[MUD-Dev2] The Future of Quests

[Threshold]

Zach Collins (Siege) wrote:
> I'm perfectly fine with extending the context of the Uncanny Valley to
> include any attempt to simulate humanity which comes close but falls
> short, and thus stimulates a negative response

That isn't what the Uncanny Valley is all about. The robots in the 
example do not "fall short" or fail. The robots in the theory are 
actually a success. They are closer to human looking than their 
predecessors. The point of the UV is that when a robot is mostly fake, 
we focus on the parts that are real looking. When a robot is mostly 
real, we are drawn to the flaws. And there is a deepseated, 
psychological revulsion to it because it looks horribly wrong to us.

The argument is that this is the same reason deformed people are 
shocking. We are genetically programmed to have a certain degree of 
revulsion for such deformity so we do not perpetuate those genetic flaws.

Crappy, procedural quests are disliked because they are just bad. They 
are obvious fakery on the part of the developer, and the player is a bit 
insulted and disappointed by it. These crappy quests are not tapping 
into any deep, genetic programming or anything of that sort.

The comparison is absolutely invalid and totally inapplicable. It is not 
"extending" the concept to use the term for quests, it is absolutely 
destroying the concept.