[MUD-Dev] Usability and interface and who the hell is suppo

[Jon A. Lambert]

On 17 Sep 97 at 11:01, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> 
> I've been thinking a lot on this, and it's occurred to me that realism is 
> much like security, in that it is the reciprocal of convenience. Or, more 
> in line with my experience, as security and/or realism increase linearly, 
> convenience and ease of use decrease exponentially.

Yes, exactly. This is true of board wargames, miniatures, and p&p 
rpgs as well. We also had an earlier thread on this entitled 
Realism vs. Playability, I think? 

> There's a lot of discussion here on how to make things 'better' for the 
> gamer. But many of these improvements, no matter how many exciting 
> possibilities they create, would make the actual game play more and more of 
> a pain in the behind; we discuss all sorts of vast designs that make almost 
> any action somewhat like programming. As programmers ourselves, we like 
> this! Hey, you don't just 'kill monster' -- you 'slash monster mid forward 
> lateral sword', or 'stab monster high left dagger'. 

Actually many of my FRPG friends refuse to mud because of the utterly 
simplistic combat.  None of them are programmers.  The 'kill monster' 
is a great deal more simple than most p&p rpgs.  I don't prefer the 
syntax you cited, but I do prefer the complexity and choices of 
action implied by it.

> Long commands? Bah, 
> just bind it to a hotkey in your client, which appropriately simulates a 
> trademark fighting style. Hey, 'wield sword' is too high-level... try 
> 'grasp sword handle right'! This can be extended, you see, so you can 
> 'grasp sword hilt both' for a more powerful thrust, or 'grasp dagger tip 
> left' in preparation for throwing. The possibilities are endless! And it's 
> so trivial, you just bind hotkeys and write scripts and stick additional 
> logic into the server so related skills add to your ability to do specific 
> things.

I haven't noticed anyone here advocating the above. 

You are forgetting the obligatory bathroom functions we have 
discussed in past threads.  ;)

-cut-
You really gotta go. NOW!
>unzip pants
Ok.
>pull down pants
Ok.
>squat
Ok.
>defecate
Ok.
>get toilet paper
You don't have that.
>say "Damn!"  
You say, "Damn!"
>get leaves
Ok.
Your torch flickers and goes out.
>wipe ass
You don't see that here.
>say "Oh shit!"  
You say, "Oh, shit!"
Someone snickers.
-cut-

> And lots of skills! A thousand, at least! 

Yes.  At least a hundred or two really "useful" skills/spells. A 
thousand might be pushing it. *grin*

Forty-two classes! 

What's a class?  I thought many on this list advocated abandoning 
this concept in favor of skills.  Not that there's anything wrong 
with classes.

> Eighteen races! Twelve genders! Three hundred and ten languages organised 
> into various degrees of ancient, classical, and modern with a related parse 
> tree that actually allows you to learn related languages faster!

This is certainly a thematic determination.  Many fantasy novels 
certainly have as many races as well as classes.  I don't see how 
this poses any user interface or playability problems.  Some 
confusion in regard to gender might result in some very odd and 
uncomfortble sexual situations.  My last p&p campaign had 17 distinct 
languages.  It never added any complexity to playability.  It did add 
to a sense of character identity and historical depth.

It's interesting that you attribute the claims to more races, 
classes, etc. to those on this list.  I haven't seen any postings 
here advertising "heavily-modified Circle" muds. ;)

Well Nathan did have some odd gender combinations, but they seemed 
very necessary and made for much more interesting alien life-forms.  
Far more interesting than those english-speaking humans with funny 
spots or bumps on their heads in Star Trek.

