20 Jan, 2012, Runter wrote in the 21st comment:
Votes: 0
I suppose something like that would work, Crat. The single character prefix seems like a pretty appealing option.

I think the output would be a deal breaker for me as a player if there wasn't a way to condense the multiple messages meaning the same thing into a single line rather than repeating stuff for multiple characters. Especially if the game was designed so that people control a party, it just wouldn't make sense to me to see the room contents 5 times in a row as you enter the room even if they're color coded differently.
20 Jan, 2012, KaVir wrote in the 22nd comment:
Votes: 0
Cratylus said:
This is really not a hard problem to get around. Dead Souls (shameless plug) comes with a device called a "remote control", which you use to link to any old NPC you want, and see everything they see and make them do whatever you want.

The original God Wars had a demon power called "Eyespy" that worked much the same way. The character would rip out their own eyeball and throw it on the ground, then they could issue it commands and see everything it saw (with both handled by a square bracket prefix).

Note however that it didn't spam you with room messages if you were in the same room as your eye. So if you had a party of characters that all stayed together, the spam shouldn't be too bad - there's no need to describe each combat message from each perspective.

In fact if the player controls a group anyway, you could actually display all messages in 3rd person. No need for a "You hit Bubba" or "Boffo hits you", everyone can just be told that "Boffo hits Bubba".
20 Jan, 2012, Jhypsy Shah wrote in the 23rd comment:
Votes: 0
I could see where something more like what the OP wanted, might be useful for vehichle crews, such as ships, tanks or something. Anything that involved a dedicated team of individual party members.

Maybe something that involved diplomacy or infiltration.

But I don't recall ever seeing a MUD that encouraged playing a party of individual PCs at the same time.
20 Jan, 2012, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 24th comment:
Votes: 0
My pets actually use the exact same methods a player use, just very few are forbidden. Basically they are players following blindly their master orders, and following them automatically (if they can). They have a limited 'IA' as well to use some of their skills without the need of ordering them to. I forbid eq on them for one reason only. Pets are helps for players, especially at lower levels, so if you needed to eq them to be efficient then they would be useless to newbies. I compensate by giving them better stats as they level, like if they got better eq.

And I allow multiplay up to three chars (except for pk, limited to one)
20 Jan, 2012, KaVir wrote in the 25th comment:
Votes: 0
Jhypsy Shah said:
I could see where something more like what the OP wanted, might be useful for vehichle crews, such as ships, tanks or something. Anything that involved a dedicated team of individual party members.

In that case you wouldn't need a party system - the player could just control the vehicle (and its crew) as if it were a single character.

Some muds have vehicles that can be crewed by multiple characters, but the intention there is to give each player something to do. If your goal is for a single player to control all of the crew members anyway, then there's no need to give each character their own specific role on the vehicle.

Of course if you want each player to control a fleet of ships, then that might use a similar system to what has been outlined elsewhere in this thread.
20 Jan, 2012, Jhypsy Shah wrote in the 26th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Jhypsy Shah said:
I could see where something more like what the OP wanted, might be useful for vehichle crews, such as ships, tanks or something. Anything that involved a dedicated team of individual party members.

In that case you wouldn't need a party system - the player could just control the vehicle (and its crew) as if it were a single character.

Some muds have vehicles that can be crewed by multiple characters, but the intention there is to give each player something to do. If your goal is for a single player to control all of the crew members anyway, then there's no need to give each character their own specific role on the vehicle.

Of course if you want each player to control a fleet of ships, then that might use a similar system to what has been outlined elsewhere in this thread.


Honestly, I wouldn't think it would needed either, without being simplified in some way, that would probrably either make them resemble pets or a unit, instead of individual PC's.

The difference I would note, for doing it otherwise, would be the ability to customize the crew or at least certain individuals of a crew. There are reasons I would find this interesting, such as maybe simultaneous interactions with a split crew, while vehichle was docked/parked. Customized PCs having to fill in for dead/missing PC's in the same crew, whether in the same party or not.

Also the interaction of crews that may or may not be specialized in certain areas, combatants or non-combatants, traders, medical, etc.

