<!-- MHonArc v2.4.4 --> <!--X-Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: (fwd) AD: [custom graphical] whitestar --> <!--X-From-R13: "Re. Qng" <pngNotn.pbz> --> <!--X-Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 00:38:27 -0700 --> <!--X-Message-Id: 199805010737.CAA25387#zoom,bga.com --> <!--X-Content-Type: text --> <!--X-Reference: 199805010411.AAA14739#relay,mnsinc.com --> <!--X-Head-End--> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <html> <head> <title>MUD-Dev message, [MUD-Dev] Re: (fwd) AD: [custom graphical] whitestar</title> <!-- meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" --> <link rev="made" href="mailto:cat#bga,com"> </head> <body background="/backgrounds/paperback.gif" bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" alink="#FF0000" vlink="#006000"> <font size="+4" color="#804040"> <strong><em>MUD-Dev<br>mailing list archive</em></strong> </font> <br> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] <br clear=all><hr> <!--X-Body-Begin--> <!--X-User-Header--> <!--X-User-Header-End--> <!--X-TopPNI--> Date: [ <a href="msg00294.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg00296.html">Next</a> ] Thread: [ <a href="msg00292.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg00300.html">Next</a> ] Index: [ <A HREF="author.html#00295">Author</A> | <A HREF="#00295">Date</A> | <A HREF="thread.html#00295">Thread</A> ] <!--X-TopPNI-End--> <!--X-MsgBody--> <!--X-Subject-Header-Begin--> <H1>[MUD-Dev] Re: (fwd) AD: [custom graphical] whitestar</H1> <HR> <!--X-Subject-Header-End--> <!--X-Head-of-Message--> <UL> <LI><em>To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A></LI> <LI><em>Subject</em>: [MUD-Dev] Re: (fwd) AD: [custom graphical] whitestar</LI> <LI><em>From</em>: "Dr. Cat" <<A HREF="mailto:cat#bga,com">cat#bga,com</A>></LI> <LI><em>Date</em>: Fri, 1 May 1998 02:37:24 -0500 (CDT)</LI> <LI><em>Reply-To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#kanga,nu">mud-dev#kanga,nu</A></LI> <LI><em>Sender</em>: "Petidomo List Agent -- Kanga.Nu version" <<A HREF="mailto:petidomo#kanga,nu">petidomo#kanga,nu</A>></LI> </UL> <!--X-Head-of-Message-End--> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-Begin--> <HR> <!--X-Head-Body-Sep-End--> <!--X-Body-of-Message--> <PRE> > On 12:12 PM 4/30/98 -0500, I personally witnessed Dr. Cat jumping up to say: > > > >Well, I don't know if many people do, given the "not much interest" you > >cite from prior attempts. > > I've always suspected it was because nobody knew who I was and therefore > couldn't take me seriously, but I also had this nagging feeling that I > wasn't giving people enough credit. ;) Occam's Razor still says to me "hey, if not many people are acting interested, probably not many people here ARE interested". Just a hunch. > How do you feel about 'modes' of operation, like a novice/expert toggle? I > always detested them, myself, since it always seemed like neither of them > ever quite fit the way I interacted with the game. Have you ever seen one > done well? I feel a strong need as a designer to have novice/expert toggles some places, maybe three levels other places. For the one specific instance of the DragonSpeak editor (that's the scripting language) I could easily envision 5 or 6 levels, but that's something of a special case. I have seen very few of these types of things, and I don't know whether one exists out there that I'd feel to be "done well". I really don't know that I have enough experience with the prior art to comment meaningfully on what's been done before in this area. Generally I think this sort of thing is most appropriate where you are targeting (as with Furcadia) a very broad audience, and the more narrowly targeted your game is, the more likely it is that a single interface for everybody is appropriate. Indeed, I think multi-modes is something of a special case that's only appropriate for mass media. If you have millions of players, catering to a niche could still cover a pretty large group of people. If you have ten players... Hey maybe some of them have radically different tastes in interface than the others... I say tough, let 'em live with it! Regardless of whether you provide one interface "mode" or several, you should make the game client as customizable as you can get away with, while maintaining consistency with your other goals (which may or may not require things like fixes window sizes and positions rather than configurable ones - it just depends on what the goals are). There should be template files that store all the configurable options about appearance, layout, keyboard definitions, etc. And you should default to a template that's reasonably comfortable to use, but provide several others with descriptions of what