FW: [MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)

[John Buehler]

Kevin Littlejohn writes:

> Sorry, I didn't mean to be pissing people off.

You aren't.  Not me anyway.  That was just a little exasperation on my
part.  I threw it at you instead of Matt because I figured you'd take
it better :)

> I was presuming there was more to this "knowledge transferral"
> system than simply reproducing the mechanics of items and calling it
> "knowledge", and I was presuming (from your first posts) that you
> were trying to solve the "player knowledge of the world translates
> to character behaviour" issues, rather than just creating another
> class of object.

> If someone can explain to me how "/pass_secret password_for_statue
> darius" and "/give key_for_statue darius" differ, then I'll shut up.
> Actually, no, if someone can explain how /pass_secret is meant to
> have greater powers of stopping player->character leakage of info
> than, say, EQ's no-drop lore items have, _then_ I'll shut up ;) I
> just don't see where the wins are.

Well, I've been trying.

EverQuest's quest item machinery is identical to what I'm talking
about, except:

  1. I can give a copy of an item by just being within speaking
  distance of another character.

  2. I don't junk up my inventory with the items.  I junk up my
  character's brain.

And I *am* trying to solve issues of player knowledge influencing
character behavior.  The only one I was trying to solve this time
around was the problem of having in-game secrets.  In general, I do
believe that there is significant potential in a model that causes
characters to filter information before it reaches the player.  In
many cases, as with secrets, the player needn't even know the
information.

JB

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