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

[Adam Wiggins]

[Chris L:]
> 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.

Hmmm...well it's not *really* a problem, it just means I don't read
everything that comes through.  Nothing wrong with that, I suppose.
I imagine that trying to split things up by thread is pretty pointless,
given the way that threads wander.  I suppose you could write a little
script to grep for certain keywords to activate the thread keyword...
ie, "java", "C++", "ColdX" and so on would trigger [Language], "role-playing"
would trigger [Role Playing], and so on.  Dunno how well that would
work or even if anyone would care.

> >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.

Well, there's two sides to this.  On the one hand, I don't want death
to be such a devestating experience that you go, "Awww...what's the point?"
and give up playing all together.  I'd like to think that if it's a young
character who hadn't gotten that far anyhow, you'll just say, "Ah dang,
I was starting to like him."  If it's someone you've been playing for a
long time and you've become attached to, it should be more like "Good-bye
old friend.  We've had some good times."  Of course, this might also
depend upon the manner of death...hopefully someone that you were that
attached to died in an appropriate way.  I see no need (or easy way)
to guarentee this, though, other than a human DM overseeing things (something
I absolutely don't want).

> >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.  

Yup.  I'd like to think that the world is a dangerous and unpredictable
place, but that someone who is quick on their feet and at least mildly
competant with basic survival skills can explore most of it without
encountering certain death.

> >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.

Hmmm...this may be true, but I don't really think so.  See above - you
can invest a lot of time in a character and become attached to them,
but hopefully your invested time was not something you feel you "lost".
The player should feel that that time was time spent having fun and learning
about the game world, rather than time spent trying to 'build' up their
character, even though they are doing that, too.  Part of it is the
evening of power levels - on a normal numbers-mud, a 1st level character
can hardly go *anywhere* without getting instantly slaughtered.  Since
the difference between a new character and an old, experienced one is
much smaller, you can still go all the places you used to go and do the
things you used to do.  Is this making any sense?

> >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
> 
> 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.

Well, no hacks are really necessary as long as you are the admin of the
system you're playing on - you can just copy the files around, set creation
dates or whatever.  Angband doesn't do any validity checking at all,
as far as I know, so you were free to back up your savegames all you liked.
Of course, the game was just so much more fun and rewarding when you didn't
back up the savegames (I felt, anyhow, and most of my Angband-playing
friends agreed).  I guess I want to capture that same effect, even though
the gameplay of our mud is nothing like those games.  If you were descent
at the game, you could make it to the deeper levels in no time at all - but
nothings to say you wouldn't get unlucky and have a couple of ancient
multi-hued dragons load up right around the corner and all of them
breathe on you and kill you instantly.  Now that I think of it, the thing
I really liked was that you could control the way you played the game
very easily.  If you played a cautious game, making sure you had all
the proper resistances and stats before descending below certain levels,
always making sure that you are at a dungeon depth that was easy for your
character to handle, retreating from fights that weren't certain victory,
you could pretty easily (albiet slowly) go through the entire game without
ever being in a whole lot of danger.  If you played recklessly, though,
going down whenever you saw a staircase, plunging downwards despite the
abscence of nether resistance or whatever, you ran a much higher risk of
hitting things you couldn't handle, and frequently faced instant obliteration.
But! - you also progressed *much* more quickly, and got the thrill of
trying to take on things that were really "too hard" for you.  And, if
by some incredible stroke of luck, or more likely some really good
tactical thinking on your part, you managed to kill a Dracolich with your
24th level warrior, you get a very nice reward - tons and tons of experience,
really nice items, and so on.
So....my point is, this is what I like.  You choose how to play your
game - if you don't ever attack any dragons, life is a lot safer.  But
if you *do* manage to attack and kill one, you get the immense benefit of
its hoarde (not to mention bragging rights).  If this works correctly,
you'll never feel you died 'unfairly' (died when the dragon breathed,
eh? big surprise..).  It's fine to have dangerous stuff around (dragons
ravaging the land, even) as long as there are ways 'out' for a
semi-ingenious player (hiding where the dragon can't see you, running away,
whatever).

It's this:

The dark figure of a huge, winged creature is approaching from the south.
>
The sound of heavy breathing and giant wings flapping reaches your ears.
> hide between rocks
You try to push yourself between the rocks...it's an awfully tight fit!
>
The dragon is looming closer, approaching from the south.
>
You manage to squeeze all the way between the rocks.
You hope you don't have to go anywhere soon, because you seem to be
 pretty well stuck.
>
The dragon flies overhead, its keen eyes scanning the landscape.
>
The dragon flies off northward.

versus:

The dragon has arrived from the south.
The dragon OBLITERATES you with its deadly bite!
You are mortally wounded, and will die soon if not aided.
> swear
You don't seem to be in any shape for that.

> >>   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.

That's fine - why not just implement simple user-level sharing?
Ie:

1) Bubba the Troll, 22 years old. (access: awiggins)
...
> access bubba +clawrence
Bubba's access now includes awiggins and clawrence.
> access bubba -awiggins
Bubba's access now includes clawrence.
> access bubba -clawrence
Bubba is now accessable only by you.

> 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.  

Hmmm...so when, pray tell, would a player ever *not* want to pull the
arrow out of their leg?  Not only to they have to deal with having an
arrow stuck in their leg, but the game doesn't think they are as
tough or decisive.

> 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.

I'm confused how this helps gameplay.  This means that, if everything
bad seems to be happening to your character, you can assure that they
will only get worse, no matter what you do? *boggle*