[MUD-Dev2] Players are shallow [was: The Future of Quests]

[Mike Rozak]

Damion Scubert wrote:
> The trick for the MMO/MUD designer is that the player is that the player 
> can
> only track so many NPC relationships at one time.  Overwhelm the player
> with quests, whether hand-crafted or randomly generated, and at a certain
> point that player will become simply swamped with stories and 
> relationships
> that he's supposed to track.  Your odds of getting the player to actually
> care
> at this point are extremely low.

Yup.

Diku-MMORPGs have turned into quantity over quality. Low-fees over quality 
also. Basically, they're McMMORPGs.

The sad thing is that everyone is trying to create a McMMORPG with a menu of 
Big Macs, Quarter pounders, and fries.

... which ties into what Cruise wrote:

> People naturally prefer easy and shallow over complex and rewarding.
> Unfortunately, things are worth what you pay for them, and so the easier
> something is to get, the less satisfying it will be.
> This is a problem for anyone trying to produce a "popular" game, and hence
> we see the trend towards the grind and vending machine NPCs as the
> predominant gameplay element.


Peoples' intelligences are contradictory. When people put their mind to 
something, even the stupidest person can be amazingly intelligent (once in 
awhile). When people don't care about something, their intelligence is on 
autopilot, and not much better than traditional MMORPG-mob AI.

In other words: If you find the right game for the right player, the player 
will actually want complex and rewarding... Lots of people eat at McDonalds. 
They know its crap, but it's there. Most of them, will seek out quality food 
at least occasionally, but they partake in quality food more rarely because 
of (a) convenience and (b) price. Don't forget that only around half of all 
restaurants are fast food crap.

Conversely, 90% of MMORPGs (at the moment) are trying to be McMMORPGs.


I feel sorry for all the game developers working under high muckity mucks 
who want to create a McMMORPG. Their futures are destined to be filled with 
subtle variations on Big Macs (with or without pickles, with or without 
cheese, with or without PvP, etc.), and producing games for customers they 
don't respect.