[MUD-Dev] The Relationship between pkers and monster AI?

[Marc Bowden]

--On Wed, Sep 8, 1999 02:25 +0100 Tony Wilkinson
<tony.wilkinson at dial.pipex.com> wrote:

> 
> None of the MMORPGs to date have very strong monster AI (because of
> resourse limitations I guess) but if for example the monsters were
> "smarter" would it stop players from looking to PvP for their kicks? In
> Close Combat 3, the computer behaves so "intelligently" that you
> genuinely have to keep telling yourself it's not another person. If that
> sort of AI was on a MMORPG, would the need to clamp down on player
> killing be so necessary?
> 

  Yes.

  You're proceeding from a faulty premise - that the urge to kill another
player is driven by a need for challenge.

  More often in my experience the reasons for killing another player in
favor of an NPC are more basic....

  1. Acting out agressive fantasies they can't get away with in real life
     due to the realities of physical size, parents, etc.

  2. The feeling of power at being able to wreck someone else's playing
     experience; in a nutshell, "here I can hurt someone and nobody can
     stop me!"

     and/or

  3. To see how far they can push the administration before vanishing
     and reappearing from another ISP and doing the same thing all over
     again. To wit, since they can't get back at their parents, principal,
     etc. they go after an authority figure that can't come and get them
     physically.

  All of these stem from a desire to use the anonimity and the ability with
the proliferation of free accounts on modern systems to avoid tracing to
act out behaviors that they can't get away with in real life.

  You will never, ever build a game-controlled entity that can fulfill this
particular hierarchy of needs, because they hinge on affecting another real
person in a negative way.

                     Marc Bowden  / Soulsinger
                      The Dreamshadow Legacy




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