[MUD-Dev] Alright... IF your gonan do DESIESE...

[coder at ibm.net]

On 25/05/97 at 12:20 PM, cg at ami-cg.graysage.edmonton.ab.ca (Chris
Gray) said: >[Chris L:]

>:Its been too long since we've had any decent size posts.  This list
>:used to be rife with 30K signal filled chunks. 

>Actually, I prefer the smaller posts - easier on the meatware!

Yeah, but they tend to fall into being just idle comments without any
real in-depth discussion or debate over the validity of a given point. 


>[Much discussion of death, partial death, etc.]

>You seem to have a strong desire for "something different". 

Yup.

>I can
>understand that, but you want to make sure that when everything is
>done, the game is still playable. 

I confidently predict that the majority of current MUD players,
especially the DIKU-ites will not consider it playable by any scale
they are currently familiar with.  

>However, it strikes me that something
>that few players will put up with for long is a lot of frustration.

Yup, this is why I'm not making the multiple bodies etc etc etc yada
yada a fundamental part of the initial approach to the game.  I intend
for the game to be initially playable from a single-character
hack'n'slash monty haul PoV.  All the rest comes in as the players
find out that that bumph is but surface dressing on the real meat and
feature set of the game.

Going back to ShadowHouse and the recent coverage for Fortress Fract
and the Blue Grass Path -- none of the new players even thought about
attempting it.  For one it was to tough to get to, asnd too confusing
when they got there.  Only the fairly experienced players knew enough
about the game to realise what they offered, and that Fract and the
BGP were the high-risk high-challenge fast lane if they could stomache
it.

I'm not real sure how as yet, but I'm hoping to arrange for the same
sort of split again, where the munchkins can wander about slaughtering
fido's (somebody kill be if I ever put a fido in a game in anything by
spoof) while acting as a breeding pool for real players who start
digging into the more interesting aspects.  Maybe the ratio will be as
high as 1 in 100 players ever goes past the DIKU-dumb approach.  I
hope it will be that high.

>On the other end of the scale, killing off a character that
>has taken a lot of effort to develop, can also be quite frustrating.

I am very tempted to seperate death into two classes:

  1) The game kills you.  Do something stupid like step the wrong way
into quick sand and drown.

  2) You kill yourself.  Do somthing stupid like pick on the wrong
player/mobile and get yourself slaughtered.

#1 I consider entirely excusable, especially in the case of
exploration.  If they are in the condition where they are only running
one body, I'm thinking about doing nothing but resetting the character
back to initial condition.  This doesn't mean a whole lot except that
they lose everything they gained, their body is reincarnated with all
name assignmnets etc left intact, and they are dropped back in the
world.  

#2 is stupid and inexcusable.  Delete the character.

Point has often been raised here with newbie killers.  The difference
is that with the lack of a global naming system its *really* tough to
find another character unless you have a pre-assigned name for their
body.  As such its easy to determine if someone has logged in, but
very tough to impossible to determine where they are in the game (or
even what body they are controlling), and whether or not they are
newbies.  Character bodies are entirely anonymous.

>In typical computer games, backups are allowed, which lets the player
>try dangerous things, but without the thread of losing everything.
>The fact that so many games do that (starting with the Scott Adams
>adventures, and continuing with Infocom) must say something about
>what is perceived as making a playable game.

Agreed.  I've been thinking about this.  Currently I've been hoping to
use this very point as a way of encouraging players into the
multi-body realms.  Get a second body, park is somewhere safe and just
ignore it to have semi-guaranteed immortality.  

>:I've attempted to solve this in a round-about way, mostly via
>:side-effects of other design decisions.

>And you have come up with some very interesting things by doing so. I
>like the concepts of body stealing, body-less godhood, watching
>through another character's body's eyes, the spirit world, etc. 

Excellant!

>It
>would take me a while to get comfortable with using the system,
>however. 

Yeah -- I'm fairly sure there is no way about this.  Its a larning
curve no matter what.

>It seems to me that your system is aimed at the advanced MUD
>player. Is that a conscious choice?

Its more implicit than definitional.  I like highly detailed games,
and so that's what I try and create.  (Actually I absolutely adore
incredibly simple games where the complexity is outside of the rules
(eg Sokoban, Go, Yote, Omnigon).  I'm not fond of the lego-class
stuff, and so tend to ignore that.  I'm particularly trying to head
for "advanced players" per se

>I'm going to leave comments about the actual details to the advanced
>MUD players on the list - I don't feel qualified to comment further.

Hey, you play MUDs occassionally -- you're more than qualified.

>Re: Silverlock. I'm pretty sure I've got it around here somewhere,
>but a quick search didn't find it. It must be buried in a box of
>paperbacks. I must admit to not remembering anything about the story,
>but just remember the picture on the cover. Vague ticklings about the
>story are there, but no details. (Just shows I read too much!)

It is probably the most allusion dense piece of fiction I have ever
read.  I have a pretty decent literary bakground, and I *know* I only
caught about 20% of the allusions and references in there.  OTOH had
it was an incredibly riotous and hilarious read (remember the Friar
who watched his fellow monks be staughtered with indifference, but
only got upset when the barbarians spilled the wine on the grain and
proceeded to single-handledly slaughter them wholesale for such
sacriledge?)

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...