FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION

FACTION-BASED PVP

A number of persistent worlds allow players to belong to factions. These can be as small as gangs or as large as entire nations at war. The rules enable players to attack members of enemy factions but not members of their own faction—in effect, it's team play. Different factions control different regions, so players can generally tell safe areas from unsafe areas. For the most part, this arrangement solves the random violence problem that initially plagued Ultima Online.

THE BOTTOM LINE ON PLAYER KILLING

You cannot please everybody, so you will benefit from deciding whom you want to please and tailoring your environment to them. In a game that allows player kill­ing, a certain number of players will inevitably abuse the system, exploiting their superior strength to victimize weaker ones without ever putting themselves at risk. You can't please them without also providing them with victims who won't be pleased, so it's not worth trying. Ultimately, you need to bear two things in mind:

■ It's a fantasy world. That means it's supposed to be enjoyable, escapist enter­tainment. People don't fantasize about being harassed, bullied, or abused. A fair contest among consenting players is one thing; perpetual harassment or an ambush by a gang is quite another.

■ People pay to play. This makes your world distinctly different from the real world. The real world doesn't owe us anything; we survive as best we can. But as a game provider, you've taken the players' money, so you have obligations to them. Just exactly what those obligations are is open to debate, of course, but if players don't feel that you are meeting your obligations, they will leave.

PLAYER EXPECTATIONS

Players have higher expectations of the virtual world than of the real world. For example, players expect all labor to result in profit; they expect life to be fair; they expect to be protected from aggression before the fact, not just having to seek redress after the fact; they expect problems to be resolved quickly; and they expect that their integrity will be assumed to be beyond reproach. In other words, they expect too much, and you will not be able to supply it all. The trick is to manage their expectations.

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