[MUD-Dev] Expected value and standard deviation.

[Jeff Cole]

From: Freeman, Jeff
> 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.

Ah, but to be so cynical. ;-P Let me try: all that is so much 'nuff
said ... if (the dreaded If) your game is so mind-numbingly devoid
of entertainment value that players can only measure themselves
against the Developer Metric(R).  Bleh.

Even in my system, though, you can still tell them (or not tell
them) exactly what you want.

I chose poorly in choosing the phrase "less obvious."  I did not
necessarily mean "subtle."  What I meant by "less obvious" was that
players would not so obviously become god-like.  Because of that,
lower-levels could meaningfully group/compete with/against
higher-levels.  Of course, the system implicates other basic design
decisions also.

For example, players are going to "die" more often, so you probably
could not enjoyably implement an expected value/standard deviation
system with a system in which the death penalty was great.

This is truly classic, though ... I laughed out loud, thanks:

>  and sell his (or for less money, her) pixel on eBay.

yrs. Affcty,
Jeff Cole
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