[MUD-Dev] Usability and interface

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <01BCC8EB.9E05A0D0.caliban at darklock.com>, on 09/24/97 
   at 10:24 AM, Caliban Tiresias Darklock <caliban at darklock.com> said:

>On Wednesday, September 24, 1997 4:29 AM, clawrenc at cup.hp.com 
>[SMTP:clawrenc at cup.hp.com] wrote:

>>   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.

Yup.

>> 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.

True, this would add a whole new mechanic.  My preference would be to
add possibilities for a player to resist being picked up, to break out
of the bag, to otherwise escape, or in some other way to transform the
previously atomic transaction of "pick up player and put in bag" into
something where the potential victim has the possibility of altering
the outcome.  Best would be if the intended victim has the (slight)
chance of putting his attacker in the bag instead of himself.

Aside: In MUD2 the standard reaction upon being picked up was the log
off, and then log back on to attempt to attack the fellow more
directly.  As it required a rather high level character to even be
able to pick someone up, this was not often successful.  It did tend
to make many enemies for the attempted collector, which also tended to
shorten his life on a perma-death MUD.

>	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!

How about putting Bob in the empty bag, and _then_ dropping the dragon
in after him?

>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. ;)

One could easily extend that to MUD2's case.  You are playing a game
where such mechanics exist (being put in bags).  Ergo, by default you
have agreed to those mechanics...

>> 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:

Missing data on the Enola Gay feature, was that it required solving a
long and intricate puzzle, many steps of which were prone to being
accidentally prevented by the normal operations of other players.  You
needed a specific set of objects, several of which were valuable and
prone to being collected or swamped (destroyed) by other players, you
needed the objects in a particular sequence, and many widely seperated
pieces of the world had to be in an unaltered state.  The result was
that it took a LOT of work, and a larger amount of luck to be able to
get the Enola Gray off the ground in the first place.  You also had to
be a reasonable level playerjust to get the requisite objects, or to
the parts of the world needed.  Then once you pushed the button, the
game was reset (in a reset based game, often a valuable thing), all
the players were kicked off and told who reset the game.  

The result was that a player might be forgiven doing the Enola Gray
once, perhaps twice if he found a totally seperate set of players to
kick, but after that he was merely setting himself up as the PK target
of choice for a great many players.  Such did not live long.

Note: MUD2 was a perma-death unrestricted PK game.

The result was that it had all the characteristics of an ego toy, but
enough feedback and accountability to keep it as just a very
impressive, tell-stories-about-it-to-others, Wow-isn't-that-neat,
feature that most were happy to know existed without ever using it
themselves.  As such it implicitly added flavour without having to be
tasted.

>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)

But this ruins the value of the feature.  The value is in the depth
and extent of the effect you are able to create on the world.  You've
watered the wine.  You've cute the dope.  What was an almost
unadulterated nuke now has kiddie wheels.  

The kick was in the extent of the effect you could have on the world.

Sure, the Enola Gray was suicidal (perma-death), but it was a fun
suicidal, a, "Wow!  Hot dang!  You can *do* that?  WTF!  I *really did
that?  Oh sheeeit....I'm for it now...."

>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.

Ahh.  My preference has nifty almost automatically always trumping
naughty.  I'll acknowledge the naughty by attempting to figure out
other systems to dilute or counter weight the naughty without diluting
the nifty.  As such you tend to get layers within layers, which I
consider another benefit.

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...