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

[Markku Nylander]

Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> 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. 
[snip]
> 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?

	Brad and Caliban have an excellent point here. I'd like to turn the
	question around and ask this: How do you make _creating_ the world
	challenging (= fun) to the _seasoned coder_ (implementor, game
	designer, whatever)? The reason I ask is because I've followed the
	discussion on this list and to me it seems people are aiming for
	more and more complex (internal) designs (total world persistence,
	object behaviour simulating laws of physics etc.)... how do you
	hide all that behind the user interface and keep the game playable?
	If you coded an intricate and ingenious MUD engine that simulates
	the real world perfectly, would you want to plop a simple Diku
	interface on top of it, i.e. if a player was carrying a plate mail
	and wanted to wear it when carrying a torch and a sword, would you
	let a player to do Dikuish 'wear plate' or would they have to
	'drop plate; extinguish torch; put torch into backpack; sheathe
	sword; remove backpack; drop backpack; remove belt; drop belt;
	remove chainmail; take plate; wear plate;	take backpack...'? 
	Does it keep you motivated if the players go "OOooh" over the
	twinkie ANSI color coded auction channel that took you five
	minutes to code, but think the event-queued-limb-hit-and-damage-
	permanent-injury-and-scarring based	combat system you spent	three
	months implementing sucks big time?

		Newt