[MUD-Dev] PvP Systems

[J C Lawrence]

On Sat, 17 Feb 2001 20:43:04 -0800 
John Buehler <johnbue at msn.com> wrote:

> J C Lawrence writes:

>> Players who react to the word about them and don't edit it, and
>> players who attempt to author their game world.  I don't see that
>> a game necessarily can't cater to both populations, or that one
>> that caters to the latter won't necessarily also cater to the
>> former.

> While it may be possible, I don't see how it can be done.  I
> consider it as axiomatic that if there are players who are
> altering the world and there are players who rely on the
> 'advertised' world, then there is a conflict of what players will
> encounter.

Of course -- I never presumed that players would have an expectation
that a malleable world would be exactly as advertised, and I'd be
rather surprised if that happened to a significant extent.

> Do they get the 'advertised' world or the one that the players are
> altering?

They get some meld of the two.

> Obviously, if I say that players can alter the world and advertise
> my game that way, players who step into the world will have to
> understand that other players will be altering the world.  

Precisely.

> If stated up front, then players can choose whether or not to try
> out the world.  The 'advertised' world experience is one inclusive
> of player modifications.

<nod>

> Personally, I don't believe in community authoring of creative
> works unless the goal of the work is well understood.  

While I agree, this assumes that the creative work is singular and
non-aggregate.  In the case of large-world MUDs, which is implied by
large populations, it is almost necessarily aggregate as players
will, by nature, attempt to create their own stories (and thus art)
within, on, and beside what you do.  Much like Warhol's work,
there's a lot of embellishment, exploitation, commentary, criticism,
satire, etc that takes place one and because of the framework you
prive, in exactly the same wasy a barnacles ride on the hulls of
ships without the ship's or their captain's consent.

Once you get past a rather small size you are no longer the unique
author, not in any Disney sense, but a water colourist attempting to
sketch the framework of a world faster than the cats can spread out
across it.

King Canute?

> In the case of a game world, some few folks who work for the game
> company will decide how the world is going to change in the coming
> days and weeks.  I leave it to the players to react to that macro
> activity.  I have no problem with players altering the game
> experience at a lower level.

Please do not interpret my posts as declaritive of your failure.
Much like a startup that is currently interviewing me (I suspect the
impossibility of their success, am not attracted by their model,
question whether the market they are targetting exists, and suspect
they are irretrievably naive), my preferences and default views on
world and game design are almost diametrically opposite to what you
are proposing (voyeuristic tourism just doesn't appeal to me).

> Although your comment about time is undoubtedly meant to mean 'as
> the months elapse', it occurs to me that I might run my game such
> that it is open from something like 3PM until 1AM each day.  The
> park actually closes at the end of each day.

Oooo!  *That* could be interesting (tho dreadful on the
international scale).  

>> I have a generic problem with gallery games (more or less, "look
>> at all the pretty scenery").  While there is a population that
>> enjoys such tourism, that's not me, and I'm not convinced is even
>> medium term tenable.

> I'm decidedly not interested in such things either.  

Ahh, good.

> I want to *do*.  But I tend more towards cooperation with other
> players, and competition with the forces controlled by the game
> company.

I don't like the concept of NPCs, or the implicit AI concerns for
effective NPC simulation, so I tend to avoid that entire concept as
a Bad Idea.  Players are the only things in my world that even
pretend to be intelligent to any significant extent.  Basilisks are
better considered as pimordial and implacable forces of nature.
They merely act.  Its not worth even attempting to question how or
why, especially as their native ability to alter the world on a
massive scale (an adult weighs roughly 850 metric tonnes with
magical and physical strength exponentially matching compared to
humans (basilisk burps are intended to be more significant and more
noticable than most volcanoes)).  Outside of basilisks all other
life forms, other than human players, are minless and obviously
stupid automatons that are merely engaged in obviously mechanical
resource consumption patterns.

Players are intended to be the bugs between the rock and the hard
place.  They are the default prey species for the rest of the game,
and the game is a far more effective predator than the humans, with
their intelligence, could ever hope to be.

Cooperation is going to be critical to any sort of long term
survival, and fundamental to any significant level of personal
advancement.  Many of the forms of cooperation will take the form of
helping to decide when to run and hide (a minor form of resource
management), and in attempting to find and exploit ecological niches
within the game.  Should I eventually roll this thing (John Szeder
will of course spend the next months puking his guts out, already
knowing the UI I'd use) I'm expectant of spending most of my time
ensuring that the player population finds possible ecological niches
to attempt to advantage, and then sytemically removing them once
they sucessfully do so (players are the prey so the predators will
adapt to their patterns -- as an admin I am effectively the ultimate
predator winnowing and breeding my food species).

Its rather curious to be in the position of pre-defining my entire
player base as grief players, and then attempting to build a system
that actively expects them to be grief players by systemically
making them the most easily predated population (its a high magic
world).

>>> Why are those players in my world if it's not entertaining for
>>> them?

>> Because they can make something in your world which is
>> entertaining, or they can do something with or to your world, or
>> more likely with or to its population which is entertaining.

> Which brings us right back to the issue of 'entertaining for who'?

Either to them, or to an audience they perceive.  Either is
sufficient.

> I would absolutely define a grief player in that way.  I won't hit
> the market with an open enrollment game until the internet solves
> the identity problem.  I simply don't need the money more than I
> care to deal with the corresponding customer support problem.

Whoa boy.  I'm one of those working on the side of ensuring that
that "problem" is not solved.

--
J C Lawrence                                       claw at kanga.nu
---------(*)                          http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--
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