At 06:25 AM 9/2/97 -0400, Andrew Helm wrote:
>As for the idea that you make life hard on the players, but
>not to the point that they leave.... well, that's flawed on
>a basic level. If you see your job as approaching the point
>where you make players leave (but not beyond), then you've
>got the wrong goal in mind.
I think now would be a good time to bring up the idea of role-playing.
Realistically any god that makes something more difficult for players is
considered a mean god ("player-unfriendly"). So when a lot of people kill
one mob you decide to make that mob harder (for game balance). Then you can
tell the players what happened in several ways:
"I made the mob harder to kill"
Don't do this. In most cases it makes you appear more mean than
challenging. Players might get angry. This can accumulate pretty quickly
in a players mind and they can start to think "the administrators of this
mud are mean" and leave. So how can you tell them that the mob is more
difficult to kill?
"It appears the Deadly Purple Rabbit has become more powerful after getting
some lessons from the Big Bad Purple Bear. Players should be careful while
traveling in the Forest of Many Purple Things."
Now ignore the use of purple (its really not an important part or the
message). This message says "somehow the mob is more powerful" and sends a
message to the player that it wasn't the imm's fault (even though it was).
The player turns their anger against the mob, not the imm and then by
telling players to be careful it makes it look like the imm is on your side
instead of the mob's side. This is just an example but I think you
understand what I am saying (I hope). You (the immortal) didn't use your
power to beef up the mob and make it harder to kill. The mob did it on its own!
It also doesn't hurt to chat with players occasionally. A casual
conversation with an administrator can make a player for more important than
average. This can be enough to make the player stay with a relatively bad
MUD. No garantees but if you have a good mud and are a nice person to the
players then chances are they are gonna stay. I may not know much about
coding but it only took me one day to become a clan leader on one MUD
because I could recruit just about anyone. I was even told that I needed to
slow down my recruiting. I tend to make more friends than enemies on MUDs
and that is important (in my opinion) for an imm.
This is just a short (short compared to how much I could have written ;))
example of some of my ideas on "The Art of Administration" or "Challenging
the Players" or "Pissing people off" or whatever you want to call it. If
you don't agree with me don't listen to me. I was just trying to share a
few ideas of mine on this subject. please, no flames.
The world doesn't need another war.
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