[MUD-Dev] Usability and interface

[Adam Wiggins]

> On Sun, 21 Sep 1997 08:42:12 PST8PDT, Adam Wiggins
> >The two aren't fundamentally different.  The second only has enough elements
> >to keep human players interested, while making scripting both difficult and
> >not very worthwhile.  IMO, most of your time playing should be doing things
> >you are famliar with, but the *exact* thing you are doing you have never
> >done before.  This requires a system which is logical and consistent.
> 
> The problem I see with the second concept is that there is no easily
> conceivable way for the medicine maker to determine many of those
> factors.  ;)

Only if the system is not well-written.  I think of it no different
than (to pick an example I'm very familiar with) programming.  The
number of language constructs I use is very small.  Yet I rarely
repeate myself exactly.  Instead I'm presented with a situation, some
effect I need to get.  I then apply my general knowledge to come up
with specific solutions, from deciding what kind of data type would be
best down to whether I should use a for loop or a while loop.  In the
course of doing new things I might even come up with new data types of
general methods which I can apply to future situations.  Most things we
do in life work this way; I don't see why the systems in the game
should be different.

> I certainly agree with logic and consistency, though, and the only major
> problem I can see with generic structures like the one you describe
> above is the vast amount of human effort that needs to be put into
> detailing them... what you'll likely end up with is a few detailed and
> complicated things, and then you get tired and bored and just sort of
> half-heartedly whip out the rest. I can conceive of some very complex
> system which could actually define all of this in combination within
> various objects, so actually you *could* make a system out of it... but
> I wouldn't want to try it myself. 

Well, guess I'm just insane.  Of course, I get to be insane when I'm doing
a project with no deadline, no customers, no management, and no expectations
beyond just amusing myself.

> >A technical note: making randomized messages is a great way to make scripting
> >more of a pain and the game more interesting for players.
> 
> Also a great way to increase the time spent writing boring messages for
> players. ;)

I actually enjoy writing multiple messags, so this isn't a problem for me.

> I just really dislike things that only have one solution which requires
> you to have one single skill which you may not even be able to get. Most
> players have a method of getting by a locked door: finding a key,
> picking the lock, casting a spell, kicking it in, etc. But when you tie
> it to a language, it's now a puzzle that is utterly trivial for a
> particular type of character, but a major investment of time and effort
> for most others. 

I agree wholeheartedly with your general statement here, but I think you're
wrong about the specific case.  When presented with (say) a book written
in a language you can't read, you can:

- Find a friend to translate.
- Find a translator who will translate it for a fee.
- Learn to read the language, or at least well enough to read the book (more
useful if it's a long text which you need to reference multiple times).
- Cast a 'read languages' spell or something similar on it.

Also, remember my example in a completely different thread about how I
got to the end of a quest where you had to speak a phrase in demon and
ended up charming a creature that could speak demon, making a portal, then
ordering him to go through and say the phrase?

IMO no element should exist in such a rigid form that there's only one
way to approach it.  In fact, it's very difficult to do something this way:
inventive players will always find other things to try.

> Teachers also sort of up the ante for puzzles, especially in the
> much-touted classless system wherein anyone can theoretically learn any
> skill (some better and/or faster than others). I'd be much less

Yes.  One of the main 'goals' for our game is to find teachers that can
teach you the things you want to know.  This is the side effect of a skill
system, and some muds have basically made this their entire focus.  See
Raph's mud, Legend.  I like this aspect quite a bit.  Questing to find the
ancient teacher of X is a lot more interesting to me than questing just
for loot and glory.  Then again, I've always considered character advancement
to be the funnest part of an RPG, so it's no surprise I've made it the
focus of my own.

> suspicious of languages if it was possible to converse with creatures in
> their native tongue -- in a P&P game, when you come up to the orc
> stronghold, you can speak to the orcish guard in his own language and
> possibly get through the door without a fight. In online games, no such
> thing is generally possible. For a weak fighter, this would be a great
> asset, but online? Nope... you just have to go get someone to beat the
> orc's head in.