they're good for (good for Laptops with no numberic keypad - good for maximizing text chat space - good for keeping all combat-related functions quickly and easily accessible, etc.) Let players make their own templates and share them with each other. Basically, most people at this stage in evolution are stuck being monoperspectivists, which means that for any issue, they feel, act, and think like there's only one attitude that people have (or should have, anyway) about that issue. Of course the fact of the matter is, if you have 1000 people, on any particular issue they're likely to have at LEAST 2 different opinions, preferences, etc. Possibly 3 or more. Sometimes, 239. And occasionally 1008. One step up from the monoperspectivist is the person who knows intellectually that other perspectives exist on issues, in the minds of other people - but still can't grasp what it feels like to have that different perspective, can't understand why anyone would think that, just can't grok that other viewpoint. And it makes their head hurt to try to think about it too much. So they end up designing and coding interfaces (and game designs, etc.) the same way a monoperspectivist would. Which is generally to code things exclusively to cater to "people with tastes like me". Well that works ok if you're a person who has tastes that match a lot of other people's tastes reasonably well. (Or if you match only a modest number, but you don't really care whether many people play your game or not anyway.) But I try to take one step past that. For broadest appeal, I try to evaluate every interface decision by estimating the diversity of tastes on that issue. If it's 99% option A, and 1% option B, you can probably hardcode option A into your game - unless you have resources to spare and can be a purrfectionist! If it's 92% A, and 8% B, that might be a good candidate for saying "The game defaults to A, a pulldown menu option or a checkbox in an 'options' dialog allows the selection of B." The idea is to keep the knowledge that it's even possible to switch to option B from bothering the 92% of the players who, most of them, don't even want to know that. Out of sight, out of mind. Then you decide whether the game stores the setting, so people that pick option B will get it again on their next gaming session, or whether it always starts up in A and makes you switch. This depends on the nature of the option, the reasons for wanting to switch it, and the nature of the people in that 8% group. (This scenario is an oversimplification, too - you might get 85% "always A" people, 6% "always B" people, and 9% "use both sometimes, switch depending on which I want/need at the moment". In that case, the reasons and behavior patterns of the switchers play a significant role in determining whether to make the switches persist to the next session or not.) If you get a case where tastes are something like 70% A and 30% B, things start to get a little more interesting. Here you may well want to make the choice "in your face", so everyone knows that both A and B are available. The penalty of not doing so, that as many as 30% of the players may fail to choose the option that would make the game most enjoyable for them, is getting pretty steep at this point. Exactly how you do this depends on various details. Is it something people would want to switch back and forth a lot? Button on the main game display, always visible. Is it something where they probably want to pick the best choice of their tastes, and then leave it that way forever? Several criteria. If it has a major impact on how much people enjoy the game, you may want to make it a one-time configuration question during setup, the first time they play the game. Display very clear, well written text (and illustrations too if appropriate) to make sure they understand the choice, force them to say yes or no, and make the default button that's selected if they just press Enter option A, since A is the 70% choice. Couple this with the obscure pull-down menu or options dialog choice to change it later. This works well for something people are fairly certain to A) know what they really want in regards to, and B) accurately select that. If it's something they might look at and go "gee I don't realy know what I'd prefer in that regard, I was never offered such a choice in any previous life-experience and haven't played this type of game before either", you might consider sticking with the always visible toggle button. Or doing the configuation step, but forcing a "did that work out for you or do you want to switch from A to B right now" dialog to appear a couple days later, for the people who will never hunt through pull-down menus and options dialogs. Or you might want to strongly