[MUD-Dev] The changing nature of fun

[Chris Holko]

From: "brian hook"

> "Forced Interdependence"

I think forcing players to group is the wrong approach.  Its far
better to reward them for grouping.  AC does this buy increasing the
amount of experience you gain.  In a group the experience awarded
per mob is higher than normal.  This is much better than just making
it impossible if not grouped.

> "Corpse Recovery"

Worse thing about most MMORPGs in my book.  Nothing fun about it, it
derails the plans for the session or worse just heaps on the
frustration.  About the only thing AC2 got right was lack of item
loss on death.  They already had the no experience loss, which is
probably the reason I will not play EQ.  Punishing players for their
mistakes is needed, but frustrating them or creating cottage
industries to get around it isn't an ideal solution.  AC solved it
by penalizing your abilities until you earned your way out of it.
They did not remove ANYTHING you accomplished already, and that is
the key to a good system.  Never take away a players efforts.  You
can still punish for stupid behaviour by the temporary reduction
method.

> "Overcrowding"

I think that the big source of this problem is that game worlds
aren't designed to handle the rush.  They are designed to handle a
mid-life population but never the early land rush or the end game.
One method is to duplicate some of the more popular areas, but this
needs a good lore/background to make it reasonable.  AC1 did this
with certain "Flood dungeons".  There were 2 or 3 of each scattered
about the world.  The second option is just to have a huge number of
dungeons to give people places to go (I never did find EVERY AC1
dungeon, I don't think anyone has).

> "Bad Guys Can't Interact With Good Guys"

I love this idea and would love to see it taken to its fullest.  By
that I mean, you cannot even GROUP with non-aligned factions.  The
issue that comes up here is all the cry-baby pee-pants that want to
have it THEIR way.  They want the world to conform to them and fail
to see why they should actually participate within the rules of the
world as it was designed.  If anything designers still coddle these
types of players too much.

> "Travel"

I think portals as AC1/AC2 have are a great solution for this
problem, however at the same time there needs to be some real
justification for why these things exist yet mobs don't use them.
After all, if a mob sees a character flee through one wouldn't that
eventually ring a bell?  Travel becomes worse in zoned games because
the connections between zones are really contrived at times.  In a
non-zone game you have many more options for getting there yet at
the same time you also run into the fact that world can be very very
big too.  This leads to increase in travel times unless some other
means is made, like portals.  Another option would to allow
characters to be able to summon more varied types of portals.
Perhaps linking two characters through some attribute so they could
form portals where the other is .. etc...

> "Down Time"

Downtime = punishment.  Its a stick.  First it never really works.
Experienced players will find all the tricks to circumvent it.  So
unless its just so overbearing the only people affected are those
not in the know or without the means (ie, having access to skill X
or class X).  Nothing is worse than having to sit down between
battles and regain health.  Its even worse if there is no reasonable
means for you to reduce this time that does not require another
person.  This all goes back to forced grouping.  Is it reasonable to
expect people to always be able to team up?

If you want people to interact with each other then instead of
forcing them to game designers need to give them a enjoyable reason
to.  Perhaps changing the concept of what a character is?  One way
may be to give characters levels of respect or accomplishment within
their race/civilization.  You could be the grandest fighter in the
world, but your social rating is so low most people don't invite you
to big functions.  Hence non-combat time is encourage to be spent in
social activities?  (even hanging out at the local pub would gain
you points to socialization)

You did leave out one major area.

		      "Player versus Player."

This seems to be the new means of excusing development teams from
making content or coming up with a real story.  It also is used to
circumvent the need for having mobs with any sense of AI.  I truly
believe that all-peace mmorpgs have more growth potential than
pvp-centric or pvp-enhanced games.  Most PvP games are of short
duration play, like tribes, UT, quake and similar, as there is no
loss as very little if anything is invested in the character.  It
will be interesting to see what Shadowbane does as most games that
do support PvP see very few of their players participate if its
optional.


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