[MUD-Dev] Classless systems

[adam at treyarch.com]

Regarding DartMUD, Accursed Lands, and other respected/cutting edge muds:

On Sat, 22 Jul 2000, J C Lawrence wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Jul 2000 23:40:04 -0400 
> Christopher Allen <ChristopherA at skotos.net> wrote:
> 
> > If not, we maybe we should actively recruit on of their active
> > creators, because I repeatedly refer to both of these as having
> > some notable features that are of interest to mud-dev members.
> 
> Several of us tend to; you, me, Raph, Wiggins, etc. That said, I do
> agree that it hasn't received enough examination on the list but
> tends somehow to get treated as an, "Oh yeah, them".

Which brings me to a point that I've touched on here and again: the list
content, as a whole, is highly theoretical.  That's good - I certainly like
it that way - but it seems that whenever someone presents an example of
one of the theories being put into practice, everyone shuts up.  Are ideas
only deemed interesting if they haven't been done before?

Recent examples:

   <various listmembers>: An introduction/namespace system would rule.

   Me: Accursed Lands has that system, let's discuss it...

   [silence]

Or:

   <various listmembers>: It would be cool if combat messages looked like this!

   Me: My mud has that system, let's discuss it...

   [silence]

Or:

   <various listmembers>: That kind of justice system would never work.

   <some mud admin>: We've been using it for several years, check it out.

   [silence]


I'm not complaining exactly, just wondering what the cause of this
phenomenon is.

In some ways my mud critiques were intended to get the ball rolling on
analysis of existing implementations, but the approach was a bit too shallow
to have lasting value beyond "how a newbie sees your mud."

> I suspect this
> is due to the fact that there's been nobody on the list willing to
> act as a DartMUD advocate/explanator, to tell us how the system
> worked in some detail and to argue its case.

<nod>

UO has Raph.  M59 has Mike Sellers et al.  Island had Keegan.  Discworld
has David.  Blood Dusk has me.

In some cases, the 'champion' for a given mud doesn't even have to be a
creator, just an avid player.  JC + Shades and me + Arctic are the two
off the top of my head.

So perhaps if we can't recruit the creators, we need to find some avid
players and recruit them to the list...

> Instead we know it is
> there, but to actually find out details requires an extensive time
> commitment to play/investigate which has not been forthcoming,
> especially as any findings have no guarantee of being correct
> (apparancy versus actual implementation).

For me, the biggest problems for some of the most 'advanced' muds, such
as DartMUD, Accursed Lands, and even Atturion Dynasty, is simply that
their playability is low.  (I assume this is a problem for more than just
I...)

When I was a college student with practically unlimited time and patience
I was able to struggle through some of the more obscure yet unique muds
(YaMUD pops to mind) in order to get to the burried gems within.  As time
goes on I find myself less able to do this.  Most recently, my attempts to
play Accursed Lands have been fairly short due to frustration with the
difficulty of actually getting to the "meat" of the game.

In fact, one of the things I would be most interested in discussing would
be "okay, we've got this cutting-edge <X> system pretty much working, now how
can we make it nice and polished and generally up to the same level of
playability as 'normal' mud features?"  Where <X> is "combat", "introduction",
"object damage", "spell construction", and so on.

Adam





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