[MUD-Dev] Re: MUD Design doc - Combat

[Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: J C Lawrence [mailto:claw at kanga.nu]
> Sent: Monday, January 04, 1999 12:29 AM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: MUD Design doc - Combat 
> 

> I *really* dislike generically automated combat.  There's a balance
> there between control and amusement.  I'd rather not enter commands
> for every beat of my character's heart.  I'd also rather not see
> enter-command-and-sit-back-until-desired-state-accomplished.

There's one darn good reason to have the latter--it's less vulnerable to
latency. The more interactive, the more vulnerable the player is to loss
of connection or packet loss or plain old lag which causes them to miss
or mistime crucial input.

Lots of ways to handle this, of course, some of them more subject to
abuse than others. Queuing systems and programmable actions & the like
can help with this, of course. But a queuing system loses actual
interaction in favor of pre-programmed estimates. Programmable actions
are, frankly, only for the expert gamer, which may not be your target
audience.

-Raph