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

[the_logos at www.achaea.com]

On Sat, 24 Feb 2001, Brian 'Psychochild' Green wrote:

> SavantKnowsAll at cs.com wrote:
>> In a message dated 2/18/01 8:42:48 PM Pacific Standard Time,
>> claw at kanga.nu writes:

>>>  What about all the ways of indirect PK?  (The normal examples are
>>>  leading a band of newbies up against Tiamat, or charming an aggro
>>>  NPC and releasing him in a newbie area/town, but the permutations
>>>  are near infinite)
  
>> You cannot "train" as monster's aggro a bit differently.  We've
>> tried to make "griefing" a difficult task in our game.  Hopefully,
>> Beta will prove we've done a decent job.
 
> I believe it was Rich Vogel that's stated that you cannot truly
> catch all the bugs your game until months after launch.  Betas help,
> but you can't catch everything then.
 
> Soft PK is a huge problem, don't underestimate it.  If you've
> managed to solve that problem, then you are a better designer than
> I.

Well, I wouldn't consider leading a bunch of newbies (who are
following of their free will as opposed to, say, a charm spell)
against Tiamat to be a problem. Still, that's a pretty easy
solve. Just don't let newbies attack a superpowerful monster without a
warning.

As for the rest of the soft PK problems, I disagree with you totally
Brian. They are not at all difficult to solve. If you don't want
people charming aggro monsters and releasing them in your town, then
don't let people do it. It's as simple as that in most cases. We have
very few problems with soft PK. Almost none actually.


>> Sure it is.  There's nothing more that your King can do than *own*
>> up to 30% of your production.  You *can* fight your way to
>> independance.
 
> So, the strong get stronger.  Actually, the conquered contribute to
> the power of their conquerer.  So, if I ramp up production to fight
> off my King, he gets more power to fight me off.  Sounds like a
> losing situation.

We don't know in detail how his system works, but that's an easy
problem to solve. Simply limit the amount of power any
person/organization can bring to bear on X
land/person/organization/resource pool. So, your power resides on
breadth not depth.

> Plus, you need to watch out for loops in your system.  If A is
> conquered by B, B can get up to 30% of A's production.  What if C
> conquers B? Does C get 30% of B's resources, including 30% of the
> 30% B got from A? If so, what's to stop me from making a bunch of
> characters and having them conquer each other in order, thus having
> a guy at the end of the line that takes a bit of all my other mules'
> pies.  Also, what if A conquers C above?  Does A's new 30% from C
> add to his production, altering what B gets from A, etc, etc, etc?

This can be stopped simply by not giving anything to a player that he
doesn't work for. If I want to boost C's resources and can put effort
into C or mule characters A and B, then the only way I'm going to
choose A and B (if my goal is to boost C's resources) is if putting
effort into C is less effective. I COULD put effort into A and B but
only 30% of that effort will be rewarded. Why not just put it all into
C where 100% of my effort will be rewarded?

--matt

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