encourage older players of the game to help newer players out with this decision, in some way. If you have a 70/30 split on a question that's of more minor impact to game enjoyment, you can do things like pop up a dialog two weeks after they've been around and say "Now that you're more experienced you may wish to refine you game settings to increase your conveniene and enjoyment. Would you like A or B?" The real brilliance will come in spacing these messages and dialogs out appropriately, even coming up with complex triggering conditions based on user behavior rather than just time. > This sounds a little like the MS Office Assistant. In my experience, most > people seem to hate it. I for one like it, but not because of the help... I > like that the little paperclip dances around and acts suave and > sophisticated in the corner of the screen. In other words, I like the > degree of levity it introduces to the process of boring memo writing. When > it pops up help messages, I tend to be a little irritated. Are you familiar > with this feature of MS Office, and if so, what's your immediate impression > of it? The danger with time based unsolicited offers of assistance is that you're being an immense pest. I in fact spent one session running a program last year that had the dancing paperclip. I found it amusing, but think it rapidly would have become annoying had I used the program regularly. The vast majority of designers/programmers seem to put these things in so they happen WAY too often. You should be interrupted seldom, and generally only for the things that are mostly likely to add to the experience for you, rather than making you frown and say "The choice between A and B is irrelevant, that's trivial and I would enjoy the game equally either way and besides it's asking me how to fine tune the interface to one of the game features that I NEVER USE ANYWAY! Go away and get lost!" Frankly it's not like we HAVE to be operating in the blind, with regard to online applications. They connect to our servers all the time, we could be having them tell us millions of little details about user behavior, all the way down to how many inches per hour do they roll their mouseball around on the little rubber mat? We could be, but we're not. I ran a roundtable at the 1997 CGDC (being a believer in not obscuring my meaning with jargon unknown to a significant percentage of the audience, I'll clarify that that stands for Computer Game Developer's Conference) on the subject of gathering player and activity data in online games, and I got the lowest attendance of any roundtable I ever moderated. (Sex in Computer Entertainment was highest for some reason - go figure! Though when I ran the first roundtable on MUDs at the conference turnout was also pretty good). I think most of the development community isn't quite ready to get this sophisticated yet. Consider, though. Let's say 70% of our users will want to have the left mouse button activate the flomgisticulator. And 30% of them would enjoy the game much more if the left mouse button defaults to turning on the phlogamzitronic shields. But let's assume further that most of our users will have NO clue which of these things they'd prefer while they're reading the opening text or going through the setup screens - they'll need to play the game for days or weeks before they know it well enough to make that choice. (Indeed, it takes 2-5 hours of play before the user even finds out what a flomgisticulator is!) So let's say we want Beekin the Help Dragon (who has somehow wandered out of Furcadia and found his way into the weird science fiction game of this example in some incomprehensible fashion) to pop up after an "appropriate period". Problem is, we have NO idea what an appropriate period is, because we have ZERO prior experiene with how long it takes players to learn this game, which we only finished and released to the net five minutes ago! Data Collection Man to the rescue! Let's say we put that option in the pulldown menu, the options box, or maybe even the "so obvious you can't miss it" big button on the screen. Let people play. Record all the times anyone changes that option setting... Now analyze that data! We might want to look at when they make a LASTING change to the setting. If they switch it back and forth a bit, maybe they went and fiddled with it when they didn't reeeeeally know the game well enough to pick what they would want. If they put it on setting B and leave it there for six months, you can probably assume at the moment in time when they set it they probably had some idea what they wanted. (Though there's always the few oddball exceptions.) Let's say 99% of the users are going and making their final, permanent choice on their 17th day of