Coded Puking, NPC Interactions, & Development Notes

Mayhap a way to display/read player hooks would be useful?

I don't like the gamey aspect of this, especially as I've played games where people put things in their hooks and then spazz about someone somehow knowing those things. I also don't like how it takes the focus off in-game roleplay and puts it on OOC lists.

I'd prefer people to express themselves by organic roleplay, word-of-mouth, and the rumor system (including the IC rumor board).

I have thoughts about a few of the topics mentioned in this thread but this is the one I'd like to comment on:

• We want people to be able to emote with each other while focusing on one thing at a time, not doing that awkward thing that plagues MUSHes where you end up addressing five people in a single emote and having five conversations at the same time. 
  • We're considering implementing a sort of character limitation -- either on the length of speech in a single emote, or on the separate instances of speech in an emote, or both. Not on the text of the emote overall; I'm wary of that because I've played such games and it does seem to hamper introspective detail on body language.

I think that there's a line of distinction between playstyle and writing style, and it's in danger of being stepped on here. Implementing mechanics which encourage players to interact with the game world in desirable ways or discourage them from doing so in undesirable ways is part of good game design. However, implementing mechanics which restrict, prescribe, or otherwise dictate the ways in which a player can depict those interactions borders on stifling creative expression for the sake of personal writing preference.

Introducing a character limitation strikes me as a heavy-handed solution to a non-problem. The awkward bits are part and parcel of the collaborative storytelling experience and aren't particularly harmful -- matter of fact, I find that a big part of the fun is being exposed to all different styles and seeing how they mesh. In moments where immersion is brought under threat by clunky writing, the writers themselves will feel it and attempt to course-correct. Meanwhile, a character limitation creates a whole new type of awkwardness, frustration, and breaking of flow: discovering that the emote you just wrote is invalid and must be rewritten because it doesn't adhere to someone else's idea of a good emote.

Just wanted to put it out there that this sort of restriction is a big turnoff for me personally.

Oof, character limitations was one of the reasons why I left the last MUD I played on.

I'd rather have something in my profile with an OOC note about writing style & preferred RP whatsits than character limitations tbh.

Every decision we make is towards our overall vision of providing an immersive atmosphere in which to facilitate character stories. While I agree that mechanically limiting length of emotes-- even very delicately and surgically addressing merely the flow of conversation -- is heavyhanded, and it's probably better to just put style suggestions in a guideline of stated 'norms'... we do have a vision for the game in terms of what should be expected when roleplaying with people, and at some point we'll just have to ask players to trust that vision.

What we're trying to do here is provide an immersive atmosphere for a playstyle that resembles improv acting more than collaborative writing. It's difficult and jarring to immersion when these two styles clash. The level of confusion can be enough to stop people from wanting to roleplay at all. It can turn roleplaying into a difficult task rather than an easy pastime, a challenge that plagues our subconscious even when we really do want to play. Negotiating that confusing metascape is mentally draining. We want to have a defined approach here so that people can play comfortably in our envisioned manner: as a relatively sequential series of events, smooth and easy and fun.

--

Development Update: 

• Vicinity revamp is done. I'm cautious about it because such a massive rewrite is going to impact several areas of gameplay, and I know for sure that more bugs are going to crop up. But I've written a fresh pile of unit tests and they're all passing, so... I'll be loading that in sometime today. This revamp might seem meaningless and unnecessary right now, and not really lead to any differences in gameplay for the majority of people (except possibly bugs), but it accomplishes a few things: 
  • Way better processing efficiency, which will allow us to add more features into the emoting system without creating extra lag.
  • Way cleaner code, which will let us revamp combat, which badly needs fixing on multiple levels.
  • Easier and faster fixing of any future vicinity-related bugs.
• Testing with Arena Characters! As long as new registration remains closed, the ARENA command will be accessible to everyone. When registration opens again, we'll be gating the arena command behind one level of account presence (35 invested points) to ensure that the arena character powers remain in responsible, invested hands. But now, from the account login screen, you can input ARENA to go to the Faded Zone with an OOC character type that has special privileges (HELP ARENA for more information). This way, you can test things out without the concern of your character's IC personage being involved in any way -- you can load items, set your stats and skills, and fullheal yourself if necessary. This feature is also going to be loaded in today, hopefully within the next hour or so.

