04 Feb, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 41st comment:
Votes: 0
Think outside the box man.

So, you're strolling around in your happy "I know everything" world, and somebody clubs you over the head. You wake up in the middle of an underground sewer complex. Annoyingly, whomever abducted you also stole the compass you always carry. There are wet tunnels going in all directions. There are dim oil or gas lamps every hundred yards or so. How are your 1337 skillz, which you KNOW since you grew up there, going to help you find your way out of the maze of tunnels?

Good grief. If you can't imagine a circumstance in a game world where you might actually (for real) get lost and not just be able to type "north" to go north, maybe you should take a break and go PLAY a game. :)
04 Feb, 2013, KaVir wrote in the 42nd comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
Think outside the box man.

Somewhat ironically, if you read the original post my above link referred..., you'll see me complimenting the poster for thinking outside the box, and "not making most muds". Back then I'd probably agree with you.

However I wrote that post fifteen years ago. Since then I've come to realise that "fun" and "usability" trumps "realism".
04 Feb, 2013, Lyanic wrote in the 43rd comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
However I wrote that post fifteen years ago. Since then I've come to realise that "fun" and "usability" trumps "realism".

That's a lesson I've only started to learn in the past couple years. I've been forced to reevaluate a lot of earlier design decisions that I made for the sake of "realism".
04 Feb, 2013, arendjr wrote in the 44th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Since then I've come to realise that "fun" and "usability" trumps "realism".

Agreed as well. But let's not forget quix made his suggestion because it seemed "kindof fun". I agree if it can be implemented such that it won't destroy usability but rather create a genuine puzzle effect, that it could indeed be a fun experience. Of course the burden of making it actually fun is on the person who implements it, but I wouldn't dismiss the idea out of hand :)
05 Feb, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 45th comment:
Votes: 0
It also has a lot to do with how lazy and/or jaded your target audience is. Consider graphical MMO's. I don't know how many of you actually played them as they grew up, but I did. I also played earlier graphical RPG games, such as The Bard's Tale.

One of the big differences between modern games and their earlier counterparts, is the inclusion of a "radar minimap". In Everquest 1, there was no such map. There were painted maps available, but you were expected to learn your way around the game world by exploring. Many of us kept hand-drawn maps to note the locations of encounters/dungeons/resources on, because they spawned in static locations, but what you quickly learned was that after a few days or weeks, you stopped looking a them because you remembered where things were.

Newer games, OTOH, were designed from the start to always have a little map in the corner of the screen, which not only showed you the surrounding terrain, but also put nice glowing dots to show you where you were, and often to show you where those encounters/dungeons/resources were as well.

This isn't just a convenience. It isn't just a UI choice that makes the game more "fun" vs. more "realistic". It's a shift in mindset. Modern players RELY on those crutches being there. They have never experienced the adrenalin rush of realizing they're lost in a hostile environment near sunset, and so they ONLY see the annoyance factor of not being able to easily navigate from point to point.

I think many of us, as we've grown older, fall into that category too. We forget the fun moments, and only remember the annoying ones, and so we assume ANY inconvenience to the player is bad, because the thrill is gone.
05 Feb, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 46th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
Think outside the box man.
So, you're strolling around in your happy "I know everything" world, and somebody clubs you over the head. You wake up in the middle of an underground sewer complex. Annoyingly, whomever abducted you also stole the compass you always carry. There are wet tunnels going in all directions. There are dim oil or gas lamps every hundred yards or so. How are your 1337 skillz, which you KNOW since you grew up there, going to help you find your way out of the maze of tunnels


That is a maze…ok, you know what, north will become what is in front of me, south what is behind etc….I can put marks on the ground everywhere I go to not run circulary.
The point is where north is has no importance, the point is to be able to go in a straight line.
And a maze has never been fun ever…just follow a wall, and if you get back to your original position follow the other one.. repeat ad nauseum tll you fin an external wall…
05 Feb, 2013, KaVir wrote in the 47th comment:
Votes: 0
Lyanic said:
KaVir said:
However I wrote that post fifteen years ago. Since then I've come to realise that "fun" and "usability" trumps "realism".

That's a lesson I've only started to learn in the past couple years. I've been forced to reevaluate a lot of earlier design decisions that I made for the sake of "realism".

I think in many ways it's one of those things you have to learn first-hand to really appreciate. Much like I mentioned in the It looked good on paper! thread, "Sometimes a feature sounds pretty good when you're designing it, but after seeing it in action you really wish you hadn't added it". After a while you start to spot a pattern, and get a better idea of how well certain features are likely to work out; having to throw away large chunks of code can be a painful lesson, but it's one you don't forget in a hurry!

arendjr said:
I agree if it can be implemented such that it won't destroy usability but rather create a genuine puzzle effect, that it could indeed be a fun experience.

