Member Discussions

Massaria wrote here in part:
http://www.mudconnect.com/discuss/discuss.cgi?mode=MSG&area=promotions&message=17787

>>What I'd like to see is the players running/joining intelligence and terrorist organisations, making other players the challenge of the game, without necessarily putting a character's life on the line. Assassinations should certainly be possible, but since the focus of the player should lie with organisation more than with any specific character, it should be alright, ideally.

>>The primary aim of the game would be intelligence gathering. Initially in the form of exploring the world, selling the discoveries to the highest bidder or those of similar convictions, according to your morals. Later, when involved in an organisation, it would focus on intercepting communications between operatives and their handlers, and of course insuring that your communications got back home in safe hands.

>>Of course, double- and triple-agents and regular defectors would play a major part as well - Can I trust this newbie, or is he really the alias of an enemy? On the other hand, organisations need agents abroad in order to gain intel, so players will need to take a chance on some newbies.

Anyone have input or references on how to balance player distribution between such groups? Sure we’ve all seen the good vs bad, good, neutral, bad, etc set ups. I am curious as to what mechanisms might be employed in a case where say there are a dozen or two such organizations which exist outside the controls of umbrella organizations.

I must admit that I'm a bit unclear about what you mean by 'how to balance player distribution between such groups'. I gather you mean that the players should be more or less evenly distributed in all the groups? Or, at least, that a situation where a large majority of players are grouped in one huge organization, is undesired, as they would dominate the game and make the creation of new organizations much too hard or even practically impossible?

I'm not sure such a situation would ever arise, simply because it isn't fun. A game where organizations are pitched against eachother, and everyone is in the same organization can't be very fun. I think that some players will probably make the conclusion that they will have more fun if they turned on the big organization and traded in their information for a position in a smaller organization.
It's hard to tell, naturally, but I think such a system is more or less self-regulating in terms of destribution of players, if not power of the organization.

I did give some thought on the agenda of the organizations, but it's been a while and I seem to have skipped over it pretty lightly. Here's what I have in terms of organizational values (really just elaboration on a brainstorm... a brain breeze?)

Upon creating the organization, the player would choose a purpose for the organization - possibly two, one for the public, and one which might be known only to members or the highest ranks within the organization (you saw Alias, right?).
In any case, if would follow one of three doctrines:

The protection of... (passive)

The creation of... (aggressive/passive?)

The elimination of... (aggressive)

I'm not sure as for the passive/aggressive parts - the player should probably be allowed to chose whichever he likes, regardless of the doctrine. Though, can you passively seek the elimination of something?
The original idea was the the aggressive organizations would be trying to blow up bombs and actively pursue their goal (for 'good' or 'bad'), and that it would be the role of the passive organizations to try and find them out and prevent the operations. I'm not really sure about this setup anymore. I think perhaps there'd be a lot more aggressive orgs than passive. I'm really at odds here.

The three doctrines seem like the fundamental purposes that intelligence or terrorist organisations seem to have. Of course, some arab states could be said to want to 'create a world without Israel', but semantics aside, I can't think of others.

Once that is in place, I figure there might be a pre-determined list of objectives to focus on, probably with an opposed objective to go along with each.
For example:

Environment   <--->   Industry
Peace         <--->   War
Liberal       <--->   Conservative

Or the player might choose an ethnicity (African, Arab, Asian, Caucasian - no more specific I think), another organization, a country or possibly a religion. (*)
Thus, the purpose of an organization might read "The creation of Environment", "The protection of CIA" or "The elimination of Caucasians".
Obviously, the trick would be that organizations with similar objectives might join up, and that those who oppose will make 'war' on eachother (they won't of course, at most an assassination or perhaps staging a coup in the country of the other organization - things that will be setbacks, yes, but never eliminate the organization).
Furthermore, it ties in with the NPCs, who'll have similar objectives and will therefore be more or less likely to help a certain organization.

Hm. I think that's about it. How does this sound to you?

(*) I'm uncertain about how much semblance there should be to the real world. Should there be religions like christianity and islam, should there be a USA and EU, an Iran and Iraq? On the one hand I don't believe in shying away from topics just because they're sensitive, and I think it'll add real flavour to the setting - on the other hand I don't want the environment to be a hateful, bickering shouting match.
Do you have any experiences with real-world settings that handled some sensitive issues?

Mass, brain-breezing.

I'm uncertain about how much semblance there should be to the real world.

It isn't only sensitivity that you have to worry about. As well, you have to take into consideration that:

• Each player's beliefs are going to get in the way of roleplaying. I doubt there could be very much of an RP environment, as a result. Take the war in Iraq for example. It would be difficult for many US citizens to roleplay an Iraqi citizen appropriately.


