[MUD-Dev] Reward system for social gaming?

[Adam Miller]

"Alex McGivern" <alex at aeonofdiscord.co.uk> wrote:

>> Did you read that article about EVE Online? The one where a group
>> of assassins spent nearly a year infiltrating a rival guild,
>> earning their trust, and then backstabbing them and stealing all
>> the guild assets?

> That's really cool, in theory - I'd love to play in a game that
> fully supported that style of play.

A friend of mine once spoke about playing on a full PvP server. He
joined a group and hunted with them for quite a while. Then one day
he and the group were fighting a mob and he got a nice loot
drop. Then one of his guild friends he hunted with for 6 months
killed him and took the loot. Nobody intervened or even cared. That
demonstrated that the "community" only existed because the big guns
had not yet decided to kill you for your stuff yet. It isn't really
a community that can be stable or built-upon reliably.

These situations are interesting and can be wildly entertaining, but
the problem is they make entertainment for one person at the great
expense of the other. The ideal situation is where two people can be
entertained at the expense of no one, or perhaps at the expense of
computer-controlled mobs who don't care that they get killed 600
times per day and looted.

This Eve situation isn't the gameplay that builds communities and
playerbases. Think about what it cost for this guy to have as much
fun as he apparently did. How many people possibly quit because of
the losses? You can't determine because the article was written from
the perspective of the person who did the Eve manipulating and
stealing, so it all sounds exciting and fun. The only way a
community can survive and grow is if the majority of the players
feel like they are having a good time. This gameplay runs counter to
that.

These giant thefts happen in real life, but they send people after
the thief and actually have a chance to get the money back. The Eve
situation was irreversible because the game mechanics made a
one-time giant theft possible with impunity.

Overall it probably hurt Eve that it happened.
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev