[MUD-Dev] Understanding Simulation (was: Point of View)

[Travis Nixon]

From: "Matthew Dobervich" <matthew.dobervich2 at verizon.net>

> Why do you want NPCs involved in a player driven economy at all?

Because the economy is doomed to fail without somehow representing
all the people in the world outside of the very narrow range that
the players actually occupy.  In fact, even if you've got a "player
driven" economy, you've probably got NPCs involved anyway.  You're
just more likely to call them mobs than NPCs.

Unless, of course, you've got an economy where a house never gets
built unless a player builds it.  Or that the grain never gets grown
unless a player plows, plants, and harvests it.  Or that the trash
never gets picked up unless a player does it.

But then you've got to find enough players that want to fill the
"menial" positions.

Of course, that's maybe a wider view than you're probably thinking.
Even with a more narrow view that says that the types of things
players want can only be made by players through trade skills or
whatever, you've still probably got a sickly economy that puts newer
players at a severe disadvantage.

Of course, there are ways to enliven it and spruce it up and make it
not stink even though its decaying, but those would generally be
delaying tactics, not solutions.

:)

I'm quite convinced that the only solutions involve considering what
the rest of the world wants and needs, rather than only considering
what a very narrow range of people in the world want and need.  And
the players are about as narrow a range as you can get, since they
typically all want the same sorts of things.  I would also say the
same about environmental simulations.  If you've got 10 wolves in
the world for every player, said wolves are easy to find, and
worthwhile for the players to kill, don't act surprised when your
wolves go extinct.

Of course, widening the view back out will diminish the players'
ability to have an actual noticeable effect on the world, which a
lot of them(us) claim is the primary thing missing from most online
rpgs.




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