[MUD-Dev] Cheating in the world

[Shannon Sullivan]

On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 17:55:55 +0100, Ola Fosheim Grøstad
<olag at ifi.uio.no> wrote:
> "Ted L. Chen" <tedlchen at yahoo.com> writes:

>> Um.. if it's a world, and spoon thievery is rampant across the
>> land, wouldn't the reigning goverment put a stop to it?  The
>> judicious use of force (or magic physics barring spoon tricks -
>> in this case) is well within the expected response of any
>> governing body.

> I am not saying that the physics or design of the world should
> remain unaltered. The players shouldn't have to think "will
> climbing on spoons get me banned or is it ok?". That is
> detrimental to the world (not the game).

I respectfully disagree.  I think it is the responsibility of every
player to consider their actions within the context of the game as
well as the world.

Consider a money duping bug, for example.  Money is not commonly
duped by accident.  It's not a curiosity.  Once discovered (I'll
concede that the discovery is sometimes accidental but this one
event pales in comparison to the thousands upon thousands of
subsequent attempts to reproduce the error for fun and profit),
duping is actively enagaged with full knowledge that it is beyond
the bounds of normal game-world behavior.

To take no action against the offenders, those people who are
actively engaged in attempting to break your game world, is to
reward bad behavior.  You provide a distinct benefit to those
attempting to break your game - they get to profit from whatever
bugs they can exploit and never get punished for it.  They have
nothing to lose and everything to gain.

If one is attempting to create a commercially viable game world, I
can think of few things that would tank those efforts faster than
failing to ensure swift and harsh punishment for those attempting to
destroy your creation


Shannon
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