[MUD-Dev] UO rants

[John Buehler]

> Dan Merillat
> Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2000 2:21 PM

> "John Buehler" writes:
>
> > You're assuming that them 'getting off their asses' is what they find
> > entertaining.  You're being very centric to the style of gameplay that you
> > enjoy.  This is the fundamental problem with PvP activities.  One player
> > decides that the world is a certain way and everyone else should adhere to
> > those rules.  That one player invariably states "that is reality".
> > Unfortunately, the game is supposed to be entertainment.  Entertainment is
> > very subjective.  If we put 50,000 players into a world with each
> having his
> > or her own subjective view of what entertainment is, we have a
> tough balancing
> > act.
> >
> > The question is: can 50,000 players who enjoy different things
> actually enjoy
> > the same game world?
>
> No.  If you put in a war without affecting the non-war players,
> you've got two
> seperate games with instant messanging between them.

If multi-experience games do not exist, then we only have single-experience
games.  If we have single-experience games, then we have pretty much the set
of games that exist today.  Players play one game and then move on to a new
game when they tire of the old.  If multiple games permitted the same
character to be used, would players reuse their character?  Note that if
characters can be reused, then whatever form of community exists will be
propagated from game to game.

It is this line of thought that suggests to me that multiple game experiences
can be incorporated into a single world experience.  Players play the game one
way until they tire of the experience.  Then they consider either other acts
in that multi-experience game world or they consider a new game.  I submit to
you that players prefer to suck as much as they can from one game in which
they have invested of themselves.  Countless players of EverQuest have stopped
playing their primary character in order to try the game again from a
different angle - by playing a new character that is of a different class.
People dabble in the trades (such as they are), just to try something
different.

I've used the word 'feathering' before, and I believe that's the way to
intertwine these game experiences.  We already have examples of this in the
form of 'safe zones' and such.  In the safe zone, the game experience is
different: you can't be killed (or whatever the safe zone protects you from).
It's a very poor example of feathering of game experiences because the
boundary of gameplay is very abrupt geographically.  Feathering is the process
of altering the game experience a shade at a time as the player moves
geographically, socially, economically, whatever.

A justice system is the example that springs to mind for this 'feathering'
technique.  The enforcement of a justice system that is accomplished by NPCs
means that the justice system is enforced only where those NPCs are.  The
higher the density of the NPCs, the lower the density of getting away with a
crime.  This is a form of geographical feathering.  Lawless areas are slowly
feathered into lawful areas.  You get to pick where you'd like to spend your
time.  You pick your game.

As far as war is actually concerned, I'm not interested in making war the
prime mover of the world.  Combat is a form of entertainment for players.  My
view of this is that players certainly don't like to fight computer-controlled
opponents.  As a result, my opinion on this is that gamemasters should be
running a strategic simulation tool that permits them to control the NPC
monsters at a high level, but leaving the tactical combat to the computer.
Just to give an example to get you in the ballpark of what I'm thinking about,
the gamemasters might run a tool that looks like Age of Empires in order to
move units of monsters about and such.  One or two gamemasters would be pitted
against a couple hundred players who are working more or less together.

One model I use is one of 'the front lines' where a broad front of combat
exists that the players can go to for their fix of combat.  The war aspect is
very approximate as the gamemasters could just invade at 2am PST and crush the
good guys.  For the purposes of entertainment, they won't do this.  Instead,
they'll make things entertaining by pushing with more or less bad guys to
drive the good guys back or to let them advance in the war.  The good guys
obviously have control over the behavior of their characters and will have an
impact on the outcome of the combat.  If their cooperative tactics are good
enough, they can route the gamemasters even when the gamemasters were assuming
that they could push back the good guys.

Many here will despise such an arrangement because it means that the normal
ebb and flow of player versus player combat scenarios will never develop.
While that true, and while I normally very much believe that the only way to
get natural scenarios developing in the world is by having players control the
interactions, I do not believe that this is true for combat scenarios.
Rather, I haven't seen an approach that lets all the things that I want in a
world to be sustainable.

I see a justice system ensuring that PvP activities don't get out of hand in
areas where other players are doing their part to support activities at the
front (food, equipment, etc).  I see the gamemasters providing the opposition
that the players want for combat - and to keep combat away from the peaceful
areas.  Further, the gamemasters roughly control the movement of the front
lines.  The areas in contention can be overrun by the bad guys every now and
again - and players in those areas who are trying to practice peaceful
passtimes will get killed.  They will know in advance that those areas are
dangerous.  But they will be predictably dangerous.  After a while, they will
drop in danger level, players will know this, and players will be able to
pursue their peaceful passtimes without concern over war sweeping through.
That lower danger level might still permit marauding bad guys to come by and
trash things a bit, but those acts would be rare.

In support of all of this is the fact that many players frequently quote how
they wish that they could have a character in such-and-such a fictional world.
Where that fictional world literally comes from a work of fiction.  It is not
possible for a world such as Middle Earth to be completely populated by
players with the resulting activity of the world being what we find in The
Silmarillion.  In order to have predictable entertainment and to retain a
given level of quality of service, NPCs must be employed to give the world
structure.  Where necessary, gamemasters must work like actors in theme parks
to provide the highest levels of interaction for players: such as combat or
other competitions requiring intelligent opponents.

Why can't players be the opposition in scenarios that require intelligent
opponents?  Answer: because other players aren't interested in your
entertainment as a player.  Gamemasters must be.  In a commercial system,
that's their job.

So, despite Raph's opining about the stamp collector dilemma, I believe that
essentially arbitrary games can be incorporated together.  Players are welcome
to mix and match their game experience from the various games that exist in
the virtual world.  The one caveat that I will easily concede about 'the
dilemma' is that it takes time and energy to develop an entertaining treatment
of any game type, including stamp collecting.  If only a few players are
interested in it, the return on the investment obviously isn't there.  This is
not the same as whether it is tenable from a playability standpoint.

JB





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