"Advanced" use of virtual worlds? (Re: [MUD-Dev] MMORPGs & MUDs)

[Matt Mihaly]

On Tue, 29 Jan 2002, Ola Fosheim [iso-8859-1] Gr=F8stad wrote:
> Matt Mihaly wrote:

> Oh come on, mud-dev'ers discuss the obvious all the time. ;>

That's true!

>> I'm not sure why using the game in ways it hasn't been designed
>> for is a sign of an advanced gamer. If I take a chess board and
>> start throwing the pieces across the room (using it in a way it
>> wasn't intended) that hardly makes me an advanced chess
>> player. It just makes me a person who enjoys chess in a different
>> way.
 
> Horrible analogy. First of all you would not be a chessplayer at
> all.  RPGs are marketed as rollplay and a fictional experience,
> the first one is pretty much a hamsterwheel where the designers
> are in control. All you have to do is follow the path, in
> excellent roleplay you become a co-author and still get to do
> everything that other players get to do.  You do it with a level
> of sophistication and you get to do more.

I'd say you get a level of sophistication one down, because you've
hamstrung your ability to really explore the tactical nature of the
game. In Achaea, for instance, you can't even really discuss a lot
of combat and whatnot in-role, because there has to be too many
references to out-of-character concepts.

As for the hamsterwheel, well, not in any MUD I design or play. We
create worlds, and people then go ahead and reside in them. We don't
provide single all-encompassing goals of "Getting the highest level"
or whatnot. Level isn't even particularly important.

 
> (You seem to assume the chess is an advanced game, which is pretty
> much a cultural idea. It actually is a pretty rigid and limited
> pattern matching game)

Chess is an advanced game insofar as its strategies are extremely
deep.

 
> There is no reason for not doing any of those activities in a
> roleacting mentality. Especially political games are very well
> suited for roleacting, you get to maximize drama. But no MMO have
> any great political game built in, and probably will not have it
> either. Because, if you do, you risk getting the entire server
> killed off, which seemed to happen on some Meridian server.  MMOs
> are static by designphilosophy.

I didn't realize you were limiting it just to big graphical games. I
was talking about MUDs generally.

I'm also not sure why you think a big political game =3D getting the
entire server killed off. Politics are quite important in Achaea,
and a political leader killing the server population off isn't
possible.

Political games are also, I would say, extremely ill-suited for
roleplaying, becuase no one wants to roleplay someone stupid and no
one can roleplay someone more competent than they themselves are. In
any competitive environment, people are going to want to win, and
politics are nothing if not competitive. Mihaly's Law of Competition
and Roleplaying says, "The greater the level of competition between
players, the lower the level of roleplaying. This is because
roleplaying is about process, while competition motivates one to aim
for results. The more competition there is, the more results trump
process."

The result of this means that people are going to play the political
game to the end of -their- abilities, not to the end of their
character's abilities. Since you can't roleplay someone wittier or
more clever than yourself, and since people will inevitably use all
their personal abilities to win, you end up with roleplaying being
almost impossible if you want to win (and most people do). Sure,
maybe they can talk in some ridiculous fake "accent", but it's got
little to do with adopting a role and playing it faithfully.

 
> You dont really have any sophisticated PvP combat either, it is
> very much a simple optimization or twitch thing. And even then,
> PvP is a great source for roleacting and roleacting adds another
> layer to that experience as well.

No offence, but do you actually play any PvP MUDs seriously? They
are -not- well-suited for roleplaying, because they get so
incredibly competitive. The only MUDs I've played since about 1994
are heavily PvP MUDs, and I have to say, while occasionally you get
people who can roleplay well while engaging in PvP, generally the
sheer competition drives people to cast aside everything that
doesn't work to help them win.=
 

 
> Actually, formally all you need is some kind of ordering involving
> A and B. You dont need a continuum.

Yes, you're right. That's really what I should have said. If the
ordering isn't based on any objective criteria though, then you're
just stating a preference.

 
> Actually, we were talking production of experience. I can agree
> with you to some extent, but only because and advanced consumer of
> fiction is productive. I.e. she makes an interpretation.

Whether you're roleplaying or not, the minute you talk to another
player, you are a producer of content. Roleplaying is merely another
kind of content, like just chatting OOC to another player. I'm not
going to comment on whether it's more advanced or not, but if I had
to choose between the two, I'd much rather have my players chatting
OOC to each other than roleplaying with each other (I'd rather have
both, as some prefer one, some prefer the other). The community
bonds it builds are far more powerful that way.

 
> You got too hung up on your assumptions about one dimensional
> continuum.  Now, who is the gourmet: a person that cant be
> bothered to taste and smell (or even chew), or one that does and
> also add spice and atmosphere to the dinner?

See my comments above. Talking about people's physical lives builds
more powerful bonds. It is more meaningful communication and there
is simply a much larger range of topics to chat about. The beauty of
the physical world is that it's an incredibly deep and broad world
with lots of common reference points. It doesn't make any sense, to
me, to say that adopting a fake persona and talking about the king's
valet's cousin's wife's brother-in-law's famous sword Godslayer is a
somehow more 'advanced' activity than talking about what's going on
in your life.

I have nothing against roleplaying, by the way, and enjoy doing it
myself sometimes. I just see no reason at all to classify it as a
more advanced form of play.


--matt

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