I would like to see a way that OOC buddies can play the game together, with less fear of arbitrary punishments (because face it, it's not really fun to play when you don't know the rules). Therefore, a suggestion on how to integrate OOC buddy groups into the game.

The basis is that all OOC buddies who play, and are not on opposing sides, has to register their OOC buddyship. If you play with people you know OOC and don't register, you get denied instantly.

Three in-game commands:

1) oocbuddy invite <character> - invites somebody to be your ooc buddy
2) oocbuddy accept <character> - accept an invitation

When you have one or more OOC buddies, you are subject to some limitations:
1) No more than 25% of your PKS can be done with your OOC buddies - if you are above that limit, you cannot group with or follow your OOC buddies, and you receive additional penalties. This does not kick in until you reach 20 pks.

2) You cannot loot more than 3 items + gold from people you kill - people playing with OOC buddies are held to a higher standard. The 3 item rule apply to your whole OOC buddy clique, so if you loot 3 items, none of your other buddies or their buddies can loot anything.

3) You take 5% more damage regardless of whether you are with your OOC friend or not. This is to compensate for the competitive advantages you get by having OOC connections. If you go above 25% PKS with your OOC friends, you start taking even more damage (say, 3% more damage for each % of PKs with OOC buddies above 25%)

4) You cannot improve skills when fighting/casting on an OOC buddy.

As more ways of being douchebags become apparent, more restrictions can be added to the framework. Also a general rule not to be a douchebag and that you will be held to a somewhat higher standard. Imms can of course still manually intervene and apply the above rule as they see fit when the hardcoded restrictions are not sufficient.

What do you think? IMHO it would:
1) Reduce the need for manual punishments
2) Make it more fun/viable for friends to play together
3) Reduce the vagueness of the rules
edit: 4) Make it much easier for imms to know which players to monitor for permagrouping etc. It could also be used to crossreference IP:s of old known permas to see if they neglect registering their buddyship.

The thing is, nobody says you can't play with ooc buddies. You just can't create an unfair advantage by using ooc methods.

There is a difference. We get plenty of prayers, notes, communications etc. where players will tell us in advance about their wanting to play together. We make a note of it and allow it to happen.

As long as they aren't making a combination or group to create a specific unfair advantage and abuse it, it's all good.

This is so much easier to do than creating another way for those who want the unfair advantage to try and "break the code".

For instance, a few friends want to play battleragers. That's easy because just by being a rager, you will get slapped for breaking their code long before an ooc ring is realized.

On the other hand, 3 guys want to do the necro,thief and bard trio for the purpose of ganging down the Fortress. That's something that would get the boot. That's not something that is going to be okayed before hand.

I don't think more coding is going to fix any problems of being lame that common sense can fix naturally.