[MUD-Dev] Natural Selection and Communities

[Dave Rickey]

From: "John Buehler" <johnbue at msn.com>
> Dave Rickey writes:

>> No, we set the *rewards*, and the constructs adapt to those.
>> Those contructs that achieve for their individual members the
>> rewards they seek will prosper, those that do not will wither
>> away.  Guilds as we know them in EQ and Camelot are social
>> devices for being able to get a group on short notice.  Beyond
>> that, they are a means of fielding a "raid" force to handle those
>> fights that require large numbers of participants.

> The rewards that you bring up are part of the impetus that I'm
> talking about.  But organizations solve problems just as they
> pursue rewards.  The bottom line here is that games should be
> supporting and permitting and encouraging the formation of
> organizations that are *entertaining*.

> As I've stated many times in the past, I don't believe that
> player-run content - including organizations - is a good thing
> overall.  As a result, I'd like to see NPCs running these more
> complex organizations, with the players operating within them.  So
> players get to influence events up and down the organizational
> structure, but they don't define it or control it, per se.

> Anyway, that's my take on it.  I don't know that I'm disagreeing
> with you so much as trying to make a different point.

Pretty much.  I want the organization to come from the players for
two reasons: They will be more attached to it if they built it
themselves, and any structure that they create will inherently be
more flexible and adaptable than anything I could pre-define.
Flexible organizations adapt to their environment, part of the
environment for a player-driven organization is that it has to be
interesting and entertaining for the players (since it rises and
falls depending on their participation).  Call it the
passive-agressive problem of game design, I can't make the players
do anything, but I can set it up so they can't do anything else.  If
I do, and they aren't interested in doing it, everything falls
apart.

So I have to let go, and work from the edges.  Figure out what
structure of limits and rewards will make organizations like what I
am hoping to see flourish.  We didn't *make* players develop the
Alliances and compartmentalized planning in order to carry off Relic
raids, they did it themselves in response to the obstacles between
them and their reward, most of them created by...other players.

The only things the players really care about in the game are those
they can influence or control, directly or indirectly.  If they
don't matter to it, it doesn't matter to them.  If you *make* it
matter to them, they won't like it.

--Dave



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