[DGD] Pet peeves for users in a MUD

[Shentino]

On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 6:30 AM, Dread Quixadhal <quixadhal at chartermi.net>wrote:

> Heh, while I don't object to adult content...  I find many places
> throw it in just to have it there, much like the movie industry.  The
> problem isn't the adult content, it's the bad writing and lack of
> purpose for the elements that are present.


Indeed.

Also, proper segregation is a must whenever you have the potential for
minors to be present.  That is unfortunately a case where censorship is a
necessary evil.


> As for death... that's either an oversight on their part, or possibly
> a stupid decision.  You should ALWAYS be able to quit, no matter what.
> That's simply rule #1, because they can't stop you from dropping your
> link, so providing a command that always lets you disconnect in a
> controlled manner is vital.


In this particular mud, "disconnect" is not a valid command when you are a
ghost, but it is automatically executed when you go linkdead...but if you're
a ghost and you lose connection...the last "command" the mud sees from you
will be a syntax error, and then suddenly you're gone, so um...what happens?

My own mud uses rent, and so quitting out in the middle of nowhere
> will penalize you by dropping your equipment -- but you can still do
> it.


This also covers linkdeath I presume.

Personally I think that, unless you are in a realtime situation like active
combat, you should not be penalized for a situation that might not be your
fault, unless it can be proven to some degree that your quitting is
habitual, and thus evidence that you are either unlucky, or you are trying
to exploit linkdeath, both of which are Good Reasons not to take pains to be
generous.

What I'm thinking of doing is having special portals scattered about, that
only members of the "player's guild" are allowed to use, and as a special
rule, you must be calm to enter.  If you have a positive adrenaline score
from a battle or any other case where sudden quits are exploitable, you
aren't allowed to use the portal.  Your adrenaline would also be kept a bit
high if you're in danger.

I generally would treat "portals to OOC land" the same way any decent single
player RPG maker would treat save points.  In a safe place, away from creepy
crawlies, and relatively noticeable.  Inns would make good places.

One thing I would never enjoy doing is penalizing a player for isolated
connection farts.  What I'm thinking of is creating a mobile specifically to
manage characters whose players are offline (either by accident or design).

This "linkdead AI" would be active at any point the character is in IC land,
but whose player is offline.  It's job would be to control the PC in a
reasonable manner.I remember KaViR discussing something like this on his
site (before his domain was sadly swiped by spammers).

Reasonable, of course, is relative, and would probably need to factor in a
few things, such as perhaps your experience, learned data from how you fight
or move, and perhaps some stats or skills like intelligence or tactical, and
last but not least, probably soemthing that takes into account how prone you
are to disconnect.

Which brings me to another idea I just thought of...the "connection
balance", that would act as an account of "connection funds".   If you
wanted to quit while IC, you would need to spend some of this to hire the
linkdeath ai to get your PC home.  You'd get a steady, continuous deposit
for your IC time (even if you yourself are offline).  Sorta like the system
paying you to roleplay.

Here's the fun part.  If you "overdraft" and your "check" bounces, Bad
Things will start happening.  The linkdeath AI would go on strike, with a
severity that depends on how far in debt you are.  Minor overages could
cause you to delay, drop some stuff, or otherwise make your PC's departure
for OOC land less than smooth.  In extreme cases, the linkdeath AI may
simply quit and leave your character vulnerable to attack until you've
earned enough to pay it to take the PC home, and you're SOL if a monster
comes along and attacks you in the meantime.

If you reconnect quickly, there's less opportunity for Bad Things to happen,
and you will likely reconnect quickly if your connection farted, and in the
process you won't need to have the linkdeath AI on duty for very long,
saving you from paying too much to it in wages.  The few seconds the AI is
on duty won't cost very much.

If, however, you are gone for awhile, then you are either SOL connectivity
wise, or you are deliberately staying offline, and the linkdeath AI realizes
that it's time to go to work, deciding how helpful to be depending on how
much it is paid out of your "connectivity bank account".  The more of a
credit balance you have, the more you can spend, and the better your
character will fare in your absence.  Be a wastrel and make a habit of
abusing things, and you won't be able to pay the linkdeath AI enough to do a
good job at taking care of things while you're offline.

Expensive operations in terms of being billed by the linkdeath AI would
include going home, neutralizing adrenaline levels, escaping from combat at
above-normal skill levels, and other things that a linkdead player would
like his character to benefit from.

This is just an idea kicking around in my noggin, but thus far I haven't
found any problems with it.


> In my opinion, you should be able to do anything OOC regardless of

your character state (excepting being frozen/silenced by an admin).


I agree wholeheartedly...especially in cases, like in Kotaka/Ulario, where
you have multiple characters under one account, and any one of them (or
maybe even none at all!) could be considered "you" depending on which one,
if any, is active.

I recently came to this conclusion after reading one of skotos's articles on
the subject.

The fact that both Phantasmal and Kotaka have alpha-stage plans to allow
single-player/multi-character serves to complicate things a bit on this
subject.