[MUD-Dev] RE: MUD-Dev Digest, Vol 11, Issue 23

[Alex Chacha]

Steven King <steve at madrogue.com> wrote:

> As a devout player of the thief class, I had the same thought
> earlier while reading this thread.  Players who hoard items would
> get noticed by the local Thieves' Guild spies who could provide
> the information to fellow guild members.  Then, player (and/or
> NPC) thieves could break in and steal things.  There are drawbacks
> of this, of course, but thieves could finally have a place in
> MMOs.

But this brings us back to the old problem of players policing
themselves.  In this scenario a thief can just steal with no
repercussion.  Griefing is not too far in this model.  Unless the
thief had some drain (guild fees, price for contract/information,
protection fees, etc) then it would just move the wealth around
between thieves with everyone else being the source.

The main problem that I see is that no one likes to be a victim of a
robbery, and getting robbed of what you have spent your online time
gathering will no doubt cause an anger in the playerbase and may
lead to an exodus of players (unless they have some attainable path
of retribution).  I don't think anyone will play a game to be
helpless and susceptible to theft, unless the only class in the game
is a thief?

People will also find "shelters" for their wealth (not unlike real
life).  This may be a viable drain, where you may offer various
costs for same stat weapon with only difference being the visual
presentation (vanity seems to win out a lot in MMOGs).  People will
also actively look for loopholes in the "economic" model which will
make balancing it even more difficult.

I don't remember any successful game where thieves were able to
steal from players directly and retain any appreciable playerbase
(stealing from NPCs is done in many games with varied risk).  Such
games no doubt exist, but how big is the playerbase?.
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