[MUD-Dev] New Bartle article

[Trump]

> From: "Koster, Raph"
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] New Bartle article

> Key part of that sentence is "the end." Do we WANT end points in
> these games?


I'd say we do.  For a number of reasons.

  1.  If the players were never going to leave then an unending game
  would be great.  The fact is everyone will quit eventually.  Granted
  there is a small number for whom the server being finally turned off
  will be that point (NWN).  But for everyone else if you can extend
  the time people will stay by giving them an endpoint that is beyond
  when they would have quit from boredom you are able to keep
  collecting money from people you would not otherwise have been able
  to get.  The trick here is picking an endpoint that is beyond the
  boredom point, but not too far beyond it as to be unreachable.  How
  many times have you plodded through the last few levels of a game
  you were getting sick of just because you wanted to win it?

  2.  One thing that turned me off from all the ORPGS I've played is
  the lack of a victory situation.  In my ethical code you dont quit
  until you've won.  Quitters are losers.  If there is no way to win
  your game you are making everyone a loser.  People tend to look back
  and say, "Yeah, UO got boring so I quit."  What kind of word of
  mouth is that?  Wouldnt you rather have them say, "I was there when
  we beat back the enemy and saved the world!  I didnt go back because
  it was so much fun that it took up my whole day."  Which will bring
  in the new customer?

  3.  Early direction or early rejection.  Oh the number of times I've
  seen this.  "Hey Bob wanna try UO?"  "Sure, what am I supposed to
  do?"  "Whatever you want."  "OK, I want to watch TV."  *Bob watches
  TV* "Hey bob, wanna try Diablo?"  "Sure, what am I supposed to do?"
  "Kill Diablo" "OK" *Bob begins his quest to kill Diablo* ORPGs are
  losing thousands of players because they dont have a goal to get
  players into the game before that emotional attachment develops.
  I'd guess this is one of the main reasons the various types of MUDs
  and ORPGs fail to attract even close to the numbers of single player
  games.  New players without direction are likely to become
  ex-players rather quickly.

  4.  Fresh starts are needed and sometimes they need to be
  forced. With UO's Zog Cabal story line many players were thinking it
  was going to lead up to a server wipe.  Some didnt like that idea,
  but many did.  The game had recently fallen to numerous dupe bugs,
  bugged "1 hit killer" weapons and housing was out of hand.  It would
  have been a perfect time to erase all the duped gains and all the
  houses clogging the landscape.

Obviously the kinds of endpoints I'm talking about here are not PD or
other random events, but long term goals.  Players are there to hang
with thier friends, to fight their enemies, to build thier characters
and generally have fun.  I'm sure there are plenty of Evercampers who
would be pissed to log in one day and found all thier ph4t l3wts
erased, some might even quit, many more would just start over with
that other class they were thinking about twinking.

What better ending point is there than a Pwipe? You should be able to
tell us all what percentage of players quit UO's open beta test after
every wipe, and there sure were a lot of them.  If it really was
devastating then there would have been no testers that last day after
the dozens of wipes.  If I remember correctly, the server was still
packed.

-Azeraab

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