There are many ways to create puzzles, mazes, and intellectual challenges. But deliberately making the user interface more complex and the fundamental command set inconsistent is not one I'd generally recommend.

arendjr said:
Of course the burden of making it actually fun is on the person who implements it, but I wouldn't dismiss the idea out of hand :)

Neither did I, I put serious consideration into the idea before dismissing it (many years ago). Note that I do actually have relative movement commands (forwards, backwards, left and right), but they serve a very specific purpose, and complement (rather than replace) the cardinal direction commands.
05 Feb, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 48th comment:
Votes: 0
Rarva.Riendf said:
That is a maze…ok, you know what, north will become what is in front of me, south what is behind etc….I can put marks on the ground everywhere I go to not run circulary.
The point is where north is has no importance, the point is to be able to go in a straight line.


So, you'd want "north" to lie to you, since it's actually performing the "forwards" operation, JUST LIKE I SAID ABOVE!

Yes, this is MUCH less frustrating for the player. That way they keep trying to head north under the assumption it will eventually lead them to the north edge of the maze, maybe even drawing a map on paper… only to realize an hour later that "north" changed several times (silently) because they changed facings and assumed "north" would always turn them back north again.

Rarva.Riendf said:
And a maze has never been fun ever…just follow a wall, and if you get back to your original position follow the other one.. repeat ad nauseum tll you fin an external wall…


Yep, that always works… except when the maze isn't designed by a simpleton who only puts one enterance in it, and who only makes it a flat two dimensional maze, and who doesn't populate it with hazards that can kill you or send you fleeing in terror (thus losing your sense of direction, again).

Or how about a "maze" that has no walls? Perhaps you're in the middle of a giant swamp, surrounded by dense fog. Have you ever actually been lost, in real life? It's easy to say "Oh, I'll just move in a straight line until I find a landmark." It's not always so easy in practice. I would want a game to capture that same sense of unease, or there's no point.

When was the last time you actually played one of these kinds of games?

KaVir said:
There are many ways to create puzzles, mazes, and intellectual challenges. But deliberately making the user interface more complex and the fundamental command set inconsistent is not one I'd generally recommend.


I couldn't agree more, which is why in such a circumstance, informing the user that the cardinal directions are not useful because they have NO IDEA where north is, and telling them to use the only directions that actually make any sense at all (forward, back, left, and right) is how they'll find their way.

Do you think having "north" move the player in an arbitrary direction that may or may not actually be north is a GOOD idea? Really? I can tell you I'd be pretty angry if I spent 20 minutes trying to map my way out of some confusing area, only to discover my map is worthless because my assumptions about the directions I've moved have been flat-out wrong.

I suppose, if you wanted to move the annoyance to that end, rather than the momentary annoyance of having to use more accurate commands, you could simply change the messages from "You head north" to "You THINK you head north", and let them blunder about.
05 Feb, 2013, KaVir wrote in the 49th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
Do you think having "north" move the player in an arbitrary direction that may or may not actually be north is a GOOD idea?

I'm not talking about arbitrary directions, I'm talking about relative directions. To quote my earlier post, "You continue using 'n', 's', 'e' and 'w'; in this case the commands are relative to the head of the vehicle (unless you're at the wheel, in which case you'd perceive the world as if you were the ship). While walking around the ship, any ASCII/graphical map would always show the ship pointing towards the top of the screen."

And yes, I consider that better than "your command set changes when you enter a vehicle". If the prow of the ship is always depicted as the top of the map, then 'n' moves you towards it, which (while technically not north) is consistent with the normal movement behaviour. You could change the output of the command so that typing 'north' says 'You move towards the front of the ship', but I don't agree with changing the command set.

quixadhal said:
I can tell you I'd be pretty angry if I spent 20 minutes trying to map my way out of some confusing area, only to discover my map is worthless because my assumptions about the directions I've moved have been flat-out wrong.

Another advantage of a consistent command set is that you can use exactly the same manual techniques or automated tools for mapping a vehicle (such as a ship) as you would for mapping a regular area.

quixadhal said:
I suppose, if you wanted to move the annoyance to that end, rather than the momentary annoyance of having to use more accurate commands, you could simply change the messages from "You head north" to "You THINK you head north", and let them blunder about.

