[MUD-Dev] Star Wars Galaxies: 1 character per server

[Jeff Cole]

From: Sasha Hart, Friday, February 07, 2003 4:15 AM

> Disagreeing: imagine prisoner's dilemma with [Player 1] prohibited
> from taking any move but 'cooperate' and [Player 2] left
> free. Freeing both will, indeed, expose both to 'defect'. But it
> will shift ideal strategies away from 'always defect.' To me that
> betters the lot of the guy who was freed *in addition* to creating
> more parity. It doesn't just hurt the lot of the other guy. But,
> easily, this completely depends on the game.

Your argument assumes another very important (determinative)
difference between your two games: that, in the first game, Player 2
knows Player 1 is restricted in strategy while in the second game
neither player knows the others strategy.

If, in the first game, Player 2 does not know that Player 1 is
restricted in strategy, then Player 2's ideal strategy does not
change when Player 1's restriction is lifted.  And, in the second
game, if both players can know the other's strategy, then the game
reduces to the trivial.

I am interested in how you see the ideal strategy shifting away from
'always defect.'  The best you can do (and still keep the game
'prisoner's dilemma') is to make Player 2 indifferent to his
potential strategies in the first game (that is, by setting equal
the payoffs to Player 2 in the first game).

Yrs. Afftcy,
Jeff Cole


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