play. Simple! We could have Beekin pop up on day 17 and offer them the choice. But let's say the choice was buried in a deep obscure settings dialog, and we think the average person might be finding that a week later than they really woulda been ready for it, just because it's in such an obscure spot. But that "one week" is a seat of the pants guess, not something we've measured! No problem. Set Beekin for ten days, have him ask "pick A now", "pick B now", "ask me again in a few days", or "Go away Beekin, I'm smart enough to know that it's under the Fleeble menu option if I need it". Now measure the frequency of the different responses with Beekin set at 10 days! You can very easily determine if Beekin is asking too early, by tracking how people respond. If you ARE to soon, bump him back a few days and measure again. (You DID keep your Beekin settings controlled on the server end, rather than making it so people would need a new client to change those intervals, RIGHT?) Let's say we DON'T have 99% of the users all making the choice in the same brief window. Let's say there's a big standard deviation on the distribution, the day people choose their setting varies from day 10 to day 42. Now we don't want to just split the difference and ask on day 26. Some people aren't asked until way later than they would have been ready to answer and start enjoying the game yet. Other people would be asked way before they're ready. Let's presume "readiness to be asked this" relates to proficiency in some particular areas of the game. Let's theorize that some other measurable factors also relate to proficiency in those same areas. If we can find one or more of those, maybe we can make a good personalized guess about when to have Beekin ask you. Let's say we measure the number of times per day you use the flomgisticulator, the number of times per minute you click any mouse button anywhere on the game screen, and a dozen other factors. Calculate correlation indexes to determine which of them have a strong correlation between them and whether or not the player's made his final choice of setting or not. Maybe it turns out that most people that click more than 6.2 times per minute have made the choice, and most people that click less than that haven't, and that clicks per minute tends to rise over the first few weeks as people learn the game. Ok, bingo, pop up Beekin's dialog box when they cross 6.2 clicks per minute. If there's a good correlation between flomgisticulator uses per day also, maybe you can improve your odds of making a good call by factoring that value in too, and weighting the two criteria. > Bringing into this > the idea of pop-up help, after a person reaches some particular milestone > you might want to pop up a request that they join the newbie helper team. A > lot more people would treat that as an honor instead of a duty, as opposed > to requesting that people specifically volunteer to join the team without > prompting. You might ask at two or three different milestones, if they > don't 'jine up', to see if they've had a change of heart. I have grave doubts that good criteria can ever be found for automated determination of good candidates. You could measure something like percentage of time spent talking while in hearing range of one or more newbies (players with less than N hours of playing time logged). But this would catch a professional newbie-taunter as readily as a dedicated newbie helper. It wouldn't distinguish a really good newbie helper from a well-meaning but bumbling one. And it'd scoop up some people in the net who just happen to hang around the starting areas a lot with their friends, and don't happen to have much of any interest in newbies at all. Besides, an invitation from a robot doesn't convey a fraction of the surge of warmth through your body that you feel when being invited to an honored post by a real person, especially a person of rank and signifiance. One of our first four assistants told me he was all misty-eyed when I told him how helpful he was and how he was practically the ideal example of how we'd like people to be in our game. The key to things like this is developing heirarchies, so that when you have 100 times as many players you don't have a few staffers scrambling to talk to thousands of people a day to keep up with this stuff. Climbing up through the heirarchies and growing in social status becomes the major focus of the game for some people. We're seriously considering making it a major focus for most people. That and getting attention (number of player-hours spent on your maps and stuff), which is the basis of the currency system. The more diversion you're providing for your fellow players, the more spending money you'll have. Attention IS the currency of the future. *-------------------------------------------**-----------------------------* Dr. Cat / Dragon's Eye Productions || Free alpha test: *-------------------------------------------** <A HREF="http://www.bga.com/furcadia">http://www.bga.com/furcadia</A> Furcadia - a new graphic mud for PCs! || Let your imagination soar! *-------------------------------------------**-----------------------------* -- MUD-Dev: Advancing an unrealised future. </PRE> <!