I was thinking about this : In an online game (not necessary mmo), attacking other players in a team is almost always better off than going solo for the simple reason of "more people attacking = easier to take down someone". Is it possible to implement a system that encourages solo action and discourages teaming with friends?

In Dwarf Fortress, dwarves that are facing a large number of enemies sometimes enter a "combat trance" that gives them a considerable boost to all combat stats and increases their chance of getting critical hits or dodging incoming attacks. If you include a sort of superpower that's only triggered when you're all alone facing multiple adversaries, then solo combatants will be at an advantage against teams, whereas 1v1 fights or team vs. team fights will be unaffected. You could even scale the bonus, so 1v2 would give the solo player a 110% boost, while 1v5 might give a 700% boost. If ten guys try to jump you at once, you'd be like Rambo and Batman with Jedi powers, virtually immune to attack and dealing death with every action, but if one guy comes after you, then it's a fair fight for both of you. It would be like the "ninja principle", where one ninja is an invisible nightmare of flying stars and slashing blades, but twenty ninjas are no match for a guy with a mullet and a tank top.

You'd have to include a way to decide who's on which side of the conflict, of course. In a free-for-all, three or four players could unofficially team up, each receiving a bonus from the presence of their mates. The best way I can think of to fix that would be to force players to join a faction for the game, so that it's clear who has the advantage, and you're unable to harm your own allies. The only way to cheat that system would be to have double-agents join the other side and hang around that team's players, penalizing them for having superior numbers but refraining from helping in the fight. I'm not sure how to beat that metatactic.

Another idea would be reward/penalty scaling. Calculate the relative strengths of the two sides and apply the ratio (or even the square of the ratio) as a modifier to rewards and penalties.

E.g., let's say in a fair fight the winner gains X and the loser loses Y. If a group of strength 10 attacks an individual of strength 1 and wins, they gain 0.1 X and the loser loses 0.1 Y. But in the rare occasion the group loses, they lose 10Y and the individual gains 10X.

Ideally you want the reward to be proportional to the risk.

This solution has the added requirements that you need to able to calculate a single "strength" rating for each player (maybe just level), and also handle edge cases such as: a large group suffers a Pyrrhic victory, 3-way battles, etc.

Your title implies that you want both team fights and solo fights to be valid options but your post implies that teaming is *always* bad. Which is it? And are we talking one character per player or something more RTS-like? And as others mentioned, do you mean teams that the game can recognize or just people deciding to shoot on only one guy? Is it a game where winning is the only thing that counts or is XP earned or something like that important?

Anyway how about requiring lots of maneuvering room? Maybe bumping into someone means both are stunned for awhile. Add in easy attacks that push your enemy into his friends. And be very, very generous with friendly fire. And have lots of area attacks and splash damage. This should encourage henchman-style fighting where only one or maybe two at a time can attack at a time.

I read the title and post again and yes, they are contradicting! It is more of a case of "i don't know what I want".

The thread was the result of me trying out this MMORPG call "EVE Online" which has global open PvP (although if you attack someone in town, the guards will destroy u) but solo players really do not stand a chance vs a gang and almost everyone goes PvPing in a team. It got me thinking about the possibility of encouraging solo.


I think there are two major issues, one design side and the other implementation side :

1) [Design] - Encouraging one will discourage the other.

Giving people benefits for teaming up will discourage solo players who cannot compete against team PKers. Balancing solo and teams (such as using what other posters have suggested in this thread) will discourage teams which are harder to put together and still beatable by a solo player.

The obvious way to endorse both would be to split the play area into team PvP zones and solo PvP zones (whether this is enforceable or not is the next point). Is there a way for both to play together in the same zone and show no favoritism to either side?

2) [Implementation] - Is it possible to differentiate solo and team PKers?

It is easy for players to collude without officially being in a team (partying up using the in-game party system etc). I could help my friend by attacking first, running away and then allowing my friend to continue attacking the target. We can share intel, exchange equipment etc.

For this reason, I think all attempts at balancing solo and team PvP (or encouraging solo over team) will fail. People will just find loopholes in the system and exploit them unless the system is something extreme like only allowing instanced 1v1 PvP arena.

If your game will be only about combat than yes it will be a tricky balancing act. You are basically looking for a combat system where the number of opponents on either side is irrelevant, which is very unintuitive. But you can still have stealth gameplay tailored to solo players while combat encourages teaming up.