> What are people's experiences with giving out imm positions to > non-players who did something for the mud (such as making a webpage, paying > for the server, giving a blo-er..you know)? The newbie imms don't know how > the mud works, the dos and don'ts, what's accepted, etc. > Recently our mud was screwed up balance-wise because the guy who was > paying for it didn't know as much as he pretended to when he made "code > changes", among other things which I won't get into here. Currently we're > being hosted by a long-time respected player, and everything is moving > smooth (but slowly, long story ;). > > Anyway, are newbie imms a good thing? Have you found that players make > better imms, or do you end up with cheaters and a lazy staff? In my opinion, you can't become a veteran imm without having been a new imm at some time... I remember cutting my teeth on Oasis...with a lot of reading of every help file that I could find.... On one of the muds that I work for (based on Star Wars), we tried to have an active role-play element, including encouraging RP organizations such as the Sith Order, the Jedi Knights, as well as the armed forces of the two main SW governments. Of course, our then coder had disabled the title command because of abuse, so having any position in these RP organizations meant instant immortality. For some reason that was beyond me, the ability to set the titles of others was left at the same level as our builders. So...we tried to get the players to build zones, rather than let the ability to use those command go to waste.... Big mistake. We ended up with every new imm having their own personal lightsaber and giving powerful equipment to other players. If zones were created, they contained either mobs and items that wrecked game balance, or mobs and items from outside of the SW universe (Pikachu, a 9mm Barretta, and *ahem* a blow job all seem to come to mind...). So...there are mistakes made there, ones that I'm having to correct as I deal with my new coder position, trying to get cooperative builders (I've had to fire builders every other week for going against our cheating policy). On a mud that I have ownership of, however, I will admit that most of our staff is hired without prior acquaintance, using only our builder exam period to see if the prospective imm will "play well with others". Granted, because all of the IMPs on this mud all came from the other mud I described, we all have decided to keep a close watch on our builders, including strict controls on the values of what is built (yes, I know that there can be many, many levels of experience, and yes, I know that you can set the values to just about anything, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to allow gameplay to go unbalanced and add more levels...). Since we're still in development and praying for a playerbase (the average time for new players staying connected is starting to approach one minute...), I can't tell you if we will have a serious cheating problem, but as the builders will be closely watched by our IMPs as well as currently two trusted builders, I don't foresee having many problems (our GRGOD+ staff members are all very familiar with my policy to "summarily execute" any staff member that cheats, courtesy of that SW mud...). *shrug* Two long narratives that may or may not have answered your question... James/Alendar/J'Lek/whoever.... </identity crisis> -- +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | FAQ: http://qsilver.queensu.ca/~fletchra/Circle/list-faq.html | | Archives: http://post.queensu.ca/listserv/wwwarch/circle.html | +---------------------------------------------------------------+
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