[MUD-Dev] Sustainable Ecosystem

[Andy]

----- Original Message -----
From: Patrick Dughi <dughi at imaxx.net>
To: <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2000 1:49 AM
Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Sustainable Ecosystem


> > Nice Idea I like it.  With that system the players spend more
> > time fighting among themselves and worrying about other players to make
> > any inroads into the animal population.  The players may also be
> > encouraged to "farm" the creatures within that area as game for hunts or
> > for food. You could also have a general state of an animal that means
> > you dont get anything of use from it. i.e. its starving to death so has
> > little meat and the skin is poor quality. Or its to young and hence
> > there is very little of it.  Also just teaching players about the
> > "rules" of what to kill and what not to kill will help if is part of
> > roleplay.  After all the woodsman who is teaching them how to hunt
> > should have a pretty good idea of the balance of nature.  If players
> > chose to upset that balance deliberatly other NPCs can give further
> > warnnings before finally starting a quest for other players to stop
> > these few rogue players.
>
> This is a great idea.  It just doesn't seem to be viable.  The
> chance that one person could put together in their head the realization
> that killing species _x_ raises the number of species _y_, is pretty good.
> Humans can handle in their head simple equations with just a few
> variables.  The more variables you add, the less chance that the player
> will 'get' it.  I think someone said that the normal number of things that

Err. I obviously didn't make my suggestion sufficiently clear.  I was
basically suggesting
that you use NPC's: Shop keepers and Woods guides etc. To encourage or
discourage
the use of resources such as animals.
How you inform the player is up to you. But the most obvious one is to have
the NPC's tell the players i.e. The woods guide stops you and points to your
bow and arrow and says "If you be going to hunt Deer friend, you better
forget it
now.  There be to few left now worth the tracking."  As the woods guide
turns to
leave he says over his shoulder "I also hear the King is hiring men to help
keep
of the poachers."  (This can be with or without bad grammar)

You can give the player a number of warning's like this, but if the player
doesn't
catch on quickly the Kings hired men will soon teach him.  The hired men
might
well be a mix of NPC's and players who can engage the other NPC's or players
who have yet to figure out that its time to stop killing Deer.
Also an admin doesn't have to assign roles, an NPC can - just as if you they
would assign any other kind of quest.

The environment (including NPCs) are a very powerful and under used tool
for guiding and controlling player behaviour.  When players chose to fill
roles of office within a admin designed organisation such as the hierarchy
in a palace, they are entering into a kind of quest system where they can
be sent of by the central AI to act as a control element on their own ranks.

Other more subtle methods can be used while the problem isn't quite so
sever such as hiding the resource away, and perhaps more dangerous to
find.  If they dot get the level of the problem a "catastrophe" can be
arranged that will act to inform the players the hard way   After that the
players will remember not to go overboard with the killing and even go
so far as to inform newbies who even glance in the direction of the Forrest.

I have a lot of ideas related to this and I could go on for ages, but I am
going
to take a break there for now.

Volt

> If we take this system, without having an admin assign roles, and
> give actual rules for the players to follow (and probably a reward system
> to back up your already inplace punishment system), they're going to screw
> everything up.  Not just that, but after a while, they'll leave
> eventually, without even realizing that they were the cause of the
> problems.  I guess it could be worse if someone then leaves because
> _someone else_ made it bad to begin with.
>
> PjD





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