[MUD-Dev] Character evolution

[Adam Wiggins]

[Jeff K:]
> >I'm not sure if there are many kinds of harassment. In the end it all comes
> 
> 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".

Here it's difficult to define 'abuse'...I suppose it's up to the
admin.  If a clever player finds a way to gain an advantage by using
something in a way I as the coder never though of, I will applaud them.
See Nathan's example about the guy and the overheating riffles.
If they find an obvious bug (like item duping over crashes) and go nuts
with it, that's actually abuse.  I don't even mind a little of that -
I caused the bug to begin with, anyhow - but I *do* mind it when it starts
to affect the game on a large scale.  By that point the admin should
become aware of it and squash the bug as quickly as possible.
I guess I don't see bug abuse as a mortal sin, only kind of lame.

> (2) Thsoe who abuse the game in order to annoy.

Exist anyplace, anywhere, and any time where you can interact with others.
It is completely impossible to avoid these people, and that's unfortunate.
However, you can design the mechanisms in your game to make it more difficult
for these people; this is part of the reason I despise unrestricted access
to global channels, conventional 'tells', and so forth.  We've set it up
so that it's pretty difficult to annoy someone, but even if you do go
through the effort, you can only really harass one or two at a time.

> >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 ;)

'The Judges'?  Is this the admin, or some special device for supervising
the game?

> >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.

Yes.  As mentioned already, it can't be avoided.  The part that takes an
annoyance from being just that and going to harassment is when you are
powerless to stop it.  Half the reason I like to use text clients is so
that I can do things like "#gag {%1 tells you, '%2}".

> >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.

Gotta agree with that.  Annoyer-types don't enjoy themselves much when
their intended victim ignores them.

> >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.

Excellent.  Gonna have to steal that little idea, if you don't mind...
*yoink* :)

> 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.

This is ideal.  In addition, I've always liked the idea of implementing
a simple karma system, whereby someone with bad karma attracts more bad
karma, and vice versa.  There are many ways to actually distrbute the karma:
a simple, hidden system where certain actions give you negative karma, and
others give you positive, plus the admin can manually fool with your
character's karma...or slightly more interesting, one where the players
actually get a number of karma points that they can deliver each day to
people other than themselves.