[BrettH]

Originally Posted by But an attractive feature being part of a a MMORPG is no reason not to integrate it into a MUD.

I didn't say elements used in MMORPGs shouldn't be in text games - merely that text games should not try to base their primary concepts upon the concepts that MMORPGs dominate.

The ideal, lasting text based game in my opinion would be primarily focused upon detailed character interaction, world changing effects, and powerful storytelling tools; however, it would be quite possible to go on hunting or raiding expeditions, or to play a combative character if that were one's preference.

It just wouldn't be a game BASED on the core concept of combat/repeat quest advancement, where most of the systems and coding effort were expended in trying to out-hunt the MMORPGs.

A flexible text-based world that allowed dynamic storybuilding tools requires reasonably good combat and expedition mechanics, because those things will come up from time to time. However, it should not be the primary point of the existence of the mud, or the characters within it.

I have many friends who are diehard MUDers, and have been for many years, who are now turning to WoW whenever they have a hunting urge and only go to their MUDs when they want to develop storyline. I know of no one currently that goes to a MUD when they get an urge to 'hunt', unless they are simply relying upon old habit. It's one thing to have an expedition that is tied into an event (which they will instantly drop WoW to go do) and other to go hunt for hunting's sake and watch the text scrolling by.

I imagine this trend is only going to continue. We can say "But look, such and such a game is still doing fine" but I think we all know they are primarily existing upon old momentum, and the challenge lies before us in creating a new generation of MUD players that will come despite the lure of fantastic, massive, graphical games.

---Brett

[shadowfyr]

Hmm. See, here is a major problem I have with the argument of MMO vs. mud. That one can't do what the other does. True **only** within the limits of the current systems. But consider.. Second Life is right now only just a graphical mush, though one group of people have stuck into it some script to mimic an RPG area. Same problem as the other RPGs, the stuff is all repeatable quests and stuff to hack up. The fundimental problem in all cases is that it takes time, effort and skill to produce quests, so you get canned quests, or at best, quests that are "same as before, but with variations". That's somewhat easier in text, but its still fairly limited. And all mud style games and MMOs work like that. The closest thing to non-linear you can ever expect to see in MMOs is progressive servers, where solving a set of key quests "unlocks" the modules and areas of the game that you didn't have access to before. The problem being, that in cases like EQ, that can mean being limited to a few races at the start and only getting ones like the Kerra of Luclin *after* the existing players have unlocked the areas. It also means that improvements in maps and a mess of other things are never seen "until" they get unlocked in some even later module. In muds (and in EQ2) you have epic world quests. Ones that run from one end of the game to the next, where new parts get unlocked as you go. But *most* of everything going on is still repeatable canned stuff.

Its just not possible for a small number of people to code completely new world wide quests every week or make them all non-repeatable. With graphical systems, its just an order of magnitude worse.

Now, that said, what might be needed is some adaptive AI in mobs that give certain types enough autonomy to start in some caves some place, then move out to the forests, spread camps through them, etc., while the players don't even know the danger. All you do is set goals for them and some parameters for how they are going to act. Some might prove to be allies, others dangerous enemies, depending on their agression, goals, etc. Then, let the players build the rest of the world, al la Second Life, with the main limitations being how much cash they can scrape together to build and maintain the things they build.

In other words, combine the concepts. Make it a player created world, where *they* get to design the combat systems, etc., or at least the descriptions (and animations if 3D), and placing the only limits on a) how much damage things can do at what levels , b) how many skills of that level you can create personally and c) how many skills someone else can pick up from those. Let classes develop naturally, as people create skills, but have to pick "which" of those go together best. But, add additional limits to balance this, like creating a healing feature over a certain level automatically effecting the maximum damage you can do with anything else. Let them do what ever they want, within the bounds of sane limits on how those interact, then let people figure out what "class" they are based on what they pick. For that matter, make societies *and* guilds. Guilds should be real guilds. You might hire some thug to guard the doors into your guild if you are a priest, but you don't have theives, assassins, warriors, etc. *joining* them. Guilds are collections of like minded people, with similar skill sets, who work to improve "those" skills. Societies are collections of like interested people, who may have entirely different skill sets, which they believe can compliment each other. Having the ideas seperate means that you can create a guild designed to improve combat, for example, and naturally end up with an entire group that is trained to be a "Knight" class, or a "Monk". There might still be some variation in the skills, they might find people from other guilds willing to teach them, under the table as it where, skills their guild disdain, but this develops naturally, not as a "pick and choose" sort of thing where you just one day talk to someone and they teach you a dozen new skills to show off. Even the real world doesn't work that way. In the real world, you get "classes", with some cross over and some become experts at those classes, others are jacks of all trades, but the later pay for it by not being "quite" as good at them. Class based systems try to enforce this rule to stupid extremes, classless ones ignore it, producing something a result that is just a tad absurd. Both get it wrong imho.

