[MUD-Dev] UI Issues: Anti-scripting techniques

[Adam Wiggins]

[Shawn H:]
> On Sun, 5 Oct 1997, Travis Casey wrote:
> > >I'm against numeric displays of anytype except where they represent
> > >something that could be realistically measured on some scale within
> > >the game.  In most cases I believe they lead directly to power gaming
> > >attempts and indirectly to scripting/spamming.  If you simply must
> > >use a gradual improvement % based skill system, I believe that using
> > >incompetent for 01-10, barely competent for 11-20, etc. would give
> > >the necessary feedback to the player while doing much to hide any
> > >gains from spamming or scripting, reducing the incentive as it were.
> > 
> > I like using numbers -- they're easy to display and understand,
> > where many "descriptive" systems use adjectives where it can be
> > hard to tell which is better.  Also, since Arabic numerals are used
> > in many languages, they make it easier for players who aren't
> > native English speakers.	
> > 
> > However, there's no reason my the numbers displayed have to be the
> > actual numbers that the mud uses internally.	The players might be
> > shown their skills on a 0 to 10 scale, for example, even though the
> > mud internally uses a 0 to 100 scale.
> 
> Quite true.  However, this becomes a more involved question if you've
> adopted a system as I have (similar to the one you posted about
> relative skill comparisons).
> 
> How does one tell the player what skill level he is at with a
> relative system such as that?  I detest seeing "Your broadsword skill
> is at 80%".  It is incorrect to say "You are very good at picking

Percent is something used by skill systems rated from 1 to 100 that I
really despise.  It's terribly misleading, IMO.

> locks", since not all locks require the same amount of skill to pick
> (nor are all locks requiring a range of skill X to Y necessarily
> similar, which would render the message "You are very good at picking
> Yale locks" acceptable).  Ideally, I want to present "You are capable
> of besting the meanest of red dragons" or somesuch, but that implies
> that somewhere a calculation has gone on that was aware of the
> meanest red dragon in the world.  I think this sort of thing depends

Not only that, but it requires that the player have some knowledge about
how tough mean red dragons are.  Hardened veterans of the fantasy genre
probably know that a red dragon is tougher than a wyvern or a drake, but
not as tough as a chromatic dragon or a dracolich.  What we're talking
about here is context.  As I see it, there are a couple of contexts that
you can choose:

- Import one from related settings.  The red dragon thing, above, would fall
into this category.  The message from the ideal armor rating (best possible)
on SillyMUD is, I believe, "Armored like a dragon".  Most people familiar with
any sort of fantasy know that dragons are well-armored.  This has the advantage
of being familiar without stepping outside the bounds of the game's setting,
assuming that you're using a setting that isn't completely different from
established conventions.
- Import one from the real world.  This is nice because you can assume anyone,
even non-fantasy readers, can understand the context.  I don't like it because
it is outside the game's setting in many cases.  For example, "Armored like
a tank" would be fine for anyone familiar with modern-day tanks, but hardly
fits with a fantasy setting.  If it's not a fantasy setting, than this is
probably inaccurate, unless you happen to be driving an M-1 when you happened
to check your armor rating.
- Leave it entirely in-game.  This is, of course, basically ignoring the
problem.  On one hand, this will cause players to learn what the game scale
is and then all is fine.  On the other hand, it makes things confusing for
newbies, which is one of the things we were trying to get around with this
whole discussion.  Thus, a rating displayed in a graphical bar of some sort
would be fine, but it would take a while for people to get aquinted with the
fact that a bar of about halfway in 'climb' is good enough to make it up
Mt. Steep but not Mt. Toughie or Mt. Impossible.

Personally I like the last one the best.  Here's why: a context is
created just with a single listing of skills.  Consider:

Character creation complete.
You enter the game.
> skills
Your skills:
swordplay: 10
lockpicking: 3
burger-flipping: 28
climbing: 12
>

You now know that your character's best ability is burger-flipping.  The
context formed is relative to what's around it.  This doesn't say anything
about the scale, although the player may well assume that it's a scale of
1 to 100.  They could get their skill in swordplay up to 80 and think
that they are a really kick-ass swordfighter, until they happen to meet up
with someone that has a skill of 564.

We discussed options about text which relates you to whomever else you've
ever seen, ie:

> stats
Strength: You are the strongest person in the world.
Intelligence: You are a super-genius.
Constitution: You're tough as nails.
>
Bob arrives from the south.
Bob flexes his arms.
Bob leaves north.
> stats
Strength: You are a skinny wimp.
Intelligence: You are a super-genius.
Constitution: You're tough as nails.
>
Buffy arrives from the south.
Buffy stabs a knife into her arm without wincing.
Buffy leaves north.
> stats
Strength: You are a skinny wimp.
Intelligence: You are a super-genius.
Constitution: You have the pain tolerance of a small child.
>
Boffo arrives from the south.
Boffo quickly explains the theory of relativity.
Boffo leaves north.
> stats
Strength: You are a skinny wimp.
Intelligence: You're dumb as a post.
Constitution: You have the pain tolerance of a small child.

