[MUD-Dev2] What is agame?(again)was:[Excellentcommentary onVanguard's diplomacy system]

[John Buehler]

cruise writes:

> Thus spake John Buehler...
> > Dave Scheffer write:
> >> Nor am I focused on punishing players who insist on flouting a
> >> specificapplication of a rulebase.  This relates to the "framing"
> >> tactics firstraised by Raph:  when I have players that think
> it is great
> >> fun to organizea flamedance of naked Rubber Chicken-gripping characters
> >> they'll gravitateto the regional/contextual rulebase agent that makes
> >> that sort of thing fun.Appreciative NPCs might gather, applaud or even
> >> throw perishable flowers.When I have players that want to disrupt other
> >> players with the sameflamedance behavior they'll be in scope
> of rulebase
> >> agents that discourageit, where eventually those disruptive players
> >> would not even be allowed backinto the effect area.
> >
> > I'm not sure how this is different from a monolithic rulebase.  It's
> > finer-grained, but it still relies on being able to penalize players
> > throughtheir characters.  That produces an arms race from the players
> > who insist ondoing the chicken dance in the non-chicken dance part of
> > town.  The gamewants to discourage them from doing it and the players
> > want to do it.  Aconflict of agendas exists.
>
> The difference is the game gracefully handles this "edge case", as it
> were - the game knows the players are doing something unwanted, whereas
> normally it is requiring humans to make that judgement. Whether the
> game's response is sufficient is another question, but is a much easier
> problem.
>
> > What about players who enjoy the fact that they can elicit that reaction
> > from the NPCs by singing?  It's just a different way of playing the
> > game. As many players like to say, "If you didn't want me doing it, why
> > did you put it into the game?"
>
> "If you don't want me killing other players, why is there combat?"
>
> Somethings are appropriate in certain places. Other threads are
> discussing ways of allowing differing players to pursue their own
> agendas without interference - this is a good example of how to
> encourage that result. By having NPCs react differently in different
> locations, singing or dancing or nudity become easier or more difficult
> in seperate geographical locations - and most players will naturally
> gravitate there for those activites.
>
> Sure, some will try and break the system, but they'll be fewer, and they
> should have that choice, even if the end result is naegative for them.

I agree that it's an improvement.  I'm a big believer in using NPCs to
provide a game context.  I just think that NPCs work best for players who
want to play the game the publisher's way.  Those who are bored or malicious
quickly turn to doing things that are annoying to other players, despite the
efforts of the NPCs to discourage them.  So I don't see NPC discouragement
as a sufficient disincentive.  Is it a disincentive?  Yes.  Will it limit
disruptive play?  Yes.  It suffers from being difficult/expensive to
implement.

I'm just all becited about private instances for like-minded players.  It's
simple and it addresses all these issues very neatly.  I'd still like to see
the NPC context, but that's about artificial intelligence and rules and
such.  It's a high end feature.  Like multiplayer world physics.

JB