[MUD-Dev] Balancing Addicts -> soft vs. hard enforcement

[cimri]

Ling <K.L.Lo-94 at student.lboro.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 15 Mar 1998, Justin McKinnerney wrote:
> This caught my attention...
> 
> [snippered]
> 
> > The first, and most common for any out-of-the-box mud, is to make some of
> > the areas level restricted.
> 
> [snipped]
<snippage>
> Alternatively, instead of using an artificial 'hard' enforcement.  The
> exp/coinage/equip worth from creatures could be lowered according to some
> formula (even down to zero).  This 'soft' enforcement would prompt 
 
<snippage>
>   |    Ling Lo of Remora (Top Banana)
> _O_O_  Elec Eng Dept, Loughborough University, UK.     kllo at iee.org

I am so glad to see someone mentioning this question for which I've
never had a name, but which I've often though of over the years.

[Begging the question briefly of whether I've committed some sort of
mud-dev group faux pas by culling out only one subtopic from this
thread and following on, I'll just jump right in.]

Summary--I've often thought that if you don't want your players able to
do something, then make it impossible, or highly unpleasant, or boring,
or unprofitable: but don't use out-of-game-system sanctions (pfile wipe,
freezing, etc) with reasonable exceptions for functional defects or
real-world illegal activity.

I've seen no end of muds where some behavior was undesired by the
admins, and so they put up a message on a noteboard and/or in the
text you see at login/connect time, and threaten dire consequences.

"No more killing of shopkeepers!"  "No teleporting of aggressive
monsters to areas frequented by newbies!" are two examples that come
to mind.

It always ends up with sore feelings, misunderstandings, and pain
on the part of players and admins alike.  "But I didn't know!"
"You did too!  You're site-banned!" etc.

I think if you _can_ do it in a mud, then you should be allowed to
do it (with the possible temporary exceptions for functional defects).
And admins should discourage or prevent undesired behavior by making
it boring, or unprofitable, or unpleasant, or even impossible to do
by putting special cases in the code to handle it.

Seems like it would make mud-living a lot more pleasant.

Jay // Cimri