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

[Damion Schubert]

-----Original Message-----
From: Brandon J. Rickman <ashes at pc4.zennet.com>

>On Fri, 24 Jul 1998, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
>> [some stuff I should reply to, maybe later]
>>
>> 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 quick Might & Magic 6 bashing: the "AI" has barely progressed from
>that of the third installment.  Not only _can_ you mow down hordes of
>tri-colored skeletons from across three feet of water, you _have_ to, in
>an endless, mindless slaughter-fest.  To make this slightly less
>entertaining, most powerful creatures will fire missiles and spells at you
>from a distance and many are resistant to physical attacks.

Having worked with Jon van Canegham, I can tell you that this is
part of his design philosophy.  Sure, he could improve the AI, but to
be honest, it's a lot more satisfying to kill a horde than finally slay a
solitary troll.  He's a big believer of 'Nothing (including realism)
should get in the way of the fun.'  Sound familiar?  I think he believes
that everyone, deep down, wants to be a powergamer- and that's
really the most rewarding part of the CRPG experience.

By comparison, I've played Unreal lately, and I can't stress how
unsatisfying it is to never fight more than 2 monsters at a time.
And sure, they all exhibit good AI, but in some cases, it's so good
that the only way I could beat the level was to abuse holes in the AI.
I felt like a cheat when I did that.  When I killed 60 skeletons in
M&M6 with one spell, I felt like a god.

>Since there
>are so many monsters to kill (I would estimate there are at least 50
>monsters to kill for every friendly villager wandering around town.  So
>much for preventing the world from being taken over by an evil plot -
>things are bad all over, and it is up to you to kill everybody.) the
>rewards are very small.  And actually the best source of experience is to
>complete various quests, most of which require the termination of some 40
>to 300 monsters, frequently human.


>Thinking about how uninteresting I found M&M I started to make some
>little diagrams to illustrate how simple the play structure is and
>how narrow the appeal.  But I'm unsatisfied with it and will postpone
>posting it for the moment, lest it be taken as a simple bash on a game
>that isn't even a mud.  The basic idea is that a game can be more
>satisfying when the activity of the game changes over time, moving from a
>struggle to survive to ambitions of glory, or vice versa.  If the
>amount of character management increases as the game difficulty increases
>I find that the fun is diminished.


While other companies work to reinvent the RPG experience, M&MVI stays
true to it's form and provides an extension of the old CRPGs - Bards Tale 2,
Might and Magic I, Ultima III, Wizardry.  They did a bloody good job, and
the
game took ~120 hours of my life away.  I'd never accuse it of being a ROLE-
playing game, or a fantastic story, but gosh, it was fun.

Does this have relevance for MUDs?  I think it has a lot.  On the other
hand,
about a third of the posts on this forum is dedicated to controlling
powergamers, instead of indulging them. =)

--damion