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

[Richard A. Bartle]

On 03 March 2007, Damion Schubert wrote:
>See, I've always disagreed with this definition of 'depth' in a world's
>design.  UO had, in my opinion, a shallow crafting system (compared to,
>say, ATITD), a shallow combat system (compared to, well, anyone), and
>very shallow world content (esp. compared to EQ).  They did a whole
>bunch of things, but did none of them very deeply.
	I agree that the depth of the gameplay wasn't any great shakes, but
I mean depth in terms of the world model. The world model for UO was deeper
than for EQ, for example the way that the various creatures interacted with
each other and the way the resources were managed.
	That said, yes, the deeper the world model then in theory the
deeper the gameplay...

>http://images.slashdot.org/articles/07/02/bcraids.jpg
	This doesn't look like breadth to me. There's a large quantity of content,
yes, but this is a breadth thing ? player choice, size, number, variety,
form.
Depth is a player understanding thing - effects, complexity, ability,
function.

>make no mistake about it, WoW provided a ton of depth that was aimed
directly
>at those they thought would dig deep to go find it: those people
>who raid 3 times a week and were decked out in purple gear a year before
>Burning Crusade went live.
	It provided a ton of content, but I wouldn't say running MC 3 times a
week and having much the same experience every time was depth, whether in
terms of gameplay or world model.

>2) Why are we only seeing depth in features that have been done before,
like
>combat and raiding?
>#2 is astonishingly easy to answer: because we haven't proven we can do it
>with any other system yet in a way that will get 200K+ subscribers
	So the default assumption is that adding depth in those areas would
ruin the virtual world, therefore until we can find some existing world that
has those features and isn't ruined by them, we shouldn't add them?
	Depth is more expensive, sure, and this could, I suppose, be an
argument for not having it (although as I said before, against the size of
the art team it's not necessarily all that much of an added expense). It
would be worrying if adding depth were seen as a potential world-breaking
feature which should be avoided unless backed up with evidence of its
working elsewhere, though.

>1) Why aren't we seeing more broad games like UO?
>As for #1, well... I'd like to see more broad games.  Unfortunately, the
>more systems that you have interacting, the more likely something
>incredibly broken will happen (UO is the Murphy in Murphy's Law here).
	Then again, there's more chance that something incredibly original
will happen. Or, until designers learn more about how systems interact,
both...

		Richard