[MUD-Dev] Expected value and standard deviation.

[Freeman]

From: Jeff Cole [mailto:jeff.cole at mindspring.com]

> Still, it seems to me that if advancement were primarily based on
> decreasing standard deviation rather than increasing expected
> value, a designer could provide a much broader gameplay
> experience.  Also, if advancement were less obvious, maybe players
> would focus on aspects of the game other than advancement.

In Multiplayer PONG-Online:

  If you win, your paddle gets bigger.  If you lose, your paddle
  gets smaller, but only for a little while, then it retutns to its
  previous size.

Ah, but the bigger your paddle is, the 'harder' the game must be in
order to advance: So you have to go play on a different playing
field, which is bigger than the previous one and has a smaller,
faster ball.  Relative to the playing field, your paddle is actually
shrinking as you 'level up'.

When you are truly uber, your paddle is maxed-out - a mere pixel at
1280x1024.  The only way to play the game now is to group-up with
several hundred other pixels to form a good sized paddle.

But as long as you (as the developer now) put a little text at the
bottom of the screen that says "Paddle Size: x", and increase the
value of 'x' as you devolve the player's avatar from robust
pong-paddle to mere pixel, then the player will think he's
'advancing', brag about it, take screen-shots of it, and sell his
(or for less money, her) pixel on eBay.

This sort of thing doesn't give me much confidence in 'subtle'
advancement mechanisms.

Rather, it seems players will buy (literally, no less) whatever an
obvious advancement mechanism tells them... even if it is the exact
opposite of what is really happening in the game.
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