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silvarilon · 08-04-2010, 01:49 AM

Those forums are found at each individual game.

I think this speaks to the diversity of muds, and longevity of player retention.
I might play a FPS, and then move on to another FPS in two weeks time. Thus, my "gears of war" community is going to overlap with my "battlefield 1942" community, and so on. It's worth talking to the "broader FPS community" about what games sport which features.

With muds, I might play one mud for five years. I won't have enough spare time to give any other muds a serious attempt, and if I do hop muds I'll loose the community that I've become part of. I'm only likely to leave due to real life pressures that stop me from playing, or due to being so annoyed at that specific game that I stop playing it, and sacrifice my involvement in the community. Unlike a FPS, where I can play battlefield for a few weeks then go back to gears of war.

The differences between the games also means that cross-game player communities are hard to build. Can I talk to you, player-to-player, about my opinions on the noble house of Bisclavret? Or even the game mechanics to do with social advancement? No. It won't make any sense unless you've played my mud. I can tell you about an exciting new feature, but unless the feature is really exciting enough to make you try out my mud, it's not going to be a very meaningful conversation. So why bother? I'll just go to my mud's forum, and talk player-to-player with others that know what I'm talking about. You knowing about the feature isn't going to help you out, best case you might be able to tap an admin and suggest they add the feature. Knowing about a cool new feature in an upcoming FPS might convince you to try out that game. The "cool new feature" in the FPS will also make sense to someone that hasn't played, because they have a similar enough shared expectation. "This game has grenades that suck opponents into a black hole" - that makes sense to you. You know what I'm describing. "This game has a hunger system that modifies your ability to resist disease modifiers" - that sentence makes sense, but what does it *mean*? What it means will depend on the type of mud, whether it's PVE or PVP, how diseases work, etc. - implement that same system in different muds and it will have wildly different effects. Implement that grenade, and it'll essentially do the same thing in any FPS. Without this shared experience, a wider player-to-player discussion is mostly meaningless.

The mud developers, on the other hand, tend to be a special case. They're actively seeking out new ideas. They may not have the shared experience, and may not truly know how the ideas would work (just look at the thread where I made comments about Ironclaw's prison system, which gave an extremely misrepresentative impression because I hadn't explained other systems that help balance the system) - but we can still discuss ideas. And we are still interested in discussing ideas - because we're in a position to take those ideas, modify them for our games, and implement the interesting ones. An average player isn't in a position to do anything with this information.

In fact, an average player interested in the wider mud community is likely to discover a whole lot of fun-sounding features and gimmicks that their preferred game is missing, and that is likely to motivate them into creating yet-another-mud to add to the list. At which point they would continue to participate in the discussion, but would be considered "a mud admin."

Yes. Partly.

They do outnumber the players. But they are also more motivated to participate in "external" discussions. They're intentionally looking outwards.
Players who want to discuss their game are going to want to find other players that know what they're talking about. So those players will look inwards, to their own game's forum.

Judging by Ironclaw, players are very interested in talking about the game.
Some players are so interested in the game mechanics that, just from testing, they have a better idea of the balance and hidden dice rolling than most of the staff. I shudder to think of the amount of time they spent testing.

I think this is true.

This also happens, but when they migrate, I think players leave their previous community behind. I think they would like to take the community with them, but it's just not practical. Instead, they'll keep in contact with their friends through IM, and the like, or they'll continue to post on the old game's forum. (We have many ex-players who still participate in the forums)

08-04-2010, 01:49 AM	#84
silvarilon Member Join Date: Dec 2009 Posts: 144	Re: The "Health," of Muds Those forums are found at each individual game. I think this speaks to the diversity of muds, and longevity of player retention. I might play a FPS, and then move on to another FPS in two weeks time. Thus, my "gears of war" community is going to overlap with my "battlefield 1942" community, and so on. It's worth talking to the "broader FPS community" about what games sport which features. With muds, I might play one mud for five years. I won't have enough spare time to give any other muds a serious attempt, and if I do hop muds I'll loose the community that I've become part of. I'm only likely to leave due to real life pressures that stop me from playing, or due to being so annoyed at that specific game that I stop playing it, and sacrifice my involvement in the community. Unlike a FPS, where I can play battlefield for a few weeks then go back to gears of war. The differences between the games also means that cross-game player communities are hard to build. Can I talk to you, player-to-player, about my opinions on the noble house of Bisclavret? Or even the game mechanics to do with social advancement? No. It won't make any sense unless you've played my mud. I can tell you about an exciting new feature, but unless the feature is really exciting enough to make you try out my mud, it's not going to be a very meaningful conversation. So why bother? I'll just go to my mud's forum, and talk player-to-player with others that know what I'm talking about. You knowing about the feature isn't going to help you out, best case you might be able to tap an admin and suggest they add the feature. Knowing about a cool new feature in an upcoming FPS might convince you to try out that game. The "cool new feature" in the FPS will also make sense to someone that hasn't played, because they have a similar enough shared expectation. "This game has grenades that suck opponents into a black hole" - that makes sense to you. You know what I'm describing. "This game has a hunger system that modifies your ability to resist disease modifiers" - that sentence makes sense, but what does it mean? What it means will depend on the type of mud, whether it's PVE or PVP, how diseases work, etc. - implement that same system in different muds and it will have wildly different effects. Implement that grenade, and it'll essentially do the same thing in any FPS. Without this shared experience, a wider player-to-player discussion is mostly meaningless. The mud developers, on the other hand, tend to be a special case. They're actively seeking out new ideas. They may not have the shared experience, and may not truly know how the ideas would work (just look at the thread where I made comments about Ironclaw's prison system, which gave an extremely misrepresentative impression because I hadn't explained other systems that help balance the system) - but we can still discuss ideas. And we are still interested in discussing ideas - because we're in a position to take those ideas, modify them for our games, and implement the interesting ones. An average player isn't in a position to do anything with this information. In fact, an average player interested in the wider mud community is likely to discover a whole lot of fun-sounding features and gimmicks that their preferred game is missing, and that is likely to motivate them into creating yet-another-mud to add to the list. At which point they would continue to participate in the discussion, but would be considered "a mud admin." Yes. Partly. They do outnumber the players. But they are also more motivated to participate in "external" discussions. They're intentionally looking outwards. Players who want to discuss their game are going to want to find other players that know what they're talking about. So those players will look inwards, to their own game's forum. Judging by Ironclaw, players are very interested in talking about the game. Some players are so interested in the game mechanics that, just from testing, they have a better idea of the balance and hidden dice rolling than most of the staff. I shudder to think of the amount of time they spent testing. I think this is true. This also happens, but when they migrate, I think players leave their previous community behind. I think they would like to take the community with them, but it's just not practical. Instead, they'll keep in contact with their friends through IM, and the like, or they'll continue to post on the old game's forum. (We have many ex-players who still participate in the forums)