[MUD-Dev] Stranger in a Strange Land (was Usability and interface and who the hell is supposed to be playing, anyway? (Was: PK

[Maddy]

Previously, clawrenc at cup.hp.com wrote....
> In <c=US%a=_%p=EA%l=MOLACH-970925223940Z-13404 at molach.origin.ea.com>,
> on 09/25/97 
>    at 08:36 PM, "Koster, Raph" <rkoster at origin.ea.com> said:
> 
> >On Thursday, September 25, 1997 3:17 AM, clawrenc at cup.hp.com wrote: 
> >>The primary effect I see of removing the WHO command, and removing 
> >> the global namespace I do both) is that of removing the sense of the
> >> individual players as being a member of a larger group of players 
> >> all playing the same game.  It removes the sense of an instant social
> >> context, "All of us on the who list are players," and with the 
> >> removal of the global namespace removes even the pretense of baing 
> >> able to place oneself in any even remote sort of social relevance as 
> >> a new player. The result is that it tends to devolve them all into 
> >> confusing world without clear ability to identify or locate friends 
> >> or allies, or even know who or what might be any of these things.
> 
> >Yes, yes, yes. Couldn't agree more. The issue, once you have settled 
> >for not having a global namespace, as JCL terms it, is providing a 
> >rich social context quickly and easily without it.
> 
> A quick addendum here as some newer members may not realise the
> definition of "no global namespace" as above.
> 
>   I have no global namespace (very minor exeptions).  This means that
> there are no objects that have names that everybody knows.  While you
> character may have a name that you gave it, nobody else will know that
> name, and in fact has no requirement to use that name,  Instead they
> may assign whatever name they wish to you, just as you may "name" them
> however you wish.  The result is that a name assignment is now private
> to the character that assigned the name.  Thus I may know a certain
> character as "bubba", you may know his as "Boffo", and other as
> "Bernie".  (This is generically known as the "Silke effect" after a
> fictional character who was fond of name games.)
> 
>   Name can be assigned to more than just other characters,  Players
> can name objects, rocks, houses, locations, trees, etc freely.  Of
> course those names are private to them -- so other players can assign
> different names or no names at at should they wish.
>
>   The end result is that upon re-encoutering the named object, the
> name you have assigned to that object is substituted instead of the
> generic description of that object.  This can result in dialogues as
> follows:

What if a player wanders about and names everything he sees?  Do you have
some kind of decay on object/names that players haven't seen for a while,
because otherwise you'd end up with a lot of object/name entries?

> >Only a few are
> >character  based--largely the ones in the category I call "context 
> >embellishment." But how many of these are truly critical to your 
> >social experience? Remember, mud social bonds evolve from the 
> >fictional towards real social bonds; if you have good community ties 
> >they will be OOC ties, not IC ties.
> 
> While true, I think this misses the point.  Without any social context a
> character will be lost, and only able to play at a severely reduced
> capacity.  With no social context a player is essentially playing a
> glorified Zork.  Given that a player has no way to causitively locate or
> isolate other players anywhere in the game (cf above mention of your
> graphical scope advantage), I see this as a real problem.

[Snip - example of newbie lostness]

> Ignoring the tritenesses, its almost a classical nightmare.

Yup - this could definitely be a problem but I can think of several ways of
at least allievating the problem.

Firstly in the above example you're only limited to being able to see what
is in the current room.  If 'look' displayed what you could see in the whole
area you were in, you could at least follow the troll, or see other "people"
with which you could try and talk to.  In fact it could almost be worth
putting a mobile near where players start that is overly friendly to
newbies.

Secondly starting players in a nice safe environment where they're unlikely
to get killed would probably help.

> >It wandered into the topic of newbie areas, 
> >training wheels, and the like, and basically ended up, i think, at
> >the  opinion that ifyou can provide such an experience to people
> >crafted  well enough that they do not feel they are being channeled,
> >it can be  successful. But if they start to sense channeling and
> >restrictions,  they rebel...
> 
> I'd question if the rebellion really matters if the players know that they
> can always retreat back to the guide whenever they want.  The key then
> would seem to be able to pick up on a guide at any point on his tour.  The
> guides then really become randomly tappable references rather than a fixed
> tour.

Hmm.  The problem with newbie area, is that all the ones I've seen are
linear.  A guide (see my comment above) is probably a good idea.  The thing
is, is that you don't want the newbies thinking that the guide is a guide,
more like a very friendly person who is offering to show them around. 
Rather than the guide saying "Ok - lets go this way" the guide could also
follow the newbie around, pointing out places of interest.

> Sure, go rebel.  Go do your own thing.  When you want to find out more
> about the basic structure, come back and we'll continue from whereever you
> want.

You'd still need some kind of linear framework?

Maddy