<!-- MHonArc v2.4.4 --> <!--X-Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Usability and interface --> <!--X-From-R13: Oqnz Ivttvaf <avtugsnyyNhfre2.vasvpnq.pbz> --> <!--X-Date: Wed, 24 Sep 1997 13:52:01 +0000 --> <!--X-Message-Id: 199709240945.CAA07525#user2,inficad.com --> <!--X-Content-Type: text/plain --> <!--X-Reference: 34282751.9009468#relay,mnsinc.com --> <!--X-Head-End--> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <html> <head> <title>MUD-Dev message, Re: [MUD-Dev] Usability and interface</title> <!-- meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" --> <link rev="made" href="mailto:nightfall#user2,inficad.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="msg01409.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg01411.html">Next</a> ] Thread: [ <a href="msg01376.html">Previous</a> | <a href="msg01427.html">Next</a> ] Index: [ <A HREF="author.html#01410">Author</A> | <A HREF="#01410">Date</A> | <A HREF="thread.html#01410">Thread</A> ] <!--X-TopPNI-End--> <!--X-MsgBody--> <!--X-Subject-Header-Begin--> <H1>Re: [MUD-Dev] Usability and interface</H1> <HR> <!--X-Subject-Header-End--> <!--X-Head-of-Message--> <UL> <LI><em>To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:mud-dev#null,net">mud-dev#null,net</A></LI> <LI><em>Subject</em>: Re: [MUD-Dev] Usability and interface</LI> <LI><em>From</em>: Adam Wiggins <<A HREF="mailto:nightfall#user2,inficad.com">nightfall#user2,inficad.com</A>></LI> <LI><em>Date</em>: Wed, 24 Sep 1997 02:45:05 -0700 (MST)</LI> <LI><em>Reply-To</em>: <A HREF="mailto:nightfall#inficad,com">nightfall#inficad,com</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 Mon, 22 Sep 1997 08:17:59 PST8PDT, Adam Wiggins > >One of the main 'goals' for our game is to find teachers that can > >teach you the things you want to know. This is the side effect of a skill > >system, and some muds have basically made this their entire focus. See > >Raph's mud, Legend. I like this aspect quite a bit. Questing to find the > >ancient teacher of X is a lot more interesting to me than questing just > >for loot and glory. Then again, I've always considered character advancement > >to be the funnest part of an RPG, so it's no surprise I've made it the > >focus of my own. > > This sounds really great, but unfortunately you combine this with some > of the other factors in the game you're describing... and it's sort of > like creating the world's greatest basketball code and making the > world's major races dwarves, gnomes, and halflings. Character Short hoops, my friend, short hoops. :) (This example has more relevance than might first apear.) > development is a lot of fun when you're *developing*, but after a few > run-throughs you get tired of it. It really doesn't matter how detailed > I can make my character when someone else can walk up and destroy all my > work for no real reason. Wrong. It makes it everything. Again, I'm coming from years on Arctic where player-vs-player actions (stealing, fighting..) are common, and expected, parts of the game world. I find it boring if the procedure is simply jumping through hoops until I have an all powerful character. To sum up our mud, if such a thing is possible, in one sentence: Get as far as you can. This doesn't mean you every hit some sort of 'ceiling' on your character's abilities, although it does get progressively harder to advance or even keep up your skills, resistances, and so forth. It means that's it's a dangerous world, full of surprises from both the game and other players. I find this exciting, and it increases the 'glory' of characters that do well by tenfold. You're correct that this means that not just anyone who sticks to it long enough will always land 'on top' (whatever that is). You've got to be alert, and the more dangerous a profession you choose, the more likely you'll be facing an early retirement for whatever reason. Even if you choose to be a farmer or a blacksmith (perfectly good professions given our economy), life won't be perfectly safe or complacent. I understand that not everyone likes this sort of game, which is why we plan to state all of this straight off in the intro text, like a mission statement or whatever. > >> suspicious of languages if it was possible to converse with creatures in > >> their native tongue -- in a P&P game, when you come up to the orc > >> stronghold, you can speak to the orcish guard in his own language and > >> possibly get through the door without a fight. In online games, no such > >> thing is generally possible. For a weak fighter, this would be a great > >> asset, but online? Nope... you just have to go get someone to beat the > >> orc's head in. > > > >I don't see why you couldn't do this. > > Nor do I, which is why I sort of turn my nose up at languages. Nobody > ever does... of course, this also comes down to another problem I see in > a lot of MUDs, which is that a lot of really cool things are overlooked > in favor of easier things. You *could* Sure, and this list is about coulds, so I stand by my original statement. Anyhow we've probably beaten this to death. I like languages; they aren't a huge component, but they are one of those small details that can really bring a world to life. Did Tolkien's languages make his books any better? Not really, other than making it easy for him to churn out cool-sounding and consitent names. But I feel they added a huge amount to the overall mood and setting. > >Have the orc only allow people through > >who he's seen speak a phrase of at least n words in orc. You could even > >take it further and require some knowledge of orc culture. > > Yeah, those are fun... > > >speak orcish > You now speak Orcish. > >say Hey, you stupid moron, open the #$!