MMORPG's and the spoils of anti-social behavior

If you've played WoW, you've probably experienced it. You run a dungeon, some good loot drops, and it's ninja'd by the group leader, or by someone who didn't really need it, or by someone who rolled on it "for an alt".

If you've ever raided in WoW, you've experienced it again. Something cool drops for the guild, and the officers decide to override the normal loot system to give the loot to themselves or one of their buddies.

And if you've ever played a game without protection against scams (FFXI or EVE Online, for example) you've probably either been scammed, or were hesitant about making deals lest you be scammed.

Ninjas and scammers do what they do because there are no (or few) repercussions to their actions. Why do massive games reward anti-social behavior?

The Ninja Looter

Ninjas, if you've never heard the term before, are people that steal (or ninja) loot from other more deserving players in group settings.

Now, in an ideal world Ninjas would not be a problem. Your friends and guildies are always available when you want to run an instance or dungeon. They do not ninja from the group because they are good people, and also because the punishment is more severe when you steal from your friends or guild. You would never be trusted again, and would likely be booted from your guild or group of friends.

Some players believe that this ideal world exists in real life, as does at least one MMORPG developer, Blizzard. Perhaps if you join a 500-person guild there are always trustworthy people available to run an instance with you.

For most people, however, the ninja is an ever-present problem. There is no method for an entire server to punish a ninja looter. And even if there was, name changes and server transfers would render it ineffective.

The Corrupt and/or Inept Guild Leadership

In many MMORPG's, loot in raids (large groups) is allocated by the raid leaders who are typically also the guild leaders of the raiders. Inevitably, it seems, the judgment of the guild leadership falters, and they make a bad decision, either intentionally or unintentionally.

Once again, I'll note that in an ideal world this would never happen. And once again, I'll note that many gamers, as well as Blizzard, believe that this ideal world actually exists. They'll often say something to the effect of "Why would you be in a guild you can't trust?"

Having been in such a guild (twice), I can tell you that there are a multitude of reasons. Your friends are in that guild. It's hard to find a new guild. In one case I was in that suspect guild because it was still the most trustworthy raiding guild in my faction, because unfortunately "most trustworthy" and "trustworthy" are not always synonymous.

And more so than with ninja looting, poor judgment is as much of an issue as corruption and cronyism. Guild leadership will try to do the right thing and award loot to those most deserving, but then misidentify who the best and most reliable players actually are.

As with ninja looting, there is little recourse. The guild cannot really remove the leadership without disbanding and reforming. So there seems to be a dearth of raiding guilds that are fairly run, probably because there are few adults (in maturity, not age) who actually have that kind of free time and are willing to invest it into a guild.


The Scammer

In most MMORPG's, at least some important types of financial agreements among players are not enforced by the game or the developers. Unscrupulous players will take advantage of this situation and cheat other players out of items and money.

Once again, in an ideal world this would never happen. Everyone would be trustworthy, and any dirty dealers would be cast out. Once again, idealists claim that this is an achievable goal. In fact, they'll often tell victims that "it's your own fault."

However, in this case, Blizzard does not agree.

Blizzard keeps records of chat logs for 24 hours or so, and if you scam another player and that player complains Blizzard will make it right. They will usually return the ill-gotten coin or item, and often punish the scammer with a suspension or ban.

This approach tries to create the ideal world instead of just claiming that it should exist. Now, it's not completely ideal, as there are still unscrupulous people who either don't know or don't care about a ban. There are also unsuspecting players who do not know that scammers can be punished. Once I saw a self-identified newbie and victim of a scam ridiculed in general chat until I mentioned that he did have effective recourse against the scammer. Hopefully he went on to pursue GM-meted justice.

This system also allows even suspicious players (like myself) to trade freely and confidently, in a way I could never do in FFXI or EVE Online.

The Greater Effects of Anti-Social Behavior in MMORPG's

It's worth considering that this rewarding of scamming and cheating eventually spills over into real life. Someone who revels in taking advantage of others will find lots of negative reinforcement in a typical MMO.

Sometimes the scamming and cheating dovetails with actual gray-market or criminal behavior. Gold farmers are also notorious ninja looters who will then sell the now well-equipped characters to unscrupulous buyers. These same gold sellers, as Blizzard has pointed out, will often sell gold and items from hacked accounts -- literal theft.

And what does this say to kids who are playing the game? That scammers win, and that there can be little consequence to their actions. That honest people are at a disadvantage from the start. Nice guys finish last.


Attacking the Problem Instead of The Victim

In these three instances we've only seen one truly effective countermeasure. Blizzard, the developers of WoW, put their foot down against scamming. They developed and maintained a mechanism (chat logging) that allows them to punish scammers. And this system works.

Likewise, talking about ninja looting and bad guild loot allocation will not solve those problems either. What we need are actual game mechanics that disrupt or eliminate these activities.

Attacking The Ninja Looter With Game Mechanics

The mechanic that is the chief culprit in ninja looting is the Vegas-style loot system. The boss drops a few pieces of discrete loot and the players decide amongst themselves how it is to be distributed. Inevitably a player "decides" that they deserve loot they don't really deserve and the whole system crashes down.

WoW does provide some mitigation of this by providing reputation loot and shareable coin. Reputation is awarded based on participation, not rolls, so no player can "steal" reputation from the rest of the group. Coin is split evenly among the group (although some rare coin-related foul play still occurs).

Strict participation-based rewards are nice as part of an overall reward strategy but cannot stand on their own, nor serve as a primary loot mechanism. They offer no special reward for completing a dungeon, earning rep feels like a grind, and there's little reason to return to an instance after hitting the maximum reputation it offers.

A more viable, primary loot distribution mechanism would be to reward a random player instead of dropping a random reward. Vegas loot systems drop a random reward, and then make players decide/fight over it until one player is rewarded. Why not cut out the middleman? Pick a random player, and then pick a random reward (or give them a token) that suits them. Like normal loot, you won't always be giving people something they need -- but it will eliminate the fighting and decision that lead to despair and greed.

Attacking Poor Raid Loot Distribution with Game Mechanics

Loot distribution in a raid is a little trickier since you don't really want the loot to be random. You want to make sure the loot is evenly distributed over time, and you want to award the loot to better and more dedicated players first.

Good guild leadership will do this for you but it is hard to come by.

I won't lie to you and say this is an easy problem to solve. Guild leaders control the raid, so if you try to favor participation or contribution in raid loot rolls, guild leaders can game those numbers just like they game their own guild's loot rules to reward the wrong people.

Having each individual roll against their own potential piece of gear doesn't work well either, because you'd either have to cap the numbers (which would allow more gaming of the system) or have entire guilds that get all their dungeon gear in a single run.

If I could tell you a great answer for this I would be working at Blizzard or Mythic instead of writing a blog in my study. A good system, however, could be to award the lowest quality 80% of the loot in a dungeon as reputation (participation) loot, and allow the highest quality 20% of the loot to be awarded by the guild officers. So in the worst case scenario, everyone would at least get 80% of the loot they wanted even if the guild refused to give them anything.

I guess the best way to solve the guild loot problem is to do what WAR has done, and cut guild looting out of the picture almost entirely by getting rid of large scale PvE raiding.