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

[Maddy]

Previously, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote....
> Quick reply, I'll go into more detail and fill holes later...
> 
> On Monday, September 22, 1997 4:23 AM, Maddy [SMTP:maddy at fysh.org] wrote:
> >
> > But we're talking 12 year olds - not hackers.
> 
> There's a more significant intersection there than you would think.

Hmmm, well I guess you could be right - hacking is a really childish thing
to do *P).  It's unlikely that I'll be letting kids on anyway, don't want
the nasty internet police *cough* coming along and saying I'm corrupting
children with mindless violence.

> > You may decide you want to delete the character, but it won't let you.
> > Given that you've just spent N-minutes creating this character according 
> to
> > your own needs, it doesn't really make sense that you'd want to delete 
> him
> > so soon.
> 
> Given that the availability of documentation is so restricted (not 
> downloadable or printable), chances are that I've built my first character 
> without a clear understanding of what will work best in the game. Ever go 
> to a gaming convention and seen a guy running some game say "Who's the 
> cleric?" -- and the whole group raises their hands? Or *nobody* raises his 
> hand at all? Bad situation. Same thing when you start up a character on a 
> MUD... you log on as a troll, and the first thing you see is thirty trolls 
> running around. Screw that, I want to do something different. What do you 
> mean, 'no'?

Well I've never been to a games-con (missed the last local one) so I can't
really say I've seen that, but the kinds of games I play don't have clerics. 
There might be players with healing skills, but they're refered to the
player with healing skills.

There must have been something about trolls that convinced you to want to be
one in the first place.  The fact that you've started the game in a large
troll city (which you'd expect to be full of trolls) seems like a silly
excuse to want to get rid of the character.  Would you want to start again
if you were a human and saw hundreds of humans running around?

It's going to be most likely that the time will be measured in hours rather
than days anyway.

> > but no-one said they were targetting the game for large groups - we
> > were discussing how to add elements to the game that make it more fun for
> > groups.
> 
> Let me restate: If game X is targeted at group Y then group Z will think 
> game X sucks.
> 
> Agreed, that wasn't the point of the grouping thread. I was attempting to 
> relate an example to discussions which have taken place on the list 
> recently, in the hope that people would get more involved with it if they 
> could see it had some relevance to other topics they were interested in.

Ah well it looked like you were saying that we were all saying X and only X
and X was bad, when in fact we were just suggesting X as addition.

> > Er where in the above paragraph did I state the players should only work 
> in
> > teams.  Lets see - I said that players should be able to do stuff in 
> groups,
> > I don't see how this equates to they shouldn't be allowed to do stuff by
> > themselves.
> 
> It doesn't. But you still shouldn't say that, and I thought it was worth 
> mentioning that you shouldn't say that, even though you didn't say it.

[Clutches head in agony]  Are you confusing me on purpose *P).

> > > All of us are PROGRAMMERS. We are by definition *not* the average 
> player.
> >
> > We might be programmers - but some of us have played muds, some of us 
> have
> > done PnP RPGs, some of us have done both - therefore we have some vague 
> idea
> > about the kinds of games we like to play.  I personally don't care if 
> anyone
> > logs on, I'm just running it for my fun.
> 
> This goes right back to target audience.

Well ok - target audience == me then.

> > The "how should the players communicate with the server" part already 
> works
> > tho.
> 
> No, it doesn't. People constantly complain about how difficult it is to get 
> things done on a MUD. You don't hear it here, because we already know what 
> we're doing.

Well yes - I find it really hard to break into houses and steal things (I
like playing thieves), but most muds don't let me do this.  Usually because
there aren't any houses.

> > > If it's so easy, why do we spend so much time discussing how different 
> the
> > > underlying server has to be for these types of people?
> >
> > Because so far the only type of player that is really catered for in 
> MUDs,
> > are powergamers.
> 
> Which is an interface issue as *well* as a game mechanics issue.

No - I don't think so.  Most MUDs are aimed at powergamers because the sole
goal in the MUD is to amass vast amounts of XP and rise rapidly up through
the levels.

