[Estarra]

Originally Posted by (Iluvatar @ Oct. 19 2003,16:29) A good example is fear, how do you "force" a feeling of fear on anyone using text.  Few react in expected ways so it's best to stay away from "forced" feelings unless as a direct result of their actions.

I may be in the minority, but personally I enjoy reading feelings or "vibes" in a room and haven't had any complaints (what I call the "psychic" sense). For example, you walk into a sacrificial pit for a dark god and read as part of the description "Despair and fear vibrate in the air." I've never heard of anyone feeling "forced" by this. Or even: "The statue of the ancient god makes even the most hardened heart flutter at the majesty." (Note: I don't mean things like "You walk into the room and feel fear." I never use the first person.)

In any event, I've heard arguments about never forcing the players what to feel (though I could indeed force them by progging a fear affliction upon entering the room, but that's another story). But, in my opinion, this view taken too far leads to missing out on some descriptive fluorishes which enhance the atmosphere of areas.

[Molly]

I love the way you can sometimes make bad building work to your advantage. A badly linked maze from one of our less skilful Builders inspired to this room – the one-room maze:

The Mirror Room
[ Exits: n e s w u d ]
You are in a room completely covered in mirrors. All the four walls, even the ceiling and the floor are covered in those mirrors. Looking in any direction you see yourself staring back at you, reflected over and over in the looking-glass... As much as you enjoy looking at your own face in a mirror, this mass effect is getting kind of unnerving. What if suddenly your own reflection jumps out of the mirror and stabs yourself in the back?

Looking in any direction naturally produces the exit description:
You see your own reflection in the mirror.
You see Molly immediately to the west (or whatever)

For once this nonsense makes sense, hehe.

To get out of the room you naturally just ENTER MIRROR

And eeeew... I used the dirty word YOU... several times...
And I told the player what to think too...
(To tell the truth, I do that a lot. I always thought rules were meant to be broken)

[Iluvatar]

Oops, sorry Hephos, it must have been the_logos along with your comment and I get confused over which is which often.

[markizs]

Originally Posted by This was made to stop the blabbering among some players who told each other the directions, and was of course very effective. But it also took a pretty long and complicated script to set it up, and even though I am fond of scripts, I prefer things to be simple.

there is one very good salution for those kinds of problems.
to make puzzle little different for different players, turn theyr name into ASCII values, sum them up, and then split players into groups using those sums. then when player enters maze you check his ascii sum, and provide exits depneing on group he is in. if there is like 10 groups players will never figure out where is the difference that splits players :)

[Derk]

md5 hashes are much more unique

[Ogma]

Originally Posted by (Derk @ Oct. 21 2003,14:55) md5 hashes are much more unique

How can something be much more one-of-a-kind? Either something is unique or it is not unique.

[Kylotan]

Originally Posted by (Iluvatar @ Oct. 19 2003,16:29) I know it's tedious, I know it's unrealistic, but I also know of you really want people to READ, you gotta do it.  A plethora of inane dupes breeds briefers and that voids the whole purpose of having competent builders.  I recognize the disclaimer you posted afterwards showing the difference between *filler* vs *activity_zones*  but my statement still applies.

Nah, it's not having duplicate descs that breeds 'briefers', it's having a lot of rooms with no important or pertinent information. It doesn't matter how good a writer you may be; if I'm just trying to travel through a forest, I am not going to stop to check the shimmering morning dew upon the leaves every time I pass through. When travelling or hunting for opponents, all the extra descriptive text becomes background noise and the player often chooses to get rid of it, looking for the signal, which is usually the room name and the exit list, plus any objects or creatures in the room. For this reason, standard Dikus should probably stick to very short descriptions except in important rooms, so that players know when they're seeing something significant. In more advanced muds, you might have a level of detail system that reveals more information about a room the longer you stand there.

[Derk]

Whats wrong with making important things stick out as actual items for once?

You see: A large tree.

While you are at it, why not have some sort of analyze command...

>analyze tree
You see a tree
You can push it
You can climb it
It looks like you can burn it

Heck, whats wrong with making mobs you can analyze?

