[MUD-Dev] Cognitively Interesting Combat (was Better Combat)

[ceo]

cruise wrote:

> This is a general summary of various mails - just kinda thinking
> out loud for a bit...

> Paolo has suggested three "metrics" for the cognitive complexity
> of a process:

>  1) Number of unique rules accessed during the process.

>  2) The rate of access of these rules.

>  3) The total number of rule accesses required.

> I would, however, add a fourth:

>  4) The number of rules available to choose from.

This to me sounds fine but restricted to a very low-level. The
cognitive complexity items do nothing to measure or encourage fun,
which IMHO is much more worthy a thing to be adding to the combat
than mere cognitive interest - whereas the added item 4 starts to
move in that direction.

I still think you ought to go back and read the previous discussions
on fun, which were aimed at a slightly higher level and attempted to
get closer to the final aim - an enjoyable game - although still
IMHO at least one crucial step away. I suspect that inventing the
next step upwards might be what it needs to convert the whole of
this area from an academic discussion into the start of a sea-change
in game design.

> Chess has been oft quoted in this thread as an excellent example
> of cognitive complexity, but there are times when you can play on

....but it takes too long to play and is too exhausting for most
people most of the time. Cognitive complexity == hard work. As a
side-note, I'd rather endure physical pain than move any significant
distance in the direction of chess - even something as simple as
Connect-4 is for most people too mentally exhausting to play too
frequently as a leisure activity (even if they very happily play it
occasionally). It doesn't matter than I enjoy chess: that's a single
discrete activity that I might do once in a leisure sitting. Bear in
mind that combat in games has to be repeated many many many times at
a high frequency.

Adam M
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