%&ing gate or I'll stick > > my shield up your butt sideways. > The orc smiles and opens the gate. > > Seriously, things like that amuse me for much, much longer than they > ought to. ;) Actually, this makes sense for an orc stronghold. Change it to the elven city and it's a bit stranger. 'Tis why I mentioned the watchword phrase instead. Or do some simple parsing for well-known insults, to catch players off-guard. Again, a stupid little thing, hardly important, but if I did the above and the system parsed out 'moron' and had the orc tell me to fuck off, I would be both amazed and very amused, which is of course the point of me playing th emud in the first place. > >Right. Well, since we don't have any such well defined states as 'fighting', > >this would be very difficult for us to implement. Also, invisibilty is > >a very powerful and difficult to obtain spell, and it is far from perfect - > >others can still smell, hear, and sense you through other means. > > Why does every game developer I ever try to talk to keep insisting that > HIS game is one hundred percent immune from every example I give because > 'my game has no such concept'? Skill-based 'classless' systems have been > around a long time, and they're by no means immune to game balance > problems. In fact, just about every game system suffers from game > balance problems, and rather serious ones in many cases. Does anyone > recall 'Man, Myth, and Magic' which allowed anyone miserly enough to > save up 3000 or so gold to instantly become SuperCharacter? I never said there was no game balance problems. If anything, they are more difficult, because the character 'states' are less discrete. What I said was that that particular example was difficult for me to apply, although you'll note I did try anyhow. It's like someone asking me to fix their computer for them, and I end up saying, "Welp, if this were Linux I'd just look in file X, but this is Windows, so you either can't do that or I don't know how. Sorry." Game balance problems that we have and will run into: skills which advance too quickly/slowly by certain methods, or just in general due to bad difficult settings; skill decay which is too fast/slow for certain characters due to strange stat combinations; computer-controlled deities which incorrectly judge the desires of those who pray to them; deity favor not changing appropriately for certain actions; or teachers that require impossible favors in order to teach what they know. We spend quite a bit of time, as well, concocting strange situations to 'test' the system. Ie: "What happens when someone is hanging from a rope by one hand and tying their shoes with another, and someone else either on a ledge or a nearby rope attacks them?" Another big issue is how players should leave the game. We feel strongly that they should leave the game entirely similar to traditional muds, but this causes a lot of problems in a 'realistic' mud. If they quit while lieing on the ground bleeding to death, what happens while they are away? Should it not let them quit? What if, instead of that, it's a fatal poison in their veins, destined to kill them any moment? What if they are unaware of the poison? etc.. Anyhow we're not immune at all. The questions and answers are just different, which is something I like. > >I was about to say 'I don't see what's so anti-social about sticking an > >axe in someone's head', but I think possibly that's going a bit far. > >I'll instead say that I enjoy all sorts of character interaction, hostile > >or not. Hostile actions just tend to be counterproductive for both parties. > > I mainly dislike hostility between players because it's too easy for one > player to force such activity on another. If I'm walking along with my > character, which I've invested some four months in developing, and some > multi-year veteran of the server who happens to be bored sees me walking > along and decides to squot me like a pumpkin -- well, I just lost four > months for his momentary giggle at watching the MUD's 'huhuhuhuhuh, you > killed somebody, he's DEAD, huhuh that was cool' message. On a > permadeath MUD, I don't get any of it back, either. Even when death > *isn't* permanent, when I've worked for a week at making the next > stepping stone in my character's development and suddenly lose it all... Agreed. One thing I hate about muds right now is the MASSIVE amount of time you need to invest to have a descently interesting character. We're going for short-and-sweet character careers; I imagine few people will play the same character for four months. Years is probably impossible. So I agree: permadeath is bad on a mud where you 'have' to spend 20+ RL hours just to get a character far enough into the game that it starts to be fun, and frequently 100+ hours for a 'good' character. Forget that; I don't have time for it. Back when I was attending a university and had nothing to do but ditch classes it was a little different. > to be fun. Challenging, yes, definitely. Occasionally frustrating, yeah, > great. But binary? Would you play a game like Dungeon Keeper if every > time you were