War Tax: A thought about PvP and Diplomacy

[Evangolis]

I’ve been thinking about ‘Open PvP’ again, and I’ve had a thought about PvP and war.  In Shadowbane, the only logical reason not to fight was that you might lose, and since if you let others grow strong, you would lose, it followed that there was no reason not to fight.  This led very rapidly to everybody fighting, followed by most losing, followed by most quitting, and the cycle repeats until the server is empty.

Now DAoC deals with this problem by limiting the degree to which losing is possible, and Guild Wars deals with it in a somewhat similar manner.  I don’t know how WoW deals with it, but I’m guessing they too limit what you can lose.  This works well in its fashion, but it also means that there is no reason not to fight.

All this means that there is no room for diplomacy in MMOs.  (Drama is the common substitute, IMO)  This seems to me to be a fundamental lack to the social dimension of MMOs, and thus I’d like to see a more Open PvP option that would give diplomacy meaning.  Here is my broad suggestion for how to do it.

Basically, I’d force PvP to be restricted to members of guilds who are formally at war with each other, and if a guild is at war, I would impose a drain on that Guild’s resources that would make the cost of war greater than the benefit.  A War Tax, as it were.  I’d see declaring war as something that can be done by any guild to any guild, and I would require delays on actual hostilities, to prevent the mid-battle double cross and other sorts of surprise attacks.  I’d also require both sides to declare any peace.

I know this is rather vague, but I’m floating a general notion here, not a specific design.

Any thoughts?

[koboshi]

Here’s an idea that might fit in. your post made me think of it, even though it's sort of the opposite to what you’re talking about.

When two guilds (or other such groups) enter into a cease fire, treaty, or all out alliance, they must put forth a large sum of money as collateral. If a guild under such a treaty attacks their ally they forfeit their collateral gold to the attacked guild. The treaty may be severed by both parties amicably in which case both guilds recoup their collateral. This would mean, not only would those who would cause war be held responsible, but those who were wronged would be compensated, and it would still allow for the freedom to randomly attack another guild.

Depending on implementation the collateral could be negotiable by the parties signing it. This could lead to guilds trying to manipulate other guilds into a false sense of security by signing a treaty while essentially setting an affordable price they are willing to pay to attack the other. Or the amount could be a percentage of total guild assets. In this case when an uberguild signs an agreement with a small guild the small guild has the ability to set a price high enough to affect the larger one, otherwise the smaller guild might put up half of their gold for a contract which requires only 10% of the uberguild's. The terms could also be negotiable meaning that the contract could state what counts as a breach. Exa: No PKing ever. No trespassing. PKing, ok, but no property destruction. No PKs in churches. Any treaties signed by either party hold for both**.

Of course there is the matter of what happens to the gold being used as collateral. The gold is still technically the guild's, but they may not use it without getting out of the contract. The gold still registers as the guilds so that guilds can’t hide their wealth during negotiations, especially if they are percentage of wealth negotiations. Finally, the gold may not be used to cover multiple treaties*.

*if it could then a guild could sign treaties with everyone. Then, if/when they invalidate one of them; they have no gold to pay for the others. This would mean that the other guilds now have treaties in which they must pay if they break them but the guild in question can attack without paying anything more.

**That last one would be a hard one. If A signs with B, and B signs with C, then C turns around and screws A, who pays? Does the entire contract of B&C go to a as well as the entire contract of A&B or does A get C's collateral and B just has their contracts severed with A and C leaving them with their gold intact, or is A forced by their treaty with B to sign a treaty with C in which case C loses both contracts and B loses their contract with A? I guess the last two are the same unless the forced contract between A and C is for a different sum of money than the one between A and B or B and C.

[Strazos]

There was a game I played at one point, perhaps EQ, I'm not sure....

They had a mechanic for declaring guild wars and such.

[Evangolis]

That was EQ, but nobody ever declared guildwars because there was no point to it except PvP, and because of all the negatives of getting killed in EQ.

