Re: [MUD-Dev] players who "take away from the game"

["Philip Loguinov -- Draymoor" <fibhufky#erols,com>]

From: Quzah <quzah#hotmail,com>

>On Thu, 11 Nov 1999, Ola Fosheim [iso-8859-1] Grøstad wrote:
>> J C Lawrence wrote:
>> >   All bugs are fair game and may be exploited as wished as long as
>> > you report them beforehand.  Exploitation of non-reported bugs (not
>> > reported by the exploiter) are rewarded with character or player
>> > deletion.
>>
>> How will players know that it is a bug?  The assumption that players will
>> think of an advantage as a bug assumes a rather homogenous imitating
world
>> and a knowledgeable player base?
>>
>> Example: If I get one million gold for selling my first mushroom to a
troll
>> in the mountains, does that make it a bug?  I would call it a fortunate
>> incident.
>
>This remindes me of 'Conch' (I think that's how they spelled it.) Mud.
>The black queen's bishop's pawn always gave huge amounts of experience.
>Even when you were high level it was still worth a stop by the chess
>board (which was blocked off to those above level 6 I think) to kill it.
>Even when the king and queen were only worth 1 experience, I think you
>could get in there and kill the bqbp for 50 or so.
>
>Getting in was another matter entirely ;) You just had my mage go out
>there as soon as he got um.. beacon or something like that, he cast a
>beacon on the chess board at low level, then recalled/teleported back
>to his beacon, you met him there at low leve, and he cast your anchor
>(beacon had two parts: anchor, and recall) on the chess board, then
>any time at high level you wanted back out there, he cast recall on
>you and vola!
>
>Such a fun place, so many fun things to do... it's a shame what
>they did to my mage :(


Very clever. Now, this wasn't a bug, sorta.
The experiance MAY have been a bug, but thats a differant matter.
I believe bugs should be reported, however exploits are fair game.
Heres the differance:

A bug:
Stock Smaug has a polymorph spell. This spell switches you into a low level
mob.
Mobs have MPCommands that they can use. As a switched player, you can use
any
of these commands.
That is a design flaw. I concider it a bug which i would expect to be
reported.
(btw, being a bug-finder as a player helps when you're coding. I'm even a
bug finder as an
imm)

An exploit (imm example):
Smaug has very nice mobprogs. It also has a beautifull (for my perposes)
fall and autoteleport
code.

So, what i did was this: Make two rooms, one has a down exit to the second.
the second teleports
you to the first at a delay.

Well, thats pretty simple, infinite loop there. But the beauty comes in what
it can be used for.
MPTranfer can transfer ANYONE, regardless of level.
Falling and getting hurt has some sort of delay on the player, the speed of
the teleport delay causes commands to never go through.
Conclusion?
force mob mptransfer imp infinite_fall
They can't get out on their own. I held a friend of mine in there who was
about
7 levels higher then me in there for a while, fun :)
Anyway, there were no bugs in there, and it's a nifty way of taking care of
annoying players.

That is simply using tools available to you in a way that wasn't anticipated
by the implementers.

An exploit (mortal example):
PK mud, i'm the most powerfull player on the mud (mage, i know EVERYTHING,
can get anyware)
Now, its smaug, with stock deadly/peacefull and level limits on PK.
I'm 50, there is no safe on repop/deathpop.
I get an item that pops an aggro mob into existance and it attacks you.
I am invisible and use the item, aggro mob in deathpop room :)
I go and kill a person (charmies) who is an enemy of my clan and they pop up
at deathpop. Mob kills them.
they pop up at deathpop. mob kills them. etc etc etc.
TERRIBLE spam on the deathlog :P
Eventually a friend of mine (currently playing an imm, this was an alpha)
gets to put safe on the room, but not before the guy died over  a hundred
times in approx. 10 seconds.
There is no bug here. The deathpop room was meant to be unsafe. I took
advantage of all the stuff i had and knew to exploit the system.






_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev maillist  -  MUD-Dev#kanga,nu
http://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev