[MUD-Dev2] High Intensity [was: Meaningful Conseqences]

[Damion Schubert]

On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 4:58 PM, cruise <cruise at casual-tempest.net> wrote:

> Damion Schubert wrote:
> > We also were hoping that people would talk about
> > high-intensity events that were automatically generated.  Consider how
> > people can talk about high intensity Left 4 Dead games.
>
> That's an very good phrase, very closely related to meaningful
> consequences.
>
> they are, arguably in a chick/egg relationship. Does having meaningful
> consequences (say, perma-death) result in high-intensity events
> (fighting a boss), or does creation of high-intensity events (an
> incredibly hard-fought encounter) result in meaningful consequences (a
> memorable victory)?
>

Meh.

A lot goes into creating a high intensity piece of gameplay.  MUD and MMO
designers
tend too much to worry about persistent consequences to create high
intensity gameplay.
This is all too often a mistake - as game designers, we want our players to
take risks,
to try unusual strategies, and to occasionally have to learn by doing.
Being overly
punitive (permadeath) nudges players towards avoiding those challenges,
instead
focusing on lesser risk, lesser reward activities.  Bam, you have a grind.

High intensity is mostly about being in the moment.  In Left 4 Dead, total
failure (all
four people die) means starting at the beginning of that chapter - rarely
more than 10
minutes of lost time.  In Soul Caliber, you can have an incredibly high
intensity match
where one person hangs on to just a sliver a life and still manages to pull
it off - and
yet losing in Soul Caliber loses you little more than bragging rights.  WoW
has the
lowest death penalties of any MMO, and yet successfully beating a difficult
raid
encounter like Yogg-Saron the first time is heroic because the whole time it
feels
like you are skating on extremely thin ice.

High intensity comes better when winning is hard, not because losing sucks.
Some
time ago, psychologists determine that the death penalty isn't a good
deterrent for
killers because killers that are 'in the moment' don't care.  We want them
in the
moment.  We don't want them to fail, and then find they can't get to that
moment again.


--d