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

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <01BCC370.9367FB30.caliban at darklock.com>, on 09/17/97 
   at 11:01 AM, Caliban Tiresias Darklock <caliban at darklock.com> said:

>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.

>But what keeps getting lost is the idea of the players. 

I will readily confess that my main interest is the actual design
itself, not the playing of it.  Playability is then just a metric
marking a "good" design.

>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. The first
>three characters are guaranteed  to have an initial experience which
>really and truly sucks, and since this  is so different from the
>majority of MUDs, there will actually be a lot  MORE people who think
>this really sucks because it's going to take a player  base of some
>twenty people before you get a meaningful group together.  Where are
>these players going to come from if everyone logs on to find a  game
>that sucks?

This would seem a classic bootstrap problem:

  X is desired.  
  You can't get X until you have (large number) of Y.
  You can't get (large number) of Y until you have X.

Once over the initial threshhold, the hope then of course is that it
will become self-sustaining.  Most MUD's instead subvert the entire
structure by attempting to have many X's, each with different
threshhold values, a good many of which have very low or zero
threshold values (solo play).

A side effect of this latter structure is the categorisation of the
game-world into areas, with areas stated to be of various difficulties
(newbie areas, level 10 areas, high level areas, group areas, etc). 
This balkanisation of the game-world into pre-digested lumps bugs me. 
I don't like it.  My preference would be to mix the newbie/easy, the
middling difficult, and the tough/group/whatever together willy nilly
along with (largely) removing any parallel to the "consider" command.

This creates mystery.  I also encourages ad-hoc grouping and
assistance, especially if you don't have mobiles repopped with
identical/similar stats (reduce prediction).  Trite examples:

  "Hey Bubba, I'm trying to figure out how to use the Human 
  Catapult.  Wanna help?"

  "Boffo, how about I take the boat over to Fortress Fract and 
  then summon you over?  I've got a few other people interested
  in trying to help figure it out.  Wanna join?"

  "I need another hand to push a heavy door open in the White Oak 
  Tree.  Anybody want to lend a hand?

  "Just found a whole pit full of Ents down in the catacombs under 
  Castle Krak.  Devious little buggers too -- lotsa traps and 
  clever dodges!  Anybody wanna join in?
  
>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.

Its really another bootstrap question in disguise.  Even the most
baroque game will attract dedicated players if there is sufficient
quality underneath.  I've generally found that other players do more
to create documentation and suggested learning curves than an Imm or
Admin ever could.

Diplomacy seems a perfect case in point (I've been spending a lot of
time looking into it lately).  You can go buy it off the shelf today
at your neighborhood game store.  It comes with a nice fat rule book. 
You can read, study, and pour over the rule book for hours even
months.  At the end you won't understand how to play the game beyond
the base mechanics, and that won't help in practice.  Its a
non-trivial game.  The rules are often ambiguous in their details.
There are many closely-related variants. It is endlessly complex in
structure despite simple underpinnings.  Most of the character and
method of play of the game has little to do with the rules, but
instead is based on play-to-player(s) "diplomacy".

The end result is that there is a flourishing after-market in
Diplomacy 'zines, in mentos leading new players up to greater
understanding, in books, journals, dicussions, and courses in "How to
play," and "How to play better."

I don't see that a MUD need necessarily be different.

>...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?

A good question.  I'd love to.  Unhappily its not an area I have a lot
of experience or expressed ability in.  I've attempted to populate the
list with those who would add other flavours, but that is an area I've
not found many in (yet) to invite.

>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:

>	RP gamers and the rest
>	PK gamers and the rest
>	PO gamers and the rest
>	Experienced MUDders and the rest
>	Experienced gamers and the rest
>	Programming types and the rest
>	Puzzle oriented types and the rest
>	Solo players and the rest
>	Socialisers and the rest
>	...etc...

Which begs the question:

  Is approaching a game design on the basis of balkanising its public
and then selecting one segment of that public a Good Approach?

I would argue that it isn't as its a design decision which tends to
limit other later design decisions unecessarily as being "out of
theme."

>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?

1) A consistant, logically orthogonal and extensible interface.  Essentially this means that the base grammar for the MUD should be an expression language, where the rules for forming expressions are simple and consistant with few to no exceptions.

