Top Mud Sites Forum - View Single Post - Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century"

camlorn · 04-09-2013, 07:09 PM

I'm going to chime in, here, in no particular order:
Muds will always have a home among the blind and visually impaired, if nothing else. That's not the main point, but I seem to have gradually become the mud accessibility advocate, so I mention it where I can.

I can count on one hand the number of muds with a unique gameplay feature. Unique interface? no problem, but unique features, that is features that stretch the boundaries of the medium, are rare. They have been rare for as long as I've been playing muds--the most unique feature I've seen is godwars2's lack of rooms (this is pretty unique). The second most unique feature is possibly avendar's alchemy system or Lost souls's subjective world. I'm ranking them by how they might affect the player, that is how someone might look at them and go "Wow, that's cool," and how they affect strategies. Don't get me wrong. Other muds have unique features, they just don't stretch the boundary of text much.
I'm going to come at my point from an unexpected direction. let's talk about graphical games for a moment. Graphical games tend to offer, for starters, positional combat--is that an incoming fireball? we can dodge it. This isn't based on the dodge skill, it's based on the skill of the player. I can move left/right/etc. Everything tends to have polish. The graphics, in the bigger MMOs, or so I've heard, can be quite impressive. Weapons look different, as do attacks. I have input over what happens in combat at the cost of worse RP.
let's compare this to muds. In most cases, you type kill rabbit. You get back "You hit the rabbit. The rabbit hits you. You miss." What. That's informative. Maybe I'm using a light saber, maybe I'm wielding the honest to god moon itself. The mud doesn't care, I still "hit the rabbit." In many cases, that is just about every warrior class I've ever seen, you can get by and often do by just watching as your character goes right along hitting the rabbit and the rabbit hits you, and then: "You die." Sorry, but where's the immersion? In the graphical game over there, i can watch as the sword wielded by the giant animated glowing soldier thing chops my head off. There's probably blood. My character might, in some of the ones rated pg13, scream. Everyone and most of the mud websites go on about how text is better because you can imagine, but for 95% of muds, there's not enough to work with to get to that point.
What about this, instead, just as a starting point--I'm coming up with it on the spot. A chacrum, which I may be misspelling or misremembering the name of, is a medieval bladed disk, a bit like a Frisbee:
Camlorn winds up and throws the chacrum, spinning it around his wrist before skillfully letting it go.
<a few seconds later>
The chacrum (thrown by Camlorn) glances off the helm of the knight of oblivion, striking his hand edgewise as it falls (type retrieve to retrieve your chacrum).
<I wait too long>
The knight of oblivion retrieves your chacrum before you can retrieve it, spinning it around his wrist. With a flick just so, he releases it.
It strikes your unprotected head, and you feel an instant of pain as the Chacrum's edge penetrates your skull. You see yourself from above, the chacrum splitting your head down the middle like some sort of ghastly dinner plate, inserted into your brain pan. Congratulations, you have died to your own weapon.
I think that that's a good example of what I mean. I'm not going to outline a hypothetical combat system to go with it, not unless someone really, really wants me to for some reason, but I think it makes my point. It looks like a novel. We could advertise it as a game that focuses on deep immersion through text with an emphasis on placing you in the position of a barbarian hero, with simulated gruesome combat. We could make quests that act like stories instead of just go get the 5 newt eyeballs for the alchemist. We could put it on the IiPhone. We are now above many of the games on the iPhone in terms of quality. Nowhere in my description did I use the word mud. Nothing stops someone from adding sounds or throwing inventory icons in or making combat animations. You could animate the player and his opponent or opponents on a 2d plane with 2d graphics, and (as final fantasy 13 did) not allow the player to control movement. This is still at heart a mud, and a text interface could still be offered.
I was going to go on more about stretching the boundaries of text--I have ideas about this and how it could be implemented--but I'm' going to wrap up with this. For once, I have to disagree with KaVir. Interface is a lot. It can change the way the game is played. It's quicker to click a mouse for starters, and if the server wants it can just assume that the client already knows how to display the messages. I'm not going to say that a mud with a graphical custom client isn't a mud, but the line is blurry. I'm sure that there's cases where knowing that a player is using graphics will change game balance entirely, and where knowing that a player is using a mouse may limit or allow the expansion of a complex gameplay feature or puzzle.

