[imported_Synozeer]

Thanks to Drakkos Wyrmstalker of Discworld MUD for his article, "Unlisting the Listable." Here's an exceprt:

Originally Posted by When you get right down to it, players are a deeply deceitful, shoddy lot of chancers. No, no... don't take that the wrong way. I just mean that you can't trust them as far as you could throw them. Look, all I mean is that they'd sell their mothers if they thought they'd make a profit on the deal.

You can read the article here .

[Molly]

Great article, Drakkos.

We've got the same problem with shady players swapping Quest info, although I don't think they've gone far enough to put up websites with the info. Probably they are too selfish to do that. Putting up a website would mean that EVERYBODY gets the info. Our little cheaters just want their FRIENDS to know. (By the way, just out of curiosity, how did you get informed about those websites? Did someone squeal or did you do a Google search?)

I think our players mostly do their blabbing over AIM, but it happens inside the mud too; sometimes they've even been stupid enough to write down detailed instructions on a note.  

Blabbers are pretty hard to deal with. There are cases when I'm absolutely positive that there has been massive cheating going on, for instance when one player solves a really hard quest , maybe after months of trying, and then half his Clan 'solves' it too within the next week. But without solid proof, there is not much you can do. And without snooping and spying on the players (which I detest) solid proof is hard to get. Also any amount of snooping wouldn't catch the ones that are 'smart' enough to keep their blabbing outside the mud.

What we do get is a lot of accusations from other players, that 'so-and-so' cheated with 'this-and-that' Quest. The accusations may be true, or 'so-and-so' might just be a very good player. You usually have a pretty good idea which is the case, but again there is not much you can do without proof. Generally we have to leave it to the players to deal with.

There are times when a Quest has been so tainted by cheating, that we've had to remove it, or revamp it thoroughly, meaning that everybody gets punished, even the innocent ones and the Builders. There are also times when accusations of cheating has started Clan wars.

We naturally do what we can to prevent cheating in the Quests themselves, by adding random elements, changing mazes, tough mobs to kill,  playerflags and different paths through the Quests. We even have scripts that throw all followers out of the room, if they don't have the right flag. But some Quests actually have to be easy, since there is a learning curve, and Newbies need challenges too.

And all those alternative paths and random elements means a lot of extra work for the Builders. Setting up a good, interesting, challenging and captivating Quest is hard enough without having to deal with ways to stop cheaters. Sometimes the scripts get so complicated that they screw up. And all those extra playerflags mean increased risks for a player getting stuck in the middle of a long quest, for instance if he loses link at the wrong moment.

Even one-time Quests is not a solution, since - (apart from the somewhat wasted work it entails) - the players can make alternative characters to do the Quest again. I guess the only real way to stop blabbing would be totaly imm-run onetime Quests, but that means even more work.

The 'blabbers' ruin it for everyone, but mostly for the honest players that play a straight game and like to tackle challenges on their own.

[the_logos]

Information wants to be free, as the saying goes.

[Tavish]

Originally Posted by (the_logos @ Sep. 21 2004,16:34) Information wants to be free, as the saying goes.

It's the endless information struggle.  Information just can't make up its' own mind.  

Originally Posted by Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine---too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, 'intellectual property', the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better."

[sunflare2k5]

And then some games go to extreme lengths to make sure that questinfo isn't shared. For example, The Eternal Fantasy is set up as a mandatory-quest game; unless you can solve puzzles and defeat certain foes, you're stuck in the newbie areas.

Their rules state that any sharing of information will result in both the character who "dared" to ask, and the character who answered, being immediately nuked. Which is why I gave up on that game. I'm not stupid, but I was stuck on a quest. And since I knew there was no hope of any help, there was no way I could continue.

While I agree with your point to stop cheaters, going to extremes can make the players feel persecuted by the staff. And that will drive them away from your game.

[drakkos]

Bing!

I don't think it's ever going to be possible to stop 'cheaters'... if the information is valuable in any way, then there is an incentive to try and capitalise on that value, whether it be for tangible or intangible rewards.

The trick, I think, is to make the information valueless - the only way I can really think of to do that is to make the process into the part that rewards.

