There's nothing stopping anyone from selling cl_guid's though. In theory you could set up a server (or servers) that only allow access from guid's that you have sold. This is a similar to what commercial game companies do with CD Keys (guids are ususally generated from CD Keys). The problem lies in the fact that nobody would buy a cl_guid when they can play on other servers for free.
I think enough people would pay 10 bucks to be in the 'non-griefer club' to make it worthwhile for someone to set up some kind of sysem like that. That said, I doubt enough people would sign up to it to make up the numbers for decent games on the protected server(s).
So, to make up the numbers and secure from griefers, maybe make the server open to the public, but sell certain admin rights for $10?
Screw that, I would rather play on a server where several people were given admin rights out of trust, as opposed to because they've got 10 bucks. So yeah, tjw is right, and the problem is mostly limited to 'unpoliced' public servers anyway.
On a bit of a tangent, speaking of trust reminded me of something...
I've been working on a game where the potential for griefing is even higher than it is in tremulous. Imagine that for every kill as a human you get 100 personal credits, but you also create 100 team credits, and turrets / armory etc. cost team credits to build... Who can spend these team credits?
We worked out a trust & ranking system that is extremely simple to use and it seems to work exceptionally well - in theory. Our game isn't finished, so it hasn't been tested, but this system could be worth mentioning here.
Basically, everyone has the option to nominate one person that they trust for that round, that person gets 'trust points' and if they too have nominated someone else as trustworthy, their nominee gets even more points for being trusted by a trusted player. This passes 'upline' through 3 levels, until everyone who participates in the system is given one of 7 ranks, and one or more players is given commander priviledges. The sysem is dynamic such that as players join and leave, or change their trusted nominee, the player ranks and the team commander will change. A clan or an organised group can easily setup their nominees so that everyone gets commander priviledges, or whatever rank structure they prefer.
The team commander is given full game admin rights for their team for that game, as well as limited server admin rights such as kick and mute, up to a ban from that team for that round only.
By "game admin rights" I mean a team's commander has all sorts of crazy powerful controls. To put it in a tremulous context, he could do things like designate one or two deconstructors, reshuffle the spawn queue, remove access for certain players to the construction kit or certain weapons from the armory, even shift credits from one player to another.
I'm not suggesting this system for tremulous, so much as trying to show that there ARE methods available for crippling griefers without crippling the gameplay.
Anyway, if you're at all interested in the workings of this rank allocation system we devised,
this flash file demonstrates it in action.
