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

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On 08:08 PM 7/27/98 -0600, I personally witnessed Chris Gray jumping up to
say:
>[Caliban Tiresias Darklock:]
>
> >Remember the Bard's Tale series? I think there
> >were FOUR monster pictures in the whole game. The name of the monster was
> >different, but look... same picture, same four-frame looping animation. And
> >guess what? We didn't care! 
>
>Hmm. I distinctly remember complaining that the pictures were the same.

Oh, sure, we COMPLAINED. But we didn't stop playing because of it. I think
we get awfully wrapped up in making sure no one can complain, but people
are going to complain no matter what. In the end, I prefer the complaints
to be about deliberate choices made in the construction of the game. "Hey.
When I buy the drive upgrade, it doesn't work on my warp field." "I know.
The warp field is a different engine, so it's not affected by the upgrade."
"That sucks." "That's life."

After a few situations like this, I hope the players will get into the
mindset that anything they find annoying about the game is deliberate.
"Hey... That was weird." "I wonder why it happened?" "It's a bug." "No it
isn't, there ARE no bugs in this game... they did that on purpose. I wonder
what it means."

>Appearance does matter, in general. 

I do see a major difference between BT and online games. When you load up
BT and look at the graphics and say "yuck", you've already paid for the
game and you don't want that money to be wasted. When you log on to a MUD,
and you think it sucks, you log off and go somewhere else. UOL is a little
different; you have to pay for the client, and then you go try it. If you
don't like it, tough. You're stuck with this client. Which is why I haven't
logged onto UOL just yet. ;)

>Just shows again, I think, that different things are important to
>different people.

And single-player gamers are significantly different from multi-player
gamers, which is something that requires some balance. There are things
that all gamers enjoy, things SP gamers enjoy, and things MP gamers enjoy.
It's tough to balance that out so you hit the right features and cut the
right corners. What you leave out is just as important as what you leave in.