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

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On Wednesday, September 24, 1997 4:47 AM, Maddy [SMTP:maddy at fysh.org] 
wrote:
>
> 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.

Right back to 'this doesn't apply'. "Who is specialised in this highly 
specific area that we MUST have at least one of?" (No hands go up) "Um... 
how many people here are specialised in this area that we only need one or 
two of?" (Eight hands go up) "Um... you didn't raise your hand, what 
exactly is YOUR specialty?" "I play a mean bagpipe..." (collective screams 
and stampede for the door)

> 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?

Uhhh... when did I say it was a troll city? Let me be more specific. I 
choose race X from a list of twelve races, because race X is an odd race 
and I want to be different. I get into the game, and after a couple hours 
of wandering about I notice that across the entire MUD approximately thirty 
percent of the combined PC and NPC population is of race X. I am therefore 
not different at all, my goal is not realised, and I'm dissatisfied. I 
decide I would prefer to play a less common race, like race Y which appears 
to be about two or three percent of the population, so I try to abandon the 
character (being a nice guy, I want him deleted to save you the time, disk 
space, and trouble of maintaining a character I have no interest in). Now 
you tell me the character is too new, and I haven't played him long enough 
to be able to delete him.

What if I choose a race under an assumption that turns out to be false? 
Let's say I choose to be a half-elf figuring that means half human and half 
elf, and then discover that you randomly selected what the other half is so 
I'm half elf and half pixie -- or in other words, the physical equivalent 
of a skinny hairless halfling with pointy ears, no hair on his feet, and 
useless vestigial wings that look stupid? Yuck! What a moronic combination! 
I hate this! Get me out of this character!

> 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.

Yeah, sometimes I'm not clear enough. I apologise.

> > > 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).

Actually, yes, but it was intended to be humorous rather than cruel, so let 
me state more simply: I was just offering a cautionary note, rather than a 
critique; the cautionary note was not applicable to what *had* been said, 
but to what I feared might be inferred from it.

Is that still confusing? Looking at it, I can see where someone might look 
at it and go 'oh, yeah, THAT makes perfect sense, now if I could just 
figure out what it means'.

> > This goes right back to target audience.
>
> Well ok - target audience == me then.

Then why discuss it? You'll only have one player, so you don't need network 
capability or user management or even an efficient system... and you know 
better than we do what that one player wants ;)

> > 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.

Usually because people have no reason to go home. There's nothing there. I 
for one think there's a BIG need for people to have their own space in a 
game... potentially something like a barracks, where you the player would 
log in and create you the character. If you died, you would go back to your 
barracks and make a new character. If you wanted to log off, you would go 
back to your barracks and quit. People need a place for their stuff, you 
know?

Potential problem: player takes really good character and goes out 
gathering really good equipment. Leaves equipment and a lot of money in the 
barracks. Character goes out and gets killed. Player makes new character 
and gathers up nifty equipment and piles of gold. *Is* this a problem? Is 
it any less of a problem if player has a friend whose character gives him 
that same stuff out on the street? Is that somehow prohibited?

> 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.

And therefore the command set is specifically geared toward that goal -- 
without supporting a lot of the other niceties, like communication and 
expression.

> > 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.

Well, you're perfectly capable of beating people up, for one, and of using 
selected skills to achieve an effect. I recall one player who was 
constantly hypnotising people on a MUSH and implanting suggestions that 
they should go to a particular area and start a fight. There are always 
people who go and get concealed weapons permits and then walk around waving 
their gun at the slightest excuse. While there's no actual 'level' 
involved, and there's not likely to be any experience award involved 
either, power pursuit is still alive and well on MUSHes. Not to mention the 
people who fake power: we had a player on one MUSH (both will remain 
nameless) who repeatedly implied the supernatural nature of his completely 
normal character; eventually, this snowballed and got out of control, and 
staff became involved -- at which point it came to light that the player 
had been lying all along, and in fact had deliberately and maliciously 
abused the trust-based nature of the game to convince people of his 
character's power and ability. The player was permanently removed from the 
game, and several dozen players had to 'retcon' (retroactively contradict 
-- "that never really happened") months of effort and roleplay.

