[MUD-Dev] Re: State of the art?

[Martin Keegan]

On Wed, 17 Feb 1999, David Bennett wrote:

> >players' sake, however, may find it more difficult to "compete" for the
> >login time of players looking for other players, since our muds will be
> >offbeat and oddball, and will take time to catch on.
> 
> I don't think this is totaly true.  Most muds which are successful are

It's *not* totally true. It is but a generalisation.

> definately different to stock muds.  They had a style or idea of their own
> which makes them successful.  In some cases it might be as simple as the
> theme, in others it would be a more complicated relation between theme and
> things like skills/races/eye catching.

ah yes, but these are things I'd say were accepted means of "innovation" -
variations of a particular set of parameteres within certain bounds.
 
> By far and away the biggest draw of people to a mud is word of mouth.  Once

sure that's what gets them there, but what keeps them there?

> people have heard of your mud, more people start coming, which causes even
> more people to come.  And so it goes on.  I think being different and
> oddball at the start is actually a catcher, rather than something which
> turns people off.

I think the theme of a mud is the parameter you can vary most if you're
maximising player appeal (Discworld has a strongly maintained, oddball
theme). The next one is the player attributes (in particular races,
classes, skills).

In my experience, the gameplay on Diku muds is very similar cross the
board, though the profusion of questions in the initial login procedure
exhibits startling variety.

Mk

 "Firewalls begin in the mind"




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