[MUD-Dev] A Question on PvP and PK

[Lars Duening]

szii at sziisoft.com wrote:
> From: "Matt Mihaly" <the_logos at achaea.com>
>> On Thu, 1 Aug 2002, Sean Kelly wrote:

>>> Actually, Go has a ranking and handicap system that allows even
>>> a novice player to challenge a master and keep things fairly
>>> even.  I imagine something similar could be done for RTS games
>>> to keep things even as well.

>> Yeah, I know, but it's not the same to me at least. Knowing that
>> I'm being treated like a retarded stepchild just to have a chance
>> of competing against someone else isn't at all fun. It's even
>> less fun than being beaten over and over with even resources,
>> because winning just feels cheap and empty, and losing is even
>> worse. =)

> See, now this is what bugs me (personal thing.)  People are too
> focused on "I have to have a chance of winning" to even play.  Why
> do you have to win? Why is losing to a superior player "bad?"

Because winning is the point of playing the game *duh*. Why should
people play a game, not to mention trying to get better at it, when
it's guaranteed that they will lose _all the time_?

> A good chunk of my "chess" memories from jr. high are getting
> WAXED by a 2400+ ranked Grandmaster.

Yeah, and all your games were against Grandmasters like this one,
never against anybody else, right?

> IMHO, American society is far too focused on "fairness, equality,
> and the ability of X to compare to y."

What does that have to do with anything?

As far as I remember, the particular problem discussed was how to
keep the gameplay enjoyable even though you have participants of
vastly different skill. Equalizing the skills using a handicap
system or similar is just one of the possible ways to do it
(besides: it also works in favor of the Veteran when he has nobody
but Rookies to compete against). Another way, often used in physical
sports and probably hard to translate into MMOGs, is to divide the
participants in groups of similar skill and compete and rank only
within these groups.

--
Lars Duening; lars at bearnip.com
PGP Key: http://www.bearnip.com/lars/pgp-lars.asc


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