[MUD-Dev] Usability and interface

[Maddy]

Previously, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote....
> On Mon, 22 Sep 1997 08:17:59 PST8PDT, Adam Wiggins
> <nightfall at user1.inficad.com> wrote:
> 
> >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.
> 
> This sounds really great, but unfortunately you combine this with some
> of the other factors in the game you're describing... and it's sort of
> like creating the world's greatest basketball code and making the
> world's major races dwarves, gnomes, and halflings. Character
> development is a lot of fun when you're *developing*, but after a few
> run-throughs you get tired of it. It really doesn't matter how detailed
> I can make my character when someone else can walk up and destroy all my
> work for no real reason.

I don't think any of my PnP characters have ever stopped developing and I've
had some of them for years.  What do you class as "no real reason".  If you
were playing an orc and I were playing a dwarf, it would make perfect sense
for me to kill you.  You're a vile scum sucking orc, a spawn of evil
etc..etc..  There could be a religion that requires its members to kill
anyone with blond hair.

> >> 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.  
> 
> Nor do I, which is why I sort of turn my nose up at languages. Nobody
> ever does... of course, this also comes down to another problem I see in
> a lot of MUDs, which is that a lot of really cool things are overlooked
> in favor of easier things. You *could* 

I've never actually found a mud where languages were "supported" so I guess
my views on them haven't been tainted.  The problem with the above example
is that doesn't matter what race the orc is.  Even if he were human, you
still wouldn't be able to talk your way past him on most muds.

> >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.
> 
> Why does every game developer I ever try to talk to keep insisting that
> HIS game is one hundred percent immune from every example I give because
> 'my game has no such concept'? Skill-based 'classless' systems have been
> around a long time, and they're by no means immune to game balance
> problems. In fact, just about every game system suffers from game
> balance problems, and rather serious ones in many cases. Does anyone
> recall 'Man, Myth, and Magic' which allowed anyone miserly enough to
> save up 3000 or so gold to instantly become SuperCharacter?

Well the problem is, is that all your balance problems seem to be based upon
XP/Level based systems and they don't really make sense if you don't have
either of them.  I'm sure that I'll have loads of balance problems to start
with, which is why I'm going to take most of my system from an already
stable PnP system.

> >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 have that problem on occasion myself. I mean, really, you can emote
> about anything, and I see people who pose such ludicrous things you feel
> like demanding to see their character sheets. Building a house of cards,
> no problem. Balancing a dagger on the top? Hold on a second here,
> Houdini! Make a roll for that one...

A good reason to get rid of emotes?

> >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 mainly dislike hostility between players because it's too easy for one
> player to force such activity on another. If I'm walking along with my
> character, which I've invested some four months in developing, and some
> multi-year veteran of the server who happens to be bored sees me walking
> along and decides to squot me like a pumpkin -- well, I just lost four
> months for his momentary giggle at watching the MUD's 'huhuhuhuhuh, you
> killed somebody, he's DEAD, huhuh that was cool' message.

Well think about the situation.  You're walking along and you see this guy
walking towards you with a sword.  At that stage I'd give the guy a wide
berth as will all the NPCs walking about too.  What if you were walking
along and a mobile/NPC killed you?  There isn't really that much difference,
you're still dead.  If there isn't any risk in the game, then there really
isn't any point in playing.  You'll just wander about, swatting NPCs like
they were flies safe in the knowledge that they couldn't harm you.

>                                                           On a
> permadeath MUD, I don't get any of it back, either. Even when death
> *isn't* permanent, when I've worked for a week at making the next
> stepping stone in my character's development and suddenly lose it all...

Yes I can see this is a problem, but the game would only suck if the other
player could kill you in one blow.  I'm expecting that you'll have several
seconds before he'll even get his first attack in, giving you plenty of time
to get away.  If he does kill you and other people have seen him kill you,
he's going to be a lot of hot water.  The locals will report him as being
your murderer and the local Lord will make him a wanted criminal.

He'll not last long, if every patrol of soldiers, or group of adventures is
looking for him.  Even his "friends" might find it better to shop him in,
rather than tarnish their good name by associating themselves with him.

> I tend to be pissed. I don't like games that piss me off. I like games
> to be fun. Challenging, yes, definitely. Occasionally frustrating, yeah,
> great. But binary? Would you play a game like Dungeon Keeper if every
> time you were defeated on level 11 (like most of us were, repeatedly)
> you had to start over on level 1? All or nothing? Jesus, man, starting a
> new character is a tremendous pain; you put in all that work, and then
> you're Joe Wimp for at least a week. During that week, of course, you
> have to wander around hoping nobody decides he's bored enough to whap
> you for the heck of it. If you're lucky, or you have 'connections', then
> someone can hook you up with some equipment and start you off with a
> decent amount of money. The rest of us, of course, just end up going
> somewhere else.

Don't you think it a challeng surviving in a hostile environment, where
everyone wants to cut you into tiny pieces?

> >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).
> [...]
> >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 could point out that there are other such places out there that a lot
> of people really hate. Dark Metal, in the MUSH world, routinely has
> large numbers of people logged on; a lot of people there really like it.
> It's also known as 'Twink Metal', a rather pejorative term as a 'twink'
> is the MUSH world equivalent of an asshole, and the founders have long
> since moved on -- and consider it a failed experiment. While there
> certainly is sufficient interest to keep it running, it's still not
> exactly 'running successfully' when the creators have abandoned it. 

Well I'd assume that the vast numbers of people on it, actually do like it. 
The game has been targeted at X, so like you've already said, Y is going to
hate it.  Admittedly it seems odd that the founders just left it running,
since it is their game I'd have expected they'd just take it down.

Maddy