[MUD-Dev] Commercial value of RP

[Koster]

On Thursday, January 08, 1998 5:27 PM, Travis 
Casey[SMTP:efindel at polaris.net] wrote:

>  - Remember that players will do what they're rewarded for doing. 
 On a
>    mud in which the best rewards are available by killing monsters, 
players
>    will kill monsters.  If the best rewards are available by killing 
other
>    players' characters, the players will do so.  This is really the 
last
>    point taking a different form -- if players can choose their own 
goals,
>    but can only be rewarded for a few of the possible goals, the 
choice
>    becomes somewhat moot.

One pitfall here is that in any system where you can kill both 
monsters and players, players will *always* be more rewarding. They 
will have more smarts, an excellent level of challenge to them, a wide 
selection of potential targets, and likely, a greater diversity and 
greater quantity of treasure, rewards, goodies, etc. I find this to be 
axiomatic. The question is how much *risk* they offer, and how much 
other penalty the killer may accrue for his actions. But in a flat 
choice, which is more rewarding "before taxes" I believe players 
always win, hands down.

>    [Aside:  this is why I like advance-through-use skill systems. 
 They
>    allow the player to choose goals (which, if any, skills they want 
their
>    characters to be good at) and reward them for pursuing those 
goals
>    (advance the skills which the character uses most often).]

A note here is that skill systems are notoriously difficult to 
balance, and thus end up with "ideal combos"--the better the skill 
system is, the more of them it has, until there are enough that you 
can't call any single one the "ideal." A phenomenon worth mentioning 
there is the "accepted wisdom" trap many players fall into with 
skill-based systems, whereby everyone thinks there is actually only 
one ideal combo, when in fact there are many. It can be damnably 
difficult to get variety when the game culture suggests there isn't 
any!

>  - Lead by example.  Create one or more characters of your own and 
roleplay
>    it/them on the mud.

The larger the scale of the game, the more difficult it is to do this, 
btw.

-Raph