• Things are going to be more heated, and people are going to take them more personally. I can imagine quite a bit of fighting taking place constantly, which would be disruptive and annoying.


• The world will progress and diverge (or it will simply stagnate, which is another issue, in and of itself). As a result, this "real world" won't be "real" for very long.


• Organizations *will* die out, regardless of what your hopes are. If I'm the only player in an organization, and my opposition consists of 100 assassin players... I'm going to quit the game and make a new character pretty quickly. This poses quite a few problems.
  1. Clans need to be balanced, which is inherently impossible unless they are founded simultaneously and are of the same "real life" popularity. (Clans which are around longer are going to attract more players, typically. Also, certain groups are going to naturally be more popular, given their foundation in "reality")
  
  
  2. If a group doesn't have an "enemy" group, then this part of the game is meaningless to them. That means, also, that you need players to keep players.
  
  
  3. etc...
  
  

Of course, there are others as well... but I think you get the picture. The idea of having an "Earth based" MUD, though, is appealing, given its (ironically) original nature in the MUD community. If you were able to solve the issues involved, I think it would be able to attract a crowd (assuming, also, the use of the principles being discussed here.)

Honestly, this all reminds me a bit of risk.

Best of Luck,
-Jess

It's interesting to ponder, certainly.

One of the factors we deal with everyday touches on allot of the pitfalls to this kind of system.

I.E. keeping people working in the food and service industry, the people that pick up the trash, the road workers, the sewage workers, grocery store shelving experts, etc. etc.

When most people play a game, they want something different then what they experience in normal life. No one wants to play a game where they have a dead end job as a cashier. (though there could be some who actually would want to do that.. for some reason) So the problem becomes as stated above, how do you ballance things out, get people to do the jobs and 'organizations' that no one wants to.

I think one thing that allot of people miss is that the world as we know it, business, industry, all of it, was an evolutionary process.

The first people didn't just have set groups to do work. People were sepperated by ability, and depending on what was needed to survive became one thing or another. The quickest and most agile, the hunters, others farmers, pot makers, etc.

I think to go into a project with preconceived organizations might be a mistake. If you allow for organizations without a strict limit, or preset organizations as a whole you might be pleasantly surprised at what people do, and where they fall.

If you let them evolve your world from basically a blank slate it might be better off then trying to force them into a concrete construct.

It's kind of how I approach creating a D&D campaign. I create a general world, some basic plot points and timeline. Fill in the current situation, populations, beliefs, etc. Then the actual players choose where they go, what they do, how the world interacts with them, not them to the world.

I find it much more enjoyable to watch them shape my world with me, then to give them a linear story to simply walk through.

Just a thought :)

-Syn

Well, I'm sure the organizations would be the ones a bit more interesting... he mentioned about a dozen or two, which is such a small number, wasting one on janitorial work would probably be a bit odd. *smile*

However, I do agree that allowing the players to shape the types of organizations is a good idea.

As I understood it, the problem is that this won't, in and of itself, create a balance.

My contention is that if, as Massaria suggested, we move toward an "Earth based" game, there is absolutely nothing you'll be able to do to balance the "organizations". Players will naturally choose the things they like in reality, or play the things they don't like poorly.

However, assuming we still work with a fictional setting, balancing each group should only really be a matter of tweaking.

First of all, we have to ensure that each "organization" is given a balanced level of power. Without that, everything else will fall through.

Once we've established that, we need to address the problem of each player in an organization adding to the organization's power linearly. In other words, an existing organization is going to build players faster than a non-existing organization. Each player that an organization has on gives that organization an equal amount of power, which naturally means that the most populated organization is innately the most powerful (excluding a few extraneous factors, of course). As a new player, why would you create a new organization, only to be bullied by your enemy of 100 players, when you could join that organization and not have to worry about being bullied at all? You'd spend all your time being assassinated, as opposed to spending your time assassinating others.

The issue here is that we have to give more power to an "underdog", to balance him against the established organizations. Offhand, I don't have a clue how to do that... but it does have to be addressed. A few possibilities to exploit would be that a less populated organization would naturally be:

• Better organized
• Harder to infiltrate
• Harder to locate / Easier to hide
• More secretive
• Easier to lead and communicate between
• More "under the radar"

Third of all, then you need to create incentive for players to try different organizations that they wouldn't normally. This part is *extremely* important. Without it, you're going to see typical MUD distributions, (which are nearly always one sided). Once again, I have no idea how to do that... but you could take a look into:

• Encouraging multiplaying (which would encourage multiple characters, and thus multiple organizations per player). Note: this would also solve some issues with having enough characters on to make the game interesting.
• Slightly "un-balancing" organizations based on popularity.
• Giving *HUGE* benefits to small organizations
• Making infiltrating other organizations a major part of the game

Anyway, best of luck,
-Jess

Thanks for the thoughts above. I was not just thinking in terms of the Spy vs. Spy scenario, but also in general ways to make numerous conflicting organizations work in general.