>analyze jewler
he appears to be looking for an item
he wants to talk about beer

snicker

[Estarra]

Originally Posted by (Derk @ Oct. 22 2003,22:24) >analyze tree You see a tree You can push it You can climb it It looks like you can burn it

I'd prefer that players have to figure out what to do with the tree rather than having an analyze command that tells you all possible manipulations. What if you have to thump the tree to make a bird egg drop to the ground that's needed for a quest? I'd prefer players figure that out for themselves or find clues rather than just having them analyze a tree and get a message "You can thump it."

Originally Posted by (Derk @ Oct. 22 2003,22:24) Heck, whats wrong with making mobs you can analyze? >analyze jewler he appears to be looking for an item he wants to talk about beer

Ugh. I think its much more interesting to interact with a mob to find out his motivations or any quest. Wouldn't this be more fun:

>greet jeweler
Jeweler says, "Hello, mate! Hey have you seen a mug around with a picture of a big ole moose on it?"
>say what about the mug?
Jeweler says, "My moose mug? It's my favorite drinking mug! Beer seems to taste better in it. If you've seen it, I'll pay ye for bringing it back to me.
>say so you like beer?
Jeweler says, "Beer! It's my favorite beverage. If you find my moose mug, I'll pay you for bringing it back, but I'll pay you even more if its filled with beer!

[Derk]

That is exactly my point.. thump tree? What if I tried kicking the tree, punching the tree, hitting the tree with a sword, running into it with a jeep, grabing a bull dozer and smashing it, shooting peas at it... or ####, climibing it and grabing the egg myself.

...gave up and quit your mud cause of all the possible commands I didn't try thump? I knew there was an egg.. I wanted it so I could get my +3 sword to go kill someone.

Not everyone really cares and wants to read, examine, try every possible thing on every mob/item/hint in a room description in the entire world.

[markizs]

Originally Posted by Whats wrong with making important things stick out as actual items for once? You see: A large tree. While you are at it, why not have some sort of analyze command... >analyze tree You see a tree You can push it You can climb it It looks like you can burn it Heck, whats wrong with making mobs you can analyze? >analyze jewler he appears to be looking for an item he wants to talk about beer

thats all makes game way too easy. way too fast for players to explore and master in all ways.
and important things as actual items makes it even simpler. we use that approach only in newbie areas. and analyse command....sounds like it would ruin all the fun of mud. and you would need extreamly large mud world to keep players busy with such analyse feature.

[Derk]

Originally Posted by (markizs @ Oct. 23 2003,04:03) and you would need extreamly large mud world to keep players busy with such analyse feature.

Nice assumption.

I mean really. I want nothing more than to sit around all day being kept busy. Real fun.

You can ignore me on this, but you are ignroing the opinion of a huge amount of mud players.

There are tons of ways you can make quests interesting besides making players brute force 1000 commands to get something to simply interact.

Furthermore, tons of power players like me already have a set of macros which will make 95% of items in most muds do something. And we solve all your quests very quickly, part of playing these types of games over 10 years.

[Molly]

"A trick, if done well, is as good as magic, In fact, a trick, if done well, can BE magic"
"People will believe what they want to believe, or what they fear to believe is true."
(From Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule)

Many of the things we do as builders are illusions. We can make it look like something that’s in the room appears not to be there – or that something that seems to be there really isn’t.

Below is an example of a pretty neat illusion – the ‘untouchable’ Mob.

The background story is as follows:.
The setting of the zone is a funky future city, with two rivalling youth gangs, one of which is a bunch of rather nasty neo-Nazis. The leader of the second gang approaches you, complaining about the Nazi Fuehrer having bought one of these ‘fancy new forcefields that protects you from all damage’. Since he cannot kill him by himself, he asks you to help, and bring him the arm tattoo of the Fuehrer as proof.
So you poke around a bit and finally locate the Fuehrer, in the Sauna of the Health Club that the Nazi gang frequents.

Here is what the room looks like.

The Sauna
[ Exits: W ]
The Sauna is furnished in the usual way; wooden benches at different heights, to allow each person to select their favourite temperature. On the lowest bench the heat is fairly tolerable, close to the ceiling it becomes scalding, and after a few minutes you feel like the albumins in your system are starting to coagulate. Only the toughest people can stick it up there for more than ten minutes, so naturally it gets to be a competition between the tough guys, who can endure it the longest. Maybe this accounts for the general syndrome of braindeadness among the Goliath members. Having your brain cooked regularly clearly cannot be good for the grey matter.
The House Goliath gang leader occupies the top shelf - where else?
A Goliath member is tossing some water on the stones with a ladle.
The Goliath lieutenant is reclining on the middle shelf.

