Dealing with lag (Re: [MUD-Dev] Removing the almighty experience point...)

[Jason Messer]

On Sep 21, 2004, at 12:42 PM, Michael Hartman wrote:
> Jason Messer wrote:

>> Any time you do manage to create a thrilling and dangerous
>> experience the reality of computers and computer networks
>> threaten to destroy that experience at any moment.

> I firmly believe it is no longer appropriate for game designers to
> dumb down their game due to the possibility of lag.

Failing to recognize and account for lag in some way will cause many
players to avoid some of your best content because the risk is too
high.

I don't think lag needs to be the main design consideration, but the
much maligned "auto-attack" was at one point a conscious choice made
to deal with lag. Lack of moving platform puzzles in MMO worlds
probably didn't require much thought to leave out, falling damage
from cliffs and pits is a different matter though - leaving it out
impacts both "realism" and player choice, putting it in means there
will be deaths from lag.

> Does lag exist?  Of course. Do computer crashes happen? Of
> course. Does that mean you should design for these extremely rare
> and infrequent problems? Not if you want to make a good game.

> A perfect example of this is a very old, very time honored concept
> from the mud world known as "wimpy." Wimpy was basically a setting
> each player could configure that would cause their character to
> automatically flee from combat when their hit points reached a
> certain % of max.

One thought is that "wimpy" did not go far enough. Maybe characters
could store scripted situational responses for when there is no
client input. A limited amount of "macro play time" per day could
prevent players from using such a system to build a bot. From this
viewpoint auto-attack and wimpy are somewhat related features.

I don't think auto-attack, situational scripting, lack of
perma-death, not having platform puzzles, no falling damage, and the
like are a dumbing down of the MMO - they are considered choices to
prevent frustrating setbacks and a recognition that lag will play a
part in the player interaction with the world.

Players are conservative beasts, why else would they choose to farm
orcs rather than doing such quests as already exist. If you have to
give players permission to roleplay, you also have to give them
permission to be heroic.  If they die trying out high end content it
should be because they got were not powerful enough, or need to
learn some tactics - not because of lag.
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