In most designs player conflict is simply upscaled to gang conflict. This often results in a sort of weighing of sides where player numbers are the most significant factor in encounters. Even apart from the might vs might contests I find that numbers play a significant role in quest/rp competitions.

As an example, in several MUDs I’ve seen a set up similar in form to the following: Gather more of some type of object than your competition. This might be gathering magical widgets, corpses, almost anything. Almost any way you slice it, the side with significantly greater numbers has a huge advantage. The group with the greater number will on average find/acquire more of the items, has a greater chance to have members about when there is less competition for items, has a greater chance of having members willing to do the task, etc.

It seems to me that the vast majority of balancing of organizations is done by restricting choices to one organization or the other. Let’s use Lord of the Rings Online as an example. In the basic game, there is only one side, those helping the fellowship. So the Turbine Devs were concerned about racial distribution and wanted to give players incentives to play races other than elves. They did this as most games do by limiting what classes elves could pick. They also wanted the game to reflect a greater population of humans and tried to encourage this by giving humans unrestricted access to classes.

So clearly one way to encourage player distribution amongst organizations is if the various organizations offer different benefits different from each other. Still, this type of design is simply a carrot and has no real mechanism to drive player membership to some equilibrium.


I’ll try to comment on your specific examples after I’ve thought about them more.

Thanks for your replies jess, you bring up a lot of good points.

Each player's beliefs are going to get in the way of roleplaying. I doubt there could be very much of an RP environment, as a result. Take the war in Iraq for example. It would be difficult for many US citizens to roleplay an Iraqi citizen appropriately.

I don't think this will be an larger issue than it is on a normal fantasy mud. I personally find it hard to play women, for example (though I usually enjoy it).
Quite the contrary, I think it'll make it a lot easier to roleplay in a settting close to the real world. We all know where we are, have a pretty good grasp on the predominant cultures and mannerisms, which, I gather, will make it easier to portray believable characters.
Hm. On the other hand, I guess it's easier to spot poor rp as well, since we have some idea about how this or that perosn should behave.

Things are going to be more heated, and people are going to take them more personally. I can imagine quite a bit of fighting taking place constantly, which would be disruptive and annoying.

Agreed. I figure there should be limited capabilities of global comminication, especially OOC, along with a good 'ignore' command.

The world will progress and diverge (or it will simply stagnate, which is another issue, in and of itself). As a result, this "real world" won't be "real" for very long.

Nods. I've been pondering pushing the time back some 25 years. First half of the 80s sound about right to me. Not a whole lot of internet and mobile phones back then - much more cloak and dagger and poisoned unbrellas, much less hacker geeks and pulonium-210. This more due to considerations of setting and gameplay (much too easy to just encrypt and click 'send' today), than adhering to the real world. It wouldn't be very real in the end.

Organizations *will* die out, regardless of what your hopes are. If I'm the only player in an organization, and my opposition consists of 100 assassin players... I'm going to quit the game and make a new character pretty quickly. This poses quite a few problems.

As you point out in your later post, new organizations aren't meant to pop up on some list over all organizations - indeed, it should be a event of some importance when you discover a new organization. If you're the only person in your org, and you do nothing to reveal yourself (though that would be kinda boring), no-one should ever be able to identify your oganization.
I should probaly clarify what I mean by organization (vis-a-vis synorel). I use the term as synonymous with 'intelligence agency', 'terrorist organization/network' and even 'secret society' - they're not private firms or corporations, not as I envision it anyways.

Honestly, this all reminds me a bit of risk.

Hehe, not quite what I was aiming for, but it could easily be worse. Risk Rules! :-)

Each player that an organization has on gives that organization an equal amount of power, which naturally means that the most populated organization is innately the most powerful (excluding a few extraneous factors, of course).

Well yes, more players equal more power. But by the nature of the game - keeping and attaining info - each new player also weakens the org, in that there's yet another security risk to worry about. And not just some coded mechanism either, it's in our nature. I think the downsides of adding a new player to the org will at some point outweigh the benefits of doing so quite naturally, the question really is if that point is low enough to actually balance the orgs (if it's still a good idea to have more players join when you have 100 already, it's a moot point). Probably there should be coded mechanisms as well, calculations that favour the smaller orgs, as you mention.

As a new player, why would you create a new organization, only to be bullied by your enemy of 100 players, when you could join that organization and not have to worry about being bullied at all? You'd spend all your time being assassinated, as opposed to spending your time assassinating others.

