[MUD-Dev] The changing nature of fun

[Dread Quixadhal]

From: "Chris Holko" <cholko at mindspring.com>
> 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.

I agree with this.  The mud I played on years ago made combat very
difficult as the number of creatures on each side became more and
more unbalanced.  A group of 6 level 3 players could easily take out
groups of 2 or 3 level 5 mobs, but a single level 5 player would
usually die (or flee from) a group of 4 level-1 villagers.  In
addition, if you grouped, experience shares were rounded up, so
while you'd get more if you killed something solo, you'd get a
significant chunk of it when grouped (I think the formula multiplied
the experience by about .75 x number_in_group).

>> "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

Actually, I treated it as a way to learn the map.  The experience
loss was dumb (how do you learn negatively by dying?), but having to
go find your corpse was only annoying if you were in an area you
knew really well.  If you were exploring and got killed, it was
frightening but also educational.

The only downside on this is that if you had travelled several
"zones" away, it took forever to trapse back across the world again
(the infamous boat-ride of EverQuest).

>> "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.

It's called poor balance.  If you find your players consistantly
avoiding one area, but loitering around another... chances are the
difficulty vs. reward ratio is off.  I always found that giving more
rewards for random encounters encouraged the players to explore
instead of doing "runs" through known areas.  Of course, it has to
be balanced so players still DO the crafted areas.

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

The two BEST examples of this I can recall are Dark Age of Camelot,
in which you have three seperate nationalities which don't speak the
same language and are automatically hostile to each other.  The only
PK that's allowed is between these opposing nations, and they are
seperated in the corners of the world so they meet in the (neutral)
center.

The other is the old Ivory Tower mud, which had two worlds (Law and
Chaos) joined by a single tower with the toughest mobs in the game.
If you could get a strong enough party together, you could cross
through the tower and wreak havoc.

>> "Travel"
 
Travel time adds realism and increases boredom.  I like exploring,
so travel is just a part of the game for me... but I know many who
would rather just teleport everywhere.  My thoughts have always been
to provide mechanisms to travel quickly (horses, vehicles, etc) at a
cost, to provide enhancements (boots of speed, drugs, etc) at a
price, or skills (teleport spell, etc) the player can spend time and
experience to learn.  Those that care will take one or more of these
options, those the don't mind will walk.

>> "Down Time"

> Downtime = punishment.  Its a stick.  First it never really works.
> Experienced players will find all the tricks to circumvent it.  So

Yup.  The DM in me wants to say down-time is realistic... but the
player in me says it's just time I'm looking at my inventory,
checking the map, or chatting.  I think the idea of
exertion/endurance points is about the best way to simulate
down-time.  If you've been running alot, you use them up.. if you
walk slowly, you get them back.  If you actually rest, you get them
back very fast.

If your inventory means something (has weight, uses up endurance
faster), then having potions to restore it is a good way out (the
more you carry, the more you have to use them).  Of course, in a
magic world you can use spells which you can make the player spend
things to get.

> 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?

I hope not, I play solo more often than not! :) Also, I don't see
how grouping would reduce movement cost (in fact, it should force
the group to the speed of the slowest) other than giving the fighter
access to a fly spell that they couldn't get themselves without
spending money.

> 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)

Non-combat skills are the spice of the game!  These days, I tend to
try and think of ways to move more of the economy of the game into
the hands of the players (and the AI), rather than simple shops with
fixed inventories that never run dry.  I actually think a
mostly-closed economy is the way to go.  If orcs normally carry iron
swords, and lots of them get killed in a certain area, they might
have to start carrying bronze short-swords because there are no more
"good" weapons for them to use.

> 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.

PvP is generally never fair.  If it's a free-for-all, then newbies
just get slaughtered and quit.  If it's by area, then a small set of
players hack at each other in that area, and everyone else avoids
it.  Registration systems seem to work the best (Registered PK's can
only attack other Registered PK's), because they an still kill each
other to their hearts content, but there aren't many hiding places
(they can be ambushed while playing normally too).

It's a hack though.  PK's tend to be number crunchers, and for them
most of your hard work isn't even noticed.  They could care less
that you carefully hand-described a woodland stream leading up to a
fog-shrouded cave enterance... they're much more impressed that
their Sword of Self-Mutilation now does 7d6+13 points of
damage. *shrug*

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