So what is my goal again?
As I gather information on player behaviors and the rising solutions to solve it, I realize developers have made more progress than I had initially thought. Although, game developers could take it even further.When you play a game, be it a video game, board game, or a physical activity, there are rules that must be followed to make the game challenging or fair. In a video game, developers create the rules, which can be restrictions or features within the game code. A normal player cannot physically break these rules or the game itself would be broken.
Now think of a game of tag children play at a park, the rules are simple: one person is chosen to be "it" and that person must tag another player who will then become "it" continuing the cycle. The person who is "it" must close their eyes and count to 10 to give the other players a fair chance to hide. The player who is "it" can potentially cheat by peeking to see where the other players are hiding, giving that player an unfair advantage.
After all the kids realize that person is a cheater they might give the cheater a second chance to redeem themselves, but if that does not work then the cheater is shunned, chastised, and maybe even exiled from the game. At the very least people think of the cheater poorly, and will remember that person as a cheater.
This is what I consider to be a harsher punishment, especially if implemented in large multiplayer games such as MMO games(Massive Multiplayer Online). If everyone in the server could easily recognize the behavioral history of other players, then bad behavior would be discouraged. Rather than the developers of the game restricting players with too many rules, allow the community to create rules and judge players breaking the rules within the game-play.
I think that sounds like a pretty interesting strategy to deal with rule-breakers. However, it also sounds like it could be pretty problematic. While it would indeed show everyone what this person has done before and how their behavior has been a problem, it doesn't really punish them. Aside from the idea that the member who has been punished might simply not care if they've been marked with this thing that says that they've had problematic behavior before, there could be others who side with them and it doesn't prevent them from continuing poor behavior in the community that other members would have to deal with. So it's not really a punishment. It doesn't really teach them that they've done something wrong and nothing actually happens to them.
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