Bill Fulton, the game designer in charge of Shadowrun’s economy system and user interface, posted a note on the official Shadowrun forums about the steps being taken to combat griefing in Shadowrun.
My central goal around griefing is to make it so that players who are playing the game ‘honestly’ don’t have to quit or leave when the griefers show up. Running from bullies just makes them feel powerful, which is what they want, so it doesn’t address the problem.
He goes on to say:
1. There will be a vote system to kick players. It has some wrinkles to it that are different than other games vote kick systems. It will have a little more teeth in it than most systems, and be more resistant to being used as a weapon by the griefers as well.
2. It will be fairly apparent who is team killing/shooting. The money a player loses for team killing & shooting is on the top page of the stats screen. It will be obvious to anyone paying attention if a teammate is actively being a team killer/shooter.
3. There are $ penalties for shooting teammates. So players who ‘negligently’ shoot teammates (as opposed to intentionally) will have their bottom line hurt.
Note: there will be no punishment system. While they have their uses, it is hard to prevent them from being used by griefers as well (they can intentionally step in front of you while you’re shooting, etc.).
Fortunately, there have been very few cases of griefing in the beta, but it only takes a few to ruin the experience for many.
Tags: bill fulton, griefers, user interface, vote system
Bill came on again later and added a more detailed explanation of how the vote/kick system in Shadowrun will work. Sounds pretty good, although the whole “second vote” thing is a little confusing.
I always thought the most elegant solution to team killers would be to take damage away from the shooter when he shoots his teammate. This would appropriately result in a penalty for shooting your teammate, and it would discourage someone from doing it. (People would think twice about throwing that nade). Let’s just hope that the voting system is not used for removing competitive players from public matches.
I want to know more about dedicated servers. If dedicated servers work how I hope they will, then I’ll be able to kick/ban players at will and I’ll never have to worry about TK’ers/griefers.
I’ll then give the admin rights to a dozen other players who will “moderate” the server. There will often be a moderator in the server playing and watching over things. If there’s a problem, they’ll deal with it and things will rarely get out of hand.
Over time, the server will have a “reputation” or an established culture. It will then turn into a happy-go-lucky frag fest and there will be little trouble in the server.
@ Oc: I also hope that someone that’s really good doesn’t get voted out of a server. I think it will happen. I’ve been banned from many dedicated servers in Halo before.
@ Gnome: Yeah, I read about the “second vote” stuff. It was confusing. If I call for your kick and you don’t get gone, then you can call for my kick. Which ever one of us gets more kick votes gets kicked from the server. One of us will have to go.