[MUD-Dev] Re: Fun vs Realism [ Was: OT: Sid Meier ]

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On 02:47 PM 7/25/98 +1000, I personally witnessed Leach, Brad BA jumping up
to say:
>
>It seems most of us are striving for increased realism with our designs - 
>Is this at the cost of fun? 

Yes. I keep saying this. Realistic is fun to watch. Realistic is not fun to
play. If I wanted realistic, I would stay in the real world instead of
playing a game.

>Are we putting too much into muds, at the cost of gameplay itself?

Yes. I keep saying this, too. Most of the new servers I hear about would be
fun to hang out and go "Oooh" at, but would absolutely suck to try and play. 

>Where do we draw the line of what is neccessary versus un-necessary?

If it isn't fun, take it out. If lots of people ask you for it, put it in.
Ironically, this very simple method of deciding what to put into the game
actually works pretty well once you toss this realism thing out the window.

>I have recently envisioned the "ultimate" mud as something that allows
>you to interact with everything... every brick in that wall, every grain
>of dirt in that mound, etc. If that complexity is indeed added in the 
>future (as I dont think the average Joe/Mary has that sort of 
>storage/computing power now), will it actually detract from the game 
>itself?

Severely. Stop and think. How much fun is it to interact with a grain of
dirt or a brick?

>This leads to another point - if you dont have more and more detail, how
>do you make the world challenging (assuming challenging = fun) to the 
>seasoned mud'er?

Challenging is not always fun. The Zork games were loads of fun, even when
you knew where everything was and what everything did and how everything
interacted. (In fact, the Zork games were rather crappy before you got a
good deal of that under your belt.)


Fun can come from several things. Some people find challenges fun, but next
to no one thinks challenges are the ONLY fun. Most people, in my
experience, find one thing fun over all others: acquisition. People want
money, skills, levels, titles, points, and STUFF. It is worthwhile to
provide 'build-your-own' sorts of interfaces, so your stuff can be
completely unique and you can either tell someone else how to make it or
not, at your discretion. It is also worthwhile to create multiple levels of
acquisition, so there are goals of increasing difficulty as you go up in
ability. And, our views of competition being what they are, there needs to
be some way to perceive yourself as having "won". 

Pretty tall order, really. 

I've been looking at AI recently, and thinking "If I do a really BAD AI,
and admit up front through my backstory that 'the enemy is not too smart'
or something like that, and work under the assumption that every player
will be able to outwit and outsmart the AI... wouldn't that still be fun?"
I mean, old games had really crappy AI. Think of the Might and Magic series
through MM3. The enemy sees you, closes to melee range, and attacks.
Period. It doesn't know how to go around anything. It doesn't know how to
look in any direction except straight ahead. And if you put a low obstacle
between you, you can merrily fire missile weapons into the enemy until it
dies. Probably two or three enemies think to fire missiles back at you. And
you know what? That was still pretty fun.

Some games have raised the bar for us. Like UOL, which has drastically
changed what people expect from an online RPG, or Quake, which has
drastically altered what people expect from an action game. (I've already
seen several damn good games crucified in the press for not being
multiplayer-capable and internet-ready.) 

But really, what matters is... was it fun? Isn't that what counts? After
all, up to Ultima 5, Ultima was seriously raising the bar for RPGs... but
no one ever lived up to it. And other RPGs still sold just fine. Compare
the capabilities of MM3 to U5. Ultima was head and shoulders above it! It
had a better backstory, cooler interface, spells were fancier, and
challenge was a lot higher... but MM3 had STUFF! Things like the "Flaming
Sapphire Dagger of Moon Portal" and crap like that! It rocked!

You know what? I miss Might & Magic, so I'm going to go buy MM6 right now
over at Chumbo. I seem to recall they had a "Deluxe" MM6 which included the
whole series.