It could possibly flesh it out more, I would think..though, granted, not nessicary.
20 Mar, 2012, Guest wrote in the 27th comment:
Votes: 0
:smile: :smile: :smile: :smile:
23 Mar, 2012, Chris Bailey wrote in the 28th comment:
Votes: 0
This is another idea I've been toying around with for awhile. My turn-based combat system is supposed to allow partying with other players or with your own characters(it doesn't yet). While a bit unconventional it can preserve most of MUD gameplay while allowing several new features in and out of combat. The system I envision is based entirely around role assignment between characters. In-combat roles are fairly typical things such as tank, healer, support, damage, etc.. each character will still be controlled by the owner when its turn comes around, but combat options are modified depending on the role. More time spent in each role would increase aptitude and unlock more abilities specific to each role. It is a classless system but you would still want to choose abilities that enhance your preferred role. (or choose a role that enhances your preferred abilities). Outside of combat role assignment can still be a fun and interesting feature. Lets say my party heads out to a nearby forest to gather materials for crafting. One member could be scouting the perimeter for rare herbs while another chops wood and a third continues work on salves and potions. Perhaps your characters have constructed a hideout or stronghold and you would like one to research development of anti-siege equipment while two others assist each other in forging new weapons or armor. What I'm getting at is that controlling multiple characters can be a lot of fun using simple role/task assignments while preserving a lot of what we are used to in more typical muds. The only problem I've been running into is designing a feature rich menu-system that can be used throughout the mud.
23 Mar, 2012, Exodus wrote in the 29th comment:
Votes: 0
I always liked the system that they ended up doing in Guildwars. Pets/minions and normal NPCs followers were "dumb" followers that had their own generic equipment and skillsets. They followed you around and helped out based on a predefined set of AI rules. A different type of follower (hero) was one you could customize to an extent with equipment and a skillset of your choosing. Recently they allowed the alternate characters on your account to replace the hero followers if you wanted.

How I see this translating to MUDs is a system where there are generic followers that can be of assistance in an uncontrolled fashion, and more specialized followers that can be customized to an extent and controlled by basic commands from the player. If you wanted to have your alternate characters follow you around, you could and it gives a bit of a personal touch to your party because you spent the time leveling and customizing your alt.

I could even see metagame stuff tied into this where you could assign roles (AI action sets) to your alt, gain party attunement, party-specific skills and such to create a more specialized or all-around stronger group.

The big thing to keep in mind here is that with any kind of system, it needs to be designed into the game and not something just arbitrarily thrown in. Adding followers of some kind is fine, just as long as they have purpose other than just following you around and running into walls.
26 Mar, 2012, plamzi wrote in the 30th comment:
Votes: 0
Exodus said:
If you wanted to have your alternate characters follow you around, you could and it gives a bit of a personal touch to your party because you spent the time leveling and customizing your alt.


We've recently been developing the party system from the opposite end of what you're describing–making certain NPC's look more and more like player alts. I still have mixed feelings about it because it discourages socialization with actual people. But we had to make some tough choices in view of the fact that a small player-base made it difficult even for players who were willing to always be able to form a solid group. I wonder what other people's observations are on the effects of making players more self-sufficient. Am I old-fashioned in thinking that an online game should encourage P2P interaction beyond a "friend list" and a "hit list"?
26 Mar, 2012, KaVir wrote in the 31st comment:
Votes: 0
plamzi said:
We've recently been developing the party system from the opposite end of what you're describing–making certain NPC's look more and more like player alts.

Reminds me a bit of my old mud, where PCs and NPCs were cosmetically indistinguishable (mainly due to an introduction/recognition system). There were several incidents with newbies logging on, attacking what they thought was a mob, and receiving a swift execution. Perhaps not the best design decision, but it had its amusing moments.

plamzi said:
I wonder what other people's observations are on the effects of making players more self-sufficient.

My observations: It makes it a bit easier to build up an initial playerbase (as the players can do better on their own) but makes it a bit more difficult to retain a long-term playerbase (as the social bonds that keep players coming back are a little weaker).

I think there's definitely some benefit in allowing players to be fairly self-sufficient in the early game, while encouraging teamwork later on.

plamzi said:
Am I old-fashioned in thinking that an online game should encourage P2P interaction beyond a "friend list" and a "hit list"?

I don't know of any muds that take it to that extreme.
26 Mar, 2012, plamzi wrote in the 32nd comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
plamzi said:
Am I old-fashioned in thinking that an online game should encourage P2P interaction beyond a "friend list" and a "hit list"?

I don't know of any muds that take it to that extreme.


So, are all of us old-fashioned then? :)
26 Mar, 2012, quixadhal wrote in the 33rd comment:
Votes: 0
To the OP – If you want a solo game where the various combat roles are broken out into multiple "characters" (ala the Ultima series of RPG's), you'll likely want either a turn-based combat system (with a timeout at the prompt), or the ability to set "stances" for each party member so they'll auto-attack in predictable ways.

To me, the simplest way would be to just have a party where the characters are numbered in a set order, and you can issue commands like 3 cast 'magic missile', or 2 melee offensive stance.

Now, the only question that remains is… do you want your party to appear as a group to other players, or do you want other players to just see the "main" character? That's mostly cosmetic, unless PvP is involved.

