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

[Eli Stevens (WG.c)]

William Leader wrote:

> But then I thought about the "In-Crowd" phenominon when it comes
> to dividing up the goods. When a person gets to abitrarily divide
> things up, they will subconciously award friends higher than a
> casual acquaintance. Players with large social networks would
> simply level faster. (It would be nice to quanitfy how much faster
> but any number would be a wild guess.) This isn't really a bad
> thing since socializing is a valid aspect of gaming. My concern is
> controlling it so that it doesn't degenerate into a all out
> popularity contest that ends with popular but incompetent players
> controlling lots of power. (you know, kinda like politics.) Then
> all the powerfull generate the most XP, and hand it out to the
> others with power, meanwhile the outsiders are left with litte
> reward for their efforts. The outsiders will probably find a
> different game to go play at this point.

I only see this as a problem if the inertia to start your own
in-crowd is "too large."  For those on the outside, joining together
should be easy.  Being on the inside just means that they have
friends, and potential friends should be easy to find no matter
what.  Now, if they can't convert potential friends into real
friends, they should probably be playing a single player game.

> The idea is that I won't be able to give all my XP to my buddy,
> and he won't be able to give all of his to me. We can favor
> eachother, but not to an exclusion of others.

Why not?  Go ahead - screw 'em.  Maybe the other players are
jerks. Maybe not.  But either way, you just got kicked out of the
in-crowd. Not a huge deal - there's plenty of other crowds out
there, unless it's habitual.  If it is habitual, then you're welcome
to find another game where you can advance.  ;)

> From a playability standpoint I don't see how this can work
> because I'm not sure players would stand for the interuption each
> time the group membership changes (which seems to happen quite
> frequently at times)

Also see my reply to John Buehler - amortize the time assigning the
+/- during the play session.
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