defeated on level 11 (like most of us were, repeatedly) > you had to start over on level 1? All or nothing? Jesus, man, starting a > new character is a tremendous pain; you put in all that work, and then > you're Joe Wimp for at least a week. During that week, of course, you Yes, which sucks. We get around this two ways: for one, characters start descently strong. No being defeated by dogs or squirrels. Second, you get character points added to your account when you loose (via death or deletion) a 'built up' character, so that you can start you next one with more advantages. Also, the power difference between a brand-new character and the best swordsman that ever lived is much, much, MUCH smaller than your average mud nowadays. The best swordsman that ever lived will have a rough go of it against three or more descently trained opponents. An army of newbies is enough to run him down no problem, assuming he's not smart enough to run the other direction as soon as he sees them. > have to wander around hoping nobody decides he's bored enough to whap > you for the heck of it. If you're lucky, or you have 'connections', then > someone can hook you up with some equipment and start you off with a > decent amount of money. The rest of us, of course, just end up going > somewhere else. I think you're making an awful lot of assumptions on how our game works. Suffice it to say, it's nothing like anything I've ever played, and that's on purpose. Yes, there's a learning curve. No, not everyone will like it. > I could point out that there are other such places out there that a lot > of people really hate. Dark Metal, in the MUSH world, routinely has > large numbers of people logged on; a lot of people there really like it. > It's also known as 'Twink Metal', a rather pejorative term as a 'twink' > is the MUSH world equivalent of an asshole, and the founders have long Heh. Twink usually means a whiner or someone just incompetent on a hack'n'slasher. Guess the definiton of the term represents the views of the playerbase. > since moved on -- and consider it a failed experiment. While there > certainly is sufficient interest to keep it running, it's still not > exactly 'running successfully' when the creators have abandoned it. > I'm not saying this is the case with Arctic, but I *am* saying that you > can certainly have a game that has completely failed, generally sucks, > and everyone rags on -- but still has over a hundred players logged in > at a time. Oh, certainly. Midthevia is one of the most played muds on the internet, and it sucks donkey balls like there's no tomorrow. My point with Arctic was that I love to play it, even now after I've pretty much exhausted everything it has to offer, and that I'm not some sort of freak, there are others that actually agree with me. :) (Or, at least, they share my freakdom with me.) > >The example, as I recall, was a 'low level' (which I will take to mean > >unskilled in combat) character fighting against a 'high level' (by which I > >will assume you mean skilled in combat) mobile. This is useless for the > >low-level player, because you only learn by fighting someone whose skill leve > >is roughly equivilent to that of your own. > > I take serious issue with that statement, but it's useless to debate the > matter. Why? It works great, so I'm curious to know why you think it wouldn't/doesn't. Or perhaps you mean, you don't think that this is how it works in RL? > >(This, of course, is why teachers > >are ideal, as they can tailor their own fighting to be at a 'virtual' > >skill level equivilent to that of the student.) > > My unarmed combat instructor most definitely did NOT do this, and I have > the scars to prove it. Are you saying that you think that this is a better method? Having tried both in a variety of different skill areas including unarmed combat, programming, archery, and plenty of others I could probably rattle off if anyone cared, I *much* prefer actual intruction as opposed to being pounded into the ground faster than I can even blink. Yes, I do learn from the second method, but I learn somewhat *faster* from instruction, which was my point above. The 'high-level' character dragging the newbie in against the 'high-level' monster doesn't gain the newbie anything, since he would be just as well of fighting something that was only moderately more skilled than he. > >I might also point out that millions of people > >enjoy blowing each other away multiple times with shotguns on such > >popular games as Quake and Duke Nukem 3D, yet no one seems to question > >their sanity. > > It's a little different when you have a game where any player can whip > himself up to full power in less than 60 seconds and 'death' basically > means 'hit the space bar'. Given that set of circumstances, as opposed Right. You have to balance the power-gaining with power-loss. We've tried to de-emphasize power anyhow, but for all the combat related skills (which do, indeed, make up nearly 1/3rd of our total skill tree) power is pretty much what it comes down to. We have it set up so that you can learn quickly but it's always dangerous. Mortal combat is definitely to be avoided, although if all you ever do is spar, your abaility to deal with dangerous situations and of course your pain tolerance will remain at pitiful levels. Even so, trying to train yourself by getting involved in fights to the death is a bad idea. Half of being a good 