Re: [spoon-discuss] Re: spoon-discuss Digest, Vol 5, Issue 17

["Glotmorf" <dwhytock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 27 Nov 2003 at 13:36, Daniel Lepage wrote:

> Despite the fact that I am among the players most likely to profit
> from a relaxation of bandwidth restrictions, I would object to such a
> proposal.
> 
> In fact, I wonder if it might make things more interesting if we
> actually *decreased* the amount of bandwidth given to players, or
> somehow restricted it. Back when we had the Grid, I'd been thinking
> about ways to a) cut players' bandwidths further and force them to
> somehow collect it on the grid, or b) create a variety of weapons and
> tools that cost bandwidth to operate; the idea was that since Dave was
> doing most of the Grid tracking at that point, we should make things
> that, if they created complexity in one part of the game, would reduce
> complexity in other parts.

Bandwidth was originally 3.  I forget who proposed its increase when.

> Also, I seem to recall that the original goal of societies was to
> allow bandwidth pooling, but so far that's never been needed, as we
> hardly ever even come near our bandwidth limits, much less exceed
> them. If bandwidth were tighter, we could have some very interesting
> game dynamics.

Actually, societies were created to pool any number of interesting things.  I had in 
mind the stockpiling of vote proxies, pinball guns and other things that one member 
could make effective use of in quantity if all members contributed one.

In fact, cards are an interesting idea.  Should a Society be able to possess a hand?

> As for ALC props, they could be simulated with normal proposals, if
> the author so chooses, simply by stating something like "If, in more
> than half of the messages sent to the public forum containg players'
> final votes on this proposal, that vote was a YES and was immediately
> followed by a list of numbers containing 2, then do this:"

The reason points are distributed among parts of an a la carte prop is that, if only half 
one one's prop passes, one should get only half the points.  Thus an a la carte prop 
incurs some risk if people don't like the whole thing, but not the same risk as an all-
or-nothing prop.

What you're proposing, on the other hand, is an opt-in rider system, whereby, if a 
proposal passes at all, additional things may pass if the voters state they should.  
This makes the riders depend on the "core" proposal but not result in additional 
points, so that the proposer is sacrificing the chance for additional point gain in order 
to make the riders possible at all.

While this simplifies things for Dave on the point-count side, it still makes things 
complex on the vote-count side.  It might be simpler to use dependent props that can 
exceed bandwidth but yield no points for the proposer.  Still more work for Dave, but 
at least relatively straightforward.

Dave?  Got US$0.02 to contribute?

						Glotmorf

-----
The Ivory Mini-Tower: a blog study in Social Technology.
http://ix.1sound.com/ivoryminitower

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