[MUD-Dev] MMO Quest: Why they're still lousy

[Paul Schwanz]

Michael Hartman wrote:
> Sporky McBeard wrote:

>> I see no reason why even the most uncreative player couldn't
>> create a decent modular dungeon, given enough direction and
>> plenty of explicit boundaries. I guess what I'm saying is, make
>> it difficult to screw up.

> Never, ever, ever underestimate how uncreative and poorly suited
> to design the majority of gamers are. Seriously, you will be
> absolutely shocked at the degree of suckage players create if
> given the opportunity.

> There is a reason why games are created by professionals. :)

Gamers are good at playing games, however, and it isn't impossible
to make portions of dungeon design into a game (Dungeon Keeper
anyone?).

Furthermore, if you think about it, players are providing a type of
content when engaging in any cooperation or competition.  In my
opinion, the whole point of multiplay is the content that other
players are generating.  Take away that content and you have a
single-player experience.  Granted, this isn't what people usually
mean when they talk about player-generated content, but I see such
content as existing on a continuum.  Things like cooperation and
competition may be on one end and player-created models and textures
on the other, but there are all sorts of points in between where
players can contribute in subtle ways to the overall experience.
Imagine AI that reconfigures a dungeon based on how other questers
have fared.  Your experience of that dungeon is shaped by the last
guy that entered it and is shaping the experience of the next.

In any case, I think Sporky is onto one of the better notions I've
heard for filtering player-generated content.  The designers at
World Fusion planned to have a similar mechanic in Atriarch, where
constructing buildings was like putting together legos, and the size
of the blocks you could work with was dictated by your construction
skill.  Coupled with construction skill points dependent upon peer
review, I think this could be an effective filter.  The point is
that when you have low construction skill, you won't be able to
design anything really cool, but you also won't be able to design
anything that really sucks either.

>> They aren't bad suggestions, just extreme ones. Thinking outside
>> the box sometimes requires a shock to the system to get started.

> I don't think removing one of the most important parts of quests
> (the story) or throwing the baby out with the bathwater (removing
> quests entirely) are really thinking outside the box. That's more
> like lighting the box on fire.

Quests by their very nature /are/ stories.  Perhaps Sporky isn't
suggesting that the story be removed, only the text/narrative.  I
thouroghly enjoyed Peter Jackson's story based on JRT's LoTR
trilogy.  I appreciated the fact that the story was played out using
the strength of the medium.  If Jackson had decided to throw a lot
more textual narration onto the screen, I think it would have been
distracting.  The strength of games are their interaction.  Though
text and narration has it's place, I personally would enjoy a lot
more questing and stories devoid of text and narration, but rife
with interaction.  You won't be able to imagine how this is possible
unless you think outside the current MMORPG box.  In my estimation,
Sporky was doing precisely that.

--Paul "Phinehas" Schwanz
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