League of Legends, the free (ish) to play tactical online game, has long had problems with griefers, cheaters, haters, and general Bad Sorts ruining the environment of the game. So many of them, in fact, that the developers couldn’t possibly keep up with the complaints reports.
So they’ve done something really interesting – introduced Jury Service for players, of sorts, in the form of a player moderation system for complaints.
The Pugnacious Priest has a piece up today on the LoL system, and what its implications would be if it were to be introduced into MMOs like WoW –
“I’m not sure I like the idea of being rewarded for administrating justice ( but what else would be incentive enough) , or punished for not agreeing with the majority. I can’t imagine that everyone would be paying spectacular attention to all the issues ( even with a compulsory page view time before you can give a verdict) and make snap decisions as they churn their way through case after case. They have the wrong incentive to do that, a reward. Justice is supposed to be blind, and impartial. When you add the reward for majority decision Your first purpose – to clean up the community can be forgotten.
We have been taught to grind by the nature of the games we play. We grind Rep, gear, quests, badges. It would be very easy for any of us to slip into a Justice administration grind when there is reward to be had.”
This is an interesting topic, and an interesting piece, covering both the problems with WoW’s justice system (such as it is) at the moment, and some of the likely consequences of adding player-mandated justice to the system.
I’ve been known to strongly advocate for a reputation system in WoW, particularly for the LF tools – but it’s interesting to see that there are other solutions we could be trying too! And, honestly, a jury of our peers works pretty well IRL. On the other hand, of course, there are well-known problems with jury systems forcing a tyrrany of the majority, and with a significantly simpler system than the real-world justice system, it’d be easy for anyone who doesn’t fall within the “norms” of WoW society – like, say, gay players – to be badly mistreated by player-led mob justice.
Do you think a player-arbitrated justice system would work in WoW?
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Aren’t we talking about enforcing a “cultural norm” with such a system, though? What makes one better than another? Seems to me that if you’re signing on to a system that is all about establishing and policing cultural norms, you’re naturally going to get some cliquishness.
I’ve long been a fan of the “black spot” method in Puzzle Pirates. It’s something carefully designed to cull abuse from the herd while leaving playstyle pretty much alone.
http://yppedia.puzzlepirates.com/Blackspot