While I really don't think this would have an impact on griefing or noticeably change behavior, I'd like to highlight this post and see if anyone has any specific ideas. We've had brainstorming sessions to try to figure out how something like this could work but we have never been able to come up with a viable system that couldn't be grossly gamed. (Not to mention coming up with any IC justification for such a system that wasn't incredibly contrived.)

Well, as Catarin said, how about actual Gladiator events? Have an event where a Blood House or something opens a Gladiatorial arena where people can fight real fights for real prizes. Unlike the arena, death there was a death, and cures were used, and the winner takes the gold both participants betted to get in. You could even hold tournaments from time to time, where the winner gets to take home an artifact. Nothing huge, but something fun and interesting, such as a mask of esteem or a font. Permanent or temporarily. Basically, arena matches with risks and rewards.

You'd need two people that wanted to fight. I'm not sure you're going to get anyone who likes ganking a non-com 2v1 to participate.

Then the problem isn't "having meaningful fights".

I personally find group fights more entertaining, unless they end up in trench wars. 1 vs 1 can get horribly stagnant if both fighters know the opponent well and have the means to counteract the other's offense.

EDIT: I don't really have a good idea regarding your problem, but I wanted to question the premise implied by the thread name, first.

I think a Gladiator-type event would be great. You could have all the normal events--FFA, Wargames, Slippers, Freezetag--and set up tiers for prizes. Offer gold, maybe even credits. I'd go for it, and I'm barely a com.

EDIT: And by event, I don't mean a one-time thing, I mean a permanent addition to arenas, even if only the Klangratch tournies.

The problem is that people would game rewards. Oh, want free credits? Let's to a gladiator thing and let me win. Next time I'll let you win.

Not personally interested in having 1v1's of solo beastmachine classes versus group combat classes. Teamwork is where the fun is at.

Hmm. I'd suggest a penalty for losing then, but then I wonder how many people would risk losing. Hmm.

Psst, friend, create a newbie and get it to level 50, then use it to battle me for credits. I'll do the same for you!

I don't think all classes are quite balanced for 1v1 combat, it probably wouldn't work out so great in my opinion.

An idea I've heard people bounce around before, is some expansion to the domoth realm that requires people to duel to gain some minor prize or buff or whatever. Don't really know how that would work, but that's some IC justification, I guess?

Again, how would you design it to stop it from being gamed or abused? If you are offering a minor prize/buff, people would definitely try to find the easiest way to get it.

What if Guild Champions earned some sort of bonus for their guild for dueling Champions of the diametrically opposed org (Celest vs. Mag, Seren vs. Glom, Halli vs. Gaudi) in some sort of special area set up for it? So they can challenge each other to a duel and if they win, their guild gets +5% experience or +10% health/mana/ego or something like that for the next month. This would presumably fix the problem of people deliberately losing to each other and would make champion something more than an honorary position. And maybe Protectors, for instance, could do the same thing but for a purely personal benefit instead of a guild one. Of course I'm not sure what the exact mechanics would be (what happens if one person consistently avoids the fights?) or how to avoid retarded stalemate matchups (bard/bard, mage/druid, druid/druid, and to a lesser extent mage/mage and warrior/warrior).

So you'd design a system only open to guild champions and not other players?

I edited just after you posted to include the potential for protectors to challenge each other. It's probably not an ideal system, but using guild positions seems like a decent way to get around the problem of people deliberately losing to each other, since the diametrically opposed orgs are unlikely to agree to anything like that.

Can you be more specific how that would work? How would it be timed? Would it work in off-hours? What if some guild challenged and no guild responded--would they get a reward?

Upon further consideration, maybe the champion thing was a bad idea, but I think allowing protectors/security/champions of rival guilds to all challenge one another whenever they want would be interesting (maybe they could touch the shrine of Klangratch to send an open challenge to all their rival guilds, and then accept/reject the responses they get so that random Seren protector #14 who touched the shrine doesn't have to fight Shuyin). With it not depending on champions it could pretty much work at whatever time anyone feels like responding to the challenge. There are any number of things that could be used as easy rewards: gold, credits, temporary artifacts, experience, experience bonuses, blessings, divine favor, esteem, etc.

Would people actually use this system? I don't really know - some weaker guilds/orgs might just feel like they're handing the buffs to their opponents or whatever. I guess you could have some kind of incentive for the losers, but then, should you really be getting rewards for losing a duel? Also, not sure how to deal with people potentially just trading the free buffs back and forth (ie. okay, I'll let you win this round, you let me win next month, etc).

Going off Sham's idea.

Each guild has a 10 room aetherbubble (accessible from the respective guildhall). Only members of that guild can enter the area. There's one node in the center of aetherbubble.

Any guild can make a challenge. Only guilds of the same archetype can answer the challenge.

If no one accepts the challenge in one hour, the challenge ends and must be re-initiated.

If a challenge is accepted, the two aetherbubbles are joined and only members of those two guilds can enter that area.

There is a capture-the-flag type combat where each guild must 'capture' (camp) at the opposing guild's node for 20 minutes (while protecting their own, of course).

Winner gets some type of blessing for 8 hours. Neither guild can engage in another challenge for those 8 hours.

There would be some historical record keeping track of the wins or losses.

Again, I really don't think this would have any impact on PKers off-plane, just an interesting addition. Not sure I love the above idea but could be workable.

I can't help but feel that it has a lot of similarity to God Wars; one side can make a challenge, the other side has to accept or nothing happens. There's an inherent problem with that kind of structure at this point that we've seen with God Wars' implementation (yes, I know I was in favour of something like this in the past). It just appears to have been proven a poor release valve.

I kind of like the basic idea here, though I think restricting it to solely guild v guild while requiring those guilds be of the same archetype is probably far more stifling than it needs to be. Numbers of guilds of a given archetype (e.g. only 2 druid/wiccan guilds but 6 warrior guilds), and then balance issues based solely on guild (something that comes to mind is mage v mage or druid v druid being an exercise in futility/rage), etc. Could make it city v city, maybe, but that's probably a bit bigger in scope than what is wanted here. Idk. Maybe just open it up to all guilds in different org.