RE: [MUD-Dev] Guilds & Politics

["Koster, Raph" <rkoster#origin,ea.com>]

On Wednesday, December 10, 1997 7:19 AM, Ola Fosheim 
Grøstad[SMTP:olag#ifi,uio.no] wrote:
> "Koster, Raph" <rkoster#origin,ea.com> wrote:

> >BUT any code system which attempts to judge human behavior is 
doomed
> >to screw up. :P
>
> So... It didn't work??  Give us the gory details please!!! :)
>
> Ola.

Work, not work... whew. :P Tough question. Quickie overview:

It's probably the single least popular feature in the game. This still 
comes out at 74% want to keep it whilst fixing any bugs.

It causes a lot of admin load, because people end up affecting their 
reputations negatively accidentally, or through utter cluelessness 
(got a letter today saying, "Honest, I had no idea that rummaging 
through other people's bags would make others look down on me!")

A description of the system in place in UO:

There is a notoriety scale that goes positive and negative. Zero and 
some range on the sides of it is considered anonymity.

Certain actions when taken will result in your "notoriety" rising, 
others will result in its going down. Some of the actions change in 
result depending on who the victim of the action was. Over time it 
tends to sink to center. The value includes a base value plus a local 
factor (which isn't very large).

Typical actions tracked include attacking, killing (this is tracked 
separately from attacks), stealing, rummaging through other people's 
belongings, setting off explosives, giving items to people, healing, 
casting beneficial or detrimental spells, inciting fights, etc.

Visible effects of this include: prices in shops changing based on 
your notoriety, up to and including the refusal of service; your title 
changing; targeting in combat changing the highlight color so you can 
tell whether the attack would have a positive, negative or no effect 
(graphical system of course); NPC conversation and reaction based on 
the stat; guards attacking or preventing access to certain areas and 
thus to certain services, such as banking; difficulty in resurrecting 
if your reputation is too low.

Additional side frills not directly related to this system but which 
tie into it: excessive kills of individuals more innocent than 
yourself will result in bounties being posted, with confiscation of 
your goods; all player vs player kills are tallied on a local bulletin 
board.

Benefits: the overall incidence of harassing or pointless pkilling 
since all the above fell into place has dropped by a factor of at 
least ten (clear out of our list of top issues, in fact). Players can 
see those who are

Major issues: "Oops, I accidentally attacked my friend!" "Hey, my 
friend and I want to attack each other to practice weaponry, yet our 
reputations suffer!" "This guy broke into my house, but had a good 
reputation, and I would damage mine if I attacked him" Plus, the top 
playerkiller groups now are GOOD guys who self-righteously hunt down 
anyone who has slipped slightly in reputation and kills them, because 
that way they kill indiscriminately but still keep their reputation 
up. This can be seen as a benefit, I guess, since it adds a lot of 
teeth to the system :)

But the biggest problem of course: it's just another layer of game to 
play. All the above can be manipulated (we do hide numbers on this of 
course, but there is an overall title) and an expert player can play 
the numbers. It also damages roleplay quite a lot since playing an 
honorable rogue is very difficult, and it basically makes large scale 
combat impossible right now (as it would ruin the reputations of 
everyone in the battle).

However, do I believe it's better than nothing? Heck yeah.

-Raph