[Aarn]

To quote the_logos

Originally Posted by A player just has to buy something from another player for optional payments to have an impact on gameplay. There's nothing you, as the mud admin, can really do to stop that as long as anything of value is transferrable between characters.

The second sentance of your statement there is, quite frankly, completely and utterly false. I can only assume you don't have much practice catching cheaters on your MUDs. I only rank in the middle of the CF-Immortal-Totem-Pole, and I have several tools that would allow me to catch this, most times easily. And the imms ranked higher then me have quite a few more.

These are a big part of the reasons we can say with confidence that money doesn't have an affect on gameplay in CF.

[the_logos]

We don't all run the same kind of game. However, optional payments can affect gameplay in Carrion Fields, and you DID change your reasoning behind that only upon it being pointed out that they can.

--matt

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by (Aarn @ Feb. 15 2006,16:43) But please, prove me wrong.  Post the list of checkboxes YOU think MUDs should use when listing on TMS, if the existing proposal isn't good enough for you.

Originally Posted by Personally, I would be fine with adding a checkbox for "Game is run by paid professional staff." and "Game is run by volunteer staff." Would that make you happy enough to deal with detailed checkboxes on whether people pay to play your game or not?

No, and in fact, I'd be quite opposed to those, even though it probably makes my games look better. I think that sort of thing is unfairly stigmatizing due to preconceived notions that potential players will have about their meaning.

Originally Posted by I don't think it would. If you really were cool with "full disclosure" on the listings, you would have just proposed the other check boxes you wanted to see to go along with the "pay to play" stuff. Instead you're just grasping at whatever you can to keep from having to properly label yourself.

I am cool with full disclosure, but I'm also not the one on a crusade here. A list of checkboxes is going to require a lot of thinking to cover all the relevant intricacies. If Synozeer wanted this and wanted help, I'd help him. I'm certainly not interested in helping people who are expressly on a crusade "against" me though, lame though that crusade be.

--matt

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by (Aarn @ Feb. 15 2006,16:51) The second sentance of your statement there is, quite frankly, completely and utterly false.  I can only assume you don't have much practice catching cheaters on your MUDs.  I only rank in the middle of the CF-Immortal-Totem-Pole, and I have several tools that would allow me to catch this, most times easily.  And the imms ranked higher then me have quite a few more. These are a big part of the reasons we can say with confidence that money doesn't have an affect on gameplay in CF.

Actually, no, you can't, and the reasons why are well-understood in the developer community. There has been one design that's been proposed by Randy Farmer (who did the Lucasarts Habitat virtual world back in the late 80s) that makes Ebaying/selling items for money very difficult, but it's not been implemented as it doesn't appear to make for a very fun game.

I can prove money can have an affect on gameplay in Carrion Fields, but it takes some effort on my part. I'm willing to do it if you're willing to sign a contract obligating you to pay my costs after I succeed. Here is what I'd do:

1. Either post here or use our adspace here or on Mudconnector to advertise that I'm looking for Carrion Players, and will pay someone $100 for some item of trivial value. If that gets no responses, I'll just increase the amount. I don't know what game currency you guys use, but I'd think that there are a lot of kids who would happily sell me 1 of the smallest denomination of currency for $100.

2. Sign a contract with the person obligating me to pay them and them to give me the item.

3. Screenshot the transfer of the item specified in the contract.

I mean, trivially, all I have to do is have a friend create a character in CF, pay him $20, and have him give me a gold piece. There, gameplay has been affected, and all you guys know is that a gold piece (or whatever) changed hands, since it looks absolutely no different from any other transfer.

Btw, if you're interested, here's Randy's article: http://www.fudco.com/habitat/archives/000023.html

And the resulting Terranova discussion: http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nov..._virtual_.html

You might also check out http://www.gsauctions.com/ which is auctions for stuff on another text MUD (Gemstone).

--matt

[Valg]

Originally Posted by (the_logos @ Feb. 15 2006,16:51) We don't all run the same kind of game. However, optional payments can affect gameplay in Carrion Fields

Carrion Fields, LLC hasn't pocketed a penny like this. Sorry. If you insist on the hypothetical bribery angle (not that I'd consider those "fees", but whatever), we can add text at some point that we're discussing payments to the ownership/company.

I'll second Disciple's thought: If "optional fees impact gameplay" is conceptually too complicated for you, even though everyone else seems to get it, and you agree we run very different kinds of games (as you just stated), feel free to suggest a checkbox that differentiates between the two.

I've deliberately posed language that is as neutral as I could think of. I'm not asking for a checkbox that says "WvW (*), or PvP?" That would be too pointed.

We use very different business models. How would you describe that difference?

