[MUD-Dev] Mass customization in MM***s

[Matt Mihaly]

On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, John Buehler wrote:
> Matt Mihaly writes:

>> So make death relatively painless. Maybe being blown out of the
>> sky only takes them out of the encounter for X period of time.
 
> I thought Marian's original premise was to make the adventure have
> high emotion through the possible loss of something valuable:

That is, in my opinion, a poor way to achieve high emotion. I posted
about that in a reply to Marian though.
 
> Given that, death is not supposed to be painless.  Or are you
> suggesting that players can get right back into it, but perhaps at
> the cost of another quick death?  Does that set up a player for
> huge disappointment who really isn't capable of handling the
> ferocity of the encounter and loses all his lives?  I know that
> you don't really care about such a scenario unless it starts to
> impact your business model.  But I care about structuring the
> entertainment so that my players will reliably get a certain level
> of entertainment.  Thus my original posting.

I just think the limited deaths idea is a poor one, generally
speaking (obviously there is really no design decision that can be
said to be universally poor, as it's entirely dependent on the rest
of the game).

As far as what I care about, I care first and foremost about making
money, because I'm an ethically responsible business operator who
understands that he has an obligation to make money for the people
who made the game possible in then first place (my
investors). Happily, the only way to do that is to ensure the
players are reliably entertained, and even more happily, we seem to
be damn good at it.

I'd actually like to check out your game though, where these players
are being so wonderfully satisfied in all the ways you speak of so
frequently. Point me to the address of it?

--matt

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