Ultimately, I don't think it's feasible to code around a culture problem. We as a community need to get better at spotting/calling out toxic behavior. Lusternia's pretty decent at this in some aspects - we have selfishness as a defence, but most people don't even bother putting it up because I literally can't think of the last time I heard of anyone stealing things.
I think it's up to players and administrators to promote good behavior and punish bad behavior, but the obvious problem is that admin can't be around 24/7 (and may not always be able to distinguish toxic behavior vs RP), and the ability of players to punish bad behavior is limited when the people or organizations behaving badly are overwhelmingly dominant (as in the 15v5 example given above.) This isn't going to change until toxic people are held accountable by everyone, even those who benefit mechanically from the toxicity.
Whether or not you can code around it really depends on the root causes at the end of the day.
- The strongest orgs group up to dominate the rest of the game.
Really, this seems to come from conflict objectives which encourage this sort behaviour to varying degrees. (i.e splitting domoths between you and eliminating the competition) You could code around it by building/reworking systems so that they encourage the strongest orgs to fight each other by making that the most rewarding avenue.
- Orgs don't punish toxic members because they benefit mechanically from them.
In the current state orgs are pretty dependent on combatants for a lot, it unfortunately makes sense that orgs are reluctant to do anything about them because it means potentially losing much more than just one member. You code around that with systems that bring the potential contributions from combatants and non-combatants to a more equivalent level with the goal of limiting the impact of losing combatants.
Some of it is going to be ingrained culture that's hard to change but it's pretty interesting to see how even small mechanics can have a significant impact when you look across a variety of games.
Comments
/s
Accountability is necessary.
- The strongest orgs group up to dominate the rest of the game.
Really, this seems to come from conflict objectives which encourage this sort behaviour to varying degrees. (i.e splitting domoths between you and eliminating the competition)
You could code around it by building/reworking systems so that they encourage the strongest orgs to fight each other by making that the most rewarding avenue.
- Orgs don't punish toxic members because they benefit mechanically from them.
In the current state orgs are pretty dependent on combatants for a lot, it unfortunately makes sense that orgs are reluctant to do anything about them because it means potentially losing much more than just one member.
You code around that with systems that bring the potential contributions from combatants and non-combatants to a more equivalent level with the goal of limiting the impact of losing combatants.
Some of it is going to be ingrained culture that's hard to change but it's pretty interesting to see how even small mechanics can have a significant impact when you look across a variety of games.