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

[Michael.Willey at abnamro.com]

     ____________________Reply Separator____________________
     Subject:  [MUD-Dev] Re: WIRED: Kilers have more fun
     Author:   mud-dev at kanga.nu (J C Lawrence <claw at under.engr.sgi.com>)
     Date:          9/1/98 8:02 PM

>On Fri, 24 Jul 1998 16:08:25 -0500
>Michael Willey<Michael.Willey at abnamro.com> wrote:
>
>>   Theoretically, the point of a 'reputation system' is to
>> simulate people acquiring a reputation from the news and
>> rumors spread about their actions, right?  It makes sense
>> to track information regarding their actions somehow in
>> order to simulate reactions from NPC characters, but why
>> do players need that crutch?  Unlike NPCs, they have the
>> ability to listen to the rumor mill and make up their own
>> opinions.
>
>There are two reasons:
>
>  1) Players are not connected 24/7 and so don't have available
>the constant social feedback that defines a social context as
>well as "the word on the street".  Tracking and publishing
>this sort of data doesn't solve this problem, but does lessen
>aspects of it.

That's only partially true - Joe Player is not connected 24/7,
but, given a large enough playerbase, *players* are.  The
social feedback from the playerbase is not as omnipresent as
in RL, but it does exist.  Tracking and publishing *data* may
increase it's effects, but creating *opinion* from data should
be the job of the player, not the computer.  This seems to me
to be the primary failing of "reputation", "alignment", or
other behavior tracking systems.

>Earlier there was discussion of having descriptions and other
>generated output run thru a filter based on the experience
>line of the viewer.  Thus descriptions would be tailored to
>what the player character had experienced and seen, to the
>level of some data being supressed and other data emphasized
>due to the altered levels of importance that pertained to that
>specific character (eg warriors would notice battle scars and
>the states of weapons, tailors would notice the material used
>in clothing and details of its repair, etc).
>Thus each character would see something potentially different
>from what any other character saw of the same item, ad this
>in turn would be guaranteed different from what that character
>saw of himself.

  Exactly!  Consider Bubba and Buffy, the Duo-Bombers.  They
randomly kill people and destroy property to advance some
political movement.  By any conventional measure of morals,
they're dangerous felons.  If their identities are well-known,
then their reputation will reflect that.  But if Buffy checks
the reputation of Bubba, why would she see him as dangerous?
To her he's a hero struggling for 'the cause'.  Boffo supports
their movement, but thinks that bombings aren't the way to
achieve their goals.  In Boffo's view, they're merely misguided.
Biff lost a family member to one of these bombs.  He doesn't
care about politics, but he thinks Bubba and Buffy are evil
incarnate.

I think, however, that the only filter complex enough to
adequately process all these factors into an opinion exists
inside a player's head.  I would say that the solution lies
in assisting that filter by providing it with better data,
not in creating a new filter.