[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] What is agame? (again)was:[Excellentcommentaryon Vanguard's diplomacy system]

[Dave Scheffer]

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Buehler" <johnbue at msn.com>
To: <mud-dev2 at lists.mud-dev.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2007 8:33 AM
Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] What is agame? 
(again)was:[Excellentcommentaryon Vanguard's diplomacy system]

> cruise wrote:
>>
>> It's the privacy section that is possibly the hardest one. Instancing
>> has been an attempt to solve this, but then people complain that we're
>> devaluing the concept of a MMOG - whereas I think something of this kind
>> is /precisely/ what is needed in an MMOG to stop the entire playerbase
>> from constantly infighting.
>
> Food for thought.

That really is thought provoking. Back well before the "not a mirror" days 
of UO I was beating up on poor Raph with a very similar approach, what today 
we'd think of as instancing but with similar mechanics John describes.  At 
the time Raph's (very pragmatic) response was that this was well beyond 
their current resources.

Currently players handle this on their own to a degree - over time people 
create lists of other players with whom they have grouped and enjoyed the 
time spent, so when a friend logs on or has shared their OOG chat handle 
they get invited to instances.  Several games provide nifty tools to search 
for players by type/etc and invite them accordingly, sort of a pull model.

But John's push model is nifty as well, sort of like arcade courtesy.

I definitely do not want to do away with instancing.  I would like to see 
prohibitions on how often a player can do certain storyline quests - that 
would minimize farming to some degree and the resulting overwash of high end 
or "epic" items.  But that is an entirely other topic. :-)

Dave Scheffer