25 Sep, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
A thread on TMS brought this to mind. Back in the old days, when disk space was expensive, it made sense to have things like rent (Diku) or your equipment falling on the floor when you quit (LPmud). But such features are no longer necessary - so is it really desirable to have them?

I've played rent-based muds before. I understand why some people like the feeling of having a super-rare item, and I can appreciate that it creates a different sort of attitute towards equipment, and results in a different style of gameplay.

But even if that's what you want, is there really any need to make people log on butt-naked? This is particularly relevant for roleplaying muds, but also holds true for other games to a lesser extent (barring themes that provide a solid reason for why equipment is lost). Wouldn't it make sense to at least allow certain items to save on the wearer, even if it's just clothing and the like?

I know we've got some LP people around. I've not played your muds, so I don't know if you have equipment saving. But even if you don't, this isn't an attack on your mud, I'm just curious as to how it's justified in an RP sense; if I'm playing a soldier and I log off, what is the IC reasoning for him wearing only his birthday suit when I log back on?

DikuMUDs with rent have a similar issue, although not quite as bad (you can save equipment as long as you can afford your rent), and the ones I played were definitely not roleplaying muds. But in the thread I mentioned at the start of this post, the mud in question is a commercial LPMud that boasts about its roleplaying-enforced environment - yet worn equipment doesn't save (I think they do have limited storage for paying customers, but you have to manually put your gear into it).
25 Sep, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
I know we've got some LP people around. I've not played your muds, so I don't know if you have equipment saving. But even if you don't, this isn't an attack on your mud, I'm just curious as to how it's justified in an RP sense; if I'm playing a soldier and I log off, what is the IC reasoning for him wearing only his birthday suit when I log back on?


This is a pretty common misconception about LP's, because waaay back when,
back when Lars Himself burst onto the scene, there was no equipment saving
and some of the muds from back in these mists of history just never got
around to adding it*.

However, the LP codebases I'm accustomed to have eq saving as a matter of
course, and I believe it's been so since 1995 or so that it's kind of
normal for a new LP lib to have eq saving and kind of weird for it not to.

"eq doesn't save on LP's" is pretty much anachronistic, the way some
limitations of the-original-Diku mud are sometimes incorrectly pointed
at today as a problem with all dikurivatives.

In the case of the LP codebase I maintain, it's an admin-configurable
option. By default equipment does save when quitting and across reboots.
But the command

mudconfig retain disable

sets the mud to not behave this way except for items specifically
designated as save on quit (like invisible thingies that serve some
purpose the player may not be aware of).

I don't see too much point in forcing people to sell or store
their items before quitting, but whatever, some people want it,
so I give them the choice.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

* I should mention that even these Old Ones
often do have some stuff that loads on a player at login, like
invisible guild-membership items and such.
25 Sep, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
I think it's not just disk space. Having some form of "rent" is a very easy sink to implement in a sink-and-faucet approach economy. (If people were worried about disk space, saving files in some form of compressed archive would be a far more appropriate technical solution.)

That said, I don't really understand either the motivation for all equipment simply disappearing or at least being unequipped on log out.
25 Sep, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
As far as I know this goes back all the way to MIST and MUD1. I doubt there's a logical reason for not having equipment save nowadays, most people just roll with what they know.
25 Sep, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Actually, on further reflection, there are gameplay reasons for not saving equipment; it depends on what kind of game you're creating. I think saying that there is "no logical reason" is a little strong.

Consider a game that is meant to implement some kind of FPS-like experience. People consider it perfectly normal to log in to a deathmatch type of environment and have to go collect weapons and whatnot, and have no expectation of these carrying over across sessions.
25 Sep, 2009, shasarak wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
I think the reason for doing this originally was more to do with game balance than a lack of technical capability.

Dropping EQ when you quit meant that the EQ dissappeared every time the MUD rebooted (which tended to happen quite often in those days). That meant an enormous amount of valuable stuff was being constantly and permanently removed from the MUD economy (with gold being the only persistent thing, if that). New equipment tends to be constantly generated every time an area resets. Making equipment non-persistent meant that you didn't end up with a raging inflation problem.

