[MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)

[Phillip Lenhardt]

On Mon, Feb 19, 2001 at 12:36:21PM -0800, John Buehler wrote:
> Right.  Quests systems are predicated on having precanned problems
> that constitute cheeze in a maze situations.  Wandering through the
> maze isn't entertaining, so only having the cheeze is.  The achiever
> archetype is *invented* by this construct.

Don't you think you might be begging the question a bit here? Wandering
through a maze _can_ be entertaining, and not just when the room
descriptions are "interesting". Consider the mazes drawn on paper that
some people like to trace their way through. They're not drawn in dozens
of colors and styles, with gratuitous little doodles all over them.
They're simple and clean, because it's no fun to trace your way through
when you keep getting distracted by the "entertainment".

> Consider books.  Do you flip to the end of the book to read the
> section where Gollum falls into The Pit with the One Ring?  Of course
> not.

But I _do_ flip to the scene where a sickly Mat Cauthon kicks Galad and
Gawyn's arrogant sword-wielding asses with only a quarterstaff. And I
_do_ fast-forward to the scene where Gale and Evelle bellow in unison
when they realize they left Hi Jr. behind, again. I tend to do this
more with works that I have experience many times and can summon the
context of the scene at will, but I'm not above skipping a few pages
of dialog when I feel I can get away with it. I don't think I've _ever_
felt the need to read John Gault's entire speech straight through.

> How do we make activities entertaining?  By having them never happen
> the same way twice.  By ensuring that there are so many variables that
> go into an activity that there is always some twist in the way it is
> presented to the player or the way it comes out in the end.

Do you worry about over-stimulating your players? I know I want to
crawl into a dark and quiet hole for a week after spending even
half a day at an amusement park, but then, my excitement threshold is
admittedly lower than most :)

And will there be some way for players to flag themselves as "busy", so
that the game won't keep presenting new avenues for entertainment when
they're already engaged in a satisfying activity?

> This is why the steps themselves must be entertaining.  The final
> outcome of the quest might not even be there.  Suppose you find a map
> to a treasure.  Somebody else might have tripped over it in their
> travels.  Sorry, no treasure at the end of the rainbow for you.

In keeping with your amusement park metaphor, I would have thought you'd
have your employees busily filling the hole with a new treasure chest,
restocking the fishing pond, etc. You've already set an expectation in
your players to treat the experience as entertainment, not competition.
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