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Old 02-16-2005, 07:20 PM   #21
the_logos
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Chuckle. *pat pat*

Yes, clearly, MUDs like Achaea, Puzzle Pirates, Habbo Hotel, Second Life, Ultima Online, Project Entropia, and so on are "on the fringes" when compared to mainstream titans like 4 Dimensions or other random DIKUs with few players.

There seems to be a lack of understanding on copyright on your end. Information is not copyrightable. Ideas are not copyrightable. Specific expressions of those ideas are. A site that verbatim takes a bunch of paragraphs from your game may be infringing. A site just giving solutions to quests is not.

You also might want to clean up the infringing IP from your own game before you go attacking others for allegedly infringing.

--matt
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Old 02-17-2005, 03:19 AM   #22
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the_logos:
Heh, touchy, touchy...

FYI, I wasn't  referring to the Achaea custom of selling perks for money, (which seems to be pretty mainstream nowadays), but to the phenomenon of players trading virtual swords and equipment and even characters for large sums on the internet. One of the backsides of commercial games.

But of course, you need no excuse to insult my game. That's the second time in a week now. Last time the List admin removed your posts.  It will be interesting to see if they will do the same this time.
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Old 02-17-2005, 04:48 AM   #23
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Fair enough, and if that's the way you really meant it, then I apologize for taking offence. We're actually in agreement there too. I have a huge problem with that, but not because of anything to do with its effect on the game (the game has no rights). My problem is that people -explicitly- agree to Terms of Service EULAs that prohibit them from buying or selling in-game stuff for money and they do it anyway, using a justification that boils down to, "Well, I want it."

Incidentally though, I don't see how it being mainstream or not really affects the morality of it. For me, and I'd assume for basically everyone, morality isn't a popularity contest.



They removed your post too, Molly. And I didn't insult your game. I just pointed out that there's nothing original about centaurs, fauns, and caucasian humans. That's self-evident. Had any other game claimed to have all original races aside from dwarves and elves, I'd have claimed 'BS' just the same if they had centaurs, fauns, or caucasian humans.



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Old 02-17-2005, 07:41 AM   #24
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the_logos wrote (Feb. 16 2005,14:11)


Isn’t it a bit strange that the owner of a large commercial Mud, who is claiming himself to be widely respected professionally, is publicly promoting a cheat site against another commercial game? Even to the extent of publishing the URL for it? Hardly what I’d call professional courtesy, but then again, professional courtesy doesn’t seem to be any of his more outstanding properties.

On the other hand it comes as no surprise that the_logos would approve of cheat sites. I remember a thread some time ago, when he informed the world about how he once bought a heavily cheated sword from a crooked mudowner for (I believe) 1000 $. It surprised me at the time that someone would openly brag about such a dishonourable exploit, but it does tell you something about the moral standards of this guy.

What I found particularly offensive about that post of his however was the fact that he insulted just about every mudowner on the board by claiming that they would have done the same if given the chance (i.e. sell a cheated weapon to a player for a similar sum). Talk about judging the world from your own standards…
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Old 02-17-2005, 01:29 PM   #25
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Sarapis is an incorrigible bastard. He stole my candy, then he sold it on eBay.

He is NOT TO BE TRUSTED. Keep fighting the good fight, Sinuhe. You, the Chinese government and Molly O'Hanrahahanrahan make an UNSTOPPABLE FIGHTING FORCE.

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Old 02-17-2005, 03:14 PM   #26
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Heh, your mindset is amusing. Imagine considering a great player resource like Thottbot an attack rather than an asset to your game community. Talk about missing the forest for the trees. I'd kill to have people as competent as the Cosmos/Thottbot guys doing that for one of my worlds.

In the real world, where most developer's vision isn't as obscured as yours is, sites like Thottbot are encouraged as legitimate player resources. It's generally only ego-driven admins who want to 'beat the players' or show the players how much smarter they are than them who get ****y when someone doesn't find things out JUST as the developer intended.

