[MUD-Dev] PvP Systems

[John Buehler]

J C Lawrence writes:

> > 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.

And if they lack the tools to do so?  And if they are informed that
those tools will not be made available to them?  I'm hoping that
people's desires to do the sorts of things that you're talking about
will be sated by the games that you and others will be constructing.

> Please do not interpret my posts as declaritive of your failure.

Hmm?  No problem.  I have a certain attitude of disbelief about what
some of the folks here plan for their environments.  It's just that I
don't have a recognized voice here.

> > 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).

Dreadful from the standpoint of trying to have enough deployments
worldwide, or dreadful in that North American deployments would be
running at very inconvenient times for overseas players?

I was assuming that there would be deployments of the game suitable
for tens of thousands of players, and the location of the deployment -
complete with operations and planning staff - would determine the park
hours of operation.  If the hours of operation are hitting the right
sweet spot, the majority of players will have good ping times because
they'll be topologically local to the server on the internet (roughly
matching geographic distance).  Players in other time zones will use
the deployment that is both closest to them and open during their
hours of play.

> > 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.

Note that I'm going for a bit of a hybrid approach.  The NPC
'wranglers' run many NPCs and so actively oppose the players in a
controlled way.  The NPCs aren't able to do everything that a player
can do, of course, and when it comes to one-on-one encounters the NPCs
will rely on their AI.  But the NPCs will be more dynamic and
intelligent than any game AI could normally produce.  NPCs attacking
will use more sophisticated strategies.  Changes of routine will be
introduced by the wrangler as they see opportunities.

An example of what I'm talking about is all the NPC farmers visiting
the NPC mayor and angrily complaining about something.  Players can
use primitive means of finding out what it's all about to determine if
there's something interesting to do - or to just talk about, for that
matter.  Such activity would be produced in a constant stream - the
wranglers are working full time, like air traffic controllers.

> 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.

Sure, and that's obviously going to be an effective strategy for
providing a particular form of entertainment.  It's a fairly high
level form of entertainment that some folks will just find too
intimidating.  Some chunk of our population isn't prepared for truly
predatory settings.

> >>> 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.

Not to somebody who bought the game believing that the entertainment
would be the way the game company said it would be only to find other
players presenting their own version of what is entertaining.  The PK
problem is the obvious example.

> > 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.

Although off topic, I only want the mechanism to be there.  You can
stick to internet activity that permits anonymity, but I want to have
the tools to be able to require player identity information.  If
players aren't interested in providing that information, they have the
choice of not playing.  Companies that find that anonymous use of
their service is untenable retain the ability to know who is who.

I'm in the camp of anonymity being - to use your approach - a Bad
Idea.

JB

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