Contracts and reputation

Problem

With the overall reliance on other players, I think it will be neccesary to have more mechanics that can encourage players to uphold their end of the bargain when deals are made. Because of so many these agreements being service and not product based, the escrow system won't always be a solution, in the case of trading of services.

Potential Solution

I think that allowing contracts to play a bigger role throughout the different game systems and progression paths that rely on player interaction would be beneficial to the experience. These could be there own mechanic to allow them to be more versatile through the different game systems and would enforce aggreements made between players for all different types of things.

At the same time you don't want to force players to behave certain ways. I think a good solution for this would be the "actions have consequences" approach, where each player has a "player reputation" that can be penalized for choosing to break contracts, which can make other players aware of their tendencies, and less likely to form contracts with that player. I think this would encourage players to uphold their end of the bargain, while also still allowing for freedom and a risk/reward element to breaking these contractual agreements.

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Comments

Xcorpyon

Love the idea

SongRune

What sorts of contract conditions would you like to see? How should the game detect when they're fulfilled?

The main problem with this sort of thing (and which prevents adding more than "craft this for me" sorts of things to the escrow system) is that there's often no reliable way to detect performance of the contract.

tautau

Players will have reputations naturally, without any game mechanics. If someone is unreliable or a jerk, word gets around. If someone is dependable and pleasant, people will like them and word will spread.

However, if we have a game mechanic where players get scores based on other players' clicks, then that will be abused. Guildies click guildies and the system tells us nothing.

Thulf

It would also need anti-exploit mechanics embedded within. A tough nut to crack.

I've got nothing against the idea itself though.

Strevi

I don't like the idea because it keeps track of what a player does and makes that transparent to other players.
It will cause players to force acting as good instead of naturally being good.
I prefer those to like to deceive to be able to do that, so that eventually I can learn who they are and avoid them. I am not sure how to explain it better.
I want to interact with a good person not only with a good in-game character.

Xenotor

I could see putting exp or even entire level on the line of a contract as payment for breaking it.
As in exp debt.

There could be different contract papers from cheap onces to legendary contracts.
The bigger the rarity the higher the potential payment can be addet for breaking it.

So a grey contract could maybe deduce 5% of the current max.
While a legendary could give the debt of multiple levels.

Gold offcourse.
But its not an upfront cost.
Rather the moment you breake the concract the ammount set in said contract gets taken automaticly.
If you dont have the money, you go into negative gold.

There could be a negative reputation modifier for having negative gold.
At the least one should banned from forming a contract while having negative gold.

Hell i could even see something like guild ownership or guild dissolution as contract breaking payment on high rarity contracts.

SongRune wrote: »

What sorts of contract conditions would you like to see? How should the game detect when they're fulfilled?

The main problem with this sort of thing (and which prevents adding more than "craft this for me" sorts of things to the escrow system) is that there's often no reliable way to detect performance of the contract.

The contract should only be able to be done with things that can reliable be counted for completion.
-participate in the defense of Node X and kill at least Y amount of enemy's.
-Destroy Z amount of caravans from guild X within Y amount of time.
-Declare war on X node/guild for Y amount of days and kill Z amount of people.
-Sink X amount of ships from Guild Z within a time period of Y days.

But there is more off-course.
Lets take this example:
-Destroy Z amount of caravans from guild X within Y amount of time.

There are things that needs to be added to all contracts of these kinds.
-If 50% of Z amount is done the contract counts as partial complete.

There are various ways one could go here.
-If the merc guild does reach 50% but not 100% completion, they receive no gold but also no penalty.
or
-If the merc guild does reach 50% but not 100% completion, they receive 50% gold payment but no penalty.
or
-If the merc guild does reach 50% but not 100% completion, they receive 50% gold payment but 50% penalty.
or
As long as the merc guild does not reach 100% completion, the receive full penalty.

The system would track activity's of the merc guild and count each time members of the merc guild destroyed a caravan of the targeted guild / node.
To limit abuse it would also count every caravan destroyed of the targeted guild, were members of the merc guild participated in the assault.

The same for kills.
Or allow the option to set the contract so participation is enough.

The same system can be done for crafting.
Party 1 pays in materials and 10.000 gold for a legendary short sword crafted.
Party 2 (the smith) gets both upfront and has X amount of time to deliver the legendary short sword to Party 1.
To counter abuse, it would be ok to just give the sword to a nearby storage where party 1 could take it out anytime.

Assassination contracts.
Kill player X for Y amount of times within time-frame Z

Give the player options to do as they wish even if the contract is one sided.
After all both sides need to sign it.

Better read the small print.

BaSkA_9x2

Not a fan of this idea.

The game shouldn't implement a reputation system like Yelp where you rate other people's "services": if you want to know if you can trust other people or not, ask around or find out the hard way. If they end up not keeping their word, there'll be ways to punish them, in-game or otherwise (reddit, discord, forums, etc.).

I would like to have a contact list/memo UI in-game where you can manually add notes about players you interact with, something similar to Rust's contact list. Regardless if they add a contact list or not, I will have my personal blacklist in a .txt file and I'm sure that there'll be a lot of drama regarding that on the Discord of the server I end up playing on, but a UI in-game would just make it a bit easier.

So, basically, no need and no thanks for a reputation system, let people be stupid and face the consequences organically, stop trying to remove socialization or risk from getting "scammed" from online games.

Cheers

Ace1234

@BaSkA13
You bring up some good points but I dont agree that social interaction is being removed. A contract and reputation system is by definition social at its core.

