Subject: Re: radical departure
From: Otso Makinen (otso@hybrid.fi)
Date: Tue Nov 16 1999 - 12:47:22 EET
What Hook is trying to point out makes much sense to me. First there's the simple fact that filling the known world of Majik would simple takes too much time, several years at best. If we won't allow players to enter the world before this all is done, I'm pretty sure it never gets done. We must start small, with few starting locations and place all the interesting locations near enough to be found. Even if we had the whole world ready we had to place the initial players near each other or they would never find each other (dealing with extremely stupid NPC's just can't replace real players). Since we have quite huge land area in our use, we can easily add areas while the world is running without players ever noticing cities/villages/whatever appearing from nowhere. And about developing societies. If we place players in a ready world we must make to world quite static or the players will break it. If players are allowed to make history they'll crash the initial world in less than a week. Most cities build by designers would soon be ruins if we want to make it possible to destroy cities. We just can't throw players in and assume they'll immediately adjust to the world unless it is forced to them. We are talking about real societies here, with real people in them, and such societies must develop gradually. We can't force players to obey rules, while at the same time allowing them to make their own. Luckily, we can use sages as a great tool to guide development of the world to a direction we want it to go. Think them as Gandalfs and Fizbans who can make great changes with just a little adjustments. If we have to constantly remind elves that they like living in woods and not in caves, telling that that's just the way elves are, we have made a mistake somewhere. If we want to have elves living in forests we must make the race so that to best place for them to be is in the forest. If the only reason for a player to play different races differently is just because they're told to so, it will not work. I could write much more on this, but I'll better stop before the text is still readable. -- Otso Mäkinen / Majik 3D Project harum@majik3d.org https://majik3d-legacy.org
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