[koteko]

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I'd love to put some serious AI into my MUD. My studies are about bio-inspired artificial intelligence which could be funnily applicable in an open-ended MUD like I would like to implement. On the other hand, I'm doubtful on how much this would add to the game experience of the players who want to have fun, not to live in a world simulations, most of the time.

I'll go with one example. One of the few active MUDs in Italy is, actually, a sort of big medieval/low-fantasy life simulations with well written background and tons of complex quests but, also, a quite realistic "life" (combat included) mechanics (just to say that doing the doctor is a very challenging (and remunerative) profession). No, you don't need to pee nor do mobs, but you need to drink and eat properly to not become obese and you need to provide food for your horses and dogs, if you managed to domesticate one, when you close them in a room. Otherwise they will die.

One of the things that I love there is about the popping of mobs. Let's imagine that a certain, just-invented forest, called The Forest of Wolves, is full of very dangerous wolves. The people that go there very rarely come back alive.

At a certain point, the boss of the Hunters Guild decides to go with all of his hunters, make tents and with traps and many, many days of killing, wants to eradicate the wolves for good. The mobs do not exist as fixed entities but "pop" as in normal MUDs, just that they pop according to a certain probability.

Continued, consistent killing of a particular type of mob can reduce its probability to pop, eventually simulating an extinction (probability 0). This can also happen by consuming natural resources, like gold mines or flowers for potions or particular trees.

Now, that's a very smart system that allows the players to shape the world according to their own actions (a zone that is never "conquered" continuously may see the increasing probabilities of very dangerous mobs, thus making it an even less safe place).

What I would like to do instead is something even more "crazy", and in a certain sense even simpler: give the different kind of Mobs a (somewhat) complex AI and a simplified genetic system and let them organize freely, to see how the mobs end up shaping themselves upon the "pressures" of the players.

Now what I'm really asking myself is: is this really needed? Would any player find pleasure in this? In the italian MUD I was talking about, nobody seemed to care about that (the "probability" one) amazing feature. Much like the Half-life example silvarilon wrote about.

I think, to go back to the OP question, that many MUD owners just don't care; many, also, end up answering to the question I'm asking myself with "No, it is not really needed" and they discard that complex system. Some, eventually, decide to try. Let's see if I'll be one of them ^^