[MUD-Dev] A Question on PvP and PK

[Zach Collins {Siege}]

On Fri, 2 Aug 2002 szii at sziisoft.com wrote:

> A good chunk of my "chess" memories from jr. high are getting
> WAXED by a 2400+ ranked Grandmaster.  He would give me his queen
> and both rooks and still work me over.

> You know what?  I learned a hell of a lot from him on how to use
> other pieces and the extreme value of positioning.

You'll notice that in chess, you can see the position of every piece
from the beginning to the end of every game.  When mudding, it's
rare to see another player's method for improving their character's
combat ability, whether by special equipment or by camping a
mid-level spawn point, or whatever.

> IMHO, American society is far too focused on "fairness, equality,
> and the ability of X to compare to y."  It may sound harsh, but
> hell.  No way I can compare to, say, anyone on the Linux Kernel
> team for programming skill.  I don't think that I could even
> "compare" to most of you for game design.  I'd like to get better
> in both, so I lurk, and learn, and read.  While the golden chalice
> of "everyone is equal" is nice, it's simply not true.  Those who
> have invested the time, energy, effort, willpower and training to
> better themselves should not be held back by those that have
> not...unless they choose to.

Again, we can see what we're doing here.  Every post this list
transmits goes to every subscriber.  We have the capability to study
our friends and competitors.  We willingly give out tips and
information on how to improve and we discuss what can be changed or
fixed in things that seem broken.

> If I ever get the chance to play tennis against Agassi I'm going
> to get my ass kicked.  But you know what?  I'm going to learn a
> hell of a lot even from losing...and I'm going to enjoy every
> minute of it.

> As the saying goes, "Winning isn't everything."  (and it's not the
> only thing, either. =) Take your odds, learn from the game and be
> thankfull you have the opportunity to play against someone that
> much superior.  You could learn a lot more than you may realize.

Yeah, if you play against Agassi, you get to see the externals of
his strategy in action, but is he going to tell you about the less
public bits, the "internals" of it?  Possibly, since in the real
world it actually pays direct dividends to be nice to one's
opponents.  Not so in many online worlds, because there's something
more than a bit of dignity lost when a player is defeated: you tend
to lose equipment, cash, XP, and/or skills when killed.

When you combat a monster on a mud, do you know how it got so tough,
or do you know only that it looks bigger and meaner than you and
that you'd better run before it tears you apart?  I very much
appreciated the "Ecology of" articles that Dragon Magazine ran off
and on over the years, because it gave a background to the AD&D
monster stats.  It allowed me to understand how to best approach
one, and what "strategy" it had for surviving adventurer encounters.
Kobolds, for example, don't just stand toe to toe with a fighter:
they hit and run, strafe with arrows when they have bows, and lead
angry adventurers into traps at top running speed.

Heck, when a monster uses a weapon against you, it's kind of assumed
in P&P RPGs that the weapon will be salvageable after combat, and
that the characters will be able to wield it as well; the monster
used a good weapon, so the corpse contains that weapon.  In other
words, it had a visible strategy: the weapon being used.  Players
who win PvP bouts all the time don't normally hang around to explain
to their victims just what process and equipment you need to win
like they do.  And with the limited options for combat (direct
damage, sometimes from ambush, instead of setting traps or using
advantageous terrain), most muds don't have much of anything to
study after the winner leaves: no physical clues to observe, thus no
visible strategy, thus nothing to learn but that some guy ran up and
beat you to death with a flaming sword.

At least in FPS games you can watch a player's movements, and learn
how to dodge their weapons or otherwise use some form of strategy
besides load up on XP, aka run the level/skill treadmill.

This is why I appreciate mud combat that involves something more
than 'attack monster' 'rest' 'attack monster', and why I dislike PvP
so much.

--
Zach Collins (Siege)


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