[MUD-Dev] [MLP] The use of ecology models (was: NPC Complexity)

[Matt Mihaly]

On Thu, 25 Apr 2002, Sean Kelly wrote:
> From: "Matt Mihaly" <the_logos at achaea.com>
 
>> *boggle* A minimum of effort? Surely my friend, you are joking! 
>> As someone who has spent the last 5 years of his life as the head
>> admin and developer on a group vs. group MUD, I can tell you it
>> requires somewhat more than a minimum of effort. It's been my
>> experience on three different group vs. group games that admin
>> intervention is absolutely crucial to keep the conflict between
>> the groups alive and, more importantly, interesting. Fighting
>> over the same issue for years can get tedious, and creating new
>> issues for them to fight over (when they aren't finding their own
>> reasons) is not a small amount of work.
 
> Good point.  But if players can both compete directly as well as
> affect the world at large (some sort of content creation), I
> believe that the game is much more self-sustaining than worlds
> where this is not the case.  Asheron's Call case in point.
> Designers spend all their time working like crazy to get the next
> month's block of content out the door, and the more industrious
> players finish it in 48 hours.  Also, since only a limited amount
> of content can be created, the entire populace ends up being
> attracted to the same few places (though I grant that the team has
> done a good job trying to distribute things as much as possible).
> Compare this to, say, Ultima Online, and I think UO comes out on
> top in terms of designer effort vs.  replay value.

Sure, I agree that it adds value to the world. I was just pointing
out it's not a costless panacea.

--matt

_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev