[MUD-Dev] Life

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <Marcel-1.09-0529232631-b49Ky&5 at Gryphon.iaehv.nl>, on 05/29/97 
   at 07:50 PM, Marian Griffith <gryphon at iaehv.nl> said:

>On Wed 28 May, clawrenc at cup.hp.com wrote:
>> In <3.0.32.19970527122035.00acea0c at mail.tenetwork.com>, on 05/27/97 
>>    at 08:38 PM, Jeff Kesselman <jeffk at tenetwork.com> said:

>> >HOWEVER there is a social problem in obnoxsious players online purposely
>> >trying to hurt other players by killing their characters for no good
>> >Rp reason at all. 

>> If you don't consider the violation of "true RP" a problem, then this
>> is less of a problem.  If you're not attempting to run (or enforce) a
>> solely immersive RP game, then I can see little reason to get upset at
>> the "for no good Rp reason at all."

>I don't belief you can get out of this very real concern by saying
>that if you don't consider it a problem it isn't. There are some
>people who don't want to play at all. 

Rephrase that to: "...don't want to roleplay at all."

>They want power, in a petty
>way. The classical bully who can't contribute anything but misery for
>others. If the object of the game is roleplaying then that assumes a
>certain cooperative attitude of the players. 

If the violation of RP is not a problem (and thus the implicit trust
and cooperation you describe), then the killing is _less_ of a
problem. 

I am not arguing that the problem does not exist, but arguing with
JeffK's concentration on a specific and rather specialised
value-judgement on the killing and making it the only point of
evaluation for the game.  His position is only maintainable if you
accept his evaluation of the RP aspects of the game, and the RP
integrity of the game as being primary.  If you devalue the RP, for
instance my moving towards a more "powergamer" centric game, then the
problem as described fades in proportion.  There is a sliding scale
here, an axis if you wish, against which games and game actions can be
measured.  

The exact point of my argument is that there is an implicit value
structure and unstated standard which is being used here to evaluate
and judge games and game designs/approaches -- in this case centric on
immersive RP.  While I don't argue the validity of that structure and
standard, I strenuously object to its being assumed as the default in
discussion, or that assumption being implicit within a general non-RP
specific (as a tag for the assumption) discussion.  Additionally to
the extent to which it becomes implicit it acutally violates the list
charter which is to be explicitly free of such base assumptions and
private hobby horses.  The whole idea of the list is to move the
MUDding _field_ forward, not to merely advance RP'ing as one faction
over another, or even to change the balance of the field.  

<arch eyebrows>  <wander off distractedly>

>You have to do something about those players who don't want to play
>even by this minimum of courtesy. Or worse, who enjoy upsetting
>others for the power it gives over their emotions. Just saying that
>well, you can kill the .... and that's it won't work. At least not
>all the way.

Agreed, and here we get into the problems of bad game design.  It is
difficult to implement free PK in a system without having to rework
much of the rest of the system design to accomodate.  It definitely is
*not* a bolt-on in a design sense.

What I would like to see is constructive discussion of the game design
issues on how to approach free PK in such a manner that the rest of
the game remains balanced and slaughter-fests can be constrained.

Again, I attempt to handle this one via the side-effects of my other
design decisions.  

  I don't have a global naming system.  Thus a PK'er can't do a "who",
and then track down the victim.  Instead they must first locate the
other player without any implicit way to differentiate them from a
mobile (there is no command which will return, "this is a mobile" as
vs "this is a player body").  Then, ocne they have found them they
must assign a name to them (body specific, not character specific),
and then track them down from there.

  Characters are not bound to their bodies.  Thus a PK'er has no real
in-game way of associating a character with a specific other player. 
They may be able to tell from listening to the character talk/tell
etc, but then that only applies to that one body, and once that body
is dead they are back to square one.

  Additionally as bodies are a fairly fluid thing, killing a
character's body typically has little permanent effect on the
character.  He has other bodies, or can easily get other bodies.  It
is an incovenience and a disruption of the current action.

  {Possible new feature}  If I do this, upon a PK the dead character
becomes attached to the PK'er as a partial owner.  This places the
PK'er at increasing risk as the numbers of PKs increases.  Actually,
with the fuid state of bodies this is not necessarily such a problem: 
A PK'er could pick up a second, third, fourth, or umpty-fifth body,
run about on a killing spree, let the body get killed and actually
engender no ill effects upon himself as a character.

The general side-effect I've concentrated on is to render individual
PK's as inconvenient but not catastrophic to a player, and to then
ensure that concerted or sustained attacks by a PK'er on an individual
other player is technically both not feasible and almost impossible to
sustain.  What this leaves is the player who goes on a PK spree,
killing eveyrthing he can find.  That is again diminished by
effectively ensuring that that body will be short lived, and having
none of that game-specific advantages accrued from the PK spree
reflect on that character's other bodies.  As such its reduced to
annoying flash in the pan.  

>... My
>viewpoint in this may be different from that of the average player
>but for me being attacked (or otherwise harassed) by another -player-
>is emotionally very upsetting.

And here is where the out-of-game values start to apply.  I'm very
leery of treading in these areas as I suspect that a game system both
has no right to be there (and definitely no obligation or duty), and
more simply because they involve factors which are entirely outside of
the game system and cannot be either measured or controllably affected
by the game system.  Too much chaos.

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...