Dealing with players
 

I'm curious to ask MUD admins and other staff members on MUD's how they've dealt with problem players in the past, and what they think is the best way to deal with them. Also, I want to ask if you have a complaints system on your MUD, and are players encouraged to give their opinions on your game or not? If so, does this tend to be helpful or detrimental?

Re: Dealing with players
 

There have been a loot of very good threads on this topic here and in the mud connector forums; I'd recommend you look for those in the archives as well as any comments you may get here.

I personally take opinions and ideas, but most of the time I blackhole them because they're either duplicate, irrelevant, a bad idea, or not worth the time implementing. Things usually get mudmailed directly to me, but sometimes things also appear on the public 'god interface board' for general discussion.

I recommend you have a typo command that logs the typo in the room the character is in, and also an 'idea' command that logs ideas to a file for later examination. Both of these serve to eliminate a lot of direct comments.

For spammers and newbie annoyance characters, you'll want siteban ability and comprehensive communication send suppression to limit the damage before an admin can be notified. There are a number of other tools that can help with this.
For persistent illegal pk and "you should have known better" bug abuse, I strongly recommend a timered freeze system. For pk, my motto is to freeze early, freeze often, but don't permanently freeze. Making sure the character thaws in a reasonable amount of time encourages problem players to focus on that character and invest more heavily, because even if they pk someone they'll get the character back eventually. A heavily invested player is less likely to do anything dumb. In short, lower the penalty duration, decrease the crime.

For people who are are hatemongers or sex motivated, warn or ban.

For bug finding and abuse, I only punish for blatant repeated abuse of a non-reported bug. If as a player, you 1) find the bug, 2) use the bug a few times to verify it, and 3) personally tell the me and make sure I about it, then you're basically golden and will get brownie points from me. However, it -is- allowed to continue to use the bug after #3, as long as the bug is considered trivial or not worth fixing. Many players do this safely, or to ensure that I fix something they know is a problem.

What's not ok is to do things like buy a billion gold coins because of a compound interest bug at a shopkeeper. For things of that ilk, I usually repossess all material goods plus a hefty percentage penalty, or freeze. If it's persistent and too much work to deal with, I'll siteban, but that's extremely rare.

The biggest issue I've run into recently is dealing with people who are just generally jerks, and the drama queens that feed them.

-dentin

Alter Aeon MUD

Re: Dealing with players
 

Hello Orion. You have good questions that all Admins deal with. Here are quick simple answers from New Worlds Ateraan.
The best way I've found is to only have mature players. NWA is a roleplay intense game and so we only allow mature players (18+). Thise method has weeded out 90% of twinks.


Yes, we have one of the best that is automatic plus a compliment of staff and assistant staff members to personally work with players.

Yes.

Always helpful.

Re: Dealing with players
 

I am starting to find the old Ban the player method to not work, w/ the new flash clients basically proxying them to connect, and the fact I've had players switch ISPs to avoid bans. (the the is TOR etc....) I have taken characters from player for breaking the rules, and resetting skills etc. I've also got commands to disable communication for said players too.

Re: Dealing with players
 

We have a set of rules that if players (or staff) break they start getting punished. This starts with warnings, and ends with permanent bans. This tends to solve the worst violators.

I find that for particularly troublesome, but well intentioned players, a one on one chat in a professional manner can do wonders. Get them "on" your side and doing something useful

We do have a complaint system. We currently have both gmail domain email (i.e. ) and Bugzilla that we use for issue tickets. We have a senior staff that complaints can be sent to as well.

As for opinions, I personally encourage our players to give any constructive critique. I find it quite helpful in figuring out what I can do to improve the game. I've even been known to have a poll about a new feature or concept if player opinion is definitely needed.

The "Top Three Twinks" articles in the Mud Articles section () have been a resource for me as far as trouble players.

Best,
HAL
AtonementRPI