[MUD-Dev] New Bartle article

[Richard A. Bartle]

On 24th February, 2001, Dave Rickey wrote:

> No, I think that's way too cavalier an answer

What was cavalier about it?

> we wound up where we are because we never answered the essential
> dilemna of a fully PvP enabled world: How to make it possible for
> the "bad guys" to lose.

I'm not concerned so much with how we got where we are as I am as how
we get to go other places.

> The "bad guys" don't mind losing, as long as the fight was fun

But the bad guys often hate losing even more than the good guys!

The reason they are "bad guys" in the first place is frequently that
they have a low self esteem and wish to prove their worth to
themselves by demonstrating their superiority over other players. If
they were interested in challenging, exciting fights, they'd attack
players who were better able to defend themselves; on the whole,
though, they only attack if they have a huge advantage. They have a
need constantly to demonstrate to themselves that they have
power. Consequently, when they die, they tend to hate it, as they've
demonstrated the complete opposite.

> All a potential player sees is that the "bad guys" can permanently
> destroy *their* character.  And he's not going to accept that, in
> most cases.

Well my article suggested two ways of addressing that:

  1) Don't have PKing. Have PD, where your character can die but not
  directly at the hands of other human beings, but don't have death to
  other humans in combat.

  2) Only allow PD (whether by PKing or not) only to be possible in
  locations that players have to elect to visit.

		Richard

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