[MUD-Dev] On socialization and convenience

[Sean Kelly]

From: "Michael Tresca" <talien at toast.net>

> And as you can probably guess, no player is interested in sitting
> at the tavern at all.  Why?

> You don't get healing from taverns, so there's no real reason to
> go.  You can get drunk, but that doesn't necessarily help you
> (GOPers see this as just plain stupid).  Players are only a
> channel away.  Taverns are supposed to serve the same purpose as
> they would in real life -- a social setting (presumably, to swap
> adventure stories, to get together to party, etc.).  But they
> don't.

I'ver seen this same occurrence in most online RPGs.  Taverns are
generally deserted.  People tend to congregate at shops and other
similar points.  Still, this also makes the taverns good locations
for fairly sane and quiet discussions without dealing with hordes of
players auctioning off their latest set of kewl gear.

> RetroMUD has an introduction function too.  It provides the
> detailed background of your character to someone else.  But we
> don't hide their names, and we don't hide who they are, because
> otherwise, this happens:

>   I couldn't FIND anybody!  After about a half hour of wandering
>   around, without the means of finding other players (including my
>   friend), I quit and never looked back.

> Communities will always be built where there are large groups of
> people, outside the game.  You can't control it, but you can
> certainly support it with a system that allows players to chat
> with each other without having to be deeply immersed.  If you
> don't do it in the game, definitely make sure you create a
> separate support for it on the Web (a Yahoo club, chat rooms,
> message boards, etc.).

Yup.  If the socialization features don't work well enough in a game
players will simply resort to third-party help like
instant-messaging programs to organize everything.  Often it seems
this is the only way to successfully manage an entire guild as
in-game systems tend to never be robust enough for such things.

One thing that's kind of surprised me is that none of the MMORPGs
I've played had any facility for sending messages to players who
aren't currently online (mail).  I grant that it has definate impact
on disk space, but arranging meetings and adventures with friends
invariably requires tracking that person down, and this is much
easier if you can leave a note for them to meet you somewhere at
such-and-such a time.  I would think that this would be one very
easy way to convenience players and help keep socialization more
game-centric.

Regarding Anarchy Online... I didn't get in until the open beta a
few days ago... what stuck me about the game was how isolated I
felt.  Much more so once I left the newbie area and got into town.
No one was talking to anyone else and the city I was in was so
randomly arranged that I don't see much of a social flow forming.
Also, the shops have mostly been replaced by rooms full of personal
terminals and I can just picture the hordes jockying for position
much like the supply stations in Tribes.  I guess we'll see how
things turn out once the game goes into production, but Ralh's
statements about how world design affects the socialization dynamic
was very apparent when contrasting AO with AC and UO.


Sean

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