[MUD-Dev] A flamewar startingpoint.

[Adam Wiggins]

[Derrick Jones:]
> On Wed, 12 Nov 1997, Adam Wiggins wrote:
> > > unfriendly to us as players as well.  You can extend this to badly
> > It depends - I see a 'wicked' design to be a good thing - unfriendly
> > to your character but more interesting to you as a player.  A just
> > plain mean design which is meant to make you feel stupid or slow
> > or otherwise incapable is no fun, yes.
> 
> Yes, very true.  Let the game do mean things to the players.  But there
> should be a reason the game is doing these things.  Example of 'mean'
> design used well would be killing characters who decide to go for an
> unprotected lava bath.  'Mean' design used poorly would be to pick a
> random character and have them suffer a fatal heart-attack.  The
> difference is accountability. in good designs bad things happen to
> characters for a reason, in poor designs either bad things don't happen
> when they should or they happen when they shouldn't.

Right.  Well, there's a certain amount of unpredictibility that I like
to keep players on their toes, but on a broad scope the above is
very applicable.  For instance, Arctic is well known for being a wickedly
designed mud, which is what IMO makes it as good as it is.  For instance,
the lock on the front gate to Silvanesti has a trap that paralyzes anyone
that touches it and then teleports them someplace randomly in the area.
The first time we did it my buddy (who boldly tried to pick the lock)
got teleported in front of Cyan Bloodbane, a particularly nasty dragon
who is regarded as possibly the most dangerous creature on the mud.  It's
wicked because it's unexpected and harsh.  It's not specifically mean,
however, because everyone there knew that Silvanesti was the most dangerous
area on the mud, and everyone there was prepared to face incredible and
unpredictable danger.  This example is particularly harsh, but still
within reason.

> I don't feel the game is making fun of us if the design makes us looks
> clumsy.  It is a matter of game focus.  If you want to test a players
> ability to master the controls, then make the controls hard to manage.  If

I can't think of any situation where this is really fun.  Unless you mean
some sort of in-game controls (trying to figure out how to fly a complex
alien spacecraft in a pinch), the actual interface to the game being
difficult is hardly entertaining.

> you want the game to be the focus, make the controls be easily mastered,
> but the game elements difficult to master.  If you want the world to be

Which is, IMO, ideal.

> On an aside, if being 'forced' to play a character that is less dextrous/
> less intelligent than the player becomes boring and tedious (and therefore
> not a feasible option), and the character shouldn't by default be equally
> intelligent/equally dextrous (then player =3D=3D character, which is also
> unacceptable), then I must ask how one is to role-play a character more
> intelligent than themselves?  That seems to be a paradox.  You don't want
> the game controlling your character, but (assuming you're of normal
> intelligence) you're not qualified to play a character of god-like
> intlligence...I personally prefer to play _really_ stupid characters
> because it's great turning off my brain for a few hours.  Unfortunately my
> characters usually have very short life expectancies.  ("Dragon? I'm not
> 'fraid of no stinkin' dragon!")

Heh.  Well, I think most folks take the RPG intelligence stat far
too literally.  In a true RP game, it's a guideline for how you play your
character, yes.  In a game where your stats affect how your character
functions, I see it as a more basic kind of intelligence - your character's
abillity to learn new information and skills quickly, their ability to
focus mental energies of various types, and so forth.  I don't see it as
their ability to solve crime or speak with all their thees and thous in
the right place.

> > > In a MUD you can easily reach a situation where something happening to
> > > your character is perceived as happening to us, or even worse if a
> > > roleplayed character really dies.  I would perceive that as loosing
> > > some of my personality freedom and investment of time (which is
> > > convertible to money)...
> 
> Yes, but who is _really_ to blame for the fate befallen our character?
> Another character with its own wants and needs?  Then the problem isn't
> with design.  As a matter of fact there's no problem at all.  The player
> controlling the character?  Then there should be punishment for doing
> something stupid/out-of-character.  Players usually assign blame to the
> code.  "That mobile attacked me back!" or "How come I died when I decided
> to step off that cliff?" and "I was hunted down and attacked by a savage
> gang of orcs!" are complaints every adminstrator should hear from the bad
> players as they leave.  I'm targeting my game towards the type that
> realizes that mobiles defend themselves any way then can, doing something
> stupid gets you killed, and that orcs are to be avoided when theres an
> army of them storming the plains...

I think the only valid complaints here are just things which are
inconsistant within your world.  Ie, the famous old stepping off of a cliff
with a fly spell on but somehow still plummeting to your death.

