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> So if you slay too many Gorgs soon there would be none left. Leave them alone and they'll eat all the Fraggles. Players would form culling expeditions every w

> So if you slay too many Gorgs soon there would be none left. Leave them alone and they'll eat all the Fraggles. Players would form culling expeditions every week. [...] I think the venerable Ultima Online had a few features like that, or was supposed to, not completely sure. Ultima Online tried to have such an ecology, but the players didn't react to it as described despite the game designers giving players minimal rewards for killing herbivores so that they would focus on killing the carnivores. Instead the players indiscriminately killed both the carnivores and the herbivores, because the players were human. The ecology was removed. https://youtu.be/KFNxJVTJleE https://youtu.be/KFNxJVTJleE

baroffoos 7y ago
Sounds like the game was perfectly realistic then.
mrmonkeyman 7y ago
No, they killed easy prey because.. it was easy.
TillE 7y ago
That was in 1997, a time when nearly all players were using dialup modems and server hardware was pitifully slow compared to today's. The attempted ecology was no doubt very simple. UO's original designer, Raph Koster, recently announced a new MMO project where he intends to revisit many of those old simulationist ideas.
ss248 7y ago
>because the players were human It's a very compelling story, but that wasn't actually the case. The real reason was the flawed design. People just had to kill everything for the materials because of the way equipment was implemented.
- justmedep 7y ago
  I think one YouTube comment named another good reason: The animals were too easy to kill. "The problem is obvious. The animals were too easy to kill. Imagine trying to chase down a real rabbit or deer with a sword. You will never catch either one and if by some chance you corner them the deer would actually stand a chance of beating you."
- PeterStuer 7y ago
  Mmo designers are very constrained in their game mechanics because they always have to deal with players that will exploit every possibility to grief. This unfortunately leads to things like extremely unchallanging encounters for random matchmade groups as any group will have players trying not just to get a free ride but actively trying to get the party to fail the objective.
leoc 7y ago
As best I recall (it seems it's not easy to find sources now) the biggest problem was with player-killing and griefing. The devs left player-character interactions relatively unrestricted in the expectation that social order would be (largely) maintained by the in-character actions of the PCs. Similar things had worked in text-based MUDs of the time. When they naturally got a Hobbesian bloodbath instead (classic MUDs have many more hours of active games-mastering per player than any MMO) they began the retreat that led to the fake-roleplaying, theme-park experience familiar from World of Warcraft etc.
- Operyl 7y ago
  https://gametyrant.com/news/ultima-online-spent-3-years-developing-systems-that-were-destroyed-by-players https://gametyrant.com/news/ultima-online-spent-3-years-deve... has some quotes from the creators.
- vintermann 7y ago
  "Similar things had worked in text-based MUDs of the time." Not really, in my experience. In MUDs with unrestricted player killing, in-game policing did very little to stop it (unless you count intervention from immortals/wizards, I.e. admins)
Raph_Koster 7y ago
Original lead designer of the game here. Richard's recollection is flawed on this (he wasn't close enough to the tech to know why it failed). Reason #1: the closed loop fell victim to hoarding, particularly because the advancement system encouraged the production of goods with no value, as explicated in great detail in Zach Booth Simpson's detailed paper on "The In-Game Economics of Ultima Online." Slides: https://studylib.net/doc/9778818/the-in-game-economics-of-ultima-online---mine https://studylib.net/doc/9778818/the-in-game-economics-of-ul... Paper: https://web.archive.org/web/20090207141813/https://www.mine-control.com/zack/uoecon/uoecon.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090207141813/https://www.mine-... Reason #2: the cost of pathfinding for the searches was too great. The Sims later solved this by having the agents in a very similar system use simple hillclimbing, with resources broadcast into a map.
- Razengan 7y ago
  wow, this is why I love HN: An incidental thread on a subject sometimes ends up having a key figure on that subject joining the discussion. :) I never really got to try Ultima Online during its heyday (I was averse to MMOs and saw them as a step backwards from the narrative qualities of single-player games.) Re: the ecology, other commenters here and on YouTube have also noted that it was too easy to do things what you shouldn't be able to do, like chasing down rabbits and deer with a sword. :) Thanks and looking forward to your next game!

baroffoos 7y ago

Sounds like the game was perfectly realistic then.

mrmonkeyman 7y ago

No, they killed easy prey because.. it was easy.

TillE 7y ago

That was in 1997, a time when nearly all players were using dialup modems and server hardware was pitifully slow compared to today's. The attempted ecology was no doubt very simple. UO's original designer, Raph Koster, recently announced a new MMO project where he intends to revisit many of those old simulationist ideas.

ss248 7y ago

>because the players were human It's a very compelling story, but that wasn't actually the case. The real reason was the flawed design. People just had to kill everything for the materials because of the way equipment was implemented.

justmedep 7y ago
I think one YouTube comment named another good reason: The animals were too easy to kill. "The problem is obvious. The animals were too easy to kill. Imagine trying to chase down a real rabbit or deer with a sword. You will never catch either one and if by some chance you corner them the deer would actually stand a chance of beating you."
PeterStuer 7y ago
Mmo designers are very constrained in their game mechanics because they always have to deal with players that will exploit every possibility to grief. This unfortunately leads to things like extremely unchallanging encounters for random matchmade groups as any group will have players trying not just to get a free ride but actively trying to get the party to fail the objective.

leoc 7y ago

As best I recall (it seems it's not easy to find sources now) the biggest problem was with player-killing and griefing. The devs left player-character interactions relatively unrestricted in the expectation that social order would be (largely) maintained by the in-character actions of the PCs. Similar things had worked in text-based MUDs of the time. When they naturally got a Hobbesian bloodbath instead (classic MUDs have many more hours of active games-mastering per player than any MMO) they began the retreat that led to the fake-roleplaying, theme-park experience familiar from World of Warcraft etc.

Operyl 7y ago
https://gametyrant.com/news/ultima-online-spent-3-years-developing-systems-that-were-destroyed-by-players https://gametyrant.com/news/ultima-online-spent-3-years-deve... has some quotes from the creators.
vintermann 7y ago
"Similar things had worked in text-based MUDs of the time." Not really, in my experience. In MUDs with unrestricted player killing, in-game policing did very little to stop it (unless you count intervention from immortals/wizards, I.e. admins)

Raph_Koster 7y ago

Original lead designer of the game here. Richard's recollection is flawed on this (he wasn't close enough to the tech to know why it failed). Reason #1: the closed loop fell victim to hoarding, particularly because the advancement system encouraged the production of goods with no value, as explicated in great detail in Zach Booth Simpson's detailed paper on "The In-Game Economics of Ultima Online." Slides: https://studylib.net/doc/9778818/the-in-game-economics-of-ultima-online---mine https://studylib.net/doc/9778818/the-in-game-economics-of-ul... Paper: https://web.archive.org/web/20090207141813/https://www.mine-control.com/zack/uoecon/uoecon.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090207141813/https://www.mine-... Reason #2: the cost of pathfinding for the searches was too great. The Sims later solved this by having the agents in a very similar system use simple hillclimbing, with resources broadcast into a map.

Razengan 7y ago
wow, this is why I love HN: An incidental thread on a subject sometimes ends up having a key figure on that subject joining the discussion. :) I never really got to try Ultima Online during its heyday (I was averse to MMOs and saw them as a step backwards from the narrative qualities of single-player games.) Re: the ecology, other commenters here and on YouTube have also noted that it was too easy to do things what you shouldn't be able to do, like chasing down rabbits and deer with a sword. :) Thanks and looking forward to your next game!