes within a certain range of your character. (Why within a certain range? To keep the tension of people asking themselves: "should I approach"?)

It is worth noting that straight kill without any sort of cooperation status (say, an ambush or snipping) is not recorded in that system.

3) The third proposition is inventory safe keeping. If you are in a group, then the amount of gear you keep with you as you respawn is proportionnal to the size of your group and how close you were to them when you died. When I said than my proposal would encourage the formation of groups of maniacs, I was referring to this. The gear that respawned with you would be randomly selected and would disappear from your dead body (so as to make exploit non feasable). The gear would be randomly selected so as to not deter PvP which, as stated earlier, is encourage by the fact the looting possibilities are very good. Now there would be a potential for them to be, an almost certainty, but the item you wanted most may not be there.

4) The fourth proposal is too general but still deserves mention: make zombies more lethal.

This post is already too long and is more than enough to start a discussion if there is an interest, so I'll leave it at that.

*If an invite is sent and the inviter shoots you in any way, his protection falls of. He will not respawn with his items.

Edited August 14, 2012 by TheCoconutChef

[gwbrewer 49]

Another QQ thread.. Why can't people just stfu and let everyone play like they want.. Cry me a river when you die.. it feeds my laughter.

[ScoopJukem 4]

I like the idea of encouraging players to cooperate and deter shooting on site, however I don't agree with allowing players to re spawn with gear under any circumstances. That just takes away from the brutality of the game, which is one of its main attractions. Your fourth suggestion to make zombies more lethal I do like though. Surviving should be tough to the point that having someone to watch your back outweighs the benefit of having their gear, up to a certain point. They can do this in numerous ways imo, such as allowing zombies to run in buildings (taking away player's safety), or giving them the capability to hit you while on the run because right now as long as you are running at full speed they can't really get at you.

Edited August 14, 2012 by ScoopJukem

[TheCoconutChef 9]

Another QQ thread.. Why can't people just stfu and let everyone play like they want.. Cry me a river when you die.. it feeds my laughter.

I'm not sure you realize how much my proposals are about letting everyone play as they wish.

If you want to bandit as a lone wolf, there's nothing in what I've said that would prevent or hinder that. Furthermore, clean shooting without any sort of cooperation attempt will give you most of the loot.

I don't agree with allowing players to re spawn with gear under any circumstances.

I see no way of avoiding it during an invite procedure, but there could be a way of doing it with regards to group, which is that your items would only be given back to you upon making contact with all or one of the members, but they would not be with you upon respawn. The problem with that is that then it's not much different than your group looting your body to give you back your stuff. It's only advantageous if the whole of them gets killed or if they can't stay around to get the stuff manually.

Edited August 14, 2012 by TheCoconutChef

[bazbake 456]

We already have bandit skins. People who are nice will want to work with nice people and people who are dicks will get shot in the face.

[T.G. 48]

Some decent suggestions and well thought out. However, assuming that most player killing is based on logical weighing of risk versus reward seems flawed in my opinion. I think most player killing is based on players wanting a typical deathmatch fps experience in this game. Unfortunately for the better souls trying to salvage some shred of humanity in this game, no amount of cooperation incentives will alter this. In fact I would imagine that the number of solo player killers are rather insignificant when compared to the groups of player killer that camp the south coast cities. Giving any artificial benefits to groups outside of present game mechanics would only further bolster these groups of human hunters. Grouping provides greater strength and relative safety (for the collective if not the individual), this is the only incentive needed to encourage grouping.

[ScoopJukem 4]

The problem with the bandit skin is that it does a horrible job of determining which players are nice and dicks. The humanity system just isn't set up correctly to fulfil its intended purpose. For example, I am a bandit currently when I've only ever killed 2 players who popped out in front of me armed and started shooting. Does this make me a bandit?

@OP

I think having your friends pick up your stuff and return it to you is good as is. Your system is unfair to the player attempting to kill and loot members of a group because it puts potential loot off limits.

Edited August 14, 2012 by ScoopJukem

[TheCoconutChef 9]

We already have bandit skins. People who are nice will want to work with nice people and people who are dicks will get shot in the face.

The problem is that the skin provides very indiscriminate information. There is no context as to when or how who got killed got killed. Some bandit may be approachable (good cooperation or refusal stat) even though he snipped lots of people.

Some decent suggestions and well thought out. However, assuming that most player killing is based on logical weighing of risk versus reward seems flawed in my opinion. I think most player killing is based on players wanting a typical deathmatch fps experience in this game. Unfortunately for the better souls trying to salvage some shred of humanity in this game, no amount of cooperation incentives will alter this. In fact I would imagine that the number of solo player killers are rather insignificant when compared to the groups of player killer that camp the south coast cities. Giving any artificial benefits to groups outside of present game mechanics would only further bolster these groups of human hunters. Grouping provides greater strength and relative safety (for the collective if not the individual), this is the only incentive needed to encourage grouping.

The first objection doesn't seem to hold to me since the point is to give the cooperative minded people some tools and not necessarly to deter those that want an fps experience. Furthermore, the moto "trust no one" seems to point in the other direction.

Artificailly bolstering the human hunter / camper that already exists may be an issue however. Though the goal of the proposals were not to protect those who just spawned.

@OP

I think having your friends pick up your stuff and return it to you is good as is. Your system is unfair to the player attempting to kill and loot members of a group because it puts potential loot off limits.

As I said, you have to die within a certain range of group members in order for this to work. If you still thinks it's unfaire (even though it's randomly selected item, a few) then I can't think of anything better for now.

Edited August 14, 2012 by TheCoconutChef