'warrior' is picking the fights that you can win. > to a game in which you potentially spend months developing a character, > PK becomes a good deal more acceptable in my eyes. There's a tradeoff; I > don't want to trade even a *day* for some dork to have a cheap thrill. > But I'll certainly trade a couple minutes. (Owner and operator, Clan > Hellrazor.) *nod*, a balance issue, as always. Another thing brought up here is how easy it is to *escape* deadly situations. We have it set up so that a quick-witted player has many, many options. This harkens back to Arctic: I've been involved in probably hundreds if not thousands of PKs, but the number of actual player deaths I've caused there has probably been around a dozen. I myself have been killed twice. This isn't because my characters are all that great, it's because I think ahead and know my options for getting out of tight situations. This is applicable to everything, of course, not just PK. I *despise* stuff like: > l A Sunny Pasture > scan Nothing around. > The dragon arrives from the north. The draggon obliterates you with his bite. You are dead. Dunno if you caught the earlier thread with me griping about this, as well as my many examples about how to avoid this sort of thing. To sum up: make danger give a clear warning in most cases, and give the player time to respond. Naturally this means the best assassin is someone who can give the player a little warning as possible, but ideally this should be quite difficult. </PRE> <!--X-Body-of-Message-End--> <!--X-MsgBody-End--> <!--X-Follow-Ups--> <HR> <!--X-Follow-Ups-End--> <!--X-References--> <UL><LI><STRONG>References</STRONG>: <UL> <LI><STRONG><A NAME="01376" HREF="msg01376.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Usability and interface</A></STRONG> <UL><LI><EM>From:</EM> caliban#darklock,com (Caliban Tiresias Darklock)</LI></UL></LI> </UL></LI></UL> <!--X-References-End--> <!--X-BotPNI--> <UL> <LI>Prev by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01409.html">[MUD-Dev] Usability and interface</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by Date: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01411.html">RE: [MUD-Dev] Affecting the world</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Prev by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01376.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Usability and interface</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Next by thread: <STRONG><A HREF="msg01427.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Usability and interface</A></STRONG> </LI> <LI>Index(es): <UL> <LI><A HREF="index.html#01410"><STRONG>Date</STRONG></A></LI> <LI><A HREF="thread.html#01410"><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>Re: [MUD-Dev] Usability and interface</STRONG>, <EM>(continued)</EM> <ul compact> <ul compact> <ul compact> <LI><strong><A NAME="01333" HREF="msg01333.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Usability and interface</A></strong>, Adam Wiggins <a href="mailto:nightfall#user1,inficad.com">nightfall#user1,inficad.com</a>, Sun 21 Sep 1997, 02:24 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="01354" HREF="msg01354.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Usability and interface</A></strong>, Caliban Tiresias Darklock <a href="mailto:caliban#darklock,com">caliban#darklock,com</a>, Mon 22 Sep 1997, 02:51 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="01357" HREF="msg01357.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Usability and interface</A></strong>, Adam Wiggins <a href="mailto:nightfall#user1,inficad.com">nightfall#user1,inficad.com</a>, Mon 22 Sep 1997, 06:00 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="01376" HREF="msg01376.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Usability and interface</A></strong>, Caliban Tiresias Darklock <a href="mailto:caliban#darklock,com">caliban#darklock,com</a>, Tue 23 Sep 1997, 05:14 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="01410" HREF="msg01410.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Usability and interface</A></strong>, Adam Wiggins <a href="mailto:nightfall#user2,inficad.com">nightfall#user2,inficad.com</a>, Wed 24 Sep 1997, 13:52 GMT </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="01427" HREF="msg01427.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Usability and interface</A></strong>, clawrenc <a href="mailto:clawrenc#cup,hp.com">clawrenc#cup,hp.com</a>, Wed 24 Sep 1997, 22:59 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> </LI> <LI><strong><A NAME="01361" HREF="msg01361.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Usability and interface</A></strong>, Shawn Halpenny <a href="mailto:malachai#iname,com">malachai#iname,com</a>, Mon 22 Sep 1997, 15:10 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="01381" HREF="msg01381.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Usability and interface</A></strong>, Adam Wiggins <a href="mailto:nightfall#user1,inficad.com">nightfall#user1,inficad.com</a>, Tue 23 Sep 1997, 06:58 GMT <UL> <LI><strong><A NAME="01389" HREF="msg01389.html">Re: [MUD-Dev] Usability and interface</A></strong>, Shawn Halpenny <a href="mailto:malachai#iname,com">malachai#iname,com</a>, Tue 23 Sep 1997, 16:37 GMT </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> </LI> </UL> </LI> </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>