[MUD-Dev] To good to be TRUE, in an MMPORPG?

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001 18:05:03 +0000 (GMT), Matt Mihaly
<the_logos at achaea.com> wrote:

> Maybe that's possible if you NEVER let the gamers and roleplayers
> interact, and if roleplayers never want to be gamers and gamers
> never want to be roleplayers, but then one would question why you
> are trying to put them into the same world.

I'd have to agree on this. My system provides some avenues for RP,
but they're admittedly sparse (which is odd for me, since I greatly
enjoy roleplay). I find that RP-oriented additions to the game seem
to get in the way of game-oriented additions, since it's virtually
impossible to impose any kind of enforced boundary on them. If you
provide a "smile" command, for example, there's nothing to prevent
someone from running around smiling at everyone and generally being
disruptive. (Actually, that strikes me as a hilarious concern. WTF
would you tell that guy?  "Cease and desist at once, impudent
varlet, or thou shalt be banned for excessive smiling!" I mean,
honestly.)

While I tend to approve of unintended activity within the context of
a game, seeing it as a sort of unexpected cleverness, unintended
activity within the context of roleplay usually translates into
"acting like a jerk". I think any game which expects to allow just
*anyone* to roleplay needs to consider the fact that roleplay
USUALLY requires people to have a meeting of the minds on what
"acceptable" means, and the more people you get involved, the less
likely that becomes.

>>   * Avatars will remain in game when you log of - they will
>>   appear sleeping and will be protected by the gods.

> Interesting I guess, though if they're protected by the gods from
> anything bad happening to them, ultimately a bit pointless. So
> some guy's icon is there, untouchable, when he logs off *shrug*.

Agreed. I leave the guy in-game and killable. I'm trying to figure
out a good way to keep this from spamming the hell out of everyone
in certain locations; one of the thoughts I had was to require an
explicit scan for inactive ships, so you could wander into some
location with thousands of ships and only see the few that were
online until you did a scan. Of course, the scan would still spam
the hell out of you, but at least you would have asked for it.

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