> > Well, we beat this one nearly to death a while back.  Caliban and
> > some of the other hardcore role-playing types felt that any time you
> > loose control over your character's fate the game has failed.  Others
> > (myself included) feel that if you can control your character's fate
> > 100% all the time (ie, there is no external factors affecting them)
> > that the game itself looses much of its meaning.
> 
> It comes down to what you concider to be in control.  Are you in control
> in a MUSH-style combat, using emotes to solve disputes?  How about with
> IMP-monitored combat?  Using a set probability chart (pre-known) to
> determine the outcome?  Using a hidden probability chart?  Personally, I
> feel players stay in control as long as they are aware that they are
> losing direct access to their character and why.  (for example the player
> doesn't determine how much damage a broad-sword strike will do, but they
> are still 'in control' of the combat)

Nod, I suppose it's very dependant on the game.  When you're playing
Star Fox and your character yells out, 'Take that you big meanie!' it's
flavor and I doubt anyone says, 'Hey no fair!  I didn't tell him to say
that!'  But if my character did that on a mud I'd be pretty annoyed.

> > > >I don't think it's so much deception as it is instant death.  Deceptio=
> n is
> > > >okay as long as you don't go overboard (ie, Paul Reiser's character in
> > > >Aliens added immensley to that movie, but if everyone on the space mar=
> ines
> > > >squad had been deceiving each other, it would have gotten a bit old).
> > >=20
> > > Uh, but deception by a character (whom you might have reasons to not
> > > trust) and the gameworld (which you would expect to be reasonable) is
> > > two different things.
> 
> But what happens when that character is part of the gameworld?

Um...I don't quite follow.  Isn't the character always a part of the
gameworld?

> > Okay, maybe I should have said that he was overgeneralizing.
> > He said 'Avoid deception', when he should have said 'Avoid having
> > seemingly straightforward elements in the gameworld which deceive in
> > such a way so as to annoy the player and add nothing to the game
> > experience.'
> 
> Again, I restate. Bad things should happen for a reason.  If something in

Better yet (as long as we're going for generalizations) - ALL things
should happen for a reason.

> the gameworld would benifit from seeing bad things happen to a PC, then
> there's a good erason for the gameworld to deceive the players.  However,
> challenges faced should relate to the task at hand.  With the scuba gear
> analogy, ask how the scuba gear got there in the first place.  If it was
> set there by a character within the gameworld as a deliberate trap for the
> PC, then I don't see a problem with the scenario, as long as players have
> a reason to suspect that the gear is faulty (i.e. you don't leave stuff
> for them to use sitting out on a regular basis, so they would natually be
> suspicious of such a 'freebe').

Yup.  This is the difference, once again, between a game world like a mud
and an adventure game.  The game world is more like real life in that
picking up a piece of food you find on the ground and eating it is a bad
idea.  In an adventure game this is rarely a problem.

> Also, deliberate deception can be quite amusing.  One of my barbarians had
> a rather long combat sequence with a (completely inanimate) stone statue.
> "It's just waiting for us to let our guard down to attack!!!". It didn't
> end until one the mages present dissolved the stone statue (which of
> course proved my barbarians point: it dissolved once he 'killed' it.) with
> a spell.

Smirk.  This brings up a completely unrelated beef of mine with current
muds (at least, ones with semi-sophisticated mechanics).  Generally the
system doesn't let you do anything it considers silly, ie the designer
said, "Why would you ever want to do that?"  On of the things I've always
wanted to be able to do is engage in combat with inanimate objects, for a lot
of reasons, the above being one of them.

> [snip Myst conversation]
> The problem I have with most of these little puzzles is that they seem
> completely unrelated to the rest of the game.  An example would be one
> game I've played where you're walking thru a haunted mansion and suddenly
> a cash register appears where you have to make certain change with a
> certain number of coins.  It seems like the designer of the game sent away
> for a 101 silly puzzles book and plopped random puzzles into random points
> of the game.

Yup.  Tony said they worked very hard to try to avoid this in the sequel.
Most of the puzzles revolved around these five types of animals, which were
featured around the game world in various forms, and most of the puzzles
related to this sort of imagery.  Of course, I found it all so esoteric
and disconnected from anything even slightly relevant that it might have
well been a cash-register.

> Also the original logic seems to contradict the original interactivity
> argument.  Players hate these little pauses because they are _not_ being
> interactive.  If They want to sit there and watch something mind-numbingly
> boring, the TV is there 24 hours a day.  Also, the pauses add nothing to
> the story in most cases, usually because the puzzles themselves are
> irrelavent and tedious.

Well, some good filler is always nice.  Wing Commander was largely
successful because they tied together the combat sequences with
simple cut-scenes and character interaction.  Of course, the key is that
you could skip over all of them if you weren't interested and wanted to
get straight to fighting, and you could always click through them quickly
if you were a fast reader, or didn't feel like watching a particular
animation again.

