[MUD-Dev] DESIGN: Player pyramid

[Mike Rozak]

Sporky McBeard wrote:

> It seems to me that you are trying to group players by some
> arbitrary criteria. I mean, you've got a pyramid. Now what? You
> can certainly group players by their motivations, but I don't
> think you'll find many answers from it. It also assumes that a
> player stays in one particular level.  Personally, by your chart,
> I've been at every level at least a dozen different times in the
> hundreds of MMORPGs and MUDs I've played.

I agree that players will move around levels depending upon their
mood. I think I mentioned this in the writeup.

> See? This is what I'm talking about. You don't need to worry about
> every player being an intergalactic trader, because players will
> naturally segregate themselves into little
> cliques/tribes/gangs/whatever. If killing monkeys becomes popular,
> you'll see people starting to kill monkeys because they want to
> belong, and you'll see people purposely not killing monkeys to not
> belong, and you'll see people trying to save the monkeys because
> they like monkeys better than people (and let's face it, who
> doesn't?). The more people you have, the more possibilities you
> have (even in something limited like CoH), and the more conflicts
> you'll have to deal with.

I think the example I gave gets in the way...

The difference I was trying to point out is that world-like game
players who want to be an intergalactic trader want to do so because
it somehow involves other players (either as more intelligent
opponents, more realistic dynamics, socialization, or the
satisfaction of beating a real opponent) while game-like players
don't really care if the other players are around. Game-like players
could still be an intergalactic trader, but they would be perfectly
happy playing a single-player game or multiplayer with some friends.

If you offer a world-like player a single-player intergalatic trade
game they'll yawn and say its boring, not fun, etc. They need other
players in the world to make things fun for them, and in the case of
trading, hundreds to thousands of other players.

If you have a world populated solely with world-like players (who
needs lots of other players around) then, even if they tend to run
off and do their own things, I suspect there will still be too many
players that want to be world-like intergalactic traders, and not
enough players that want to buy stuff from them. The same will hold
true for other professions that world-like players might take up,
such as crafting.

One way to solve this is provide sub-games (like killing monsters)
that attract game-like players, so there will be lots of players
around wishing to buy stuff off the world-like intergalactic
traders. (Swords, armor, and other combat bits.)

The existence of "conflict" is not important to my obersvation. The
fact that world-like players need game-like players, but game-like
players don't need world-like players, is a source of conflict on a
model level. It's the reason why (I think) to create a VW that makes
world-like players happy, you'll need to provide (near) free
game-play for game-like players, an incentive so they can stomach
the world-like elements of the VW that they don't like. If it isn't
(near) free, the game-like players will go to game-like worlds, and
the world-like worlds will collapse.

Mike Rozak
http://www.mxac.com.au
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