[MUD-Dev] Re: Affordances and social method (Was: Re: Wired Magazine...)

[Marian Griffith]

In <URL:/archives/meow?group+local.muddev> on Sat 25 Jul, Adam Wiggins wrote:
> On Fri, 24 Jul 1998, Marian Griffith wrote:

> > In <URL:/archives/meow?group+local.muddev> on Sat 11 Jul, Adam Wiggins wrote:

> > > Credit cards aren't bad if you're a commercial venture; but
> > > are you going to tell me that most people don't have more than one credit
> > > card?

> > To be very honest, by requiring a credit card you would lock out most people
> > outside the usa.  Credit cards  are not nearly so common  in the rest of the
> > world. I do not personally know anybody who has a credit card.

> Egads!  That must make it practically impossible to buy anything over the
> internet?

It does, but that is not so bad as I have yet to find something that I
would want to buy.

> And if this is the case, what is the alternative?  I have a hard time
> imagining an online game like UO processing a hundred thousand checks each
> month, although I suppose it's possible if not very practical.

At least in the Netherlands that would not be a problem.  There is a well
developed giral money transfer system. Which requires nothing but to sign
a transfer order and to post it free of charge. It can even be made auto-
matic until you stop the monthly transfer. I pay rent, electricity, water
and gas that way and never have to worry about it (as long as I make sure
I have enough money on my bank account at the beginning of each month).
The various companies involved have no worry about their money,  but even
if I pay by transfer then still the bank does most of the work, sending a
disc or something with details of all checks they processed.  The company
of course pays for that service but most prefer to do that rather than to
receive thousands of money transfer orders each month :)

> Anyhow, the same principal still stands if you're taking checks - go by
> checking account number.  In fact that would probably work better - I have
> fewer checking accounts (3) than I do credit cards (5).

Three? I only have one. My, what a strange country you live in.

> > > Ha.  IMO the best screening is that performed by story-based muds;
> > > since you have to spend a lot of time crafting a character and then
> > > getting approved by the staff, you're not going to like just throwing them
> > > away on a whim to annoy some people.  Of course, this will never work for
> > > any sort of even semi-mass-market venture; by doing this, a mud is
> > > restricting themselves to a very specific (elite?) group of players.  Of
> > > course, that's the desired effect, unless you're trying to make money.

> > I hope that the knowledge that a lost character can not -that- easily be
> > replaced would make most players more cautious  and more inclined to be-
> > have with at least a minimum of civility. No don't laugh. I can at least
> > hope can't I?

> Yes, that's the idea.  The trick is just making it so that any person who
> is new to the game can easily get a character (otherwise they will get
> frustrated and turn away before they've even begun), but at the same time
> making it involved enough that they aren't just dime a dozen.

My thought was to give each new player four or so free new bodies, to be
reclaimed with the imms if they can not get resurrected because the body
has gone missing. After that the ptb can start asking nasty questions.
One thing you would have to take care of, as maddy pointed out,  is that
new players must immediately be encapsulated in the social fabric of the
game or they would find the game unplayable.  Incidentally this may just
make it harder for rogue players to step outside that same social fabric
at a later point.

> One thing about thinking up a character history is that you can't just
> repeat the same thing over and over.  Ie, on a hack-n-slash mud, attacking
> someone and subsequently being killed by the guards may be a deterent for
> the attacker since they loose all the effort they put into building up
> their character, but they can build up another one in the exact same way
> by making a newbie and going to the same areas and killing the same
> monsters.  One cannot, however, use the same character background twice in
> a row on the same mud.

Marian
--
Yes - at last - You. I Choose you. Out of all the world,
out of all the seeking, I have found you, young sister of
my heart! You are mine and I am yours - and never again
will there be loneliness ...

Rolan Choosing Talia,
Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey