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

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <Marcel-1.26-0919194249-0b0Ky&5 at Gryphon.knoware.nl>, on 09/19/97 
   at 12:27 PM, Marian Griffith <gryphon at iaehv.nl> said:

>On Thu 18 Sep, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:

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

>> 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?

>You are, of course, assuming that the only activity in a game is to
>do something else. Probably fight monsters and or other players.

Reese reports that being a fisherman, and thus spending ones play time
sittting about fishing and telling stories is popular with a certain
set of players.  One could easily imagine a similar scenario for
musicians sitting about strumming and swapping songs.

>> All of us are PROGRAMMERS. 

Most of the active list participants are programmers, of which Marian
(nod) is the most obvious non-programmer.  She's not alone.  

This balance is more due to the methods used to generate new members
(ie me reading something of theirs on r.g.m.* or the web) than any
innate quality or topic definition.  Mostly the list membership
reflects the areas of my interest -- almost all the membership wrote
something somewhere that I was interested in.  I've attempted to
rectify that somewhat, but would not mind assistance...

>> 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.

>There's been discussion of that topic too, it's just not very
>popular. Probably because there is little controversy in it?

I've been thinking about this over the w/e.  For me the answer is
simple:  I agree, it is important, but no, I don't have diddley squat
to say about it.  I agree that current MUD interfaces suck great big
hairy warts. I agree that they can be much improved.  I have nothing
particularly to add there.  Not my main area of interest.  I'm content
to stand to the side saying, "Yup, over there is a problem!  Anybody
wanna do this other interesting thing?"

I suspect I'm not alone here in the dark.

--
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...