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

[Justin Hooper]

On Tue, 20 Feb 2001, John Buehler wrote:

> > Phillip Lenhardt
> 
> > 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.

This, however, isn't evidence.  I enjoy EQ quests just fine, for the most
part.  My guild leader prefers doing quests over the experience grind.  In
fact, were it not for the camps required to do the quests, I'd likely
spend most of my time doing quests.  If a fault lies in EQ, it's not the
fact that the quests are circuitous and drawn out; instead, it's the fact
that the game (and by extension, any part therein) is generally only
designed to yield rewards in the form of nifty items and level
advancement.  Taking a game predicated upon the "You are here, get there."
model, and saying "Gee, people don't enjoy the trip along the way." is, at
best, futile.

> 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 it's still just a cave, and just a maze, and entertainment falls upon
the viewer's purvue of interaction.  Basically, people get out of things
what they want to get out of it.  You've done nothing by making the maze
that makes it better or worse for providing "entertainment".  Instead,
you've limited your examples to only those people who are likely to be
inherently entertained by such a construct.  What does the powerleveller
get out of your caves, for example?  What about the loot monger?  How
about the baker?

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

Awfully sweeping generalization, isn't this?  For counterexamples (and
make no mistake, I definitely agree that there are glaring deficiencies in
EQ), look at some of the newer quests in the new expansion.  There's one
multipart quest that I know of where you're required to explore (at least
a little bit) the different trade skills.  Now if that's not holding a
player by the nose and saying "See, there IS more to the game than just
whacking things and waiting for a timer to reset!", I don't know what is.
The problem would seem to be that the niche is already carved, so to
speak, and these type things are now seen as a "frustrating" deterrant to
obtaining the phat lewts.

> 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.

The problem is that for you, that may be entertainment.  For others, it
may not be.  It's all well and good to say players should be able to find
entertainment when they want it, but what if some players want to sit and
whittle, some want a hearty conversation with the farmer, some want to
kill the farmer to see if he's got any treasures hidden in the bottom of
his cellar, and some want to slaughter the entire population to prove
their battle prowess?  How do you determine whose entertainment takes
precedence?  If you're railing against the prevalance of nonstop carnage
as the sole means of entertainment, I'm with you.  It's tiresome, and
generally not satisfying to me either.  But you can't cover ALL the bases.
You can't even begin to.  And the simple fact of the matter is that
carnage is a lot easier to create than compelling entertainment of most
other forms.

Me, I long for political intrigue and plots that go bump in the night.. of
course, that's very hard to do.. and I don't think player run power
structures are likely to get it right anytime soon (if ever).

> 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.

But what's in those cities for the players who crave danger as
entertainment?  If you effectively segregate the two, aren't you throwing
out a whole sub-classification which might arise from the mixing of the
two?  (After all, if you really just want to weave baskets in peace, why
would you EVER do so when not in an inherently peaceful locale?)

> 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.

One element of any good adventure that I've ever read is the ability of
the hero to react heroically when beset.  I'd argue that complete safety
inherently implies the lack of being able to be beset, and thus the lack
of being able to react (or act) heroically.  Whether this safety comes
from a safe base of operations, or superior firepower, is relatively moot.

Rather than saying you can't be bothered, wouldn't it be more satisfying
to say you won't "likely" be bothered?  (Of course, this is
programmatically MUCH harder to do.)

> 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.

Realism != entertainment.  Sustainable disbelief of reality (IMO) ==
entertainment.  If I want realism, I'll shut the computer off and go pay
my bills.

> 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.

How does this desire interact with the "uber" model, wherein a quick rise
to power of a small clique of players would then go out, collecting all
possible maps (or a substantial fraction thereof) in order to try and
collect all the treasures?  This WILL happen, unless the treasure is so
undervalued as to be relatively worthless.  If this is the case, though,
your whole quest structure loses compulsion.  Given a choice of
entertainment without the frustration of following the available quest
path, or entertainment with it, without the lure of some reasonable reward
at the end, why would anyone choose the latter?



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