(*): The "Wallet vs. Wallet" gameplay model, where two players square off in a competition of who bought the most credits. Exciting!

[Traveler]

I suspect Matt could really give a damn about the business model of Carrion Fields. His entire line of discussion and list of links/sites is probably just an attempt to divert the conversation.

The point remains that TMS bills itself as a 'One Stop Mud Resource'. Individual MUDs harbor no responsibility to provide information of any kind on their home pages. Their listings on TMS however should provide as much information as possible because it would be beneficial to players and conform to the way in which TMS labels itself.

[Aarn]

Really, your response stands to reason, based on what I said earlier. You aren't interested in full disclosure of any sort. You could just say that and be clear with us all, rather then beating around the bush.

Also, thank you for offering to come cheat on our MUD. I think I can speak for the entire staff when I say "No thanks." I trust as a professional MUD developer you would find that, well, unprofessional.

[Sacac]

The only thing I can really say as to the "optional payments affect gameplay," is that, it could "theoretically" happen in any game on the list. Now, if it applies to all of them, it doesn't really matter enough to even bother with in my opinion.

And it could "theoretically" happen in any mud, however hard it may actually be is up to the individual game.

Let's take Armageddon, I "could" tell them I will donate $20,000 if they will improve the crim code and fix the brew code.

Would they turn it down? Maybe. Would it effect gameplay if they do accept 20k in exchange of code revamp? Uh.. Yea.

Sooooo. If it applies to everything, it doesn't matter.

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by (Aarn @ Feb. 15 2006,17:43) Also, thank you for offering to come cheat on our MUD.  I think I can speak for the entire staff when I say "No thanks."  I trust as a professional MUD developer you would find that, well, unprofessional.

At least you recognize it CAN happen, and that's kind of the point, isn't it?

--matt

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by We use very different business models. How would you describe that difference?

I don't see them as being fundamentally different, just different in scale. You sell things that can affect gameplay, so do we. In both cases, money can directly affect gameplay, though certainly in our case it affects it more than in yours.

Frankly, this really shows your real motivations, which don't involve disclosure, but promoting your MUD instead. The important thing to you here isn't disclosure, but finding a way to separate your MUD from our MUDs in any way you can.

--matt

[Valg]

Originally Posted by (the_logos @ Feb. 15 2006,18:33) I don't see them as being fundamentally different, just different in scale. You sell things that can affect gameplay, so do we. In both cases, money can directly affect gameplay, though certainly in our case it affects it more than in yours. Frankly, this really shows your real motivations, which don't involve disclosure, but promoting your MUD instead. The important thing to you here isn't disclosure, but finding a way to separate your MUD from our MUDs in any way you can.

Sorry, but we don't sell influence. Neither does the American Cancer Society, even though you could theoretically bribe officials. I have access to our bank records, and nothing in there is in exchange for anything related to gameplay. We'd pass any audit of our finances.

We're not interested in separating our game from yours in any way we can. We're interested in honestly disclosing an important and crucial difference. Why are you so interested in concealing it?

You've previously stated that we run fundamentally different models. I'm sorry to see that you're backtracking to continue your charade, but I'm not surprised. Good luck getting anyone to buy it.

[Davairus]

These new check boxes sound ok to me. The more useful advanced search filters are, the easier the experience for the players using them, and the happier they'll be with their results.

Being able to search for "free" is a no-brainer for a search field .... "purchaseable perks" or something to describe the achaea option also seems reasonable to me. I have a good feeling that there's people who'd want to search that, and I'm sure it isn't undesirable to list it clearly on TMS, if its already listed clearly on the game's website. Seems like just a matter of getting the wording right.

Other suggestions I've longed for, for several years:
* search results default as random picks (limits alphabetical advantage on mud lists, which is lame in my opinion)
* searches may be ordered by most popular voted
* searches may be ordered alphabetically if you want.

[Valg]

Earlier today, at a Red Cross office:

Matt: Hi.  I understand the Red Cross hates Japanese-Americans.
Employee: I have no idea what you're talking about.  Federal law prohibits such a thing, it's incompatible with our mission, and there are countless examples showing that we treat Japanese-Americans like we treat all Americans.  Could you explain?
Matt: Well, I bribed one of your employees to say something negative about them out loud.  It's right here on this tape.
Employee: Well, that would be against our rules, and that employee would be fired if they did say that while on the job.  It certainly wouldn't reflect on the Red Cross.  May I see the tape?
Matt: Sure.  (*Hands it over.*)
Employee: Sir, this is a cassette of Weird Al Yankovic's "In 3-D" album, with "I heart A.Y." scrawled in crayon on one side, and "Red Cross Evidence" scrawled on the other.  I just played a piece, and it's just polka medleys.
Matt: Well, I don't have an actual proof it happened.  But it theoretically could happen, and I could theoretically bribe an employee to say that on behalf of the organization, and that's what's important.  It's how I came to the conclusion that the Red Cross is a commercial enterprise that hates Japanese-Americans.
Employee: Might I interest you in one of our mental health brochures?

