[MUD-Dev] On socialization and convenience

[Sean Kelly]

From: "Travis Nixon" <tnixon at avalanchesoftware.com>

> But you don't have to mandate grouping to get people to group.
> You just have to make it worthwhile.

> For example, if I remember correctly, in Gemstone 3, the system
> works something like this: If you kill something by yourself
> that's the same level as you, you get 100 experience points.  If
> you group up with a friend to kill that very same thing, though,
> instead of sharing the 100 points between the two of you, you both
> get 100 points.

> Yes, this means that you got the same amount of experience for a
> fight that was half (or less) as hard, but so what?  It really
> doesn't get any better than that for encouraging grouping.  It
> might not be quite as effective as requiring people to group, but
> I don't think that's a good idea anyway.

In this respect, AO takes things a step further by offering you MORE
experience for killing a monster while in a group than you would
have gotten fighting it solo.  Further, I'm fairly certain that they
offer experience for all sorts of activities in addition to actually
fighting.  They seem to be making a real effort to make things like
specialist healers a viable class.

Personally, I don't see people using the personal quest engine much.
The quests that I've tried are all nearly identical in that you get
stuck in a boring arrangement of nearly empty rooms where there are
some enemies to fight, some chests to loot, and something you need
to find.  People play multiplayer games at least in part to
socialize.  Couple this with the fact that the random quest engine
just isn't very good and that you actually are rewarded for grouping
and I don't see it drawing much attention away from the rest of the
game.  Whether the rest of the game will succeed or fail as a social
experiment remains to be seen however.

Sean

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