I don't see why you couldn't do this.  Have the orc only allow people through
who he's seen speak a phrase of at least n words in orc.  You could even
take it further and require some knowledge of orc culture.

> n
The orc bars your way.
The orc says, 'Whom do you worship?'
> say Bahk'ra
The orc says, 'Remember that Bahk'ra will be watching over you while you are
in the city.  Tread carefully lest you awake her wrath.'
The orc steps aside.

> I like situations you have to think and be creative to get out of.
> However, I greatly dislike situations where you have to have skill X or
> item Y to get through a given area. I also have a real problem with
> situations where having some specific item or skill makes a previously
> difficult situation a cakewalk. 

Yes, I agree.  See above.

> I've had the best success *teaching* people to play without the
> rulebooks. Those big books are intimidating. ;)

Hrm, the thing that intrigued me about it in the first place was the massive
amount of literature availible.  When some aquitences of mine first told
me how it was played I thought it sounded silly, but I was impressed by
the incredible detail into which the books went.  I actually read through
most of a couple of the monster manuals, the player's handbook, and a
few other assorted companion books before I ever actually played it.

> >Although the rules are not 'the game' by themselves, they do make up the
> >game.  Do you believe that D&D should have been published as a vague
> >list of ideas on how to sit around and create fantasy stories with your
> >friends?  
> 
> Actually, it was. ;)

There's nothing vague about the saving throw tables, thac0, AC, the
character sheet, statistics, classes, races, money, damage dice, spell
lists, or anything else in there.  But again these are all just details
which lead towards a less rigid purpose, which is my point.

> >We wanted the character to react to stimuli without
> >player intervention, but we wanted the player to be able to intervene at any
> >point to modify or create new actions.
> 
> Are the reactions to some degree predicated on the character's current
> status?

Not only 'some degree', but your current status is actually the main
thing to be considered.

> One of the things that bugs *me* is stuff like given an
> invisibility spell that lasts till you attack, your character sneaks off
> into the enemy stronghold, and when he sees one of the guards... he
> attacks! WHAT?! You dork! Stop that... 'You have died. Restore from

Right.  Well, since we don't have any such well defined states as 'fighting',
this would be very difficult for us to implement.  Also, invisibilty is
a very powerful and difficult to obtain spell, and it is far from perfect -
others can still smell, hear, and sense you through other means.

> saved (Y/N)?' I remember putting an NPC on point in one game and having
> exactly that problem. Another annoying situation in a different game was
> a guy who kept casting lightning bolts at a shambling mound (for the non
> D&D players: the shambling mound was a sort of swamp monster --
> electricity made it bigger, stronger, and nastier).

Right, like the lame AI for your party members in Ultima 7 (U6's was at
least passable).  Iolo was constantly shooting you in the back.
The difference is, your character doesn't have any AI.  He or she only
*reacts* to stimuli, the same way your hand jerks back from a hot plate
or you throw up your arms to protect your face when someone throws something
at you.  Spellcasting is certainly never automatic.

> >What I mean is:
> >Most folks consider vi to be difficult to use.  I find it one of the
> >best interfaces I've ever used, even though it took me a while to learn
> >all the nuances.  I find using a normal text editor an excercise in
> >frustration, even with all the bells and whistles they put on 'em nowadays.
> >Is vi Bad or Good?  Is pico Bad or Good?
> 
> "vivivi: the text editor of the beast." Actually, I find that most text
> editors and word processors are most useful when every command, and I do
> mean EVERY command, is available from the keyboard at any time. I think
> vi does a pretty good job of that, even though you have the two 'modes'
> (I hate modal operations). I certainly find many of vi's commands a lot
> more intuitive than say, WordPerfect. Unfortunately, I don't get to
> choose my own applications much anymore -- I have to use what the rest
> of my office uses. Which means Office 97.