> > No - I'll replace them with um..nothing at all - they're powergamers - 
> they
> > run around killing things for XP & levels.  Since I don't have XP or 
> levels,
> > my mud isn't going to be that interesting for them.
> 
> Levels are very convenient for keeping score, but we certainly have our 
> share of powergamers on WoD MUSHes, and there's no concept of levels 
> whatsoever there.

Levels are a limited goal for people to attain.  What did the powergamers do
on the MUSHes?  From what limited experence I have, there aren't monsters
that you can go around killing once an hour, there weren't vastly
overpowered weapons to collect & horde.

> > > What if English isn't my native language?
> >
> > Well you're going to have a hard time reading/understanding the room
> > descriptions etc aren't you?  The whole mud is in english, so if you're
> > going to have problems knowing how to type "get sword" you're not going 
> to
> > get very far.
> 
> Part of the assumption of NLP is that someone understands the basic syntax 
> and structure of the language in question, and therefore there is no need 
> to document that. This is, particularly in a MUD, a bad assumption. I can 
> get the general sense of a paragraph written in German, Dutch, French, S  
> panish, Portuguese, and other languages -- but I certainly can't construct 
> a sentence from scratch in any of them.

Well since the basic premise of the structure is a verb followed by an
optional number of nouns.  You're also allowed extra adverbs & adjectives
etc in there as well.  If you put in something it doesn't understand it
tells you that it doesn't, what types of word the misunderstood word is (or
it thinks it is) and what types of word it was expecting.

> > > What if my vocabulary isn't quite as good as yours?
> >
> > Well I'm sure your vocabulary will be good enough to use fairly wildly 
> used
> > verbs.
> 
> The two word commands you're using as examples are hardly anything that 
> require NLP.

No - they're not, but they are simple sentences.  "pick up the banana from
inside the chest on the table and insert it quickly up the orc's bottom" is
the far extreme my parser can cope with.  Well it can't actually handle
"orc's", but that is because I've not gotten around to it yet *8).

> > Ok what if you're amazingly strong and able to lift up bob.  Surely "get
> > bob" would pick bob up and sling him over your shoulder?  What if there 
> is
> > an object called "laid"...etc...
> 
> Exactly, so how do you deal with that?

Well I'll treat "get" to mean pick up the object and hold it/put it rucksack
or whatever.  Unless of "get" is followed by a preposition, in which case
it's a different situation.  "get on the horse", "get out of the pit" are
valid examples of how "get" isn't "get" any more.

> > Why bother having races if they all look, act and sound the
> > same.  You might as well only let players be human fighters or something.
> 
> Why exactly do you need the races to be unable to understand one another? 
> Does this help, somehow?

Why do I need races to be able to understand each other?  You'll most likely
start in your home town along with a load of others of your own race. 

Imagine race X is at war with race Y.  It takes a lot of the fun out of
things, if you can sneak up to race X's headquarters and have a good listen
to what they're all planning for tomorrow.  The way I've got languages
planned out is that each letter maps to another letter (although I'm
probably going to use groups of letters).  If I say "Hello world" in human,
it might appear to an elf as "Ifmmo xpsme".

The elf can repeat what the human says (ie say "Ifmmo xpsme") and because
the mapping from elf to human reverses almost perfectly the human will see
"Hello world" from the elf.  Now that example is very simple and with the
little experiments I've fiddled with you do get mistakes when the
translation is repeated.  Not nice mistakes like whole words transposed or
even the wrong word, but simple mistakes like "hello" becomes "hillo".

> > So if you wanted to tell Bubba that the dragon was coming you'd type 
> what?
> > "dance the dragon is coming" ??? Well when I last checked none of "the
> > dragon is coming" are adverbs.  You'd perfectly within your rights to 
> type
> > "dance quickly" tho.
> 
> How about 'dance as if <any phrase>'? I mean, 'dance as if lost in the 
> music' is perfectly reasonable, right? How exactly is 'dance as if the 
> dragon is coming' less reasonable?

Well here is where the NLP comes into play.  "lost in the music" is vastly
different to "the dragon is coming" and it should be fairly easy to spot
that the way you want to dance makes no sense.  The only way around it
would be to construct the sentence such that it warps the message into a
form that is acceptable, and you're more than likely going to warp the
message too much.

