[MUD-Dev] Better Combat

[Koster, Raph]

Douglas Goodall wrote:
> Paul Schwanz wrote:

>> It seems to me that in this example, freeing up her hands to chat
>> involves a better UI design, not additional game-created dead
>> time.

> I came to a similar conclusion earlier today. There are two
> separate problems: downtime and socialization.

> Downtime is a design flaw.

I rarely speak so bluntly, but this is ludicrous.

First, define "downtime." I'd say it is "moments during gameplay
when you are not actively participating in a game choice."

Rotating the members of a volleyball squad. Halftime during a
physical game. Hitting the pause button during an intense session of
console play. Waiting for the sweeper AI to go past you down the
corridor as you hide in the corner--perhaps indefinitely.

There are many KINDS of downtime, many gaps in gameplay, and often
these gaps are sources of important meta-play--calling a time-out in
the middle of a basketball game, for example.

  - There's downtime when you are waiting for the optimal moment to
  perform an action you have already decided on.

  - There's downtime where you are prevented from performing an
  action.

  - There's downtime to rest up the player (physically or
  psychologically).

  - There's downtime to optimally prepare for a subsequent game
  choice (some of the preparation may involve choices in itself, but
  some may not, such as sitting to recover mana or HPs).

  - ...I'm sure there are more. Fundamentally, there's downtime that
  is resented and downtime that is not.

I'll make the general assertion that resented downtime is that which
gets in the way of doing something else that you want to do. But any
of the other factors may ameliorate or even entirely remove that as
a factor. For example, travel time is a frequently cited source of
downtime. Yet travel time introduces a variable into gameplay that
could be used profitably by many sorts of fun game systems
(primarily of the strategic, slower-paced variety). Good downtime or
bad downtime? Depends on which subgame you are playing, does it not?

> It's (arguably) accepted as a design flaw in every other genre,
> unless you're talking about a pause button. CoH corrected this
> flaw. Socialization should be an unrelated problem, but it's
> connected to downtime because of the interface.

It is not an unrelated problem. Even with an optimal interface, we
are still bound by the limits of the human brain. No socialization
of significance happens during a an intense and involving FPS
deathmatch, not because of the hands being busy, but because of the
BRAIN being busy. Even just communication is not a trivial
activity--it costs a significant number of cycles, and usually
communication during that selfsame deathmatch is *extremely* basic,
consisting of basic expressions of schadenfreude, fiero, and other
such dominance-heirarchy sorts of posturing.

Socialization requires sufficient spare cycles for communication,
and requires that other more immediate needs that might distract be
at a low ebb. It really is that simple. Communication is a
compressible activity--move to voice, text macros, txt lingo, or any
number of other possibly more optimized communication media, and you
can reduce the amount of time it takes to express an idea. But
socialization, as opposed to communication, is a complex dance that
involves a lot more than just conversing.

Anyone who has tried to have fun at a party in only five minutes
knows this. Anyone who has gone on one of the stupid "five minute
dates" knows this. Anyone who has interviewed a potential employee
knows this. There are physical cues, there's testing of the
waters--you don't get to know someone quickly.

If the game is go-go-go, there is no timeslice sufficient for this
sort of dance to occur.

> I enjoy socializing. Given how social most humans are, I don't
> think socialization needs encouragement of any kind. Most players
> will socialize just by being human... So why don't they? Why does
> this need encouragement at all?

> Because the game makes it hard.

And the commonest way is by making the game *too involving.* If you
could communicate telepathically and instantly in Quake and its ilk,
you still wouldn't socialize while deathmatching.

Is it any wonder that much of the socialization surrounding games is
asynchronous, or at the least, compartmentalized away from the game
proper (into fountains at Midgard away from the action, into message
boards, into mailing lists)? That when people speak of socializing
in go-go-go games, they almost always describe *not playing* while
chatting?

> Give me a better interface (or built-in voice chat or, preferably,
> speech-to-text-to-speech) and you can have your cake and eat it
> to. Easier said than done, I know.

It exists now, and the primary effect reported is...? I don't see a
surge of socializing. I do see many reports of existing social
groups making use of it. But each communication burst within an
existing social group carries multiplied freight because of past
history and context.  That is not at all the same thing as the
process of socializing someone.

As Jeff has been reiterating, real social bonds migrate out of the
game.  The relationships between downtime and attention and
socialization are a big part of why. The questions facing designers
are

  - do we care if the socializing happens outside of the game
  framework?

  - does the locus of interaction affect whether the players value
  the game more or less?

  - is there a way to tie the social groups to the game so that they
  play longer?[1]

  - is social interaction within the game worth pursuing or does it
  damage the gameplay itself?

Don't get me wrong--I a) tend to play solo b) get bored with
downtime too c) am not advocating making the games slower-paced d)
enjoy go-go-go as much as the next guy. But we're designers here,
and instant gratification is not the sole driver to our
choices. Some fun is immediate, and some fun takes time to mature,
like wine.

-Raph

  [1] Some may assert this is a purely commercial concern, but I'd
  say that even in free muds, the desirability of retention is
  extremely high for numerous reasons.
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