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

[Jeffrey Kesselman]

On 4/17/07, Dave Scheffer <dubiousadvocate at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Peter Keeler <scion at divineright.org> wrote:
>
> > Jeffrey Kesselman wrote:
> >
> >> (III) I think it encourages "cult of personality" to develop around
> >> the ops.  Further feeding their egos at the expense of those more
> >
> > I tend to agree that it's in poor taste for the op to show up at the
> > goodguy party as a villain NPC. It breaks the fiction really badly to
> > think ofall the powerful heroes brown nosing to the villain, even if the
> > "villain"is nothing more than a temporary avatar for the op. It seems to
>
> I don't see that the villain showing up to a good guy event breaks
> thefiction - part of the burden of being a "good guy" is tolerating open
> tauntsand there are no lack of examples in comic book fiction of just
> this sort ofthing.

But not in COH.  At least not in the automated play.  Its one of my
issues with CoH's design actually-- the "heroes" are very much secret
police who go around beating up whoever they are told to without any
due process.

These same heroes do NOT put up with taunts from bots.  (Not that the
ops taunt, for that matter.  Mostly they just stand around and play
"rock star.")  In fact, they attack the bots before they can open
their mouths.


>
> At best one can sum up the player reactions as "Good guys who faun
> overSuper-supervillains show inconsistent roleplaying".  That's not the
> op'sfault.

I disagree.  The player reaction is a natural and expected social
reaction to the arrivla of an authority figure.  One that has no
legitimate place in the game.
>
> I'd argue that showing up without the invul flag is actually the
> mostdisruptive thing.  Rather than players fauning we'd see players
> ganking theop immediately. "dewd I got her stuff!"  The op simply
> becomes a pinata for"players who show inconsistent roleplaying".

That woudl be 100% consistant with how they treat the MOBs, so I
totally disagree that its in any way inconsistant.

In the game of CoH the whole job of a hero is to "gank" anything the
authorities tell him or her is a villain,

And we've been told "Ghost Widow" is one of the worst..