[MUD-Dev] Alignment (very long)

[Kevin Littlejohn]

>>> Paul Schwanz - Enterprise Services wrote
> Christopher Allen said:
> > We have been talking some at Skotos about something very similar to this,
> > but not for purposes of "alignment", but instead, for reactions of NPCs to
> > players.
> > 
> 
> You know, I was just thinking last week about how these same values might be 
> used for the AI of NPCs and perhaps SPCs (scripted player characters).  How 
> difficult would it be to set up the system so that characters choose whatever
> course of action maximizes their skill gain based on a comparison of their 
> personal values profile and the action profiles with which they are presented?
> Of course, it probably wouldn't work as a foundation for the AI, but it might
> augment it in a way that helped make NPCs/SPCs more interesting.

I'm more and more convinced as this discussion goes on of a couple of points:

1) Alignment, as most people know it, is broken - it's an attempt to assign
arbitrary "absolute" values to a player's actions, without being able to know
either the rationale behind said actions, or often the framework you're
viewing the actions from - ie. before you can assign an absolute value of
"evil", you have to be able to _fully_ define both good and evil, and to
discern why a player behaves they way they do.  Personally, I want NPC's whose
behaviour is unfathomable, so I'm headed in the other direction already ;)

2) Any Reputation-based system should be individual, or at least group-wide,
and should probably be wrong.  That is to say, a character can build up a
reputation by their peer players noting what they think of the player, and
by NPC's observing the player in action, and those reputations should
apply on at least a per-group, if not per-individual level - your reputation
with elves is seperate from your reputation with dwarves, maybe all modified
by your reputation with fighters if you're meeting a fighter.  Oh, and
I'm thinking more and more we should accept, as in the real world, that a
person's reputation could be, and probably will be, unfounded in a lot of
cases - people "getting the wrong idea".

I love the idea of NPC's being able to discern the motivation of a character,
but I suspect that's an unsolveable problem - so have NPC's react only to
what they see, and what other NPC's "tell" them.  If you're seen to be killing
the local hero, then your reputation goes down - regardless of whether the
local hero had just gone troppo, or was enchanted, or had killed your one
true love, or whatever - tough bikkies.  In a lot of respects, I think this
is closer to the real world - you could maybe even include the ability
for people to 'persuade' others, so if they're caught like this they can
attempt to influence the populaces view of them.  Could make for some
interesting power-base building opportunities in itself, actually.

The idea of a number of reputation areas, such as trustworthiness and
violence and so on and so forth are cool - I think you'd probably have
to build them in terms that can be easily observed, tho.

Just some thoughts, anyway.

KevinL



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