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

[Phillip Lenhardt]

On Mon, Mar 05, 2007 at 03:44:46PM -0000, Richard A. Bartle wrote:
> If it were the case that newbies and people brought up on WoW actively
> disliked the concept of depth, it would be a different story. I don't
> believe that to be the case, however.

One problem with depth is that it only looks like depth once you
have it figured out.  Until you understand it, it looks an awful
lot like a bug (if it violates your expectations), or exploit (if
it unexpectedly benefits you), or happenstance (if you just notice
it), or random cruelty (if it unexpectedly punishes you).  So I
would say that newbies (and casual players, to a lesser extent)
_do_ dislike depth.  It is often confusing, upsetting and
harmful to their experience.  Players need to be exposed to depth
gradually, which can be done with a variety of techniques.  You
can expose it as a player levels up (eg new spells, skills,
talents).  You can expose it as a player moves to new areas (eg
starting areas have no water deep enough to drown in).  You can
expose it as a player encounters new entities (eg early mobs only
aggro when attacked and never run for help, later mobs have an
aggro radius but never run for help, later mobs aggro and run for
help and even later mobs do all of the above as well as patrol
instead of wandering within a fix area).  Adding depth to a game
may not be particulary difficult or require many resources, but
I would say adding depth to a player's experience in a gradual,
controlled and revelatory manner very often is difficult and
expensive.