[MUD-Dev] players who "take away from the game"

[Philip Loguinov -- Draymoor]

From: Quzah <quzah at hotmail.com>

>On Thu, 11 Nov 1999, Ola Fosheim [iso-8859-1] Gr=F8stad wrote:
>> J C Lawrence wrote:
>> >   All bugs are fair game and may be exploited as wished as long as
>> > you report them beforehand.  Exploitation of non-reported bugs (not
>> > reported by the exploiter) are rewarded with character or player
>> > deletion.
>>
>> How will players know that it is a bug?  The assumption that players w=
ill
>> think of an advantage as a bug assumes a rather homogenous imitating
world
>> and a knowledgeable player base?
>>
>> Example: If I get one million gold for selling my first mushroom to a
troll
>> in the mountains, does that make it a bug?  I would call it a fortunat=
e
>> incident.
>
>This remindes me of 'Conch' (I think that's how they spelled it.) Mud.
>The black queen's bishop's pawn always gave huge amounts of experience.
>Even when you were high level it was still worth a stop by the chess
>board (which was blocked off to those above level 6 I think) to kill it.
>Even when the king and queen were only worth 1 experience, I think you
>could get in there and kill the bqbp for 50 or so.
>
>Getting in was another matter entirely ;) You just had my mage go out
>there as soon as he got um.. beacon or something like that, he cast a
>beacon on the chess board at low level, then recalled/teleported back
>to his beacon, you met him there at low leve, and he cast your anchor
>(beacon had two parts: anchor, and recall) on the chess board, then
>any time at high level you wanted back out there, he cast recall on
>you and vola!
>
>Such a fun place, so many fun things to do... it's a shame what
>they did to my mage :(


Very clever. Now, this wasn't a bug, sorta.
The experiance MAY have been a bug, but thats a differant matter.
I believe bugs should be reported, however exploits are fair game.
Heres the differance:

A bug:
Stock Smaug has a polymorph spell. This spell switches you into a low lev=
el
mob.
Mobs have MPCommands that they can use. As a switched player, you can use
any
of these commands.
That is a design flaw. I concider it a bug which i would expect to be
reported.
(btw, being a bug-finder as a player helps when you're coding. I'm even a
bug finder as an
imm)

An exploit (imm example):
Smaug has very nice mobprogs. It also has a beautifull (for my perposes)
fall and autoteleport
code.

So, what i did was this: Make two rooms, one has a down exit to the secon=
d.
the second teleports
you to the first at a delay.

Well, thats pretty simple, infinite loop there. But the beauty comes in w=
hat
it can be used for.
MPTranfer can transfer ANYONE, regardless of level.
Falling and getting hurt has some sort of delay on the player, the speed =
of
the teleport delay causes commands to never go through.
Conclusion?
force mob mptransfer imp infinite_fall
They can't get out on their own. I held a friend of mine in there who was
about
7 levels higher then me in there for a while, fun :)
Anyway, there were no bugs in there, and it's a nifty way of taking care =
of
annoying players.

That is simply using tools available to you in a way that wasn't anticipa=
ted
by the implementers.

An exploit (mortal example):
PK mud, i'm the most powerfull player on the mud (mage, i know EVERYTHING=
,
can get anyware)
Now, its smaug, with stock deadly/peacefull and level limits on PK.
I'm 50, there is no safe on repop/deathpop.
I get an item that pops an aggro mob into existance and it attacks you.
I am invisible and use the item, aggro mob in deathpop room :)
I go and kill a person (charmies) who is an enemy of my clan and they pop=
 up
at deathpop. Mob kills them.
they pop up at deathpop. mob kills them. etc etc etc.
TERRIBLE spam on the deathlog :P
Eventually a friend of mine (currently playing an imm, this was an alpha)
gets to put safe on the room, but not before the guy died over  a hundred
times in approx. 10 seconds.
There is no bug here. The deathpop room was meant to be unsafe. I took
advantage of all the stuff i had and knew to exploit the system.






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