> Actually, it makes it easier, because you start to get sloppy. If someone 
> invests the time, like maybe someone with no life and no responsibilities 
> and nothing better to do, they can find the little areas where inevitably 
> game balance has been thrown out the window by a bad decision. You can't 
> effectively balance this many variables. Especially with a publicly 
> distributed server, which you can hack apart piece by piece and discover 
> the secrets of. Basically this means that real people with real jobs and 
> real lives are at a serious disadvantage compared to the twelve year old 
> who MUDs from school and home and dabbles in programming. This twelve year 
> old can invest forty hours of processing time on a program, no problem, and 
> also has no difficulty creating several hundred characters just to get an 
> analysis of starting stats. I'm sure many of us remember when we thought 
> nothing of starting and exiting a game in DOS several thousand times while 
> we hacked at the saved games with a hex editor trying to figure out where 
> the cool powers were. I'm sure many of us still do such things.

What seems to be lost in this is you have described a game with a 
SINGLE overriding goal.  The traditional HnS goal of killing to 
advance, advancing to max level, getting the best equipment. 
I'm not sure how any of this would apply to my game or many of the 
others I've read about here. 

> I see three main goals on this list which come up over and over:
> 
> 	1. Let's make the game really really versatile and complicated.
> 	2. Let's make the game really really difficult and challenging.
> 	3. Let's make the game really really different and interesting.

Yes.  More or less.

> But what keeps getting lost is the idea of the players. Someone somewhere 
> is going to have to play this game. Let's say you take the teamwork issues 
> we've discussed recently to heart, and make a game targeted at the standard 
> D&D style group of 4 to 6 people.  

I have never lost sight of my target audience *gasp* (Can't believe I 
said that).  It just doesn't mesh with the game above at all.

> Add onto that all the fantastic new concepts people bandy about here, and 
> people log on to find a game with cryptic documentation, seriously complex 
> usage guidelines, command sequences that bear far too much resemblance to a 
> BASIC program, and an arrogant administrative staff with a basic philosophy 
> of "up yours, this is our game and you don't have to play it". The game is 
> terribly different from other games, so it's hard to learn. It's incredibly 
> versatile, so it needs a lot of time and effort to get familiar with. And 
> it's more difficult, too, so you end up frustrated.

Different does not make it hard to learn. 
Different does not require programming in any shape or form.
Different does not entail a difficult to use command set.
Different DOES entail turning off hundreds of Diku-expectant players.

> I think we're losing our roots here. MUDs are founded in tabletop RPGs, 
> with the admins analogous to the gamemaster/DM/storyteller/Game Operations 
> Director. In any good tabletop campaign, a lot of effort is invested in 
> providing the players with FUN. 

Sadly mainstream MUDs have lost these roots.  I see nothing remotely 
resembling this on your "average" Diku or LP.  In general, your 
"average" Mush is much closer to these roots spiritually if not 
mechanically.

> But here on this list, it seems like that 
> has gone more or less out the window in favor of making the most incredibly 
> rich and complicated world we can; 

For me, yes. I still don't see how a richly detailed world relates to 
a more complicated user command set or harder to play.

> I think both concepts have real merit, 
> but I don't think either can be discarded. Consider the id software byline 
> of 'a bad game with a good story is a bad game; a good game with a bad 
> story is still a good game'. In this case, the world implementation and 
> complexity could be considered the story, while the actual player 
> interaction would be the game. A good game with a good story is nothing 
> short of phenomenal, and since most of us on this list appear to be 
> idealists, why aren't we spending more time discussing the ways players 
> interact with the game itself and whether it's actually going to be fun to 
> play?

Please do.  Do you mean mechanically?  Like User-interface?
 
> Part of this is who you target the game toward. There are groups within 
> groups within groups here, which can usually be divided up into bicameral 
> camps:

I'll give it a try.

> 	RP gamers and the rest
Yes.
> 	PK gamers and the rest
Must fall within RP category. 
> 	PO gamers and the rest
I'm not really sure what PO is. 
> 	Experienced MUDders and the rest
Not important.
> 	Experienced gamers and the rest
Sure. But they can learn.
> 	Programming types and the rest
No.
> 	Puzzle oriented types and the rest
No. 
> 	Solo players and the rest
No.
> 	Socialisers and the rest
Yes.

