[MUD-Dev] New Bartle article

[Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu 
> [mailto:mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu]On Behalf Of
> Trump
> Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2001 5:40 PM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Cc: azeraab at dies-irae.org
> Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] New Bartle article
 
>> From: "Koster, Raph"
>> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
>> Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] New Bartle article
 
>> Key part of that sentence is "the end." Do we WANT end points in
>> these games?
 
> I'd say we do.  For a number of reasons.
 
>   1.  If the players were never going to leave then an unending game
>   would be great.  The fact is everyone will quit eventually.
>   Granted there is a small number for whom the server being finally
>   turned off will be that point (NWN).  But for everyone else if you
>   can extend the time people will stay by giving them an endpoint
>   that is beyond when they would have quit from boredom you are able
>   to keep collecting money from people you would not otherwise have
>   been able to get.  The trick here is picking an endpoint that is
>   beyond the boredom point, but not too far beyond it as to be
>   unreachable.

But the boredom point is going to be different for every player.

> How many times have you plodded through the last few levels of a
> game you were getting sick of just because you wanted to win it?

Just about never--I just quit the game. I have a very low threshold of
tolerance for boredom in a game.

>   2.  One thing that turned me off from all the ORPGS I've played is
>   the lack of a victory situation.  In my ethical code you dont quit
>   until you've won.  Quitters are losers.  If there is no way to win
>   your game you are making everyone a loser.  People tend to look
>   back and say, "Yeah, UO got boring so I quit."  What kind of word
>   of mouth is that?  Wouldnt you rather have them say, "I was there
>   when we beat back the enemy and saved the world!  I didnt go back
>   because it was so much fun that it took up my whole day."  Which
>   will bring in the new customer?

The classic way this usually happens in GoP muds is reaching max
level, becoming an immortal or other sort of member of the staff, and
promptly ignoring your duties, never building the area you were
supposed to build, and leaving the mud. :)

What sort of victomry condition would you propose giving each person
as they max out? It has to be an individual victory condition, not
something global like "the day we beat back the world."  (Because the
end points I was talking about were for individual player arcs, not
for the worlds as a whole).

>   3.  Early direction or early rejection.  Oh the number of times
>   I've seen this.  "Hey Bob wanna try UO?"  "Sure, what am I
>   supposed to do?"  "Whatever you want."  "OK, I want to watch TV."
>   *Bob watches TV* "Hey bob, wanna try Diablo?"  "Sure, what am I
>   supposed to do?"  "Kill Diablo" "OK" *Bob begins his quest to kill
>   Diablo* ORPGs are losing thousands of players because they dont
>   have a goal to get players into the game before that emotional
>   attachment develops.

Absolutely true. And the freer-form your game is, the harder it is to
provide said initial obvious goal. But it's also accepted wisdom that
a game that lets players set their own goals will retain players
longer (and we see evidence of this even in narrowly focused games
like Diablo, where alternate ways of playing the game evolve). The
common solution is to provide a clear immediate goal to newbies, and
gradually reveal the free-form nature of the game to them over time.

I guess I am saying that giving goals to people doesn't necessarily
mean there has to be an end point to the experience.

>   I'd guess this is one of the main reasons the various types of
>   MUDs and ORPGs fail to attract even close to the numbers of single
>   player games.

This is certainly not true of UO and EQ. Both of them are extremely
successul even by the standards of single-player games.

>   4.  Fresh starts are needed and sometimes they need to be forced.

I'd much rather a player come to it themselves; they have the power to
pwipe their own character at any time after all.

> What better ending point is there than a Pwipe? You should be able
> to tell us all what percentage of players quit UO's open beta test
> after every wipe, and there sure were a lot of them.  If it really
> was devastating then there would have been no testers that last day
> after the dozens of wipes.  If I remember correctly, the server was
> still packed.

Actually, UO suffered badly from tester attrition. If you recall, we
started out mailing CDs to select people, and we had to put the client
up for download at the end in order to get more testers because the
pool of 50,000 wasn't enough--too many quit. I wouldn't claim pwipes
as the only reason though. :)

I'd 

-Raph
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