[MUD-Dev] Usability and interface and who the hell is supposed to be playing, anyway? (Was: PK Again)

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On Thursday, September 18, 1997 1:08 AM, Maddy [SMTP:maddy at fysh.org] wrote:
>
> I think you're being a bit melodramatic here *8).  I'm sure if anyone is
> doing anything along the lines of 'grasp sword handle right', which is
> probably going to include me, then all that extra stuff is optional.  If
> anything I'm definitely going to accept 'wield sword' or 'wield the sword 
in
> my right hand', it'll be up to the users how much detail they put into 
their
> actions with the rest using defaults.  'wield sword' will obviously wield
> the weapon in your primary hand, unless there is a weapon there already 
in
> which case it may (if you're good enough) wield it in your other hand(s).

I've always found it unintuitive to have to put a weapon away before 
wielding another one. When I say 'wield sword', and I'm carrying an axe, 
then I'd say it's pretty damn obvious I want to stop using the axe, which 
the game OUGHT to be able to figure out.

> Surely you also see that having a wide choice of skills makes things more
> interesting for people?  Don't you think it'd be boring if there was only 
a
> "use weapon" skill?  Having every player looking the same, with the same
> skills and speaking the same language is very boring.

Yes, a wide choice of skills is great, but skills like musical instruments 
are just plain stupid. What the hell does this add to the game?

	>play lute
	You play your lute.

Yes, it's nice being able to run some form of bard who carries around a 
musical instrument, but does a 'play lute' command REALLY enhance the 
experience for anyone? What's wrong with ',plays his lute merrily, skipping 
about the marketplace' instead of a social command?

> Well that 12 year old is going to have a hard time with my place.  For a
> start - he'll only be able to have one account.

Pray tell, how exactly do you intend to enforce that? I have several dozen 
shell accounts, each with an associated e-mail address, and it's trivial 
for me to create more. Any hacker worth his salt can have several hundred 
with little difficulty.

> If he destroys it (as
> opposed to being killed) it won't be able to get another account for a 
fixed
> amount of time, that I've not decided.

So if I decide I don't like this character, and I decide to delete it, you 
kick me off the game? That really sucks. If I really like the game, and 
just want to start a new character, what POSSIBLE rationale would convince 
me to come back after several days when you say 'sorry, you just threw away 
a perfectly good character, you can't have another one until date X'? A 
message like that would really hack me off, and I'd go play elsewhere.

> And even then, it won't under any
> circumstance tell him what his stats are in numbers.

But it will give him some relative idea of how well he does on character X 
as opposed to character Y, which is what he wants anyway.

> Why will the game suck because the game allows people to form groups to 
do
> large tasks?

You seem to be misunderstanding my point. If you TARGET the game, meaning 
you SPECIFICALLY code the game as though most activities will be carried 
out under certain circumstances, at groups of four to six, any group less 
than four is hamstrung.

> There will obviously still be tasks for solo players, it's
> just that making a mud where the only use for a team of players is so 
that
> they can kill something big, seems a bit pointless.  Players should be 
able
> to do all kinds of things together.

Players should also be able to do all kinds of things themselves. Consider 
whether most players actually WANT teams and teamwork. I don't know whether 
they do; I certainly don't, because -- as I said in another post -- I don't 
*like* these people. I don't understand them, I don't get along with them, 
and they certainly don't understand or get along with me. I'm your 
classical computer geek.

> All of us (and I imagine I speak for all of us) are trying to create a 
game
> that we as players would want to play.  Who cares if Biff the 12 year old
> doesn't like it, there are plenty of muds out there that do play like he
> wants.  And if they don't, then he (like we are) can write his own.

All of us are PROGRAMMERS. We are by definition *not* the average player. 
And this attitude is exactly the type of arrogance that pisses me off about 
MUD development, because your market is too specific and too narrow and as 
far as I'm concerned it makes you the single worst type of MUD admin on the 
face of the planet. I'd like to design a flexible and easy to use game that 
middling numbers of people (say 50 at a time) will log onto and enjoy. I 
don't need hundreds of people online; that's just too crowded.

> I'm not sure where you've been, but even tho I've been on this list for a
> short while all I can see are people discussing how the players interact
> with the game.

I've been on it for a good long while, and this is true. However, the 
discussions tend to be 'how much should the players be able to do' rather 
than 'how should the players communicate with the server'. We're discussing 
design issues on the back end and administrative issues on the front end, 
and somewhere in the middle there are a bunch of players trying to play a 
game who SHOULD be the main concern.

> Take the thread you're replying to.  It's about whether
> players should be able to kill each other, indirectly or not.

Yep. Exactly.

> It's very easy to cater for a lot of the groups you mention.  If you add 
a
> varied assortment of puzzles and monsters and traps, you'll end up with a
> varied assortment of players.

If it's so easy, why do we spend so much time discussing how different the 
underlying server has to be for these types of people?

