Well I thought that sending everyone to some guys blog to leave comments would be funny. But he evidently shut comments off.
So that was just a waste of time. Sorry about that.
Next time I’ll check to see if the comments are turned on before I send everyone running amok into someone else’s site.
So I spotted this quote from a site that is linked to here.
So what I want everyone to do is to go to his site and leave a comment.
It’s Monday, and we have another, fairly large, batch of things not to do, courtesy of the IT industry.
(Submitted by Warlock)
I didn’t get a chance to respond to everything on my last ‘Dream MMO’ post. But people kept discussing game mechanics for the next week. So I figured “Why not keep this discussion going?”.
So evidently online game economy is a subject that the readers of my site have an opinion on.
Now, I still take the stance that inflation is inevitable, but can be mitigated from the design, although a lot of my readers disagree with that assessment. Or rather, in an ideal situation for an MMO there will be inflation. Because ideally there will always be more players, adventuring away and adding more virtual money to the economy.
One suggestion I saw come up a lot was to remove things from the economy. Which is true, if players are constantly having to replace their gear that would have a net effect of keeping their stockpiles of money down. Since that was the majority suggestion, let’s run with that tonight.
Of course, players get kind of cranky if you take their stuff away. I’m not saying that you should take players toys away on occasion, just that games need to be cautions about how they go about doing it. So here are the ideas I saw suggested last time, plus a few others.
Ways I think would be good to remove items:
Reduced Effectiveness With Use - It doesn’t force the player to ever give up a piece of gear, but it encourages the player to switch out as often as they can, in order to maintain peak effectiveness.
Damage - The equipment has it’s own sent of hit points, that are reduced by use. Eventually the equipment will break. Many games have systems similar to this. The best example I have seen was in the game Arcanum. If an item gets damaged, you could repair it. But instead of going back up to it’s maximum health when you repaired it, the current health and the max health would be averaged. So the more frequently you repaired you equipment, the longer it lasted. But that would make it cost more, and no matter what it will eventually break.
Binding - Once picked up, customized, or equipped, the item becomes locked to it’s owner. WOW made good use of this, as nearly all of the equipment from the first third of the game onward is binding in some way. Guildwars also did a neat job here, by making weapons customizable. You spend extra money on the weapon, to gain a bonus to it’s use, but then no other player can ever use it. They’ve basically found a way to get the players to pay extra for having their equipment bound.
Scavenging - WOW has this as enchanting, Auto Assault had a version of this. Basically you allow the players to turn the items they posses into the raw materials that they use to create new objects. As long as the player crafted items cost more resources to create than they yield when destroyed it shouldn’t be abusable. Especially is you make a separate set of resources that are *only* available from scavenging. If you link this to a damage system for the item, it could be rigged up that the less health the equipment has left, the less salvage it has. Which encourages the players to break their own toys as fast as possible.
Obsolescence - If the player has the best sword in the game, he will never spend money on another. So make a sword that is better than that. This is what every MMO would probably like to do. But there are practical limits to how many new areas, and new equipment the development team can get into the play-space. And they will never be able to make it fast enough to keep up with the ultra-hardcore players. Don’t get me wrong, I like this idea the best, and it’s part of the point of MMO’s. At least it’s part of the justification for the subscription.
One possibility to use obsolescence without breaking the developers backs, is to supplement it with a procedural one up system.
Let’s say that the best sword in the game is the Longsword of Leetness. It’s only available by doing a long and expensive quest, and at first, only the absolute most dedicated players have them. But months pass and more and more players have found the time to complete the quest. Once a certain percentage of end-game players have the sword the game determines that it needs to ‘one-up’ the Longsword of Leetness. So it releases the Battle-axe of Leetness. Which statistically is pretty close to identical to the Longsword in every way. Except that it has a bonus when used against a player who is using the Longsword. When enough players switch to the Battle-axe, it creates a super-powered mace, that has a bonus to take on the first two, and so on. It think a nice money sink could be developed by giving the end-game players a permanent arms race against each other.