I agree that the mechanics should foster more organic types of interactions, but the problem is that the organic way of dealing with this problem (keeping your list and notes of past players) will most likely never catch up to the sheer amount of different players that would be interacting with you.

This means that chances are they most likely won't ever really face any consequences, due to the delayed affects and chances of never seeing you again, or anybody you might have "told on them too." This means they will constantly be breaking agreements because of the high probability of a lack of consequence.

So because of this, even though I agree that the consequences of actions should be organic, I think the chances of an organic consequence are too low to function as an effective deterrent, which is why I think the reputation would better function as a deterrent.

This may not be quite as organic but it still has organic aspects to it, by simply tracking the broken contracts in real time that player had with other players that you will most likely never be able to hear stories from in person. This would still allow that social aspect of making agreements and breaking them if you choose, but with more reliable and more immediate consequences- through better informing players to be able to weigh their risk/rewards and make decisions in their best interest.

BaSkA_9x2

Ace1234 wrote: »

This may not be quite as organic but it still has organic aspects to it, by simply tracking the broken contracts in real time that player had with other players that you will most likely never be able to hear stories from in person. This would still allow that social aspect of making agreements and breaking them if you choose, but with more reliable and more immediate consequences- through better informing players to be able to weigh their risk/rewards and make decisions in their best interest.

Don't get me wrong, from an utilitarian point of view, I agree with you and would like to have a in-game blacklist Yelp contracts and reputation sort of system.

However, from a social and "player driven sandbox game" point of view, I have to disagree. I think that having risks and "forcing" players to make friends (and play with them) is better and more fun for the game overall, even with all the downsides that definitely come with it pointed out by you and which I never disagreed.

Strevi

BaSkA13 wrote: »

Ace1234 wrote: »

This may not be quite as organic but it still has organic aspects to it, by simply tracking the broken contracts in real time that player had with other players that you will most likely never be able to hear stories from in person. This would still allow that social aspect of making agreements and breaking them if you choose, but with more reliable and more immediate consequences- through better informing players to be able to weigh their risk/rewards and make decisions in their best interest.

Don't get me wrong, from an utilitarian point of view, I agree with you and would like to have a in-game blacklist Yelp contracts and reputation sort of system.

However, from a social and "player driven sandbox game" point of view, I have to disagree. I think that having risks and "forcing" players to make friends (and play with them) is better and more fun for the game overall, even with all the downsides that definitely come with it pointed out by you and which I never disagreed.

That's how I feel too.
This game will be also a social experiment, and we will see if the old mmorpg days can be revived in the age of modern mmorpgs. Players who come from them might feel uncomfortable.

JustVine

Eve Online is a really good study case as to how something like this gets implemented into the game naturally.

Eve Online players for many years had to work peer to peer on these issues (usually property law and fulfillment contracts.) Due to the make up of their active player base, actual players with law and financial backgrounds started laying the foundation for increased property ownership literacy among guild leaders and just generally players interacting in a space where those contracts had an impact.

There was a very active community that had many vested interests in working out what property rights and common contracts should look like to the point that people start using template contracts from the most respected specialists in the community on that topic. The community started to realize what tools were worth automating and what were not for CCP Games to work into the game itself. Eventually some tools did get implemented into the game to both formalize things and make the process easier.

Note the key take away points here:

1. The player base was educated by fellow members to understand their rights and the impact of otherwise unknown jargon and legal concepts. This meant that while people would get swindled, there was an active effort to lower the amount of skullduggery involved in taking advantage of people who had less understanding on a topic not typically needed for video games.
2. That player base collaborated actively to refine and exchange ideas as to what was best practice relative to the common situations that happened in their community. Contracts are something that needs to develop in context. Complex is not always better, but neither is simple.
3. The community identified what would help the community most for the least amount of interference from CCP Games. The developers of Eve were regularly educated and interacted with the community leaders who developed the standard contracts as well as those who used them regularly in gameplay.
4. CCP decided to respond after many many years to help with the things that benefited the community most. They were cautious in a prudent manner as implementing such a system without any of the other three points in this take away can cause massive community development problems.

Tl;dr: Yeah sure, this is fine. But I'd rather this be a conversation we have a year or two after launch. I don't trust this sort of system to be designed without a massive amount of community cultivation, investment, and reassurance of the general populace's legal literacy.

SongRune

@JustVine, I agree completely.

This is one of the hardest parts of this sort of thing. While developers and programmers can implement technical models when they are well-specified, working out exactly what is needed is something that's basically wild mass guessing, even with direct feedback, until there is a solid shared community foundation and perspective. Without a community that has already developed and matured a set of customs and standards, no matter what a developer implements, it will always result in some form of chaos. This is absolutely the sort of thing that is useful to implement, but it is also the sort of thing that must be done as a reinforcement and streamlining of existing cultural/community norms within a game. No matter what you try to provide at launch, it won't work out well because your community isn't built around it yet.

This is how contract law is built in real life, too. Our legal systems have codified the style and form of agreements that were already in common use for centuries, and perhaps fine tuned or optimized pieces of them as appropriate. Without the tradition and experience behind it, even the modern systems wouldn't work smoothly, and in a game (such as Eve or perhaps Ashes) you need to build the tradition first, then add the mechanics, for anything more complex than the Escrow System will already cover.

daveywavey

I like the contract idea, if they can make it work. I'm not particularly bothered about the reputation thing.

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