[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Rewards

[cruise]

A lot of the current discussions have involved, obliquely, how players
are rewarded for what they do.

In current MMOG's, rewards are used as a "carrot" to encourage player's
jump through a game designer's hoops.

The whole point of these is that players want them. However, therein
lies the problem - gameplay becomes fixated on the reward, to the
detriment of whichever activity is necessary to achieve it. Especially
in a multiplayer environment players become competitive between
themselves, even when this is not desirable in the game's universe.

Between achievement-seeking and player-competition, players will quickly
determine the most efficient method of achieving the reward. Often, this
will bare little resemblance to the activity the reward is supposedly
for...the virtue quests in UO, for example.

Equally, players will often participate in activities that provide no
reward, simply because the activity is enjoyable - re: the anecdote
about chicken dancing in UO.

Thus:

a) Players don't need rewards if the activity is enjoyable.
b) Rewards for activities often reward the wrong behaviour.

As a generalisation, the available enjoyable activities increase with
more players, since we are at heart social creatures (yes Sean, I know,
you hate people ;)

As per Caliban's recent posts, the more players, the more opportunity
for b) to become disruptive and spoil your game.

Which leads me to the conclusion that in a multiplayer game, rewards
should be minimal, if existant. They certainly should not involve an
increase in power, since that will only worsen the competetive streak.
The exception to this, obviously, is if you can make your rewards immune
to b) above /and/ can evenly distribute them amongst all the play styles
you wish to encourage.