[MUD-Dev] Re: WIRED: Kilers have more fun

[Adam Wiggins]

On Tue, 21 Jul 1998, J C Lawrence wrote:
> Koster, Raph<rkoster at origin.ea.com> wrote:
> > In fact, a question I'd ask is whether the increased freedoms that
> > have come over time in certain mud designs have increased the
> > dissatisfaction... in other words, seeing a line of evolution from
> > MUDI to Aber to Diku to M59 and UO, all gaming-oriented environments
> > in many ways, we do see an increased freedom in the feature set,
> > more ability for players to act freely. Does the fact that they have
> > more freedom make players more sensitive when a particular freedom
> > turns out not to be supported by the code base?
> 
> Bingo.  Given a limited set of mechanics (and Shades is a perfect
> example here with is extremely primitive command and mechanic set, and
> incredible playability) there are few permutations and little to no
> expectation of depth.  Start adding depth and the number of mechanical
> permutations (n!) grows much faster than the actual depth (n**2(??)).

In a nutshell: "If I can do X, why can't I do Y?"  Whereas if they
couldn't do X or Y at all, there would be no question.

A similar effect, perhaps one that is a bit more obvious, can be seen in
animation quality.  If one is playing a video game from the mid-eighties
where characters had at most three frames of animation for any one action,
seeing them do something new which also uses two or three frames of
animation seems completely reasonable.  If, however, you're playing one of
them new-fangled 3D games with 60 fps character animation, the second it
jerks or pops or does anything but be silky-smooth, it's going to suddenly
seem like something is wrong with it.  Shouldn't they be happy that the
animation is nice and smooth *most* of the time, and not sweat it when it
fails to live up to that?  The answer, of course, is no - once you set the
standard, you have to stay with it the whole time.

Adam