Come help save mud history

[WindupAtheist]

Nobody wants to be told they need to stop doing whatever it is they're doing because it's time to socialize. That's it. Add all the social tools you want, but as soon as the game says "Even though you would rather keep fighting, you have mind wounds and must go to the cantina!" you're fucked and doomed to watch people bot your social punishment bits so they can get back to what they were doing faster.

That's it, and it's the one thing you sometimes don't seem to see, Raph. Just let them do what they want. Don't make them play the PK evasion game when they would rather mine, don't make them sit in a cantina and watch dancers when they would rather shoot ewoks, just put a bunch of activities in and let them do whatever one they want.

If you want more people in the tavern, don't fag up combat to get them in there. Just pile more minigames and fluff into the tavern. People like minigames and fluff.

[Fordel]

In fact, I also never made it to a capital, because running slaying wolves and kobolds was a prerequisite. Saying that I can get into the social scene after however many days of levelling is not instant gratification to me.

I just want to nitpick. That is simply false. Any level 1 character can easily make it to their respective capital, right out of the box. The only prerequisite would be the ability to walk down a road and read the signs.

The other nitpick, would be it takes roughly 15 minutes as a total newbie to level to a point where the wolves and kobolds are irrelevant. Not days.


/nitpick

[WindupAtheist]

Yeah, god knows there are enough level 1 bank alts in every capital. And it might take an hour or so to do the newbie area if you're not some veteran zipping through on autopilot, but then what's the difference? The game is about PVE, and that's the starting point of the content ladder.

[Raph]

Keep in mind my first session was during beta. I spent a good couple of hours in the newbie zone. Not 15 minutes. Started as a human. I haven't gone through that since, no idea what it is like now. The base quest chain was kill 5, kill 10, kill 15, kill 5, kill 10, kill 15, then go to the vineyard or whatever, kill 5, kill 10, kill 15. It took a lot longer than 15 minutes, especially if you're like me and walked up to every NPC, explored every nook and cranny, trying to find anything to do that wasn't kill 5, kill 10, kill 15. :)

The NPC at the edge of the newbie zone told me not to leave until I had done the full quest chain. I left anyway. I found a house which said it could teach crafting. It wouldn't because I wasn't of high enough level. Then i went down the road and found a small town. Nobody would stop to talk. So i kept going down the road, stepped off the road and was instakilled by something in the bushes. Twice.

That was my first WoW session. It wasn't a bad game. It just wasn't for my playstyle.

[Raph]

Since this is so damn far off topic, let me try to just reiterate my point once.

If you design the game so that people are encouraged to stay on quest chains, quickly move from place to place, and have no breather time in the game proper, then people will simply move the breather time outside of the game. That's what you guys are doing with Vent, with forums, etc. That was really my sole point there.

This can be seen as giving people choice, certainly. It can also be seen as removing choice. YMMV. If you're someone who doesn't know the forums, the Vent, whatever, then you just can't see it. You can't find it easily. You have to be more plugged in in the first place.

Me personally, it doesn't suit my playstyle. That has little to do with the broader design discussion.

I also believe it does not suit the playstyle of more casual people who don't have friends in place in advance, or who have lack of interest in digging in to find out more about how to get to talk to people. But i think that those people are increasingly just doing other stuff altogether on the web that is getting more gamelike, rather than coming into the gamey games.

This has nothing to do with how aggressively a designer forces downtime, or whatever. Even the most go-go-go of these games has way way more downtime during play than say, Quake. I am not posting here advocating forcing everyone to stop and rest for half an hour every hour. :P So bringing up cantinas is kind of beside the point, in terms of what I am talking about.

[Fordel]

If you design the game so that people are encouraged to stay on quest chains, quickly move from place to place, and have no breather time in the game proper, then people will simply move the breather time outside of the game. That's what you guys are doing with Vent, with forums, etc. That was really my sole point there.

So those people idling and chatting in the Dalaran right now are a figment of my imagination?


I honestly and sincerely do not understand the point you are trying to make.

[UnSub]

If you design the game so that people are encouraged to stay on quest chains, quickly move from place to place, and have no breather time in the game proper, then people will simply move the breather time outside of the game. That's what you guys are doing with Vent, with forums, etc. That was really my sole point there.