Wandering off topic a ways, I also wanted to inject a bit about grouping (in general), and why players would bother…

Speaking from the much larger wading pool of MMO games, I can tell you that the current trend is towards being able to solo almost all the game content. This gets a LOT of people in the door from the start, but they don't stay for very long. Most of the "hardcore" gamers I know say most MMO's are 30/60/90 day games, unless the endgame PvP is engaging. OTOH, most of the "casual" gamers I know generally tend to form static groups that play together once a week for a few hours. Those groups are characters you've declared will ONLY play with the group, and otherwise only log in to craft, fiddle with skill points, gear, etc.

The major issue with grouping is time. People often have wildly varying amounts of time and energy, and it's very hard to keep a group together without making that commitment (to only play as a group), because the game mechanics usually force you into different content as your character progresses.

A few games (City of Heroes, Everquest 2) allow you to "mentor" players who are too far below your level, so they can join a higher level group, or the inverse of "exemplaring" down to a lower level to group with younger characters. Guild Wars 2 is taking the approach of automatically scaling your level to the level of the content, so when you revisit the newbie village, you're effectively level 2 again.

The other big factor in grouping vs. soloing is how easy the content is to find, and how long you have to sit around to find a group.

World of Warcraft introducted their "dungeon finder" system, which lets you put yourself in a queue saying "I want to run one of these dungeons", and when enough people of the right archetypes (tank/healer/dps) are in the queue, it lets them jump to the dungeon as a group. On the plus side, this lets you go about your business of soloing while waiting for others to be available to group. On the minus side, if your game is solo-friendly and is balanced the way *most* of these games are, you probably have far more dps people than tanks or healers, and so dps folk still have to wait a while to get in.

Guild Wars 2 is also trying to solve that issue by removing the "holy trinity" and giving everyone the ability to heal/ressurect teammates, and changing the aggro mechanic so there's no such thing as a tank.

I know I'm talking about graphical subscription games here, but the same concepts apply. The added issue for text games is the very(!) tiny audience. It's much easier to spot trends and problems when you're looking at sample sizes in the thousands, whereas most muds have never had 1000 players walk in and out the door over their whole lifespan, let alone logged in at once.

If I were designing a group/party system for a text game, I would probably choose the model where anyone can form a group, and others could ask to join it without having to wait for the leader to send them an invite. I'd probably also provide the option of an "open group" where others in the same area could auto-join if they set themselves as "looking for group". If two LFG people enter the same area, have it automatically make a new group with the "leader" being the higher level (or older) character.

I'd probably also provide solid benefits to grouping, beyond the social chat system. If one person completes a quest objective, everyone in the group gets credit for it. If you're getting XP for kills, or coin loot, auto-split it and round up. Yes, you'll get the occasional leech, but you can put mechanics in to ensure they only get their share if they're not idle, and not more than X rooms away, etc… if they're gonna bot, they're gonna bot.

Finally, I'd do my best to make content that is group-accessible only, but find a way to make the rewards be useful for the player, but not overpowered, nor an easy way to generate cash/xp by repetition. In other words, "bind on pickup" items which have very low vendor value, and a diminishing return on cash/xp rewards for each time you run the content.

Basically, you need to give people a reason to group (beyond the touchee-feelee social aspect), and make it as effortless as possible to do so. If everyone can hire mercs that will give them a group (even if it's a bad group), many will do that instead of even trying to find other humans to play with. So, do you want a solo game, or an MMO?
27 Mar, 2012, Exodus wrote in the 34th comment:
Votes: 0
plamzi said:
I wonder what other people's observations are on the effects of making players more self-sufficient.


It runs the gamut from one extreme to the other really. The type of power granted by a role-playing character coupled with relative anonymity can create personas that are far more sociable on the game than they would ever be in real life. On the other side of the coin, there are just some /foreveralone people that will be anti-social no matter where they are or what they do. Whether they prefer it that way or just lack the skills necessary to interact with others and don't have a desire to, I couldn't say.

I've seen folks that jump on teamspeak and run an area for high-end loot with scary efficiency and other people that can handle a crew of alts all by themselves do the same thing just as well. There's even the other weirdos (myself included) that are ballsy enough to take on super monsters solo.

I can say the solo people are generally the minority, but it would be cutting out a demographic if the system wasn't flexible enough to at least allow some sort of powering through the game with NPC followers or the odd person that has enough time and determination to take on situations by themselves that would normally require a group of people.
03 Apr, 2012, Jhypsy Shah wrote in the 35th comment:
Votes: 0
reminds me to try this one some day..

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tanks mmo
20.0/35