[MUD-Dev] RE: Understanding Simulation

[shren]

On Fri, 11 Oct 2002, Peter Harkins wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 10, 2002 at 02:42:03PM -0500, shren wrote:
 
>> In my ecology simulation thought experiments, a creature becomes
>> tougher as it becomes more rare.  Extinction becomes extremely
>> unlikely, however, a creature can easily be nudged into limited
>> terrain.  Then again, however, I strive for dynamic ecology
>> instead of realistic ecology.

> What this sounds like to me is that the more of a species a player
> kills, the more difficult and fun it is to kill the rest. They
> have to attack smarter, hit harder, search better. Then your
> system will eventually reach a point where the they can't fight
> well enough to kill a creature because the game is cheating (as
> they'll see it) against them so much and get extremely frustrated
> with what they suddenly perceive as an unfair system.
 
> I think having a dynamic ecology rather than realistic is a good
> idea, but this particular idea lets the players control a feedback
> loop.

Think that if you like, but for me, the fact that monsters are just
there to be killed, walking treasure chests with trivial
self-defense mechanisms, bores me to death.  What's so horrible
about a monster that can't be killed?  Everybody encounters
something, now and then, that they, personally, can't kill.  What's
so game-breaking about a monster *nobody* can kill?  What's really
wrong with an anti-genocide mechanism for monsters?

Do all the dynamic ecology work you like.  If you allow players to
wipe the board clean with a couple of max-level characters with good
gear, then your dynamic ecology will be just like UO's dynamic
ecology - irrelevant - and you might as well go back to static
spawns.

If you kill the orcs so completely that there are only a handful
left that are impossible to kill, then they will probably be in a
remote area.  Think of that remote area as Mordor.  Any party of
adventurers in middle earth that decides they want to clear Mordor
of all monsters deserve the death that they get.  But no - almost
universally across all MUDs, almost all monsters are actually
pinyatas, built to die.

Fantasy often contains the idea of a balance between good and evil.
That's thrown out the window for almost every online computer game
I've played, where evil is a red headed stepchild.


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