As I mention above, there's the issue of being discovered in the first place. And when this happens, the idea would be that you're already in place in some other org, which you may then inform on.
That is, you make a char and enter org A. After a while you make your own org B, and then when you're discovered, or make contact with org C, they should, ideally, see the value in your info and buy them from you. Of course, the situation would be another if it was org A that discovered you, or if org C was working with/for org A. Oh what a lovely mess! ;-)

Going on assassination sprees should probably be prevented by raising the profile of the org - investigative journalist and officers of the law who start turning over stones if too many odd deaths happen. And of course, a high profile is detrimental to an org that deals in seecrecy. Assassinations really should be a rare and costly thing to do, especially if unsuccessful.

The issue here is that we have to give more power to an "underdog", to balance him against the established organizations. Offhand, I don't have a clue how to do that... but it does have to be addressed. A few possibilities to exploit would be that a less populated organization would naturally be:

Right, Right, Right! Some come quite naturally, others would need coding.

Third of all, then you need to create incentive for players to try different organizations that they wouldn't normally. This part is *extremely* important. Without it, you're going to see typical MUD distributions, (which are nearly always one sided).

I'm not sure I understand this. As for the plan I have, there's not really 'different' orgs per say. You can set them up differently, sure, but I don't plan on having many levers to pull here though. It's the actions of an org, the perceptions of other orgs, that make them 'good' or 'evil', if that's what you mean.

Encouraging multiplaying (which would encourage multiple characters, and thus multiple organizations per player). Note: this would also solve some issues with having enough characters on to make the game interesting.

Nods. The way I see it, you enter the game as a child (which is why you get to ask stupid questions ;-), you decide on an initial career and destribute some initial skill points to skills based on your career choice.
Once you're in an org (your own or joined one), you're allowed to make a new char.
It really is the org that is in focus though, so once the player has the means, he probably should make one with one of his chars. The org can then fund the training of other chars which will be ready to take over the org if the head should die, and can be used for a number of things otherwise.

MudDev:
As an example, in several MUDs I’ve seen a set up similar in form to the following: Gather more of some type of object than your competition. This might be gathering magical widgets, corpses, almost anything. Almost any way you slice it, the side with significantly greater numbers has a huge advantage.

I touched on this above, but in other systems, might there not be some kind of 'overhead'? If they're gathering foodstuffs, more food would get eaten too, if they're gathering dragon scales, behaps the dragons fight harder against those who has already killed many dragons, if they're gathering xp, a lot of valuable insights might be lost due to too many retellings and superstitions.
Heh, I dunno, but there must be reasonable ways to increase the difficulty as the number of members increase.
Take that robot game at skotos (I really should be able to remember it... embarrasing), the listings there aren't topped by the largest teams because they're arranged by a mean value from all the members, which put the large teams at an disadvantage.

Phew. I'm really getting into this idea again. :-)
Not sure how serious I am about getting this airborne. It has some promise, I think, and it's rewarding work when it works, but god it's hell on earth when it doesn't!

Mass, tries not to go to hell.

Now back to the Spy vs. Spy example of a smaller organization offering someone something to switch sides.

I think no matter how you slice it there are significant issues involving player-ran organizations. I also assert that I’ve yet to be wowed by how game mechanics handle these issues. This isn’t to say that there aren’t games with systems which ‘work’ but, at least to me these systems seem to ‘barely work’ as opposed to ‘work elegantly’.

You suggest the idea of there being a downside for adding more players to a group. This runs the risk of interfering with the social dynamics between players. Who gets to decide if a player gets added? What happens when the org’s leader/committee doesn’t let your friend in? What is really the ‘currency’ the group offers to outsiders? Is it simply social? If that is the case, it would seem to me very hard to balance as what one person finds socially rewarding is a far different metric than most other game design issues.

Now I’m not suggesting that a design even has to try to ‘handle’ the above. Nothing stops a developer from simply ignoring those issues (many developers have), but my point in starting this thread was to see if people had found or developed tools to better handle situations like the ones raised here.

Let’s look at another of your examples. You talk about an agent (better term for someone working though an org I think) being discovered and being that person is already in an org they have something to offer competing. I would call this a hopeful offer (i.e. the player hopes someone will take them in). This assumes that the information is worth more to the group then the penalty the group gains in taking in the player. I use penalty because you concede that the more members an org has the more risk the org opens itself to. I also use it as logically the player is a negative asset if for no other reason than they’ve been caught (this might be negligible if discovery is very common and the player is simply switching from one group of failures to another).

That brings us to the information itself. If the information is something known to players rather than an object of ‘encrypted files’ then the person runs the risk that the org doesn’t need that particular information. If the system is not automated then as some point some player or player group is making a call to admit or pass on a player.

