At the heart of player vs player games or pvp as is coined in the industry is the desire to compete. As my children have very convincingly shown me time and again, winning is funner than losing. While many people point out that good sportsmanship is all about enjoying the game regardless of outcome, many of us secretly hope to be the winners. What I have noticed that frequently happens in games is that people know who the good players are and will wait to see which team they join before choosing a team. If all of the good players do this it's what's known as stacking, where there is an imbalance in playing ability on the two teams. What occurs then is hardly a competition, rather it is a massacre. I like to think of myself as a good player in many games that I play, and often I will try to be on the underdogs team so as to even the playing field a bit. What I have noticed is the more that I play a game and become known, that when I join the underdog team that it isn't the underdog team for that long because many "good" players will switch sides as soon as the tide of the competition comes to be against them winning.
I try not to bring up politics very often, but since it is a common area of competition I think it bears a quick look at it. When foreigners are being made familiar with american culture for example, I found it interesting that Americans claim to be the most free country in the world, yet despite having many choices of political parties overwhelmingly there were only two dominant parties. In talking to people about this occurring for such a long time, many people say that they would prefer to vote for one of the smaller parties, except that would just mean throwing away their vote. Thus they feel obligated to choose instead from the two parties who clearly have a chance of "winning". Some people were not even aware that they were allowed to choose other parties, or even that other parties indeed existed beyond the two powerhouses. I like to look at this as people wish to be affiliated with a winning establishment, even if that establishment may not share the same ideals as said people, the "choosing the lesser of two evils" if you will.
In games the drive to win often leads people to extreme and unethical behaviors, such as cheating, hacking, stacking teams or sides, spying on their competitors, bribery, the list goes on an on. Often systems are put into place to try and stop these unwanted behaviors, yet the desire to win will often lead people to seek out loopholes or other ways of getting an advantage. The problem is once a system is compromised and people recognize the inherent unfairness the advantages the cheaters have, then many people are driven to leave the system if they have a choice, or if not they are forced to cheat themselves in order to remain competitive.
So to bring this back to my game, I really want to see this succeed and in order for that to happen it needs to be able to stop such behaviors from happening. I've seen too many games where the players who are willing to play fair and follow the rules are driven away by cheaters and hacks. Some areas that I am a little concerned in would be
1. How do you keep factions relatively even as far as number of skilled players on each side?
2. What happens when the majority of a faction decides to stop playing making things unequal?
3. How do we limit hacking of the client, and in what ways do we detect said hacking?
4. What if someone stops playing and gives their account to a friend who is on an opposing faction? How do we detect this and stop it, or does it need to be stopped?
5. What can be done to make sure the game stays fun for everyone?
Any help with how to tackle these questions would be greatly appreciated.
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