[MUD-Dev] DESIGN: Why do people like weather in MMORPGs?

[Miroslav Silovic]

ceo at grexengine.com wrote:

> I think it ranks pretty close to "dieing of hunger every 20
> minutes" in the "RPG player irritation spectrum", no? :)

> Which is silly, since there are plenty of ways to work-in needing
> light without gimping the player, from increasing monster
> perception radiuses to decreasing player radius (compensated for
> by "night-time" skills and abilities) to making torches
> "automatically in use until fight mode is entered, at which time
> the player automatically drops the torch; player automatically
> retrieves torch after combat".

> The really annoying thing is how many games historically have made
> "having the brains + co-ordination to chuck a torch to the ground
> and draw sword" into a massively time-consuming or difficult
> action, taking as long (or longer) than it takes someone to run at
> you from 30ft or more away. *that's* what really gets people's
> backs up, IME.

If the game strives for some level of realism (and the tradeoffs
involved), I don't see why a game character would /want/ to have a
two-hander in an underground cave in the first place. It's noisy,
clumsy, and tends to graze the walls and fellow players just as
often as often as monsters.

Of course, if the game system is derived from AD&D, the answer is
clear: because the designers of AD&D thought that a character should
be forced into a single (rather narrow) weapon type. I think this is
both wrong from the realism value (two-handers are only good in
certain specific situations, and they just get you killed in a duel
against, say, a rapier), and from the gameplay point. It makes much
more sense to build some tradeoffs in each general weapon type, make
all the players reasonably proficient with just about any weapon
(with some smallish bonuses for practice, and accounting for facts
like that Raistlin couldn't lift a morningstar or a two-handed sword
off the ground). So if you are on horseback, you want something with
long reach, and able to just kill the enemies from the distance,
like two hander or a lance. If under ground, you need a light and
something small and convenient - like dual-wielded shortsword and
torch. Yes, you should be able to parry and counter with a torch.

My point is that the bad game designs only annoy players because the
designer neglected to think through all the consequences - the
combinations that work well seem to be discrete islands between the
mismatches.

    Miro
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