[MUD-Dev] Usability and interface

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <342de0fa.16602420 at relay.mnsinc.com>, on 09/25/97 
   at 08:39 PM, caliban at darklock.com (Caliban Tiresias Darklock) said:

>On Thu, 25 Sep 1997 11:42:10 PST8PDT, Nathan Yospe <yospe at hawaii.edu>
>wrote:

>>Again, Caliban, you are using outmoded constructs. Please, explain to 
>>to me how this becomes a problem, say, in JCL's system, where the 
>>only limiting factoris your own creative development in designing 
>>traps and tools? 

>This doesn't come under the heading of character development, in my
>mind. For one, each and every character you ever have will have a
>commensurate ability to do all of these things; if I know how to
>build a catapult, my character can therefore build a catapult. If I
>know how to mix gunpowder, so does my character. If one of my
>characters knows, all of my characters know. 

This is not exactly true for me, but is largely.  It is literally true
for me regarding game-information.  

I make no effort at all to control the flow or use of game-information
among players or characters.  Thus if say one character discovered how
to make gun powder, any other character of his could also freely use
that data, as could any other player or character in the entire game,
no matter how they had found out that data, in-game or out-of-game. 
Thus, if you know how to do something, no matter how you came to know
how to do that thing, you can it.  

The limitations of course are in-game constructs.  If making gun
powder requires material which is not readily available, the character
in question will have to acquire that material.  If he needs various
magical EQ, then he'll have to get that.  If he needs certain stats at
particular levels (and yes, I have actions which require specific
stats to be within very narrow ranges), then those stats will have to
be in those ranges, etc.

For me largely the character has no real mental existance outside of
its human player, or if you wish, human ability == character ability. 
The areas where this isn't true are where the specifics of the
game-world intrude upon the character.  Thus physical strength,
stamina, etc are all in-game constructs, and develop in-game. 
Will-power (a very important stat for me), which is closely alligned
with Concentration, are reflective of the human's style of play.  Thus
they will vary dynamically from a median low as the character plays
and demonstrates and exercises his fortitude in those areas.  Magical
ability similarly, is a developed skill.

>It is reasonable,
>therefore, to conclude under this model that one character is pretty
>much the same as another, and therefore character development is
>completely irrelevant. 

Nahh.  They all have different bodies, which all have different innate
physical capabilities and affinities.  Each character also has
different skill webs and stat developments.  Even taking two
characters with identical character stats, but with different bodies,
or different numbers of bodies, each ends up with very different
in-play stats.  (Single body play is much more powerful, but risks
perma-death, multi-body play is much weaker but largely immortal)

However the brunt of what you are bearing towards, that the human's
skill and ability is far more important than his character's
development and stats is correct.  That is a key and very deliberate
design point for me.  I specifically want a game where the human is
the one on test, not the character.

>This is no doubt rectified by further statistics in JCL's world
>setting, such as skills and attributes, which would give you some
>area for actual character development along more traditional lines.

<nod>

>Character development in Zork, for example, is nonexistent. Your
>character's abilities are defined *and limited* by your own. While
>this is certainly intriguing, most of us left Zork behind rather
>quickly. In games, we want to not only express our own abilities, but
>transcend them and do things we normally could not. 

<shrug>  Disgreed in intent.  Any character is going to be doing
things that the human could or would not in RL.  Fighting dragons,
being eaten by wolves, rescuing princesses etc are all foreign to RL. 


Even immersive RP or hack'n'slash is an inherently intellectual game
and challenge.  It all occurs in headspace.  A human who is not
mentally able to visualise or manipulate concepts of a certain
complexity will have no greater ability to do the same in a game. 
Conversely however, a human who has that ability in spades, can, if he
wishes, hold himself back as if he couldn't.  This is the key reason I
abstracted all the mental and intellectual components of a character's
definition back to the human, and kept only the in-game mechanics
defined in-game.

>Death being 'potentially' permanent does not qualify in my mind as
>permadeath, provided such precautions are available to all characters
>in some fashion; it's when the advanced character has precautions and
>the new character doesn't that we have problems. 

