FW: [MUD-Dev] DESIGN: Study of MMORPG/MUD friendliness

[Ben Carter]

On Tue, Feb 01, 2005 at 10:00:40AM +1300, Lisa Galarneau wrote:

> Speaking as a player here, I would argue that UI makes a huge
> difference.  CoH's team seek and find member functions are so
> simple and well-integrated that the temptation to use them is
> tremendous.  Having to broadcast LFG on a chat channel (even a
> dedicated one like WoW) is messy, annoying to listen to, and easy
> to miss.  And in SWG, I find that

Oddly enough, WoW did have a "Looking" flag prior to one of their
recent patches.  I only saw it show up in the /who list, and there
did not seem to be an easy way to utilize it (perhaps that is why it
was removed.)

> the UI for finding other players is pretty unfriendly, even though
> it has endless options built-in -- I can search for players well
> enough (even by blood type?), but there are no context-sensitive
> options for sending tells, etc., once I've identified them (unless
> I've missed it?  If so, that's a usability issue right there).
> And if a player is standing around that I want to talk to?  Why do
> I have to spell their name to send a tell?  Actually, the ability
> to communicate easily and casually has been missing from several
> MMOs I've played lately.  But again, in CoH, I can easily send
> tells to a player via a right-click, both in physical proximity
> and from my friends' list, etc.

I think the worst offender in this regard was Asheron's Call 2.
Absent was any form of group-seeking indication, and combined with
the fact that their chat system for sending direct tells to other
players would crash (this was common at the time) meant that if you
were in a sparsely populated area, you were completely isolated
(only people within your talk radius would be able to hear you at
all.)  I'm not sure if there was a global-chat system or not.

Combined with the way that players advanced (they made characters
with skills targeted towards taking on enemies solo), this led me to
jokingly describe the game as being the first in the "Massively
Singleplayer" genre.

--
-Ben Carter
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn
from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their
apparent disinclination to do so. - Douglas Adams, "Last Chance to
See"
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