I can see building a mechanism to support secure treaties and diplomatic escrow being part of all this, but I feel that to have a more 'Open' PvP system than we see currently, there has to be some reason not to go to war without real need.  I think a game-built cost based on the number of members of the guild, thus also putting pressure on 'zerg' guilds.  I also think that the resources used in a War Tax should be different from the resources gathered by players in PvE; no-trade goods accrued only by the guild itself, and probably subject to decay if not used, to prevent massive hoarding.  e.g. Food for the NPC 'populace' of a guild's holdings, with inadequate holdings of food resulting in loss of holdings.

[Llava]

It actually sounds like Mordred, the PvP server, in DAoC.

Most guilds were neutral to one another, some were allies, and some did consider each other "kill on sight."  I'm not sure if enemy guilds were notified when your guild declared them "kill on sight"- if so, that adds a much better dynamic.  When you would click on a player belonging to an enemy guild like that, it would mention to you that they belong to an enemy guild.  That meant a few things:  They had no reason to treat you honorably (let you finish an existing fight, not assist others attacking your resources, etc), they would likely not engage in trades with you, and you could basically rely on them to do whatever they could to fuck you up if they came across you.

With relics actually providing benefit to the guild, and those relics able to be stolen, there was real reason to try to make your guild well liked and accepted- but, as it goes with real world diplomacy, start gathering too much strength and all the niceness in the world isn't going to stop someone from trying to take what's yours.

Then, of course, there were benefits to alliances.  After all, it was a lot easier to group up to get to your keep and wipe out an invading force if a nearby keep was friendly, giving you a safe area to gather and plan.  Also gives you a point to which you can retreat, not even mentioning the additional reinforcements an allied guild might provide to help you defend your assets.

Of course, none of this diplomacy was in character.  It was a PvP server, not a roleplaying server.  Anyone who did try to roleplay was usually put on every guild's Kill On Sight list- the Shadowclan, for example (same folks as the UO Shadowclan, but kobolds instead of orcs), I don't believe had ANY allies.  Same goes for the Blodfelag.  And we in Nimue's Ragin' Roleplayers knew ahead of time that just putting the word "roleplayer" in our guild name would paint big targets on us, even though we had no intention of roleplaying whatsoever.  So due to this "PLAY TO PWN, RP IS GHEY" attitude, none of the complex relationships or diplomacy had any of the intrigue or flavor that I believe you're trying to achieve.

[Typhon]

I think this sort of gameplay makes for a better game.  Risk is pretty straight forward until you add the diplomacy factor in, at which point it gets much more interesting (conversly, if you play with folks who adhere strictly to a "by the rules" approach, the game is usually less interesting).

Guilds would have to have something that another guild wanted and couldn't get as easily as going to war.  If/when that something trades hands there would need to be a reason to stop waging war (your tax seems a reasonable solution).  Another solution would be to have NPC factions represent a real threat to the player races so that a certain amount of restraint and/or cooperation was necessary.

Maybe, instead of tax, guilds have to spend cash on npc guards, commerce, or the implements of war (e.g., seige weapons or "war tax").  A guild that spends too much on war, and not enough on npc guards or commerce risks having wildnerness monsters (not enough npc guards), or the local rabble (not enough commerce) uprising against them and damaging/destroying their hard-earned/built keep.

So guilds want to storm a nearby guild's keep to get an item that will help their kingdom, but they can't wage war too long or they'll lose it all.  The game should probably start out with npc forces more powerful then player forces, which would teach the guilds to cooperate (probably some sort of raiding, or keep taking a la DAOC).  After awhile, player forces are going to be more powerful, and that's when things start to get interesting.

Ideally the game would require common sense, cooperation, and restraint along with cleverly timed and executed aggression for a guild to be successful.  Simply spastically attacking everyone else in the game should be a quick way to loose your keep (item/skill upkeep would be required to force players to need keeps/local economy to keep their edge).

