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

[Damion Schubert]

-----Original Message-----
From: Koster, Raph <rkoster at origin.ea.com>
>> Players NEVER care. We keep talking about all these things, 
>> all this stuff,
>> that NO ONE CARES ABOUT. 
>
>Not to quarrel with Damion (everyone always expects me to quarrel with
>Damion!) but some players DO care, and it isn't quite as absolute a rule
>as what you two state. :) There are ALWAYS things that players see a
>hint of and want to be in the game, too. (I've certainly heard enough
>people ask for X feature in MM6!). In UO players decided that by gosh,
>they ought to be able to animate dead. After all, there are NPC
>skeletons. From that, a whole necromancy project arose, with research
>pages and feature lists and all sorts of stuff. There is no necromancy
>whatsoever in the game. But many players are convinced there is. Some
>features, players will indeed care about.


>In an example more suited to the thread of your discussion: in UO you
>cannot repair bows. You can repair melee weapons, but not bows. (And
>yeah, how much sense does it make to fasten together a bow once it
>breaks?) Players still scream for that feature. It makes sense not to
>have it; it's also the sort of feature that is exactly the sort of
>omission your posts describe. But some will clamor for it anyway...


I think there is a very fine line.  Players will always clamor for
'more', but if you listen to their clamoring, you'll notice that they
ask mostly for 'more toys' (i.e. new, usually not realistic features 
such as the necromancy school above) and 'more stuff' (i.e. more
weapons and other easy extensions of existing code), but rarely
do they ask for 'more realism'.  In fact, they are more likely than
not to be the ones to volunteer to short-circuit it!  As an example,
I'm willing to bet that most of the players of UO are extremely 
thankful that houses can't be broken into (without cheats, anyway)
yet I'm willing to bet that a lot of us designheads would look at
this as completely unrealistic and unsatisfactory.

Another example: on Meridian 59, we came very close to 
implementing shop opening and closing times.  We thought
it would very easily add a great deal of realism to the game.
Then we realized: would anyone like this feature?  No, they'd
be ticked off that they'd have to wait upwards of 45 minutes
to sell their loot and buy reagents!  More likely, they would
have petitioned it's removal.

As a side note, it's a lot easier to start with a realistic game
than to infuse realism later on.  If Meridian had launched with
shop opening and closing times, players would have complained
mildly, but accepted it.  Try to infuse such an annoyance in 
a live server, and watch your alter ego burn in flames on the
message boards.

--damion