[MUD-Dev] UO rants

[John Buehler]

> Dan Merillat
> Sent: Friday, August 25, 2000 6:01 AM

> > he murders the newbie?  The newbie insulting the Lord is very much like
> > a PvP encounter.  Why doesn't the Lord consider this as one of those
> > scenarios that simply adds to the spice of the game without having to
> > resort to murder?  Being on the receiving end of a PvP encounter is never
>
> So it's ok to enforce your style of PvP on someone, but not ok for them
> to force theirs on you?  The type of interaction you're talking about
> is having a group of morons follow you around heckling your every action.
> That "added spice" is ok, but defending your honor against a group
> of hoodlums is not?   That's more of a self-centric view then the
> PK's themselves have.

Dan, I was playing contrarian there, attempting to use Matt's logic in opposition to his own
argument.  As I've stated elsewhere, if you don't want people saying stuff to you that you find
harrassing, you should be able to have sanctions applied to those people.  But the recognition of
what is potentially harrassing has to be established up front, and the sactions against those people
have to be controlled by the game.  Otherwise, someone will harrass me, I kill their character and
they continue to harrass me.  As has been stated on the topic of harrassment, it is OOC, while
killing a character is primarily IC.

> > fun, and that's why I don't like PvP worlds.  In the end, only the most
> > powerful players are able to enjoy the experience.  And those tend to be
> > the hardcore gamers.  Like yourself.
>
> Without player interaction, you have a massively online singleplayer game.
> With player interaction, you have PvP.   Even without combat, the players
> abuse the system to affect other players.

I absolutely agree with this.  Two people standing in the same room are immediately in contention
for where to stand.

> > I certainly think that those who shoot their mouth off should have some
> > form of sanction applied to them.  Do you really believe that any sane
> > government would condone execution for foul language?  As I suggested
>
> Murder dosn't exist without death.  Perminant death.  Thus, without permadeath
> killing someone for slandering your character is acceptable, even admirable.
> They'll just respawn, like the goblin overseer.  And you get a trophy or
> two out of it.   And perhaps you'll spark a war, and that'll also be fun.

Take your 'murder doesn't exist without death' statement to the logical extreme.  Your character
doesn't exist without a body.  No body, no character.  Obviously, this is all about a question of
degree of saction in the game world.  Death models vary, and I have proposed a temporarily-imposed
death penalty that is just like permadeath.  That's more extreme than 'fall down and get up'.

As to whether a war is fun or not, that's the very focus of this discussion.  Who's to say that a
war is what the players want?

> > The players are the monitors, but not the judge, jury and executioners.
>
> So who fills that role?

The first judge is the game.  It decides what could possibly be a crime.  The next judge is the
victim.  If he's unhappy enough about what was done to him to loose the dogs of justice, he does the
appropriate in-game things to make that happen.

Included in 'the dogs' are player bounty hunters, who are authorized to use varying levels of force
to enforce the sanctions that are defined by the game.  Non-lethal force to bring in thieves alive.
Lethal force to bring in murderers, dead or alive.  And so on.

> > You believe that virtual communities are different than real life
> > communities.  What you're missing is that a virtual community is simply
>
> He's correct.  VCs resemble no RL community known to man.  It's a brave
> new world.

My statement there has been massively misunderstood.  Obviously I massively misstated what I
intended.

My assertion is that a virtual community is simply an extension of our reality.  Real people are
playing the game at real computers.  The community doesn't exist within the game world.  It exists
in our world.  That's why I say that virtual communities are no different tan real life communities.
It's like saying that a phone call produces a different self-contained community than the real
world.  It's an extension of it.

> So what happens when EVERYONE is a lord, untouchable by anything but the
> hand of God itself?  (And God is too busy keeping the universe running to
> take an interest in peasant raping or sport hunting of outcasts...)
>
> Add to that a magical sheild that prevents the other lords from harming you
> in any fashion.   In fact, the only thing that stops this is having actions
> directly have conceqences.

I see.  So a character can be in two places at once?  All characters can lift mountains, invent new
species, and so on?  The rules of these game worlds are voluminous.  That's because they are coded
constructions of people who have to code something before it's possible.  Digging a hole frequently
isn't permitted.

As to the assertion that everyone is a lord, that's a fundamental problem.  Simutronics has been
talking about a game called Hero's Journey, predicated in the idea that every player is a hero.  I
simply don't believe that.  Unless the world is populated by so many NPCs that I feel like a hero
because I'm surrounded by non-heros all the time.  Then we're back to the single player experience
of Diablo.  In multiplayer games, we play with the other players' characters.  The only thing that
matters is what our relative ability levels are.  If we're all heros, then the effect of being a
hero is drastically diminished.  We might as well all be peasants, trying to overthrow our dastardly
baron.

JB





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