[MUD-Dev] Usability and interface

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On Sun, 21 Sep 1997 08:42:12 PST8PDT, Adam Wiggins
<nightfall at user1.inficad.com> wrote:

>Yeah, but I see this as a serious flaw with Ultima's spell 'system' - it
>wasn't a 'system' at all.  It was just a list of reagents which were combined
>to make spells.  There was no element of what-if; you couldn't decide to use
>a little extra mandrake to make the invisibility spell last longer, or a little
>extra spidersilk to make your fireball hotter.  You simply jumped through
>the right hoops to get the spell you want, no different from puzzles
>in a static adventure game (which, as I've stated before, I usually despise).

It's still a good system concept, even though you're right on the money
with your criticism of it. It's the same flaw that annoyed me. But it's
definitely something that could be expanded and detailed a little more.

>Yeah, and this is the number one pitfall in designing a system.  You want
>it to be complex and random enough so that it's difficult and not terribly
>productive to script, yet intuative and logical enough so that it doesn't
>seem like a bunch of completely arbitrary effects with no causal relationship.
>A tall order, but this is what I've chosen to focus on for my own mud.

A *very* tall order. I'm not sure whether you're brilliant or insane. ;)

>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.  ;)

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. 

>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. ;)

>Also, we are considering having play 'modes' for players.  
[...]
>Etc.  It will probably just give you a set of aliases, most of which are
>just "echo There is no 'X' command here, see help on Y."

I'm not sure I like that idea. It's sort of like running a Mac in DOS
emulation mode. ;)

>A lot of it is how easy it is to actually switch languages.  Ie,
>if you have to do:
>
>> speak giantish
>> say Damn dwarves...
>> speak common
>
>It's not really worthwhile.  

Exactly. Language in RL isn't that hard to switch between. I have this
problem on just about all online games.

>Might I assume, then, that you also dislike actual locks on doors?  They lock
>out anyone with a key or a thief that can pick it.  Large monsters lock out
>weaker characters.  Long distances lock out people that don't have a lot
>of time and/or stamina.  I like obstacles, and what's more I like varied
>obstacles.  I'm not saying I'd like every single puzzle in the game to
>require you speak some language.  I'm saying that I like as many varied devices
>as possible so that each 'puzzle' can have a semi-unique solution, instead of
>all of them requiring either 'kill monster X' or 'retrieve item Y'.

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. 

>> In P&P, all of these things are just as possible, but you have many more
>> options to get by them. In all the games that I've played, I've never
>> seen one of them offer a translator for hire. I guess only PCs are
>> supposed to do that. 
>
>Yeah, now you're talking.  Introducing a new element like languages allows
>you to put in some much more than just the actual languages themselves.
>You've got translators, teachers, or others who actually employ themselves
>based on languages.  You've got the fun of mistaken translations ("You
>said WHAT to me?!"), people overhearing things that they aren't supposed
>to ("I didn't know you knew language X!")...the later of which is pretty
>interesting on a mud where there's no mechanism for completely private
>communication.

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
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.

>> Cute solution. Note, however, that the majority of the party was
>> completely screwed.
>
>I take it by this that you think that this is a bad thing?
>All my best mud stories/memories usually involve someone, somewhere (usually
>me) saying 'Shit...I/we are TOTALLY screwed'.  For example, the story above.

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. 

>Which doesn't mean that they are completely useless, stupid, and worthless,
>which is the statement I was responding to.  Yes, most of the elements
>that go into a game are comparitively small in and of themselves.  All
>of these elements combine to make what we call a 'game'.

I'd like to see languages done better on MUDs, but I still only think
they have value in a roleplaying environment. In a 'hack and slash' or
'adventure' environment (to steal the categories from a recent and
excellent post), they're either useless or incidental.

>> You've never played completely without the books? You don't know what
>
>Yes, only after everyone knew them all damn near by heart, and knew
>exactly how the game way played.  If D&D was published without any
>specific rules it never would have worked, despite the fact that most
>experienced players ignore and/or modify most of the rules.

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

>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. ;)

>The way we arrived at our conclusions about how we wanted the mud to play
>was mainly through details.  I thought about things that had happened on
>other muds, what was 'good' about those situations, and how we could make
>those fit into the game.  Once we knew more or less how we wanted things to
>work on the player level (which is all about details, events, and elements),
>then we steped back to look at the big picture.  Without those concreate
>details as guidelines, though, we would have been just flailing around
>blindly with vague notions.

