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KaVir · 09-29-2005, 05:00 AM

You joined the thread by asking me "Why?" in response to my opinion on light systems...

I'm sure it's the justification many use, but if everyone took that stance there would be no further innovation in the mud community - everyone would be running stock muds. Furthermore, just because a codebase is successful on the whole doesn't mean that all of its features are well-liked or even worthwhile. Take my old GW codebase for example - pretty popular, but full of bugs. I'm sure there aren't many players to enjoy the frequent crashes, and that's certainly not a feature I would encourage others to copy.

I can imagine several ways of designing an interesting food system. I can also see how roleplayers might want the option to eat for RP purposes. I can even understand muds which started out with the standard food system in place and felt they had better things to spend their time on that reworking it.

But in over a decade of mudding, you're the first person I've encountered who's specifically said they enjoyed a system which literally consists of typing 'eat pie' every few minutes to avoid being spammed with 'you are hungry' messages - and I'd have serious concerns about the enjoyability of a game in which that was considered one of the highlights.

But you're missing the point - the way the light source system is designed in Merc makes it a completely redundant feature. Everyone has access to a light source, and there are no drawbacks to having one, therefore Merc might as well not even have bothered with it at all. And if it's just the RP aspects you like, you could just have an item called a 'torch' and the result would be the same.

It would be comparible with implementing dozens of attack spells, then making the lowest level spell the most powerful in all situations - the other spells would become redundant. Or it'd be like making the starting equipment the best in the game - the whole concept of gathering equipment would become obsolete. Or how about giving people more exp for being logged off than they could earn from playing the game - a great way to discourage the players from putting lots of time into the game!

Much of it comes down to personal preference, I agree - but creating a feature which renders itself or another part of the game obsolete is simply poor design, not to mention a waste of time that could be better spent on improving other aspects of the game.

09-29-2005, 05:00 AM	#20
KaVir Legend Join Date: Apr 2002 Name: Richard Home MUD: God Wars II Posts: 2,052	You joined the thread by asking me "Why?" in response to my opinion on light systems... I'm sure it's the justification many use, but if everyone took that stance there would be no further innovation in the mud community - everyone would be running stock muds. Furthermore, just because a codebase is successful on the whole doesn't mean that all of its features are well-liked or even worthwhile. Take my old GW codebase for example - pretty popular, but full of bugs. I'm sure there aren't many players to enjoy the frequent crashes, and that's certainly not a feature I would encourage others to copy. I can imagine several ways of designing an interesting food system. I can also see how roleplayers might want the option to eat for RP purposes. I can even understand muds which started out with the standard food system in place and felt they had better things to spend their time on that reworking it. But in over a decade of mudding, you're the first person I've encountered who's specifically said they enjoyed a system which literally consists of typing 'eat pie' every few minutes to avoid being spammed with 'you are hungry' messages - and I'd have serious concerns about the enjoyability of a game in which that was considered one of the highlights. But you're missing the point - the way the light source system is designed in Merc makes it a completely redundant feature. Everyone has access to a light source, and there are no drawbacks to having one, therefore Merc might as well not even have bothered with it at all. And if it's just the RP aspects you like, you could just have an item called a 'torch' and the result would be the same. It would be comparible with implementing dozens of attack spells, then making the lowest level spell the most powerful in all situations - the other spells would become redundant. Or it'd be like making the starting equipment the best in the game - the whole concept of gathering equipment would become obsolete. Or how about giving people more exp for being logged off than they could earn from playing the game - a great way to discourage the players from putting lots of time into the game! Much of it comes down to personal preference, I agree - but creating a feature which renders itself or another part of the game obsolete is simply poor design, not to mention a waste of time that could be better spent on improving other aspects of the game.