> > > >> But wait a second, that character is me!
> > > >
> > > >Again, I take exception to all of this because of the basic premise.
> > > >The character is *not* you, Glassner.  It is a character which comes w=
> ith
> > > >its own abilities, desires, and faults.  It is up to you to direct the
> > > >character most of the time, but it is not you.
> > >=20
> > > For a singleplayergame I would have to agree with Glassner, the
> > > character is me.
> 
> The characters we play are puppets.  The idea that people do not possess
> the ability do distinguish between the character and the player _really_
> frightens me.

Heh.  Never thought of it quite that way, but now that I think of it,
that IS a bit scary.

> Now I concede that we grow attached to our favorite little
> puppets, as they inevitably absorb quite a bit of our own personality, but
> our characters exist (at most) as separate individuals with their own
> motivations and abilities.  The personality of a mud character is an
> illusion, just as the personality of a movie character is an illusion.
> Good role players make convincing illusions, but should never convince
> themselves.  As I said earlier, I play morons because I am forced to act
> intelligently in RL, and its very cathardic to be able to do whatever
> _doesn't_ come naturally to me.  (kick in doors without checking to see if
> they're locked--or even closed--always raises an eybrow or two)

Nod.  This same sort of thing can apply to just about any character type -
picking pockets when you are an honest citizen all day long, being a pious
priest when you're actually an athiest, being an evil power-hungry mage
when you spend the day enforcing justice.
Not only can you see it as a little 'vaction from yourself', but it's
also a chance to see the world through a different perspective, something
which I think most everyone can benefit from.

> > > >> Never take over control of the player's character.
> > > >
> > > >Again the logic is sound, but as a player I can't agree.  I *like*
> > > >cut scenes, when done right (again, all the Lucasarts game do them wel=
> l).
> > >=20
> > > But it wrecks immersion.
> >=20
> > I guess it's just subjective.  I find games without cut-scenes
> > less immersive, because it usually means no story and no character
> > motivation.
> >=20
> As far as cut-scenes are concerned, they are usually used to narrow the
> scope of the game, to keep the plot more linear.  As such, they have

Adevnture games *are* linear, so I don't see cut scenes as doing much
more damage.

> little place in muds, which should concentrate on widenening the plot of
> the game.

Oh yes, of course.  I can't even imagine how one could actually
do any sort of a cut scene for a mud.

> This only applies where there is an important desicion to be
> made durin the cut-scene.  The text equivalent to the cut scene would be
> to slowly send text to the player, having them simply wait until the text
> passes before proceding onto the next challenge.  This would be a great
> response to the command 'walk to town_X'.  The game would describe the
> scenery the character passes, and the waiting would simulate the character
> actually travelling, as well as keeping the character in the same
> time-line as the other players.  Now if the character decides that they
> wanted to walk to town_Y half way there, then the town_X cut-scen would
> stop, then a separate cut-scene for 'walk to town_Y' would be generated
> and sent to the player.

Hum.  I see this as automated travel, not a cut scene.
The closest think I can think of is the text you're sent when you
activate something.  Ie, you push a button and a door swings open, then
an image of the necromancer's disembodied head floats above the floor saying
'You'll never breach my castle, adventurer!'  Pretty basic - it's a cut
scene because you can't try to cast a dispel on the illusion, or run
out of the room before it happens (I'm assuming it's all instantaneous),
or whatever.  It's just text which the game spits out at you, and the
object in question (the necromancer's head) isn't any real object.  At
best the code will check first to make sure the necromancer is actually
alive.  Pretty basic, and can sometimes add.  I try to avoid this sort
of thing myself.

> [snip some stuff completely unrelated to muds]
> > > >> character's personality, which fatally injures the development
> > > >> of the character and leads to a psychotic personality and
> > > >> uninteresting story.
> 
> > > I think he meant "not convincing", like a badly written novel. A novel
> > > is usually trying to make the reader feel/understand/reason with the
> > > main character in some sense, right?  I sure wouldn't enjoy a novel
> > > where I say to myself "oh well, this character is just plain stupid
> > > and boring, do me a favour, go jump off a cliff, will ya!". (Unless he
> > > does, of course ;)
> 
> This here I find odd.  What makes stupid characters unconvincing?  I like
> to think I play stupid characters quite convincingly. And yes I believe I
> have had a character die from jumping off a cliff (he didn't know any
> better).  Now as long as there are intelligent characters for which the
> idiot can act as a foil, the world is actually enriched by well-played
> morons.  Hrmm...anyone ever concider designing a MUD where all of the NPCs
> are _really_ stupid?  Man, would that be a riot to play, not to meantion
> darn near impossible if the world itself was consistant to idiots being in
> power ("I think main street would be a _great_ place for a pit-trap"
> declares the Mayor)

I have memories of an episode of Star Trek, next generation where they
encounter those 'We look for things which make us go' guys.