[MUD-Dev] DESIGN: Online adventure games

[Mike Rozak]

>From Steven King:

> You would also have to make sure that all players are truly a part
> of the story.  It's hard to have 100,000 seperate "unofficial"
> stories going on at the same time while you're trying to deliver a
> single "official" story.

Hard? More like impossible.

> Now imagine if, along with the original goal, the players could
> take part in events from the movies.  Players could play the parts
> of the ground troops on Hoth during the evacuation, or on Endor
> during the last battle.  They would be a part of a larger story
> and have more...

I agree with the concept, but just to be devil's advocate: What if
the players "mess up" the outcome of the story... Luke Sykwalker was
on Hoth and Endor. What if someone kills the NPC Luke Skywalker? The
solution is to somehow prevent the user from doing this. Then the
user feels they have no free will, and get frustrated.

You would need to somehow convey to the user that when they enter
the "story" elements of the virtual world they would lose some of
their choices at the expense of going through a professionally
created story. The sorts of people that play current MMORPGs would
probably find such a tradeoff incredibly distateful - since one of
the reasons they like MMORPGs is that they have free will to do
whatever the want (within physical constraints).  The sorts of
people that play adventure games may find the tradeoff acceptable,
because they are used to entering similar agreements with every
adventure game they play.


Mike Rozak
http://www.mxac.com.au
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