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

[Matt Chatterley]

On Wed, 18 Mar 1998, Jon A. Lambert wrote:
> On 17 Mar 98 at 7:14, Ling wrote:
> > On Mon, 16 Mar 1998, Jon A. Lambert wrote:
> > 
> > > 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.

A side note: OOC/IC handling and behavior patterns used to be a pet
subject of mine (for a couple of years), while I was in the RP-orientated
game circuit. The approach Ling mentions is a good step forwards - if you
try to STOP players from communicating OOCly, they'll defy you far more
strongly. If you give them good LEGAL ways to do so, they'll be slightly
more appreciative (in the loosest meaning).
 
> A caveat to communications:  I believe you can (and should) code 
> around "mechanical" abuses of a communications system.  Things like 
> spamming a player into the oblivion of mud link-death should be 
> grokked.  A method of ignoring or suspending all or partial 
> communications should be available for a user.

IMHO, a player using the mud to spam someone else is effectively
committing a DoS-type attack (against the mud, or against the other
player, based on your view). I've taken measures to prevent it (but I know
there are ways they might be circumvented, and they may lead to huge
inefficiencies and thus have to be removed - unknown at this time).
Communications will also be logged (perhaps by random sampling rather than
continuously), and we will be operating on a three strike system.
Something like:

1st strike: Suspension of playing privaleges for <xyz period of time>
2nd strike: Deletion of character(s) used to <attack>
3rd strike: Deletion of game account, notes made against login site, and
if the attacks were malicious and captured on log, those log segments will
be sent to the appropriate site admin.

The game will be using email-based registration (Yahoo, NotMail, etc do
not count), and all players will be under the understanding that anything
can and will be logged.
 
> My game will have strong separation of user and character.  You 
> would log in as "Ling" and be taken to an OOC area and then upon 
> entering the game you enter the IC area as your character, be it 
> "Ming the merciless", "Conan", "Barbarella", etc. or all three 
> characters at the same time or various in-game NPCs if you desire.  
> While in the game there are no OOC channels.  There's no telling 
> who is playing any given character.  You may even share a character
> with friends or even make the character publicly available.  

Very, very, very interesting ideas. :) I plan on 'login accounts' for
players so they can have a name they are used to for actual logins, then
select a character - I may put in 'character transfer' between accounts.
Heh. However, you cannot communicate beyond mail/news while in account
mode - you must transfer to an actual character.
  
> > 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>
> 
> Lovely.  I really like this.  :)

It's interesting, but not how I would like to run an RP environment.

[Snip rest]

--
Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
Spod: http://user.super.net.uk/~neddy/spod/spod.html