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ID: nightfall:750445954
Groups: players
Author: Zarius [8/8]				12-Oct-1993 18:12:34

 -- What I really miss in NF, player competition.. --
What I really miss in NF, player competition..
(the opinions expressed in this note is my private opinions. I do not say
to rag down on NF, mererly explaining what I really miss in NF..)

Ok, now I've spent some hours on this MUD and build up a character.
Previously I've been playing at IGORMud in Sweden. There is one
element I really miss in NF-mud, player agains player or guild agains
guild competition. This is not necessarly player killing! Solving
quests and killing mud monsters is ok, but what I really enjoy in muds
is competition (well, actually in RL as well, but that is another matter).
In the text below I'll tell about how things worked at IGORMud, I do not
mean this as an advertisement for IGORMud, although it had a player
theme that I really loved..

In IGORmud there were a special guild for vampires. You had to be a
certain level to join in, when you did you got special powers and could
feed on other monsters (instead of food and drinks). You got special
fighting abilites as well. Because of this the vamps got very powerful,
so the wiz'es created a demon hunter which sold kits two people who
wanted to track vampires down and stake them (stake is not a player
killing thing, more like loosing some XP). On the other hand vamps
could suck blood from the players which had this kit. Note that neither
sucking or staking had anything to do with player killing, it was just
a transfer of XP from player to player. You also needed this special
vampire kit to be able to identify true vampires (there were also half
vampires, doesn't matter..). When a vamp sucked a hunter usually the
hunter would broadcast a message to all hunters telling who sucked him.
Then all hunters would try to hunt this vamp to stake him, and if they
managed to they would get XP from the vamp (which would loose XPs).
On the other hand if a hunter staked a vampire, all the vamps got the
broadcast message player xxxxxx has now proved himself a vampire hunter
and all the vamps would usually go after the hunter. They got 15 minutes
to track him down, after this the hunter was 'freed' from hunting until
he got himself another hunting kit.

The nice thing about this theme was that other players that did not wish
to participate in these crazy hunts could keep on minding their own
business, except from receiving some bad language over the shout lines
now and then from pissed of vamps or hunters. 

This is just an example. I loved this theme, and I am pretty sure 
there are many other ideas than the vamp/hunter theme to create similar
challenges, like races, hunts for robots, etc. etc.

Personally I find mud'ing a bit boring without this competition
aspect (sure, one competes for power and wisdom, but that usually
involves little player to player competition directly). I would sometimes
wait for hours hoping that a hunter, later vamp would log in (I changed
sides because I thought there were not enough hunters and plenty of
vamps).

Now to be fair I should also mention that this "fighting" really pissed
a lot of people off at IGORMud. It was really difficult to make the
rewards for hunting/sucking fair. Right before I moved from Norway to
Germany (to study my last year as an ERASMUS exchange student) there
were lots of changes going on, concerning the vamps and hunters.
Unfortunately I have a restricted net access (Baden-Wurtenberg) and am
therefore unable to find out what the status of this theme is at 
IGORmud right now, but since a couple of wiz'es showed an interest
in my opinions I will post a message to a friend of mine at IGORmud
to find out what is the status quo on the vamp/hunter theme. As soon
as I get a reply from him, I'll post a followup..

So this should be something for the really ambitious wiz'es out there.

I'll probably will not continue to build up my character here, but thanks
to all the people who helped me so far.. I will however read any followup
to my articles and try to answer any questions regarding this subject..

So long..
Zarius
> 
