[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 ("Damion Schubert" <zjiria at texas.net>)
     Date:          9/5/98 1:43 AM

>This only works if a player has to spend some time inter-
>acting with other players before engaging in illegal/illicit
>activities.  If I can create a character and immediately
>attack other players (or do so without getting to know
>someone), there is little opportunity for any reputation,
>good or bad, to flourish.  By the time my reputation is bad,
>I've created a new character.

If new characters are ineffective killers, that becomes a
much less effective tactic.  My goal is to weed out the
occasional troublemaker who sees newbies as easy game by
changing that assumption rather than warning newbies about
him.  Diehard troublemakers fall under a different set of
rules that expects personal action from a staff member, and
player killers aren't necessarily troublemakers.

[We recruit a lesser level of staff (Enlisted staff, as
opposed to Officers) from the players to specifically deal
with harassment and troublemakers, introduce newbies to the
game, and other tasks like these.  Not only does this keep
most of the lesser problems out of our hair, it also provides
a good way to screen out applicants for higher positions.]

[SNIP Duo-Bomber example]

>Hmmmmm, I believe that reputation systems should be in
>place primarily so that the young and the gullible know not
>to take candy from certain strangers.  How you wrap this system
>in a simple, quick to identify system so that your newbies don't
>get duped by a mad bomber, get killed, and log off in
>disgust is something that would interest me very much.

That's just it:  I don't.  The young and gullible are warned
from taking candy from strangers by their elders, and
protected by limiting the numbers of strangers offering candy.
The world is still a dangerous place, and training the young
to expect everything to be simple and quick to identify is
doing them a disservice.  Sometimes they might be caught by
a mad bomber, killed, and log off in disgust.  Hopefully that
mad bomber is captured and made to pay for his crimes, thus
protecting future newbies.  I can't offer perfect protection
without completely sanitizing the game (and not even then),
so instead I search for a happy medium that satisfies by own
sense of balance.

My interest in a "reputation" system isn't to protect newbies,
but to give the same options to NPC characters, by allowing
them to maintain opinions about dangerous folk and circulate
those opinions amongst each other as rumors.  My reasoning
is that I can't stand to see notorious bandits and killers
stride boldly into town, thumb their noses at the guards and
purchase weapons and provisions from an NPC merchant, then
leave to continue their villainy.  I don't mind that the
bandits exist, but I do mind that they operate without fear
of consequences.

I see extending the system to also inform players as a useful
side-effect, not the primary purpose.  Certainly, if the
information is already being passed back and forth we might
as well let them see it, too.

[SNIP]
>True enough.  Problem is (and this is certainly true of both
>Meridian 59 and UO) that you have about 5 seconds, after
>seeing someone, to choose to run away or not.  If you can't
>parse data in 5 seconds, then your first response is to run
>away at the sight of anyone you don't know.  This may seem
>silly, but my first two weeks of UO were entirely me walking
>up to people and saying "Hi!" only to watch them bolt away
>as if I were Satan incarnate.

That does seem silly to me, and completely foreign.  I can
only guess that it's a result of the incredible difference
in scale between our operation and a UO or M59.

Stranger == Danger, and the more people in the world, the
more of them are strangers.

It seems to me that there are two directions to work in
trying to lessen social problems created by that distrust of
strangers.  The first is to reduce the amount of "strangeness"
presented by unfamiliar faces, by providing information about
them.  Reputation is obviously a good example of this.  The
other direction is to decrease the amount of danger that a
stranger represents.  An idea in this direction:

Many cultures value hospitality to strangers, and myths from
all over the world follow the formula of the "mysterious
stranger" who turns out to be a deity or servant thereof in
disguise.  Those who show hospitality are rewarded, and those
who do not are punished.