I wasn't too keen on this, as I didn't see it as a bonus from the
player's standpoint (other than being mildly amusing for a while), nor
did I see a clean way to do it.  Something simple, like rating according
to race (a strength rating of 'great' from an elf is the same as 'good' for
a human and 'lousy' for an ogre), isn't a bad option, if you want to make
it more difficult for players to pin down the exact numbers.

As to the numbers versus text thing, I am always in favor of not showing
any numbers.  However, as both a player and an implementor, I've come
to the conclusion that they are really pretty nice all around.  Travis hit
most of the key points - my main problem is the ambiguity of text outputs.
Is an 'incredible' strength higher or lower than an 'amazing' strength?
For an extremely amusing example of this, check out the ratings in the
Might and Magic games.  Your characters started with regular D&D stats
(3 - 21, I think it was) but as the game went on they got higher and higher
due to gear and other affects until they were often into the three digits.
However, the 'ratings' were all based on the D&D scale.  Thus you got to
see, starting around 20, your text rating change every ten points or so,
starting with 'great' and moving up through 'excellent', 'incredible',
'amazing', 'stunning', 'fantastic', 'astounding'...without numbers these
would have been meaningless.  As it was they were completely superfluous,
and just plain inaccurate.

> 	< look
> 	You're at the entrance to a cave.
> 	< score
> 	You've unsurpassed skill in every possible task!
> 	< Hot Damn!
> 	< consider squirrel
> 	You have no idea if you can beat the squirrel.
> 	< WTF?
> 	< kill squirrel
> 	Your slash misses the squirrel.
> 	The squirrel's bite ===OBLITERATES=== you.
> 	You die.
> 	< delete
> 
> That is not something I'd like to see...nor is the same scenario, with:

Well, one would like to assume that one could make reasonable assumptions
about such things.  Most people don't spend a lot of time considering how
dangerous someone is, but if asked, they could probably come up with something.
Thus, the 'consider' should have reported something like:

It is one eighth your size.  It moves very quickly.  It has long, razor-sharp
claws.

If you check your stats and find that you're slow, check your equipment
and find that you're naked, you might realize that it will cut you up
pretty bad if you provoke it.  On the other hand, you can probably assume
that, at it's size, you are significantly stronger than it, as well as being
pretty difficult for it to kill without a special method (like a snake's
venom).  Of course, all this assumes that your combat is 'realistic'
enough for this to all be true.  If it's not then you don't have much
choice but to make the consider command take into account things that you
couldn't normally, in order to make things 'fair'.  It's ridiculous to
think that a person can't gauge to some degree of accuracy the potential
for harm to another being possesses.  They may have hidden methods (like
a black widow or a vorpal bunny) but you can at least see their size,
arms, armor, etc.

> 	< score
> 	You suck rocks in every possible skill.

This makes a little more sense to me.  I don't know exactly how good of
an ice fisher I am, since I've never done it, nor known anyone that has
told me anything about it.  I am aware that such a thing exists, however,
and I can probably assume that I'm no good at it.

> 	< Hmph.
> 	< consider squirrel
> 	You have no idea if you can beat the squirrel.
> 	< kill squirrel
> 	Your slash ===OBLITERATES=== the squirrel.
> 	The squirrel is dead!
> 	You've become better at swordplay!

I'd just as soon get rid of squirrels altogether, of course.  IMO this
argument becomes that much more valid when you substitute a 'real' creature
such as a goblin.  On many muds, goblins are weak, pathetic creatures that
any newbie can beat.  On some muds, they are weak, pathetic creatures that
exist in large numbers and can swarm any character into the ground.  If
all you had ever read before playing a given mud was The Hobbit, you'd
probably think that goblins were fearsome, powerful creatures of the dark
that rode wolves and ate anything they could get their jaws around.
Still, I should be able to look at the goblin and see that it's either
half my size and wielding a rusty kitchen knife, or twice my size with
huge teeth and a razor-sharp pair of swords.

> also makes my flesh crawl.  In a relative skill system, how
> does one effectively (without misleading) convey a newbie's skills to him?
> Do they all start out as "You're okay at just about everything"?  I know
> I'd rather have an inkling of how good I am at picking locks before I play
> my newbie Houdini...

Also I think this should be defined in character creation.  If you say
that your character has limited experience with escapism but never bothered
with swordplay, I can start the game knowing that I'm a better escape artist
than fighter.

> I would like players to be able to get an idea if they could succeed at
> something like killing an NPC solely from its description and whether or
> not the player has beaten something like it in the past.  There is,
> however, no requirement that the description contain the information that
> every player who ever looks at that NPC would like to see to make a
> determination of whether or not he'd win.  I think the system has to help
> out here and give some feedback on where the player stands with respect to
> someone else.  That much is easy once they've played a while (indeed, after
> they've made their first kill), but if they've never killed anyone, are
> they good at it, bad at it, or okay at it?  Is there any way they can get
> a general idea aside from just "consider"ing it?

Looks, as I said.  This requires intense consitency in your world.  It's
common for muds now to have a wolf in one place which any newbie can kill,
and a wolf someplace else that is mildly difficult for a mid-level character
and completely impossible for a newbie.  Usually these were created by
different people but have similarly menacing descriptions, ie 'A vicious
wolf with powerful, slathering jaws.'  IMO this consitency is desired
both for the players and the builders.  However you have to design things
to work this way from the ground up.