And hey, guess what? Blizzard is run by great, professional developers. That's probably why, if you had actually bothered to do any research (*gasp*, imagine doing that! ), you'd discover that Blizzard has an entire forum section on their official forums devoted to custom UIs like Cosmos, which feeds Thottbot its information. They've even made a thread about which UIs are available sticky so that the thread stays at the top. Note that the first post following the Blizzard rep's thread-starting post is about Cosmos.

So are you even more outraged now? How dare I post a link about Cosmos/Thottbot from WoW's official forums! My god, I'm like the devil!

Oh, by the way, you might also want to check out Allakhazam's site, which also has lots of quest walk-throughs:

(yep, look at me, I did it again! I posted another web link to a well-known WoW resource! By the way, you can also use this cool little site you've probably never heard of called 'Google' () to find all sorts of information. )


--matt
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Old 02-17-2005, 05:23 PM   #27
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the_logos; Feb. 17 2005,04:48
Oh, I see – referring to someone’s mud as ‘mainstream titans like 4 Dimensions or other random DIKUs with few players’ is not insulting these days? My mistake, you could have fooled me.

And, just for the record:

1. 4D is anything but ‘mainstream Diku’, it’s one of the most developed free muds on the net, as anyone who has played it can verify. You obviously have no clue about what the game is like, so why the cheap stab?

2. Anyone judging the quality of a Mud by the number of players must be either extremely biased or rather stupid.

3. And if I cannot take part in an open debate on a discussion Forum, without some jerk taking a stab at my game instead of sticking to valid arguments, then these boards are going sadly down the drain.
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Old 02-17-2005, 05:56 PM   #28
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Shrug, it is what it is. You have few players. People can read into that whatever they want.


Haha...hahahah....hahahah. That's too funny. My god, that's like a textbook example of pot calling the kettle black.

--matt
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Old 02-17-2005, 06:00 PM   #29
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Old 02-17-2005, 07:08 PM   #30
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You're so wrong. It's Achaea. Imperian is the suck.
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Old 02-17-2005, 08:11 PM   #31
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Achaea sucks ass. It doesn't even have GRAPHICS, for God's sake.

Come back when you have normal mapping figured out, Sara****.
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Old 02-18-2005, 12:26 AM   #32
 
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That's good because I just hate when people agree with me, because that means I have to do the heavy lifting on finding something interesting that we don't agree on. :-)

Ditto on 1. and 2. But there is a lot to 2. that is just simply out of your hands and into the realm of unenforceable like you say. Along the lines of questy stuff, we had players who would exchange maps areas in e-mail. Builders didn't like it much, but the alternative of monitoring player communications to look for secret deals like "hey give me your email and I'll send you my map" was well dumb... also unconscionable.

Well yeah and it's just as obvious to their fellow players who the bad seeds are. Of course in most games like I've suggested here and elsewhere, the players are powerless to do anything about it. So you must judge. Well get out of the judging business. The last thing I personally want to do is to login to my mud and take a look at at the docket of player complaints, play dad, and decide which child is the problem. And as you might be also be aware even a clear cut case with the well-known problem child on the victim side, is usually the result of retaliation by the frustrated but normally good player. You don't have to judge if players have the power to each individually make a decision to exile those they don't like from their space. Peer pressure is a much more powerful force for change than that coming from authority figures.

Well I disagree with you on 5. In the US at least information is not protected under copyright. And whether currency is exchanged for information, or equipment in the mud between players isn't none of my business either. Whether it's real or virtual currency. Why draw the line at exchanging real currency, and not exchange of real services or for something more ephemeral like friendship? Same thing. Hey I can always get great deals when I mud with my wife. I can exchange an uber-sword-of-major-orc-killing for a kiss, and if I really haggle I can even get a better deal outside of the game. Of course she usually wants hard cash for anything she finds. *sigh*

Regarding 4. Get rid of snoop, logging and wizinvis. Really respect their privacy. Why should players have to move their chat outside the game when there's perfectly good chat system in the game? Well it would be after one scrubs the flaws out of it (staff peeking).

