[MUD-Dev] Trouble Makers or Regular Citizens

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Tue, 28 Mar 2000, Justin Rogers wrote:

>     First of all the use of a ban at the IP level implies that you already have code
> to handle IP level.  So adding code at the IP level to marshall these people into
> jail rather than into the game or banning the.  Shouldn't be that much more code.
> You also allow people to turn off channels, chat, etc...  So why not allow one person
> to turn off another person?  Think of the amount of referalls for banning you would
> get if a single person could shut another person up.  That other person have another
> character, allow the mask to use an IP expression.  So my challenge to every one of
> you is to give me concrete times where you have to ban instead of implementing a little
> bit of code (not just or that one person, because you can make it general for the next
> butt nugget).  If I were to implement valid mechanisms for all of the *bad* players to
> come to my MUD and play to keep them away from yours, what should I handle and look
> out for.

To me, it's simple. Troublemakers who repeatedly act in ways that are
damaging to the spirit of your world are not acting out in isolation. They
have personalities that guarantee they will continue acting like that, at
least until they grow up or get a mud of their own and discover how
irritating they were formerly (I speak from some experience here. Maybe 7
years ago or so, I made a REAL pain of myself on Batmud, two different
times. Did things like code a room that allows no commands to be entered
and that traps all archwizards in it. I look back now and am horrified at
my behavior there.) Each troublemaker users use up resources, whether its
bandwidth (the single biggest concern for large commercial muds), piss off
your other, valued players, and 90% of the time are either too poor to
afford to buy anything, or are "against pay muds" (wonder if they are
"against pay restaurants" or "against pay hotels" too). 

I really don't see what the controversy is. MMORPGs are a service industry
combined with the entertainment industry. Your management of it has much
more in common with the service industry, however. I demand some level of
responsibility and a certain standard of behavior (admittedly, not as high
as I'd like to be able to enforce), _exactly_ like, oh, say, a nice
restaurant or nice hotel would. If some idiot is running around your hotel
lobby screaming like a madman (or doing something else inimical to the
culture and feeling you've created at your hotel or restaurant), what do
you do? Unless it's a major customer (who don't tend to be major problems
in my experience, bar a couple glaring exceptions I've experienced), you
don't ask questions, you remove him from the premises and ban him from
them. You don't waste your company's money by spending administration
energy on the guy in the hopes that he will come back. It's not worth it.
All customers are NOT equal, particularly to me, because we are not pay to
play. We are pay-as-you-want, and we try to go by the old 80/20 rule (ie
80% of your income comes from 20% of your customers.) If some newbie, or
indeed, someone who isn't a good customer, or who hasn't bought anything
at all, is irritating my major customers enough that they complain, there
is _no question_ that I would ban them, and I would do so with absolute
glee, because it is my wish to create a game that certain, well-heeled
people enjoy. Everyone else is completely welcome to enjoy it too, but
they better be on good behavior.

--matt




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