The most common complaint we see today is that it is too difficult to defend against griefers (players who wish to sabotage the game for others). There are two types of tools in the game that you are supposed to use against these players: weapons to kill them and curses to banish them. But it seems that it’s necessary to give the normal players more power in this fight, so we will make the curse system more powerful.
This is how it currently works:
- Players gain one curse token by playing for two hours. You can only have one token, not more.
- When you curse someone, your token is used. You cannot curse again until you have regained a token.
- A player who gets cursed gains one curse point per curse. These points are local to the server though.
- A player who has 8 or more curse points on a server is banished, and will be born far away from the others. This is called Donkey Town, but it is not a real place - just far away into the wild.
- One hour of play reduces curse points by one, so the player can re-enter society eventually.
This is how we think we will change it:
- 1 and 2 remain the same.
- 3 changes, so curse points become global and affect all servers.
- 4 changes, so curse points become global and so the banishment limit doesn’t always have to be 8. Players who repeatedly get banished to Donkey Town can get their limits reduced, so they get banished quicker if they repeat their bad behavior. The tolerance becomes lower for repeat offenders.
- 5 remains the same.
- 6 (added) If a player gets cursed N times in the same life, their character will die of the N:th curse. The value of N can be lower (~3) on a server with low population and higher (~5) on a server with high population.
- 7 (added) A player who has been cursed to death on a server, will be banished to Donkey Town on that server until they have zero curse points left.
- 8 (possibly added) Not playing the game for 24 hours also reduces curse points by 1 (encouraging a break for those who have misbehaved).
- 9 (added) Observers can also use a curse token, if they have one available.
The system is supposed to do three things:
- a) Make it possible for a settlement to “vote away” griefers, so they stay away and can’t easily come back
- b) Prevent those griefers from just continuing to sabotage one settlement after another.
- c) Make it possible for players who have been cursed without good reason (because this will also happen) to keep playing the game without being severely affected.
Please let us know what you think about this design. We encourage you to submit your feedback before we lock it down.
Thanks!