[MUD-Dev] Cognitively Interesting Combat

[Derek Larson]

On Tue, 17 Aug 2004, ceo wrote:

> ...but [chess] takes too long to play and is too exhausting for
> most people most of the time. Cognitive complexity == hard
> work. As a side-note, I'd rather endure physical pain than move
> any significant distance in the direction of chess - even
> something as simple as Connect-4 is for most people too mentally
> exhausting to play too frequently as a leisure activity (even if
> they very happily play it occasionally). It doesn't matter than I
> enjoy chess: that's a single discrete activity that I might do
> once in a leisure sitting.  Bear in mind that combat in games has
> to be repeated many many many times at a high frequency.

It is the norm, but I wouldn't call it a requirement.  Instead of
serving up a glut of meat-grinder combat, games should consider
decreasing the frequency while offering differentiable encounters.
And to make it clear, no one is trying to produce a system to rival
chess; something on par with solitaire or minesweeper would be fine
(which people can handle in larger amounts, evidence suggests).

Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox illustrates the rudiments of what I'm
looking for.  There is definitely a lot of combat, but the
engagements are more discrete; there's usually some time in between
where you're doing something else, if just navigating through a
city.  Also, there are easily a dozen different types of basic foes
that each have their own unique style of combat, which in turn
forces you to change your tactics (not to mention the boss
characters which offer a further dozen unique encounters).  The end
result is that the game always felt fresh throughout the ~50 hours I
played it did.  If you want retention, inject an ounce of this
"freshness" into your MMORPG once a month.

-Tek
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