[MUD-Dev] Star Wars Galaxies: 1 character per server

[Koster]

From: Dubious Advocate

> I maintain that game worlds are damaged solely by dupe exploits
> and poorly planned loot templates.

That seems a remarkably narrow view. SOLELY by bad loot and dupes? 
Nothing else?

> Guild mules indicate a problem with economic distribution.

Hardly. Players will hoard to the maximum ability possible. If
players have access to mules, they will use them, period, end of
sentence. The sufficiency of storage they are granted is basically
irrelevant.

Players will also find the shortest path to the cheese. If players
have access to mules to make their main more powerful, they will do
so. After all, any given player seeks greater control over their
environment, and more power. They are reluctant to interact with
anyone else.

> Character mules indicate a problem with grouping mechanics and
> shared storage.  Both are easily resolved.

In what way? Note that UO had such a massive storage bloat that
backups of memory took two hours or more to complete, and forced a
massive effort to do database cleanups in game.

> And neither truly damage a world by themselves but rather simply
> present a short-term design opportunity.

You say this despite having seen the economic and gameplay havoc
wrought in UO?

> UO resolved them both, through player-controlled vendors and
> housing.

Neither resolved the issue. Vendors were instantly abused as
ADDITIONAL storage until we imposed a vendor fee based on the
pricing of items on the vendor. Housing created even more of a mule
and storage issue by allowing players to hoard to unprecedented
levels--10,000 shirts in one tile was COMMON.

Mules in UO are if anything a worse problem than ever, with near
100% of the playerbase running them, and interdependence greatly
reduced (a trend accelerated by other measures such as Trammel).

And storage was ameliorated only by enforcing a stringent storage
limit that is less than 1% of the original capcity of houses.

> The sole drawback to their approach was unrestricted "on the main
> map" housing.  UO may be a morass codebase - but there are so many
> valuable design & business lessons it pre-learned for the next
> competitor.

Players don't like virtual housing. I'll say it flat out. Houses are
popular in large part for bragging rights. That demands the ability
to show them off. The rules of real estate still apply: location,
location, location. I'd say the lesson learned is "you need to have
more space" not "put houses in a pocket dimension."

-Raph

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