Surely that difference is precisely the idea?  One develops the
capability of being immortal.  It incurs known (large) risks and
expenses, but also has a large payback.  Isn't this a valid form of
character development?

>Hold on a moment here. I'm saying that when a character is killed, it
>should be a direct result of his own action or lack thereof. It
>should not be a direct result of some other player's action *unless*
>there is a reasonable and clear opportunity to avoid it. 

It is very easy to argue that there is no effective difference between
the two assertions above.   

  Bubba logs in a new character, and wanders about.  Boffo walks up to
Bubba and bops him over the head with a club.  Bubba is dead.  Bubba
didn't run like hell when he saw Boffo == Bubba's inaction resulted in
Bubba's own death.  Quite Easily Done.

>It is therefore virtually impossible in your game for my character to
>be flamboyant, shy, or otherwise anything more than some faceless,
>generic mannequin with some armor and weaponry. I don't find that
>acceptable. I'm sure lots of people do. Personally, picturing a world
>like that horrifies me. I pity those people. We live in a world where
>we can express our individuality, and I value that very much. I
>wouldn't trade it for anything. Not for money, not for power, not for
>love, and most certainly not for the sake of some game.

Another viewpoint:  Any game by its nature is a castrated and
simplified form of RL.  To some extent abilites, forms of
communication etc are removed from RL to produce a simpler world for
the game to take place in.  Surely this is merely a choice of what
tokens to remove from RL for the game world?

>>If *I* fail to check for traps when entering an obviously hostile >>territory,

>Define 'obvious'. 'Outside town'?

Suitable definition:  Any territory that I don't expressly control and
have full awareness of.

>>if *I* associate with diseased beggars and vermin, 

>Define 'associate'. 'Walk near'?

Sure.

>>*I* DESERVE to get killed even if *I* didn't start any fights. 

>This comes under 'implicit' consent, which I mention an awful lot
>with very little indication that people recognise 'explicit' as being
>an antonym rather than a synonym of the word.

"Implicit" and "explicit" need a very carefully defined frame of
reference to define their scopings.  Move the reference out of game
and explicit can very quickly become synonymous with implict in an
in-game reference.

>You seem to take my examples far too literally, which is pointless
>unless... um, actually, I've mentioned so many times that my examples
>are never intended to be the end-all of game constructs, it's just
>pointless.

Nahh.  Its a key mechanism used on this list grounded in the many
scenarios used.  A scenario is posulated and is picked over in detail. 
The scenario acts as the definitional prototype for the point under
discussion.  To the extent that the scenario is found faulty the point
is found lacking.  The scenario can of course be modified, extended,
and altered as the discussion proceeds, which does make it a moving
target, but also allows it to adapt to the faults and weaknesses
found.

>:Not when 'everyone' includes people who have significantly more >:experience in the environment than I do. Which it does, because your >:development team and your friends and the people you like will get >:onto it earlier, so by the time the public can get onto it there's an >:existing userbase of maybe a dozen people who are already experts. 
>:Those people proceed to dominate the game. The rest of the userbase 
>:can avoid them. Some small part of that userbase then gets good at 
>:the game, and eventually begins to rival the existing experts. Over 
>:time, the number of experts grows, and the longer the game has been 
>:around the less attractive it is to new players -- because it now 
>:operates purely on an expert level, and the new player is 
>:hopelessly outclassed. Such a game really and truly sucks.
...
>Oh, even better, you mean I'm only rarely going to see other players?
>Yeah, that just makes me want to drop everything and run play your
>game...

How about the actual game played by different characters at different
levels of "advancement" bears little relation to the game as played by
characters at other levels of advancement?  Voila!  Expertise is still
present and valued by the game, by the game activities of those
characters do not interfere.

>>Don't attract attention
>>until you are ready to handle it, and there is no problem.

>How the hell am I supposed to know? 

You die a lot, and learn by experience -- same way you learned what
you know in RL.

--
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...