So those people idling and chatting in the Dalaran right now are a figment of my imagination?


I honestly and sincerely do not understand the point you are trying to make.

I think it is that people there are socialising in spite of the game mechanics, not because the game assists them to do so (outside of providing basic communication tools). Raph can correct me if I'm wrong.

[UnSub]

The reason this thread started is because I said "we and you will enjoy this hobby better if we save some of the history so we can look at mistakes made and good ideas that panned out but that never got to an audience." In response, we get, uh,... I am not even sure. "who cares? it's all irrelevant." (Except when you throw specific mistakes back as arguments to make a point). Well, you get the games you deserve, is the answer.

History never repeats! I tell myself, before I go to sleep!

Here's the issue: which MUD specifically solved which problem? If you want to make MUD history usable, it needs to show the progression of how certain problems / issues were overcome, or what crippled which title. Or the various tactics MUDS used to overcome the same problem. However, that takes a lot of care and given how fragmented MUDS can be / were, there probably isn't an easy answer.

Things like the Mr Bungle rape or the Karyn affair / Story About A Tree are important to MMOs because they offer lessons about how players can behave. The actual MUDS they occurred in are a bit less relevant other than the various capacities those environments let players do what they did.

[Senses]

If there is anything to be learned from this thread, its that people generally get exactly what they are expecting.  Raph mentioned earlier that he logged into WoW the first time and spent his time killing kobolds and wolves with no clear idea how to socialize, or to do anything other than kill kobolds or wolves.  I can understand this, and yet I'm wondering how MuD's were any different?  How many MuD's start with you logging into a room devoid of any life save for a sign that says "read this" and being expected to figure things out from there?  The answer to "what next," was always "ask someone," and that was as good advice in a MuD as it is in WoW.  

I no longer play WoW, it has been a long time, but I still laugh in other games when asshats scorn the "community" of WoW and say how filled with 12 year olds it is.  This is both a myth and a lie.  Throughout my time in WoW I met plenty of people like myself, and plenty of people like Raph, and ya,  even a couple 12 year olds.  If anything, there were far more women as well, which I think adds a hell of alot more to the community than any other game can boast.  But then, maybe its just me.  I have what I would consider to be life long friends from Everquest as well, and Ultima Online before that.  Being socially adept is as much a skill in online gaming as it is in normal life, and people who can barely be expected to hold a conversation with coworkers around the watercooler should hardly expect to be able to do it over general chat.

So as for my answer to the many questions posed in this thread.  There is a lot to learn from MuD's, and if nothing else, history for history's sake is treasure in and of itself.  Enforced downtime is a no, but I find it equally annoying finding myself in the middle of a game that has no pause points where I can take a breather and piss.  The minute you realize something is "downtime," you are already bored, and that is the key.  

[pxib]

I feel like you're trying to help someone build a better Facebook by cataloging everyone's fond memories of .plan files.

MUDs, as a platform, provided cheap and simple ways to design and create content. All but a very few were free to play. All but a very few had an active userbase in the low dozens. They explored and exploited a myriad of uniqqe niches and satisfied a myriad of unique players because any slob with a server and a little background in coding could throw one together in a month of weekends. Experimentation was cheap and easy. Nothing to lose but pride.

Barrier to entry for players was also very low. If you build it, and you don't charge them to play it, they will come. There were all sorts of big lists available, and it was easy to place ads and recommendations on Usenet to refine their search. Pop in, see if the quality of writing or the feature list excited you... drop by again later and see what's changed. No pressure. Nothing to lose but time.

It might be possible to sift through and find a few valuable nuggets, but I have a feeling they've been analyzed to death already. The moment is gone... people want realtime 3D worlds, they expect the game to provide them with fun for their money, and those expectations require Massively Multiplayer subscriptions to fund their years of development time. Much of what MUDs could teach us no longer applies.

[Raph]

So those people idling and chatting in the Dalaran right now are a figment of my imagination?


I honestly and sincerely do not understand the point you are trying to make.

I think it is that people there are socialising in spite of the game mechanics, not because the game assists them to do so (outside of providing basic communication tools). Raph can correct me if I'm wrong.

