[MUD-Dev] Usability and interface

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On Wednesday, September 24, 1997 4:29 AM, clawrenc at cup.hp.com 
[SMTP:clawrenc at cup.hp.com] wrote:
> In <342f30e9.10505055 at relay.mnsinc.com>, on 09/20/97
>    at 03:14 PM, caliban at darklock.com (Caliban Tiresias Darklock) said:
>
> >On Fri, 19 Sep 1997 21:43:02 PST8PDT, Adam Wiggins
> ><nightfall at user2.inficad.com> wrote:
>
> >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.
>
> At which point I note a couple of the more interesting puzzles from SX
> MUD (MUD1 I guess) which were later removed for MUD2 and its slow
> death under BT:
>
>   1) There existed in the land a paper bag.  The bag internally was
> comprised of two rooms.  Players of sufficient level could "pick up"
> other players and put them in the bag.

The kind of brain process which would consider such a thing a Good Idea is 
completely foreign to me.

> Very quickly the bag game changed to:
> Find as many players as you can and put them in the bag, then get the
> dragon and drop him in too, peer in the top to watch the
> slaughter/fun.

I would prefer allowing other people to voluntarily get into the bag. 
"Sure, I'll take you to Darkmoor Keep. Get in the bag." Of course, you 
could certainly stick the dragon in before the player, allowing the same 
general amount of fun if the player was too trusting.

	Bob says "Yeah, I can get to Darkmoor."
	Bob drops a bag.
	Bob says "Here, climb in the bag."
	>look in bag
	The bag appears larger on the inside than on the outside. It must be ma  
gical.
	The bag contains:
		A large vicious white dragon foaming at the mouth
		Several hundred corpses
	>tell bob Bugger off!

Of course, we all know the phrase 'look before you leap', but how many of 
us really do? The player with the bag can convince a lot of people to get 
in the bag, while the players getting in the bag should be kicking himself 
rather than the player who had the bag. This is *fair*. I can't *put* you 
in the bag, but you can certainly get in it if I talk you into it... and 
that's entirely your fault. Caveat emptor. ;)

> Pushing the button reset the game
> __without__ logging the button pusher off.  This was a significant
> advantage as logging into SX MUD was a aomewhat lengthy process --
> during which the game-nuker could have free-reign of the game, gaining
> all/many of the key objects.

This reminds me very uncomfortably of the kinds of things that 
inexperienced and/or young and/or immature GMs consider fun. These kinds of 
constructs are just inane and ill-considered; I would have done something 
more suited to *play*, as follows:

The button is pressed. (process set in motion)
Several shortly-spaced emits are sent to all players. (fair warning)
All players except the button pusher are frozen for a period of five 
minutes. (player advantage)
Players logging on while other people in the game are frozen are not 
frozen. (balancer)

The situation now becomes a matter of 'see the emit -> recognise this means 
a freeze is coming -> log off voluntarily -> log back on immediately'. The 
players now have some control over whether they are frozen. In addition, 
with frozen players, the button pusher can now rob or kill multiple players 
with impunity. (I would be likely to make the frozen players immune to 
damage, as well, to prevent death -- which enables another tactic of 
protecting players from turn-based damage by pushing the button. Some 
players would unexpectedly gain from the process.) In addition, when people 
log on and the rest of the players are frozen, they can take advantage of 
the situation as well -- possibly getting things the button pusher wanted.

It's still rather distasteful, IMO, but much less so under the new rules 
I've outlined. :)
	
> I'd note that most of the fun things in life are fettening...err,
> uhh...all of the fun things in MUDs are opportunities for abuse
> disguised as fun things.  I don't see that attempting to prevent abuse
> on the one hand with technical systems, and ehance the fun on the
> other with the same systems is profitable or needed.

I prefer to think of it as: The construct can be used for lots of nifty 
things. The construct may be useful for nasty things. Let's make a nifty 
list and a naughty list, and compare the two. In fact, let's get some other 
people we trust to make similar lists. Now let's stack all the lists 
together, and consider whether this item is nifty or naughty or somewhere 
in between. If it's somewhere in the middle, maybe we can modify it a 
little and make it nifty. If it's clearly naughty, we should probably throw 
it out. But if it's clearly nifty, let's keep it! We can overlook one or 
two little things, provided the nifty outweighs the naughty.

> Ignoring that fact that the second puzzle above is centered on a
> reset-based game, I expect that you'd consider both of them "bad",
> whereas I look on them as highly laudable if not almost ideal examples
> of excellent puzzle and game design.

I find them wonderful examples of great ideas that were given too little 
consideration. They can be improved greatly just by changing a couple 
things. Simple things, really, but they make a big difference in how 
acceptable I find them, and very little difference in how much fun they can 
be.

=+[caliban at darklock.com]=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=[http://www.darklock.com/]+=
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