[MUD-Dev] players who "take away from the game"

[Daniel James]

msew wrote:
> 0) what are disruptive players?
> 1) what do you do with disruptive players?
> 2) why do disruptive players appear/blossom?

I want to dodge the questions to, perhaps needlessly, point out
that the often 'disruptive' players are your best players,
because they generate controversy, activity and spectacle for
everyone else. I can think of a few people who we came close
to banning from Avalon, but didn't because they created such
incredible emotion and gameplay for other players. Admittedly
Avalon thrived for a while on a more confrontational approach
than I or many others find palatable.

Rather than banning such folk, the issue is channeling them
into 'constructive' (which is sometimes destructive) activity.

But there is a difficult line with abusive behaviour, particularly
for commercial operators who need to watch their terms of service
and vanishing customers.

Banning very annoying and unpleasant players is a reasonble
option, and probably more straightforward than an 'ignore' button
or temporary suspension. An advantage to a retail client is that
the unique CD-id can be banned, unlike most dynamic IP's. I like
shrubs, we had stone figures in Avalon, they couldn't even rustle.
Muting without notification and the log of behaviour Raph mentioned
are essentials.

A player empowered solution is more elegant, not least from the point of
view of reducing customer service costs/volunteer GM time, but hard to
implement in a 'fair' manner.

Very often I think MUD's foster disruptive instincts because of
anonymity and lack of consequences to actions. In Middle-earth
we were hoping to address the latter, at least somewhat, with
permanent death.

Most of this 5-10% are boys with bad attitude, however, and I am
less and less interested in trying to appeal to these guys. A
more mature audience seems a lot more attractive all round.


cheers et salut


Daniel, at last subscribed to MUD-Dev

Give deceased games a decent burial, at the nascent
http://thecan.org/





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