My solution to 6 is simply to reverse the progression and provide an advancement track for staff. The advancement track gives higher level staff members less and less powers over the players. Advancement is based solely on contribution, and non-exercise of power. They advance from level 1 (or whatever it is in game terms for a newbie player) to level 0 to level -1 and on to ever decreasing levels of power. Until they are completely invisible and without power over the virtual world. One might ask, well if they can't manipulate anything in the virtual world the players are living in then how do they do anything at all? They do what the do in the meta world of the mud. Creating and coding meta things which are unrealized in the player world and until such time as they (or subset of them), via consensus, collective push a button to make them realized. Yeah it's a zen thing. Sadly many would have to redesign their games to do this.
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Old 02-18-2005, 01:30 AM   #33
 
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Hey look at the players on this mud forum game. They have to appeal to a moderator to crush each others communications. Now I can't see the post. What about my right to read it, judge for myself and more than likely be highly entertained by it? I protest!! I complain loudly and vociferously in colorful turgid prose that this doth suck! Repression! Tyranny!

P.S. Moderator: Could you remove all the exchanges on this thread between Molly and TheLogos. They are frightening my inner child.
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Old 02-18-2005, 03:57 AM   #34
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the_logos Feb. 17 2005,17:56
I am glad it amuses you.
There is one small difference however.
I attack your arguments.
You attack my mud.
You do a similar thing with KaVir, whenever you run out of arguments.
It's bad debate technique, to say the least.
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Old 02-18-2005, 04:04 AM   #35
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Again, you have to be kidding me. You are the one who -constantly- attacks me rather than my ideas. What's your response to pointing out that coders are valued more highly than builders, for instance, based on what they get paid? Insults and accusations. And let's not forget the time you implied we harbor paedophiles.

Further, what are you talking about, exactly? On the thread in which our posts were deleted, I was attacking what you said, not you. You claimed that your races were original aside from dwarves and elves. This isn't so, and I pointed it out.

Stop playing the victim. It's laughable.

--matt
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Old 02-18-2005, 05:18 AM   #36
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Cool

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Old 02-18-2005, 11:12 AM   #37
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Tyche; Feb. 18 2005,00:26
That’s fine by me, I enjoy a good discussion too. Many of your suggestions are really interesting too.
However, some things that look very easy theoretically are a lot harder to apply in praxis. I believe you are not actively running a mud ATM - (no offence intended, just an observation) – so maybe you forgot a bit about the every day problems that running a Mud entails. (Just like old time players tend to forget how it felt to be a newbie).

Take for instance your idea of removing snoop and wizinvis completely. It’s true that both commands can be abused extensively for intruding on player privacy. But both are also very useful as tools for the staff.

Most imms for instance go wizinvis while they are working on a project, because they don’t want to be disturbed by player questions, while on the other hand they don’t want to appear rude by ignoring them. As for snoop, I use it myself pretty regularly, for instance in the following situations;
1. When a player claims that his char, or some command or quest, is bugged, to find out what is causing the problem, by asking them to repeat the action while I watch. (Usually it turns out to be caused by a bad alias or bad settings in the mud client, but that’s another story).
2. Guiding a new Builder through the first steps of OLC, since that makes it possible to give them immediate input at each stage, which they otherwise cannot receive while they are in the editor.
3. Following a new player through some part of mudschool, to check if the instructions there work as intended.
4. Monitoring when a new zone is testplayed, because some weaknesses only are revealed when the zone is played by someone else than the creator. (You tend to get ‘home blind’ to your own errors, that’s only human).

