[MUD-Dev] Re: Affordances and social method

[Orion Henry]

At 04:55 PM 7/29/98 +1000, Brad wrote:

>I certainly think it could be an interesting toy to play with. A mud
>with theme involving building (to provide tools to conquest?) as its
>primary function. Sid Meier's "Civilization" certainly comes to mind
>here. It seems, based on the success of online "build and conquer" games
>such as Starcraft, that people enjoy that theme. I wonder how successful
>it would be in a text only environment? Balance would be interesting -
>the real advantage of current "build and conquer" games is that they
>only last for a few hours - not a few months or years. How can the
>environment be balanced so that it doesnt suffer from excessive growth,
>over-population, polution, global meltdown, etc, etc?
>I am certainly going to be thinking about this over the next few days
>though. :-)

	As always I say  set thing up in such a way to mimic the real
world... In a multiplayer, build-and-conquer environment things are fun
as long as there is competition... the fun stops as soon as there is a 
mega powerful player or group of players that control everything... 
If it were set up such that a small, weak group of players could 
easily hide in the vast game-space and that sabotage and gorilla
tactics were something that a superpower could never totally guard 
against, then the competition could continue once a team had 
become obsurdly powerful ( ala Empire vs. Rebellion in Starwars )
Also if a powerful entity needed the assistance of dozens if not hundreds 
of human players to function then civial wars and mutinies would be 
abound as soon as things got dull...

	I envision a build and conquer Mud where all sides duke it
out, one seems to win and becomes bloated.  Small rebel forces 
contune to make pot shots at the giant until either onc succeeds and
dethrones it, or social meltdown and civil war break the giant 
into factions and every thing starts right over again...

	Orion