I must admit I'm unsure about what it is you're looking for. Solutions yes, but to what problems?
At first it's about player destribution, but now you say things like 'I also assert that I’ve yet to be wowed by how game mechanics handle these issues.' and 'but my point in starting this thread was to see if people had found or developed tools to better handle situations like the ones raised here.', and I may be somewhat dense at times, but I don't know what issues and situations you're talking about here.

I think I can safely answer some of your questions though, without too much of a chance of answering something you didn't ask.

What happens when the org’s leader/committee doesn’t let your friend in?

I guess they have to join another, start their own (with their friend, perhaps) or simply go out and get something of sufficient value. I don't see this as significantly different from clans and guilds that have a requirement for a minimum level. It's a question about playing the game to attain a certain value to an org/clan.

What is really the ‘currency’ the group offers to outsiders? Is it simply social?

The org would be paying its agents. But aside from gaining some little money, the point of joining an org would be 1) to socialize and make contacts and 2) to gain access to intel. Primarily social, yes.

If that is the case, it would seem to me very hard to balance as what one person finds socially rewarding is a far different metric than most other game design issues.

I'm sorry, but I can't really make sense of this. The social aspect of being in an org should be balanced against other aspects of the game? I don't get it - since most everyone would be in an org, everyone would be involved in this social aspect.
I'm sorry MudDev, but I just can't make head or tails here.

You talk about an agent (better term for someone working though an org I think) being discovered and being that person is already in an org they have something to offer competing. I would call this a hopeful offer (i.e. the player hopes someone will take them in). This assumes that the information is worth more to the group then the penalty the group gains in taking in the player.

Yeah, this is a problem. If an upstarting agent in an org has sold information about the org employs it, without actually joining another org, that agent would be in trouble if his dealings were discovered. Especially so if the agent for some reason doesn't have the means or opportunity to escape, but I'm not really sure what options would be open to the deceived org. Criminal charges seems unlikely (and boring), and too many strange deaths isn't a good idea.
Hm. Tough one. Maybe it is the end of that agent (life imprisonment), and the player will have to start over. On the other hand, one never knows when it'll come in handy to have a contact inside a prison...
It's fairly obvious that the most successful agents will be those who can accurately evaluate the value of a given piece of information, versus the risk of getting it across to those who value it.

That brings us to the information itself. If the information is something known to players rather than an object of ‘encrypted files’ then the person runs the risk that the org doesn’t need that particular information.

I've given this a great deal of thought, and I probably need to give it much more.
Obviously the players could just meet up at some IM system and share whatever information they like in that way. They can do that no matter what I do, so the only viable path, I gather, is to make the information 'real' objects within the game. Real objects in the sense that agents will be able to pick them up and put them in their pockets, even if the nature of the information is, for example, a conversation overheard in a restaurant and the method of relaying it is verbal (in which case the object would be copied, not handed over). This, of course, would open up possibilities for player-generated information (a player creating an info-object and claiming he overheard the conversation), and actual forgeries (pictures, official documents etc.).
More importantly, it lets the game decide what the agent/organization actually knows (as opposed to he player, who may know it all), which may then spur new events or information.

I hope this sheds some light on how I'd approach your questions (and that the questions weren't rhetorical).

Mass, creates an info-object.

I must admit I'm unsure about what it is you're looking for. Solutions yes, but to what problems?
At first it's about player destribution, but now you say things like 'I also assert that I’ve yet to be wowed by how game mechanics handle these issues.' and 'but my point in starting this thread was to see if people had found or developed tools to better handle situations like the ones raised here.', and I may be somewhat dense at times, but I don't know what issues and situations you're talking about here.

I haven’t departed from the opening OP. Perhaps your confusion is that even though I referenced your post I never meant for the discussion to be limited to that specific type of organizations (it was just a single example).

I could perhaps sum up the OP along the lines of: In competitive play one design concern might be whether each group can successfully compete against the any and all other groups. Often the competitive edge is in favor of the organization which has numerical advantage. One method towards this goal might be mechanisms (coded) which ‘load-balance’ the groups (systems which encourage organizations to some sort of evenly distributed balance).

There are all manner of design issues surrounding player organizations. I’m interested in addressing a specific issue in an even more specific manner (systems which drive character organizations towards even amount of characters across the total number of organizations).

Here’s two examples.

Hammer approach: One could have a group where player orgs have 10 members, must have 10 members, and the ‘power’ of the org is based only on number of members and not their individual power. Not really what I am looking for, but does meet the OP.

