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

[Richard Woolcock]

Koster, Raph wrote:
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Dan Shiovitz [SMTP:dbs at cs.wisc.edu]
> > Sent: Monday, June 29, 1998 12:32 PM
> > To:   'mud-dev at kanga.nu'
> > Subject:      [MUD-Dev] Re: WIRED: Kilers have more fun
> >
> > On Mon, 29 Jun 1998, Koster, Raph wrote:
> > [..]
> > > You get the idea. FWIW, in UO we used to have guards who were called
> > by
> > > players, said call heard by an NPC, were created offscreen, walked
> > to
> > > the point of the incident, announced their intention to stop the
> > fight,
> > > and attacked the two players if the fight didn't go away
> > immediately.
> > > And players ran LOOPS around 'em. So now they teleport to the guy
> > and
> > > slay 'em in one blow.
> >
> > I'm curious why this method didn't work in UO since, after all, this
> > is more or less how real-life police work. Was the problem that
> > players took advantage of magic to evade the police somehow?
> > I'm thinking of teleporting, etc .. of course, anything the players
> > can do, the NPCs should be able to do also, so there's no realism
> > problem with guards teleporting in if the players can teleport out,
> > no? Hmm. Did the guards fail to stop fights in time, perhaps? That
> > seems like another imbalance in the system, either in the combat
> > system or the magic system.
> >
> Players could outfox the guards fairly easily (the pathfind isn't THAT
> smart), never mind teleportation and other similar problems. And they
> slay in one blow because given more blows, the player can indeed
> teleport away. If your crooks can teleport away, they will do so every
> single time, making the "safety" of towns a mockery and undermining
> confidence in the administration.

Why not enable the guards to prevent teleporting?  This could be through 
something as simple as throwing a net over the target, although my mud
uses various spells such as Web, Jail of Water, Arms of the Abyss, etc
to hold people in place.

You could even make the entire town anti-magic, although I imagine this 
would result in a lot of complaints ;)

KaVir.