[MUD-Dev2] Player Choice - How Much is Too Much?

[cruise]

Apologies for not replying for a few days - I'd been meaning to post 
that mail for a while, and only remembered the day I went on holiday...

Okay, general replies, to avoid quote hell:

The Magician's choice doesn't really work well in a game, unless you 
expect the player to only play through once - the moment they die/reload 
and make another choice, play through again, or even just discuss the 
game with a friend, they'll figure out that there were no actual 
choices. re: the complaints that quests are pointless because they never 
change the game world of an MMOG.

I was actually expecting more debate over the core statement - I 
remember quite a few vehemently insisting that they be allowed to play 
the game how they like - maybe they're on holiday too :P It's certainly 
the mindset of the players - if you read any board you'll see all sorts 
of posts complaining that they can't do X, and since they pay their 
subscription they have a right to be able to do so.

Perhaps the better question, since there appears to be a simple answer 
to my original one, is how do we prevent players from figuring out that 
their choices are being restricted when guiding them?

Using James' example - how do you make some players stay and defend an 
objective, without explicitly immob'ing a random % of the playerbase? To 
me it seems quite a simple behavioural training problem.

WoW uses rewards to train - do this; gain xp (or honour in this case). 
In the PvP game, defending an objective isn't immediately connected with 
the victory, and so is ignored in favour of what the game /is telling 
them/ will lead to victory (and the reward).

The quick answer is to add honour points to defending an objective (lie, 
say, TF2) or at the least listing "defend the objective" somewhere 
obvious when it is in danger, so it becomes associated with the victory 
in the players' minds.

My preferred solution would be to change the game to encourage players 
to think further ahead than just immediate rewards. But that's never 
going to happen, and is a general complaint about most MMOG's today.

Okay, one quote:
Thus spake Sean Howard:
 >That's why I think we should stop thinking of MMOGs as games. What they
 >really seem to be are shared environments in which a game (or two or
 >three) take place. For instance, in WoW, you could grind up your levels
 >and do raids for uber-loot (that's one game), battle in the PvP areas
 >(a second game), or just sit around and tell stories around the
 >campfire (not a game at all).

I think this is definately a better view - you are not producing one 
"game", but a collection linked by a common theme. Perhaps this is why 
Puzzle Pirates works so well?