That is completely true. If a player can tell the difference, so can a script. If a player can't, then neither can a script. In either case, the script is minimally equal to the player.

--matt

I never said Clandestine was bad for a Diku MUD. I said it was yet another Diku MUD - meaning it has a Diku based combat system. Unless that is a false statement, I don't see how you could assume I was flame-baiting.

You cannot reduce a player's ability to script. You can place punishment on people you consider to be scripting, which is going to be completely arbitrary since you can never have concrete proof. You can discourage it, but you can't completely get rid of it.

In the end that's a wrong way to go about it - hunting your own players for a vulnerability you left in your system. If you don't want scripting to make a difference, design the combat system to not benefit from it particularly.

I'm curious if you, yourself, are an experienced PvPer, Matt?

As I've stated, that's what we do - our system does not encourage scripting. I was merely giving you a few of the many options you have when trying to reduce or weaken reliance on scripting for PvP. Scripting is not "illegal" on Clandestine, though it is discouraged and there are coded measures to dissuade its use. I have played MUDs, however, where scripting was illegal.

On many PvP-focused MUDs, people who use bots are generally flamed by the other players for being lazy or lame, anyways. It is a pretty widely-accepted idea that relying heavily on triggers and bots reduce the amount of the PK-Rush in combat which makes PvP more fun for most.

It is fundamentally impossible to tell except where the script lets you due to incomplete design.

Simple case to demonstrate:
I get hit by poison.
The cure for poison is eating a 'whatnot'.
I eat a 'whatnot' or my client trigger does it for me.

The MUD receives 100% identical information from the client regardless of whether I pushed a button myself or whether my client trigger outputted the command for me. You can look at delay times, etc etc, but those are all easy for a script to fake.

Getting a client to operate completely autonomously is, of course, pretty difficult and currently impossible if it involves any sort of free-form communication, but there is simply no way for a MUD to tell if someone is using scripting assistance (which is what I assume we're talking about here, given the current impossibility of fully scripting a believable character).

--matt

If you have a point, you'd be best served to just spell it out. Instead of baiting.

And your suggestions, while they would be well-received, are nothing new. They've been tried and they don't work.

Yes, I am. I also designed Achaea's PvP system, of which Dr. Bartle said, "Few virtual worlds with an immensely complicated combat system avoid being completely dominated by it -- Achaea is the best-known exception."


--matt

Well, this I certainly agree with, but players in general (not all players, to be sure), value winning more than the rush. Or rather, they get a bigger rush out of winning with scripts than they do not winning as often without scripts. One might view that as a shame (I kind of do), but human nature is what it is. I fought against scripts for years in Achaea, going so far as to try and hold combat tournaments where scripts were banned. It eventually struck me that it's just not possible to ban them and gave up at that point.

Scripts are extensively used on the IRE games and whether you or I might personally prefer people not to use them, there's not much question that lots of people love the IRE combat systems, scripts and all. To each his own eh?

--matt

My question to you wasn't whether or not you developed a PvP system, as most of us involved in this conversation have experience with that, obviously. I could respond to the name-dropping, it just isn't necessary.

My point was to say that your line of thinking is similar to many lesser experienced PvPers I run into, who are very logical and mathematical in their approach to player-killing.

My point was that if you are experienced in player-killing yourself(not design), then you would probably have experienced fighting PvPers who dominate via creativity and instinct. Without fail, I have never played a good PvP game where the best scripter or best mathematician dominated everyone else.

There's a reason for that, and that's my point. My push is that a system should encourage creativity, instinct, intuition, groupwork, leadership, suprise, etc - the system should push the biggest rush possible, and that by actually discouraging scripting, you offer your players more responsibility for their actions and therefor more danger and more rush.

I'm an experienced PvPer and I was the one to make the initial statement. I also stand by it, precisely because of my experience.

There are many possible ways to show your talent in a competitive game. Why you consider "reflexes" to be superior, I don't understand. And making scripting part of the fight in no way limits creativity.

Lots of players love Midievia's combat system and lots of players love combat in Aardwolf, and many other large MUDs. Part of the reason is the size of the playerbase itself and not necessarily the PvP system. Rarely in PvP/PK forums or conventions or development threads is IRE's combat system brought up as an influence for creating a good PvP MUD.

Obviously it works for the purposes of you making a lot of money, but that does not make it the best product out there, nor does it mean that MUD-PvP should encourage scripting (or a PvP system that encourages scripting) merely to appease the players as a whole, as opposed to those dedicated soley towards PvP.

I'm quite experienced in player-killing myself, but that's really beside the point. The fact is, scripting is simply faster than a human. If something is parsable, it is scriptable. Text that gets communicated in a known format is exceptionally parsable and thus exceptionally scriptable. If reaction times are an issue (and you stated that you believe that PvP comes down to reaction times), humans lose even worse than in chess.

--matt

There are many possible ways to show your talent and reflexes is merely one of those. And scripting limits a lot of things, most importantly, it reduces the amount of responsibility you take for PvP, therefor limiting the rush and the notion of danger. This is a topic that gets brought up in PK threads and conventions again and again and again, and the same thing is concluded.

Do you have data on this? Or is this completely anecdotal?

So a system which makes the players happy.. isn't a good one?

Oh? Darn, I guess I didn't realize people didn't like our PvP combat system.

--matt

It most certainly has no effect on your responsibility when it comes to PvP. The actions of your script are the actions of your self.

Well! That sure puts me in my place doesn't it! Some people on some random PvP forum somewhere aren't talking about our PvP system but the creator of MUDs is in his published book on MUDs. Consider me suitably chastised. Next time I'm speaking at a games conference, I'll be sure to look for you in the audience.

--matt

A client-script will always react and act in the same way, whereas a human will not. I react and PK indistinguishably as fast as a script, so it is possible to improve your reaction time to the point where you should not need scripts. However, the predictability of a script allows for me to decipher how an opponent's script works, walk them into traps, plan against them, and do some pretty funny things to them in general.

After now 14 years of PvP (I started at age of eight, mercilessly killing other people instead of the monster in Hunt the Wumpus until nobody would enter "The Cave", then moved to the then-free Gemstone games), I cannot even begin to count the number of times and ways that I have seen scripts get people killed. There's a reason for that.

Beyond just the feasability of a heavy-scripter PKer against a flexible, strategic, creative, fast-acting PvPer; this goes back to the center of the current discussion which is that it is possible, at the designing table, to focus your PvP system on the things that give the players the most rush, and to discourage elements that take away from that (including reliance on scripting).

Some elements are certainly heavily influenced, much like Avalon borrowed heavily from previous games.