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

[the_logos at www.achaea.com]

On Tue, 6 Mar 2001, John Buehler wrote:

> Matt Mihaly writes:
 
>> Achaea already lets characters pass knowledge to each other. It's
>> called 'say', 'tell', 'messages', 'newsboards', 'channels',
>> 'shouts', and so on. The idea that I should have to pass knowledge
>> to another character (and apparently only in certain circumstances)
>> via some special command seems silly. Telling another character
>> something through any communication method is sufficient for that
>> character to know something. You just want to make people jump
>> through hoops by pretending that a character doesn't know something
>> when clearly he or she already does.
 
> ANY game system - ANY set of checks and balances - can be played by
> a player.  I've seen some doozies described here.  I don't believe
> that they scale up to the casual player base.  The casual player's
> ability to suspend disbelief only goes so far.  When their character
> gets an in-game 'secret', they assume that means that it's a
> *secret*, with all the implications that go along with it.  They
> assume that they can tell it to others and that people who haven't
> been told the secret don't know it.

Yes, exactly! The casual player's ability to suspend disbelief only
goes so far! When Lancelot the Knight tells Bill the Priest the
secret, and the game refuse to recognize that Bill has been told the
secret, Bill is going to have trouble suspending his disbelief, as he
clearly knows the secret (and I don't just mean he the person. I mean
he the character.).

My entire point here is that your method requires a massive suspension
of disbelief, whereas mine (if you call my opposition to your method a
method) requires none at all.


>> Further, frankly, I don't see that it matters whether a character
>> gets that information from another character or from a totally
>> out-of-character method like a website.
 
> Obviously a major point in why we disagree.  You're either not
> concerned with moving the checks and balances of implications for
> character actions far from reality, or you figure that the players
> will be able to deal with that new balance point.  "They can deal
> with dragons and magic, so why not characters that magically
> discover secrets?"

What I'm concerned with is the player experience. I don't see which
group of players your method of doing things appeals to. Certainly not
roleplayers, and certainly not GoP players. GoP players will just
think it's silly to worry about in-character vs. ooc knowledge, and
roleplayers will want to know why, when their character DOES know
something (because he's been told by 50 other characters who have
already done the quest), the game tells them the character
doesn't. It's taking single-player mechanics and pretending that
you're still playing a single player game.

 
>> Are you advocating cracking down on players expressing, say, modern
>> political ideas such as liberty and justice for all? Clearly in a
>> fantasy setting, such ideas do not fit and how could a character
>> have learned about them?
 
> Cracking down on it?  The ideal scenario is that a roleplayer is
> running the character and I am telling the roleplayer what I want to
> do.  The roleplayer would then act as a natural filter, refusing to
> do things that aren't consistent with the character.  Such as
> discussing the Yankees' roster.

What you want is hardcore roleplaying it sounds like, which by
definition is not for the casual player.

 
>> And what about things like simple addition? Do you have a way of
>> ensuring a character can add? Probably not. It's not needed, of
>> course, because characters know a lot more than what you can track.
 
> I can model a mathematics skill (or many subskills) and have tasks
> in the game world that use that skill, so yes, I can model any
> number of points of character knowledge.  If my character has the
> ability to aim a cannon, then having the mathematics skill might
> come in handy.  A character without the addition skill may always
> show quantities to its player as 'many' or 'few'.

And when said character is talking to another character and suddenly
magically knows how to add? The thing is, people who want to roleplay
that badly (and you're talking about really hardcore roleplayers if
they're going to pretend they can't even add properly), then I don't
think you need to code in all those restrictions. They only work
against a good roleplayer, because they won't manage to stay
consistent with the character he has devised for hiself.


>> In-game knowledge is not trackeable without the use of AI way
>> beyond what we have now. All that can be done now is mock up a
>> system to make users jump through hoops. Until you have a system
>> that knows whether my character knows something (instead of
>> pretending that the only way to gain a piece of knowledge is via
>> some special command as opposed to general communications), then
>> you're not modeling in-game knowledge. You're mocking it.

> I'm not quite sure what to say in response to being accused of
> mocking the modeling of in-game knowledge.

Do you understand what I'm saying? You don't seem to from your
responses.

What I'm mainly interested in hearing is:

What type of player does modeling character knowledge in this
inconsistent manner appeal to? It certainly doesn't appeal to GoPers,
it isn't going to appeal to hardcore roleplayers (anyone who says
otherwise, come talk to me after you've beaten your head against a
wall after the game consistently actively denies the experiences your
character HAS had).

--matt

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