[MUD-Dev] XP as gift (was: Attractive Grouping)

[John Buehler]

Eli Stevens writes:
> John Buehler wrote:

>> In scenarios like that, I believe that distribution of items can
>> be performed in some orderly way.  The people who are fighting
>> all know each other.  They've been fighting together for a week,
>> a month or a year. Everyone knows who did what during the fights.
>> If that can be represented in the game award structure, I think
>> it's a winner.

[cutting to the chase]

> To cut to the chase:

> Why not do this with XP?  Define a play session somehow (the
> duration of a group, etc.), and at the end of the play session
> have the character assign the XP they earned to other players.

> You cast fireball at the ogre: 100xp
> You cast silence at the ogre mage: 150xp
> You cast silence at the orge: 10xp
> Total: 260xp

> Your group:

>   Bubba the warrior: [80xp]
>   Buffy the rogue: [120xp]
>   Boffo the incompetent: [20xp]
>   Left to assign: 40xp

> To encourage the assignment of XP, have a player not recieve XP
> from a play session until they assign their share to others, with
> penalties for waiting too long.

> A player's level becomes derived from how much XP they have from
> other players.

It sounds like an onerous duty over something that is critical to a
contentious topic - experience.  Doneld Shelkey just posted about
how so many things that used to serve as a way for players to
interact are being removed from the newest games in the spirit of
making the games more fun.  I think that the suggestion of having
players assign experience is a step towards corpse retrieval.  It
would cause greater interaction between players, but it's not fun.

With the item distribution thing that I was talking about, the idea
was that the items are not critical to anyone, so whether they go to
you or me is not really all that important.  We socialize because
what we're doing (combat) involves socialization and the game
interface gives us time to socialize as we fight.  We don't break
socialization because I decided to go off and run a quest that's in
another zone.  We stay together because the fight is here and
because I'm not incentivized to pursue my own achievement goals
elsewhere.  I may go off because I'm tired of fighting and want to
try my hand at another type of entertainment, but I don't do it as a
natural course of the game.

So I vote against the idea because it's predicated in personal
achievement (experience points).  But as an effort towards
encouraging players to interact, good on ya, mate.

JB
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