[Evangolis]

I'd like to restrict both broad alliances and broad wars, since these rapidly result in server depopulation.  My desire is to see a general state of tense truce, with occasional outbreaks of war amongst some factions.  The hope is for a throughly balkanized game world.

Resources spent directly on the resources of war don't seem to prevent war, they just make it more devastating when it occurs.  That is why I specificed a separate resource, which cannot be earned by players or traded among entities, and a penalty for resource shortage that does not directly cause a reduction in warfighting ability.

[Typhon]

Are you thinking of a 10,000 castles type of landscape, each with his own lord, and no way to consolidate (war is about taking from another castle), or is there a way to consolidate (war is about taking land)?

How does a player manage the "War Chest" resource?  Consequences (associated with running out of resources to pay the War Tax) only apply to those who wish to continue playing the game, many people who are on the way out try to go down with a last big "fuck you", which causes problems.

Are you going for a in-game system to enforce deals, or leaving it entirely in the realm of player interaction?

Since you are trying to bring diplomacy to the game, does that also include intelligence work?

How bout this: A game of King of the Hill, with the "hill" being favored land location for a keep/castle (access to convenient travel, pve locations, auction houses, etc.).  Each player starts with his own small keep, whose location is based upon how well the player is doing in the game.  Players can band together to form guild castles, but there should be a limit on how big a castle gets due to guild membership (big state/little state thinking to encourage both guilds and casuals).

[Evangolis]

Actually, I'm thinking of more of a mental landscape than a physical one, a landscape where players know war is possible but not certain.

One possible physical landscape would be one of a few NPC cities, surrounded by peace zones, a couple dozen Guild castles and a few hundred small Guild towers/strongholds, set in PvP switchable areas (landholder can opt for PvP+), all set in large PvE areas of NPC liars, some of which areas are PvP+, with some PvP+ areas containing desirable but non-essential assets.

War Chest income would be derived from area held, and expenses charged the same.  Exact income/outflow and War Tax rates would have to be carefully fit to this, so that a Guild could maintain some state of war, and could avoid 'war zerging', where many smaller guilds declared war on it at once, and bled it dry.  Perhaps the solution would be to treat all guilds that declare war upon a guild as co-belligerents in a single meta-war with a single tax, but treat all wars declared by a guild as separate wars, with separate, cumulative, taxes.

The War Chest resources would be expended maintaining the Guild's territorial holdings, and if the guild lacked sufficient War Chest resources, their holdings would begin to erode, with outlying elements going to a 'free' status.  The exact mechanism there would be tricky, should the former holder be specially privileged with regards to claiming formerly owned 'free' holdings, or not?  I would see War Chest costs being asymptotically more expensive as guild size increases, with guild size being restricted by holding size, and guild membership being by account, rather than by character.  Thus a small 'tower' holding by a small (say 15 account or less) guild would pay a smaller percentage of war tax than a larger guild, thus limiting the power of "zerg" guilds to make war at will. (As guild holdings decrease, PvP enabled membership would decrease, but not total membership; the game should never deguild people.  PvP enabled membership would be set to a predeclared heirarchy, so that PvP roster would decay normally, with the decay of the guild holdings.  Account PvP+ status could be changed by designated guild members on a relatively short notice, guild holdings would decay one upkeep cycle following the upkeep cycle on which the War Chest experieinced shortfall.)

There would have to be some secure ingame system to enforce at least the declaration of war and peace, but players will certainly work outside and around any system you create.  This would be a difficult design point, trying to account for and adapt to player tactics without simply disallowing them.  The guiding principle is probably to offer players secure game-based options, but not require them, beyond the basic War Tax system.

