(subject missing)

[J C Lawrence]

On Sat, 14 Mar 1998 01:01:29 GMT claw at under.engr.sgi.com wrote:

> <<Jay/Cimri has been invited to the list, but I haven't checked yet
> to see if he's a member yet>>

Lo!

> From: cimri <cimri1 at gte.net> Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
> Subject: Varying Time Commitment Levels: what's an admin to do?
> Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 15:27:33 -0800

> What do you do, or should you do, if anything, about the people who
> can play 10-15 hours every day vs those who can spend maybe 1-2
> hours a day playing your MUD?

Nothing.

> I've been thinking about this for some time, as I would bet many of
> the thoughtful post-ers have in this group.  A recent posting by
> "Matt" <mcowley at netutah.net> reminded me of this.  He wanted to be
> able to play sometimes in an environment where a full-time
> commitment was not required to enjoy his mudding experience, though
> he had played several places where it WAS required, and it took a
> lot out of him, etc.

There are several separate but hidden questions here:

  1) How dependant is enjoyable game play dependent on up-to-date
(and presumably extensive) knowledge of the game?  The sub-question of 
course is how rapidly could that data be acquired by an expert player
joining the game after an extended absence.

  2) How dependent is enjoyable game play on general expertise which
is re-usable from session to session if if widely spread in time?  The 
sub-question is how long is required of any single playing session to
acquire the necessary expertise for the current game/character/play
level (ie a base game time granularity).

  3) How dependent is enjoyable game play on comparative progress
(assuming a goal-based game) with other players who started at similar
times to you?  (eg directly competitive)

Note: This entire area of question would seem inapplicable for
non-goal-based games.  Perhaps our RP contingent <kof> could comment?

Games whose universe or other fundamentsls are regularly morphing, as
may be found on many of the game types discussed here (eg persistant
universe with emergent and rapidly evolving universe rules) would be
difficult if not impossible to play without very regular and frequent
play/updates.  



> Anyway, I'm throwing the general questions out to the group, with my
> own preliminary thoughts:

> 1. muds tend to reward activity of some kind with something (exp,
> levels, eq, knowledge, powers, skills, whatever) 

Note: You are assuming goal-oriented games.

> 2. generally speaking, the more time you spend, the more of these
> goodies you get 3. so, people who play more often, or longer get
> more goodies

True.  Were this not to be true, the ROI (Return-On-Investment) for
time would be missing.  

Certainly a game could be crafted which mandated a maximum gain per X
units of RL time (eg levels gained per day or some such).  But this
enforced granularity really doesn't change the equation or the
perceived problem.  It merely spreads it over time, and makes the
"enjoyable" time requirement mechanically predictable which latter is
likely a Bad Thing:

  For a GoP'er (Cimri: See list FAQ (Ling: Please post one directly to
him (Goal-oriented-Player))) this would equate to the challenge of
determining the minimum rime and effort route to achieving the
allowable gain: log in, run about madly for 30 minutes, and you're
done for the day.  Arguably, and likely not the social effect wanted.
The other end of this effect is that it tends to encourage the, "gotta
logon to get my daily 'fix' of XP for the day..."

> Now this is, in and of itself, not necessarily a problem, but

> 4. what about the disaffection that results when one maladroit /
> misanthrope plays 15+ hours a day and attains to a certain power and
> influence which s/he uses maliciously to make other players feel
> unpleasant, or inadequate, or whatever?

It is easy to tag the faults of the unsocial player on the lack of
time scaling of the game play.  I don't see that the two are causally
or logically related, let alone relevant to each other.

>    Yes, this can happen anyway, but it could be exaggerated by the
> frequent-flyer mudder, especially if this is not a very capable
> player who makes up for inadequate skills by huge investments of
> time.

Bartle (is someone going to invite him to the list?), writes of this
in his MUD survey as one of the benefits of perma-death.  He views the
guaranteed advancement of such plodders in non-perma-death games to be
a severe and critical fault, noting that on MUD1/MUD1 such plodders
are/were killed by other wizards as a matter of course to ensure the
technocratic purity of the wizard ranks.

Some here have said they find this elitism/deliberate-predation a Bad
Thing, or at least an Unwelcome Thing.

> 5. what about the excellent player who simply cannot put in more
> than a couple of hours one to three times a week?  in many muds this
> would mean they would never get involved in the mainstream of
> activity and could be marginalized, mistreated, etc.

Is this a problem?

  1) As the subject players have no investment (of note) in the game, can
they really be said to have anything (of note) to offer the game?

  2) Is satisfying such fickle players valuable to a game?

This is of course a scale.  It is easy to define that players who play
less than 30 minutes a week have nothing to offer those who play more
and in fact impact the game and its society negligably, and thereby
define them as ignorable cannon fodder equivalents.  However the same
scale can be logically extended to exclude those who play less than 80
hours a week...with exactly the same reasoning used.  Certainly is is
easy to envisage a game where such extended game play times, or even
more, are required for effective play (eg the Walled City in Gibson's
"Idoru").

#2 raises an interesting point from a commercial perspective.  Perhaps
Raph, Mike and company can comment here.  The commercial offerings
should (hope!) have an accurately surveyed and financially mapped average
minimum play session length with notes on where their costs break even
for those shorter play periods, and effective methods to encourage
longer play sessions.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                               Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------(*)                     Internet: claw at under.engr.sgi.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...