[MUD-Dev] Player Justice

[Freeman]

From: Paul Schwanz
> Freeman, Jeff wrote:

>> In this system the players build the town from the ground up out
>> of nothing.  They pool their money and resources and after
>> building the town, they feel that the town is their town.  Their
>> homes are there, along with their merchants, stores and
>> factories. The town isn't just something they own, it's
>> everything they own.

> So you end up creating what?  A game where little can be lost,
> little can be gained...and there is little reason to play?

Quite.  And that is also bad.  But that's why I said that in
hindsight, I'd have divided the "everything you own" and the
"everything you fight over" into two seperate things.  If towns are
"Everything You Own" (and in SWG, they mostly are), then I'd have
players fight over some 3rd-party territory.  It can be *something*
they own: Something they win and lose, but it shouldn't be
*everything* that they own.

> Personally, I get an overwhelming sense of futility every time I
> play MMORPGs designed the way you are advocating.  I don't want to
> be coddled.  I don't want to be spoon-fed content.  I could be
> unique in this, but I don't think so.  I believe there is an
> untapped market of gamers who are tired of having games sanitized
> of everything that might threaten what a vocal few feel they are
> entitled to--a market who feels frustrated over the designer's
> insistence that nothing can really matter very much in their game,
> because a vocal few do not have the maturity to handle being on
> the losing side of something that does matter.

There is a middle-ground between fighting over and risking
everything versus fighting over and risking nothing.  I'm saying
that somewhere in that middle ground is where I'd rather be (and
concede the point that SWG isn't there, it's much closer to the
'nothing to lose and no way to lose it'-end of the spectrum).
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