So any comments on the ideas I listed? Any other ideas to remove stuff from the players?
I’m not around tonight to write anything tonight, so here’s another batch of amusing things that other people made.
International Affairs. But for kids.
Anyone who’s known me for any considerable amount of time knows how dedicated I am to my hobby of writing fan fiction. Some fans write about “Star Trek” and some write about “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” while others write about “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”
My favorite show is “60 Minutes”.
And if you haven’t caught the buzz yet, they’re making a movie.
Look for it next summer: “90 Minutes — The Sixty Minutes Motion Picture,” starring Martin Lawrence as Ed Bradley and Owen Wilson as Morley Safer.
And not to brag, but some very influential people in Hollywood have seen some of my work and were impressed enough to pony up some dough for me to write the novelization of the screenplay.
Here is a sample chapter.
—–
Morley Safer sneezed, overwhelmed by the dust in the basement of the academic library. He wished his anonymous source would hurry up. He didn’t have all day to collect dust like the antiquated AV equipment that surrounded him.
He looked at his watch.
“Ten more minutes, and I’m out of here,” he muttered to himself.
“Oh, I don’t believe you’re going anywhere, Mr. Safer,” said a voice from the darkness.
Just then, the lights came on.
“You!”
“That’s right, Safer. It’s me. Phillip Morris, himself. Mr. Big Tobacco.”
“You think this is the first time I’ve had a gun pointed at me?” Safer tried to play it cool, though he couldn’t take his eyes off Morris’s nicotine-stained trigger finger, taut around the mechanism that could, at any second, send a lump of lead and blue flash out of the revolver’s cold steel muzzle.
“You think killing me will stop the truth?” Safer said.
“Oh, I don’t aim to kill you, Mr. Safer,” Morris wheezed with detachment and menace. “You have to take a message to your friend Mike Wallace. I can’t have either of you poking around in my affairs any longer. As for the truth, go ahead. Tell the entire world. Tell them the whole truth. Tell them that I am an alien from outer space aiming to conquer and control the human race through its tendency toward addiction. They’ll think you’ve flipped.”
Morris shape shifted. Before Safer’s eyes the CEO became a gray alien, his face devoid of features, his eyes big, black and empty.
“I find your Earth weapons crude, but very effective.” The alien had not spoken, but the words found their way into Safer’s brain, nonetheless. “When you get out of intensive care, make sure your viewers know we prefer to communicate using telepathy.”
One of the creature’s three fingers cocked the hammer.
“Not so fast, Phillip Morris!” Another voice shouted.
Ed Bradley stepped out of the shadows, shirtless and scraped but no worse for wear, an ammo belt draped over his shoulder and a machine gun trained on Morris’s gargantuan head.
“Ed!” Safer cried out to his colleague. “No one is supposed to know I’m here. How did you find out?”
“I’m that good, baby. And you’re lucky I am. Otherwise, you’d be filing your reports from six feet under. Put the gun down, Morris. The jig is up.”
“Up yours,” Morris projected into Bradley’s mind.
“You alien muthafucka!” Bradley opened up on the shapeshifter with the all the M-60 had. Empty shells clattered to the floor as round after round splattered gray alien gray matter all over the dusty overhead projectors behind it.
Bradley then reached into his waistband and pulled out the 9-mm handgun he always carried just in case. He tossed it to Safer.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here, Morley!”
They made their way through the labyrinth of stacks, up the stairs and out the front door. They each breathed a sigh of relief once inside Bradley’s Cadillac El Dorado.
“Check it out, Safer, I just got this new amp.” Bradley cranked the volume on his stereo, and soon Safer could feel the throbbing bass rattle his lungs.
“This be the shiz, my nigga,” Safer shouted over the hiphop groove.
“What the fuck, white boy? You can’t say nigga. Only I can say nigga.”
“That’s a load of shit, Ed. You’re saying a word is off limits to me just ’cause I’m white?”