Intelligence work is a tricky question.  There will always be moles and double-crosses, but I think the anonymous nature of the Internet makes them overly tempting.  I would reduce their impact by delaying the activation of PvP by a week or so after declaration of hostile status, to prevent mid-battle side-switching. I would also delay joining a new guild after leaving a former guild, and build robust permissions and security into guild structure. I would have transparent logging of the handling of guild assets, and some general consent on dramatic revisions in major guild assets, for example, the deletion of a building.  Failing to do this seems to me to greatly favor the hardcore over the casual, which I think is one thing that drives PvP into a very niche status. ... Oh, somewhere in all this I'd like to see a space built for mercenaries to fit into as well.  Probably a short-timer contract, requiring a net loss exchange between the players (say a minimum fee paid, of which the NPC Merc Guild takes a hefty cut), and a requirement for the merc to move overland to a neutral place before returning to neutral status and resumed contract availability.

I'd like to see multiple Kings on multiple hills, with lots of Barons on bumps as well.

[HaemishM]

How about guilds who are at war and then treat for peace would sign a treaty. Each guild would then be charged a tax based on how many kills they inflicted on the other guild, as well as how much looting and pillaging they did. You'd think that the winners would inflict more kills or damage, so would have to pay more. You might want to even modify the amount by a factor of how many people were in each guild and how many deaths they had, etc. This might discourage the total war type of syndrome. If one party can be considered a winner by the other guild, that side's tax goes to the losing side, and if neither side is declared a winner, the money evaporates.

Or, you could have each guild member have a salary that the guild treasury must pay. That would discourage zergs for the sake of zerging, since each extra man would cost the guild more money.

Of course, a lot of that depends on guilds having some form of physical, money-producing assets, instead of just mob-farming.

[Fargull]

Evangolis,

One thing I hated about Shadowbane was the reliance on PC controlled leveling after a certain point (for training), but overall everything else looked good.  I like your idea, but wonder if you tied in the "wartax" to a monarchy system setup through static NPC kingdoms.  Spots would be setup across the land (both above and below ground) on which a guild could stake a claim and become a feudal baronny giving allegence to a King and thus getting guards and goods, but would have taxes.  Have goods kept in the central guild keep (or whatever) that can be converted for Sacked Gold if taken by raid.  Any NPC guard/merchant/yadda killed would result in x amount of tarrif to the King as a boundy paid to the fictional decendants (hello moneysink), Any PC's killed would result in a reduced tarrif.  Now.. say one guild not aligned to the King your guild is aligned to attacks another guild that is aligned to your king another feature that could be added would be an imposed x% of the other aligned guilds (to your king) being online at the time would be teleported and allegence changed to match the defending guild as a type of tarrif.  Only those signed by the Guild Leader could be sent as a tarrif.  If none are online to help defend one of the King's vassels, then a tarrif would be introduced to the guild.

Okay.. that was complicated, but would create bounds outside just the guild bound.  Once a guild is settled, it can not be removed without destruction, then petition to the NPC king and a vote by the NPC king's PC vassels...

Okay.. I am done.  Damn interesting thought.

[Typhon]

Actually, I'm thinking of more of a mental landscape than a physical one, a landscape where players know war is possible but not certain.

Understood, I ended up throwing out the idea of castles just cause it happened to be in my head when I typed that sentence.  The system I was thinking of was more mobil, almost like nomadic camps fighting for better location to set up their camp (thus the mobil keeps).

What I'm struggling with in this design is where the bread and butter PvP occurs.  It seems to me that the conflict to take land should be less frequent, unless the costs/penalties of taking land is less... in which case folks would be always figthing, which seems counter to where you were initially going with this.  Which brings me back to wondering where the bread and butter fighting occurs.

My preference would be for some of the bread and butter fighting to occur between like-sized squads out in the field, but how to get them there?

An intelligence game could be built around obtaining stuff.  In additions to player-based loot, there could also be improvements for the castles/keeps.  Say a castle (guild) raids an npc lair to get an upgrade to their forge.  If there is a game mechanic which requires that the forge takes a period of time to move from lair to castle, this seems like a good opportunity for intelligence work.

