The ganking cooldown

[hoarmurath]

First, sorry for all the english bad grammar and vocabulary, it isn't my first language

 

Well, i have been thinking about ganking, how it works in other games, how it is adressed in other gaming environments, and how it could and should work here.

 

The first part in my reflexion was understanding why people gank. Some may find it obvious, but understanding what it’s really about is a mandatory step in looking how to handle the phenomena and keep it under some sort of control.

 

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So, why do people gank?

 

To win?

 

For rewards?

 

Of course, ganking is all about winning, but it goes farther than the usual winning spirit, ganking isn’t just about winning, it’s more about crushing the opposition with overwhelming strength. Do you need to gank to win? Of course not, just a couple advantages in combat are usually enough to ensure your win.

 

Concerning the reward, it seem obvious that by having to share the same amount of gold/xp/loot among a greater number of players, the reward can only be lower than in fair battles. So we can assume that the usual rewards aren’t what the gankers are looking for.

 

So, why gankers gank? The answer may be in the various battle reports that can be found posted by gankers in forums. Most of the time, when I read such battle reports, the main motivation of the poster seem to be the ultimate humiliation of the opponent. In fact, I noticed that nothing make a ganker happier than to have made someone ragequit the game.

 

This being said, why ganking is bad and should be restrained?

 

It is obvious that for those of us that plan to invest in a game for a long time, having the game successful and attracting other players is a must.

 

It’s also obvious that for a game company, attracting players and retaining them is good for profit.

 

Two reasons why having a pool of players whose intent is to humiliate other players to the point that they ragequit the game is a bad idea. It’s a bad idea for long term players, and it’s a bad idea for game developpers.

 

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So, enough reflexion, now I had to ask myself the ultimate question: what can be done?

 

Enforcing “fair” battles according to battle value or number of participants is generally unsatisfactory and open the game the another plague, the griefing.

 

Reducing the rewards for gankers seem also totally pointless as they obviously think that their ultimate reward is their opponent humiliation. They really don’t care that much about xp and gold, so they don’t care either about their reduction.

 

That makes things hard to have the gankers think twice before ganking, doesn’t it?

 

So, I had to think about the various ressources in game, and which one would really affect all payers, including gankers.

 

That’s when I thought about a universal resource in all games, one that is vital into the gameplay design : time

 

The amount of time a player have to play is limited, and he naturally want to get the most for its playing time. So, why not make gankers lose time? At that point, I started to have a lot of ideas coming (yeah, I’m a genius!!!). The first idea that come to mind is, of course, a “ganking cooldown”. Once the ganking battle is over, have the gankers waste time by locking them into battle for some time until they can leave and look for another target. You can also make it progressive, the bigger the gank, the more they outnumber/outpower their opponents, the more time they stay locked.

 

Then, I started to think about what could be done with that time. Something that nobody likes, including gankers, is to be ganked, of course. They want to humiliate others, not to be humiliated themselves.

 

So, why not using this time to prepare them their own medicine? In faction games, factions tend to care for their own, and while they don’t care for other factions getting ganked, they certainly tend to take action to ensure their faction isn’t ganked. If someone is getting ganked somewhere, a faction will tend to assemble other players to chase off the gankers. By locking the gankers in their initial battle, you can give that faction time to react and prepare for retaliation. All they need, is to know there was a gank, where it was, and when it occurred.

 

Of course, someone ganked can give these informations in faction chat, but newbies and non English speaking players may have trouble communicating efficiently. So, as we have a mechanism to lock the gankers into battle, why not have the system make that information available for everyone in the faction?

 

You can even go farther, and ensure the people that come to gank the gankers aren’t victims of the same game mechanic. Instead of having them start a whole new battle with the gankers, you can reopen the locked battle shortly before end of lock, and make it so if people enter the battle at that stage, it restart the battle timer. The good points about making it that way is that it will make gankers lose more time and protect the retaliation force from the antiganking mechanism.

 

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Well, I believe that ends my suggestion for ganking. It doesn’t prevent people from ganking, but bring consequences for doing it. I also left aside discussion about the exact point when fairness ends and ganking starts. This is number crushing that is more for the devs to decide.

[Crankey]

Add this to ROE discussion?.

[hoarmurath]

Add this to ROE discussion?.

 

there are so many discussions everywhere, i'll link it