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

[Vincent Archer]

According to Koster, Raph:

>> 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.

Some players will use them. Most will not. It depends.

Players behave as if they follow the maxim: "Nature abhors
emptiness".  If they have access to space for 200 items, they will
hoard about 200 items. If they have access to 400 item storage, they
will hoard 400 items.

The real question is: is the storage "sufficient". i.e., are the
added inconvenience of doing contortion for muling warranted by an
excess of items that are "absolutely necessary".

If the storage space is large enough that you can store all the
supplies and equipment you feel you "need" and some, and there's
obstacles to muling (such as DAoC's "you cannot pick any item
another character dropped" rule), most characters will not mule,
except a few extremists.

If storage is not enough, then people will complain loudly, or mule,
regardless of the difficulty. DAoC was another striking example.  If
you did tradeskills, like armor, for example, you had to buy
supplies by stack of 20. Each tier of equipment required you to have
about 4 different items. You consumed 1 to N items of each type,
and, if you wanted to sell back unused raw materials, you lost 50%
of their value. So you needed to store materials in your bank. If
you were working at tradeskill 6 or 7, that meants 24 or 28 slots of
your bank space were taken by your tradeskill supplies.

Your bank has, what, 40? Suddendly, it's not enough anymore. Your
trade supplies, a couple of equipment for friends, replacements,
future equipment, and you feel strangled. Then you call upon your
friends "to make transfers".

On the contrary, in EQ, I didn't felt the need of making a mule. I
could store 80 items. About 20 slots were taken by some tradeskills,
a dozen by useful gems, a dozen quest items on standby, spare
equipment for special circumstances (a "resist" set), 20 pieces of
equipment to make a "twink" maybe someday. It was far easier to
delete a quest item because I probably never intended to make the
quest anyway, or delete a spare equipment to hold that new
acquisition.

In AC, there was zero bank space. A mule was absolutely necessary,
because it raised your bank space from 0 to lots.

Note that there are other reasons for having multiple characters.

But, if carefully thought out, player hoarding can not be one to any
great degree.

--
	Vincent Archer			Email:	archer at frmug.org

All men are mortal.  Socrates was mortal.  Therefore, all men are Socrates.
							(Woody Allen)

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