Today I was involved in a live in-game debate about whether a bubble tree at the base of the stairs in Flipside on Ix should be replaced with a spice tree.
The bubble contingent said that they just wanted that tree to live and need give no more justification. One of them said that they love the tree and said I couldn't argue with love. (What's love got to do with it? What's love, but a second hand emotion?) Someone also claimed that the aesthetics of the placement of the bubble tree were preferable: that having a bubble tree there looks nicer and is more pleasing in general than a spice tree in the same place, and that that pleasure balances out any efficiency gains I claimed were associated with a pure-spice/gas Ix.
I argued that as the locations spice can grow are more limited than those where bubbles can grow, it makes sense to only grow spice in the spice-friendly locations. I didn't include a defense of gas because it is far less useful as far as I know and would only confuse the debate. The main thrust of my arguments was that planting a bubble plant in a row of spice plants is an imposition on the Glitches who come to the street looking for spice.
I am intentionally leaving out the less constructive arguments made by both sides.
I want to be clear here. I don't think this is something Tiny Speck should or can solve. If they took away the possibility of us having this problem we'd all end up playing a single-player game.
My goal in starting this thread is to sound out people's thoughts on the question of how to manage shared resources (such as use of tree holes) to maximize everyone's enjoyment of Ur, and more importantly, how to negotiate these solutions over time. This is not the first, nor will it be the last situation where one person's play style butts up against another's. Some Glitches just want to watch the world burn. How do we determine who is cooperating and who is interfering? How do we handle the anti-social Glitches without ruining the game for everyone else?
I have ideas, but I don't want to bias the discussion any more than I already have in coming out soundly in favor of not wasting the time and currants of people who want or need spice.
Some of the questions I'm posing are:
1) Is subjective beauty more important than objective time?
2) Is the first question answerable?
3) If not, how do we balance the desires of the aesthetes against the desires of the impatient?
4) What procedures do we, as a community, pursue in order to handle these kinds of situations in the future?
But feel free to answer questions I'm asking implicitly or not at all if they are relevant.