[MUD-Dev] Re: Crafting Money

[Derek Licciardi]

From: eric
> From: "Derek Licciardi" <kressilac at insightBB.com>

>> Also, if you establish local communities you must get rid of
>> teleportation entirely or make it so dangerous that its a gimped
>> magic anyway.  Teleportation is like the Internet, it makes
>> communities global nearly instantaneously.

> I don't think so, naturally you have to keep the world above a
> certain minimum entertainment value, and I think the complaints
> you mentioned are because that was not so. For instance, if the
> trip back to town from the orc village takes you a half hour of
> boring clicking, then the half hour of clicking is the problem,
> not the lack of fast teleportation. Its just that most times those
> two qualities are intimately mixed.  That doesn't have to be
> true. A good example is Lineage, I played this for a couple months
> and got to see a couple different towns, if I just decided to
> start walking in a random direction I would get lost and no doubt
> die.  Because I would encounter creatures far too powerful to
> fight or run from.  This kept me on the safe paths, or got me
> involved in trips with others. I agree with your comments on
> teleportation and it making communities global, but thats only
> because current systems are flawed in this respect.  Teleportation
> is very rare in Lineage, but while I played the game I didn't miss
> it. It is fantastically valuable to have, of course. The reason I
> didn't miss it was because all the game's action happens
> locally. If you are in a clan that owns a castle, then you stay
> around that town and castle, you have very little need to travel
> to the far side of the land. And as you are levelling, you can
> move around to different areas for the creatures you want to
> fight, but its mostly the same in quality. It also cost a lot
> money so there was a bit of the artifcial barrier, but it would
> cost money for a cross country trip in any real world.

I could have added make teleportation rare as well.  You're
effectively giving an example of why teleportation shouldn't be
there.  With easy/frequent teleportation there can be no local
economy because players will use teleportation to transport goods
instantly, rendering travel time their expenses null.  It becomes
just as easy to teleport to a resource, get it and bring it back as
it does to make the resourse or mine the resource from the local
community.  Making teleportation rare has the same effect as making
it dangerous.  Removing it entirely is an extreme case of making it
rare.

>> The key to an implementation like this might be to provide
>> sufficient content in their immediate surroundings.  The only way
>> we've seen local communities so far is ala DAoC where the
>> boundaries and travel restrictions are arbitrary and developer
>> decided upon.  There's definately room for innovative designs
>> here IMHO.

> The problem with DAoC was that the border wars was the only thing
> worth doing, so naturally everyone wants to get involved. After
> release they soon realized this and started to make different
> areas for lower levels. But they still had the problem that
> everything else is a boring trip. (ie leveling to 35 is like a 3
> month trip of boredom, and I sure wish I could just teleport to
> level 35 and play the "real" game.)

I'd agree.  It would be nice if the trip to the army or to the
frontier was more than just a leveling up issue.  It would be
awesome if you could pierce the forts and realistically have a
chance at taking over inner towns and eventually the main cities but
I suspect that's a bit outside of the scope of the game.

>> Real politics and player run kingdoms are a ways off.  It'll be
>> interesting to see if any of the games that are "tacking-on"
>> player-housing or player-cities will be able to achieve anything
>> with their designs in the coming year.  I fear all we will
>> realize is that if you're going to do player-driven anything then
>> you have to do it completely or you'll end up frustrating players
>> with varying degrees of in-game freedom.

> My thoughts are along those lines as well, but I don't think you
> need to do it completely. You can model planetary formations
> without needing to account for every atom. You just have to make
> sure that every concept it accounted for in balance to the
> whole. For instance, you may not need to allow ice sculpture, but
> sculpture in general will be needed to create a demand for
> artistry, and also to satisfy the entertainment value of artistic
> creation.  You don't need a million different species of insect,
> but you need enough to make a workable ecology.

I guess completely should be qualified.  Given that we're after
suspension of disbelief, the game needs to be designed completely
only to meet this requirement.  I'm guessing that the current "tack
the system on to an existing core" approach to adding player-driven
content will actually do more to harm suspension of disbelief than
it will to add to it.  It seems inevitable that the "tacked" on sub
systems will show signs that the game experience was patched
together rather than designed from the outset to accomplish a
player-driven content goal.  Every hole in the design reveals the
lack of integration of the original design and adds to the disbelief
that the experience is a cohesive whole.  I simply believe that the
design needs to start out from a player-driven content standpoint so
the game stands a better chance at coming off as a seamless
environment and not a collection of subsystems.  IMHO the design
that starts from player-driven content is more likely to feel like a
natural virtual world to the player.

>> Can it be done, I think so.  AoA is being developed towards this
>> type of goal but our design is not combat-centric.  Our design is
>> more of a simulation and not quite as combat-action/loot/level
>> oriented.

> Sorry, what is AoA?

Ages of Athiria.  It is our project.  We're quietly building a
playable demo of our design while looking for funding.  Needless to
say, the design is centered around player-driven content.  I'd be
glad to tell you more about the project offline if you like.  Send
me email.

Derek

_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev