[MUD-Dev] Morphable worlds, Reset based systems revisited

[Kestanan]

From: "Ola Fosheim Grøstad" <olag at ifi.uio.no>

> It is quite apparent to me that a commercial MUD is most
> interesting at the time of launch where you have lots and lots of
> players at your own level to interact with. Arriving in or coming
> back to an established game is kind of lonely and discouraging,
> there is no level playfield, and everything has been discovered by
> somebody else...

> Why not design a flexible world that allows designers to rearrange
> the entire world, gameplay rules included? Then you can massively
> improve the world and relaunch every six months...

> Yes, there are some obvious gamplay and balancing issues. Still,
> in static world designs, a reset-like world-morphing relaunch
> approach has certain advantages.

>   (Expansions does not count, they only address current hardcore
>   players, not casual ones)

Er, why do expansions only address current players? Is it not
possible that they might address exactly this situation? Basically
your assuming that any given mud only cares about its hardcore
players, fair enough loyaltys nice, but new blood is just as
important. Personally i try and mix it up as much as possible,
firstly because ive experienced exactly the lonelyness you
mentioned, and dont like it one bit, but mainly because letting any
part of the game stagnate leads to open abuse. I dont doubt that im
not alone in this.

A games as flexible as its designers at the end of the day.

K.


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