Right, but vi isn't too useful for someone who just wants to type in a
quick message.  They don't want to bother learning vi; they certainly
don't need its power for the simple editing they want to do, and the
learning curve is certainly not worthwhile for them.
So it's about who you want to cater to.  I'd much rather have an interface
which is more difficult to learn at the begining but turns out to be more
flexibile and powerful for those that know how to use it.  Really I'm
catering to the long-term players, not the newbies.  Naturally I do
what I can to make it as easy to learn as possible (namely good documentation)
but I certainly won't sacrifice long-term usability in the name of simplifying
the learning process.

> I want to feel that way on a MUD. I want to be caught up in it, lost in
> the simulation, feeling like I *am* that character hacking his way
> through the enemy's ranks. Most MUDs just leave me calculating
> percentages and figuring out relations between items and stats.

Yup.  There's two things here, for me: you need some sense of RP and
mood to let you know that you're actually doing it *for* something, and
not just 'because it was there'.  Secondly is game mechanics; pure RP
muds leave this out, because there are no mechanics, which leaves me
feeling a bit like everything that happens is just whatever I happened
to make up instead of my character existing in and manipulating a functioning
world.

> I'm an NT network administrator. Ugh. We have one guy in the office who
> is required by his affiliation with our office to run NT, but who has to
> have his physical equipment purchased by his parent company. He's
> running on a Pentium 60 with eight megs of RAM and a 500 meg hard drive.
> This is a bigger headache than you can imagine (remember, NT *requires*
> 16 megs of RAM and 32 is recommended -- although it actually does run on
> his system, if you call that 'running'), and I've tried very hard to
> tell management that he costs me more time EVERY MONTH than it would
> cost to get him a decent machine ONCE. Needless to say, they don't
> listen. Recently they attached a shared plotter to his machine to avoid
> buying a $300 print server. Duh.
> But I can't complain too much about Windows, as it justifies my
> position. ;)

Ouch.  We just spent all last week trying to get the Win98 beta installed
on all the office machines.  The relief I feel when I come home to my
486 running Linux and type 'uptime' to see '78 days' is undescribable.
On the upside, upgrading to Fat32 in 98 freed up about 300 megs on all
the hard drives.

> >Something that just now came to me - how about a 'verbs' command that
> >can be used on objects?
> 
> Sounds like a decent concept, but a pain to implement (except, as you
> say, on a verb binding MUD).

I would say it would have to be manual, no different from the help files.
Probably it should only give you a list of verbs specific to that object,
since the number of commands that apply to just any object is rather
large.

> I've always sort of felt that a PC was in many respects 'special', in
> that they can do things normal people can't. As a result, the PC in my
> world qould generally enjoy something of a higher social class, and
> certainly in most cases a more comfortable lifestyle. 

That's what you give the character to start with, not how the system
treats characters at a basic level (physics et all).

> It's also vastly useful to be able to carry your wounded friend back to
> town for medical attention, or to use an enemy as a human shield. There
> are a lot of useful things that can be done... but there's a tradeoff.

Right.  Once I had played a mud with the 'drag' command to drag people
around, I felt extremely limited once I was put into a situation where
such things were useful.  The wounded buddy thing, as you mention above.

> >*shrug*...we have a completely 'realistic' world as far as being able to
> >do anything you want to any other player.  This can result in another player
> >sticking his axe into your skull without your consent, and yes, I can
> >see how this would disturb you.  But we like it.
> 
> The admins and designers generally do, as by the time people who do such
> antisocial things show up in the game, these people have 'primary'
> characters far above the ability level that most other people start
> with. In the really nasty cases, the admins and designers ARE those
> antisocial people. 

I was about to say 'I don't see what's so anti-social about sticking an
axe in someone's head', but I think possibly that's going a bit far.
I'll instead say that I enjoy all sorts of character interaction, hostile
or not.  Hostile actions just tend to be counterproductive for both parties.

