[MUD-Dev] Enforced log out aka "real sleep"

[fred at clift.org]

(I'm comming into this thread a few weeks late - sorry -- trying to
catch up!)

On Thu, 14 Feb 2002, Brian Hook wrote:

> Which is why I brought it up -- fundamentally the rational game
> designer in me recognizes that it's a REAL bad idea.  Telling
> players "You have to stop playing this character right now" is
> very, very wrong.

This is not always true.  If you only look at this issue in terms of
game-play, perhaps there is not much justification.

On the other hand, look at it from the point of view of a
bandwidth-hungry graphical, pay-for-subscription mud.  Ideally, what
you want in a business like this is that people pay you their
subscriptions and then never log in.  Each person who logs in uses
up resources that you have to pay for.  Of course an online game
that makes logging in pointless wont be successful so you have to
balance these goals.

Utopia-online (is this still around?  haven't looked in ages) comes
to mind -- a web-based, turn-based strategy game where pretty much
20 or 30 minutes of use of a browser could be used to make all your
moves in a 24 hour period.  You _could_ split up all the things you
do over several sessions, spread out over a whole day, and
accomplish the same tasks.  This way their players never had much
incentive to sit there and hammer their web servers all day long
(except for the forums I guess).

For a mud-like game, I dont know how you could justify it in game,
but you could make players less effective in skills or combat or
whatever the longer they stay connected in each real-time period (24
hours or whatever).  Have the first 4 hours of play be at 100% and
then fall off gradually or the next 2 hours and then rapidly for the
rest, down to say 1/4 normal effectiveness.  People who are there
for the social aspects of the world can stay and socialize, people
who have other in-game or out-of-game goals will know to not bother
playing much after 6 hours.  (I seem to remember some discussion of
similar schemes a while back when talking about 'ethical' gaming -
should we tell people to log out and go play outside? - I'm reminded
of the player on the my mud who for 4 or 5 months straight was on
more than 12 hours a day...  sheesh - get a life!)

Another reason you might want to force people to spend 'real' time
away from the game would be to mitigate the
punk-teenager-powermudder from being the most powerful person on
your combat mud -- this would give 'profiessionals' like me who have
less time to play a better chance of being king of the hill or
whatever...

So, to summarize, there might be valid reasons to want to do this
even if players say they dont like it: reduce operating expneses,
encourage social responsibility, or adjust game balance for people
with reduced time to play.

There are probably more valid reasons one might want to do this, but
none come to mind right now.

Fred

--
Fred Clift - fred at clift.org -- Remember: If brute
force doesn't work, you're just not using enough.

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