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

[Matt Chatterley]

On Thu, 18 Sep 1997, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:

> On Thursday, September 18, 1997 1:08 AM, Maddy [SMTP:maddy at fysh.org] wrote:

[Snip]

> 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.

My system will tell you what you are wielding, but will not automatically
try to unwield it (incase you don't want to, and the wield command was in
error, or you are in a situation where changing weapons may be risky).
 
> > 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?

Musical instruments aren't stupid! Having different skills for different
weapons helps you to actually have different characters, and different
reasons for using different weapons. Without skills, players will use
whichever weapon hits hardest - with skills, you can bring in other
factors.
 
> 	>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?

You can build in environmental effects from it though! Just because one or
two muds do something badly does not mean it is a bad thing. You could
have it raise the 'friendliness' of everyone who hears, or 'encourage'
them to drop some money. ANythign you can imagine!
 
> > 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.

Firstly, there are ways to tell if it is the same person (for instance
subtle traps such as a 'real name?' prompt - you'd be amazed how many
people fill this out correctly despite pretending to be someone other than
they are). Secondly, you could use a process such as email registration,
and only allow in people based on certain criteria.

Not easy, and it won't always work - but is anyone really going to go to
such a vast amount of effort to play one mud?
 
[Snip]

> > 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.

Well, the scope of my game is really intended for groups (probably 2-3
upto about 10-15 depending where you are going), but you can flesh out
player numbers with 'hired help'. Some parts will be suitable for solo
exploration (even those that require groups normally), but will be more
dangerous, and you will have to take them a lot slower (less resources
available, and noone to watch your back).
 
> > 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.

Then muds which require teamwork are not for you - don't play them. That
is really the philosophy I take; I built and ran one game that catered to
'as many users as possible', and suffered for it, now, I create the game I
want to play, and let those who agree with me come along and join in the
experience.
 
> > 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.

No. The worst sort of mud admin are those who create muds because they
were kicked off their favourite game and wish to 'kick its ass' by
stealing all its players.

Specific and 'narrow' games have been around for a long time - even by
nature of simply having an obscure theme. You can pander to the masses, or
do something more specific. Inbetween is a grey area.
 
[Snip]

> > 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?

It is very easy to say 'we can do this and this', but if often
complicates itself as you consider it (for instance, a thread which was
originally 2 messages long on my muds mailing list, about design/craft
skills has now expanded into a 50 message thread on climbing and its
implementational details).
 
> > 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 am infact, a powergamer! Or rather, that is how I played on one mud.
Because that was the playing style the mud encouraged. You do not get rid
of powergamers (they do not really exist) - you create the illusion of
their existance if that is one possible gameplay style in your
environment.
 
> > 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.

My parser is fairly simplistic, but copes well. It shortens and
consolidates sentences into a form it can more easily cope with, for
instance:

Pull the pin out of the grenade

goes to: pull pin out of grenade
goes to: pull pin of grenade
goes to: pull grenade pin

Then in this case it does grenade->pull_fun("pin") (this is irrelevant
though, really).

> > > 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.

Partly because they are still using the 'old muds' (eg: old stock stuff).
 
[Snip]

> 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?

As one of our staff suggested (although he is German, his english is
easily as good as mine, and I am a native of Britain - this is probably
why ;)), we took a thesaurus, added an 'aliasing' feature to our verb
system internally, and entered every possible (sensical) alias for the
verb, from the thesaurus, into it.
 
[Snip]

> > 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.

This is why I do not intend to have a languages system of any sort - it
hinders communication if done properly (and I am still aiming at a
partially social environment, so there are ways around say), and is not
used if it doesn't.
 
[Snip]

> > 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 agree here, definitely.
 
> > 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.

Abuse is also difficult to define - what you might call abuse in a very
strict RP environment, I may not call abuse in my more lenient, less 'IC'
intensive environment.
 
[Snip]

> > 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.

(Answering the original poster more than you, Caliban):

Theres nothing wrong with the 'Diku/hack'n'slash/lpmud' mentality,
whatever the hell that is. I use MudOS to run my server - does this mean i
have an 'lpmud' mentality? If not, what the hell do I have? (Other than
laryngitis).

My game will have hack'n'slash elements if you wish to play it that way
(although you will not live as long as someone who does something a bit
safer, of course). It has some elements from Diku (I imagine), and drew
heavily on other LPMuds initially (pulling away from this in many ways
now).

Regards,
	-Matt Chatterley
	http://user.itl.net/~neddy/index.html
"Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics." -?