That's a somewhat different issue to the original scenario, where you're moving around a ship using directions that are relative to the local map (i.e., the ship) rather than the outside world. This is also similar to an idea I planned to use in Last City, where (unless you had a compass or the Survival skill) the map would be displayed relative to your facing rather than the other way around. And yes, I scrapped the idea because I realised it was confusing and annoying.

I have mazes with ASCII maps, and people still complained that they kept getting lost. I don't need to make the interface any more frustrating just to give the players a challenge.
05 Feb, 2013, arholly wrote in the 50th comment:
Votes: 0
That is kind of an interesting point, but it also depends on what genre of video games you played. A lot of eastern video games had mini-maps as far back as 1987, while Western games lagged slightly behind. Still, if you go back and look at for example the Ultima series or Legacy of the Ancients, those games had the clothes or paper maps included with them which you had to use (and spend hours translating the runes around the Ultima map's).
05 Feb, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 51st comment:
Votes: 0
I spent many hours playing Ultima 3 and 4, and the cloth maps have holes in them from push pins. :)

But that's also my point. Giving players a map, even an accurate one, of the world or zones within the world doesn't prevent them from becoming lost, nor does it preclude discovery. The ill-fated MMO Vanguard, during beta, had only hand-drawn maps of each zone, so you had to learn the landscape… after its failed launch, SOE swept in and "saved" it, but in the process they dumbed it down for the WoW crowd. Part of that was pushing a traditional minimap, complete with glowing radar dots.

While it may still be frustrating to find the exits or navigate the right depth of a 3D environment, having such a map with a "you are here" dot means you can never really become lost. IMHO, that takes something away from the game.

If you ask people who played that older generation of games, they'll happily tell you stories about their adventures. Part of the reason they have such vivid memories is that the games engaged them on all levels. Good stories are important, but at the end of the day, it's the gut reactions that stick with people for years. Realizing it's almost dark, and their corpse is in Nektulus, and it will decay before dawn…. and the tension created by having to find a way to get to it or start collecting all new gear. Getting turned around in the Lomshir Plain, and realizing the building you were heading for isn't the safe port of Khal, but instead is a pirate camp, and you're already wounded and out of supplies.

While I don't think you should make things harder for the sake of making them harder, or for some "realism" mantra… I do think you can go overboard the other way too. Restricting your creativity, because it might be complex, or might require the players to think or adapt. Giving in to every whine and whimper they make, because you're afraid of losing them. If your only goal is to have as many players as possible, then by all means… make things simple and easy. Your investors will be happy. But in ten years, your players will only remember you as "some text game I used to play".
05 Feb, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 52nd comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
So, you'd want "north" to lie to you, since it's actually performing the "forwards" operation, JUST LIKE I SAID ABOVE!


It does not lie, it just makes the area you are exploring unlinked with the rest of the world till you get out of it and see its relative position. North is an abstract construction to begin with. And no it wont change silently as long as you stay in this area.

Quote
Or how about a "maze" that has no walls? Perhaps you're in the middle of a giant swamp, surrounded by dense fog. Have you ever actually been lost, in real life? It's easy to say "Oh, I'll just move in a straight line until I find a landmark." It's not always so easy in practice.


Need to leave some marks you can align in a straight line. Takes time depending on the terrain. But it is actually easy, the constraints is food, but nothing else.

Being lost in a game , the only thing that I would feel is boredom…or frustation if it wont give me the proper tool to mark where I go in order to map the area. (and most likely because I would be limited by the game commands, and not an actual reason)

If you find interesting to be lost in the middle of the sea with nothing in sight , no sun on stars no nothing. I do not. It means only random event can help. Better not make that last too long.

It is the only situation where you cannot check where you are going.

It is not unease you will capture….just a 'how long will that last cause I have other stuff to do more interesting than rolll dice till something happens…'
05 Feb, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 53rd comment:
Votes: 0
So, the answer to my question is… many years? As in it's been many years since you've actually PLAYED a game? No wonder you find everything tedious. :)

I'm glad you think it's easy to find your way through a blizzard, or dense fog, or across a desert where your clever "markers" may get covered up in an hour or less, or the swamp I mentioned, where the ground is covered in murky water. Most people would not find it so easy. In fact, most people that I know have some trouble finding the right freeway exit when they're in unfamiliar surroundings and conditions are less than ideal in any way.