The best world is one where classes and structure develop naturally, due to the constraints and rules of how the world works, where the world is a world, so you can change it, not just stage dressing and where, like the real world, things exist around the corner you don't know where there until you bump into them. That those things are orcs instead of other humans just means the rules get more complicated, not that everything should be prescripted.

The obvious problems with this approach though is, of course, scripting the AI for the mobs and making sure that the "populations" of NPCs that belong to the races of the people playing don't get so big they vanish all the outside threats. Mind you, that means that building your castle needs to attract those (also AI driven) NPCs. It needs to be semi-real time strategy + mud + Second Life type design to *really* do what people are suggesting. Anything short of that is going to still be "mostly canned quests, but we have a few long running ones that let you conquer W or defeat X, which will late be replaced with Y and Z when these are finished."

If done right imho, the player base should create most of the world, with the staffs only job being to maybe fiddle with the combat/magic/priestly skills of the mobs or give them a bit of extra encouragement to start a war, if the player and NPC cities start getting a bit too big or spread out into to much of the world. But getting it right...

[the_logos]

Originally Posted by (shadowfyr @ Mar. 08 2007,3:30) The best world is one where classes and structure develop naturally, due to the constraints and rules of how the world works, where the world is a world, so you can change it, not just stage dressing and where, like the real world, things exist around the corner you don't know where there until you bump into them.

Just keep in mind that what constitutes the 'best world' is basically just your own opinion.

The most popular game-worlds are all almost entirely developer-created (WoW, Runescape, Lineage, etc). Second Life is a blip on the map by comparison and it has not managed to reach profitability after years of operation. That's not exactly the kind of virtual world I'd be looking to imitate.

--matt

[Malifax]

Brett: I think we agree on more than we don't.

As far as canned quests go, that's not a big deal to me. I prefer live, GM-run events where the decisions and actions determine the history of the world. Inferno, as will Shadowfall in the future, includes many automated "mini-quests" like: a puzzle for entrancing a spell library, a world-wide overseas search for ocean sector charts, a search for a merchant we sells disguises, a dynamic puzzle-laden path into the underground shrine of a goddess who grants different favors for different offerings, etc. But the hallmark of Inferno is storylines presented by gamemasters and driven by the players interacting with each other and GM-played NPCs. We often use small automated "quests" as tools in the furthering of plotlines in the game, but they aren't our focus.

[shadowfyr]

Well. I don't necessarilly suggest using the SL model for running the server, just as an idea for getting land. If someone finds, hires people to do, and gains profit off of a mine, one might expect them to buy more "land" in the game. It might not be possible (especially if you do it right) to make huge profits off of such a mine solo. You might not even make huge gains with a guild. Founding a city, hiring NPCs to do some of it, etc., *will* gain you more. Point not being to micro-manage, but just to add some strategy into the game, beyond which spells to cast against the big mob you plan to take on.

Now, if you did want to do "profit", then you can't use the SL model anyway, since its all about land ownership, which would need to be artificially restricted by some factors to keep one race (or just player races in general) from over powering the lesser NPC races. Any RL rentals would need to be based on something that didn't alter that balance. Only thing I can think of would be something like additional optionals. Like, maybe if I ever got the 3D text script model idea working, one optional extra would be rendered images of specific rooms/items/etc., which would only work properly with the custom client and a paying account. Same with environmental sounds, etc. The more emersive effects you add, the more you "rent". The game balance itself is left uneffected that way and money *stays* something you have to earn in-game.

And really, profitability on SL is the *server* issue, not the world. Internally, within the game world itself, the system is very profitable (and functions as a real economic system, not just due to being tied to the real world one), its just the server usage and maintenance that isn't (even if they hint that its real close).