Renting was, I think, aimed at the same issue. If keeping expensive equipment costs money then players won't necessarily hoard every resource they can; and the cost of the rental charge itself is a useful way to suck money out of the economy. And it gives high level players something to do - they have to keep logging on and acquiring gold in order to maintain their position; if they wait too long between sessions, then the equipment vanishes because they can't afford the rent.

There was also a tactical aspect, especially in PK MUDs. If you're about to die then an obvious option is to quit the game before it happens. If doing that takes you and all of your equipment out of the game then it's easy to abuse - anyone about to be PK'ed could simply quit and wait till his killer had got bored before logging back on safe and sound. Dropping all equipment when you quit makes quitting in combat a much less desirable option - but still potentially more desirable than actually dying, because you lose only equipment and not XP or levels as well. So quitting effectively becomes a way of surrendering, and there's a tactical choice to be made as to whether to quit or keep fighting.

Similarly, the question of whether to quit or rent was also a tactical choice. Renting was far more efficient, but could only happen at certain specific locations; if you were far enough away from an inn when you had to leave the game, you had a tactical decision to make as to whether it was worth fighting your way back to a rent-point or if it would be worth the risk of hiding all your gear and quitting instead.

Any of these issues has plenty of other possible solutions, but I think it's simplistic to assume that storage of equipment wasn't done because it couldn't be done - it was a deliberate design choice.
25 Sep, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
Consider a game that is meant to implement some kind of FPS-like experience. People consider it perfectly normal to log in to a deathmatch type of environment and have to go collect weapons and whatnot, and have no expectation of these carrying over across sessions.

Odd, I never played a FPS where I was running around naked with no clothes on my body, and most FPS you have a default weapon like an pistol or chainsaw. I think your argument is a little weak.
25 Sep, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
Odd, I never played a FPS where I was running around naked with no clothes on my body, and most FPS you have a default weapon like an pistol or chainsaw. I think your argument is a little weak.

Unfortunately I think you might have missed the point. The idea is that different gameplay calls for different rules. You shouldn't assume that every single MUD is trying to create some kind of permanent-character-building scenario. There are also plenty of cases where it can be important for gameplay to have some penalty to quitting too quickly (as shasarak explained with his PK MUD tactics).

For example, there's no reason why you wouldn't log on to the MUD with nothing more than a basic sword and shield – this would be the FPS analogy. You still have to go grab more interesting equipment, exactly as in an FPS. I'm not sure what exactly you were objecting to, really, unless it is of the very notion of having a MUD that behaves this way in the first place.
25 Sep, 2009, Sinistrad wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
Sigh.
25 Sep, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
Sinistrad said:
Sigh.


sup brah.

welcome to teh dramas
25 Sep, 2009, Sinistrad wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
Cratylus said:
Sinistrad said:
Sigh.


sup brah.

welcome to teh dramas


:cry:
25 Sep, 2009, Sinistrad wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
Scandum said:
Odd, I never played a FPS where I was running around naked with no clothes on my body, and most FPS you have a default weapon like an pistol or chainsaw. I think your argument is a little weak.

Unfortunately I think you might have missed the point. The idea is that different gameplay calls for different rules. You shouldn't assume that every single MUD is trying to create some kind of permanent-character-building scenario. There are also plenty of cases where it can be important for gameplay to have some penalty to quitting too quickly (as shasarak explained with his PK MUD tactics).

For example, there's no reason why you wouldn't log on to the MUD with nothing more than a basic sword and shield – this would be the FPS analogy. You still have to go grab more interesting equipment, exactly as in an FPS. I'm not sure what exactly you were objecting to, really, unless it is of the very notion of having a MUD that behaves this way in the first place.


And thus I begin to see what people are talking about. It's like people purposefully miss the point in here, despite logic and reason.
25 Sep, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
The idea is that different gameplay calls for different rules. You shouldn't assume that every single MUD is trying to create some kind of permanent-character-building scenario.