Leverage approach: This mechanism, more along the lines of the type I’m looking for, might work as follows. Imagine a MUD where there are magic using characters who can tap into magical nodes and doing so gives them more ‘mana percent modifier’ to cast more spells. Now let’s add in some restrictions.
---Characters can only ever tap into one node total at any one time.
---Characters can only draw on the power of a node after they’ve been ‘linked’ to it for a full cycle (24 hours, so as to prevent rapid switching between nodes).
---The percentage bonus available to a character is as follows: (NC – (OC * 2)) * 5. Where NC = number of characters linked to a node and OC = overcrowding (number of characters above 10).

This example in my opinion does not force groups of equal numbers, but can be said to ‘give greater rewards to the idealized group size, i.e. groups of 10’.

So what you get with the above is penalized for sharing too little or for oversharing. The player who doesn’t share at all only gets a 5% modifier and the players who overshare wind up in the same boat.

Note: This is just a base for discussion. It clearly does not address certain issues such as using alts to max out nodes; what if anything to do with inactive players; whether characters get a say in who can join the node; etc.

Mostly what I was hoping for were articles/books on this sort of problem solving as well as specific examples of solutions devs had created to solve issues in their games. I'll give you a specific example in the next post.

I must admit I'm unsure about what it is you're looking for. Solutions yes, but to what problems?
At first it's about player destribution, but now you say things like 'I also assert that I’ve yet to be wowed by how game mechanics handle these issues.' and 'but my point in starting this thread was to see if people had found or developed tools to better handle situations like the ones raised here.', and I may be somewhat dense at times, but I don't know what issues and situations you're talking about here.

I haven’t departed from the opening OP. Perhaps your confusion is that even though I referenced your post I never meant for the discussion to be limited to that specific type of organizations (it was just a single example).

I could perhaps sum up the OP along the lines of: In competitive play one design concern might be whether each group can successfully compete against the any and all other groups. Often the competitive edge is in favor of the organization which has numerical advantage. One method towards this goal might be mechanisms (coded) which ‘load-balance’ the groups (systems which encourage organizations to some sort of evenly distributed balance).

There are all manner of design issues surrounding player organizations. I’m interested in addressing a specific issue in an even more specific manner (systems which drive character organizations towards even amount of characters across the total number of organizations).

Here’s two examples.

Hammer approach: One could have a group where player orgs have 10 members, must have 10 members, and the ‘power’ of the org is based only on number of members and not their individual power. Not really what I am looking for, but does meet the OP.

Leverage approach: This mechanism, more along the lines of the type I’m looking for, might work as follows. Imagine a MUD where there are magic using characters who can tap into magical nodes and doing so gives them more ‘mana percent modifier’ to cast more spells. Now let’s add in some restrictions.
---Characters can only ever tap into one node total at any one time.
---Characters can only draw on the power of a node after they’ve been ‘linked’ to it for a full cycle (24 hours, so as to prevent rapid switching between nodes).
---The percentage bonus available to a character is as follows: (NC – (OC * 2)) * 5. Where NC = number of characters linked to a node and OC = overcrowding (number of characters above 10).

This example in my opinion does not force groups of equal numbers, but can be said to ‘give greater rewards to the idealized group size, i.e. groups of 10’.

So what you get with the above is penalized for sharing too little or for oversharing. The player who doesn’t share at all only gets a 5% modifier and the players who overshare wind up in the same boat.

Note: This is just a base for discussion. It clearly does not address certain issues such as using alts to max out nodes; what if anything to do with inactive players; whether characters get a say in who can join the node; etc.

Mostly what I was hoping for were articles/books on this sort of problem solving as well as specific examples of solutions devs had created to solve issues in their games. I'll give you a specific example in the next post.

I must admit I'm unsure about what it is you're looking for. Solutions yes, but to what problems?
At first it's about player destribution, but now you say things like 'I also assert that I’ve yet to be wowed by how game mechanics handle these issues.' and 'but my point in starting this thread was to see if people had found or developed tools to better handle situations like the ones raised here.', and I may be somewhat dense at times, but I don't know what issues and situations you're talking about here.

I haven’t departed from the opening OP. Perhaps your confusion is that even though I referenced your post I never meant for the discussion to be limited to that specific type of organizations (it was just a single example).

I could perhaps sum up the OP along the lines of: In competitive play one design concern might be whether each group can successfully compete against the any and all other groups. Often the competitive edge is in favor of the organization which has numerical advantage. One method towards this goal might be mechanisms (coded) which ‘load-balance’ the groups (systems which encourage organizations to some sort of evenly distributed balance).

There are all manner of design issues surrounding player organizations. I’m interested in addressing a specific issue in an even more specific manner (systems which drive character organizations towards even amount of characters across the total number of organizations).

Here’s two examples.

