Author Topic: Power, Hierarchy and Winning vs Losing (in a game environment)  (Read 5157 times)

Anaris

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So in the scenario that I've outlined, I'm curious how it would work out "in the wild".  If my goal was to see a hierarchy form, I suspect that I would instead find that players would go to war seeking vassals, and that the loser would either stubbornly refuse to click the "swear fealty" button, or would simply ragequit.

I don't see it working out unless there is the possibility for the winner to kill the loser. If there is no risk to saying "no", almost no one will submit to someone they don't want to.

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So - organic creation of hierarchy in a game environment.   What do you think?  In the world of gamers today, is this a recipe for failure?

This is actually extremely close to some ideas Tom has bounced around for a sort of "BattleMaster 2.0" idea. It was never entirely clear whether he saw it as a replacement for BattleMaster, a separate game running in parallel, or a sort of successor that would slowly take over from BattleMaster as we know it.
Timothy Collett

"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire...is your heart." "You are what you do.  Choose again, and change." "One of these days, someone's gonna plug you, and you're going to die saying, 'What did I say? What did I say?'"  ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan