[MUD-Dev] Bay Area Press re: UO, the good the bad and the Ugly.

[Phillip Lenhardt]

On Mon, Jun 05, 2000 at 02:59:05PM -0400, Dave Rickey wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Jun 05, 2000 at 2:25 PM, Phillip Lenhardt wrote:
> >
> >I couldn't agree less. I see no problem with including things that the
> >designers feel the majority of the players will not find fun. For one
> >thing, players are perverse and often find fun in the wierdest activities.
> >For another, unfun activities can serve as a mild form of negative
> >reinforcement.
> >
>     Okay, however these are not optional play modes.  In the early days of
> UO, the only "legitimate" (non-duping, non-PK'ing) way to earn enough money
> to be a master-level Mage type was to skull-cap for hours on end, or work
> another money pump.  For anyone wanting to engage in magery, generating cash
> was a *requirement* (it took more than 250,000 gold to reach GM mage, and
> that was considered a lot of money), and the tedium of doing so was a
> "negative reinforcement" intended to control the Mage population.  Barring

Choosing to be or not to be a master-level Mage sure seems like an optional
play mode to me. And I highly doubt that the UO people put skull-capping in
specifically to aid players in their quest for master-level Magehood.

>     It isn't that all players will define the activity as "non-fun", it is
> that the game system requires those that do to participate in activity they
> do not enjoy for large amounts of time.  Using "negative reinforcement" in
> this fashion essentially means that you are going to make a tedium level
> high enough that many will not tolerate it and instead will do something
> else.  That *is* stupid.  There's supposed to be a game in there somewhere,
> right?  What about all the guys who aren't quite bored enough to stop doing
> it, but still aren't having "fun"?

While it wasn't my intention to argue for using tedium level as negative
reinforcement, on reflection it seems to me a fine way of channeling players
towards more interesting game play. The trick is to not just make it boring,
but make it also non-scriptable.

Why is it stupid to discourage all but those most dedicated to achieving a
goal through whatever means possible?

>     Okay, we agree that reducing the number of repetitive actions is good.

Glad to hear it.

> I can agree (in theory) that reducing the number of repetitive actions *may*
> reduce per-session time (on the principle that if players log in to do
> certain specific things, doing them quickly will let them log out quickly).

I didn't quite mean this, but (in theory) I agree too. :)

> We agree that making the game more fun for more people through multiple
> play-modes is good.  What are we arguing about again?  That making
> time-wasters an integral part of gameplay as a "negative reinforcement" is a
> good way to design a game?  I ain't going to buy into that.  "Negative
> Reinforcement" is how you tell a player he's doing something *wrong*.  If he
> can't escape them, he's liable to think the "wrong" thing he did was logging
> on.

And perhaps he is right. All those skull-cappers could have been doing
something interesting, like raising everyone's standard of living to the
point where the economy could support more master-level Mages (which is
what I expect the situation is now, since you say "In the early days").

Of course, in a commercial game, you don't want alienate your customers to
the point where they stop paying for your service, so perhaps there is some
way of directing these players to the intermediate goals that would best serve
their long-term ambitions.



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