[MUD-Dev] Fallen Age (was Shameless Plug)

[the_logos at www.achaea.com]

On Sat, 24 Feb 2001 SavantKnowsAll at cs.com wrote:

> We've expanded the system from 1 vs 1 to up to 6 vs 6 -- Moving it
> beyond "two sided" is not currently on radar for us.  Sure, you can
> change sides mid-fight -- but you won't gain the DM points if your
> team loses.  Deathmatches can take place anywhere.  Non-combatants
> can interfere, but since it's a PK environment anyway, it won't
> matter.

I don't know the details of your combat system, but I can tell you
that we thought long and hard about where ranked deathmatches can take
place, and eventually we decided to limit it to a particular set of
rooms (the Mahtsuhama Arena, where nearly all limited combat resources
are unlimited, so as to allow people to practice with minimal
cost. Fighting is expensive normally due to the vast array of herbs,
salves, elixirs, tattoos, magical items etc that must be used and are
depleteable.)

The reason we limited it was because if non-participants can
interfere, the system was eminently gameable, and a system where
players are ranked against each other and in which emotions will run
high (PvP tends to arouse pretty high emotions), systems which are
eminently gameable are not so good.

Incidentally, we've found that the formula used to rate chess players
is quite a good one for this kind of system. (I can post it here if
anyone cares.)

 
> The game *is* the political system.  If your game is good enough in
> design, you don't need mechanics to force your players to play a
> certain way.

That sounds a bit naive. You can influence them to play certain ways
with soft methods, but you can never control them completely with soft
methods.

 
> Of course power only acrrues -- I've yet to meet a single person
> that likes to invest his time in a game only to regress instead of
> advance.  And the game is most definitely not linear and
> single-purposed - no MMOG is.

So what are you going to do 2 years into the game when newbies log on
and realize that there is essentially no chance of them _ever_
becoming one of the ruling class, becuase the ruling class consists
solely of players who started playing when the game opened.

--matt

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