Wishful thinking, but it'd be cool if this could happen in Terulia. The game has no need for admins. It moderates itself via good coding.


StolenLands Rules


I generally prefer to handle things through coding rather than legislation, so the rules are few:

1. Don't be a jerk. Yeah.

-- Claviarm

_________________________________________

I agree. FFO used to be like this.

_________________________________________

I would say no to this.

The community has shown itself quite often to be incapable of moderating itself.

FFO of old may have been like this, but back then, we also had people constantly abusing any mechanic loopholes that were found (Suicide attacking people, trash alt abuse, people abusing the hostile system to fake enough people on to attack domains). Also, do keep in mind that it took months of outcries from the players in order to get any action dealt to those who were breaking the rules as much as possible via these mechanics. Even if these listed issues are no more, the fact that the playerbase will latch onto them when they are found still exists. There is never flawless coding in a game, a way to abuse mechanics is always possible to be found.

Would any player seriously want to play a game where there is no recourse at all against a player that has found a bug to ruin everyone elses' fun at no risk to themselves? I think not.


The end result of removing "admins" from the game would end up with something Gaku has expressed repeatedly that he does not want; He does not want to have to spend his time babysitting us. He codes the game as a hobby, not as an excuse to have to moderate people day-in-day-out. The admins are there to prevent him from having to drop everything that he's doing, investigate rule breaking/mechanics abuse, and dole out punishment.

_________________________________________

Kumog wrote:

I would say no to this.

The community has shown itself quite often to be incapable of moderating itself.

FFO of old may have been like this, but back then, we also had people constantly abusing any mechanic loopholes that were found (Suicide attacking people, trash alt abuse, people abusing the hostile system to fake enough people on to attack domains). Also, do keep in mind that it took months of outcries from the players in order to get any action dealt to those who were breaking the rules as much as possible via these mechanics. Even if these listed issues are no more, the fact that the playerbase will latch onto them when they are found still exists. There is never flawless coding in a game, a way to abuse mechanics is always possible to be found.

Would any player seriously want to play a game where there is no recourse at all against a player that has found a bug to ruin everyone elses' fun at no risk to themselves? I think not.


The end result of removing "admins" from the game would end up with something Gaku has expressed repeatedly that he does not want; He does not want to have to spend his time babysitting us. He codes the game as a hobby, not as an excuse to have to moderate people day-in-day-out. The admins are there to prevent him from having to drop everything that he's doing, investigate rule breaking/mechanics abuse, and dole out punishment.

It would seem to me that you haven't played stolenlands, judging from your reply.

Handling things through coding is possible. The only two real 'bugs' in stolenlands currently involve health/sp/mana not regenerating unless you take damage once you log back in to a character, and an health boost from a certain item.

You apparently missed the point. The majority of the problems in FFO CAN be solved through coding. The 'don't be a jerk' part pertains to chat harassment.


_________________________________________

And what happens when a major bug is found and abused heavily when the coder is unavailble for a long period of time, and no admins are around to deal with the situation?

It doesn't lead to people having a good time on the game. It leads to people abusing the bug as much as they can, possibly ruining the entire hosting.

You're assuming that Gaku is going to spend 99% of his time paying attention to his hobby, instead of his real life, which is much more important than a game on BYOND. He isn't going to be able to fix bugs when they crop up instantly, and quite frankly, I doubt he'd want to when he could be trying to earn a living. Unless people wish to pay subscription fees to even play the game in order to try and make the game even semi-profitable for Gaku, I doubt this will ever be the case.

An admin is a necessary thing to have, especially in a game that only will have one server, and not be publicly available for every single person to host.

_________________________________________

I agree, there always has to someone or a group (pref a group) of people in charge. If there isnt, things are going to be abused and loopholes will be found with no consiquences resulting in major problems, pwipes, unhappy player, loss of community etc etc...

/irony

_________________________________________

Kumog wrote:

And what happens when a major bug is found and abused heavily when the coder is unavailble for a long period of time, and no admins are around to deal with the situation?

It doesn't lead to people having a good time on the game. It leads to people abusing the bug as much as they can, possibly ruining the entire hosting.

