[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Rewards

[Johnicholas Hines]

DLove wrote:
> As has been mentioned before, things become disruptive when the behavior
> the designer thinks that they are reinforcing is different than the
> behavior they are actually reinforcing (or punishing).  And that's not
> just with humans.  Talk to any animal trainer and they'll tell you that
> they run into the same problem.  It's not easy to get it right (and that
> may very well be what separates a good game from a great game).

Is it feasible to write
1. a simple detector for "behavior that the devs expect and desire" and
2. an award system that gives "drops" (including money, consumables
like health potions, equipment, stats increase, level increase,
unlocked abilities, titles, whatever).

Whenever there is an opportunity for a drop, (looting a fresh corpse,
or something), the size of the drop depends on the amount of
unrewarded good behavior.

Then when the devs notice an exploit that damages the feel of the game
(like killing one mob over and over, or camping spawn points), they
write an add-on to the behavior-detector that punishes (negative
punishment, according to the Wikipedia article), such behavior with
lowered drops.

Johnicholas