But, that's why everyone has opinions, and they seldom match. I'm sure there are plenty of people who do agree that a safe, predictable game is fun and relaxing, rather than boring and repetitive. Sometimes, boring and repetitive is fine.. since you are just killing time until something "important" has to be done (elsewhere).
05 Feb, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 54th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
I'm glad you think it's easy to find your way through a blizzard, or dense fog, or across a desert where your clever "markers" may get covered up in an hour or less, or the swamp I mentioned, where the ground is covered in murky water. Most people would not find it so easy. In fact, most people that I know have some trouble finding the right freeway exit when they're in unfamiliar surroundings and conditions are less than ideal in any way.


No I dont find it is easy in those situation, I find it is impossible like in my sea example. Hence why those situation are not fun to be in a game.
05 Feb, 2013, KaVir wrote in the 55th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
While it may still be frustrating to find the exits or navigate the right depth of a 3D environment, having such a map with a "you are here" dot means you can never really become lost. IMHO, that takes something away from the game.

Yeah, it takes a lot of the frustration away! You can still get lost, depending on the complexity of the maze and how much detail the map offers, but at least you have some indication of where you are.

Besides, if the map detracts from your fun, you can always turn it off. Nobody is forcing you to use it.

quixadhal said:
If you ask people who played that older generation of games, they'll happily tell you stories about their adventures

I played the older games too, and while I enjoyed them at the time, I never enjoyed getting lost.

quixadhal said:
I'm sure there are plenty of people who do agree that a safe, predictable game is fun and relaxing, rather than boring and repetitive.

Once again you're confusing gameplay and interface. I've certainly no objections to complex gameplay (as should be pretty obvious from God Wars II), but that doesn't mean you need a complex interface. In fact a complex interface will likely detract from the gameplay.

If you ran a restaurant, and people complained that the meals were boring and predictable, would you (a) try and improve the quality and variety of the food, or (b) replace the knives and forks with Mercurian boomerang spoons and anti-matter chopsticks?
06 Feb, 2013, quixadhal wrote in the 56th comment:
Votes: 0
If consistency is more important than correctness, why not get rid of the north/south/east/west commands entirely and use forward/back/left/right EVERYWHERE? Afterall, if a player wants to go north, they can type "face north", assuming they have an in-game way to figure out where north is, right?
06 Feb, 2013, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 57th comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
If consistency is more important than correctness, why not get rid of the north/south/east/west commands entirely and use forward/back/left/right EVERYWHERE?


Because the result would be exactly the same? I have rooms where you go north it makes you go two south of the room you are, in magical mazes…But 99percent of the time north is considered moving 'up' in the map…still the room have the same number of exits than any other rooms (or less), I do not see the point in calling an exit another name just for the sake of it. Players are intelligent enough. You can also have infinite tunnel…walking north making you running in circle. Because you have one room that makes you 'turn around'. So yeah at one point you will actually go south without realizing it (unless you left mark on the ground)…then what..you are still using the 'north exit' of the room.
06 Feb, 2013, KaVir wrote in the 58th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
If consistency is more important than correctness, why not get rid of the north/south/east/west commands entirely and use forward/back/left/right EVERYWHERE? Afterall, if a player wants to go north, they can type "face north", assuming they have an in-game way to figure out where north is, right?

I also said that usability is important. Forcing people to type "face north;forward" instead of "north" isn't particularly user-friendly.

But your example is an interesting one, because it's actually very similar to the way I handle movement. You use the "target" command to specify your destination, and then "ff"* (meaning "feet forwards") to start moving towards it. In the case of cardinal directions, typing "north" sets your target destination to a position north of your current destination, so spamming "north" several times will stack rather than overriding your destination each time.

However the movement system still proved to be a major stumbling block for newbies, because while it's internally consistent, it's still pretty different to most other muds. So I ended up adding configurable options which are switched on by default: autowalk (you automatically start walking towards to your destination after entering a cardinal direction command) and autolook (you automatically "look" when you stop moving). As the default distance for the cardinal direction commands is equal to a single unit of terrain (66 feet), this helped give more of a traditional feel to movement.

* "ff" for "feet forwards" sounds a lot less intuitive that it is, in fact it's tied in with the whole body-part command set, which all use two letters (where the first letter is the body part and the second is the action you wish to perform) and is explained in great detail during the newbie phase. The same system is used consistently for combat, magic, movement, lockpicking, alchemy, crafting, and various other activities.
21 Mar, 2013, Nathan wrote in the 59th comment:
Votes: 0
Having 'forward' move you in the direction you are facing and so on make sense to me. It handles movement when you can't or shouldn't know which way is north (like in a maze). In reality, probably nothing should be n,s,e,w except that non-cardinal directions are sacrificed for simpler movement (on a fixed plane) where something can be north of something else and the way to get there is clear, then.
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