[MUD-Dev2] Meaningful Conseqences

[cruise]

Eric Lee wrote:
> I had the same thought about Oblivion - "Man, this is a great world but I'm
> lonely.  I wish this were an MMO!"  Of course the game as designed would be
> broken as an MMO because it allows way too much permanent altering of the
> environment.

There are mods working on allowing small-scale multiplayer in Oblivion,
for what it's worth.
However, that's exactly why they work, because they're small-scale. You
pick who's in your world with you, so there's already a decent trust
basis, and chances are you know where they live, so there can be real
world consequences for the player should they screw your game up too much :P

> Current (large-scale) MMOs can't allow permanent altering of the environment
> because people would instantly and thoroughly trash the environment, ruining
> it for everyone else.  Why is that?  Because people are jerks . . . um, I
> mean, because there are no meaningful consequences for being anti-social, or
> at least no meaningful consequences that scale to thousands of mainstream
> players.  Some games have tried to solve that problem (Ultima Online comes
> to mind) with only limited success.
> 
> The root problem is that it's easy to have meaningful consequences for a
> _character_, but not so easy to have meaningful consequences for a _player_,
> and of course it's ultimately the player who's behavior is the problem.
> Players can log out whenever they choose and be invulnerable to retribution.
> Without proof of identity, players can have multiple characters at once and
> play both ends against the middle (e.g. collecting their own bounties).
> Players can make new characters if they lose their old ones.

I think the answer is something we've dealt with before, which is
partitioning the player base. Different people want different things
from their games, and trying to make them play together is a receipe for
trouble. If each player can choose who they associate with, and allow to
affect their world, then you bring back a measure of control to the player.

> A related issue is limited content.  When there are only so many quests to
> go around, you have people standing in line waiting for the evil boss to
> spawn again so they can kill him and get the reward.  There's no sense of
> causality anywhere.

I think this doesn't help, since players can eventually feel that
nothing they do seems to matter, so they try bigger and bigger and more
impactful things (griefing, etc.) just to feel "noticed". If there was
causality, then these issues would be less. Not gone, since some people
are just jerks no matter what.

> Are we stuck with rubber-band worlds, where everything snaps back into place
> on a regular basis, or are there ways to overcome the problems?  Or is that
> the wrong question to ask?  Are players entirely happy with rubber-band
> worlds and there's no need to fix it?

I don't think we can refer to "players" as a gestalt entity liking
something or not. Some players do, some players don't. I'm definately in
the don't category, and would love to have worlds where every action
meant something, and had a permanent effect. I wouldn't want to play it
with someone who didn't want that, however.