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

[coder at ibm.net]

On 25/05/97 at 12:21 PM, Adam Wiggins <nightfall at user1.inficad.com>
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.  

>Yeah, but back then we were getting ~5 messages a day.  

True...

>Now we're
>seeing like 40...don't even have time to read them all,
>unfortunately.  Unlike the newsgroups they are almost 100% signal, so
>I can't just depend on skipping past 90% of it...

What a problem.  Terrible isn't it?

Actually this is of concern to me.  I don't want the list to be a
victem of its own success.  Traffic levels show every sign of
continuing to grow -- even with our paltry subscriber list (we're
still under 50 members).  I've already received several comments that
some members are starting to go into overwhelm both with the high
signal level signal level and traffic volume.  

What to do?  Is it really a problem?  Suggestions and comments welcome
either directly to me at coder at null.net or here in the list.

>> Bartle raises the point that on a goal/level oriented game, that
>> without permanent death, a mediocre or even flat out incompetent
>> player can have utter certainty that they will make Wiz or top level
>> if they merely persist in their plodding way for long enough.  His
>> contention, and I agree, is that this is a Bad Thing.  The problem

>Well...yes, although this doesn't necessarily bother me so much. 
>What does bother me are all the little problems that arise without
>permenant death (corpse retreival, how to handle exp loss, loss of
>RP).  Worst of all, I feel that death not being permenant basically
>cheapens the entire experience.  Death is now an annoyance, not
>something to be feared.

Is this last piece of cheapening death that is the other real kicker
here.  Death instantly becomes a minor setback akin to watching
someone else get your favoured weapon first on a DIKU.

>The lesson I learned from this, which has served me well ever since,
>is: DON'T EXPLORE.  

Yup.  This is something else I want to get rid of.  I specifically
want to create a world which enourages (and rewards) exploration and
experimentation.  

>> I don't have a pat answer.  I believe that the discouragement to
>> experimentation is less of a Bad Thing than the knowledge that mere
>> persistance will always win the day.  I also really dislike the idea
>> that a player will lose his character because he got hit by net lag at
>> just the wrong time (I've seen fights on Shades start and finish all
>> in the time one player was waiting on net lag -- he (me) was unhappy
>> about that).  As such I believe that a player should be able to
>> largely protect himself against permanent death. 

>I'm not so worried about this, actually.  What I dislike about
>strategic muds as they exist these days is that you spend *so* long
>building up your character.  Sure, if I had invested 60 hours (not at
>all uncommon) in a character and one bit of net lag could destroy it
>all in the blink of an eye, I'd consider that a pretty unplayable
>game.

>Our solution is to make it 'easy come, easy go.'  ...

I like the idea of character investment and loss.  It is the obverse
of not cheapening death.  Easy come easy go would seem to make death
all the cheaper.

>If you want to be
>someone who fights for a living, fine - you'll probably find that
>most of your skills are pretty easy to advance.  It's just that death
>can come quickly and unexpectedly - attacking lots of people is a
>good way to make enemies, certainly.  Thus fighter-types will tend to
>be 'live fast, die young.' We decided this was viable because this is
>how they do it in a lot of the roguelike games (moria, nethack,
>angband) and it works just fine.  When your character dies, you go,
>'Hum.  Well, that was fun.  Maybe I'll try a half-troll cleric...' 
>Instead of, 'DAMN!  All that work, DOWN THE DRAIN!!' (Of course, this
>is also related to those games being fun from the minute you start
>them, instead of only once you get high-level.)  If you had a
>savegame feature in these games, you'd be able to beat them in no
>time at all. If you don't want to die - don't throw yourself into
>danger!  You can have a perfectly good time playing cards, learning
>blacksmithing or sewing, scouring the forests for herbs and preparing
>concoctions, studying thaumaturgy and searching the land for new
>spells, or whatever.

Which is porbably why hacks to Rogue/Angband/Moria/Hack/Larn/etc to
allow unlimited save/restore games  were so popular.  Gotta think
about this.

>I guess the main solution is just that there's very little that is
>overtly aggressive.  You really have to look for trouble to find it. 
>(No doubt many players will indeed look for trouble, which is
>fine...they'll get what they want.)

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

>Yeah.  I think this falls into the 'irrelevant' bin.  Once you go
>back and fix other fundamental flaws with the AD&D/powermud style
>game design, the symptoms which we are discussion kind of fade away. 

Precisely.

>>   Password for Bernie: ........
>>   Password for Murgatroyd: ........

>Hmmm, why do you need different passwords for each character?  I
>thought this was one of the advantages of doing the account bit.

Variations in levels of privacy.  A player can let a friend have one
of his characters for a while without exposing all his characters. 
Not sure its a good idea, or a bad.

>> endurance, size, etc.  The character stats are all the touchy-feelie
>> stats like magic ability, will power, etc.  The account stats are a

>Will power - I thought you didn't like modeling mental stats, Chris?

I don't like stats which I feel attempt to take the place of or
obviate the human player.  Will power is one that cuts awfully close
to that line, but as strength of will is going to be a major battle
weapon, I couldn't think of another way about it.

>  > l me
>  You are awfully handsome.
>  There is an arrow stuck in your leg.
>  > pull out arrow
>  You start pulling, but it hurts too much, so you stop.
>  > pull out arrow, you fucking pussy!
>  You renew your efforts, but it's just too painful for you. 
>  > grumble

Nahh.  I'd have the character pull the arrow out of his leg and then
note internally, "resistance to pain is high, ability to act
causitively while under pain high, expressed determination high", all
of which would be component factors for the game to consider this
player formdiable.  

Note however, that rather than encourage players to go get stuck with
arrows and then pull them out for the above gains, they also get a
much bigger black mark against them for getting stuck in the first
place.  The game will attempt to notice when you are doing extremely
well and everything is going your way, and will bend the rules of luck
and probability to help -- however it will also notice when things
start to fail, and will then bend the rules against the player,
encouraging and flat out causing him to fail more often.  This of
course brings up the general point of causitively controlling
probability, a generally fascinating idea which I'll discuss in
another post.

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