[MUD-Dev] A Question on PvP and PK

[Jeff Lindsey]

szii at sziisoft.com wrote:
> From: "Matt Mihaly" <the_logos at achaea.com>
>> On Thu, 1 Aug 2002, Sean Kelly wrote:
>>> On Fri, 26 Jul 2002, Matt Mihaly wrote:
   
>>>> In Go and Chess and other games like that, you usually aren't
>>>> playing against other masters, but when you play CS or PK in
>>>> many games, you end up stuck against people with FAR more
>>>> experience than you. If you had to play a Master every time you
>>>> started playing chess, I bet it'd become
>>>> unentertaining. Challenge is good. Feeling as if you are
>>>> screwed from the start is not fun.
   
>>> 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?"

Losing to a superior player isn't necessarily "bad".

Losing over and over again to several superior players in a game
that otherwise has really good gameplay, graphics, and longevity is
more than a little disheartening. Oh, and then there's the fifty
bucks you shelled out for it.

> 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.

When someone in a multiplayer FPS repeatedly exploits loopholes in
friendly-fire code, killing half his teammates from the start, is
this a "challenge" devoid of fairness, or annoying and likely to
make you stop playing?

-Jeff

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