[MUD-Dev] Proposed Law

[Matt Mihaly]

On Mon, 22 Oct 2001, Paul Schwanz wrote:
> Matt Mihaly wrote:
 
>> Why? You seem to me to be slipping in and out of context
>> here. When a monster is "killed" and respawns, there's no
>> destruction of content taking place. It's just interaction of
>> content and player.
 
> Perhaps a better way to explain this law would include some
> concept of the number of dimensions of interaction.  While killing
> a monster is interaction of content and player, even in cases
> where the monster is automatically respawned, it seems to me tit
> is a bit one-dimensional.  Maybe this is just me, but I think it
> is pretty self-evident that having monsters that can interact with
> players on many dimensions is going to increase the potential for
> interesting content that each MOB can provide.

Sure, it's one-dimensional. So is every other method of interacting
with a mob. That's no reason to get rid of any of them or disparage
any of them. It's many of those together that makes it
multi-dimensional.
 
> Furthermore, I'd point out that respawning mobs actually removes
> one form of possible (and intuitive) interaction: that of
> destruction.

Indeed, though removing a mob permanently removes all possibility of
interaction with the mob in the future. The benefits to allowing it
may be greater, but it still removes more avenues of interaction
than just temporarily taking a mob out of commission does.

> I like the idea of giving freedom of interaction (including the
> freedom to destroy) to players, but having them live with the
> consequences of their actions (i.e. destroying something will
> remove all other possibility of interaction with that game piece).
> To me, this seems like the sort of choice/consequence dilema that
> makes a game fun.  Of course, giving players this much power over
> content may require some other game features that attempt to
> ensure the destruction of content doesn't get out of hand.

They live with the consequences of their actions either way. In a
world with respawning mobs, the consequence is that it's taken out
of commission for a period of time. Your argument is really for
extremity of consequence I think, not whether player actions have
consequences (it'd be a pretty boring game if nothing depended on
anything you did). Sometimes extreme consequences are good,
sometimes they're bad. I think it depends on the world and the
playerbase.

--matt

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