Actually the easiest way to really address the privacy problem, would be to send a message to the victim each time a snoop command is toggled. We’ve chosen to restrict is to imp level instead. After all, if you cannot trust the imps to be mature about the game they run, who can you trust?

I assume that by this you mean an extended ‘ignore command’ or ‘filter’, which allows one player to block out not only private tells, but all communication channels and actions like emote, socials, title etc. from another player?

It would be quite possible to code, the command ‘coventry’ that we have works pretty much that way, although it is an imm command, and isn’t restricted to single player communications, it blocks out all output from the player affected by it. I can see how an extended ignore command or ‘filter’ might be of use for very sensitive players, who for instance would like to block out bad language or twinkish rants. But it also has its definite drawbacks, since problem players would take advantage of it.
Picture the following scenario:

Player A dislikes player B and takes every chance of back-talking him, accusing him of several vile actions, which incidentally all are blatant lies. Since Player B thinks Player A is a jerk, he has long ago ‘filtered’ him out, so he is totally unaware of the rumours that are spreading right under his very nose - and rumours spread incredibly fast in a mud. Since he doesn’t contest anything that player A says, even when he is present in the same room, the other players naturally assume that the allegations are all true. Player B might only become aware of the situation when other players start treating him with growing resentment, unless one of his true friends informs him of what is going on. By then it may already be too late. A lie, repeated often enough and not contested, becomes the truth to many people. And Player B, a decent guy, is now the pariah of the mud, while the real jerk, Player A thrives.

As much as I dislike playing nanny and listening to the daily grieves, complaints, tattling and plain whining – (and I admit that I DO dislike tattling and whining intensely) - someone has to do it, or things would soon get out of hand. I still believe that active imms or ‘Game-masters’ are necessary in any game.

I know your pet peeve is that all bugs are the fault of the Admin, because ‘they suck’, but regardless of how hard we try, bugs will still appear, especially in a developing Mud. We may call ourselves ‘immortals’ but we’re still human. New features may have flaws that aren’t fully worked out and need to be tested in active gameplay. People will get stuck in no-exit rooms that they weren’t supposed to have teleported into in the first place, and need help to get out. Scripts sometimes screw up due to some unforeseen change in the main code. Blatant harassment or just globally annoying twinkishness has to be dealt with. All this usually on a daily basis.

And even the players who whine the most about ‘interfering imms’ usually are the first to come screaming for help, when they run into some problem themselves. A fact is that most players like to see at least one active imm on line. It makes them feel safe. And they also like being able to actually talk to the imms and to get a personal response to their ideas or needs. Why else would ‘Active imms that care’ be such a common point when people list what they expect from a 'good Mud'?
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Old 02-18-2005, 02:28 PM   #38
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Isn't that the truth. The biggest debates in Achaea over imm involvement tend to be over the manual enforcement in our (fairly complicated) PK rules. Funnily though, the same ones who always bitch that they'll get punished for killing someone for <this> or <that> were recently VERY loud in complaining that the admins needed to do something about a certain practice called "rezz-killing" (where someone is rezzed and immediately killed again) that was only affecting two groups of players who are considered open PK at all times (but with whom others can contract for assassination work). They were begging the admin to step in to save them.

What drives me a little batty is that the same players will say both that they want less admin interference and want the admins to recognize more "RP" reasons for PKing, something which would require more admin interference and more subjective judgements (of what is and isn't "good RP") on the parts of the admins....which, of course, is something they also bitch about.

A lot of them don't really know what they want, I believe, or rather, they know they want fun, but they don't really know (or haven't thought very hard about) how the opportunity for fun can be given to them.

--matt
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Old 02-18-2005, 02:29 PM   #39
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God you're an idiot, Daedalus. I'm going to throw you down a well.

--matt
P.S. If you think we don't have graphics, you've obviously never seen the big square we have on our login screen. A SQUARE, man. Doesn't get any more impressive than that.
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Old 02-18-2005, 09:00 PM   #40
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