nu.kanga.list.mud-dev

18324: RE: [MUD-Dev] Summary of PvP attempts?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vincent Archer
> Sent: Monday, June 11, 2001 3:55 AM
> To: mud-dev@kanga.nu
> Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Summary of PvP attempts?

> According to Matt Mihaly:
>> On Fri, 8 Jun 2001, Koster, Raph wrote:

>>>   Player-based: Free

>>>     * Anyone can attack anyone 
>>>     * Often accompanied by admin-based solutions 
>>>     * Does not scale to larger populations very well 
>>>     * Relies on social mechanics to curb grief player behavior 
>>>     * Reduction in audience of up to ~40%
 
>> You think that low? I bet if you just ins'otituted open PK on
>> Everquest as a whole, they would, within 20 months, lose more
>> than half their audience.
 
> Judging by what I know of the "carebears" (yeech) players, I can
> tell you it wouldn't take more than 4 months to halve the
> population. Not 20.  Changing the rules and social dynamics in
> such a major way during the life of the game will alienate the
> players in a big way.

The word audience there refers to portion of the total market. So if
you might capture 100 people, by having a free PvP game, at least 40
people won't even try it. The other 60 will try it out. They may not
stay, but they might if the game is good.

Changing your PvE game midstream to a free PvP model would
definitely lose you way more. 20% won't have tried it because it
wasn't PvP in the first place, so you would be down to 80
people. Then you lose many more out of your self-selected non-PvP
userbase.

-Raph
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