[MUD-Dev] banning the sale of items

[J. Coleman]

Zak Jarvis wrote:
> 
> However, I would argue that another incentive for reducing real-money sales of
> characters and some items (though I think items is a tricky issue, as it's easy
> for me to imagine systems where item sales enhance the game and world rather
> than detract) is that excessive purchasing of what your content developers have
> designed to be attained through in-game mechanics demoralizes staff. Content
> development staff is more important per-head than players. You'll always lose
> players here and there, but you need your staff around to make the stuff that
> attracts the players. It very much behooves the designer to development staff
> happy and efficient.

Well, my personal take on this is: why do there have to be *dozens* of 
"the Magical X of Y" in the game at all? This seems to be one of the
prevalent 
points here, that harvesting is bad. Simply make it impossible to
harvest. 
(I realize that this takes a good bit of design work and may not be
practical for 
any existing game system to go through...) Make all magic items unique,
except basic,
easy-to-get-anyway +1 magic swords, and then have only a handful of
items actually
be loaded on boot/reset. Have the players - and here's the important bit
- *and the 
mobs* create their own items.

I realize this crosses over quite a bit with Alife, etc, but if you make
an ingame 
economy which allows NPC's to *use* their skills - like, say,
blacksmithing or 
whatnot, then all cool magic items can be created on the fly, by the
NPC's. Then 
there's no problem (less problem perhaps) with: 

    a) keeping players from harvesting the same item, so only people who
pay for it 
       can have it - each item is custom, and for most items, the
players can make
       their own anyway.

    b) selling items - it could be made so that any item can only be
used by the 
       first person to pick it up, unless it's been sold to an NPC. If
you find it
       or make it, you can use it. If your buddy finds it or makes it,
he has to 
       sell it in town before you can buy it yourself and use it. (I
admit this is 
       a bit artificial and may tick off some players, especially those
who favor 
       grouping over soloing.)

    c) design staff only has to make the rules, not the items, in most
cases. They
       put together guidelines on what can possibly be made by PC's /
NPC's and what 
       can't. Then they'd only have to spend time making artifact-type
items and
       special purpose stuff (plot / quest items).

    d) player complaints. Arguably, this would make any game world MUCH
more 
       believable, due to the fact that Jimmy the sorceror won't spawn
every 5 
       minutes with exactly the same items. You'd almost *have* to let
NPC's live
       for quite some time in most cases, in order to get them to
produce any item
       of significant worth. Of course, while they do that, they get
more powerful.
       It's a tradeoff between what they carry and whether you can beat
them.

 Any comments? :P


        -Justin



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