[MUD-Dev] New Bartle article

[Richard A. Bartle]

On 7th March, 2001, John Buehler wrote:

> Instead of the guild leaving for greener pastures, whether another
> publisher's pastures or your own, provide those pastures in the
> current game environment.

I couldn't agree more.

The issue is what the nature of those pastures are. If you can't
provide it in your game, then they'll leave. I assert that one way you
could provide the pastures for some of the players is to have PD
areas.  The irony is that the players aren't necessarily going to
realise that these are the pastures they need, and will go off
somewhere else.

> As I attempt to draw in casual users, I assume that they aren't
> interested in this serious a pursuit.

Sadly, I agree with you. Casual users are more interested in playing
what their friends say is a good game, or wanting to be a
wookie. Their reasons for playing are nothing to do with what we're
discussing here. We're debating the aesthetics of high art, whereas
they're playing because, well, it looks pretty.

> Except that I worry about mixing gamers and non-gamers.

Oh, I don't worry about that at all - it's essential for the kind of
game I want. What I worry about is the recipe for combining gamers and
non-gamers ot make the tastiest game, not whether they should be
ingredients at all.

>>  Are you suggesting that there should be nothing in a game that's
>>  taxing, in case you want to do it?

> To some players, yes.

"I refuse to play your game! I don't want to be taxed, and there are
things in your game that, although I don't have to go near them, are
nevertheless taxing. I may be tempted to try them, so I'm not going to
play".

I certainly will. They don't want a game, they want a book of line
drawings of animals and some crayons so they can colour them in.

> I'm not challenging the players, I'm just entertaining them.  It's
> somewhere between a movie and the real world in the investment that
> a player has to make in order to find entertainment.

Well, as I said before, you could do this and get a stable game but it
would be ruinous in its requirements for new content.

> Ever gone hiking in the back woods and had somebody break out a cell
> phone and start talking business with somebody?

Strangely, no, I haven't.

> Similarly, if I'm patiently trying to get something done, and
> somebody comes zipping along and does it all in record time, I feel
> foolish.

But surely, if it's entertaining enough, you wouldn't care? It doesn't
bother me that when the latest Hollywood movie reaches Britain it's
already been seen by 50 million Americans. If you're going for this
kind of sit-back-and-be-entertained approach, then you wouldn't care
if someoen experienced it before you - just so long as they don't give
away the ending.

> I'm assuming that you want significant power advancement for
> characters, as with EverQuest.

For a "classic" fantasy type of world, yes.

> I'm mentioned before that this produces social stratification in the
> online community.

And I've mentioned before that it doesn't if you have PD.

> If my powerful character is killed off permanently, I'm certainly
> going to have a big ol' fat carrot waiting for me when I get back to
> my powerful state again - rejoining the people I was playing with.

Well that would be a reason why you might want to try, yes.

> And they are going to help me powergame my way back up again.

If you're a likeable person and if they don't get killed too, they may
indeed help. On the other hand, they might be moving in different
circles and only be able to offer limited assistance.

> The only way I can see breaking this chain is to make powergaming
> advancement take so long that the powerful characters will refuse to
> invest that much time.

Well another way would be for the game to be adaptable, such that
powergaming isn't possible. Sure, there may be a forest full of wolves
that you can clear out in 30 minutes for a ton of points, but if you
can't guarantee that 8 hours later the wolves will all be back then
you have to go off and do something else - something you may not have
done before. A game can automatically "modulate its shields" against
power gamers by reacting to the effects that powergamers have.

> I'm working up my first time character, experiencing the world.  But
> if I'm travelling with this second time guy, he already knows all
> the answers and knows what's around the next corner.

So if you were hiking in the woods, you wouldn't WANT to go with
someone who had been in the woods before and knew what to expect? Wow!
No wonder so many people get lost on mountainsides and the authorities
have to send out rescue parties to find them.

>>  Taken away? Only with PvP PKing. With PD from other sources, the
>>  gains have almost invariably been lost, not taken away.

> Semantics. To me, they are taken away regardless of whether the
> software does it or another player does it.  To you, it's different.

