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

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad <olag@ifi.uio.no>]

"brian hook" <brianhook at pyrogon.com> writes:
> Ola said:
 
>> I don't know. It is easier for newbies to get into the system if
>> everybody else are "newbies".
 
> It is?  I learn more from a "master" than I do from another
> student.

Actually, research on learning suggests that you learn more from
another student that is close to your own level than a "master"
student. Another student will do it with you and allow you to form
questions, a master will do it for you. That ruins the
experience. Being a good teacher is HARD. There are lots of other
reasons for favoring newbie peerage over twink play though. I don't
want to get into it all. It should be obvious to anyone with lots of
MUD experience.

> Once again, if you're fundamentally assuming a power advancement
> universe, then sure, some newbies may feel better that they're
> starting at the same point.

Nah. It's more fun to show somebody your discoveries if they haven't
already seen it. Unless you are a kid and don't understand that your
parents have seen your fantastics discoveries already.

> But at that point, you're not making a world, you're making a race
> to the finish line.  You can't have a persistent world where
> EVERYONE starts on a level playing field.

You can feel that those you interact with are. All virtual worlds in
betas have this property. You can feel it to some extent in worlds
that have advertisment campaings at sufficiently large
intervalls. (The world gets flooded with newbies)

>> Politics without interference tends to lead to "monopolies" of
>> some sort.
 
> You can still "interfere" to keep things balanced.  If you have a
> game that pits city-states or realms against each other, you can
> have power shifts in the struggle, but you can also put in safe
> guards to prevent minority states from being crushed into rubble.
> > You don't need to reset the world just to "fix" these problems.

Then the politics involve influencing the admins, whining and
screaming on forums etc. That's the interaction between players, not
characters ;). Besides such balancing tends to screw up the game
play value, doesn't it? Making the game too tedious or too hard for
the majority in order to curb the minority.

> What's not to be convinced?  If everyone is worried about a level
> playing field, then they're focused on achievement in terms of a
> measure of tangible power.  That's basically a level/skill/power
> treadmill.

Power... is a rather engulfing concept that stretch far beyond
threadmills...

> In the context of games, and specifically what I was discussing,
> achievement was specifically referred to advancement of power.
> I'm not sold that 100% of players are looking for this and feel
> they're directly competing against other players.

Oh, we all compare ourselves to others and struggle for
acceptance. All the time. I would even consider flirting to be
"advancement of power"...

>> Yes, but adding content doesn't make the world more attractive to
>> newbies. It is counter productive in that respect.
 
> 100% disagreement.  Adding new content doesn't affect newbies one
> way or another, because their "horizon" is far enough that they
> can't tell if the next continent is 1 mile away or 100 miles away.

Well, all the other players move to that continent that is 100 miles
away, and resources are spent on that area rather than improving the
newbie areas.

> Straw man.  People go back to their old _persistent_ games all the
> time.  Look at UO, EQ, etc.  They go back to their old _fun_ games
> all the time.  If a game is about consuming content, then they
> don't

They do? I might consider dabbling with M59, because there are no
other graphical PK MUDs, and perhaps for a couple of hours of
remembrance, but that would be it.

> Hey, great, but that's not addressing my point -- my point is that
> CounterStrike and BF1942 and Quake are examples of multiplayer
> games where you don't have to provide new content all the time in
> order to keep players interested.

Football, soccer etc.

--
Ola - http://folk.uio.no/olag/

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