[MUD-Dev] Acting casual about casual gamers

[Madrona Tree]

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Buehler" <johnbue at email.msn.com>
To: <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Sent: Sunday, June 25, 2000 10:26 AM
Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] Acting casual about casual gamers

>   Your 'partial application' is essentially what I'm after.  I don't
> know if you include the following, but I consider it an important
> element to the 'partial': having the characters in the world at all
> times.  This is for the purpose of continuity and community.  I can
> find where interesting characters are even when they are not actively
> being controlled by their players.

I suppose then, that this could extend to player-killers and grief players.
It would be nice for those who hunt player-killers to be able to find them.
This has proven difficult in games, where with the click of a mouse, they
are gone from the world.  Folks have always said that a lot of the
antisocial behavior is because of the anonymity of the character.  Giving
the character a persistant presence would take away a bit of that anonymity.

Combining the ideas of one character per shard (if your mud has shards),
persistant characters, and giving the antisocials other avenues of
expression... I think this could be a huge deterrent to antisocial behavior.
I hope those with more knowledge and experience than I have will make this
idea better.  :)


>   While I believe that an absentee character (need a better
> term for that)

We tend to call them "NPC Me."

In the mud I currently play on, we have persistant characters.  They'll
attack monsters, and you can set them up to say something to people if they
talk to you.  They'll wander around, but they don't open doors.  When the
player logs back in, they'll log in the exact spot they logged out at.  They
don't gain money or skill while the player is logged out, though people have
asked for that.

I am concerned by the idea of gaining things while you're offline.  It helps
the achievers as much as he casual gamers, and you're back to square one.
If you apply it so that everyone gains the same amount of Whatever, whether
they are online or not, the achievers will feel cheated because they Did so
much more than the Casuals, yet are receiving the same reward... and the
Casuals will be cheated out of the experience that the Achievers actually
got to be there for.

I like the Burst Hour idea, where the first hour in 24 the player gains a
lot of Whatever, and the hours after that the player gains very little...
and if s/he plays, it is for fun rather than achieving goals.


> I have a model for this as well, but I'd first like to state that
> trade skills should not be repetitive in nature.  If you're going
> to put something into the game, make sure it's entertaining.

Amen.  Although, with the interface we have at hand (mouse, keyboard), I'm
not sure how one would make trade skills not boring or repetitive, and not
screw up the game economy at the same time.  Mouseclicks are there as a kind
of measure of time... x many clicks go by and a player with Y skill has made
approximately Z amount of money.  Take the clicks (or button-mashing) away,
and use what instead?


> If we dump combat and magic and only have a game world
> with trade skills - with as much complexity and graphical treatment
> as is found in combat and magic today - we'd attract a different
> group entirely.  I wonder if they'd be as obsessive  :)

Oh - I'm sure.  Maybe even moreso.


> The existence of teleportation in a world exists in opposition
> to community.

The existance of teleportation in a world also often exists to aid the
community.  Joe goes on a trek to see how many licks it takes to get to the
center of the world, but then his friend Jerry logs on and sees that
something is happening in their community that requires joe's attendance.
Joe uses his ever-handy "Home" spell and arrives hours faster than if he
turned around and ran.  Without teleportation (if your map is large,
anyway), people become wary of adventuring too far away from their homesite,
if community is important to them... which is realistic, but not fun.


>   I think that explorers are the most likely candidates for
> true solo play.  Solo explorers can wend their way through the
> world and simply see what's out there.  I have hopes that there
> are techniques yet to be discovered that will inhibit spoiler
> sites and their ability to ruin the fun of the explorers out
> there.

Randomization being a most obvious one.  If the experience is different for
me than for you, it makes it more difficult for spoiler sites to get it
'right' ... because there would be no right.  That, and people look at
spoiler sites when they don't have any idea how to do something in the
game... so perhaps 'hint npcs' (maybe you have to pay them some money for
telling you a 'rumor' -- like cops pay informants) would be nice too.


Madrona Tree.



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