[MUD-Dev2] [Off Topic] Have impatient players ruined 'The Ship'?

[Zach Collins Siege]

On 10/13/06, Damion Schubert <dschubert at gmail.com> wrote:

> It's very easy for a designer to say what's fun.  It's much harder for a
> designer to let go of his design, and let the players tell him what's fun.
> Then, focus on emphasizing how that gameplay has turned out.
>
> The design you describe as the original strikes me as requiring a lot
> of players to have to sit and wait after they were eliminated while other
> players are sleeping, eating, drinking, etc.  If I'm correct about that,
> this system sounds like it has a lot of built-in dead-time for the losers
> that the server mods are trying to eliminate.

I suspect that the most unpleasant part of elimination-type games for
players is waiting to start playing again after you've lost (been
killed or otherwise taken out of the game). I further suspect that
adding an in-game betting chart to The Ship, administered by the
server and available only outside of direct play (between
rounds/before the round starts, and after elimination), would add some
excitement to the game for those who hate to wait.

This is one reason that MMOGs tend to keep respawn times low. Of
course, I'd like to see a game where being dead (or otherwise out of
body) is occasionally necessary - which would, of course, mean spells
and abilities like astral projection for those who don't want to just
stand in front of a big aggro mob.

-- 
Zach Collins (Siege)