[MUD-Dev2] Player Choice - How Much is Too Much?

[cruise]

Since everyone's run out of things to say, I figured I might as well 
start another argument :P

It's been stated several times by various people that a game designer 
shouldn't tell players how to play the game. That players should have 
the choice to play like they want to.

Now, I'm big on player choice - to me it's one of the fundamentals that 
makes a game not a movie. Saying that, I'm not sure I can truly agree 
that a game designer can't tell players how to play the game.

Surely, we're doing that to some extent /just by making the game/. If 
I'm playing Magic:the Gathering, then I expect a strategic card game - 
sure I can use the cards to proxy as 40k models, but I'm not playing 
M:tG anymore, and I can expect anyone who's trying to play M:tG to be 
rather annoyed.

If I use WoW to produce LotR machinima, then similarly I'm not playing 
WoW. That isn't "how I want to play WoW." It just isn't WoW.

While taking away all the player's choice means it's no longer a game, 
limiting them to a certain degree is pretty much the point of making 
game rules. We should and, I'd say, must, tell the players how to play 
the game.

Looking at the world around us it becomes patently obvious that people 
don't make choices that will be best for them. Can I get the hell out of 
bed in the morning, even though I know it means I get home earlier, and 
might actually eat this side of 9pm? Heck no. The most enjoyable moment 
for me in a MMOG was RP'ing in a MUD. Does that mean I RP all the time? 
Hah! Too much effort, even though a part of me knows it would be 
well-rewarded.

Players do not know what will be fun. That's why game-design is hard. A 
good game designer /does/ know better than the players what they will 
enjoy - if he didn't he wouldn't be a good game designer.

The important caveat, of course, is that players hate to feel like their 
choices are being deliberately limited - the old "invisible wall" at the 
edge of a game area, for example, when a chasm would achieve the same 
effect but not feel forced. I suspect this is what most people object to 
- not the removal of choices, but the obviousness with which they are 
removed (such as a "nerf" in MMOG's - having the previous performance to 
compare to, any such limitation will be obvious).