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

[Ling]

On Mon, 16 Mar 1998, Jon A. Lambert wrote:

> Nod.  I think this should be coded around and then justified in 
> theme.  For instance the shopkeeper problem can be approached many
> ways and here's my brief list from least to most desireable.

[various systems of enforcement snipped]

> 2) Make shopkeepers much more powerful than any player or group of 
> players.

I did like one system where certain safe area (pubs) had bouncers employed
to throw out troublemakers.  He is not ridiculously hard but he isn't
worth much exp and no equipment.  A pker wanting to remove safe areas has
the option to do so...  Just have to be determined. 

> Outside of in-game mechanics, there are wide areas of communication 
> activities that are open to abuse that I don't believe can be coded
> against, such as 'gossip', 'tell', 'emote', etc.  

I think the best method to stop OOC behaviour is code in channels
especially for OOC communications, no IC allowed (exact opposite of
current thinking).  There are times when running around on my own in a mud
with a hundred other players, drives me mad.  It would be handy to
communicate, even just to talk about the weather.

> Unless you willing to go the distance and parse speech for spelling 
> and grammatical errors, or lists of offensive words and phrases like 
> 'spice girls', 'players rights', 'titanic', etc. and provide suitable 
> punishment for such criminal use of speech. ;) 

Believe it or not, DartMUD II/Accursed lands actually has an ooc daemon
which will spot words like 'unix' and use some strange IC method called
black blood to punish players.  It also has a translator which muddles
everything you say into some awful Shakespeare dialect in the name of
maintaining an RP environment.  (yet some rp by altering their speech)

Accursed lands - <URL:telnet://accursed.org:8000>

  |    Ling Lo of Remora (Top Banana)
_O_O_  Elec Eng Dept, Loughborough University, UK.     kllo at iee.org