[MUD-Dev] Usability and interface

[Maddy]

Previously, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote....

> On Fri, 19 Sep 1997 21:43:02 PST8PDT, Adam Wiggins
> <nightfall at user2.inficad.com> wrote:
> 
> >[Caliban:]
> >> I have. I've seen people give long complex descriptions of mixing poisons 
> >> and other nifty things, which is really a great idea for the cerebral 
> >> types, but some of us don't want to scratch our heads and go 'Now HOW does 
> >> that work again? Do I stir *before* I add the hemlock, or after?' -- while 
> >> it's a neat academic exercise, it's a terribly bad game.
> >
> >I disagree very strongly with this.  I consider the exploration/discovery
> >element to be the defining feature which differentiates a 'standard' linear
> >game and a true gaming world.  
> 
> All I'm saying is that if everything is a collection of small simple
> commands, it lends itself very badly to play but very easily to
> scripting. Ultima's reagent mixing was an example; it was almost a form
> of copy protection, as you had to have the game reference handy the
> whole time. In time, you memorised certain combinations for common
> spells (An Nox and In Mani Corp, for example), but you still had to have
> the spell list available. If I could have written macros, these things
> would have been single-key. 
> 
> Note that whether you intend it or not, people will almost always come
> up with a way to script. The above example of mixing a poison would be
> trivial for someone who had coded it into a script; the script would
> probably be on some web page; and the *spirit* of the process would be
> lost. 

If the making of the poison is a multi-part exercise and you write a
macro/script to do it, what happens if part way thru you screw up part of
it.  The script will continue on as normal.  It's perfectly feasable that
rather than creating a poison you end up sitting in a small crater with
singed eyebrows *8).

[Snip]

> >These skills actually came in handy in 'real' situations, too: you had to say
> >'friend' in elven to open the door to Moria; you had to say a phrase in demon
> >to solve a certain quest (which I have detailed on this list before); many
> >spellbooks were written in different languages (written being a different
> >skill than spoken, of course); 
> 
> I don't find that any of these are terribly additive to the game. You
> lock anyone who can't find an elf out of Moria; you prevent anyone who
> can't speak demon or conjure a demon out of a quest; and you lock
> spellbooks out of the accessibility of people. Languages are like locks,
> you slap them on something and then the player ends up with this simple
> binary 'yes/no' thing as to whether they gain any benefit. 

I think locking spellbooks out of the hands of the masses is a good thing. 
You don't want Bubba the barbarian who can barely add 2 numbers together
trying to cast magic do you?  Magic is best left to the professionals. 
However having one consistant language for magic makes far more sense.

> 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. 

Well it's perfectly feasable to add NPCs that you can hire for such tasks. 
I believe that the demon example above was (meant to be) solved by buying a
demon or something.

[Snip]

> >First things first.  D&D without the handbooks would have been silly.
> 
> You've never played completely without the books? You don't know what
> you're missing. We used to do this routinely on the school bus, and it
> was truly fascinating. 

A friend of mine (who is also my GM) started off roleplaying without any
books at all - he was quite surprised to find that people were actually
selling books on how to do something that he and his players had been doing
for years in their heads.

[Snip]

> >Someone's got to push up the ante; if everyone decided that doing something
> >a little more interesting was just too dang hard, or 'a fool's errand',
> >we'd all still be playing Pong.  Actually, Pong would have never been
> >invented.
> 
> What? Of course we have to up the ante, but let's not do it by stacking
> eight million new things on top of what we have on impulse, okay? You
> can't just hang a multitude of new things off an existing framework and
> expect it to run properly. 

Most of us aren't using an existing framework?

[Snip]

> >See my 'example'
> >about languages above.  I could have responded, "You're wrong!  Languages
> >can add quite a bit if done right!"  However, I doubt this would have
> >convinced anyone, except people that already agreed with me.
> 
> It was a good example. But I still don't think that languages can't be
> replaced by something else; I mean, a language is -- in every situation
> you mention above -- just another skill that you have to have at a
> certain level to accomplish a specific task. Languages in all those
> situations could have been replaced by other skills, and the puzzle
> would have remained the same. Even the silent room could have been dealt
> with using a 'writing' skill. 

Writing is still a form of communication though.

> >> > I hate artificial restrictions and inconsistencies like
> >> > 'You cannot pick up another player'.
> >> 
> >> Artificial worlds will impose artificial restrictions.
> >
> >Yes, but the above statement implies that you *can* pick up NPCs, just not
> >players.  I find this to be massively inconsitent and unnecessarily 
> >restrictive.
> 
> The specific example above is based on an error message I picked out of
> the air, which was intended to illustrate that an error message should
> tell you specifically what it is that it didn't let you do and why. The
> realism or implications of the specific error message used as an example
> are actually irrelevant.

So you'd expect something along the lines of "You aren't strong enough to
pick up Bubba."?

> 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). 

What if the player who is idle, auto-responds to such actions with a hostile
response as well?  Picking someone up would probably come under hand-to-hand
or wrestle or something if the player was resisting.  Maybe doing such
actions would require the victim to "allow X to Y" first or something.  I'm
more inclined to make players less vulnerable when their idle, fix their
rolls so that they dodge or are missed more.  Of course if you go idle in
the middle of the Orc's warren you deserve everything you get.

> Theoretically, in the real world, you would be able to pick up the
> player provided you could carry him and all the weight he was carrying. 
> 
> Realistically, I certainly hope you don't walk down the street picking
> people up.

I'd hope you don't walk down the street brandishing a sword, but it's what
most people do in muds.

> >From the administrative angle, if I logged onto a MUD, and some dork
> picked me up and took me off someplace and dropped me, I would be pretty
> pissed. Especially if he was able to put me into a room without going in
> himself, in which case he could toss me into a trap or into a vicious
> gang of dragons. Considering these possibilities, I would be very
> hesitant to allow people to pick up other players, and very wary of
> anyone who disliked this restriction. This comes under the heading of
> bad things happening to my character without any kind of consent.

Well for a start, it's unlikely that someone will be able to go far whilst
carrying you.  And secondly whilst you're over their shoulder you can attack
them?

> Another concern: High-level character picks up low level character,
> turns invisible, and takes him to an area he can't normally get to.
> High-level character drops low-level character. Low-level character gets
> in fight. When low-level character is badly hurt, high-level character
> grabs him and runs off to heal low-level character. Repeat ad nauseam.

I never liked the idea that because of your level you weren't allowed to go
in a certain area, but since I'm planning on basing my game on RuneQuest I
won't have that kind of problem.

But there is a really obvious way to solve this.  If you're invisible,
obviously no-one can see you, so if you do something that means that people
do see you, then cancel the spell.  If you attack someone, or you're
carrying something large and visible.  Just because you're invisible doesn't
mean something you pick up becomes invisible as well - not unless you put it
in your invisible rucksack - you'd have to use some kind of 'sneak' skill to
pick up something without people noticing.

Maddy