> along the line, you have to select some group to cater to because you can't 
> cater to them all. 

Exactly right. Unless you have a huge staff and commercial 
aspirations.

> It's 
> also occasionally helpful to select groups you do NOT want on the game, and 
> specifically hamstring those players in one way or another. 

Those irritating and obnoxious idiots.  You know, the ones you find 
on "everymud" ... :)

> If you want to discourage 
> power gamers, then make all the mobs low level and use very few of them.

How about no power or little power diferentiation?  Or throw out 
the traditional mud notions of power.  Or to put it another way give 
me a sword and give Bill Clinton a sword.  Who's more powerful?  In 
what way?  Is this sort of power the ONLY acceptable goal for a MUD?
The power to kill things?

> So here's my question. I know it was a long time in coming, but really -- 
> what sort of things do you look for in a MUD? How would you like to play, 
> if you were to log onto someone else's game and find that it was exactly 
> what you've always wanted?
> 

Ok. I'll try.  I have included portions of your opinion where I have 
agreement.

I like clear and consistent commands.  I do not mind NLP if it is an 
extension of the shortest possible command structure.  I love having 
a rich set of synonyms for verbs and nouns as long as consistency is 
maintained.  I hate artificial restrictions and inconsistencies like 
'You cannot pick up another player'.  I find it disturbing that one's 
sole interface to a mud be limited to a command interface, a concept 
that's been around since the 60's.  The success of Macintosh, 
Windows, and WWW interfaces are not solely predicated upon user 
stupidity.  Even mainframes have abandoned such archaic interfaces. 
Telnet really does suck and turns off thousands of potential users.

> My own personal expression options should be limitless. I should be able to 
> say or pose anything. There should be no artificial limitations on the 
> length of my actions, nor should there be some convoluted series of 
> implicit rules like line lengths and truncation and default modification. 
> Variable substitutions are a Bad Idea here, although in code and 
> descriptions they are indeed very useful, and character escaping should be 
> completely unnecessary.

Complete agreement. 

> Players should have limited out-of-character expression options, such as 
> channels. Channels which have nothing whatsoever to do with the game don't 
> belong here. (Music channels are dumb.) Channels which have in-character 
> significance should be rationalised. (Auction channels are pretty 
> destructive to suspension of disbelief.) In no case should I be able to use 
> non-game communication to communicate *all* the time or to communicate with 
> people I normally could not communicate with.

More agreement. What's a channel? ;)

> Documentation in full should be available to me and anyone else in 
> downloadable, printable, and online viewable formats which are clearly 
> marked and referenced on the game. Revision histories should be maintained 
> scrupulously.

Easily accessible and up to date. Yes.  I see no need for player 
documentation to be printable or downloadable.  Builder, programmer 
and administrator documentation is another story.  

I expect to have fun.  I expect to die permanently. I expect to have 
things happen to my character without explicit consent.

> I should be able to kick back and relax and watch when NO ONE is logged on, 
> and enjoy myself. The game *itself* should be enjoyable. If I just go hang 
> out in the town square, I should see people going about their business, and 
> changes in the time of day and weather, and all manner of intriguing 
> things. There should be meanings; if the baker goes off to the barber shop 
> every night at midnight, then the bakery should be closed, the barber 
> should be closed, and there should be the butcher and the baker and the 
> candlestick maker all out at the barbershop singing in a quartet. Things 
> that are just fun. Not necessarily important to the gameplay, but important 
> to the game nonetheless. 

Yes I would enjoy seeing this.  I also expect interaction.

I like consistent themes.  I wouldn't find it amusing to run into 
Elvis in Babylon.  Unless the mud's theme happens to be based on the 
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or A Spell for Chameleon.  

--
Jon A. Lambert

If I'd known it was harmless, I would have killed it myself.