[MUD-Dev] Re: MUD Design doc - Combat

[T. Alexander Popiel]

In message:  <199901262056.OAA15686 at oldzoom.bga.com>
             "Dr. Cat" <cat at oldzoom.bga.com> writes:
>
>Or should I be able to talk and talk like now, and if I want to do 
>something *else* I have to press a button or mumble an arcane prefix?
>
>I trust that for telephones, the answer is sufficiently obvious that it 
>requires no debate.

I guess you haven't used a CB lately.

>I feel that it's the same for MUDs also.  Certainly 
>in every chat system I ever used, talking was the default action, and 
>people would have been baffled if anyone suggested doing otherwise in an 
>interface design.

All of the multiplayer games like Doom, Starcraft, Civ, etc. that I have
seen have talking as a distinctly secondary option that must be prefixed
with a special command.

>I think that what most MUD 
>players primarily want to do is talk to other people - and this will only 
>increase as a focus as the demographics of the Internet shift more and 
>more away from the early adopters, and towards the demographics of the 
>average human.

I think that this shift is unlikely, since all the gamers are being
trained by their other games that talking requires a special action.
Of course, it's possible that the populace with self-select into two
factions with biases in each direction, leading to different interfaces
and expectations, but I doubt that the population is large enough for
that to really have an influential effect.

- Alex