[MUD-Dev] Anarchy Online (was Community Feeling)

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

> From: Matt Mihaly [mailto:the_logos at achaea.com] 
> On Wed, 1 Aug 2001 Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com wrote:

>> One of the most alarming things for me, is the substitution of
>> pvp for 'content'. I can visualise the team sat around a table
>> thinking 'hmm, creating high level content is going to put back
>> the release at least 2 months, why don't we just let the players
>> hunt each other instead.' Well I disagree, whilst balanced pvp is
>> a great _addition_ it doesn't substitute for wanting to explore
>> legendary places and fight awesome monsters. It just doesn't
>> motivate me as most PVP is often too deterministic anyway, class
>> A will always beat class B if you both play well etc. For me
>> balanced pvp means adding enough complexity to remove this
>> foregone conclussion.

> PvP doesn't just mean combat though. There are a ton of possible
> PvP elder games. I, for instance, while recognizing your
> motivations in wanting to fight faraway monsters and explore
> legendary places, would not be motivated by that for very
> long. I'd be entertained by it for a bit, but I don't really get a
> lot of fun out of beating up NPCs. Not into Diablo or Diku. I
> enjoy PvP activities quite a bit though, whether it's fighting
> someone in a game with a sufficiently complicated PvP system, or
> trying to discredit my opponent in an election by spreading false
> rumours about him, or seducing the girlfriend of my enemy, or
> participating in the defence of my country, state, city, or family
> against the hordes of unwashed filthmongers who hate us and who
> are jealous of us, and who want to steal our pies and
> taters. Bastards.
 
> Just different likes and dislikes really.

I tend to agree with you, but in the context of AO they missed the
mark I feel. I think the complexity of the elder game needs to be
more evolved than any of the main-stream games have demonstrated so
far or look likely to in the near future. I sympathise with them
though, as its hard to be too ground breaking when you have a lot of
money resting on it.

Anyway I'm partway through reading your gamasutra article so that I
can see what principles of yours I could apply to the 'game in my
head'(tm).

Dan
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