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

[Matt Mihaly]

On 28 Oct 2002, Ola Fosheim Gr=F8stad wrote:
> Matt Mihaly <the_logos at achaea.com> writes:
 
>> the rest generated) At the moment, 136 of those players are
>> clustered together in the top four occupied areas of the game,
>> all of which are player cities. Those cities generally have
>> around 200-250 locations each. That's pretty good physical
>> density, considering that I'm willing to bet those players aren't
>> using 50% of their cities.
 
> But then I suppose that adding new areas only caters for existing
> players and not newbies?

Not at all. We add new areas for newbies as they are needed.
 
> My point is this: the first month of entering a world is the most
> rewarding period. In a gameworld, I'd like to see that rewarding
> period repeated. AO and EQ are currently not particularly
> interesting for newbies, at least not for me.

The first month entering a world is the most rewarding for you, or
for all players? It's definitely not true in the latter case. In the
former, well, can't please everyone.
 
>> Aside from physical density, every organization in the game has
>> continent-wide communication channels, and there is also a
>> continent-wide shout command, an area-wide yell command,
>> continent-wide player-to-player tells, the market channel, and
>> player-to-player persistent messages. The issue isn't whether you
>> are going to be able to socialize, but how much socialization you
>> want.
 
> Mm... yes. Maybe. But I want socializing through interaction, not
> spamming.

How is that spamming and not interaction? Two-way communication IS
interaction.
 
>> My point is just the size of the world is only relevant to
>> socializing if the designers choose to make it so.
 
> Yes, that's true. Unfortunately, most MUDs have pisspoor
> cityplanners, who aren't really capable of predicting what will
> and what will not work (if they think about the layout in terms of
> it's socializing ability at all). Certainly not plan for
> growth. Besides, MMOs have a huge surge of newbies in the start,
> then the newbie areas turn into ghost-towns....

It sounds to me like you're complaining about a handful of MUDs out
of thousands of them. Maybe most of the graphical MUDs are like
that, but that's not been my experience in text MUDs. We didn't plan
for growth properly, but accomodating growth hasn't proved all that
difficult. New newbie areas can be added, etc.
 
--matt


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