No, that's correct. The game mechanics really do encourage you to hop on quest chains quickly, jump into activities quickly, etc. Not waiting in line is awesome, and always having somewhere to go and somewhere to do makes the game feel way less aimless. But it also means you kind of have to force yourself to stop.

A good example of how this cuts both ways would be stuff like the way they have organized levels across zones. A lot of them are on gradients -- one end of the zone will be at the low end, the far end will be at the high end, and it naturally leads you to the next zone. More, they carefully have a quest at the low end that leads you gradually up the chain, and a quest at the high end that sends you to the next zone. It's a brilliant and subtle way to manage your progress and railroad you on your way. But it also means that people always move through, and that has tradeoffs. If you are on a quest chain that is leading you in a particular direction, going backwards to a social hub is time-consuming and annoying, and you don't want to even if you want a break. So you hang out wherever you are, or on your chat channel/vent.

It's not that this is bad -- again, it's tradeoffs.

Another way to think of it is that at any given moment in WoW, you have a menu of choices. "Stop and smell the roses" is not on the menu. You can choose to do it, but gosh, there's that convenient menu right there... so you keep going until you are tired. It's great for fixing those who are directionless, certainly, but it also has the side effect that there are fewer folks smelling the roses than there would be otherwise.

[Fordel]

Is stop and smell the roses ever on the menu? The very nature of stopping to smell the roses removes it self FROM any kind of menu or directed experience.

How do you direct Rose Smelling, when the very process of Rose Smelling is based around being undirected?


I just don't get what you want?

[Lantyssa]

That's why I say allow players to be active when they want, allow them downtime when they want.

A friendlier waypoint system would help with that specific instance, such as a town portal system similar to Diablo 2.  Let me mark my current spot as well as a social hub or two and port between them as I please.  I understand the desire to make worlds feel large, and I'm okay with some restrictions there, but this habit of games limiting you to one and only one bind point gets old fast.

[Nebu]

Isn't crafting and fishing a type of downtime?  The way crafting was implemented in WoW, you just hit a button and wait.  The same can be said of flying on gryphon paths.  The difference with WoW is that your downtime isn't spent regenning mana, yelling "CAMP CHECK" at the zone entrance, or waiting for a mob to spawn. 

[Fordel]

Fishing yes, certainly.

Crafting, not really. WoW crafting is not like DaoC where you cranked out 500 shields for the perfect one, and the material gathering is more active.

[Raph]

Is stop and smell the roses ever on the menu? The very nature of stopping to smell the roses removes it self FROM any kind of menu or directed experience.

How do you direct Rose Smelling, when the very process of Rose Smelling is based around being undirected?


I just don't get what you want?

Want? I didn't ask for anything. :)

But ways you can direct smelling the roses, off the top of my head, which have varying sorts of effects and consequences, some of which you may hate and some which you might not:

- quests to take you to vistas. Badges for exploration.
- design spaces meant for public or private events
- allow users to mark off spaces as theirs
- provide systemic reason to hang out somewhere that is quieter
- un-optimize traffic. In other words, have timed gates or places where you wait
- have traffic patterns with crossroads, rather than one-way flow
- have gameplay patterns with a "loop" quality
- reduce the amount of "global" anything, such as purchases, teleports, etc
- add mechanics where users can do things to each other/with each other, particularly collaborative creativity
- add social minigames; trivia, social word unscramble, etc.
- add "display" events such as talks, lectures, theater events, concerts, etc
- add alternate advancement systems for social elements
- add  "LFC" -- looking for conversation. Allow instant teleport to social groups, allow them to raise the flag for a chat session
- player-voted awards for roleplay, helpfulness, etc
- create a newbie helper, greeter, or mentoring program

I could go on and on. All of these have been done with great success in many many worlds from old muds to modern MMOs.

Edit: it isn't that you cannot go do all these things yourself. You can. It's just that if none of this is incentivized, or is even actively penalized in terms of keeping up with your outlevelling friends, then you will tend not to do them.

[Triforcer]

- have traffic patterns with crossroads, rather than one-way flow
- have gameplay patterns with a "loop" quality


I could go on and on. All of these have been done with great success in many many worlds from old muds to modern MMOs.

