[MUD-Dev] Text Muds vs Graphical Muds

[Matt Mihaly]

On Fri, 28 Jun 2002, Dave Rickey wrote:

> Threshold problem.  Each new player who joins the server is one
> more player to interact with.  At around the 500-1000 mark
> (100-200 peak population), each player that joins the server does
> more to increase the number of bad interactions than good ones,
> and effectively "crowds" someone else off the server.  Past 2500
> (500 peak), this turns around, the bad effects of additional
> people have gotten as bad as they are going to and now each
> additional person is a net gain for interactions.  You can hit
> other thresholds, your world may have a "carrying capacity", and
> certain rulesets (especially "agressive" PK+ rules) can push that
> capacity down.  But I think the next social scaling problem would
> set in around 50,000 players per world, and I don't know where
> stability would set in again (which makes TSO especially
> interesting to me, since its population will be in one world for
> social purposes).  The next one down is around 250 population
> *total*, or 50 peak.

Hmm, this isn't born out by my experience insofar as I haven't ever
noticed any problems from crossing any of the boundaries you speak
of, and we haven't had to use any special marketing push or whatnot
to move past them.

You seem to be implying that it's player interactions that cause the
problems, in which case choosing a number of participants doesn't
seem appropriate as a measurement. 100 players stuck in a single
room is a lot different from 100 players spread out among a million
rooms.

I think a huge part of it comes down to the design of the game.

--matt

 


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