Unbelievably stoked about Arena testing. I have a habit of shying away from coded combat even though I want to participate in it because I'm afraid of harming (or humiliating!) my PC due to my OOC ignorance of the code. But I really want to participate in coded combat! And with SoA's complex and novel (to me anyway) system, both that desire and that fear are heightened. OOC sandbox testing feels like a lifesaver for me.

FWIW, I love the improv vision over the collaborative prose vision. Collaborative prose is a noble aspiration, but there are better venues for that. Improvisational narrative role play is my jam, and it doesn't really have other equally  supportive venues operating in real time. We have been trying to do this in MUDs designed for RPG-style play for so long that we imagine those venues are "for" that, but mechanically and culturally they are merely tolerant of it. While I DO think there's a lot of room for stylistic differences, and I welcome input from MUSHers, this is the first and only game I ever played that I would say has as its primary goal the type of play I want to engage in. That, at least for me, is valuable and worth making sacrifices for.

I AM SO HYPED ABOUT THE ARENA!! Thank you for working so hard on the implementation. It is going to be wonderful to have a place to test things mechanically before jumping into scenes. <3 

 P.S. I think a style guide would be nice as opposed to mechanical limitations! Being relatively new to RP, I really appreciate any opportunity to learn and mirror best practices.

Reading this thread has been interesting. My initial reaction to the thought of a character limitation on emotes was negative - I tend to enjoy writing dialogue interspersed with "character movements" or "ticks", and a character limitation strikes me as something that would make this more difficult to do.

However, as someone extremely new to the MUD/MUSH RP space (hello! :wave:), and who really likes the design direction that this server has taken, I think I could be absolutely comfortable with such a limitation, if some more guidance were provided on the "style of roleplay" we're looking for (if that makes sense). For example, I'm unaware of the nuances of "improv acting" vs. "collaborative writing" as they pertain to the MUDding community, and though I can definitely guess, I'd love to hear more from y'all on what that means for how we should embody and represent our characters.

Anyway, all of the above is simply to say - newbie here, looking to make sure I'm not doing the wrong thing ;-)

EDIT: Oh, and - I'm also very hyped for arena testing!

I tend to model my emote style after my character and the game I'm playing, but specifically the separate number of dialogue strings makes me QUITE uneasy. I feel much more comfortable splitting up my dialogue than I do with a giant block of text. "You can't talk that much in one emote" also feels a little iffy, too, but removing the ability to split up my dialogue into more manageable chunks would really hinder me, at least.

Or am I misunderstanding?

Let's put that in an emote.

Illi frowns, pensive. "I tend to model my emote style after my character and the game I'm playing," and here he pauses for a while, struggling with what to say. "But specifically the separate number of dialogue strings makes me QUITE uneasy." "I feel much more comfortable splitting up my dialogue than I do with a giant block of text," he explains. "'You can't talk that much in one emote'," he furthers, though he's less bothered here. "This also feels a little iffy, too, but removing the ability to split up my dialogue into more manageable chunks would really hinder me, at least." In the end, he shrugs.

That feels a lot more manageable than a giant block of say, with an emote before and/or after. I understand the drive to avoid the 'everyone's emote is a checklist of responses to people' because it's almost immersion-damagingly formulaic. But so too would a restriction on splitting up your speech make emotes formulaic, just...in a different direction.

Or I'm totally misunderstanding the proposal.

I think some kind of style guide is definitely going to be more useful than a mechanical limitation, and I don't want anyone to feel that they are doing anything 'wrong', as different playstyles aren't necessarily wrong. People just tend to fall into habits regarding how they write in these games, and there are certain habits that we'd like to see, as outlined in our showcase posts. We'd like to guide players towards some habits and away from others, but it's definitely not at the top of our priority list, and not something anyone really needs to be worried about. (Although, based on the history of the hobby, I can understand people feeling worried. And I'm sorry for provoking that.)