[MUD-Dev] Reputation & Trust Circles [was UO rants]

[Joe Andrieu]

KevinL wrote:
> >>> "Milne, Alistair" wrote
> > Unless I'm missing the point (hehe, likely) wouldn't you still need to
> > attach a global good/bad rating to each action, and then set
> the good/bad
> > rating of each trust circle to determine how they'd react to
> seeing a given
> > action?  You're in the same situation as before, needing to
> arbitrate about
> > how good or bad everything is.  All you've achieved is that
> now you have
> > different mobs reacting to your actions in different ways.
>
> Sorta.  In the player circle area, you let players assign levels
> of trust in
> each other, and then let them rate other people accordingly -
> hell, throw in
> several different scales ("he's really honourable, so that's a
> 8/10, but he's
> not very impressive, so that's only a 4/10").  Then the ratings
> of various
> people you trust get scaled according to how much you trust
> them, and presto.

[snip]

> First step would be to get a system like this in place, then watch what
> happens to the trust metrics - could be a good tool for
> measuring how well
> you've done NPC judgement of players in itself.

Right.  The system would be a fine way to augment automagic reputation
based on actions like being caught steeling, attacking a merchant, etc.,
which of course presumes that these actions are coded into the system.

The intriguing opportunity however, IMHO, would be to set it up so that the
system is primarily driven by the players. So that judgments are being made
by the human members of the community and the entire system is responsive
to those judgments.  You might call it Human-driven AI-based behaviors.
Then Matt Mihaly's guild can be purely capitalistic and the Boy Scouts can
focus on a more honorable moral code and in theory the rest of the system
could appropriately respond to the collective judgments of their trust
circles.  Now, a GM would have to set up and moderate the transfer
functions between NPC and PC trust circles, but that's imminently
reasonable and scalable.  In fact, if done right, admins could manage
volunteer staff to monitor relations between the guilds.  If the trust
circles are set up right, I think it would prove pretty self-healing.
Those who abuse it would be devalued in the trust economy and their
"hacked" reputations would have as much value as if your soon-to-be ex-wife
recommended a good divorce lawyer for you.

That said, there are a lot of UI issues on top of balancing system dynamics
and of course, player abuse issues.  But if done well, it seems like it
might do a fair job of incorporating appropriate societal (in-game)
consequences for ethical/moral actions in the MUD.

-j

--
Joe Andrieu
Realtime Drama

joe at andrieu.net
+1 (925) 973-0765






_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
http://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev