[MUD-Dev2] [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants

[Richard A. Bartle]

On 27 February 2007, John Buehler wrote:
>I can certainly understand the analogy, but can you provide an illustrating
>example of the what has been overlooked or lost in the graphical games that
>was key to being entertained in the textual ones?  What lessons are being
>skipped?
	Well one of the main things that I notice is a lack of attention to
detail. So many things don't behave as you'd expect that the level of
persuasiveness is much lower than it should be. Furthermore, there are
interesting gameplay consequences that are missed because of this
shallowness.
	For example, last year WoW introduced the idea of weather. Sometimes
it's sunny and sometimes it's rainy (and, in places, snowy). This is a
purely cosmetic effect to add atmosphere (although no NPCs seem to change
their outfits and nothing looks any wetter than before, so it could be
better).
Rain could easily be given some actual physical properties, though. Rivers
could swell, streams could appear, jungle trails could become muddy. These
effects could have gameplay consequences: travel could be slower, Un'goro
dirt piles could be inaccessible, herbs could appear in abundance when the
rain stops. Mobiles could be affected: a fire elemental really ought not to
be as potent in the rain as it is in the sun.
	All these changes would add to the depth of the virtual world,
making it more believable and introducing new wrinkles on gameplay. Some
are easier to add than others, but most aren't hard at all. They lead
to a richer experience for the player without detracting from the rest
of the game.
	That's just weather. There are plenty of other examples of lack
of detail, all of which point to a shallow underlying physics. Sometimes,
it's the extra details that give it away: in WoW, I've killed a basilisk
and looted two spines from it; I've killed a hippogryph and looted 3 beaks.
This type of inconsistency is easy enough to prevent through checking
loot tables properly, but it should really follow from having an internal
model of what makes up a creature, not from a flat list. That way, the
detail enables you to add more interactions between objects that can lead
to more nuanced gameplay, providing more opportunities for intelligent play
(for those players who want it).

>I hope this isn't an illustrating example.  I chalk up the lack of
>interactive details like that to cost and time to develop them in an
>audio-visual environment.
	Some things are indeed not present for that reason, yes. However,
if you have animations already for bears fighting and for sheep fighting,
why not have the bears attack any sheep that get close? Why do they only
attack players who wander nearby? Why can't I train a bear on a sheep
just for the fun of it?
	Even given that visual interactivity is expensive to show, it
could still be more consistent. I can walk through other players but I
can't walk through a mop standing upright in a bucket propped up against
nothing? I can walk through a mushroom half my height but not one that
only comes up to my knees? What gives?

>If I handed the developers of a graphical game a
>bunch of NPCs that behaved like actors and a fully-simulated environment,
>I'm sure they'd come up with all sorts of elaborate details to amuse and
>amaze.
	I'm sure they would, too.
	They don't have to behave like actors, though, they just have to
behave less like automatons. The environment doesn't have to be fully
simulated, just more simulated. Textual worlds don't have actors or
fully-simulated environments either, but what they have is better AND
the same thing can be done reasonably cheaply for graphical worlds. Some
changes don't need any adjustment to the graphics at all: why can I find
bananas on the gorillas that I kill in Stranglethorn Vale but not the trees?
(And why do I find them on the furbolgs in Winterspring, come to that -
do they import them?).
	Sooner or later, graphical virtual worlds will have to become
more detailed: breadth is good, but longer-term players appreciate
depth. When we get these details, we can either look at how the old
textual worlds did it (and adapt them to account for advances made
since then) or we can design everything from scratch and make the
same mistakes as were made before (with selective depth being the
most likely firt-timer's error - making the world deeper in some
places but not in other, equivalent places).

>Right, the "nuanced complexity".  What are some key elements of that?
	The key element is that you simulate the world at one conceptual
level below that at which you present it.
	Example: if you have a world with potions in it, that means you
have fluids, so you should at least have some notion of what happens
when you mix two fluids together. It doesn't have to be at the level
of fluid mechanics, but it should be below that which is displayed.
If I have an alcoholic drink and I have water and I mix them then I should
get twice as much alcoholic drink at half the strength of the original.
The players don't have to see the potency, but they should see the
volume. In WoW, I can't even mix things unless they're predefined to
go together as part of some quest. I can't even drink part of a bottle
of water: if a full bottle gives 30 seconds of water and I drink for 5
seconds before stopping, why don't I have 25 seconds of water remaining?
That's not a graphical thing; it's not even an inventory management thing.
It's just a lack of underlying detail.
	Example: you have a world with temperature in it. That means objects
with out-of-band temperatues should be affected if they are present in
out-of-band places. If I have a quest to take something made of ice
from somewhere cold to somewhere else cold, and part-way through I
decide to visit the (inexplicably) adjacent zone which is a parched
wilderness, that ice should melt. If you go to all that trouble to
render a beautiful world with icy peaks and frozen wastes, with
steaming jungles and sun-scorched plains, why not give it the
physical properties associated with the images? Simulate the world
at one level below that at which it's presented, that's all you need
to do. Cold things warm up in hot climates and hot things cool down
in cold ones, that's good enough.

>Is there an existing writeup on the skipped lessons of text MUDs that
anyone
>can point me to?
	Not that I know of, but that doesn't mean we can't put something
together at the end of this thread.

		Richard