[MUD-Dev] Star Wars Galaxies: 1 character per server

[Damion Schubert]

>From Caliban Tiresias Darklock
> From: "Dubious Advocate" <dubiousadvocate at hotmail.com>
>> From: "Caliban Tiresias Darklock" <caliban at darklock.com>
 
>>> I also see the SCS idea as at least *incidentally* encouraging
>>> people to go look at other servers, which is certainly a
>>> community-building activity, and it's pretty hard to argue that
>>> it's a bad thing. When you have an SCS system, creating a new
>>> character is no longer a trivial activity. It requires some
>>> thought and some deliberation and a certain degree of risk and
>>> uncertainty. I think

>> I disagree that people actually work this way, or are encouraged
>> to change what I see as fundamental human behaviors simply
>> because a developer finds the goal desirable.

DA is right on here.  Making friends is work.  Making friends on one
server is work.  Maintaining these friends and remembering them is
also work.  When you're talking about people who chose an online
life over an offline life because real-life friendmaking was a lot
of work, this is non-trivial.

[ deletia ]

> Are you thinking my position is that SCS will induce players to
> participate in more community activities? Because I think that
> would be a pretty stupid thing to propose. Players will
> participate in communities to whatever extent they choose to
> participate, and if they involve themselves in multiple
> communities they will simply divide the community participation
> among those communities. They won't participate *more* if they
> have multiple characters, they'll just participate with a wider
> variety of people. Consider.

I'll go one further.  Players will find themselves shut out of
specialized events solely because they can't create a junk
character.  Archery contest going on?  Bantha riding?  They can't
take part, because they can't make a junk character to do it.  A lot
of people do this when these events (either player-driven or
company-driven) occur in the current crop of games.
 
--d

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