A Spy/Internal mole (either npc or player-based) learns of the upgrade movement, and quickly auctions (or informs, in the case of the guild-bought npc) access to the instance in which the movement is taking place.  Highest bidding guild gets access to this instance, at which point a message is generated on the coutner-intelligence chat system creating a system by which attacker/defender can fight outside of the context of a castle/keep.

Somewhat forced, but it seems to me that the idea should be about bringing somewhat equally matched sides to bear against eachother to fight over somethng of value.

I'd like to see multiple Kings on multiple hills, with lots of Barons on bumps as well.

I agree, and was what I was thinking.  The hills should provide different benefits, allowing some specialization between kingdoms.  Allowing one kingdom uber alles I think results in folks leaving a server.

[Arnold]

The money thing wouldn't work for mutually accepted wars.  We did those with no prob in UO.  What it should be is a world with wars that could be declared without the permisson of the other side, for a price.  If the aggressors peaced first, the defenders would get their money in escrow.  If the defenders peaced first, the aggressors would get thier money back... or maybe just a portion of it to account for pain and suffering (hopefully they made it back in lewt from the enemy).

[Evangolis]

If I wasn't clear, I meant that any landed guild could have war declared on it by any other landed guild.  War should always be an option for resolving disputes between guilds.

As to bread and butter PvP, when I played Shadowbane on the Wrath server, I found that the mine fights and the Rune runs provided excellent PvP options, although the 'required' nature of Runes for character building was bad.  Anyway, I would envision those seeking PvP outside the war format to venture out for these sorts of resources, which would be located in permenant PvP+ areas.  I realize that it would be a tricky thing to avoid the Desolation of Felucca, but I think it could be done.

I don't want to lose the general idea in specifics.  What I'm generally driving for is the idea that war and power aggregation need to have negative feedbacks built in, forcing people to exist in a state of tension most of the time, rather than a state of war for a brief time.  There need to be strong incentives for peaceful co-existance if you are going to allow PvP in anything like a general of meaningful sense.  Whether this involves a War Tax, or Peace Settlements, or NPC overlords, the important part is making it generally desirable to get along as factions, if not as individuals.

[Pococurante]

Usually the discentives to war are economic so we're on the right track.  We can take a page from the single-player Civ-like games to add complexity without it being tedious.

Overlay an invisible "NPC" economy - region A is lush and enjoys revenue from mutual trade with region C which specializes in minerals.  Region B in between excels at livestock and finished goods but given its resources has strong interests in preserving the peace with A and C.  Trade routes are implemented simply as daily revenue reports reviewable by guild officers. (though it would be interesting to have regular NPC caravans I need to protect if I come across them in battle with my enemy or bandits who arise when I mismanage my lands)

If C decides it's had enough they have to work with B so as not to disrupt revenue nor to have them ally with A.  I cede the a trade concession, or give them one of my areas, or just something verbal outside the game mechanics.  During war the guilds need to manage region happiness or revolts break out (instanced PvE) at the most inconvenient time.  Add another factor of smuggling to (very inefficiently) attempt to offset normal trade.

Combine that with your War Tax, the expenditure of amassed money to compensate for the loss of trade revenue, and wars become something more complex than CTF.  We see the same pattern in RL history - peace is simply the interlude to war to give both sides time to prepare.  Break each region into capturable areas and there is also the incentive to sue for peace if critical revenue areas are lost or a strategic interior border is at risk.

In terms of physical world the capturable areas need to be zones - that way the game can decide to let my raid group pass to the adjacent sub-area, or force an instanced battlefield between guilds, or divert us to an instanced PvE encounter.  This forces the guild to manage their lands so they avoid the inconvenience of diversion when they really want to confront the other guild.

We don't want this land management to be tedious so basically the guild officers weekly need to decide how much of their amassed wealth should be diverted into training the invisible NPC specialists: bankers, bandits, merchants, smugglers, farmers, etc.  This is no different than self-training in EVE.  The more diplomats I have the higher the possibility I can force peace, the more smugglers the more I can offset revenue loss, the more bandits the more I can force my opponent into instanced PvE, etc.