“Damn right. You white folks got every thing else. You stole the blues, you stole rock n’ roll. There’s even white boys rapping now. You ain’t using the word nigga.”
“Whatever.”
They pulled up to the stoplight. The music so loud, they didn’t hear the black helicopter hovering over traffic.
But they noticed when the Volkswagen behind them erupted in a blazing fireball.
“Shit, they got a chopper on us!” Bradley cried. “Stinger missiles, too.”
“Well then, floor it, bitch!”
Bradley stomped on the gas. Tires squealed. The caddy swerved to avoid cross-traffic that had the light.
The helicopter rained bullets down on the Cadillac and surrounding traffic.
“They fuckin’ up my rims, yo!” Bradley shouted. “You gotta take that chopper out! Use the RPG in the back seat!”
The caddy weaved through traffic, the helicopter hard on its tail, leaving destruction in its wake. Cars crashed. Trucks exploded. Exciting shit. Safer hung out the window, the rocket launcher on his shoulder, taking aim at the helicopter.
“Can’t you keep this car moving in a straight line,” Safer complained. “I can’t get a shot on the copter.”
“Hey, don’t tell me how to drive and I won’t tell you how to get shot down by Lesley Stahl.”
Another explosion jolted the car from behind.
“The road don’t get no smoother. Shoot them muthafuckas!”
Safer cleared his mind, took aim, held his breath. He had but one shot. He squeezed the trigger.
Direct hit. The helicopter blew up. Pieces of it fell out of the sky onto cars and pedestrians. None but the pilot were seriously injured.
“Ha ha! Nice shootin’, my nigga!” Bradley said.
Bradley and Safer walked into CBSNews headquarters, greeted by their colleague Lesley Stahl.
“Hi boys.”
“Lesley, you should have seen it!” Bradley rejoiced. “You ain’t the only one that’s good at shooting down around here!”
She eyed Safer. “What’s he talking about?”
“Oh, it was nothing, really.” Safer said, shuffling his feet.
“Nothing? Nothing? Lesley, this helicopter was on our tail, and our boy Safer here took that motherfucker out!”
“Safer! Bradley!” Mike Wallace shouted. “In my office now!”
“Gotta go,” Safer said to Stahl. “Tell you all about it over dinner tonight?”
“Um… No thanks. I’m waxing my cat tonight.”
“Now, Safer!” Wallace shouted.
The two men followed Wallace into his office.
“Shut the god damn door!” he ordered. Bradley obliged him. “I just got off the phone with Phillip Morris! Can you explain why you’re harassing him, Safer?”
Safer and Bradley looked at each other, chilled.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you, god damn it!” Wallace shouted. “What the fuck are you doing bothering an important businessman like Phillip Morris?”
“I was doing legwork on a story. I didn’t know he would be there.”
“Didn’t know he would be there? You’re telling me he’s got nothing better to do than just show up wherever you happen to be!”
“Sir,” Bradley interjected. “Phillip Morris is an alien. And he’s supposed to be dead.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Bradley? And what the fuck were you doing there? Aren’t you supposed to be working on a story about air bags? And where the fuck is your god damn shirt?”
“But I got wind that Morley was walking into a trap.”
“Shut the fuck up, Bradley! You’re on thin ice! Thin! Fucking! Ice! I don’t want to hear any more nonsense about aliens and dead businessmen and traps! It’s bullshit! I’m sick of this loose cannon reporting! Safer, you’re off this story! I don’t want you going anywhere near Phillip Morris, do you understand me?”
“But Mike,” Safer said. “I’m on to a big story here.”
“Do you understand me!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now get the fuck out of my sight. Deadline is coming up tomorrow and I want to see something good from both of you!”
“Yes, sir.”
Bradley and Safer left Wallace’s office, hanging their heads. They turned the corner in the hall and there stood Andy Rooney.
“Did you ever notice how you two are a couple of fuckups?” he said.
