[MUD-Dev] A world without charity

[David Cooksey]

Eamonn wrote:

> All this talk of who owns whos sword and ebay trading lately got
> me thinking, and so I started to wonder why players can trade
> items for money, and the answer is simple, because in game
> mechanics generally allow you to hand an item over to a player and
> to recieve nothing in return, an act of charity. So this got me
> thinking, if the game prevented acts of charity such that all you
> could do with an item was junk it (i.e. remove it from the game
> world, not drop it) or trade it for an equally valuable item what
> would this do to the game world?
...
> This system could solve several problems:

>  1. Twinking. Since you cannot give items to your newbies until
>  they find equally useful items, twinking becomes a much more
>  restricted option.

>   2. Muling. Without the ability to freely transfer items, mules
>   become much more difficult to manage, which should reduce server
>   space used for mules. (Note I dont doubt players will still
>   hoard items, but since presumably you have some sort of item
>   limit per player this should end up fairly limited). I would
>   certainly imagine it would be a better situation all round.

>   3. Account Trading. Since getting a high level, well equipped
>   account is harder, it should reduce the tendancy to trade them,
>   though conversely this may make accounts more valuable. How do
>   full account trades generally work? I imagine it is either a
>   full transfer of billing information (which should be easily
>   preventable by the operators, just make sure you are always
>   billing the same person for the same account), or just a
>   transfer of the password to have the player transfer all the
>   items to their own chars which would become very difficult under
>   the above system.

Interesting.

I think that the system will work, mostly, but that it would be
extremely frustrating to use.  It's an artificial restriction in
line with the 'This is a no jumping zone' of Space Quest.

What if George has 5 value 1 items he wishes to trade for one value
5 item?  Is this allowed, or does the trading restriction only allow
1:1 trades?  Will the MUD restrict access to higher-levelareas?

If multiple lower-value items can be traded for one higher-value
item, then twinking would still exist, although it would be more
difficult.  If the MUD does not restrict access to 'higher-level'
areas, a player could simply have a friend do all the work to
acquire an item (kill the monster, open the chest, etc), and then
take the item himself.

It would tend to eliminate muling (if possible, it would be too much
effort).  However, I don't really think it's a good idea to prevent
muling entirely, as long as the storage space can handle it.
Extremely limited item space is very frustrating for collectors
(Diablo II is one example of a game with many collectors) as they
must constantly get rid of items.  If you really need to eliminate
muling, allow each player one character only (3Kingdoms mud does
this until one reaches Lord/Lady level).

Account trading will still remain, it's impossible to really control
this.  Monetarily, there's no reason to disallow it.  With a game
like Everquest, account trading works in a number of different ways.
First, you have people who sell their accounts to strangers because
they are quitting the game or need money for real-life situations
(rare, but it happens).  Second, you have people who quit and give
their account info to friends.  This is much more common than
selling it to a stranger in my experience.  Third, people will give
their account information (name, password) to friends so that their
friends may use their characters when they're needed, or help them
catch up exp/quest wise if their playtime is somewhat limited.

In case one and two, the credit card information would need to be
changed.  In case three, nothing changes except the person behind
the keyboard.  It would be possible to mostly prevent the first two
cases by disallowing credit card info to be changed.  However, how
do you handle players who cancel one credit card and need to enter
their new credit card?  Or who change residence/name and wish their
account to reflect this?

The strongest argument for allowing account trading is monetary.
>From my experience (4 years of playing Everquest), account-retention
is greatly enhanced by allowing account trading.  I would
guesstimate that at least 20% of Everquest players own 2 or more
accounts.  In some cases, these are owned collectively by guilds who
are short on certain classes.  In others, people maintain the
accounts of friends to ensure that their characters remain viable
should their prior owners wish to return to the game.

All that aside, my strongest objection to the system is that it
doesn't make sense.  It's utterly contrary to our intuitive
understanding of how the world works.  If I pick something up, and I
can physically give it to person A, I should be able to give it to
person B.

To prevent/reduce twinking, there are a lot of already existing
notions that make a good deal more sense.


  -- required level on item.

  -- required stat on item

  -- item requires another item to be equipped (slightly different,
  works with the other restrictions)

  -- item has scaling stats/abilities based on the
  skills/stats/levels of the character equipping it.

  -- item has a chance to injure/kill the equipping character if
  their level/skill is below a certain value.

  -- item is semi-sentient and gradually allows the player to use it
  (i.e. slowly reveals powers if its wielded for long periods of
  time)

  -- item is not droppable (attaches itself to the character, will
  not allow itself to be discarded, similar to cursed)

  -- item is sentient and will control the character if said
  character has stats/level too low to control it.

  -- item will try to escape from character with stat/skill/level
  below 'X'(see the One Ring from Tolkien)

All of the above work better imho than 'I'm sorry, the Trade
Fairness Law has valued your Sword of Doomat 5, but Tommy's Broken
Short Sword' is valued at 1.  You cannot complete this trade.

In addition to the logical issue, the assigning of values adds a
whole new balance level to games which already have multiple balance
problems.  For the system to work, it is absolutely imperative that
every item within a certain tier requires the same work to obtain,
and is equivalently useful.  Since no trading up or down is allowed,
all items within the tier must be equal.  It's possible to do of
course, but it makes adding items to the game more time consuming.

-Dave Cooksey
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