[MUD-Dev] Cheating in the world

[Damion Schubert]

Ola Fosheim Grostad wrote:

[ Mucho deletia ]

> The gameability of admin presence have been discussed extensively
> on mud-dev before. I hope this won't evolve into a discussion on
> admins, to me it is obvious that MUDs should be admin free. The
> point I'd like to see contested is the idea that cheating isn't
> possible in a world and that any attempt to get rid of cheating
> will by defintion be detrimental to the unique characteristics of
> virtual worlds.

> The games of MUDs shouldn't be enforced, they should be embedded
> and deduced from the use context by the players. If they are
> enforced and defined out of the world then you no longer have a
> world and therefore it isn't a MUD. If you forbid cheating you get
> a multi user game, but you don't get a multi user world.

The crux of your argument appears to be that MUDs are worlds and not
games.  All MUDs and MMOs are some combination of world, game and
community, and the most successful games are a fairly equal
combination of all three.

When thinking about 'world', one of the cornerstones of the 'world'
component of online gaming is immersion.  When players cheat, the
immersion shatters, and players are snapped out of the 'world'.
They want, nay demand, that the people who run the world fix the
imperfection, and if it doesn't happen, they will leave.

Case in point: UO at launch was probably the most 'world'-like of
all of commercial MMOs that launched.  Much of the cheating was
because of simplistic systems designed specifically to create a
virtual world without thinking of their impact on 'game' or
'community'. But even the most ardent fans of the virtual world
could not mentally adapt or put up with exploiters building
staircases out of spoons to climb into the top windows of their
opponents houses to loot them from the inside.

If the management of UO hadn't had a change of heart and started
coming down on cheaters hard, everyone would have fled, and then
there there would be nothing now but an empty, barren 'world',
rather than the Iron Man member of the MMO geriatric set that UO is
today.

--d
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev