[MUD-Dev] PVP and perma-death

[Vladimir Cole]

"Ola Fosheim Grøstad" <olag at ifi.uio.no> wrote:

> I am not suggesting that that "griefers" lack imagination. I am
> suggesting that you can have balanced PK and perma-death. Yes, it
> might cut into som retention, but that loss could be considered as
> "cleansing" rather than "loss". That's the hypothesis.

It's an interesting hypothesis. Basically, if you can identify the
most negative behaviors and "perma-kill" those avatars that engage
in them, then you end up with an almost Darwinian evolution of your
in-game culture. Bad behaviors that are negatively punished by
perma-death will evolve out of the population. You just have to be
careful that you're not killing off too much of your base. In
theory, genetic pruning of "weaker" specimens in any population will
result in a stronger population overall.

Whether you're prepared for the negative repercussions of killing
avatars is another thing. A gazelle that gets taken down because it
can't run fast enough is physically indisposed to go to a popular
forum and badmouth the lion that did it, if you know what I
mean. Word of mouth could be very negative for any game that seems
to arbitrarily kill avatars. The policies would have to be very
carefully constructed.
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