[MUD-Dev] Re: Affordances and social method

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On 10:12 AM 7/30/98 -0700, I personally witnessed Orion Henry jumping up to
say:
>
>In a multiplayer, build-and-conquer environment things are fun
>as long as there is competition... the fun stops as soon as there is a 
>mega powerful player or group of players that control everything... 
>If it were set up such that a small, weak group of players could 
>easily hide in the vast game-space and that sabotage and gorilla
>tactics were something that a superpower could never totally guard 
>against, then the competition could continue once a team had 
>become obsurdly powerful ( ala Empire vs. Rebellion in Starwars )

The way I'm setting this up is through parallel worlds. Basically, there
exist several not *necessarily* identical worlds (it's relatively trivial
to drastically alter the nature of reality in some or all of them), and the
players can move between them more or less at will -- although it is
relatively expensive. Such an environment makes it difficult... if not
impossible... for any small group to control more than a few of these
worlds. At any given point in time, you only have to deal with one of the
worlds, so if and when a half dozen players monopolise one of the worlds...
you can just go to another one. Certainly the "choice" worlds will be taken
over rapidly, but that will leave several others free for exploration (and
the buildup of a force sufficient to charge into that choice world and take
it back). Given a large enough number of parallel worlds, I'm planning on a
dozen or so, it becomes much easier for the game to remain fun even when a
group of dorks decides to play butthead and kick the other players around.

I consider it sort of like the "PKtown" approach in many MUDs. There are
very safe areas, very hostile areas, and other areas somewhere in between;
given the right parameters for a world, PKers will naturally gravitate to
it, and given different parameters PKers will tend to shun other worlds. If
the range of world parameters is broad enough from area to area, players
can find their own personal "niche" more easily... and over time, the
worlds no one frequents can be reconfigured on the fly in order to bring
them into parameters preferred by more players. This should end up with an
even spread of players across worlds, although statistically speaking
normal distributions don't exist.