[MUD-Dev] On socialization and convenience

[Matt Mihaly]

On Fri, 15 Jun 2001, Michael Tresca wrote:
> On Thursday, June 14, 2001 12:43 AM Raph Koster posted:
 
>> Even our recovery areas suffer from this. Yes, we pretty much
>> make you go to cantinas and taverns, because you need to heal
>> wounds. But that means that the only people whom you will meet in
>> cantinas are wounded people and healers. And maybe a
>> bartender. That leaves out a lot of types of player--the
>> politicians, the crafters, the farmers and the animal trainers.

> RetroMUD faces this dilemma.  We have over six different kinds of
> channels for players to talk to each other from anywhere else.  We
> have news posts.  We have guild boards.  They can send tells to
> each other.  They can speak out loud.  They can whisper.  AND we
> have inns and taverns.

Achaea too is plagued by channels. They only work when you're on the
same continent, but the main continent is where all the player
cities and many of the various game areas are. I just recently
removed 2 of the 4 universal channels (meaning they aren't tied to
an organization...everyone can use them). We had: chat (for
whatever), rage (was supposed to be a joke. A place for people to
vent. Mainly was used as an angry chat), shout (which costs
endurance to use), and market (for buying/selling things on).

Just the other day, we removed chat and rage because I got irritated
with them. People viewed them as completely out of character and
would use them to try and 'spoil' RP events.

The other reason I didn't like them was because of our group
v. group emphasis. I don't want people from opposed groups
socializing all that freely, and universal channels like that were
muddying things like loyalties. I'd rather that they spend their
time socializing with their city, order, guild, or clans.

> You can sit down at a tavern.  NPCs will sit there too.  You can
> chat with them.  You can order drinks, buy food, listen to rumors.
> It reproduces, quite nicely, the effect of the WEB (World's End
> Bar, if I remember correctly) from AmberMUSH.  Only on a MUD.
 
> 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.

We are sort of similar, although players do sometimes throw parties
in the bars to get wasted (and then irritate everyone around them
with their mangled speech and tottering about and throwing up and
whatnot).

 
> The problem, and I imagine this is an issue with science fiction
> games more than fantasy, is that RetroMUD consists of six worlds.
> It's very difficult to reinforce the feel of SIX separate worlds,
> each with its own terrain, creatures, equipment, theme, areas (30+
> each) when you have so many means of communicating with each
> other.  Ideally, we want the folks on Sosel to meet in a tavern on
> Sosel and go adventuring there.

Yep, absolutely.
 
> But that requires having a lot of players.  Although we average
> 60+ on good days, that's still not enough to isolate players and
> assume they will find each other across six worlds.

Yeah, 6 is a lot for that size player base. I was going to give you
some advice, but I think your goals are different from mine. You
don't seem to object to people from different worlds mixing with
each other freely?

--matt

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