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

[J C Lawrence]

On Fri, 10 Sep 1999 18:10:14 -0400 
Philip Loguinov <-- Draymoor" <fibhufky at erols.com>> wrote:

> A bug: Stock Smaug has a polymorph spell. This spell switches you
> into a low level mob.  Mobs have MPCommands that they can use. As
> a switched player, you can use any of these commands.  That is a
> design flaw. I concider it a bug which i would expect to be
> reported.  

Agreed.  This is fairly obviously susicious as a design oversight.

> An exploit (imm example): Smaug has very nice mobprogs. It also
> has a beautifull (for my perposes) fall and autoteleport code.
...
> Well, thats pretty simple, infinite loop there. But the beauty
> comes in what it can be used for.  MPTranfer can transfer ANYONE,
> regardless of level.  Falling and getting hurt has some sort of
> delay on the player, the speed of the teleport delay causes
> commands to never go through.  Conclusion?  force mob mptransfer
> imp infinite_fall They can't get out on their own. I held a friend
> of mine in there who was about 7 levels higher then me in there
> for a while, fun :) Anyway, there were no bugs in there, and it's
> a nifty way of taking care of annoying players.

Were this done by a player (given user programming) I would consider
this fair use of the system, and one I as an admin would applaud as
it demonstrates creative thinking with the mechanics of the game
world.  As an admin it is in bad taste and indicates that the admin
needs to be removed as he is reacting to individual players.

> An exploit (mortal example): PK mud, i'm the most powerfull player
> on the mud (mage, i know EVERYTHING, can get anyware) Now, its
> smaug, with stock deadly/peacefull and level limits on PK.  I'm
> 50, there is no safe on repop/deathpop.  I get an item that pops
> an aggro mob into existance and it attacks you.  I am invisible
> and use the item, aggro mob in deathpop room :) I go and kill a
> person (charmies) who is an enemy of my clan and they pop up at
> deathpop. Mob kills them.  they pop up at deathpop. mob kills
> them. etc etc etc.  TERRIBLE spam on the deathlog :P Eventually a
> friend of mine (currently playing an imm, this was an alpha) gets
> to put safe on the room, but not before the guy died over a
> hundred times in approx. 10 seconds.  There is no bug here. The
> deathpop room was meant to be unsafe. I took advantage of all the
> stuff i had and knew to exploit the system.

Again, I would consider this laudable as a creative logically
consistent extrapolation of the game mechanics.  As an Admin I might 
also do some redesign to prevent such in the future, but its more
likely I'd merely do something to provide a weakness or exit to that 
trap type.

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


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