[MUD-Dev] Guilds & Politics [was Affecting the World]

[Derrick Jones]

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On Mon, 8 Dec 1997, Vadim Tkachenko wrote:
> First of all, I want to state clearly that I'm not a fan of pkilling,
> and I know what is a MU* harrasment (a close friend of mine, a girl, was
> a victim - and that wasn't even the MUD, that was just a talker).

I'd like to add the disclaimer that I have left pk in my design.  Seems
that no one to be on the recieving end of a pk, but so many want to have
the option of being on the dealing end of it...

> 
> Now, let's try to look at the problem from the different angle.
> 
> Can somebody explain to me why
> - it's perfectly normal for a MUD player to go hunting after rats,
> rabbits, squirrels, hoblins, dragons, you name it;
> - it's not pleasant, but it's still OK to be killed by a monster (even
> the squirrel, as it was mentioned before)
> - but your hearth is broken and you're about to cry out loud in despair
> when the real player kills you?
> 
> I've been there, and that was my state of mind, too, so I've tried to
> analyze that from a psychological point of view.
> 
> My answer seems to be - this is your own ego popping out from the ears
> of your (not _your_, Marian, abstract 'your') character.
[snip]

Yes, its a big ego smasher to get pk'ed.  Some other player working
against the same odds has manages to get 'better' than you in the game.
Not only that, they have decided to rub your face in it by killing you.

Think of the damage caused to the player/character in each case.  On a
non-perma-death mud, a mobile kills you, you sprint back to the room, pick
up your old gear, and start again where you left off (after a bit of work
to regain whatever you lost as a death penalty).  Even on a Perma-Death
mud, you can *eventually* get back to how you were before being killed.
The time to re-coup is just longer.

But when you're pk'ed, you have the normal death penalties, the there are
also social penalties.  In almost every design, groups of players working
together a much more effective than individual players (a Good Thing if
you ask me).  A pk victem (doesn't need to be pk, could be any harm caused
by other players) is hampered in that they are less able to function well
in groups of other players (You have to watch your back, can't trust a
random group) and will never fully recover the socialization level prior
to the attack.  New players are especially vulerable to this harm (their
characters are typically weak, and they don't have knowledge of the
playerbase), and tend to leave if it persists.

> There is a remedy, though.
[remedy to the psycoloical difference between being mob-killed and pk'ed]

> I believe that if you wouldn't know WHAT exactly has killed you, it
> would be much easier to go with. In other words, you just can't
> differentiate the monster/NPC from the different player, nothing
> personal will be left.

This is no small task.  Especially in most designs where all of the
players are humanoids, and the vast majority of target creatures are not.
Players quickly learn the 'normal' NPCs in each area, and characters
typically stand out as they wander much more than any normal mobile
should.  Imagine a hack-N-slash mud where all the mobiles ran around
speedwalking and killing a buch of stuff, then recalling before repeating
the process somewhere else.  Imagine the sheer spam in town when every
creature decides to recall.  Roleplay muds would be virtually impossible,
unless you manage to pass the Turing test for mob AI.

> So, I strip all the personal information from the players until they get
> powerful enough to overcome the initial kill'em all syndrome (BTW, can
> you tell me - is my assumption right that the more experienced player
> is, the less chance [s]he behaves like jerk?).

Yes and no.  If you sample players after, say, 1 hour of play-time, you'll
get a fair approximation of the percentage of jerks logging on.  This
gives them enough time to establish a bit of confidence, and allows them
to begin to influence (harass) other players.  Hopefully, the jerks in the
group are quickly weeded out (deleted, banned, or set to 'walk a strait
line').  Experienced players know what is and is not accepted/expected
from the playerbase, and if they are unwilling to work within the social
mores of your virtual world, they typically get frustrated and leave.
I've found, however, that simply denying players abusable powers until
they have met certain requirements (on-line time, level, etc) simply
pushes back the envelope of how long it takes jerks to surface.  Also, the
influence of these characters is generaly larger than the 1-hour jerks,
and any punishments upon them will cause long-lasting ripples in the
playerbase.  One thing that would be prevented, however, would be people
creating new characters simply to be jerks, as abuse of powers generaly
involves the risk of a greater inevestment (purging a character with 1000
hours of on-line time is a serious threat, and many players will behave
under this threat.)

[snip]
> Also, I think that the idea about muting the offender is excellent, the
> only thing I'd add to it that I'd strip the offender from his/her body
> and give them, say, a rat's one. In other words, be prepared for others
> do treat you as you've treated them before.

There comes a point in which the player would be better off losing
whatever 'soul points' he has accumulated, and restarting.  Turning
someone into a rat may simply be a dramatic way to purge them back to
start-up abilities.
[snip rest]

Derrick

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