Anyway just a strawman for further thought.  This may be going too far from your vision but it is an approach that yields complexity without bogging the players down in who baked enough bread for today's crush or whether we really need game employees to stage events.

[Evangolis]

I like context.  It appeals to my writing pretensions, and provides an increase in player immersion that also is potentially implementable in code.  Thus a quest to gaurd or attack an NPC caravan becomes a possible GvG action, and a PvP possibility if attacking or defending flags you for PvP.  Having NPC zones/instances/events associated with Guild land holding also creates potential tactical and operational GvG warfare options beyond tricks/exploits, zerging, off-hour raiding, and moles.

However, simplicity is also a virtue, and it would be best if all these resource and holding management rules flowed from a single element of the basic nature of the gameworld.  How to do that, I'm not sure, and my brain is full of Dave Rickey's front page post at the moment.

[Pococurante]

Hmm I thought I had Dave's site bookmarked - would you post his url?

[Evangolis]

Feet of Clay

But the post I'm referring to is on this site, on the front page

[Pococurante]

Front page?  Thx!

[Psychochild]

Actually, M59 does something like the original idea. 

A bit of explanation about the system: If two guilds declare war on each other, they are considered "at war".  Normal penalties for killing people are suspended (you won't be flagged as an outlaw/murderer for attacking a guild enemy).  In addition, if you undeclare a war your guild looses some money and the winning guild gets a percent.  (Undeclaring isn't instant, it takes a few hours to finalize peace).  It takes both guilds to declare a war, but only one side needs to sue for peace.

One of the philosophies of PvP in M59 is that it's largely economic in nature.  You need reagents to cast spells and equipment to fight.  You drop your inventory on death, and you can only store so much in your vaults.  This means that eventually one side or the other (or both) will run out of resources, even if the fight is not "officially" declared.  I call this the "attrition" effect.

The problem with the declaration system is that no one wants to use it.  Why?  Because it gets rid of all excuses.  If you fight a non-declared war and lose, you can blame "murder penalties".  You can scream over public channels that your dishonorable opponents were "color PKing" (aka "noto PKing" in UO), and unfair "murderer penalties" (additional penalties at death and unsafe logoff caused by being a murderer) were what did you in.  If you declare the war all these excuses go right out the window.  This basically reinforces the conventional wisdom that most PvPers don't want a fair fight, they want a fight they're fairly sure they'll win.

The economic "attrition" effect doesn't work because it doesn't make people feel powerful.  If you run out of reagents/equipment, you're basically screwed.  Trying to get more is hard because enemies will hunt you while you're farming, and player markets tend to dry up to you.  That means if you get knocked out early it sucks  Of course, the alternative is that people never ran out of resources so the fighting went on until people just got completely sick and tired of the fight and left the game to escape it.  Neither solution is really favorable for either the players (in terms of fun) or the developers (in terms of profit).

I think the one major difference in Evangolis' original post, that both guilds have to sue for peace, would make the problem worse.  The winning team could just make the losing team keep losing, and that wouldn't really be much fun.

I'm not sure what a better answer is, but I thought I'd throw out this bit of information for the discussion.

Have fun,

[koboshi]

So after reading your post I found two things you might be saying, please correct me if I'm wrong.
Both conclusions hinge on your observations which indicate that in practice no one wants to declare war.

1) No one wants to declare war.

