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

[John Buehler]

> Phillip Lenhardt

>> 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".

If you want to crawl through a maze, knock yourself out.  I suspect
that you are in the minority.  As evidence, I offer EverQuest, with
its various mazes through quests.  Short circuiting quests is a common
endeavor.

For whatever it's worth, I just got my cave generator up to speed.  It
is literally a maze generator in 3D.  But the mazes that it creates
are intended to hold entertainment.  That entertainment might be for
the explorer who wants to work on his climbing and rapelling.  It
might be for that warrior who wants to kill something that just ran
into the caves.  It might be for the guy who just wants to get away
from the rest of the world and sit.  Or wander the maze of caverns.

> 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.

Because the maze wasn't entertaining, right?  In EverQuest, the mazes
aren't even entertaining *the first time*.

> 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 :)

I don't worry about it.  I want players to be able to find
entertainment when they want it.  Entertainment does not mean
excitement.  For me, entertainment means blacksmithing a broken chain
back into working order for the farmer who needs it.  I get the
entertainment of doing the fixing as well as the socializing of
talking with the farmer while I do it.  He gets the same thing.  I
might stop by his farm later to see what he does on the farm.

> 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?

Some aspects of gameplay will simply have complications thrust upon
the player.  For example, being in a dangerous part of the world means
that new dangers could present themselves at any time, despite the
fact that you are whittling a flute.

Other areas of the world are given to more sedate pursuits, such as
the cities that are ruled by benevolent potentates.  In those cities,
you can whittle your flute without worrying about being interrupted.

The PvP switches approach that I mentioned is structured to keep other
players off your back so that the above paragraph can hold water.  In
order to avoid a player deciding to go against the flow and club you
while you're working on your flute, the switches let you say that
you're not interested in random people engaging you in PvP activities.
The switches let you leave that option available to your friends.  But
your friends should understand that when you're whittling, you don't
want to be bothered.

> > 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.

There was no competition.  There weren't two maps and two teams of
people going after the treasure.  Somebody tripped over it and picked
it up.  Entertainment is spiced by the possibility that the map could
be a fake or lead to a place that has already been looted.
Uncertainty adds to the realism of the world.

If every map was guaranteed to lead to treasure, then finding one
would immediately let you sell the map for a fraction of the value of
the treasure at the other end.  This is like selling quest items in
EverQuest, and I want to avoid guaranteed results.  It makes the world
more gameable.

Lastly, the 'adventure park' model was being applied to the real world
elements of the game, not inside the park.  When the game is referred
to, it is referred to as 'the park'.  When the documentation makes
references of the way the players relate to their characters, the
terms 'park guests' and 'park characters' might be used.  As I
suggested in the other post, the intitial animation shows a park guest
moving to a character control console as the means of entering the
park.  The metaphor is to set expectations of the player about how
they relate to the game.  At present, the relationship is far too
trivial.  I wanted to give it some more weight.

I'n not after having people line up for rides on the flying carpet, or
paying gold to get to float around in the zero G castle.

JB

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