[MUD-Dev] Playing catch-up with levels

[John Buehler]

Matt Mihaly writes:
> From: John Buehler
>> Matt Mihaly writes:

>>> Players want to be somewhat innovative. Most will never
>>> be. Designing toward the minority that can be is a poor
>>> idea. (That's not a comment on your actual idea, just the
>>> justification for it.)

>> I keep thinking about the 'innovation' of working through the
>> challenges of puzzle and card games, and how that level of
>> creative challenge can be worked into a MMORPG.  In the current
>> crop of graphical games I don't encounter any challenge at all,
>> except for those of organizing information so that I can
>> efficiently pound on the right monsters for the right cash and
>> prizes.

> What about Shadowbane? (I don't play it and don't know anything
> about it, mind you) or Planetside? Or if it's puzzles you want,
> why not Puzzle Pirates?

The "level of creative challenge" is the key here.  Multiplayer
games have the potential to bring together many different types of
entertainment, each with a different dimension of creative challenge
to it.  Shadowbane explores the experience of group versus group
PvP.  Puzzle Pirates explores the experience of group solving of
word puzzles.  I'm not familiar with Planetside.

What I find in games is not a sense of creative challenge, but one
of figuring out what the designers want me to do.  It's a challenge
to be sure, and there are LOTS of players who find it entertaining,
but it's not a creative challenge.

>>> If you assume that the game is just about bashing and leveling,
>>> at least. That's hardly true in many muds, particularly in text.

>> I was only considering the big graphical MUDs.  If there is an
>> element of entertainment beyond bashing and leveling in them,
>> I've yet to encounter it. >From what I've heard about Achaea,
>> there's certainly far more to that game.  Unfortunately, I'm not
>> a text MUDer.

> There's far more to a lot of virtual worlds. Achaea, Aetolia, and
> Imperian (our three games) are not unique in that respect, by a
> long shot. Granted, graphical MUDs to date are pretty shallow in
> the non-bashing end, especially regarding anything to do with
> story, but I'm sure they'll improve. The earliest text muds were
> pretty basic too.

And they are slowly improving.  Slowly enough for me to bemoan the
pace.

> And anyway, how about stuff like Realm vs. Realm battles in DAoC
> or sieges in Lineage, etc?

I was playing Dark Age of Camelot in the early days, and I can well
imagine that the realm combat stuff has changed since I last played,
but there was no "creative challenge" to it.  Players created the
best damage-dealing character that they could and did damage to the
opposing mob of player characters.  Generally, the biggest mob won
as the two groups swept back and forth endlessly over the same
terrain.

Due to the role of levels in the damage dealing end of things, only
the highest level characters were effective in the top-tier realm
versus realm game.

All that said, realm versus realm is a new experience.  I was
involved in stuff that I never experienced in an MMORPG.  It did not
reach the point of a "creative challenge" however.  It was just
different.

I couldn't comment on Lineage.  I played it for about an hour, being
turned off by the usual level grind.

JB
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