    Bubba dances as if coming in the dragon.
    Buffy stares at Bubba.
    Buffy says 'afGag Asgeg abbmm!' (which could losely translates to "You need to
get a life Bubba")

I can't remember who it was, but someone mentioned sign language.  Now that
is a perfectly acceptable way to pass on the message.

    > roar loudly
    Bubba roars loudly.
    > act like a dragon.
    Bubba acts like a large creature with wings.
    > point north then here.
    Bubba points to the north and then to the room.
    Buffy says 'BNmasg Gbageghn aghahk' (which could translate to "There is
a large winged creature coming this way - erk I'd better leave").

[Note: The "elvish" or whatever it is buffy is speaking in will of course
look a lot longer than examples.]

> > You gain difference between the various races,
> > why would a dwarf in a remote village miles from human settlements be 
> able
> > to instantly speak your language.  Why would he want to speak to you, 
> rather
> > than killing you on sight for being different?
> 
> Yes, languages do make a very useful reason to have NPCs that can't be 
> spoken to. But I thought we had already agreed that there shouldn't be a 
> way to tell them apart?

I didn't say the dwarf was an NPC though.  He could well be a player.

> > Abuse to the players - not to the game.  JerkFace logs on - does a who -
> > spots a player and goes and kills then.  Remove the who command and 
> JerkFace
> > has no idea who is a player and who isn't.
> 
> Remove the who command, and I log on and see a series of people that may or 
> may not be PCs. I try to find out where something is. I can't tell who's a 
> PC, who's been here a while, who's high level, who's of an appropriate 
> class, it becomes a major pain in the behind. I see plenty of NPCs who 
> would be able to help me, *if* they were able to understand and respond to 
> the question, which they aren't.

Where something is?  NPCs should be able to answer simple questions like,
"where is the bakers".  Since you've not really given any clear idea about
what kind of question you might have asked it's hard to really give an
answer.

> > Yes, well removing the difference between players & NPCs improves the 
> games
> > fun-factor as well.  I (personally) think it sucks that when you walk 
> into a
> > room you automatically know the names of everyone.
> 
> I dislike that myself. I prefer short descriptions.

Like...

   >look
   You are .... [blah blah blah]
   There is a man standing at the bar.
   >wait
   A tall man enters the tavern.

I'm certainly only thinking of listing the least ambigious name.

> > > To use a recent example from another thread, if I can go into the woods 
> > > with an axe and build a log cabin, I can also build a reasonable 
> facsimile
> > > of a telephone pole. I can also build a big cross and set it on fire. 
> Abuse
> > > is possible in any situation. Wouldn't you say walking off into the 
> woods
> > > and finding a big line of telephone poles would be disconcerting on a 
> MUD?
> >
> > Well since there isn't a "build telephone pole" skill/command, how would
> > they do this?
> 
> With the same primitives that allow them to build something you as the 
> designer never thought they would.

Yes but as someone else pointed out, they'd end up with a load of poles
sticking out of the ground.  The mud has no concept of telephone poles and
even if the player named them as being telephone poles, only she would seem
them as such.

> > We were - you have just mistakenly assumed that because our ideas aren't 
> to
> > your liking - they aren't fun.
> 
> Actually, pretty much everyone was discussing specific concepts from 
> several angles. Which is why I asked exactly what people *do* find fun, as 
> this seems to have been overlooked. Discussing fun things and discussing 
> what makes things fun are entirely different conversations.
> 
> > The ultima series are very primitive - you're
> > restricted to a set number of actions - a bit like the point-n-click
> > adventure games.
> 
> Sounds like socials to me.

Yup.

> > > All in all, I could be easily misled into thinking you're being overly
> > > defensive.
> >
> > Maybe I am - maybe I'm not - maybe I just disagree totally with what you
> > said?
> 
> Which had a whole lot of parts, so you're saying none of them have any 
> merit at all?

Well you said you didn't like groups, or NLP or languages or anything else
from what I could tell.  The only things you seem to like are standard
diku/lpmuds.

Maddy