2) A simple interface.  Abers tend to be utterly delightful here.  So is Shades.  Learn 20 base commands/expression forms and you can do most everything in the whole game.

3) A sense of fun in the world design.  "Fun" in this context refers to imaginative juxtaposition and extension.  Lewis Carrol's "Through the Looking Glass", and "Alice in Wonderland" are perfect cases in point.  Myer's "Silverlock" is another.  This doesn't require breaking out of a preset theme, just that there is an underlieing sense of a giddy romp to the authorship.

4) A game world built on simple principles with endless minor details and complexity.  The simple translation is: Everything always works this way, except for the special cases...

5) A base concept I find interesting.  I happen to find Star Wars, Star Trek, B5, WoD, WoT, Pern, Tolkien (and derivatives), Julian May, etc trite, boring, and utterly uninspiring as games.  The translation is a base theme or principle to the game which is innately interesting, or somehow attractive.  Something to inspire the, "Oooo! Neat!", or "Hey, yah gotta come see this!" response.

6) A large value on expertise to the game.  I like a game which shows depths and tricks which can be profitably studied and learned.  To put it in board game terms, I like games where I can profitably play about with scenarios at home to see how they'd work for later use in real games.  The key here is mental involvement -- there is profit in spending time and thought on trying to figure out possible new approaches or methods within the game, whether I am actually playing at that instant or not.  Note that
 predictability of game interface and response is essential here.

7) I have no interest in immersive or story based RP.  I don't mind if others want to do that on a game I'm on, I do mind if they attempt to require it of me, or require my accomodation of it as a player.  Ditto for TinySex and company.

Comments on your points:

>My own personal preferences, as seed material:

...deletia...

>...I don't want 
>syntax that changes around. If I have to 'cast' a spell, I should 
>have to 'use' a skill, and no spell or skill should be used by 
>typing *just* its name. 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*).

Disagreed strongly.  To me this is an extension of my point #1 above.  If you have a basic expression form for your language interface, then it is perfectly acceptable for that expression form to have implicit shortcuts.  The standard MUD example here is "go north" as vs "north"  The second is merely a implicit expression shortcut form of the first.

You case above of casting spells vs having the name of the spell invoke the spell would merely seem a specific case of this.

>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.

Not a thing that has much importance to me.  I don't mind it, but I'm extremely unlikely to ever use it except as a programmer.

>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.

Not something that has any real core importance to me.  For small Shades-like games I appreciate the presence of a single global channel (SHOUT).  I find having multiple named global channels more than annoying.  OTOH I like the ability to define a limited number of (possibly not present) players a given communication should be sent to.  These are all data points that went into my design of user-specific namespances, ad-hoc group aliases etc.

I won't comment on the suspension of belief metric.

>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 bemaintained scrupulously.

Truth to tell I've never noticed a MUD where this was present, but then I've never looked for it either.  I rather doubt that I'd take advantage of it if it were.  

Sure, have something to give new players a kick start in the right general direction, but much more beyond that seems both presumptive and invasive.

>I expect to have fun on this game. This means that under no 
>circumstances is anything to happen to my character that 
>*prevents* him from progressing further, ever. 

'Nuff to say that I prefer laissez faire, caveat emptor MUDs.

>Only under rare circumstances is anything detrimental to 
>happen to the character without my implicit consent (e.g. 
>beginning combat, drinking something unidentified, walking 
>through dangerous areas). 

I caveat this with the rule from the old Adventure design manual (have I posted it here?), which comments that you should always have some chance of determining that something might kill you before starting the deadly action.  As I recall the example given was a room with two exits, one of which lead to a deadly pit of hungry lions.  The comment was that without some sign that one door was "special" and the other not, such as a frieze of lions over the door to the pit, it was a Bad Design.

>DEATHTRAPS ARE HORRID, nobody likes them, nobody has EVER liked them, >there shouldn't be any. Period.

<shrug>

As a player I don't like them.  As a game designer I feel they serve a useful game purpose.

>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. 

I won't argue against it.  Laser did a lot of this back when.  To me the interest in a game is in what you can *do* as versus what can be done to you, or what happens to others in the game.  My prime concentration as a game/world designer is on the effects that a player can create.

>Likewise obscure puns and inside jokes from 
>classic games, movies, TV, and books are nice to see. 

Agreed.  See my point #3 above.  Island of course raised this to a fine art.

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...