[MUD-Dev] A Question on PvP and PK

[Moonvine]

From: Paul Boyle

> One new thought I do have to offer up is that there is a second
> option.  Some players, if they enjoy other aspects of the game
> enviornment, will, rather than leaving the game, condition
> themselves to enjoy or at least tolerate the gameplay that is most
> rewarded in the game.

> Let me give you a concrete example.  I know a woman playing EQ who
> admits to being bored by the standard cycle of plane raiding,
> monster killing, achievement playing that is the standard of the
> game.  Whenever I ask her why she doesn't quit, though, she
> usually answers that she feels obligated to be there for her
> guild, her friends, and her husband who also plays.  Btw, she
> plays a cleric. But she gets caught up in the thrill of getting
> that new bubble of experience for her skills too.

I am bored by plane raiding.  I loathe and detest the high end game,
thus I don't participate in it.  But achiever gameplay isn't
necessesarily most rewarded in the game.  I'm not sure if I can say
this in a way that makes sense to anyone but me, and I don't know
about your friend, but I'm a socializer and I set my own goals.  And
they aren't necessarily what the designers thought they would be
when they created the game.

> I don't know what you should take from that.  Personally, I feel
> sorry that she's sort of trapped herself in an enviornment that
> really isn't rewarding to her.  I'm sure the execs at Sony, are
> thrilled to have people like her who've maintained their game
> account, not because of the game itself, but because of other
> players.

I am sure this sounds unbearably lame, but to me the players are
more important than the game.  Without players, for me there is no
game.  I've been mudding since 1993 and I don't really play single
player games at all.  I did buy Diablo, and it looked really pretty,
but there wasn't any real community, so it didn't hold my interest.
I can no more imagine playing a game with the goal of killing other
players than I can imagine waking up tomorrow as a man.  It is just
completely and utterly foreign to me.  As I suspect my view is to
people who enjoy PVP.  Although I know the mud a lot of the original
EQ designers came from, and there is a strong sense of community
there.  So I'm not particularly surprised by people maintaining
their game account because of the other players, and I doubt they
are either.


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