[MUD-Dev] MMORPG Cancellations: The sky is falling?

[Sean Howard]

"Koster, Raph" <rkoster at soe.sony.com> wrote:

> Typically depth is described as gradually unfolding many subtle
> variations on a system. This doesn't imply content at all, though
> content can certainly be an element in it. It also does not imply
> breadth of feature set (i.e. number of systems), since each of the
> features may well be shallow. Howwver, interaction between
> multiple systems can also lead to depth.

My favorite description of depth is that it is a decision which A)
has the pre-knowledge to be made, B) equally valid choices, and C)
affects the rest of the game in some way. The depth happens before
the decision is made.

For A, not having enough knowledge to make a choice just means
choosing randomly. You come up to three identical doors. Behind two
are death.  Behind the third is a million dollars. Your choice is
essentially random.  Rock-Paper-Scissors is similarly challenged.

For B, they are roughly equal, but different. For instance, you see
a girl being attacked. You can walk away, no risk but no reward. Or
you can fight for the girl, definite high risk and potentially high
reward. That uncertainty is what evens the choice out. They have to
be equalish because otherwise the decision will be obvious and makes
it.

For C, walking into a fire dungeon with a fire sword will increase
the difficulty of the dungeon, while using a water sword will
decrease the difficulty. If it didn't matter whether you used fire
or water swords, the decision would be unimportant and wouldn't be
worth paying attention to.

The conclusion you can draw is that a simple system can have a lot
of depth (ie the puzzles in Uru), and really complex systems can
have relatively little depth (ie most console RPGs). It's not the
quantity of decisions made, but the quality.

> If we're going to discuss CoH, it would be much more interesting
> to discuss the relative weight of "instancing" versus "world," the
> feasibility and desirability of adding an economy, etc.

Ooh, good stuff. I'll start :)

Instancing has a great future as soon as people stop treating them
like private dungeons and more like personal dungeons.

An economy is a good and interesting way to get players to interact
in a meaningful way. I don't think CoH needs an economy if it can
find other alternatives to meaningful player interaction - which
could be something as simple as the alien invasion event that they
had during beta.

- Sean Howard
www.squidi.net
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