[MUD-Dev] Character evolution

[Jeff Kesselman]

At 09:52 PM 8/30/97 PST8PDT, you wrote:
>
>I'm not sure if there are many kinds of harassment. In the end it all comes

<good definition deleted, thank you for it.>

I dont disagree. As you were observing I w s talkign abotu methods not goals.
I do however thing tehre are 2 basic "kinds" of absuers I have seen...

(1) Those wh oabuse the game in order to "win".
(2) Thsoe who abuse the game in order to annoy.


>I'm afraid that players will find ways to abuse game mechanisms no matter
>how much thought is poured into preventing it. The effort must be made of

Absoilutely.  The Judges arent gone from our new mdoel, but they have much
higher level tools to work with/.  Theya re no longer beat police, they are
mroe liek the helicopter patrol ;)

>

>I'm slightly opposed to something like this. Firstly because I'm not too
>certain that it is very effective  and secondly because it puts a burden
>on the victim  to take steps against being harassed.  This seems morally
>wrong to me somehow.

Hmm. I guess I feel we all shoudl be responsible to defend ourselves to the
level available to us.  I DO believe in personally responsabiltiy for both
abuser and abused.

>And yes, harassment can be direct or indirect.  Talking negatively about
>another player all the time is also a form of harassment that doesn't go
>away by muzzling.

Exceopt that it really does.  Ive used the muzzle very successfully and Ive
had charcters that were hated by lamers and verbally abused regulalrly.
ocne in awhiel someone woudl say to me "Is such and sucxh rumor true? So
and so said.."
And Ild simply say, "No, and I muzzle those idiots so I dont' have to
listen to their nonsense."  and that ALWAYS ended it.

There is no fun in bothering someone who you cant see respond, they
eventually give up and go botehr someoen mreo afraid to muzzle then me.


>I think that if more than 3 people muzzle the same player that should be
>a sign for the staff to seriously follow (snoop) that player for a time.
>Another thing that might be helpfull is to give players a limited access
>to a log command.  I.e. if somebody is harassing then the victim can log
>whatever that person says and does in his or her presence. This will not

We already have a limited log. ist onyl limietd in that its logegd on the
palyers machein so its not reliable. Or new design hs a a generic
"Complain" command that logs the last 50 lines or so of text and sends it
to the staff leader directly.  This is improtant amogn other thinsg ecbause
we have made staff "anonynmous" to users.  Thsi is to prevent cliqueishness
and cult of eprsonality problemsd that we HAVE seen happen in teh current
game.  So aplyer who has a problem with a staff member needs to dfo a
"ComplaiN". The log thats sent shows who the staffer really was.

We have a fgood deal of OTERH kidsn of trips and logs as well to watch for
other kidsn of problem behavior, but our first lien of defense here has
bveen to make every kind of behavior that we consider a serious problem
have negative in game consquences.

JK
Jeff Kesselman
Snr. Game Integration Engineer
TEN -- The Total Entertainment Network -- www.ten.net

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