It's also important to point out that *representing* a character as 
possibly being something he is not is completely acceptable in a roleplay 
situation, but to deliberately lie about the results from sensory abilities 
and supernatural perceptions is just plain cheating; I could certainly take 
a character on a MUSH and never go out during daylight, which might 
convince people I was a vampire, but if I told people that my skin was pale 
and cool to the touch I'd start getting a little iffy, and if I told 
someone I happened to be holding in my arms that they couldn't feel or hear 
a heartbeat things would definitely have gone a little too far but not 
*quite* to the point of no return. You go beyond any possible defense when 
you tell someone using a thermal scanner that your character doesn't show 
up on it, or an EMT trying to take your pulse that there isn't one, or your 
character gets angry and casually punches a hole through a concrete wall.

What's the benefit? I don't know. More or less the same benefit you *might* 
get by telling someone you're a black belt when you aren't. It causes more 
or less the same problems, too; sooner or later you hit someone who goes 
'wow, me too, we should spar'. ;>

> 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.

I've always wanted to see a workable implementation of 'go get <item>' on a 
MUD. For example, when in a town, you could type 'go get food' and it would 
take you as far as it could; like for example, to the nearest tavern or 
bakery. If you typed something specific, like 'go get pie' it would take 
you to the nearest bakery and actually buy a pie. This would probably have 
so many pitfalls it could be too much of a pain in the butt to implement, 
but I'd love to see it done; it would vastly simplify a lot of things 
people usually macro, like 'get scroll pouch; read scroll; n; nw; w; w; s; 
buy pie; put pie sack; n; e; e; se; s'. Now you have to get back where you 
were, which may be difficult; with a 'go get' command, you could strip a 
lot of the deadwood from that.

> 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".

Ahh! Problem! If I speak four languages, and someone says something in a 
language I don't know... shouldn't you translate that into all four 
languages in case it means something in more than one language?

> 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.

Not likely. The NLP will fall down quickly given things like this:

	Bubba dances the tango.
	Bubba dances the waltz.
	Bubba dances the twist.
	Bubba dances the mashed potato.
	Bubba dances the running man.
	Bubba dances the butterfly dance.
	Bubba dances the Eastern elf dance.
	Bubba dances the Western dwarf's lament.

All of these are perfectly reasonable, and thus so is:

	Bubba dances the Northern dragon's approach.
	Buffy dances quickly toward the south.

It's also worth saying that in many Eastern cultures, it is perfectly 
possible to dance such a message, or even something more complex. ;)

	Bubba peers north.
	Bubba says "Ph'nglui mglw'naph Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah-nagl fthagn!"
	Buffy says "Yt'thkapg Nyarlathotep?"
	Boffo says "Ia, Shub-Niggurath!"
	Bubba dances the dragon's approach.
	Bubba dances the dragon's arrival.
	Bubba dances the grim death of everyone in the room.
	Bubba runs south.
	Boffo scratches his head.
	Buffy peers north.
	Buffy runs south.
	Boffo picks his nose.
	The dragon arrives from the north.
	Boffo screams!
	From the south, Buffy shouts "You dumb shit!"
	The dragon belches fire and brimstone.
	Boffo dies.

You know, I usually have more fun typing out these example sessions than I 
do writing the rest of the message. ;)

> > 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.

And why is there a benefit in players not being able to communicate?

> > 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.

There are SO many questions, it's impossible to list them all...

	Where can I get mandrake root?
	Where can I buy food?
	Where can I buy a decent weapon?
	Where can I find decent armor?
	Where can I learn to dance?
	Where can I learn magic?
	Where can I get laid?
	Where can I make suggestions about the game?
	Where do I report a bug?

> 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.

A telephone pole is 20 to 40 feet tall and has two parallel 6 foot or so 
crosspieces near the top. Such a construction is instantly recogniseable to 
most people.

> 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.

I like games that I can play without assistance for extended periods of 
time. I like character development. I like puzzles and intricately designed 
areas. I like realistic and 'living' areas where the NPCs actually do more 
than one thing. I like the way the Ultima series handled the environment 
(although as you mention, the command interface is pretty bad). I like old 
games like the Zork series and the Nethack/Moria/Rogue types. I like being 
able to suspend disbelief, and actually feel like this is a real world and 
the character is a real person. I like NPCs being able to develop 
persistent opinions of things. I like NPCs having a variety of reactions to 
the same stimuli. I like worlds which are familiar, and which operate on a 
similar set of rules to the real world. I like being able to ignore morons, 
talk to other players, and more or less be secure in the fact that if I 
wander around exploring I'm not likely to have anything ruin my game unless 
I do something dumb.

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