Its not necessary to mimic the entire model, including real world currency conversion, to impliment a working system. Its just... never been done totally effectively in most cases. In general, most in-game economies are derived based on models that limit what you can do at all. It hardly matter if you can make 10 types of pies if you *can't* find some new item in some other part of the world that no one has seen before and make a new kind of pie with it. You are stuck with 10 pies. Same with armor, equipment, etc. With SL, anything you make *needs* to not only work in the world, it has to do so within its limits and not look so lame no one will buy it. Now.. How you manage that in text, where what something is has nothing to do with its real appearance, you can't expand what something does without running into balance issues, etc... You would almost need to build a physics system that accounted for magic and alchemy, which internally limited what things can *do*, while letting people make almost anything. But then... You still have to have people checking to make sure its not the "Magic Dildo of Flatulence" or something. But heh, its a lot easier to QC a few items than build all of them yourself. I would think. Especially if there where clear time requirements for researching the design, etc., to give the staff time to look at them.

[Drealoth]

Originally Posted by (the_logos @ Mar. 09 2007,02:37) Originally Posted by (shadowfyr @ Mar. 08 2007,3:30) The best world is one where classes and structure develop naturally, due to the constraints and rules of how the world works, where the world is a world, so you can change it, not just stage dressing and where, like the real world, things exist around the corner you don't know where there until you bump into them. Just keep in mind that what constitutes the 'best world' is basically just your own opinion. The most popular game-worlds are all almost entirely developer-created (WoW, Runescape, Lineage, etc). Second Life is a blip on the map by comparison and it has not managed to reach profitability after years of operation. That's not exactly the kind of virtual world I'd be looking to imitate. --matt

But is that because nobody's managed to break free from that model yet? World of Warcraft has the advantage of being able to look at a decade of previous MMORPGs that were essentially the same (Meridian, Everquest, etc). I think what has made Blizzard's game so great is that they took what was already a popular genre and cleaned it up, giving it mass appeal.

Second Life went off into uncharted waters, and although it may not have been a sleeper hit, it has generated enough buzz that I wouldn't call it a failure either. Whereas almost everything was figured out for Blizzard and co. by their predecessors, Second Life had to figure it out for themselves. I wouldn't discredit the genre of social MMORPGs just yet, as I think only now it's starting to get some steam. Look at Sony's recently announced 'Home' software, for example.

And Matt, look at your games for example. I would argue that the Iron Realms games have perhaps the most well developed player run politics of any games out there, and I also think that without it your games would not be nearly as popular as they are. I know that's a far stretch from player defined classes and other roles, but it's at least a few steps in that direction.

[Malifax]

The biggest drawback of a player-defined text world is that you end up with a lot of really bad writing.

[Ide]

Originally Posted by The biggest drawback of a player-defined text world is that you end up with a lot of really bad writing.

The player that writes it might not think it's so bad.

The key is not in managing the quality of the content, but managing its distribution.

[Malifax]

Originally Posted by (Ide @ Mar. 10 2007,12:46) Originally Posted by The biggest drawback of a player-defined text world is that you end up with a lot of really bad writing. The player that writes it might not think it's so bad. The key is not in managing the quality of the content, but managing its distribution.

If you have a game full of players adding content to your world, you're going to get lots of bad writing, whether its authors think it's bad or not. There have to be standards, and substandard writing will be substandard, no matter of how it's distributed. If I have to spend time "managing" player-written content I might as well write the stuff myself.


That doesn't mean anyone's an idiot or a bad person. Just not everyone can write well enough that I'd want them painting my world. I probably set the bar higher than most, but regardless of standards, if the player population is adding text to a game a lot of it isn't going to measure up.

[Drealoth]

Malifax, what if you had a system that was designed to increase the average quality of descriptions?

Take, for example the act of designing the description for a room. You could have a collection of say 1000 (or however many) base sentences, from which the room designer gets to choose 5 - 8. Each of these sentences has customizable adjectives, allowing for a greater amount of customization. With the restriction of using premade sentences, nobody with a base level of intelligence can make a description that is too bad. Now, of course, even with thousands of sentences from which to choose you limit flexibility and eventually you'll get repetition, so you can then look at people with say 100 rooms built, look at the quality and flow of their areas, and slowly give them more and more rights - the ability to write their own complete descriptions in the end. If you created an out of character praise/report system allowing for people to anonymously praise descriptions that they enjoy, and report ones that they don't, it'd further ease the job of quality control.

To clarify on the sentence collection, you could have for example a file with a list of sentences as follows:

In the centre of the [adj] room sits a [adj] table.
From here, the player could create something like:
In the centre of the smelly room sits a giant table.

Obviously, it would rely on a creative person to create the tagged sentences to begin with (can you tell I'm not a writer?). In any case, I'm sure such a system would require more thought than what I've just given it, but it seems like a good starting point.

