[MUD-Dev] Less constrained environments

[John MacQueen]

At 05:56 PM 4/10/04 -0500, Chris Duesing wrote:

> This immediatly makes people think of a full on PVP world,
> anarchy, lawlessness etc. Well I will once again swing the analogy
> back to the real world. I do not walk up to angry pit bulls and
> poke them because I know it will get me hurt, and I do not like
> being hurt. You will quickly notice that this kind of cause and
> effect holds true for game worlds as well. If a newbie walks into
> a dragon cave they are not likely to walk out. So why should PVP
> rules work differently? I do not believe they should. I think that
> a system such as Jester proposed adds consequences to the act. Can
> you still do it? Of course. Will you like what happens? Probably
> not, but at least you can make an informed decision and have more
> game play options open to you. I think there is some danger of
> immersion breaking in the system Jester proposed as well. If there
> is no visual distinction between a villager and a player, why
> should I not get a bounty placed on me for attacking a villager?
> If we say that these acts are no different and treated similarly
> then we are left with the basis of a consistent, wholistic
> experience.

An unconstrained world will be a full on PvP world, or it's not
unconstrained. The real world is full on PvP. We have just tamed it
down to mostly non lethal PvP like boxing, football, basketball etc.

Those that PK in the real world, just once, are perma banned :)

PvP rules should work differently because the dragon doesn't pay for
an account. Nor does the villager. And they don't get to stop
playing, nor do they ever complain about an unfair fight.

If it's possible to do you would have players going on "natural born
killer" sprees, enough to cause real damage to your game, because
they suffer no "real life" consequences other than at most an
account ban.

Justice would require that the "killer" player be tracked and hunted
and killed. A system that left that character in the game world
24/7/365 so he could be hunted and permanently killed might work,
it's definitely called for in this case as is execution of that
character, removal of that characters ability to repeat what he has
done. Of course his next character will most likely also be a serial
killer.

But then you also have permanent player death, which is about as
high a cost for a mistake as you can get which causes it's own set
of problems.

Players like control over what can attack them and when. As cost of
death goes up this control has to go up as well. Otherwise players
see it as unfair in the case of PvP or un fun and leave.

Players like to win. Popular games give players risk control so they
can win with few exceptions. Once you learn the fight you kill
100,000 Orcs without much real risk.

An unconstrained world violates those things that players
like. Whether a justice system lets them eventually seek justice for
being violated is mostly moot. They may already have left the game.
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