Combat In SL: Is It Upon Us?

Combat: a topic as old as the Outlands

First person shooters (FPS) have been wildly popular games ever since Id Software came out with the first Wolfenstein 3-D. They can be great stress relievers and it's fun to blow up everything from Nazis to demons. Wait, they're the same thing, aren't they? *rimshot*

Sure, they're violent. Lawmakers try and ban them to win approval through public placation. Luddites will blame Columbine on them. Military uses them for recruitment. Whatever. Perhaps parents should take an interest in what their kids are doing, instead of blaming people for making fun, mature themed games.

SL is 18+, right?

SL is an community for people 18 years of age and older. We're all adults, right? Yet so often combat and shooting in SL takes on a negative connotation. Let's take a quick peek at the SL Police Blotter for today:
(format truncated to fit)

• Violation: Community Standards: Assault, Scripted Objects
  Description: Use of weapons.
• Violation: Forum Suspension: Spamming, Trolling, Flaming
• Violation: Forum Informal Warning: Disclosure: Second Life
  Description: Disclosure of information about another Resident in the forums.
• Violation: Community Standards: Assault, Scripted Objects
  Description: Use of weapons.
• Violation: Terms of Service: Teen Accessing Main Grid
  Description: Banned for making accounts on both grids.
• Violation: Community Standards: Intolerance
  Description: Hate Speech
• Violation: Community Standards: Assault, Scripted Objects
  Description: Use of weapons. (and then 7 more of these!)

Yikes.

So why does SL have this problem? Well, there's an easy explanation. People come to SL and find plenty of guns, plenty of gun lovers, but a scarcity of places to play around without breaking the rules. The only dedicated combat sims are Jessie and Rausch, the prior being perma-camped by World War II Online refugees, and the latter being an empty sandbox.

No wonder there's so much griefing! 40,000 users and growing, and there's all of two dedicated sims for combat? What's unbelievable is that with the glut of private sims and club owners, there's not really anyone who's following in the path of Chinatown - which was wildly popular!

Technical Setbacks

The first real stoppage is the existing combat system. It so totally needs to be scrapped! I'm sure, in the early days of Beta, when the combat system first came around, it was fine, but SL has so grown far past its ability to provide any sort of real use. Problems that I see, with some suggested solutions:

Problem: There's 2 sims for combat.
Solution: Provide more incentives to developers to have combat enabled sims, or provide more yourself!

Problem: The health system forces a teleport back to your home location if you reach zero health. this is highly inconvenient often.
Solution: Allow land-owners to choose if 0 health causes TP to home location, or to another location on that plot of land. (Spawn points).

Problem: The health system has an automatic healing factor.
Solution: Allow land-owners to choose the healing rate, as an integer, 0 for off. Additionally, land-owners would need a way to control items that could heal a player.

Problem: Weapons that do conventional damage can be tweaked very easily to be instant kill.
Solution: Land-owners need some tool to limit damage dealing to certain, approved items.

Problem: Push weapons can ruin any game.
Solution: Allow land-owners to limit push to certain amounts on their land.

Problem: Land has to allow rezzing items for projectiles to be available, yet it allows cheating.
Solution: Land owners need a tool to allow only approved items to rez.

Problem: Dots on the map sort of take away the whole "seek out and find your enemy" bit.
Solution: Land owners should be able to disable the green tracking dots on the map.
(Thanks judah jimador for pointing this out, in comments!)

The thing is, without these, combat in SL relies on replacing the whole combat system. Crystalshard Foo tried to do this with the Chinatown combat system, but it would up being so many listeners that it lagged to death if more than 4 people played. Since, Foo has come up with a new combat health system, but ultimately any player made system can be gamed by outside scripts.

Power To The People

The changes to the system that I propose are entirely based on giving land owners better ability to control on what goes on over thier land. Land owners in SL are lacking in basic abilities - especially in this area. How many times do we have to hear this story before changes are made? "This griefer came to my land and dropped an H-Bomb and threw everyone from my sim."

I'm sorry, Linden Lab, but the current land tools are completely insufficient for protecting land owner's property. Bans only work after you have been griefed - they are a completely reactionary response when the focus should be proactively avoiding griefing. And limiting access only works to a certain height and lacks the ability to prevent outside projectiles or privacy from camera intrusion.

Give us these land tools! Cut down on the abuse reports! Retain more players! Give more development tools to those of us that wish to make combat games, but can't!

Tools Needs

Even if Linden Lab comes up with solutions to the combat system, there's still a problem of content. Weapons, battle areas, scoreboards, and all sorts of other tools are absent. Furthermore, these all have to work together. This means basically you will have one of two types of systems: proprietary and modular.

A proprietary system will likely arise first, where you buy servers and appropriate weapons that jive with the system. One or two vendors will profit greatly, and the thought then is to push good content based on these proprietary systems.

A modular system has an API which everyone can work with. Consequently, it's easier for people to make cheat items. A reliable security and anti-cheat system would have to be integral to the framework of a modular combat system.

For those who know of my work in SL, you know that I have my own weapons line, Ronin, and my own plans for expanding fun multiplayer combat gaming into SL. My own line is currently expanding, and will ultimately become the basis for a combat system where "approved" battle areas will allow game play all over the SL grid. Imagine something on the likes of GTA: SL, or custom setups for competing in-world mafias, or simply small "deathmatch" battle arenas.

Competition & Innovation

SL is up against stiff competition, and ultimately the only way we could see lingering FPSs in SL will be innovation. SL offers a truly unique environment where people can build virtually anything, and I think it is that aspect will be the thing that separates SL from other FPSs and allows it some market share.

For instance, the mod community has overrun the mainstream MO-FPS market. Counterstrike, a user-made mod, was a far more popular that its already popular spawning game, Halflife. There are build tools for levels, but they're clunky, and you have to convince people to play it to get anyone to try it out. Second Life, on the other hand, has the 3-D creation built in. The availability for user-designed "maps" / battle areas is thus much more accessible to the average person. Additionally, SL is small enough where new projects get a lot of notice, but still have access to thousands of potential players instantly - no marketing or packaging required! SL has the potential to be a huge paradigm shift in user-created online content!

Sky's the Limit

Why not let users reinvent what they want in a combat game? I was walking through a few gaming retail stores the other day (fruitlessly searching for GTA 3: San Andreas) and beheld the usual contents of the PC game shelf: Tons of war games, a bunch of RPGs with scantily clad women, and a whole bunch of games exploring that explore just how to use handguns and pistols. Can we say, "death of variety"? I'd wager money that letting people have basic building blocks on making games will produce a totally new selection of combat games.

Like blowing up Nazis or demons. Not that there's any difference.