[Ide]

Originally Posted by (Malifax @ Mar. 10 2007,2:17) If you have a game full of players adding content to your world, you're going to get lots of bad writing, whether its authors think it's bad or not. There have to be standards, and substandard writing will be substandard, no matter of how it's distributed. If I have to spend time "managing" player-written content I might as well write the stuff myself. That doesn't mean anyone's an idiot or a bad person. Just not everyone can write well enough that I'd want them painting my world. I probably set the bar higher than most, but regardless of standards, if the player population is adding text to a game a lot of it isn't going to measure up.

No, you're missing the point. Substandard writing will not be distributed. That's the idea behind managed distribution, and perhaps managed is the wrong term if you think you need to spend a great deal of time on it. You write a system so that the players 'manage' the distribution of the content according to your rules.

Also, who's to say what's substandard and what's not? If you want to write everything yourself, fine. If you want to write with a team where everyone writes to the same standard, fine again. But there's nothing that says a player-generated world must result in 'a lot' of really bad writing. You're looking at the situation too simply.

[the_logos]

Drealoth:

Originally Posted by But is that because nobody's managed to break free from that model yet?

No idea, but the same could be said for every single idea that doesn't violate the basic laws of physics.

Originally Posted by World of Warcraft has the advantage of being able to look at a decade of previous MMORPGs that were essentially the same (Meridian, Everquest, etc). I think what has made Blizzard's game so great is that they took what was already a popular genre and cleaned it up, giving it mass appeal.

Meridian 59 bears little to no relationship to the DIKU line actually, or to EQ or WoW. Everquest and WoW are clearly descended from the DIKU concept though.

If you don't like WoW as an example, let's present some others, all of which absolutely dwarf Second Life, and all of which are developer created and most of which do not come from any sort of long-standing text MUD tradition)
* FlyforFun
* Neopets
* Runescape
* Maple Story
* Club Penguin
* Lineage
* Lineage 2
* MU Online
* Ragnarok Online
* Habbo
* etc etc

These all have user-generated content to one extent or another of course (simply saying something is user-generated content after all) but it's sort of a 95-5 kind of ratio, at best.

Originally Posted by Second Life went off into uncharted waters, and although it may not have been a sleeper hit, it has generated enough buzz that I wouldn't call it a failure either.

What if I said to you that to me, Second Life is LambdaMoo with graphics and real-money transactions added on?

As far as whether it's a failure or not, it's still not profitable, after years, so from the perspective of the company and its backers it has yet to really prove its success. On the other hand, it has a good revenue flow (if not profit) and they've recently hired a CFO who contributes nothing to their core business except for the fact that he's led several companies through acquisitions.

I think that ultimately what will happen is either:
1. Linden will get bought by some clueless media organization wanting to appear hip/savvy. Possibly Viacom, though their MTV division has been pretty savvy about virtual worlds thus far. The Linden boys will all get very rich and Second Life will die a slow death under the hand of an organization that has no idea what it's really bought. Unfortunately, I think this is the most likely scenario and it's pretty clear that Linden is aiming hard for a liquidity event.

2. Linden will not get purchased. It will go bankrupt, and its assets will be sold off and purchased by a group of patent attorneys who won't put the service back up but will instead spend all their time suing anyone trying to do what Second Life tried. (I'm only half-joking though!

3. A capable competitor will emerge and simply put SL out of business as users flee to a service that offers the same fundamental experience without the horrible interface and technology problems SL has. Whatever service that is will have some directed activity at the beginning too rather than just dropping users into a big sandbox of a world.

Originally Posted by I wouldn't discredit the genre of social MMORPGs just yet, as I think only now it's starting to get some steam.

I don't discredit it at all. Social virtual worlds are massive. That genre is not led by Second Life though. It's led by social worlds like Habbo, which has about 30x the regular users of SL.

I'm just discrediting SL, which I think is the most over-hyped virtual world ever.

Originally Posted by Look at Sony's recently announced 'Home' software, for example.

Yep, I was present when Phil Harrison made the announcement.

I have to say: I don't want to have to enter a 3d 'world' just to hook up with my friends to play online. Paint me dubious about 'Home.'

Originally Posted by And Matt, look at your games for example. I would argue that the Iron Realms games have perhaps the most well developed player run politics of any games out there, and I also think that without it your games would not be nearly as popular as they are. I know that's a far stretch from player defined classes and other roles, but it's at least a few steps in that direction.

Oh sure, I agree, but I consider this to be different, and actually more important in the long-run, than user-generated content (UGC). I'd call that "user-generated activity" (UGA).

