[MUD-Dev] Declaration of the Rights of Avatars

[Jeff Freeman]

>> Raph wrote:
>> >- why do you want freedom to do things that are BAD admin or business
>> >practice? (even considering that "freedom" and so on are total mirages
in
>> >this whole situation...)

>>Jeff wrote:
>> Why, because what 99% of the players think is a BAD admin
>> decision, I might think is a good one.

>If 99% of the players think it's a bad one strongly enough, it's arguably a
>bad decision regardless of what you think. ;) Certainly you felt that way
>often enough about UO! *grin*

Nevertheless, you do want the freedom to do things that all your players
think are bad decisions, yah?

Well, 99% is an exageration.  I doubt more than 50% of the players ever
agree on anything at all.  So at worst "most players think this is a bad
idea" - what admin on this list doesn't reserve the right to do it anyway,
whatever "it" may be?

>Seriously, though--adminning is often a game of compromises. Sometimes you
>make decisions that go against what you believe to be right in part because
>you want to retain an audience, keep your players happy, etc. This seems to
>happen even on those muds that don't really care about audience size,
>etc--stuff sometimes happens or decisions get made to just to keep the
>players happy.

Yeah, tell me.  Yesterday was a real beat down.  I made two bad decisions
quite some time ago that led to a couple skills being overpowered.  And I
don't guess I need to say how popular it is to lower the power/usefulness
of a particular skill, even when its blatantly obvious that the skill is
far and away better than any other skill.  Their formerly "much better than
everyone else" characters are now "worthless" because they are only
slightly better than everyone else.  One guy threatened to quit because his
character lost 2 points of strength - on a scale of 1 to ~100 it dropped
from 101 to 99 - and this made his character, in his mind, unplayable.

On the one hand, I want to keep them happy.  On the other hand, I want to
give him the old screen-door/ass line.

"I'm going to quit if you make this change!"

"Oh thank GOD, I thought you were going to hang around and cry about it
endlessly!"

> We keep discussing 2) from only one perspective: presupposing that it is
> indeed the creator's mud and that it is their right to do anything they
want
> unless they choose to surrender power and authority voluntarily. Can we
> attack it from the other angle (unelss it's too alien to everyone's
> thinking)? By what logic a mud admin assume that the act of setting up or
> running a mud gives them control over what occurs within it? Again, as a
> thought experiment. :)

Ah, almost there:  I'm taking really easy scripting jobs and handing them
out to any player that wants to do them.   One fellow wrote a pretty great
cooking package.  My hope is that we can get 4 or 5 people to do the
programming, instead of just me.  We aren't there yet, but I think we'll
get there eventually.

The shard itself is hosted by a player - when we lost the previous host, as
happened when we lost the host before that - various players volunteered to
host it.  So the players are accustomed to "the plug has been pulled, lets
find another place to plug it in".

I think, due to the lack of programmers/scripters/developers (whatever you
want to call them), that I could kill the mud by quitting.  But I forsee a
time when I could say "I quit" and the players say, "Ok, see ya." and the
mud keeps going.  I can also foresee a time where the players say, "You're
really starting to bother us, why don't we let this other guy be in charge."

Like I said, we're not there yet due to lack of people who can do what I
do, and probably due to good old fashioned loyalty, too, but it's what
we're moving towards.

Then, definitely, I think the players will have a lot more power (at least
collectively), than any of the admins, including me.  I can't think of any
other reason why I'm moving towards this other than I want to be able to
quit when I want to quit, but without ticking off all the players that have
so much time invested in playing here.  Not that I want to quit, but I do
want to be able to.

>As far as 3), it seems to be a case of "I want an escape hatch." Can we
>build hypothetical situations where said escape hatch would even be needed,
>beyond the ones already built into the document?

Sort of doubt it since, as you said way up there, admins already do things
that they think are bad ideas, just to keep the players happy.

Reminds me of The Life of Brian, I think it was.  "I know I can't really be
a woman, but I want the right to be a woman... and have babies."

I know I can't really do anything I want to do, especially if 99% of the
player's think that its a bad idea, but I want the right to do whatever I
want to do, even if 99% of the player's think that its a bad idea.

Yeah, that's the ticket.


(Did I say "shard"?  I meant "MUD".  Anyone know of a freemail service that
doesn't append an advertisement?  Freakin' DL... email me offlist if you do:
skeptack at antisocial.com )





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