[MUD-Dev] Something in the water

[Tomas Clark]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Matt Mihaly" <the_logos at achaea.com>

> Well, frankly, our admins have better things to do than sitting
> around randomly watching players hoping for the player to do
> something interesting, particularly if the rewards are to be so
> rare. And, I think, that wouldn't solve the problem. If the reward
> isn't good enough to make them want it (ie it is rarely given out)
> then they aren't going to try for it.

(delurking for a moment)

The most effective systems I've seen (mostly on MUSHes) combine
admin oversight with player voting. In other words, players nominate
each other, but the admins ultimately decide whether the award is
given. This usually happens on a regular (weekly, monthly) basis.
Most of the process is based on player decisions, but the admins can
exercise discretion and guard against certain kinds of obvious
exploits.

It takes less time than making the admins do all the work
themselves, because the best players do tend to bubble towards the
top if you have a playerbase that's interested in RP; even if the
player with the most nominations is there because of a clique-driven
"exploit," at least one of the top five is probably a strong
roleplayer deserving of the award.  That way, the awards can come
more frequently without chewing up admin time.

I think AmberMUSH had a fairly sophisticated system of this sort,
but it's been a while.

Whether to watch invisibly is another matter entirely, but I tend to
think it's a good idea. In MUSHes, at least, admins tend to stay
invisible much of the time to avoid disrupting all the RP. But in
MUSH and related codebases you usually have a @sweep command or
something similar that lets paranoid players tell who's listening to
them.

Tomas Clark (0.5robo)
tclark at halfrobot.com
(Cyberworld LP, numerous MUSHes, Sissyfight 2000)

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