> The easiest way to make sure you can cater
> for almost everyone is to get rid of the powergamers

This is just plain offensive. Try replacing 'powergamers' with your 
favorite social, ethnic, or religious group. Maybe 'gays', 'blacks', or 
'Jews'. I'm not even going to dignify it with a response.

> I'd also like to be able to specify certain
> things in detail.  I want to be able to 'drop ball on table next to 
candle',
> rather than always dropping the ball on the floor.

See my comments on NLP.

> > Any and all commands in the game should have some purpose...
>
> All of the above goes without saying - sure at the moment, there are lot 
of
> old muds that do this, but I doubt anything we've been discussing is 
going
> to make those mistakes again?

It does NOT go without saying, because people are STILL DOING IT.

> >       Natural language processing is BAD. Bad bad bad, I hate it and 
it's a
> > big pain to implement which takes time away from more useful things 
like
> > documenting the commands (which becomes impossible in NLP *anyway*).
>
> NLP has been the easiest part of my mud to write so far, but then I don't
> have "commands", I have verbs and the verb works the same way it does in
> real life.

What if English isn't my native language? What if my vocabulary isn't quite 
as good as yours? How do you handle verbs that have multiple meanings?

> Documentation isn't hard and in most cases you don't need it -
> surely anyone above the age of 5 knows what the verb 'get' does by now?

	> get sword
	You pick up the sword.
	> get bob
	You yell "Hey Bob!"
	> get laid
	...

> I agree with being able to say anything, but emoting (or posing) anything 
is
> too prone to abuse.  Say if you want languages and anything you 'say' is
> translated for people who don't speak your language, well to get around 
it
> you just emote what you want to say.

Clarify for me exactly *how* it is helpful for certain of your players to 
be unable to communicate with each other.

> A wide range of socials with optional
> adverbs and even the ability to set default adverbs (I hate grinning 
evily)
> should give you enough scope for self expression.

Ahh, so you would rather give me a small well defined set of things I am 
allowed to do. Let's say I want to 'dance'. Should it be a slow sweeping 
waltz, or a frenetic jungle boogie? Give me the ability to select, and I 
will abuse it just as easily as I could have abused emoting.

> I personally like the idea of a mud that has languages.

I personally hate it. There's no way to enforce it, and everyone more or 
less speaks 'common' anyway. What the hell do you gain from it?

> I personally feel that channels are a waste of time and like the 'who'
> command are too open for abuse.

Abuse is possible wherever you have user input. Deal with it.

> I'd like to play a mud that has none of
> these.  Without being able to find out who is on, you remove the 
difference
> between players and NPCs, which I believe there should be no difference. 
 If
> players & NPCs look the same then the jerks that log on to haress players
> will have a much harder time getting their kicks.

This is another problem I have with MUD design. Quit modifying the game 
concept to prevent assholes, okay? Assholes are ubiquitous. I don't design 
a game to keep assholes out of it, I design a game to get good people INTO 
it. Turn around, now, and start thinking about how the game should play for 
GOOD players. Security, I repeat, is the reciprocal of convenience. A game 
completely unattractive to assholes is completely unattractive to EVERYONE.

To use a recent example from another thread, if I can go into the woods 
with an axe and build a log cabin, I can also build a reasonable facsimile 
of a telephone pole. I can also build a big cross and set it on fire. Abuse 
is possible in any situation. Wouldn't you say walking off into the woods 
and finding a big line of telephone poles would be disconcerting on a MUD?

> I think we all want to play a mud that is fun.

Then why wasn't anyone else discussing it?

> Yup - you don't get any of these things in any of the muds I've seen, but 
to
> get these features you need a game that is a bit more complicated than 
your
> average diku.

Like, say, Ultima IV? When was that published anyway, early 80's? You mean 
to tell me after 15 years we still haven't caught up to that standard?

> Jokes from reallife are a big no-no - players aren't omnipotent and 
you're
> bound to get a large number of players that might not have read the book, 
or
> seen the movie/tv program.

Then they don't get it. It's called life. I'm not saying do a big 'Holy 
Grail' area where the 'fluffy white rabbit' is a level 46 monster with 
vorpal dentures, I'm saying put tongue firmly in cheek now and again. Yeah, 
a lot of people won't get it, so don't overdo it. If you scatter those 
jokes sparsely, like little treasures to be found, then they won't harm the 
experience for the people who don't get it, and they'll be vastly amusing 
to others. Back to the 'Ultima' series: Ultima 1 had an area where two 
large legs of a statue stretched into the sky, the rest broken off long 
ago, and a plaque on the base said 'I am Ozymandias, king of kings; look 
upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!' -- and I *seriously* doubt more 
than 2% of the players recognised or understood that reference. But those 
of us who did were amused, and the rest just sort of went 'huh, cool' and 
went about their business.

> All in all I could be easily misled into thinking you're still stuck in 
the
> Diku/hack'n'slash/lpmud mentiality.

All in all, I could be easily misled into thinking you're being overly 
defensive.