--X-Body-of-Message-End--> <!--X-MsgBody-End--> <!--X-Follow-Ups--> <HR> <ul compact><li><strong>Follow-Ups</strong>: <ul> <li><strong><A NAME="00300" HREF="msg00300.html">[MUD-Dev] OT: CGDC</A></strong> <ul compact><li><em>From:</em> Adam Wiggins <adam#angel,com></li></ul> </UL></LI></UL> <!--X-Follow-Ups-End--> <!--X-References--> <UL><LI><STRONG>References</STRONG>: <UL> <LI><STRONG><A NAME="00292" HREF="msg00292.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: (fwd) AD: [custom graphical] whitestar</A></STRONG> <UL><LI><EM>From:</EM> Caliban Tiresias Darklock <caliban#darklock,com></LI></UL></LI> </UL></LI></UL> <!--X-References-End--> <!--X-BotPNI--> <UL> <LI>Prev by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00294.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: PK's: A solution?</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00296.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: atomic functions</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Prev by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00292.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: (fwd) AD: [custom graphical] whitestar</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg00300.html">[MUD-Dev] OT: CGDC</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Index(es): <UL> <LI><A HREF="index.html#00295"><STRONG>Date</STRONG></A></LI> <LI><A HREF="thread.html#00295"><STRONG>Thread</STRONG></A></LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> <!--X-BotPNI-End--> <!--X-User-Footer--> <!--X-User-Footer-End--> <ul><li>Thread context: <BLOCKQUOTE><UL> <LI><STRONG>[MUD-Dev] Re: (fwd) AD: [custom graphical] whitestar</STRONG>, <EM>(continued)</EM> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <LI><strong><A NAME="00279" HREF="msg00279.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: (fwd) AD: [custom graphical] whitestar</A></strong>, s001gmu <a href="mailto:s001gmu#nova,wright.edu">s001gmu#nova,wright.edu</a>, Thu 30 Apr 1998, 20:53 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00287" HREF="msg00287.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: (fwd) AD: [custom graphical] whitestar</A></strong>, Dr. Cat <a href="mailto:cat#bga,com">cat#bga,com</a>, Thu 30 Apr 1998, 23:23 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00407" HREF="msg00407.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: (fwd) AD: [custom graphical] whitestar</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Tue 05 May 1998, 18:21 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00292" HREF="msg00292.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: (fwd) AD: [custom graphical] whitestar</A></strong>, Caliban Tiresias Darklock <a href="mailto:caliban#darklock,com">caliban#darklock,com</a>, Fri 01 May 1998, 04:12 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00295" HREF="msg00295.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: (fwd) AD: [custom graphical] whitestar</A></strong>, Dr. Cat <a href="mailto:cat#bga,com">cat#bga,com</a>, Fri 01 May 1998, 07:38 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00300" HREF="msg00300.html">[MUD-Dev] OT: CGDC</A></strong>, Adam Wiggins <a href="mailto:adam#angel,com">adam#angel,com</a>, Fri 01 May 1998, 18:43 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="00343" HREF="msg00343.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: OT: CGDC</A></strong>, Mike Sellers <a href="mailto:mike#bignetwork,com">mike#bignetwork,com</a>, Sun 03 May 1998, 14:32 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="00419" HREF="msg00419.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: (fwd) AD: [custom graphical] whitestar</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Wed 06 May 1998, 17:04 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> </ul> </ul> <LI><strong><A NAME="00311" HREF="msg00311.html">[MUD-Dev] Re: (fwd) AD: [custom graphical] whitestar Crossfire MUD</A></strong>, J C Lawrence <a href="mailto:claw#under,engr.sgi.com">claw#under,engr.sgi.com</a>, Sat 02 May 1998, 00:31 GMT </LI> </ul> </ul> </ul> </ul> </LI> </UL></BLOCKQUOTE> </ul> <hr> <center> [ <a href="../">Other Periods</a> | <a href="../../">Other mailing lists</a> | <a href="/search.php3">Search</a> ] </center> <hr> </body> </html>