Hammer approach: One could have a group where player orgs have 10 members, must have 10 members, and the ‘power’ of the org is based only on number of members and not their individual power. Not really what I am looking for, but does meet the OP.

Leverage approach: This mechanism, more along the lines of the type I’m looking for, might work as follows. Imagine a MUD where there are magic using characters who can tap into magical nodes and doing so gives them more ‘mana percent modifier’ to cast more spells. Now let’s add in some restrictions.
---Characters can only ever tap into one node total at any one time.
---Characters can only draw on the power of a node after they’ve been ‘linked’ to it for a full cycle (24 hours, so as to prevent rapid switching between nodes).
---The percentage bonus available to a character is as follows: (NC – (OC * 2)) * 5. Where NC = number of characters linked to a node and OC = overcrowding (number of characters above 10).

This example in my opinion does not force groups of equal numbers, but can be said to ‘give greater rewards to the idealized group size, i.e. groups of 10’.

So what you get with the above is penalized for sharing too little or for oversharing. The player who doesn’t share at all only gets a 5% modifier and the players who overshare wind up in the same boat.

Note: This is just a base for discussion. It clearly does not address certain issues such as using alts to max out nodes; what if anything to do with inactive players; whether characters get a say in who can join the node; etc.

Mostly what I was hoping for were articles/books on this sort of problem solving as well as specific examples of solutions devs had created to solve issues in their games. I'll give you a specific example in the next post.

I've tried to write a few different responses all ending in unsatisfactory responses. I think I need to let this perk a bit more before getting back to you.

That system you mentioned, the spell node one, reminds me of what Asheron's Call implemented. Spell economy.

The more people that used X magic group, and or Y spell, the weaker it got, the underused 'powers/disciplines' stronger. It was an interesting approach which attempted to make people smarter in how they chose spells, and tactics. Overall most people ignored it as AC didn't allow for it to make huge differences. At that rate people didn't care about a +/- 10 on a spell, but it would have worked better imo, with more gain and loss.

Interesting thought.

-Syn

I mention this game every time someone brings up this topic, but if you have not, go play a game called "Republic". This is a single player game, but they have done a good job of capturing the "group dynamic" of competing factions.

The focus of the game is that you are a start-up revolutionary organization, bent on gaining sway over the populace of the country to overthrow the evil dictator-in-charge in a former Soviet Republic state. However, not only must you watch out for the government and its police-state tactics, but you must also compete with other factions that are all vying for the support of the people.

You do this with the help of your avatar and the other members of your faction, whom you recruit to join you (as your faction grows larger, you can recruit more people). Character "skills" range from peaceful poll-taking to terrorist type activities like beating up enemy faction members of vandalizing neighborhoods and making people think the other guys did it (to lower their popularity, which will allow you to step in and gain some of the population of that neighborhood as "followers" or supporters).

I should make note that the game is centrally designed around single cities as the "levels" with the individual neighborhoods making up the "battle grounds" of that particular level. Each "type" of neighborhood provides different things to a faction who control's its loyatly. For example, an industrial neighborhood provides, I forget what they call them in the game, but I can summarize them handily as "brute force points", while commercial neighborhoods provide "economic force points" and upper-class residential neighborhoods provide "social force points".

Most actions take up a certain number of all of these, so there is some economic management of resources involved with running your organization, especially considering that even though you may have won over 100% of the population of a neighborhood, if left by themselves for too long or if other "agents" are operating within the neighborhood, you will quickly notice your influence waining and thereby, your available resources will decrease.

This game also featured one of the best "social combat" mechanisms I have ever seen in a game, for determining the outcome of such things as negotiations and bribery and the like. But that's a topic for a separate thread. Once again, play this game, if for nothing else, it would be an excellent foundation for developing a mud that focuses on the interaction of player-driven "organizations", who might be after different goals or the same, but in a competitive atmosphere.

-Vopisk

(Comment added by Vopisk on Mon Jun 4 19:34:02 2007)

I should point out: As your faction grows larger and more popular, it becomes easier for the competition to conduct "smear campaigns" against you in the media, identify your members and otherwise work against you, so it is often times better to keep your organization small and keep your activities as far off the radar as possible in order to keep your profile low and not draw heat from the government or other organizations.

Thank you. Just the sort of thing I should look at.

I’ve added it to my tasks list. How would I possibly live without Outlook?

With a .txt file and some open-source software that does the exact same thing for a few hundred dollars less? :)

-Vopisk

I never got around to trying Asheron’s Call, but have met many people who really like it.