04-09-2013, 07:09 PM	#14
camlorn Member Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 144	Re: Do MUDs need to be "brought into the 21st century" I'm going to chime in, here, in no particular order: Muds will always have a home among the blind and visually impaired, if nothing else. That's not the main point, but I seem to have gradually become the mud accessibility advocate, so I mention it where I can. I can count on one hand the number of muds with a unique gameplay feature. Unique interface? no problem, but unique features, that is features that stretch the boundaries of the medium, are rare. They have been rare for as long as I've been playing muds--the most unique feature I've seen is godwars2's lack of rooms (this is pretty unique). The second most unique feature is possibly avendar's alchemy system or Lost souls's subjective world. I'm ranking them by how they might affect the player, that is how someone might look at them and go "Wow, that's cool," and how they affect strategies. Don't get me wrong. Other muds have unique features, they just don't stretch the boundary of text much. I'm going to come at my point from an unexpected direction. let's talk about graphical games for a moment. Graphical games tend to offer, for starters, positional combat--is that an incoming fireball? we can dodge it. This isn't based on the dodge skill, it's based on the skill of the player. I can move left/right/etc. Everything tends to have polish. The graphics, in the bigger MMOs, or so I've heard, can be quite impressive. Weapons look different, as do attacks. I have input over what happens in combat at the cost of worse RP. let's compare this to muds. In most cases, you type kill rabbit. You get back "You hit the rabbit. The rabbit hits you. You miss." What. That's informative. Maybe I'm using a light saber, maybe I'm wielding the honest to god moon itself. The mud doesn't care, I still "hit the rabbit." In many cases, that is just about every warrior class I've ever seen, you can get by and often do by just watching as your character goes right along hitting the rabbit and the rabbit hits you, and then: "You die." Sorry, but where's the immersion? In the graphical game over there, i can watch as the sword wielded by the giant animated glowing soldier thing chops my head off. There's probably blood. My character might, in some of the ones rated pg13, scream. Everyone and most of the mud websites go on about how text is better because you can imagine, but for 95% of muds, there's not enough to work with to get to that point. What about this, instead, just as a starting point--I'm coming up with it on the spot. A chacrum, which I may be misspelling or misremembering the name of, is a medieval bladed disk, a bit like a Frisbee: Camlorn winds up and throws the chacrum, spinning it around his wrist before skillfully letting it go. <a few seconds later> The chacrum (thrown by Camlorn) glances off the helm of the knight of oblivion, striking his hand edgewise as it falls (type retrieve to retrieve your chacrum). <I wait too long> The knight of oblivion retrieves your chacrum before you can retrieve it, spinning it around his wrist. With a flick just so, he releases it. It strikes your unprotected head, and you feel an instant of pain as the Chacrum's edge penetrates your skull. You see yourself from above, the chacrum splitting your head down the middle like some sort of ghastly dinner plate, inserted into your brain pan. Congratulations, you have died to your own weapon. I think that that's a good example of what I mean. I'm not going to outline a hypothetical combat system to go with it, not unless someone really, really wants me to for some reason, but I think it makes my point. It looks like a novel. We could advertise it as a game that focuses on deep immersion through text with an emphasis on placing you in the position of a barbarian hero, with simulated gruesome combat. We could make quests that act like stories instead of just go get the 5 newt eyeballs for the alchemist. We could put it on the IiPhone. We are now above many of the games on the iPhone in terms of quality. Nowhere in my description did I use the word mud. Nothing stops someone from adding sounds or throwing inventory icons in or making combat animations. You could animate the player and his opponent or opponents on a 2d plane with 2d graphics, and (as final fantasy 13 did) not allow the player to control movement. This is still at heart a mud, and a text interface could still be offered. I was going to go on more about stretching the boundaries of text--I have ideas about this and how it could be implemented--but I'm' going to wrap up with this. For once, I have to disagree with KaVir. Interface is a lot. It can change the way the game is played. It's quicker to click a mouse for starters, and if the server wants it can just assume that the client already knows how to display the messages. I'm not going to say that a mud with a graphical custom client isn't a mud, but the line is blurry. I'm sure that there's cases where knowing that a player is using graphics will change game balance entirely, and where knowing that a player is using a mouse may limit or allow the expansion of a complex gameplay feature or puzzle.