I should also say that my views are slanted from having spent most of my
time on muds which were set up this way (unrestricted character action).
In particular Arctic which I mention quite a bit.  Arctic has been running
for close to six years without any sort of restriction on character action
except for the justice systems, which only exist within the cities.  PK,
psteal, and all those 'anti-social' interactions everyone loves to rag on
are a fundamental part of the game, and IMO a ton of fun.  Certainly you
don't do them all the time, even if you want to.  At any rate the game has
grown steadily over the years and for the past two or three has supported
over a hundred players online 24 hours a day 365 days a year, and has never
devolved into a deathmatch-style mud like Tron or PKmud or Ground Zero.
Some of my characters there have been very PK/psteal oriented (like my thief,
for obvious reasons, or my paladin who naturally hunted down evil).  Others
more or less ignored this part of the game.  I had one cleric who had
several hundred hours logged and I was never involved in a single PK; the
worst I ever did was silence and curse someone who tried to steal from me.
So, not only do I think all this stuff is fun, but I have no trouble imagining
you can have a game which allows these actions but for which it is not
the focus of the game, since I know of such a game, and it's been running
successfully now for far longer than I have been mudding.

> >I don't understand.  First off I'll admit we don't have any concept of high a
> >low level characters, invisibility in the way you mention, or areas which are
> >designed for a certain 'level' of character.  But all that aside, what is
> >gained by the above?  At best nothing; at worst the high character doesn't
> >manage to heal the other in time and she is permantently injured or possibly
> >killed.
> 
> On an experience-based MUD with an automated system of awarding the
> experience based on the difficulty of the task, the low-level character
> would tend to gain experience very quickly. In fact, on just about any

Okay.  Well, we don't have experience, so there you go.  Like I said, it's
just hard for me to comment on something like this; I consider it already
solved for us, and I have a hard time envisioning why anyone would desire
to wrestle with all the problems brought about by that kludgey device
known as 'experience'.

> MUD where the rewards of a combat are commensurate with the relative
> power of the opponent compared to the player, this sort of thing creates
> a game balance problem. 'Level' may be taken as shorthand for 'level of
> ability', regardless of the MUD's implementation of levels or lack
> thereof. 

The example, as I recall, was a 'low level' (which I will take to mean
unskilled in combat) character fighting against a 'high level' (by which I
will assume you mean skilled in combat) mobile.  This is useless for the
low-level player, because you only learn by fighting someone whose skill level
is roughly equivilent to that of your own.  (This, of course, is why teachers
are ideal, as they can tailor their own fighting to be at a 'virtual'
skill level equivilent to that of the student.)
Thus, no problem.  This is what I love about questioning and then
mucking around with or completely replacing these old kludgey systems;
it solves a bunch of problems in one fell swoop.  I've long since taken
to not worrying about such things as the above example.

> Being able to pick up a player and carry him somewhere has a very few
> good applications, and a tremendous number of vicious, evil, and nasty
> ones. However, a lot of people on this list seem to think vicious, evil,
> and nasty things being done to you makes for a fun game, which often
> makes me question their sanity... so I suppose, if you really don't mind

See my above statements.  I might also point out that millions of people
enjoy blowing each other away multiple times with shotguns on such
popular games as Quake and Duke Nukem 3D, yet no one seems to question
their sanity.
I enjoy strife, chaos, disention, conflict, and peril.  I find it much
*more* enjoyable when there is real human reason and emotion behind
such things instead of the flag MOB_AGGRESSIVE or a piece of script
code that tells it to attack all players whose race is not equal to their
own.

> some dork ruining your game experience on a whim, there actually aren't
> any problems. However, as I've argued with many people regarding
> characters in online games, some of us think of our characters as a LOT
> more than mere pieces on a board.

Certainly.  I sometimes worry about myself, in fact...there have been
periods in my life where I've more readily replied to my character's name
than my own given name.
But I enjoy these characters because they rise above the peril to distinguish
themselves.  If they had spent their whole careers with everyone they interact
with walking on tiptoe to assure that they didn't 'disrupt' their 'story'
in any way, they would have been pretty boring.  But we've already talked
about all this, probably no point in re-hashing it.  At any rate, that's
the standpoint from which I am creating my own game.