So someone comes and sets fire to your house. They've taken it away
from you. No disagreement there. You set fire to your own house. "The
world" has taken it away from you. Curse those laws of physics!

There is a BIG difference between someone screwing you up and your
screwing yourself up. If you consider this a mere point of semantics,
there is very little point in pursuing this discussion further.

> It depends on whether they're interested in experiencing the game
> with a new social group or not.

I agree. They get the choice.

> No character can master all skills, and the goal is to have many
> skills.

I'm interested to hear why you don't want characters to be able to
master all skills. I'm not saying that I think they should be able to,
but it's just you pulled that line out there and I was wondering why
you thought it. It doesn't seem to fit into your "let meeee entertain
you" model.

> the player model I'm pursuing is one of casual gameplay.  Players
> regularly stay away from the game for a day or two because they
> don't feel all that compelled to keep going back.

The problem you don't really seem to have addressed is that if there's
no compelling reason for them to come back after a couple of days, why
would they ever come back?

> In that model, the loss of ability to play the game is a reminder.

In that model, the loss of ability to play is a shrug of the shoulders
and who cares, the game isn't all that great anyway, why should I
stump up ten bucks a month when I don't really miss it when it's gone?

>> As I attempted to point out, even destruction of a character isn't
>> permanent death.  It is for that character.  But is that

> significant to anybody?

Well the ones who scream that they won't play games where it can
happen obviously attribute it with some significance.

> It permits in-game scenarios to play out in a consistent way, and
> that's about it.

Consistency is one of the least important reasons for having PD. The
statement it makes about achievement is the primary benefit of having
it.

>> In terms of a game world populated by characters, permanent death
>> means character death, not player blocking.  Yeah, but in a game

> world populated by characters, characters shouldn't know things that
> they weren't exposed to.

The game doesn't know they do. From the game's point of view, its
fiction is maintained.

> You're assuming that players will generally pursue a new route
> through the game.  I'm assuming otherwise.  I hope that you're
> right.

Me too <grin> .

> Same comments as above.  The player's intent is the essential point.

I don't believe it is. Players have all kinds of goals when they start
playing a game, and although these shape how the character develops
they don't dictate it. The intent may give a direction, but it doesn't
guarantee a destination. I don't see any critical consequences of a
player's attempting to reproduce an earlier character unless there was
some means by which they could guarantee getting a very close
approximation (yes, this means I'm against classes and races in these
games).

> In the case of the map, I want the character's mental map to be more
> reliable and capable than the player's mental map.

Or the map they downloaded off the web?

> In a dynamic world, this will be more viable than in a static one.
> In a dynamic world, the character's perception skills and knowledge
> will permit the player to more readily interact with the world.  In
> a static world, once something is known, everyone knows it and
> there's little value to having the character know it.

OK, I understand what you're saying, and yes, making the world so
fluid that players can't ever rely on their earlier knowledge is a
possibility. However, I believe that for many players this will be
VERY disconcerting, and I also believe (as usual) that this could eat
up content at phenomenal rate.

> Regardless, I don't enjoy it when other people get whacked because I
> don't enjoy it when I get whacked.

Not even if they sort of deserved it?

> Identifying with other people, be it through their success or their
> misfortune, seems to be a trait that distinguishes between those who
> enjoy PvP and those who do not.

I don't see how you reached that conclusion at all.

> But I'm glad to see that the idea of flexible characters is
> considered a good thing by somebody other than myself.

You bet. I hate the idea of "run on rails" role-playing. I want people
to be able to explore where they will, not always follow a
predetermined path.

> I can see the rut phenomenon developing, but I wouldn't go so far as
> to say that permanent character death is a good thing because it
> ends that growingly intolerable experience.

I wouldn't say it was just plain good, but I'd say it could be that PD
is a cloud that sometimes has a silver lining.

> But to get THAT, we have to figure out how to keep a large world
> large.  That is, no teleportation, etc, to shrink it back down
> again.

Again, I couldn't agree more. Teleportation over long distances does
not make for great game worlds.



Richard

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