  Perhaps the problem is that true war is a matter of disagreement. The question is why is it that we believe that a war in an MMOG will unfold like a little league game; a hard fought battle finished by a congratulatory handshake from the loosing team. Real wars are a matter of one group wanting what another has and not respecting their right to have it. So why should any two parties agree to war?
  One summer when I was young my family rented a house at the beach for a week. All together it was my parents, my sisters, me, my best friend, a few uncles, aunts, and, cousins, good family fun all 'round. Until something of a war broke out. About halfway through our stay I and my friend had found ourselves in a water war with the kids from across the street. (What? We were kids!) The skirmishes escalated from the use of squirt guns, to water balloons, to super soakers, and eventually garden hoses. By the fourth day both sides were using every kid at their disposal, a screen door from our rented house was broken by a water balloon, and one kid was sent crying home to mamma after a clever agro maneuver caught him behind enemy lines and next to a garden hose. The parents, not to happy about the carnage, decided to sanction a safe war. The kids from the other side of the street were invited to come over and participate in a squirt gun battle in the back yard, needless to say only three kids came and none of them the primaries.
  You must be wondering, "What the fuck is he going on about?" The point is that war, even in its most simple incarnations, is not something which lends itself to declaration. One finds themselves at war; the declarations come after the thing has happened.  Furthermore, by making a clean war, you remove what is attractive about war.

  So should the conclusion we draw be that the simple requirement of declaration is the problem?

2) No one wants to declare war.

  Perhaps the problem is that war is not what players want. True, a good battle now and again gets the blood flowing, in more ways than one, and that is attractive to players, but after a battle I would say most players want to be able to turn around and go back to their other pursuits. Besides not everyone is a killer type, for the rest it may always be more of a disadvantage to be at war.
  Explorers - A war leaves those parts of the world within enemy control inaccessible. It also leaves them open to unprovoked attacks from high level enemies.
  Newbies - Operation get behind the newbs. "Here’s a sword and a shield, try not to drag the sword. Yea, yea, we'll do a dungeon crawl later, first things first. Get out in front of me and don’t die too quick."
  Socialisers - a war is good for gossip but sometimes you just want to sit and chat in a pub without getting ganked. what's more, it might be hard to talk about anything if no one will stay away from the front line long enough to get a good conversation going.
  Crafters – Sure, everyone needs a sword when there’s a war on, but in wartime a good guild member puts their personal goals aside and does what’s good for the guild, grind. War is bad for trade, everyone takes sides and before too long half of your trading partners aren’t talking to you anymore.
  Achievers - All an achiever can do in war is loose. In the simplest cases they can loose their l33t l00t, enter a fight with the best shit in the game, lose, and leave the fight with nothing. Or they can lose standing, while they are killing the same noob for the thousandth time other guilds are climbing up the ziggurat likety-split, maxing out their characters with the newest loot and newest powers from the latest patch.

  Finally, there is the simple truth that war takes resources, resources which could be used for something else. Every player has their idea of what a better use of those resources could be. Each player also has something else they would rather be doing.  So despite the fact that war is ever present it’s not necessarily attractive. If war is not what players want then what they find attractive is peace. If they want peace then it should be peace that they should be asked to declare, not war. War exists, peace is made.

  So should the conclusion we draw be that players should be asked to declare peace?

[Evangolis]

  Finally, there is the simple truth that war takes resources, resources which could be used for something else. Every player has their idea of what a better use of those resources could be. Each player also has something else they would rather be doing.  So despite the fact that war is ever present it’s not necessarily attractive. If war is not what players want then what they find attractive is peace. If they want peace then it should be peace that they should be asked to declare, not war. War exists, peace is made.

My original thought was indeed about resources, specifically resources which would allow a guild to possess land and which would be depleted by war, with the intent to give the most successful guilds a disincentive for war.  The experience in Shadowbane was that war was declared, everyone joined, and most lost, with predictable results.  Moreover, the only reason to allow the other side any breathing room was to keep them in the game, so that there was somebody left to fight.

The rough outline of the idea I have is that there could be landed and unlanded guilds, in a world with PvP+, PvP- and PvP switchable areas.  Landed guilds would have a holding, which they could build up and control certain aspects of, including the PvP switch.  Additionally, a guild in a state of war would have a broad PvP+ status with other co-beligerents.

To address Brian's point, there would be one way for a guild to declare peace unilaterally, and that is by surrendering their lands and becoming an unlanded guild.  The idea there would be to create a 'meaningful' basis for conflict which could be withdrawn from by players who were losing, without resulting in the losers being hunted out of the game.

