[MUD-Dev] Levels and Goals [was Alright..IF your gonan do

[Adam Wiggins]

> >> I guess our whole philosophy is that we'll just design a world full of
> >> interesting and engaging stuff to do and see and visist and be.  What you
> >> as a player want to do with that is completely up to you - there's no
> >> default "game", persay.
> >
> >Yup. Quite right. This is the sort of things I want to see more of out
> >there, and the sort of thing that I want to achieve. 
> 
> Okay opinion time, but from over a years worth of experiecne struggling to
> build a communtiy around a mid-designed commerical MUD...
> 
> The "Well just build a world for you" approach doiers NOT work with the
> common public. It CAN work but ONLY if you limit your user population.

Doesn't bother me.  I don't like most of what qualifies as 'the common
public' in RL, why should I like how they behave on a mud?

> A few destructive assholes will otherwise quickly define the agme as
> "ruining everyone else's fun" and go around doing just that.  meanwhile,
> everyone else will stand around confused abotu what to do, and the asshoels
> wil lend up 'dfeining" your game for you as asshole-world.  

See, I see this as less of a problem with the reduced power levels.  Usually
you can make your character buff enough that cityguards, other, lower players,
and so on don't bother you.  Thus it takes only a few assholes to ruin the
game.  If, however, it only takes a couple characters ganging up on one
character to have a reasonable chance of success, regardless of the
strength and skill of the asshole, then you can have a much more reasonable
self-regulated justice system (ie, no need for ultra-buff terminator
robots).  I'd like to think that the number of people that want to play
the game 'normally' (that is, without specifically trying to ruin it for
others) are higher than those that don't.  If this ratio ever gets exceeded,
then ya, guess I'm screwed.  In that case, I guess I can manually step
in and start delivering justice to those whose playing styles I dislike,
either with my own characters or by switching into dragons and such.

> Modern Americans at least have bad social skils and worse coping skills.
> if yo udont' structure the world for them it wil at BEST hit the level of
> caveman roileplay (which idefiend before) and the soiphistication i nplay
> of a giant game of king-of-the-hill. 

I refuse to make a game for anyone but myself.  If that means that only
I and my close friends can play it, then so be it.  I write games at work
for the idiot, Win95 using public - what I do in my spare time is going
to be a bit more ambitious.  (Not trying to sound elitist here, but I
am well aware of the large number of jerks in the world, plenty of which
know how to use computers and have too much spare time on their hands.)