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

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Fri, 5 Nov 1999, Daniel James wrote:

> 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.

Yes, I agree (and I'm probably one of the people you wanted to ban from
Avalon way back when), but I don't see confrontational or
controversy-generating players as disruptive players. As someone
mentioned, if the focus of your game is confrontation then confrontational
players are not disruptive players, as long as they keep within whatever
implied or explicit boundaries you have decided constitute the outer
limits of appropriate behavior.


> 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.

Too right. Someone mentioned earlier that we should just work on trying to
accomodate them, but I disagree. I've found that THE most effective way to
discourage these players is to establish, as admins/Gods, an atmosphere
where maturity is respected by the player base and immaturity is not
respected and is, in fact, completely scorned. We work very hard as
in-role Gods and ooc admins to set standards for mature behavior, and it
works very well in my opinion. It does drain admin resources obviously,
but I think it's worth it. We get the occassional problem player, but
really, we are fairly disruptive-player-free compared to most games I've
seen. Being a pay game helps of course, as the 15 year old boys quickly
realize they'll never get anywhere without paying money, and they have no
money.

Still, I really feel very strongly that the atmosphere of the game can and
should be established by the admins (assuming they are mature people. When
you can just download a mud-in-a-box, you do tend to get a lot of idiots
running muds). It's no different than establishing appropriate and
productive internal corporate environments. When the top people behave
consistently in a certain manner, it filters down.
--matt




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