As I mentioned in the article, the act of decrypting a monoalphabetic substitution cipher is pretty standard - but knowing how to do it is the easy part. Actually doing it is the hard part, and the process of deciphering should be the factor that rewards the player.

My stance would be that our job as developers isn't to get rid of the cheaters, because that's all but impossible... instead, we should try and remove the incentives for cheating. In quests, removing the value of 'secret information' is a fairly effective weapon.

[drakkos]

Re: Molly.

Thanks - I'm glad you found it interesting. :-)

As far as actually finding these web-sites goes, it's a little bit of both. A quick google search will turn up a number of sites, which the Discworld Admin try to get rid of by virtue of negotiation with the relevant ISP.

But we do have some players who appreciate the spirit of the rules, and quite rightly resent people being able to get an easy reward by abusing quest lists and quest list sites - sites of any kind of real popularity are often reported by Civic Minded players.

[Molly]

sunflare2k5 wrote:

Originally Posted by unless you can solve puzzles and defeat certain foes, you're stuck in the newbie areas.

Personally I don't think qesting should be mandatory. In fact I don't think ANYTHING should be mandatory in a mud, with the possible exception of Roleplay, if that's your inclination with the game. The main object for a Mud is after all to be fun and entertaining. To be stuck in a room with a Quest that you cannot solve is not fun.

The players should always have as many free choices as possible in my opinion. They should be able to play the game in a style that they enjoy, and not being forced like sheep into certain cattlepens by overcontrolling Staff.  

If the main object in a mud is to gain levels and increase your power and strength - which is the case in most muds with an element of hack'n'slash involved  - there should be several different options how to advance in the game. Killing mobs is just one of these options, solving Quests is another. Other options could be farming, gardening, lumberjacking, trading  or crafting. Or simply exploring the world - even that can be coded to  advance the char.

As for the Quests, I would rather see a few cheaters getting away with it, than turning the mud into some semblance of a police state, with overzealous snooping and spying imms invading the player's privacy in an attempt  to catch the cheaters. In cases where the evidence isn't rock solid, I'd rather give the benefit of a doubt. (The only cases where I am totally relentless is with cheating imms. Any imm caught while using his imm powers to forward their mortal char will be booted from their position so fast that it would make your head spin).

In the matter of avoiding cheating and 'blabbing', I totally agree with Drakkos. The quests have to be designed in a way that discourages blabbing. There are many ways to do this, one of the best is to make sure that the quest varies as much as possible for all players, meaning that information from Player A is pretty worthless for Player B. This means extra work for the Creator, but the work is worth it, seeing as many players are what they are. It's totally frustrating for a Builder to see a Quest, which they put a lot of loving thought into, getting abused, so it's better to stop it at the source when possible.

Another method is to involve some pretty dangerous places to traverse and/or some hard mobs to kill in the Quest. This ensures that only high level players can finish the Quest, and discourages them from creating new chars to repeat it, if it's a one-time Quest.

One positive side-effect with extremely hard Quests is that it seems to put a lid on the blabbing. If a player spent weeks to figure out a tough puzzle, to get past a hard maze, to find some cunningly hidden portals or containers, or to get strong enough to kill the key mob, then they are far less likely to blabber about it. Why would they? They spent a lot of time and effort solving it themselves, so why would they let someone else get the same for free? There are a few quests in our Mud that are so hard that only a few players have been able to finish them over the years. To my knowledge none of those have blabbed sofar. Not even to their best friends.

Maybe there is some hope for mankind after all.

[Saren]

Nice article.

Originally Posted by If a player spent weeks to figure out a tough puzzle, to get past a hard maze, to find some cunningly hidden portals or containers, or to get strong enough to kill the key mob, then they are far less likely to blabber about it. Why would they?

I can imagine such a player only sharing the solution with their guild, for example. If the reward is significant enough, it could give a guild armed with such knowledge a pretty significant headstart.

Additionally, what's more important to a player - the ability to do a quest no-one else can, or to be the first to publish the solution and thus be credited as the first to solve it? I'd wager that to many players, the latter seems like the greater reward.