bugs (was RE: [MUD-Dev] players who "take away from the game")

[Mik Clarke]

"Sellers, Michael" wrote:
> 
> Because it's a work in progress, and because bug fixes don't happen
> instantly.  I guess I take the attitude that the player is not doing EXACTLY
> what he or she is supposed to if he or she takes advantage of every possible
> bug/feature they find in the game -- especially if they've been told or
> could reasonably assume that some action or result was a bug.  At that
> point, the game isn't about playing in the game-world any more, it's about
> exploiting the cracks in the game programming.  If you as a player want to
> have a game to play in, you need to play in the context of the game, and not
> in the meta-context of "hey look what kinds of unreasonable results I can
> get because of the insufficiency of the game programmers."  If that's really
> the context players want to use, then I as an admin would have no qualms at
> all about doing a server-wipe every time we fixed a bug.  Ah, but suddenly
> the players don't like that option so much...

Here's a case from CthulhuMud, we screwed up the definition of a mob so
that it was rediculously easy to kill.  Clearly a bug, as we know how
tough
the mob is meant to be.  If a random player walks along, kills it and
gets
a lot of xps, how are they meant to know that it is NOT supposed to be
that easy to kill? (and, in fact, should have killed the player fairly
quickly).

Greated, exploiting known bugs that they have been told not to use
should
be punishable, but punishing them for doing something they do not (and
cannot) know is wrong is not on.

Mik



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