“Shut the fuck up, Rooney,” Bradley said. “Aren’t you supposed to be in your office bitching about paperclips or some shit?”
“Whoa. Snap,” Safer said.
A few weeks ago I wrote a rant to clarify my thoughts on a few issues. Amongst the comments was this one, by Stickfodder:
“Ok in response to #2 I wasn’t old enough to vote the last two times so don’t you go blaming me blame my parents for not having me sooner. And as for #4 Skippy and Michiel In 2008!”
Now having someone want me for President certainly appeals to my vanity. On a scale between “Doesn’t Care About Recognition” and “Bottomless Vortex of Emotional Need” I probably lean just a teensy bit towards the latter.
But as much as I appreciate the vote of confidence, I must point out that it is misplaced.
But as a quick aside, I want to note that if I did run for office, I would never have Michiel as a running mate. Michiel is sane, logical, intelligent and moral. In other words horrible VP material. You see, if something bad was to happen to me, people might think that Michiel could step in and do just as good, or perhaps a better job than me. And that simply will not do.
The true purpose of the office of Vice President is to make everyone terrified of letting anything happen to the President. I don’t want sane, logical, intelligent or moral for a VP. I want a barely controlled psychopath. I want a man who can, at best, display a fingernail’s grasp on reality. The kind of guy who would call a press conference to strangle a kitten or eat a baby. Someone who becomes visibly aroused when talking about getting to be in charge of the nuclear arsenal. Because if somebody tries to assassinate me, I want those Secret Service agents motivated to jump in the way.
Which leads us back to the original point of this post, which is that I would probably be the worst President ever.
I would bring to the office a sense of, oh, let’s call it whimsy. The sort of whimsy that is usually associated with Pee-wee Herman, or Caligula.
I would preemptively invade foreign countries. Not because they harbored terrorists, or had natural resources that our nation needed. My military adventures would be based entirely on how hot the women of the country in question tended to be. All assets would be pulled out of the Middle East, and refocused on Brazil. The women there are so hot that they got a hairstyle named after them.
Now to be fair, there’s a lot of good things I could probably accomplish while in office. For instance, I have a sure fire method to reduce the price of gasoline.
Step One: Invite the heads of every major petrochemical corporation to come visit me at the White House.
Step Two: Arrange for comfortable seating, drinks, hour’dourves, perhaps a nice string quartet.
Step Three: The Speech.
The Speech will go something like this:
“Gentlemen, I am very glad that all of you could take the time out of your busy schedules to join me here tonight. As you are no doubt aware, our nation is currently undergoing a bit of a fuel crisis. But I am positive that the people in this room have the know-how and motivation to set things right. I would like to introduce you fine people to Master Sergeant Atrocity.
Master Sergeant Atrocity is a former Special Forces weapons expert. He then spent eight years in Delta Force, followed by a ten year career doing black ops and wet-work for the CIA in a variety of hot-spots around the globe. He’s brutal, efficient, practically invisible, and completely loyal to me.
If gasoline at the pump isn’t under two dollars within the next three months, Master Sergeant Atrocity will go to your home and torture your family to death in front of you. Then he will finish you off. And it will look like a suicide. A messy, lengthy, and amusingly creative suicide.
Are there any questions? Yes you there, the CEO of Conglomco International?”
“Who the hell do you think you are? You can’t just interfere with our business and threaten to–”
“Master Sergeant Atrocity? Please give our friend here a lesson in applied economic theory.”
“VIOLENT LOVE BEGINS NOW!”
Various unpleasant wet and squishy noises result.
“Are there any other questions?”
“What happens if we go public with these threats?”
“I would describe the results of such a breach in confidentiality as ‘Spectacularly Unfortunate’.”
“I see. Well it’s cheap gas for America from now on I guess.”
Step Four: Replace the carpet.
© 1995-2008 Jonathan Schwarz
Site Design and Maintenance by GeekArtist Web Design
Hosted by DrakNet
Powered by WordPress