I didn't, in fact I explicitly added a disclaimer in my original post in the hope of avoiding going down this road again:

"But even if that's what you want, is there really any need to make people log on butt-naked? This is particularly relevant for roleplaying muds, but also holds true for other games to a lesser extent (barring themes that provide a solid reason for why equipment is lost)".

What I'm talking about are the muds where there isn't a theme that provides a solid reason for why equipment is lost. Is there really a need to make people log on butt-naked in such cases?

David Haley said:
There are also plenty of cases where it can be important for gameplay to have some penalty to quitting too quickly (as shasarak explained with his PK MUD tactics).

Certainly, but I imagine it would be a rather specialised theme for that penalty to consist of your clothes falling off. Perhaps it could be based on that story (from Extras) by Patrick Stew...?
25 Sep, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
David Haley said:
The idea is that different gameplay calls for different rules. You shouldn't assume that every single MUD is trying to create some kind of permanent-character-building scenario.

I didn't, in fact I explicitly added a disclaimer in my original post in the hope of avoiding going down this road again:

I'm not entirely sure why you felt that this was addressed at you, because it was in direct reply to Scandum (even quoted him).

KaVir said:
Certainly, but I imagine it would be a rather specialised theme for that penalty to consist of your clothes falling off. Perhaps it could be based on that story (from Extras) by Patrick Stew...?

Well, that's based on the assumption that actual eq objects are the only thing the character is "wearing". In many RPGs, you don't equip underwear, shirts, pants, etc.; you just stick on armor. Why not assume that if somebody isn't wearing particular equipment (like a suit of armor) they're wearing plain old clothes?
25 Sep, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
Many role-playing muds implement clothing as part of one's self-written description. So you are not really logging in naked, unless you're description says you are. I think most find it unnecessary to implement mundane equipment as full objects.
25 Sep, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
I think saying that there is "no logical reason" is a little strong.


QPFA
25 Sep, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
Well, that's based on the assumption that actual eq objects are the only thing the character is "wearing". In many RPGs, you don't equip underwear, shirts, pants, etc.; you just stick on armor. Why not assume that if somebody isn't wearing particular equipment (like a suit of armor) they're wearing plain old clothes?

Sure, if there's no explicit clothing then that's fair enough. But most muds I've seen do actually have clothing as specific items.

It also doesn't really address the issue of the soldier who logs off, and comes back to find his weapons and armour have gone. While I can understand certain gameplay reasons for wanting to do that, it doesn't feel right to me (barring specific themes, as I mentioned before) from an immersion perspective - even if the mud is non-RP.
25 Sep, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Tyche said:
QPFA

What? Not an acronym I'm familiar with and Google isn't helping.

KaVir said:
It also doesn't really address the issue of the soldier who logs off, and comes back to find his weapons and armour have gone. While I can understand certain gameplay reasons for wanting to do that, it doesn't feel right to me (barring specific themes, as I mentioned before) from an immersion perspective - even if the mud is non-RP.

I guess you need to say what kind of game you're talking about, because the answer to your question appears to depend very heavily on the things you have 'barred'. For a non-RP game, there are plenty of reasons why one might strip away weapons and armor; the FPS game I mentioned is an example. I think you're also assuming that the game must necessarily have immersion, and I'm not sure why that must be the case. In other words, if it helps the game play, and that is what the game is about, then why is it an issue in the first place? It's a fun game, that's that.

Now, if the game is really picky and persnicketty about immersion, full RP, and so forth, then I completely agree with you that it doesn't make sense to do something like this.
25 Sep, 2009, Sinistrad wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
Tyche said:
QPFA

What? Not an acronym I'm familiar with and Google isn't helping.


You mean it's not the Queensland Pattern Flying Association?
25 Sep, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
Tyche said:
QPFA

What? Not an acronym I'm familiar with and Google isn't helping.


Spoiler
Quote Pulled From Ass.
0.0/58