[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN/OPERATION] A rant about NPC ops

[Jeffrey Kesselman]

Okay, this is a bit of a rant, so excuse me...

<RANT>
I *despise* ops coming into the game and interacting with the players
as uber-powerful characters!  The latest examples I've seen being in CoX

(I) It is patently unfair to the players who work so hard over so long
a period to work their characters up through the game mechanics only
to have their characters belittled by uber-npcs who the ops can just
whip up with a command or two.

Watching the players kao-tao to these no-work creations who are just
defined with a wave of the hand to be their betters makes me want to
vomit.  I think players who spend a year to two years getting their
characters up to maximum levels deserve a LOT more respect then these
canned-gods or goddesses.

(II) I think its cheap ego-boost for the ops at the expense of the
players (see (I) above)
John Carmack doesn't hardwire Quake to list himself at the top of
everyone's high scores.  Why should MMO developers have the moral
right to do effectively the same thing?

(III) I think it warps RP in totally unreasonable ways.  By way of
example, an op appeared as Ghost Widow at a party a few nights ago in
Virtue on the streets of Paragon City.as an op and all of a sudden all
these players are acting uber respectful and kissing her feet when the
same players would GLADLY take her down in a mission and then crow
about it to anyone who would listen.

Why do they act differently? Cause she isn't Ghost Widow, shes an op,
and thus a symbol of authority in game that humans naturally brown
nose to.  It doesn't help that these self same ops DO have the power
to bestow ego toys on their best boot-lickers in the form of  special
titles.  All of this wraps the veracity of the role play experience
for the sake of letting an Op show off.

Frankly, I'd have a lot more respect for the op if they came in
without a no-attack flag with the  full intention of letting the
players beat the crap out of her, and a lot more respect for the
players if, upon seeing a name villain in the middle of paragon, they
did just that.

(III) I think it encourages "cult of personality" to develop around
the ops.  Further feeding their egos at the expense of those more
deserving and the RP environment.  Some segment of the players
automatically responds by brown nosing.  The op, only being human,
enjoys the attention and responds by bestowing social advantage on the
brown nosers both through more attention and little op "favors" like
the aforementioned special titles,  and the whole thing quickly snow
balls into a clique centering on the op.  This is natural, human, and
*highly* destructive to the game as a whole.  In the worst cases, the
game becomes about social engineering the ops, not about playing the
game.

To me, this almost exactly the same mistake as a PnP GM who uses his
or her favorite PCs as NPCs.  The game quickly becomes about the NPCs
and not about the players except in how they relate TO the NPCs.  And
thats *wrong*.  In any roleplay game that is properly run, the
*players* are the heroes and the focus of the story, NOT the NPCs.

</rant>