[MUD-Dev] Re: WIRED: Kilers have more fun

[Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael.Willey at abnamro.com [mailto:Michael.Willey at abnamro.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 02, 1998 12:11 PM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: WIRED: Kilers have more fun 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>      ____________________Reply Separator____________________
>      Subject:  [MUD-Dev] Re: WIRED: Kilers have more fun
>      Author:   mud-dev at kanga.nu ("Koster, Raph" 
> <rkoster at origin.ea.com>)
>      Date:          9/2/98 2:23 PM

> >The problem is that once you get enough players on your game
> >to accomplish this, you've reached the point where anonymity
> >in the crowd is possible again. In other words, "opinion" is
> >only generated when the playerbase is *small* enough to
> >communicate information to itself effectively.
> 
> In my view, that's acceptable - it provides a self-regulation
> mechanism to prevent minor or infrequent breaches of conduct
> from forever tarnishing a reputation - in the anonymity of
> the crowd, it takes a spectacular offense to raise much notice.

If you're dealing with just NPCs reacting to reputation, then this is
great and just dandy. :)

> >It's been said (dunno where, it was somewhere in reading on
> >anthropology) that the ideal community formation size can
> >never exceed around 250 individuals. Larger than that and
> >it starts to fragment. And as soon as it fragments, having
> >"opinion" serve to track bad guys stops working--there's
> >always a substantial group of potential victims for him who
> >have never heard of him.
> 
> This is the point at which we differ - you see a reputation
> as a method of controlling the "bad guys".  I see it as a
> tool to make NPCs more believable, by using that information
> to influence their reactions.  The two uses aren't mutually
> exclusive, but improvements to one use of the tool can
> degrade it's usefulness in other areas.

Right--there's definitely two different uses going on here. And I do
tend to focus on the player-player relationships. Frankly, though I used
to be a big fan of having NPCs react to and remember players believably,
I've come to feel that given enough players and enough tools at players'
disposal to assume the traditional roles of NPCs, NPCs become almost
entirely superfluous...

-Raph