Exactly... learn from the past, but don't be bound by it. If you do what
you've always done...

>Heh.  I'm more intereted in taking what's *good* about current games (that
>is, what makes me enjoy playing them to begin with), ditch what I don't
>like, and then add in things I think I'd like to see.  

Dammit, this is exactly what I was proposing in that first thread that I
got all but crucified for. ;)

>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? 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
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).

>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.

>As a side note, we also have a flag NEWBIE for accounts.  This causes
>extra output on errors, like so:

Nice concept... I like.

>Just like all the Bullfrog games - Populous and Magic Carpet
>being my other two favorites.  Most people couldn't quite deal with them,
>since they were so different from anything else out there.  As a result they
>appeal only to a small niche of gamers.

Evidently we're in that niche... ;) Ever been completely sadistic and
placed locked doors all around the enemy keeper's dungeon heart, just so
he has to watch you take over all his territory and mine all the gold
and build an utterly fantastic dungeon around his ruins? Isn't it odd
how you can gain satisfaction from something like that even though
there's no one on the other end who actually cares?

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.

>I'm still waiting for a GUI that will actually make me *more* productive.
>At best they are just mildly amsuing (XWindows).  At worst they actually
>waste huge amounts of my time with configuration headaches and slow,
>under-powered interfaces (MSWindoze, which I am forced to use at work).

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. ;)

>Well again, you want to add functionlity without adding new commands.
>On the other hand, having a single command do too much can actually
>cause problems.

Agreed...

>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).

>Well, part of the trick is drawing a relavent example.  How this is defined
>is subjetive, of course.  I find that thinking about levels, experience, and
>classes is a pretty worthwhile line of thought since you get rid of quite a
>few game constructs (most of which suck, IMO) once you ditch them.  Thus,
>my only answer to a question about exp balance is, "Get rid of experience,
>and that problem goes away."

Yeah, but that sounds an awful lot like my general utterance after
difficult meetings, which tends to go 'our jobs would be so much
*easier* if we could just get rid of these damn customers'. ;)

>> As far as picking up NPCs, I would expect that trying to pick up an NPC
>> would result in the NPC taking some sort of action (presumably hostile),
>> whereas the player might not do anything at all (particularly if he's
>> idle). 
>
>Certainly not the case for us.  As I've mention above, your character
>doesn't just stand around and let people do whatever they want to him.

Which tends to change the face of things a good bit; however, 

>Plus, PCs and NPCs are indistinguishable as far as the system is concerned.
>It's actually difficult to find out which is what from within the code for
>normal game commands.  All input and output for a character just goes to
>their 'brain', which may be a script or a descriptor.  As of yet there's
>no member function on brains which allow you to query which one they are,
>and I don't plan to add one.

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. 

>One of the details we talked about when coming up with the mud was that
>we really wanted people to be able to pick up anything they liked.
>It's typical that when a group of small creatures attacks a large creature
>with opposable thumbs that the large creature will grab one of the small
>ones and throw him at his buddies.  I find this tons of fun both to do
>and to watch.

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.

>*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 don't understand.  First off I'll admit we don't have any concept of high and
>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
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. 

>> I might provide special circumstances, like the ability to pick up a
>> player *provided* he was unconscious or dead. But this still has
>> potential for abuse. 
>
>As you said yourself: being able to interact with anything in any way whatsoever
>has potential for 'abuse'.  I don't worry about such things.

To some extent, you have to. Drawing the line is difficult, because at
some point you have to say that a certain type of abuse is OK while
another is unacceptable. I think we all agree that anything allowing a
player to delete files from the server's hard drive is unacceptable
abuse, but there's certainly room for debate on just about everything
else; I find it unacceptable for Joe Dork to bash in Jim Newbie's head
as he enters the game, whereas many people on this list seem to think
that's just the way games are and why should it bother you?

>You'll have to enlighten me further.  I still don't see any problems.
>Carrying another person is cumbersome and unwieldy, and makes it very difficult
>to do anything whatever.  Certainly if both characters are in good health
>they will be much better off in terms of movement (walking/running), combat,
>or anything else they want to do if both move under their own power.

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
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.

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 You see me now, a veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I've been 
 living on the edge so long, where the winds of limbo roar. And 
 I'm young enough to get involved, too old to see, all the scars 
 are on the inside; I'm not sure that there's anything left of me
               -- Blue Oyster Cult, "Veteran of the Psychic Wars"
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