[MUD-Dev] Re: WIRED: Kilers have more fun

[S. Patrick Gallaty]

-----Original Message-----
From: Koster, Raph <rkoster at origin.ea.com>
To: 'mud-dev at kanga.nu' <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Date: Tuesday, 07 July, 1998 11:10
Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: WIRED: Kilers have more fun
[]
>Just for the record, UO does in fact now have good-vs-evil distinct from
>pkillers. However, we don't have players judging those "gray cases"
>simply because the manpower load is way way way too high. So we coded in
>some recognition of the concept of "self-defense" that your wife notes,


Raph, do you think the UO system is too forgiving to antisocial behaviour
to provide the sort of restraints that are ideal?

In another system I've seen doing antisocial things like stealing
would earn you permanent persona non grata status, like a
permanent criminal flag until you performed a quest to clear the
criminal flag.

If you murdered someone you were a permanent 'murderer' until you
performed an even bigger quest (sacrificing a rare treasure).

In one case you got three murders to accumulate until you were
considered a 'Murderer' and suffered greater penalties at death
(you basically went to hell and had to escape butt naked :)

The clever thing was that the items that you had to sacrifice were rare
enough that one usually relied on a stranger giving the item to you -
in other words it had a social context.

It seems that adding a warning to the other players would benefit
people as it would infer a social cost for antisocial behaviour.

>and we made it a five kill buffer zone, and now very few people cross
>the line into "pkiller" accidentally. (Instead, what happens is that a
>killer tricks them into being the aggressor, so his murder is allowed
>under "self-defense" rules... ah well, no system is perfect...) We rely
>on the administrators now only for cases of harassment, which I don't
>think code is ever gonna be able to judge.
>

One thing I don't understand about the UO system - it's very forgiving.
A career thief will be 'blue' to people in general even if they steal all
the time...


>-Raph, who is mourning Dani Berry :(
>
>--
>MUD-Dev: Advancing an unrealised future.
>
>