[MUD-Dev] Usability and interface

[Travis Casey]

Caliban Tiresias Darklock <caliban at darklock.com>
>On Wednesday, September 24, 1997 5:03 AM, Adam Wiggins
>[SMTP:nightfall at user2.inficad.com] wrote:
>>
>
>I don't want an all powerful character. I want a character capable of
>playing the game as long as *I* want to play it. Period. Not as long as
>people let me. Not as long as I haven't solved every quest. Not as long as
>I'm not level 50. As long as I want to play, be that a day, a month, a
>year, or even a decade. I always want someplace else to go, and I don't
>want any dork anywhere able to *stop* me. Slow me up, yeah; inconvenience
>me, annoy me, make my life hell? Yeah, go for it, but not *stop* me. ;)

I hope you didn't mean what you said there... after all, in order to be able
to play the game as long as *you* want to play it, irrespective of anything
else, your character would have to only be able to die if you wanted it to.
("The dragon killed me because I'm only first level?  But I still want to
play!")

A more reasonable version might be, "I want a character that I can continue
to play as long as I'm reasonably cautious."

>> This doesn't mean you every hit some sort of 'ceiling' on your
>character's
>> abilities, although it does get progressively harder to advance or even
>> keep up your skills, resistances, and so forth.  It means that's it's a
>> dangerous world, full of surprises from both the game and other players.
>
>Dangerous is good. Hostile is not. The difference between the terms is left
>as an exercise for the reader.

Hostile can be *very* good if done right.  Some of the best games I've
played
in have involved having the PCs in environments best described as hostile --
for example, as resistance fighters behind enemy lines.

>> We get around this two ways: for one, characters
>> start descently strong.  No being defeated by dogs or squirrels.  Second,
>> you get character points added to your account when you loose (via death
>> or deletion) a 'built up' character, so that you can start you next one
>> with more advantages.
>
>That's also a good thing; I proposed that on a MUSH I was working at once,
>and got quite a lot of bad reaction to it. It's an idea not quite ready for
>prime time, but hey, someone has to prove it works. After you've played
>AD&es..D with the same people for 5 years, do you start their new
characters at
>level 1? No! Of course not! They're above that now. Same with MUDders. :)

Something I've thought about off and on is a fantasy mud where "dead"
characters go to the celestial realms to be reincarnated -- i.e., to redo
the character with the possibility of changing race, etc.  The reincarnated
characters would be better than a normal starting character, according to
how successful they'd been in previous lives.


>> Are you saying that you think that this is a better method?
>> Having tried both in a variety of different skill areas including
>> unarmed combat, programming, archery, and plenty of others I could
>> probably rattle off if anyone cared, I *much* prefer actual intruction as
>> opposed to being pounded into the ground faster than I can even blink.
>
>You *should* receive both. First, he knocks the shit out of you, then he
>tells you what you did wrong. After five or six times through this, you
>learn not to do that. Then he does something different. In a fighting
>situation, it has to be instinct. Which means listening to some guy say
>'here is how you do it' just plain isn't enough -- you need to practice,
>and not against some guy who's going to be good and let you get your
>bearings, but against someone who not only WILL hurt you if you get it
>wrong, but DOES. You learn a lot faster that way. A teacher will tell you
>what you did wrong, and THAT is the main benefit. The real combat opponent
>will just happily pound your face in, and let you continue trying to work
>it out on your own.

The instructor is still holding back, however -- if he hadn't been holding
back, but had been acting like a truly hostile opponent would, you wouldn't
be around to exchange these messages with us.  Further, a good teacher
doesn't
try to teach advanced techniques until after the students have learned the
basics.

There are, however, other ways of holding back than acting as if you're less
skilled than you are -- you can choose less lethal techniques, not carry out
techniques with full force, or use weapons that are not as lethal as "the
real
thing."

Unarmed combat tends to be pretty nonlethal and not to cause permanent
damage
if you stay away from certain techniques.  Thus, your instructor could
demonstrate
many techniques at full-force or near-full-force and still have you around
to
teach.  Someone teaching, say, swordfighting, doesn't have that luxury.
("Ok,
son, once the medics patch up your lung, I'll show you how you *should* have
dodged.")

To expand beyond combat, almost everything I can think of is best taught by
exposing students to material that's just a bit above what they can already
handle -- would you try to move someone straight from pre-algebra to
advanced
calculus?  Would you move a programming student straight from "hello, world"
to
writing a C compiler?

Of course, that's just a general rule -- there may be specific exceptions.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'        rec.games.design FAQ:
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