Dragonrealms magic system is primarily set up as a geographical system. Each room has a setting for IIRC holy, elemental, nature magic. The lower the magic setting for a room the more of your mana (harness) it sucks up. Casting holy spells in a room with very low holy magic can very quickly run you out of ‘mana’. As players develop their power perception skill they start drawing more power from adjoining areas. Overall it seems an interesting take on things. For instance, sometimes priests have to move dead bodies to more favorable rooms to resurrect them.

I’m not overly fond of 10 dozen areas where the primary differences are architecture and critter name. I figure why add an area if it doesn’t bring something new to the game?

The more people that used X magic group, and or Y spell, the weaker it got, the underused 'powers/disciplines' stronger. It was an interesting approach which attempted to make people smarter in how they chose spells, and tactics. Overall most people ignored it as AC didn't allow for it to make huge differences. At that rate people didn't care about a +/- 10 on a spell, but it would have worked better imo, with more gain and loss.

I’ve been intrigued with the idea of secret societies in MUDs. How to have secrets without them winding up on webpages. Not sure in the sense of secret societies, but also in the sense of quests. My solution is to focus more on abstracting out the information to the player. For instance, a password can be told to a player and posted on a website, some abstracted symbol, gesture, ring, tattoo, etc., less so.

Still the key is very much as you said, coming up with something that is worth the players time and effort.

I’ve been intrigued with the idea of secret societies in MUDs. How to have secrets without them winding up on webpages. Not sure in the sense of secret societies, but also in the sense of quests.

Other than that already suggested, I'm not sure.
But I've taken advantage of the players' desire for publicizing their discoveries in Amoebamud, its' sadly half-finished parts now collecting dust in some murky corner of my 'puter.
The idea was that you'd be rewarded for telling others about the discovery that you made. You'd write up a sort of report which all other players could then read, and you gain some 'puzzlepoints', but on the other hand, you'd have to balance those points against keeping the secret and thereby increase your headstart with any new clues.
Of course, once all the puzzles were solved, there would be less of a reason to play, though I toyed with the idea of making it a matter of public record how many times these reports had been accessed by a given character (but it didn't really work out, given the nature of characters in that setting.)

Mass, reporting.

If the entire idea behind the mud is the trafficking of information, you might not have such a problem with information sharing. However, I'm sure there will be some player or another out there who won't care and will offer information for free.

But one way or another, if the buying and selling of information is the primary economic motivation in a game, players will be apt to keep their information to themselves in order to sell it to the highest bidder.

And, let us not forget, that in a game where information is key, misinformation also begins to play a large role. Think of it kinda like "alliances" you see on reality TV shows, sometimes people find out about them and it becomes as important to dissuade people from the truth, or lead them down a false path in order to make them, in sleight of hand terms, watch the right hand while they ignore what the left hand is doing.

I think a game like that would, for the first time, really capture a socio-political system, where everything is player-driven and no one can really be trusted. Some people might choose one side or another and others might play both sides against the middle, so watch what you say or do in front of others, because you never know who's watching.

Just some thoughts,

-Vopisk

First off, let me just say that I'd be a happy man the day I discovered that someone cared enough to make a website about my game, to whatever end.
But I'm not at all sure that the likelyhood of players making sites to reveal secrets, is decreased by making the information for central or valuable. Possibly the opposite is true.
One of the reasons people do this, I gather, is to gain recognition and respect from other players. At least I'm fairly sure that they're not usually motivated by some altruistic notion of helping other players.
I think a player with inclinations to make such sites is more likely to put a secret out there, the more secret or useful it is.

I think that it would be, to some degree, less appealing if that secret was ultimately unuseable by the other players (since they don't have a copy of it in the game).
As you mention, there's also the suspision of disinformation (intentionally misleading, where misinformation is unwittingly done), which will probably further discourage the practice, as people are less likely to take the site's claims at face value.

I think a game like that would, for the first time, really capture a socio-political system, where everything is player-driven and no one can really be trusted. Some people might choose one side or another and others might play both sides against the middle, so watch what you say or do in front of others, because you never know who's watching.

I should be so lucky. There's just such a long way from idea to product.
It's good to know you like the idea, though. Thanks :-)

Mass, outforming.

As far as I know Outlook is included with the OS.

But as I have access to the MS developer package all that is included.

As a side note if anyone lives by a fairly large city it might be worth your while to sign up on the MSDN.com website. Often when you sit though one of the talks the 'reward' is free software. Recently they were giving out full copies of MS Office Professional.

Hrrrm. You know there is quite a bit one can do with sharing information as opposed to hiding it. IRL one of the ways to become rather wealthy is in information brokering. I could envision a system where someone likes a ranger has to show you the path, or a system where someone finds a mine and can sell mining rights to another player (with the original signer getting a cut). Thief/assassin classes could sell information, etc. Instead of simply enabling ascii maps in games, let players work out the maps and sell them to other players.