[MUD-Dev] Usability and interface

[Broly]

On Thu, 25 Sep 1997, Nathan Yospe wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Sep 1997, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> :On Wednesday, September 24, 1997 4:48 AM, Maddy [SMTP:maddy at fysh.org] 
> :wrote:
> 
> :> 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.
> 
> :There are vastly different power levels in the game. I may be walking 
> :around with some decent armor and a hefty weapon, but some other guy will 
> :have no armor or weaponry at all, and someone else may be wearing all but 
> :impregnable armor and some vastly damaging weapon that ignores all physical 
> :armor worn by the opponent. If I can take twelve sword hits on average, and 
> :that weapon does as much damage as *twenty* sword hits on the average, it's 
> :a one shot. Even without any weaponry, if he's significantly stronger and 
> :faster and more skilled than I am, he's going to win. Period.
> 
> Sounds like a game balance/design problem. Would it be such a problem if 
> these LP/Dikuisms were not present? (And they ARE LP/Dikuisms, make no
> mistake. The consistancy with which you make falacious assumptions that could
> only come from an experience limited to those paradigms makes me suspicious,
> as you claim not to even play them.)
> 
Not really a problem (IMHO) with design.  Consider:
1.a loin vs. a kitten, or
2.a Sherman tank vs. a Honda Accord, or
3.a gun-wielding mugger vs. grandma.
The real world has vastly different power levels, and any of the above
battles would end as soon as the first object attacked, barring some
miracle.  Yet there are plenty of kittens,Accords, and grandmas.  Kittens
rarely deal with lions, the tank driver would be shot for blowing up
Accords, and wise old grandma knows better(we hope) than to start fights
with gun-wielding muggers.  So there really isn't a balance problem after
all.
In mud terms, the balance can be reproduced for each of the three
scenarios.
1.  sequestor the really nasty mobs.  There's no real reason to send a
horde or rampaging dragons thru the heart of newbie country.  I actually
did this as a player once by having them chase me thru a crowded
town...You should have seen the carnage.
2.  Have some sort of justice system,  and create reasonable mobile code.
Mobcode will prevent the town sherrif from going on a killing spree..well
maybe once...And a justice system will keep out-of-control players in
check.
3. Players can make or break any design.  If some idiot logs on, and
decides to pick a fight with Odin, the all powerful, they deserve to die.
Or if said player decides to check and see where that 'Gateway to Hell'
really leads....Or just decides to pick up a random potion and quaff it,
not knowing the contents.  Death should come in many shapes and sizes.
Most players aren't too conecrned with staying alive, and therefore won't
do it very long.

"If I try to do X, there is a good chance I will die...should I do X?"
I'd say 95% of mud deaths either come from players not bothering to ask
that question before embarking upon a chosen course of action, or
answering 'yes' to it.  Mind you that that number is incidental at best.
You won't get inteligent behaviour from your players unless you force them
to behave intelligently.

> :Consider...
> 
> :	Game 1: If I start a fight, I may get killed.
> :	Game 2: I will never be killed, ever.
> :	Game 3: If I log on, I may get killed.

world 1:  If I start a fight, I may get killed.
world 2:  I will live forever.
world 3:  If I get out of bed, I may be killed.
Real world:  If I am alive, I will die.
> 
> If *I* fail to check for traps when entering an obviously hostile territory,
> if *I* associate with diseased beggars and vermin, if *I* wander into the
> toughest bar this side of Actures in spite of the obvious HoverHogs parked
> outside, *I* DESERVE to get killed even if *I* didn't start any fights. It
> is a matter of scope. You seem to think in a combat only risk game, whichis
> pointless unless you are using the "only combat advances your level" way
> of doing things.
> 
Yes, this is very true.  Battle death shouldn't be the only way to die,
although the Klingons say its the best.  The problem with having death
lurking behind every corner is that there is no way to anticipate and
avoid it.  Players should be advised that your particular mud decides to
model some particular aspect of the real world, especially if said
modeling can greatly shorten the life expectancy of the unwary.  Most
players wouldn't expect (their character) to catch a fatal disease while
mudding, and would probably cry foul if they suddenly became vunerable to
this risk without warning.  Although I don't think its needed to inform
players to use common sense to stay alive, one does (IMHO) need to make
consessions to the idea that most mudders out there are expecting to see
your mud behaving like others they've seen, and should be adivsed when it
doesn't.  I once designed a death_trap for Circlemud called 'Heart Attack'
that randomly swicthed with rooms about the mud, and if a  character(PC or
NPC) happened to be in the room 'Heart Attack' switched with, WHAMMO dead.
Fortunately it was never implimented.

Perhaps the worst death is 'typo death', but there really isn't too much a
coder can do in the way of design to prevent it without ruining the game.
You could ask for a confirmation before allowing players to enter
dangerous places, but that would result in something like the following:

        >w
        The forest parts to reveal a small meadow.
	>n
	You follow the shrub-line at the forest's edge.
        >n
	A slight downward slope leads you toward Acorn Valley.
	>n
	You approach the cliff.
	>n
        Do you really want to do that? (go/stop)
	>stop
	>look
	You stand on the edge of a sharp cliff overlooking Acorn Valley.
	There are small grasses common to this meadowland that grow on the
	fertile soil all the way to the edge of the cliff.  You can take
	flight by going north over the edge of the cliff, but it is not
	advised unless you have managed to grow some wings, or you could
	head back off the cliff to the south.
        >look north
        You see that the cliff drops down some 300 meters below you.  You
	would squash like a bug if you went this way.
	>look down
	Its a long way down, but you think you can make out one or two
	distinct splat marks at the bottom.

Note that the player is not taking any notice of his/her surroundings
until prompted by the game.  Plyers are smart enough to learn when it
would prompt.

One design change I made away from the standard was the "stop" command.
As a player I used to pretype up to 10-15 commands becuase I was a slow
typist when I first started mudding.  Most games queue the commands, then
pull the commands off the queue and execute them one at a time.  With my
design, commands are parsed asap and their execution is delayed.  When a
player issues the 'stop' command, the queued actions are stopped.  stop
with no arguments kills all commands, 'stop XXX' kills the next XXX
command, while stop all.XXX kills all XXX commands.  'Stop stop' doesn't
work.  (I include this here in the discussion on how players end up dying
because most of my own deaths could have been avoided if I could have
avoided the temptation to pretype commands...)

> :> 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.
> 
> :If, if, if, if, if, then it's not a problem? In other words it's not a 
> :problem 2^-5 of the time? One out of 32? Yeah, that's a good argument.
> 
> If != 1/2, first off, so your logic is bad from the start. Plus, there were
> only three conditionals, if you parse the paragraph carefully.

if (balanced_fight) return no_problem;
if (have_warning && can_run_away) return no_problem;
if (battle_takes_time && can_run_away) return no_problem;
if (battle_seen && reported) return no_problem;
return problem;

That's how I read it...

gunther