[MUD-Dev] Text Muds vs Graphical Muds

[Dave Rickey]

From: "Matt Mihaly" <the_logos at achaea.com>
> On Fri, 28 Jun 2002, Dave Rickey wrote:

>> Threshold problem.  Each new player who joins the server is one
>> more player to interact with.  At around the 500-1000 mark
>> (100-200 peak population), each player that joins the server does
>> more to increase the number of bad interactions than good ones,
>> and effectively "crowds" someone else off the server.  Past 2500
>> (500 peak), this turns around, the bad effects of additional
>> people have gotten as bad as they are going to and now each
>> additional person is a net gain for interactions.  You can hit
>> other thresholds, your world may have a "carrying capacity", and
>> certain rulesets (especially "agressive" PK+ rules) can push that
>> capacity down.  But I think the next social scaling problem would
>> set in around 50,000 players per world, and I don't know where
>> stability would set in again (which makes TSO especially
>> interesting to me, since its population will be in one world for
>> social purposes).  The next one down is around 250 population
>> *total*, or 50 peak.

> Hmm, this isn't born out by my experience insofar as I haven't
> ever noticed any problems from crossing any of the boundaries you
> speak of, and we haven't had to use any special marketing push or
> whatnot to move past them.

> You seem to be implying that it's player interactions that cause
> the problems, in which case choosing a number of participants
> doesn't seem appropriate as a measurement. 100 players stuck in a
> single room is a lot different from 100 players spread out among a
> million rooms.

Yeah, and if they can kill each other both would be different in yet
other ways.  I over-simplified, I'm trying to find a general set of
rules that works, and that might be applicable to situations we've
never seen (such as TSO's essentially one-world setup).  Interaction
levels definitely have something to do with it, and absolute numbers
do play a part, but so many influences act in the same ways at an
observable level it's difficult to isolate just one and figure out
how it is working.

> I think a huge part of it comes down to the design of the game.

But which part(s)?

--Dave


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