[MUD-Dev] Player malleable worlds (was Expected value and sta ndard deviation)

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

From: Kerry Fraser-Robinson [mailto:kfr at redbedlam.com]
> From: <Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com>

>> Enough hand waving, someone show me some compelling auto
>> generated content, or compelling player generated content in a
>> commercially viable game.

> Well plenty of games have auto generated content - Anarchy
> Online's or SW:G's missions are the first that come to mind but
> there are plenty of examples.  As for compelling player-generated
> content - that's really not quite the holy grail people make it
> out to be either.  Counter-Strike was player-generated content -
> as, by definition, are all the other 'mods' out there.  I believe
> that the biggest hurdle in front of players generating good
> content is a lack of quality tools - and this applies to MUG's and
> MMORPG's as much as it applies to online shooters etc.

As John Buehler made a good argument on the tools front, and you may
both be right. Having said that NWN did give easier tools, and I'm
sad to say, but I've seen precious little player content that's any
good.

With regards to AOs & SWGs autogenerated missions, you must have a
different definition of compelling to me. Do you really find "wipe
out this dungeon with an uninspired and insipid structure poorly
thrown together by our randomisation routine using a tile set you've
already seen a million times" compelling, exciting and motivating?
How about "Go and blow up this log to John Williams' score"?

If so, your boredom threshold is lower than mine. The most damning
thing about the above are that they all tend to encourage single
player play. In SWG, the only time I tried grouping up for some
hunting, I ran for 10 minutes with some players, started attacking
with them, and realised I wasn't able to hurt or get any xp from the
stuff they were killing. Bah!  (apparently they were factioned mobs
which you can't harm without doing some exciting log blowing up/UPS
missions).

Dan
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev