[MUD-Dev] New Bartle article

[Dave Rickey]

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard A. Bartle <richard at mud.co.uk>
To: mud-dev at kanga.nu <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Date: Monday, February 26, 2001 12:41 AM
Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] New Bartle article


>On 24th February, 2001, Dave Rickey wrote:
>
>> No, I think that's way too cavalier an answer
>
> What was cavalier about it?

As in "simple, elegant, and wrong".  I could have called it
pedestrian, but that would have been insulting. ;-)

Okay, I'm a firm proponent of the idea that in the course of designing
these games, there are lots of perfectly logical mistakes to be made
(and most have been).  But it would be hard to find a problem that has
had more attention focused on it than this one.

>> 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.

I agree completely.

>> 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.

In many cases, but by no means all.  That doesn't account, for
example, for the Oasis wars in UO (or any of several other "wars"
surrounding the death of various player-made towns), where the "bad
guys" kept up an offensive for weeks, in spite of fierce opposition
and many deaths.

>> 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.

So the "bad guy" just has to figure out how to PD by proxy?  That may
take him a while, maybe five whole minutes.

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

And get the worst of both worlds?

--Dave Rickey

_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev