[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacysystem

[Caliban Darklock]

On 2/27/07, Sean Howard <squidi at squidi.net> wrote:
>
> Rather than trying to create mechanics
> that made everybody friends, I went the opposite direction

This is frequently the Right Thing.

I've been discussing the patent system with someone. The consensus is
that bad patents are awarded too often, so we should try to identify
and refuse them. I proposed that we should instead grant every patent,
no matter how stupid, and simply make the loser of any patent
litigation liable for all costs. We have yet to find a problem with
this; it creates exactly the right incentives to only file good
patents and only challenge bad ones.

In a text-based game I'm redeveloping, the problem originally arose
that some people created macros in their clients and could outperform
people without macros. The conventional wisdom is to try and prevent
macros from providing an advantage. What the original developers did
instead was create a macro object inside the game, so everyone had
macros independent of their client. The ability to have one macro
rewrite or call another was so useful, everybody stopped using their
clients to handle macros and moved their scripting into the game -
thus leveling the playing field.

On a BBS I once ran, we had occasional trouble with people who would
steal other users' passwords and log in to download files - not
because they weren't allowed to download anymore, but because they had
run out of time. Normally, you address this by instituting greater
security. I chose to address it by throwing out time limits -the
allowed time per day and per call were both set to 86400 seconds, or a
full 24 hours. The problem disappeared.

Historically, ice cream stores hired teenagers to work there and told
them not to eat any ice cream. They lost a great deal of ice cream to
employees eating it. Now they tell new employees to eat all the ice
cream they want; within a week or two, the new employee has eaten so
much that he never wants to see ice cream again, and the net loss ends
up being much lower.

Whenever you have a hard problem, ask yourself whether the opposite
solution would work. It may surprise you.