24 Jun, 2010, Littlehorn wrote in the 21st comment:
Votes: 0
David Haley said:
Quote
3) Sabre-toothed tigers: These rely on other players for PK. But this is the same issue that all PK muds face, and in this case you have an advantage - it's normally very difficult to build up a playerbase in a pure PK mud, because if someone logs on and there's nobody else to PK, there's no incentive to hang around. But in Ice Age mud, you're going to have cavemen and wolves to kill, even if no other tigers are online.

And therein lies the biggest problem with this idea, namely the flipside here: just as a PKer wants people to PK, the people interested in more RP are probably not going to be thrilled about having to continually beat off PKers who don't behave like hungry animals but like people interested in killing (perhaps even griefing) them.


That depends on the player preference. A good portion of the RP players I've encountered love to PK, but PK-RP the most. I was referring to factional conflict where you're not battling the same faction, but representing your own faction against other factions. Majority of all faction based games design their player-versus-player systems against other factions. Then the problem lies in how healthy your faction becomes during the conflict. If for some reason one side is less popular than the other in those instances, then you could see the gameplay diminish on the factional warfare front. Good example is with Dark Age of Camelot and their 3 factions. Midgaard has always been the less favored faction when it comes to realm-versus-realm. In result, fellow Midgaardians see the pains of finding groups to take strategic territories on the battlefront as well complete group content like raiding or even recruiting for guilds.

All things considered, if you have a large MUD and all factions are attractable then it doesn't matter. But, these are what you call the unknowns of game development. Even the best developers in the world can't foresee how players will adapt or utilize certain designs or systems. That's why you just have to go with the best possible design or system and just freaking wing it.
24 Jun, 2010, Kline wrote in the 22nd comment:
Votes: 0
Perhaps allow the mage to summon a demon simply for a temporary boost of power, say taking some of its essence, if it can control it? This would force the demon into a direct 1v1 with the mage played out as the demon fighting for freedom and the mage for control of it. This should work fine for the demon, as a pker, as it would just be another random player attempting to pk them.

If the mage wins, maybe they can summon an NPC demon or have enhanced powers against their next opponent; if they lose – well, they lost, and the demon got to eat a soul :).
24 Jun, 2010, Oliver wrote in the 23rd comment:
Votes: 0
Kline said:
… and the demon got to eat a soul :).


If killing one of the RPers and "eating their soul" (or whatever) gave a demon a permanent stat boost, they certainly would want to get summoned for a chance to get some extra stats. We powergamers do love extra stats.
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