I like those a lot, and now that I've time to think about it, I think that was a large part of my problem with WAR.  It was an on-rails game, no different than single-player, where you went from one town to the next on the clearly marked road between them.

Compare almost any low-level zone in WoW, or the Shire in LoTRO.  XRoads and Camp Taurajo had a "city" feel to them (people were constantly coming back), not just the quality of a truck stop that would be quickly abandoned. 

Design zones radially (maybe a central hub that people come back to, various small settlements on edge of zone).  Disperse quests and interesting things in a way where you have to wander over the zone to find them (not just 500m down the damn road).  Stick more single NPCs in random places (like the robot chicken escort quest in Felwood, turtle escort in Tanaris, or a 1000x other examples in WoW) to reward exploration.  Put less interstates in zones and more footpaths.

[WindupAtheist]

Lumping Ventrilo in with forums is a mistake. Ventrilo is an inherent part of these games anymore, both socially and in terms of competetive performance. Getting a third-party program and an IM address is a bitch, but that's why games are integrating voice chat these days. Voice is here to stay.

[Slyfeind]

Fishing in WoW, as compared to fishing in other games, is right along with the standard WoW experience of intense directed gameplay. There's no downtime about it. You're forced to stare at the bobber and click it, and if your timing is off, you lose. If you're chatting (like while fishing in UO or EQ or ATITD or SWG) you risk missing the skill hit and the loot.

[Ratman_tf]

Fishing in WoW, as compared to fishing in other games, is right along with the standard WoW experience of intense directed gameplay. There's no downtime about it. You're forced to stare at the bobber and click it, and if your timing is off, you lose. If you're chatting (like while fishing in UO or EQ or ATITD or SWG) you risk missing the skill hit and the loot.

Yeah, but it's not as intensive as "DON'T STAND IN THE FIRE!"

[Lantyssa]

Edit: it isn't that you cannot go do all these things yourself. You can. It's just that if none of this is incentivized, or is even actively penalized in terms of keeping up with your outlevelling friends, then you will tend not to do them.

<harp> Move away from levels as a reward mechanic.  At least as one that gates people from playing with whomever they want. </harp>

[WindupAtheist]

It's only now that I haven't played in a while and have racked up some post-leveling time in WoW that I realize what an odd scene UO could be at times. I used to be in a UO vampire RP guild with an old guy who used to write speeches for Cheney back in the 80's. Which is neither here nor there, but still sounds weird to say.

I know what Calandryll's talking about, figuring out what to do once you were in game. I tend to think utterly trivial teleportation might tend to help socialization, or at least it can potentially. In WoW you pretty much never see your guildmates "in person" unless you're doing an instance/raid together, because traveling is too much of a nuisance to do just to /wave and say hello. But in UO people would hop into Ventrilo and go "Where's everyone at?" and a few seconds later they would have recalled over to wherever we were all hanging out at the moment.

One guy's at his house looking for something to give his friend, someone's bored and drops by to hang out, a couple other people stop by because so-and-so's sister with the hot-sounding voice is there, pretty soon there's a whole little crowd, and you all end up crawling a dungeon or something.

It's something you have to design for from the start, though. With trivial teleportation there is no traffic, and people simply are where they want to be, which can leave the in-betweens feeling awfully empty.

[Fordel]

Fishing in WoW, as compared to fishing in other games, is right along with the standard WoW experience of intense directed gameplay. There's no downtime about it. You're forced to stare at the bobber and click it, and if your timing is off, you lose. If you're chatting (like while fishing in UO or EQ or ATITD or SWG) you risk missing the skill hit and the loot.

Type faster 

[Margalis]

A few pages ago Raph said that players have inertia and need to be prodded to get off their asses and kill slimes, now he's saying that players need special incentive to stop killing slimes and talk to their pals. Which is it?

- un-optimize traffic. In other words, have timed gates or places where you wait
- reduce the amount of "global" anything, such as purchases, teleports, etc

These are great examples of what not do do: make the game a pain in the ass for people who want to play it in a way they enjoy.

If you want to chat with your friends fine, but don't punish me because I'm not a chatty Cathy.