You're assuming that Gaku is going to spend 99% of his time paying attention to his hobby, instead of his real life, which is much more important than a game on BYOND. He isn't going to be able to fix bugs when they crop up instantly, and quite frankly, I doubt he'd want to when he could be trying to earn a living. Unless people wish to pay subscription fees to even play the game in order to try and make the game even semi-profitable for Gaku, I doubt this will ever be the case.

An admin is a necessary thing to have, especially in a game that only will have one server, and not be publicly available for every single person to host.

You're assuming that Terulia will be/should be released before most of the bugs are taken care of.

I'm just saying, it works in this other game. The creator is rarely/almost never on and it's been that way for most of the game's life, yet magically everything is balanced and not abused.

Sure, you have a right to nay say and what not.

FFO's current system still sucks. Having to babysit every aspect of the game is not a GOOD solution. It's not good for the community, it's not good for balancing, and it's not good for fun.

A better long term solution would be to test for problems in closed beta, and instead of making rules up to govern the problems of the game, code them out accordingly. I really don't see how this is arguable.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be an admin, I'm saying that coding problems out is more important than babysitting the whole ****ing community and dishing out tons of rules.

/win

_________________________________________

99% of our issues would be solved with a coded-in solution to prevent spam-killing, which I would totally support. I'm for less moderation overall, but not entirely removing moderators. As Kumog pointed out, there will always be a need.

I've seen it work in other games as Dean described, but unfortunately with a community like ours, that wouldn't work too well. Also, in a lot of games there are checks and balances for pvp and the like, but FFO allows pvp between pretty much any two characters, and most of the towns are player run. Things like that would have to be totally changed for us to rely on the code itself instead of moderation for these issues. I'm not against that, but you have to consider that it might go against Gaku's ideal for the game.

_________________________________________

Most rules can be summed up like this.

1: Have fun.
2: Don't prevent others from having fun.
3: Respect others.

As expected though, FFO is indeed incapable of this as Kumog said. Bug? It gets abused. Balance issue? Abused. Mechanics flaw? Abused. Fresh off the boat? Murder.

I do believe that solid programming can eliminate the need for mods, but because FFO allows for PvP, we need moderators to crack down on people who ruin the game for others and skirt the rules.

_________________________________________

Flagging system in Terulia should fix pvp issues. Stolenlands has open pvp and no issues. Aggressor system, karma system, etc.

_________________________________________

You know, I always liked the Ultima Online outlaw system. Free PvP anywhere, but if you attacked/killed someone, you're name would be red for a time. Walk into a town with a red name, and you'd get guard smacked.



_________________________________________

Yeah, that's totally not similar to how it is now....

_________________________________________

Lumino wrote:

You know, I always liked the Ultima Online outlaw system. Free PvP anywhere, but if you attacked/killed someone, you're name would be red for a time. Walk into a town with a red name, and you'd get guard smacked.

It gets to the point where you're outlawed everywhere in Terulia though.

_________________________________________

Disagreements aside, it would be better for Terulia in the long run if all the current issues were considered and dealt with accordingly through code rather than legislation.

As someone mentioned earlier, spam killing is a major problem. That should be addressed already via the new flagging system. Of course it will have to be tested thoroughly.

This goes for the new domain system Gaku has in mind as well.

What other problems can you guys think of that might be inherit in Terulia that should be addressed ahead of time?

_________________________________________

Well, unless punishment is capped, people could be trapped in Hell for much longer than they should. Assuming Hell is still in of course. Other than that, absolutely nothing.

_________________________________________

You'd only get punishment for repeatedly killing the same person over and over right?

_________________________________________

Garral is the one handling the flagging system. Guess we'll have to wait for him to pop in to get a definite answer, as I don't know enough about it.

I was talking more along the lines of things that are constantly brought up as abuse. I mean, just look at the rules.

No blocking for example. Instead of there being a rule prohibiting it, find a fix for it.

I keep bringing up StolenLands, but it's hard not too. In SL, you're flagged as an aggressor even if you assist a monster that is aggressive towards someone and they're given an option to penalize you, which in turn gives you negative karma and you're unable to attack players for x amount of time.

What else...

Anyone?

Ideally, if we can code out abuse, the only reason we'll need mods is for moderating chat.

So the more issues you guys can bring up, the better.

_________________________________________