Avoiding metagaming/powergaming

[dimaac 0]

Hi, I'm new here and might not be in the right forum thread but I believe this is a topic that should definitely be discussed. I've searched and couldn't find any concrete information regarding this. I've played RP games before where things as metagaming and powergaming occurs. This is something one would want to avoid in the game. For those of you who don't know what MG and PG is, you can read about it here:

I'll start off with an example. Ingame you get robbed and killed by some random dudes and remember their names, their looks etc. I assume you can see peoples names above their head or something, if not, then this example is not a good one. Anyways, you get upset and later you stumble upon same people and feel that you want to have your revenge and decide to kill them all. This is MG. So, how do we avoid stuff like this? Let the discussion begin.

 

[JamesLuck01 1,531]

10 minutes ago, dimaac said:

Hi, I'm new here and might not be in the right forum thread but I believe this is a topic that should definitely be discussed. I've searched and couldn't find any concrete information regarding this. I've played RP games before where things as metagaming and powergaming occurs. This is something one would want to avoid in the game. For those of you who don't know what MG and PG is, you can read about it here:

I'll start off with an example. Ingame you get robbed and killed by some random dudes and remember their names, their looks etc. I assume you can see peoples names above their head or something, if not, then this example is not a good one. Anyways, you get upset and later you stumble upon same people and feel that you want to have your revenge and decide to kill them all. This is MG. So, how do we avoid stuff like this? Let the discussion begin.

 

Guns will be expensive and hard to come by. Also in official servers it will be more of a problem there but private servers will be more equip'd with staff and rules. (On Official servers I think the names will be permanently above your head but private server owners will be able to make it so you must greet said person for them to see your name permanently above the head.)

[Jackabm 49]

I don't think they can easily mugg you in the street, I think that it would be scarce and you can always call the cops and arrest the criminals 

[Phiedrus 64]

This is quite an interesting topic. I never thought about the fact that if someone kills you, their respawned avatar couldn't remember anything as he is brand new in the world, therefore should have no reasons to look for revenge.

A different thing is when you are taken to jail/prison. You would probably remember and want to find the person who took you there. Well that may happen in RL too, so nothing wrong here. So let's go back to the death case.

In both cases, even if you didn't see the avatar name unless within certain range or aimed to (as it is explained in the faq), you could always have frieds who investigated the habits of a player to find where he can be taken down, or you could also 'camp' important places to find him. That, by the way, sounds like an appealing mechanic to me. But my point is, the only difference here is that in one case you know the name of the target, and in the other case you are not supposed to know it. And I can't figure out any way to counter it, or how complicated and impacting would be to implement one.

Same goes for other metas, like giving information by skype supposedly not known by the character.

Do you know any way this is effectively handled in other games? I'm curious.

[Bellanova 116]

I'm hoping that name tags don't loom over everyone's head because not only is it unrealistic, but as stated before, if you got murdered in real life, you wouldn't have the second chance to life like we do in games. So even if you knew who your murderer was you couldn't seek revenge after you re spawned. I think that with proper identification, the victim would take the person's name straight to the police and it would take out all investigation factors.