One thing I haven't figured out in my own mind (which is not to say that I've figured out answers for the various points raised) is what a good mechanism would be for unlanded guilds to challenge landed guilds, so that new landed guilds may rise.  A partial answer would be that new expansions would contain new lands, and that only one guild center be allowed to each landed guild, however, the obvious ploy of dividing a guild in two to hold multiple lands comes into play.

One thing from M59 that did strike me was the political game surrounding Murderer status.  In reviewing the histroical info in the Hall of Justice(?), I noticed that the primary function of elections was to allow a faction to sieze the Justicar office by ballot to allow that side to clear the names of all it's members.  Thus you would see such and so elected, and several grants of clemency, followed by a different election, and different grants, repeating similar sides again and again.  It was a simplistic but intersting political conflict, as well as being a nice example of giving an MMO a historical dimension that memorialized player's actions.  This sort of historical dimension is also something I would like to see in a system such as I am pondering, even if only as a listing of declarations of war and peace.

[Pococurante]

Finally, there is the simple truth that war takes resources, resources which could be used for something else. Every player has their idea of what a better use of those resources could be. Each player also has something else they would rather be doing.  So despite the fact that war is ever present it’s not necessarily attractive. If war is not what players want then what they find attractive is peace. If they want peace then it should be peace that they should be asked to declare, not war. War exists, peace is made.  So should the conclusion we draw be that players should be asked to declare peace?

This is the gist behind my outline posted some weeks ago.  War is not declared by players, it's "declared" by the game engine when actions have predictable consequences.

Players choose the general shape of their culture and their often conflicting desires/balance incur checks & balances.  Just like in real war a rogue element can bring the whole balancing act crashing down.  Within the culture there is opportunity for PvP / player justice, across cultures raids have genuine impact but with an assist from the game engine so that the game is something more than who can muster an army at 3am Wednesday morning to CTF.

I agree it is pointless to impose Queensbury design assumptions into the game.  As much as we like simplicity the tradeoff is a simplistic game where "creative uses of game mechanics" just lead to customer fatigue and sub erosion.  The simplistic game also ensures that only one kind of player is retained and usually this is not a "good customer" nor a psychology that encourages retention of other player types.

[Hoax]

I do like the idea of a non gold resource that is used in pvp conflict.  If it allows you to come up with clever systems to limit the amount of winner gets stronger loser quits game and zerging even better.

Here's a system of the top of my head:
-Guilds control pieces of territory, this territory generates mob farmed resources without the mob farming.

-Every guild has a set level of war resource they produce per time cycle.

-War resource is needed to attempt to take a piece of territory from another guild.

-The larger the guild the more resource is used up if you are the aggressor (more needed to mobilize your forces for battle)

-The more territory a guild controls the less war resource you produce (more resource is used just in the maintaining of your borders)

-When your territory is attacked you gain war resources, in a way that should allow a besieged guild to counter attack under most circumstances.  The amount gained though is based on how much resource was expended by the attacking guild (again mostly to prevent zerging, meaning a 200 player guild would not gain enough resource from a 20 pc guild's attack to attack back).

-If you run yourself into the negative of war resource your territories production will falter and if you go too far into the red you will begin to loose territories.  It takes war resource to claim even a unoccupied territory (although much less).  You can only go into the negative levels of war resource for one cycle (whatever component of real world time was chosen between the production of guild war resources).  If you go into the red you loose the ability to attack for one cycle, even if other guild attacks push your war resource into the green.  (your soldiers are tired from your over-expansion of your borders or whatever).

Not exactly fleshed out but other then the exploitation of dummy guild's attacking just to generate war resources for the exploiting guild it seems kind of solid in terms of accomplishing what you wanted in terms of a balkanized tense situation but limiting the amount of total war waged as well as the power one guild can accumulate and how viable a tactic zerging is.