You seem to think no one's going to go back and see what was actually said. Tyche called you on it first, and KaVir responded, after you'd explained yourself to me, ending his post with, "Did I just run over your dog or something?" To suggest that I'm the only one, and that it's a case of "misunderstanding", is simply self-flattering spin.

KaVir said, "I don't think there's too much risk of the game distinguishing itself…" and you responded with, "Are you saying that a game is worthless…?". Clearly, you are putting words in his mouth, and unkind words at that.



Feel free to PM me in response.

Other people understood what was meant well enough, and not only in this instance but basically every other instance you've "called" me on something (usually ending up being a misunderstanding on your part, sorry). I think that's all that needs to be said here. I'm not sure what exactly your deal is, but you certainly some to have one. :thinking:

seem*

Lrn 2 spell! :devil:

Osry, kthxbai.
Meh, that's what happens when you write a sentence one way and then revise it and end up with a Frankenstein's monster of a sentence. :tongue:

And yet it wasn't just her that seemed to have issue with your misunderstanding of things. So possibly it isn't just her or me that seems to have a "deal" with it as I saw at least two others do the same thing without so much as a peep.

Funny that you should say that Samson because you were among those who understood exactly what I meant and even agreed with what I was saying. :rolleyes:

Wait, what? See, this is the problem, you are telling me I agree with what you were saying, and I honestly can't even begin to peg down exactly where or what I'm supposed to have agreed with because all I saw was three different people essentially do a *boggle* at trying to parse your lack of parsing of….. something…..

I mean this seriously, what am I supposed to have understood exactly AND agreed with?

Ok, so I understand what this means is that if the owner hasn't changed
anything about the codebases core functions (leaving it "stock"), then
the way to be unique is to change the other stuff…meaning the areas.

Straightforward enough.



When I read this I went "huh"?

Because David's premise is that it can distinguish itself with
new areas. But KaVir seems to be saying that is not so…based on what,
exactly? It appears to be a "No, I don't think so" without support.

Since I wasn't really following the thread with any particular
interest, I didn't ask for clarification. I figured someone else
would. Indeed someone else did, and that request for a clarification
elicited:



Ah! It is implied that the owner sucks, and therefore the mud in
general won't "distinguish itself" in the form of being worth playing.

The term "distinguish itself" in David's quote I interpreted to
mean "be unique".

The term "distinguish itself" in KaVir's quote I misinterpreted to
mean the same thing, causing my confusion. He actually mean "distinguish
itself" in the sense of "not sucking".

And my confusion was resolved!

Well, that confusion, anyway. Because the rest of the crap where
people pile on David is confusing, if one assumes good faith on the
part of all those piling.

He asks for people to clarify what they mean, folks. That is a good thing.

Let's please get over whatever personal resentment we feel over the gentleman.
We don't need every thread to devolve into questioning DH's dialectic
process any more than we need every thread to include a reference to eugenics*.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

* oh poop I did it this time huh

Seems like you've read what you quoted too quickly…

An area which was written by "someone else" very likely originated from another mud, right?
So if mud X has area Y and no code modifications, what makes it any better than mud Z, on which area Y originated?
The obvious answer is "the other areas on mud X." This is one of those YMMV situations. As a mort, I straight up refused to play on stock muds that I thought had crappy areas.

Edit: Wow, sorry. Somehow I managed to completely miss the second half of Crat's post. Maybe mine was rendered irrelevant by it. :tongue:

50!

No – it was later made clear that "someone else" referred to "someone other than the owner". Since we were talking about owners demanding various legal terms from their builders, I thought that this was a fairly reasonable interpretation of what "someone else" could mean.


You "quoted for truth" Asylumius's post, which explicitly favored original areas and stock code over original code and stock areas, and added that "Original areas make a far greater impression on [you] than original coding. " In other words, you agreed that areas can be extremely important in distinguishing a MUD from its counterparts, which is all that I was trying to say, because KaVir's original post made it seem like the areas were more or less irrelevant if the code was stock.


I don't really understand all the animosity here. I guess people are trying to "score points" or something. Either that or there's been some kind of gross misunderstanding. But I don't see why people are so eager to jump on others for asking for nothing more dastardly than clarification. These reactions of "omg u so stupid don't u get it" are a little unseemly (especially considering that other people seem to agree with the point in question). I dunno. Oh well. Brainworms.

EDIT: in fairness I suppose some of the reactions were more along the lines of "surely you get it, stop your evil trolling", which frankly mystifies me even more.

Well, and I am meaning this seriously and not in a "I want to score points" way, Asylumius managed to say it in a way that was clearly understood. If that's also what you were saying, it didn't come across that way. But hey, we found something we all agree on, yes? We should be dancing in the streets or something since the world didn't actually come to an end the way Nostradamus predicted.

Oh… and…. 52! (because, seriously, 52 is better than 50!)

Dude. That shit is no joke. http://lpmuds.net/brainworm_NSFW.jpg



Wikipedia gets a bad rep around here but there's a policy it has of calling for editors
to assume good faith as much as possible. Typically the policy is the first to go in
a frenzy of reverts and discussion page fulminations. It is, however, a good policy
in principle and I suspect we could us a little more of it around here in general.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

The only person calling you an "evil troll" is you, yourself.

I lol'd.

The context is clearer if you follow the conversation back a little further. lnewlfe asked "If someone builds an area and wants a copy, why NOT give it to them?" to which David summed up his reply with "Particularly if the codebase is stock, the areas are all that the game has to distinguish itself".

My response wasn't intended as disagreement, it was really just a sardonic comment directed at that type of mud, pointing out that if (1) "the codebase is stock", and (2) those builders aren't allowed to use their work elsewhere because their areas "are all that the game has to distinguish itself", then that implies that every noteworthy part of the game was written by someone other than the owner/s. In my experience, there's little chance of such muds distinguishing themselves (as in "stand out from the competition") anyway - the most unique and original muds I've seen all had owners who led by example.

It was just intended as a little banter before I went on to give some more views on ownership. The thread was drifting a little off-topic, but the conversation was getting quite interesting - I wasn't expecting the claws to suddenly come out like that and kill the discussion in its tracks.

?

I believe Tyche is trying to say that your post was too long and as such didn't read it. :thinking:

Just to put another twist on where the discussion seems to be headed….

We seem to have two different ideas of what the "owner" or "admin" of any given MUD is. Some folks are saying that a game in which the owner doesn't directly contribute (via code or building) is destined to mediocrity, by virtue of the coders and/or builders somehow losing their way. Clearly, this is the classic view of a game that was envisioned by a single person (or a small group) and built up over time, to the point where more help was recruited. In that case, they may well be correct. If the core group loses interest, those who signed up to help may find their own focus wavering.

However, that's only the way things are done in some circles. In commercial game development, it's far more likely that the owner won't, in fact, ever touch the keyboard himself. Rather, the owner will either be the idea man who thinks of the design and then recruits people to bring it to life, or finds someone else with that vision and coordinates building a team to make it happen. If the owner is also the main visionary, his departure may well doom the game if he kept a tight reign on the building and development team. If they were simply the coordinator, or if they gave the team creative license, I don't think their dropping out will tank the project.

The question is… does the creativity come from a single person at the top, or from a group of people underneath?

I think it's quite likely that some really good MUDs can and have been built with the "owner" serving the role of watchdog and shepherd, and not actually getting their hands dirty. However, I don't think it's likely that a MUD which starts with the top dog being the driving force will transition to a more hands-off approach very well.