[MUD-Dev] About Fencing (was: mass customisation)

[Travis Casey]

Friday, July 19, 2002, 5:57:37 AM, Marian Griffith wrote:
> On Wed 17 Jul, Travis Casey wrote:
>> Tuesday, July 16, 2002, 7:45:22 AM, Marian Griffith wrote:

>>> No, the solution would not be to make it less significant, but
>>> to give the players more control. I.e. it would not be easy if
>>> at all possible, to get blown out of the sky withing seconds.
>>> By focussing less on attrition of hitpoints, and more on skill
>>> and parry, then players have a lot of action to determine the
>>> outcome of a fight.  >>> Anybody here involved with the SCA, or
>>> otherwise skilled in the arts of sword fighting?

>> I've had some training and practice in sword, staff, stick, and
>> unarmed fighting, and have read widely on the subject.  What sort
>> of info are you looking for?

> Mainly I am curious to know how the experience of actual fencing
> (which I have done only twice) can be translated to muds.

> For me the actual experience is *vastly* different from watching
> messages scroll by..

>   You hit the ugly troll
>   The ugly troll misses you
>   You hit the ugly troll
>   The ugly troll barely scratches you
>   ... and so on.

> From what I understand fencing is more about blocking your oppo-
> nent, and moving him into a position where you can strike, and I
> wonder if that can be done in a mud. It would slow down the pace
> but I can not help but think that it would be, in the end, more
> entertaining. And on a graphical mud, where you can actually see
> your opponent, it would look and work even better I think.

Well... in theory, you can -- and there are "fighting games" that
try to do it.  I can see a few ways to increase the excitement level
of combat in the game:

 - Increase player involvement.  A player who has something to do
   besides watch messages scroll is going to feel more involved and
   more interested in what's happening.  However, you have to be
   careful to make sure that the choices involved are meaningful -- if
   it's just "click on the target to try to attack it", then players
   are still going to be bored... and they'll have sore fingers on top
   of it.  The same thing will tend to happen if there's a single
   tactic that's *always* best -- players will become bored, because
   they're doing the same thing over and over.

 - Make time important.  Making combat faster will tend to increase
   excitement -- but it also runs the risk of turning combat into a
   "twitch game" if you do it too much.  There's also connection
   problems and the like to deal with -- if players lose fights every
   time their network connection gets slow, they're not going to be
   happy.

 - Increase risk.  Fighting for your character's life is more exciting
   on a visceral level than fighting for points.  I won't go into the
   negative consequences here, since they should be obvious.

One thing that should be noted is that the more optional you can
make combat, the more room you may have to turn these up without
alienating players.

The combat system need not be especially realistic to create more
excitement in these ways -- a lot of fighting games manage to be
very exciting without being remotely realistic.

--
Travis Casey
efindel at earthlink.net

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