[MUD-Dev] Alright... IF your gonan do DESIESE...

[Shawn Halpenny]

coder at ibm.net wrote:

[ potential problems arising out of increasing list traffic ] 
  
> What to do?  Is it really a problem?  Suggestions and comments welcome
> either directly to me at coder at null.net or here in the list.

Although it's not a problem for me where I am right now, if I were to
forward my mail to one of a couple other accounts, it could get titchy. 
Is dumping all the message traffic into a bin and letting people pull
out what they'd like to read an option?  I'm not thinking about any
particular implementation, just thinking aloud.
 
[ getting stuck with arrows, yanking them out, dealing with the pain ]
 
> Note however, that rather than encourage players to go get stuck with
> arrows and then pull them out for the above gains, they also get a
> much bigger black mark against them for getting stuck in the first
> place.  The game will attempt to notice when you are doing extremely
> well and everything is going your way, and will bend the rules of luck
> and probability to help -- however it will also notice when things
> start to fail, and will then bend the rules against the player,
> encouraging and flat out causing him to fail more often.  This of
> course brings up the general point of causitively controlling
> probability, a generally fascinating idea which I'll discuss in
> another post.

I get positively droolly over issues involving probability (it's one of
the few things in life I've got firm, unshakeable belief in), and am
mixing a goodly bit of it into everything in my model (things like
inverse-probability regions, really nasty probabilistic disasters and
such as-of-yet nebulous stuff).  Truth be told, I don't even know
everywhere it will pop up, just that there will be a stinking lot of
it.  Thus, I'm particularly intrigued with what'll be in this other
post.

--
Shawn Halpenny

"People that are really very weird can get into sensitive
 positions and have a tremendous impact on history."
                                    - Dan Quayle