[MUD-Dev] Proposed Law

[Sami Kosonen]

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

> Or, to rephrase in a way that doesn't make me cringe:

> Unless there is some external way to reintroduce cows to the
> system, AND if you put 100 players in a small area that only has
> 200 cows in it, AND if there is some benefit to killing cows (you
> get the meat, you practice archery, whatever) AND if the benefit
> is worth the time spent (which obviously is very subjective) AND
> if there is no sense of ownership or if there is ownership, there
> are no penalties for killing other people's cows, or the penalties
> are outweighed by the benefits, AND if there are no downsides to
> killing cows, other than the fact that all the cows will be
> dead...

> If all of those things are true, then yes, the players definately
> _will_ make them extinct.

> Duh.  :)

> You can even drop the probably.

> If the real world wasn't such a big place, we'd have driven a lot
> more species into extinction than we have.  That is just as
> certain.  :)

> People kill all the cows because you've told them they're supposed
> to.

> How much money, in real life, could I possibly hope to gain from
> killing a cow?  And how much work would it take to get said
> payoff?  Would it be worth it?  Highly doubtful.  And that's
> assuming that I don't get arrested for killing some farmer's cow.
> Note that I'm not saying games should be like real life, but it is
> rather silly to provide an ecology not even the size of a small
> town, throw a couple thousand players into it and say "Here you
> go!  Kill stuff.  Advance your character.  Make money." and not
> expect that they'd totally clean everything out in notime flat. :)

> Of course the ecosystem is going to fail.  It can't do anything
> BUT fail.  It's not possible for it to do anything but fail.  Put
> 100 wolves in a closed pen that has 200 rabbits.  How long do you
> figure the rabbits are going to live? :)

> Hell, how long do you think the wolves are going to live after
> they eat all the rabbits.  lol

Heh I have to say you're absolutely right. This is why you have so
many griefers in MUDs and so few in real world. There are very
little consequenses for killing people in MUDs especially in big
MMOGs. You wont get arrested, you won't get hanged, you won't get
banned, it's just leisure for you. Most MUDs just say killing is
good mkay.

This is why you can't implant many "realistic" features like free
PvP or looting or thiefing because they aren't realistic if they
don't have right consequences (ie chopped fingers, excommunication,
extermination, = jail etc.)

--Sami Kosonen

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