[MUD-Dev] Expected value and standard deviation.

[Koster]

From: Daniel Anderson
> From: Raph Koster
>> From: Jeff Cole
>>> From: Freeman, Jeff

>> I don't think it's in the Laws, but I've always treated it as a
>> Law:

>>    Players will do the boring thing rather than the fun thing, if
>>    they advance faster that way.

>> As a corollary:

>>    There's no way to get rid of the "boring" way to play your
>>    game. Players can always choose to play conservatively to
>>    maximize return while minimizing risk.

> There are ways of course to get players to play in a riskier
> situation if the return is great (or greater).  One good example
> is in UO where after trammel was implemented, players would not
> spend time in fel from fear of being PKed, robbed, etc.  I believe
> (not 100% positive) but the developers later implemented better
> rewards for hunting in fel dungeons than tram dungeons.

You can always adjust the risk-to-reward ratios for any given
activity, yes.

But the heart of the statement above is that *players can always
choose.* If they decide to play in a boring way, there isn't really
any way to stop them. The best you can do is encourage them to play
in a more fun way by increasing the rewards for the fun way.

But I'd add a secondary effect--players tend to turn fun things into
boring ones via a process of gameplay optimization. This occurs with
any mechanic that can be done more than once in the game.

-Raph
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