I'm noticing designers from leading virtual world companies are starting to finally recognize that it's UGA that's important. Many text MUDs have known it all along of course (including far before I founded Iron Realms 10 years ago), but text MUDs have always been ahead of the curve.

For instance, I gave a lecture at GDC yesterday along with Sulka Haro, Habbo's lead designer, and he did a great job of illustrating how implementing even minor systems that unlock the potential for UGA can lead to considerable growth.

If you ask me, that's the future of text MUDs. We are better at verbs (activity/actions) than graphical games are but I think they're better at nouns (content).

Yes, we can do user-created content and it's certainly worth doing some but I sure wouldn't try to base a gamey-world around it, and I'm sorry to say, but if the future of text MUDs is convincing people that it's nicer to read about a tree than see a picture of it, we're screwed.

What we want to do is create underlying games (which are largely independent of the content you lay on top of them) that enable a wide range of actions/verbs such that graphical games cannot effectively emulate them due to cost.

Just my opinion, of course.
--matt

[KaVir]

Originally Posted by (Malifax @ Mar. 10 2007,8:17) If you have a game full of players adding content to your world, you're going to get lots of bad writing, whether its authors think it's bad or not. There have to be standards, and substandard writing will be substandard, no matter of how it's distributed. If I have to spend time "managing" player-written content I might as well write the stuff myself.

Player-added content doesn't necessarily mean freeform writing.  Implement the appropriate rules for managing the content, then you can work on something else while the players use your tools to expand the game.

As an example: I allow players to set their own descriptions, but they may only do so through configurable options, not by writing their descriptions manually.  This ensures that they cannot write what I would personally consider to be a 'bad' description (i.e., descriptions don't have spelling mistakes, bad grammar or incorrect information).

Admittedly the above example doesn't actually help expand the game, but it does save me the effort of verifying people's descriptions for quality and consistency.  The only other two alternatives I can think of would be to (1) spend administrative time and effort verifying/validating player descriptions, or (2) allow players to write what I consider 'bad' descriptions. My approach sacrifices flexibility, but it's a price I'm more willing to pay than the alternatives.

[Malifax]

Originally Posted by (Drealoth @ Mar. 10 2007,2:41) Malifax, what if you had a system that was designed to increase the average quality of descriptions? Take, for example the act of designing the description for a room. You could have a collection of say 1000 (or however many) base sentences, from which the room designer gets to choose 5 - 8. Each of these sentences has customizable adjectives, allowing for a greater amount of customization. With the restriction of using premade sentences, nobody with a base level of intelligence can make a description that is too bad. Now, of course, even with thousands of sentences from which to choose you limit flexibility and eventually you'll get repetition, so you can then look at people with say 100 rooms built, look at the quality and flow of their areas, and slowly give them more and more rights - the ability to write their own complete descriptions in the end. If you created an out of character praise/report system allowing for people to anonymously praise descriptions that they enjoy, and report ones that they don't, it'd further ease the job of quality control. To clarify on the sentence collection, you could have for example a file with a list of sentences as follows: In the centre of the [adj] room sits a [adj] table. From here, the player could create something like: In the centre of the smelly room sits a giant table. Obviously, it would rely on a creative person to create the tagged sentences to begin with (can you tell I'm not a writer?). In any case, I'm sure such a system would require more thought than what I've just given it, but it seems like a good starting point.

I like that idea, Drealoth. It's actually something I've thought about a lot because in Shadowfall I'm including skills for building houses and ships, smithing weapons and armor, creating clothing, jewelry, etc, and describing it all. We had a system coded in Inferno where you could rent a room or suite in a hotel and completely customize furnishings, layouts and some other stuff. But Shadowfall skills are being designed with the goal of making player ability count at least as much as character skill, so I see no reason why building and item creation should be any different. Being good in combat means you type fast, have quick reflexes and are a good strategist. Being a good carpenter, shipwright, weaponsmith, tailor or jeweler means you're creative and write fairly well. Everybody can't be good at everything.

[Toraux]

Originally Posted by Player-added content doesn't necessarily mean freeform writing. Implement the appropriate rules for managing the content, then you can work on something else while the players use your tools to expand the game.

I agree for the most part with KaVir. I think for the most part players should be able to change the environment they play in, even if they aren't adding 'new' content per say, they're still changing things up for other the players, keeping each adventure new and exciting. I think MMO games could do the same thing, but its a lot easier to create more permutations in text without the expensive overhead of paying artists and designers. In this regard a MUD is more or less a continuous system where as a MMO is discrete, we can fill in the gaps because of the flexibility of text that MMO games cant.

-Toraux