Looking at the Leader provides the following info:

The naked, muscular body of the Goliath 'Fuehrer' is glistening with sweat. His head is shaved, he has swastika tattoos all over his body and his face is set in a constant sneer. He hates tourists, and above all he hates being disturbed in the Sauna. But he would never stoop to actually attacking you himself, that's what his minions are for. In fact, he is protected by a forcefield, that won't even allow YOU to attack him. Too bad, since you'd really like that tattoo on his arm for your collection. Oh well, there just MIGHT be a way of getting to him, if you can just figure it out...
The Leader is in excellent condition.

The Leader is using:
<worn on arms>     a Goliath gang tattoo

Next you naturally try ‘kill leader’ or ‘kill fuehrer’ and get the message;
‘The Goliath leader is protected by a strong forcefield. You cannot touch him.’

Next the inventive player might try a ‘room spell’, like fireball. This will provoke an attack from the two lesser mobs, but the Leader won’t even bat an eyelid.

Very frustrating for the poor player...
So how do you think this illusion is set up?
And how do you go about kill this mob? For he IS killable...
Suggestions, anyone?

Originally Posted by Furthermore, tons of power players like me already have a set of macros which will make 95% of items in most muds do something. And we solve all your quests very quickly, part of playing these types of games over 10 years.

And no, the macros won't work here. In fact, most of the illusions I set up myself are done to thwart the powerplayers that use macros.

[markizs]

Originally Posted by Furthermore, tons of power players like me already have a set of macros which will make 95% of items in most muds do something. And we solve all your quests very quickly, part of playing these types of games over 10 years.

so you assume that 95% of items in most muds are similar? holly smoke. sounds liek you have played some very crapy and stocky muds out there :) come to our mud and solve all quests then. we got only 25 quests or so. but they take #### lot of a time to do :) and not by 1000 stupid command syou need to find out. you need to explore, search and then interract with lots of mobs. and sure, there are no 'annalyse' commands. and our mud isnt like 100% rp enforced. more like hack and slash with forced questing :)

[Estarra]

Originally Posted by (Derk @ Oct. 23 2003,04<!--emo&[img http://www.topmudsites.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wow.gif[/img])]That is exactly my point.. thump tree? What if I tried kicking the tree, punching the tree, hitting the tree with a sword, running into it with a jeep, grabing a bull dozer and smashing it, shooting peas at it... or ####, climibing it and grabing the egg myself.

Fair enough. Though perhaps there is a crazy elf that wanders the forest muttering, "When you thump. Thump. Thump. The egg makes a bump. Bump. Bump." Anyway, there could be clues on what to do somewhere.

In any event, these types of quests are generally puzzles or mysteries that are meant for those who enjoy figuring out puzzles or mysteries to solve. If you are not a player who enjoys solving puzzles then of course this type of quest isn't for you. But to make all quests a walkthrough would turn off those who appreciate a challenge.

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by thats all makes game way too easy. way too fast for players to explore and master in all ways.

"Guess the verb" games aren't fun and they aren't hard. They're tedious and are poor design.

--matt

[Molly]

Originally Posted by "Guess the verb" games aren't fun and they aren't hard. They're tedious and are poor design.

In my experience players that think that quests are solved by "guess the verb" are poor players.

As Estarra pointed out, there is usually a clue about what to do somewhere. The players that don’t bother to look for clues resort to tedious, mechanic and brainless actions, like typing in 1000 random commands. It’s their own fault if that gets boring, and perhaps that type of players should stick to pure hack’n’slash instead.

Of course, if there ISN’T a clue hidden somewhere, THEN it’s poor design.

[Estarra]

Also, some things are just logical and don't need clues. For instance, if you read as part of a room description, "there is a crank sticking out of the wall", it's a good bet that you should turn the crank and not sit on it. If you read a box description and see "a lever juts out of the top of the box", chances are you should pull or push the lever and not suck on it. Even something more obscure like "there is a twig stuck between the cracks" may need to be twisted out (which I think is fair game to have the players puzzle it out, though maybe some sort of hint that they're on the right track if they try to pull it--"You pull on the twig but it stubbornly won't budge, though it wiggles a little.").