[MUD-Dev] Justifying twinking

[adam at treyarch.com]

On Tue, 18 Apr 2000, Raph Koster wrote:
> TWINKING: the act of assisting a lower level player to advance in the game
> at a much faster rate than they would be able to achieve on their own, via
> the giving of experience (often via XP split systems inherent in grouping
> systems), items, goods, or money.

This, by itself, is good in terms of giving the new player (shall we call
them the "twinkee"?) a taste of what the mud is like beyond killing rats,
and giving them incentive to stick around for a bit.  It's good for the
higher levle player (the "twinker", I guess) as they get to show off a
bit.

The problem, and the reason why this is normally thought of as a bad thing,
is that it usually goes too far.  If you give a newbie a Sword of Slaying,
they will not only be more likely to continue playing, but they will protect
and value the sword for quite a while into their early career.  If, however,
you deck them out in a complete set of ideal gear, it all starts to look
the same to the newbie and they end up getting bored.

That is, twinking is only good when it serves as a carot: "Here's what
you're going to find more of if you keep playing this game."  If they've
already got plenty of whatever it may be (gold, items, or levels) then
there's no reason for them to continue playing in terms of gameplay goals.

And that is why we call them "twinks", or sometimes "high level newbies".
They have the gear, the experience, or whatever else the mud uses to measure
power - but they don't have the knowledge or the know-how.
On a PK mud, they have another name: "east target".

Adam





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