[MUD-Dev] The grass is always greener in the other field

[J C Lawrence]

On Thu, 16 Dec 1999 05:35:12 -0600 
Dundee  <SkeptAck at antisocial.com> wrote:

> From: J C Lawrence <claw at kanga.nu>

>> Quite.  The problem with most attempted solutions for the hoarder
>> is that they are out-of-game (eg rent) and are therefore not
>> susceptible to -in-game amnipulation.  UOL is rather unusual this
>> regard in placing them in-game (houses) which raises the
>> possibility (guarantee in UOL's case) of other's being able to
>> discover/raid the stash.

> They've really fixed that, or are real close to fixing that, as
> they could have from the start.  The home is tagged as Owned By X
> and if you aren't X, then you can't access the containers in the
> home.  

No, as this effectively removes storage containers from the game in
exactly the same manner as rent.  Once an object is in an
other-owned storage container it is effectively removed from the
game.  That's not a base address to the problem, but a retreat to a
simpler (and far cruder) model which relies on god-like abilities
being conferred on storage objects..

The base problem they are trying to solve:

  Given a container which *can* be broken into, how can adjust the
system such that macro/script kiddies can't break into any container 
with minimal effort?

Locked doors on houses were fine with percentage chances at picking
the lock -- until someone noticed that even a 0.0001% chance
requaled a ~100% given a pick-lock macro playing endlessly.

> When they allowed storing more stuff outside of the "secure
> containers" (which was a bad idea anyway, since it meant people
> stacked absolute crap floor-to-ceiling), then all that extra junk
> could be accessed, but as I understand it they've finally gotten
> round to making all the extra junk decay if it is over the
> item-limit for a particular house (i.e., not in one of the secure
> containers, which only the home owner can access).

<nod>

This makes sense of some of the complaints I've been reading.
Object decay is a godsend to game designers, and absolutely hated by
every player I've known.  Nobody likes the idea of aquiring an
object only to have it disappear on them.

--
J C Lawrence                              Internet: claw at kanga.nu
----------(*)                            Internet: coder at kanga.nu
...Honorary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...


_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev maillist  -  MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
http://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev