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

[Adam Wiggins]

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?
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.

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).

> > 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.

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.

Adam