[MUD-Dev] The Virtual Ecology

[Albert]

At 08:34 PM 7/23/99 -0700, Ilya wrote:
>On Fri, 23 Jul 1999 16:22:21 -0400, Jp Calderone wrote:
>
>))Tony Wilkinson wrote:

<snip>

>Allow players to move things to extinction, but let the effects be perhaps
>a little less subtle, and a little more immediate, than they might be in the
>real world.  Most things in these games are less subtle and more immediate
>anyway, so the idea fits right in I'd say.

How about creating a group of mobs that feed on said species. As the species
grow low in count, the bigger mobs will start feeding on other things, like
players. Ideally, there would be perm-death and the mobs would have insanely
large statistics. I really have no clue how you'd go about modeling this,
however.

>I think it's fair to say that experience systems could profit from
>being made broader than fight/kill/grow/repeat anyway, so make sure there
>are plenty of other rewarding possibilities for things to do.

In my opinion, a truly effective ecosystem must take into account the players,
and this is its single greatest downfall. Put simply, you can not predict what
the players will do. If you design an elaborate ecosystem that works
perfectly,
chances are the players will adapt and abuse it, therefore forcing you to
rebalance everything again.

>In short, I think the system can be made to be at least somewhat self
>correcting.  This may mean that the self-correction includes starvation
>for the playing community!  Of course this may mean the person who learns
>animal husbandry and starts to raise a tiny flock in relative safety and
>obscurity might make some _really_ powerful friends and get rich along
>the way.

--
Albert Yi (thecheezeman at earthlink.net)
http://conceptual.virtualave.net



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