[schild]

chatty Cathy.

It sounds more to me like he wants LARPing Larry.

[ashrik]

Indeed, there's definitely a fine line to be drawn.

I want to be played in order to make me socialize more, definitely. I just never want to have the feeling that bullshit block X is here so I must sit on my thumb and wait for someone to talk to. As mentioned earlier, places like the Xroads and Camp T made socialization easy without distracting me from my gameplay, when I didn't want it. Once you start talking about intrusive elements such as the removal of global purchases or teleports (or chat, Hellllooooo Warhammer) in order to push the players to build communities and social spheres at times in which they may not want to- players will push back.

Edit: Please let it be a carp

[WindupAtheist]

Raph is chatty and makes games for chatty people. If you're not chatty, his games will stab you in the cock. (At least until he quits and the next batch of developers look at the social engineering nightmare they've been left with, throw up their hands, and shoehorn in Trammel while there are still any subscribers left. Or, to be fair, shoehorn in the NGE and chase all the subscribers away.) It's just who he is, and it's not going to change no matter how much we yell at him on messageboards.

It's okay. We already have Blizzard to make Blizzard games. There's room for a Raph.

Though what I wish is that someone would give Raph a pile of money to make an MMO, with the caveat that there must be a Blizzard guy standing behind him at all times with the authority to go "What the fuck?" and slap him in the back of the head with a fish when he starts getting too beardy and tries to implement a simulated hydrological cycle or something.

[Fordel]

What kind of fish? 

[Tale]

Insert Tanks vs Mechs spinoff.

[Ratman_tf]

Insert Tanks vs Mechs spinoff.

In that case, it would be a mechfish.

[Phred]

  But the fact is that earlier in the game's evolution they actually didn't include any sort of LFG system, and were reluctant to include it for that very reason. 

I don't know where you got this but it's dead wrong. WoW had a lfg system in beta and early release. It was taken out when they were scrambling around trying to prop up their failing database servers. It was a very simple system where you could flag yourself as lfg and people could search for class and lfg flag.

[Phred]

Keep in mind my first session was during beta. I spent a good couple of hours in the newbie zone. Not 15 minutes. Started as a human. I haven't gone through that since, no idea what it is like now. The base quest chain was kill 5, kill 10, kill 15, kill 5, kill 10, kill 15, then go to the vineyard or whatever, kill 5, kill 10, kill 15. It took a lot longer than 15 minutes, especially if you're like me and walked up to every NPC, explored every nook and cranny, trying to find anything to do that wasn't kill 5, kill 10, kill 15. :)

The NPC at the edge of the newbie zone told me not to leave until I had done the full quest chain. I left anyway. I found a house which said it could teach crafting. It wouldn't because I wasn't of high enough level. Then i went down the road and found a small town. Nobody would stop to talk. So i kept going down the road, stepped off the road and was instakilled by something in the bushes. Twice.

That was my first WoW session. It wasn't a bad game. It just wasn't for my playstyle.

The WoW you played did not survive the iterations before release. I've played humans both in beta and release and the newbie quests were nothing like that. Sure, you get a 10 rat tail quest and a kill 8 kobold quest, but as I said that chain of 5,10,15 never survived, rightly imo.

[Phred]

Lumping Ventrilo in with forums is a mistake. Ventrilo is an inherent part of these games anymore, both socially and in terms of competetive performance. Getting a third-party program and an IM address is a bitch, but that's why games are integrating voice chat these days. Voice is here to stay.

Interesting enough though, all 3 of the games I've played with intergrated voice chat the feature is almost completely unused. LoTR, Eve and now WoW. No one uses the built in voice chat.

[Fordel]

The Built in version is always shit. Always.


I don't know WHY it is always made of crap and fail, but it always is. Blizzard spent a entire content patch on it's version of Voice chat and it was still total shit.

[Ratman_tf]

The Built in version is always shit. Always.


I don't know WHY it is always made of crap and fail, but it always is. Blizzard spent a entire content patch on it's version of Voice chat and it was still total shit.

It's a shame because the integrated voice chat has options to show which characters in your party are speaking. Which is kinda handy to figure out who's getting chewed on by a zombie.