[MUD-Dev] RE: Realistic Ecological Models, Differentiating Areas by Difficulty, and Socialization

[shren]

On Wed, 24 Apr 2002, Ron Gabbard wrote:

> Players don't really want to change the world... they want to
> change their world.  They do want to combat the hoardes of evil
> and liberate an area for civilization... they don't want to
> venture forth to find the area already civilized and have nothing
> to battle.  They do want to form guilds to build grand castles and
> cities and defend those cities against the on-slaught of
> enemies... they don't want to log in and find that a Japanese or
> Aussie guild burned their city to the ground while they were
> asleep.  That's the challenge.

I disagree.  One of my most intense gaming experiences was trying to
stop an NPC town invasion alone.  The world didn't care about me, it
just knew that when the dungeon filled with monsters, it was going
to flood the town next.  I spent a lot of time trying to stop the
invasion.

As for burning a town while the players arn't there, I might as well
dump a design for a game that's been sitting in my head for a while.
Players control a kingdom and a small, uniform army.  The army is
uniform to encourage players to work together (I've got calvary,
you've got inventry, bob's got archers.)

If you want to take over a map grid, you declare your intention to
attack there.  The battle is scheduled a week from the present time.
Everyone who wants to can get on board and sign up to join the
fight.  People registered to fight can manipulate the time of the
fight (the longer the time to the fight, the more you can move it
about.)  On the day of the fight, all of the people scheduled to
show (they have to sign up in time in order to march there, of
course) arrive and the battle is fought.  If the attacker wins, he
gets the grid.

Now, sometimes you don't want to wait a week for the action.  You
can skirmish anyone at any time (ignoring even travel times) and you
gain experience from skirmishing, as well as having less casualties
than a full fight.

Gameplay:

  I decide to take a grid owned by someone else.  I have a legion of
  archers.  I state my intent to capture.  The battle is scheduled
  for 10 pm EST.

  The defender, of course, sends his pikemen to defend.  He joins
  the list.  He decides to roll back the time.

  The attacker recruits a friend with some infantry.

  The defender recruits a friend with some light calvary.

  Each day, each participant can shift the time of the fight by
  (days till fight * 5 minutes), as a crude form of an agreement
  protocol.

That was sort of on topic.  Yes, I agree that games that require
anal-compulsive constant attendance are bad.  (10-six anyone?  my
lord that game encouraged compulsive play.)  You don't have to
design things that way, though.  You can always force players to
schedule town attacks, or limit town attacks to a certain fixed 3
hour period each day.

Brief digression about 10-six.  As best I can figure, the optimal
strategy is to:

  1) build construction buildings
  2) build your base
  3) build unit construction buildings
  4) build units
  5) take down unit construction buildings
  6) take down the construction buildings
  7) stay logged in.  even though you can be attacked while
    off-line, you don't produce resources while off-line.
  8) if you need more units, repeat steps 1-6
  9) if you need more buildings, repeat steps 1, 2, and 5.

The game was built to encourage 24 hour play and the obsessive
construction and desturction of buildings.  The design was so bad it
made my head hurt.  Why would you *do* that, especially 7?

--
http://www.shren.net

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