[malaclypse]

Originally Posted by (Valg @ Feb. 15 2006,12:41) I'll look you straight in the face and tell you that players with a carrionfields.com address don't have any more respect or influence within the game. This is because characters don't have email accounts associated with them. We don't use a registration process, and we don't collect personal information. In short, the staff can't even tell if a character has one of our email addresses.

I'm amazed you're trying to say this information doesn't get out. What do your players do with those email addresses? Do they not send mail to each other, about the game? I think this is a pretty safe assumption. Of course, its only an assumption.

The point I was trying to get at is that your proposal is ambiguous. Obviously, if I can use it to link your game and IRE games into the same group without any great leap of logic, the terms are not very clear. And really, Valg, its not illogical to suppose a carrionfields.com email address isn't going to give someone at least a certain air of authority while playing carrion fields.

- Ryan

[Aarn]

To quote malaclypse:

Originally Posted by I'm amazed you're trying to say this information doesn't get out. What do your players do with those email addresses? Do they not send mail to each other, about the game? I think this is a pretty safe assumption. Of course, its only an assumption.

If you're used to the non-mandatory roleplay model, I can see where maybe this would be hard to believe. Personally, the character Aarn has been around for more then a year. I've had email contact with perhaps six mortal players in that whole time. Four that I can think of were people emailing me after their character was gone to ask about something directly, or to get clarification on something that happened to them in the game. The other two were anonymous emails from non-CF addresses from people who wanted help finding roughly what times I was playing at because they were having lots of trouble reaching me in the game.

There are several factors that go into making @cf email addresses irrelevant when dealing with the players:

1. Like Valg said, there isn't any way for the immortals to connect a given character to an @cf email address. Of course some of the higher-ranked immortals can check the IP addresses of characters, but again, the IP addresses are not connected to the email addresses, so it's irrelevant.

2. If you're talking about who your current character is in an out-of-game setting, and the information gets back to the immortals that you're advertising it, there will be consequences. At the least everyone will frown on you for mixing your character with your out-of-game persona while the character is still active. At worst, you'll be denied for breaking the rules.

3. There is no OOC talk allowed on CF (newbie channel aside, and that is closely monitered). I think this one is key to understanding what we're saying. If your character is running around talking about email addresses or telling people who the player is, or any number of OOC things, you're eventually going to be caught. Our players are used to - indeed they demand - this level of IC-control, and the few times it does happen it is often reported to us by the other mortals who hear it long before we catch it ourselves.

Like all players, ours communicate through official forums, un-official forums, chat rooms, instant-messaging, and whatever else you can think of. Of course some of them know who others are playing, we're not naive. But if it comes out in the game, like I said, there are consequences. We put a lot of effort into keeping track of these things. In part it's just the way the culture of CF works. Our players WANT things to be in-character, all the time, and that's the way we enforce it.

If you played CF for any decent length of time, you would completely understand how someones email address could have zero affect in the game. If it still seems unclear or doubtful, let me know what part you're hung up on, and I'll see if I can explain it better.

[Baram]

While the theme of this thread seems to be, yet again, attack IRE and the Pay-for-perks model they use, I'm not going to jump on either side. I just have a simple question:

How many of you, that speak so strongly about how much money does or does not effect the game play, have actually played those games for any extended period of time? How many of you have taken the time to see(in the case of IRE games) how hard it really is to get those credits without money? I have a strange feeling, none.

If you haven't played the games, you can't claim to know how much these things effect game play. Therefore how can you claim to be speaking with players in mind, when you don't know how they feel? The only person in here that has said they are a player, didn't have a problem with the way things are... What are your real motives?

[Valg]

Originally Posted by (Baram @ Feb. 16 2006,02:09) While the theme of this thread seems to be, yet again, attack IRE and the Pay-for-perks model they use, I'm not going to jump on either side...

Baram, you're a customer of Matt's, licensing the Rapture engine from IRE. (As is Malaclypse, your business partner.)What's your motive for leaping to their defense trying to frame everything as "an attack on IRE"? Or are you motive-free?

How is asking TMS to accurately label games by their business model an attack on anyone? I'd prefer accurate labeling because I'd like browsing players to know we're completely free, unlike a lot of other games. I've stated this multiple times, so you can stop asking now.