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

[John Buehler]

Justin Hooper writes:

>> How do you find out in the real world?  When you see a centaur,
>> you'll see it wearing aviak charms around its neck.  So you ask it
>> if it wants to buy yours.  Or you carry the aviak charm on the end
>> of your walking staff and the centaur sees it and asks if you want
>> to sell it.

> What if you never see a centaur?

> This is completely possible, you know.  You run through once, kill
> the bird, keep going elsewhere, and never come back.

Oh, I was imagining something even worse than that.  Although I said
you see "a" centaur, I was thinking in terms of seeing "the" centaur
that buys aviak charms.  My idea is that there are aviak charms,
feathers, eyeballs, feet, hearts, pouches, brooches, yadda yadda
yadda.  So much content connected in so many different ways that you
don't *know* what to do.  You do what you're going to do in the game
world and as you trip over new opportunities for entertainment, you
get a sense of delight at discovering something new.  This is the
explorer in me coming out again.  I like happenstance discoveries.
Formulated puzzles with documented solutions are only really
entertaining for powergaming achievers.  They know where the aviak
charms are and they know that centaurs want them (whether one or
many).  What't the point?  No wonder they're called "FedEx" quests.

In my scenario, the character kept the charm because it liked it.  Or
its magic sensing skills detected a slight magical fluctuation from
the charm.  Whatever.  It stuck the charm on the end of its staff and
continued playing the game.  The character was on its way to a certain
forest because there was something there that it needed there.  It
wasn't visiting the area in an attempt to see what it could kill so
that it could look up quests on the web and shuttle the correct bits
and pieces to the right address.

> Ideally, while I agree 100% with the perception model, there are
> also in real life and works of literature characters who make their
> life's work to document such things.  Collecting far flung rumors
> from around the world in order to catalog them as a history, or
> treatise, or what have you..

I wonder if the players cannot be harnessed for this purpose.  Having
players document in-game what they have learned might be an
interesting draw for them.  Further, it might afford an opportunity to
keep knowledge of the game in the game world.  Cities in each library
could accept books or papers written by players which only have to be
reviewed by the game publisher, not originated by them.  The reviews
would be to avoid abusive language, out of game topics and concepts
and so on.  No documents saying "Bob was here".  Other players can
visit the city libraries and see what books are there.  The NPC
librarians would be capable of making the equivalent of SQL searches.
They know the contents of their library because they are so enamored
with it.

> EQ fails MISERABLY in this department, effectively asking the
> players (and ultimately the websites) to fill this role.  This is,
> of course, a simply rediculous task for a player to fulfill, thus
> the websites.

Uh, whoops.  Well, I guess you don't buy that.  I'd like to see the
information be kept in-game, and having the players (or whoever)
produce the in-game documents seems an interesting way of chaneling
their energies.  The downside to making documents in-game is that they
are only accessible at the libraries (which could burn down).  There
has to be a corresponding up side to in-game documents.  In-game maps
could be memorized by a character, adding to the character's in-game
knowledge.  I'm not sure about other information in documents.

> The problem is that writing multiple volumes of well done prose
> would be required to do at least a passing job within the game
> itself, and this would require capital for content creation.>

Which is why I look to the players.  But it's 4AM and I may be
completely off the mark.

JB


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