On Sun, 14 Dec 1997, Mike wrote:
> The strangest thing has been happening lately. I've been trying to
> recruit builders and start a small playerbase, and many times when I tell
> someone I use Circle, they refuse to come on, or even look at it. I'm
> really not sure what to attribute this to, if it is because so many people
> run stock, change one line and call it heavily modified, or what. But
> these players go and play on a Merc based mud that is close to stock. It
> is all kind of funny.
This kind of thing used to be the bane of my mud administering existence.
Why would players shun my custom coded, custom areas mud to go play on
some out of the box Merc Mud? The only answer I can come up with is
familiarity. "Most" mudders already know how everything works on Merc or
Smaug, and they know their way around the stock areas and where every item
is, etc. Why would they want to take the time to relearn how to do
everything for your mud when there are literally hundreds of muds that are
ALL THE SAME? Much to my chagrin, "most" mudders are lazy. They'd rather
play on a generic mud and complain about its genericness than acutally
take the time to learn a new mud system. Why? Because learning is "hard",
"most" mudders want the mud to be easy. They don't want anything with a
learning curve.
With that in mind, its easy to see why X random Smaug mud has 200 players
on at once, while I have to beg players to stay on. Smaug is a
bells-and-whistles mud base, its very featureful, but if you want to do
something other than what the Smaug programmers were thinking of, you are
pretty screwed. Thus, it can be very limiting. But thats Ok for "most"
Smaug administrators, because even though they wouldn't dream of touching
the code, they know something we in CircleLand don't: They know that a
generic mud base, generic areas, and a few non stock areas just for kicks
will attract a massive playerbase with little or no effort on the part of
the administrators. This is because there is a very different approach
between the way Circle and Smaug view the mud world. Circle says, "This is
a BASE for you to customize as you see fit, but it requires YOUR effort
and imagination to make it good". Smaug says, "We have every feature you
could ever need, and if you can think of another feature, you either don't
need it or we are already working on it. We require no thought or talent
to run or maintain, just unzip, configure, tweak (maybe), and go."
But I digress.
Basically what I am saying is that I used to get mad when a player would
come on, and then immediately quit out, usually after about 2 minutes of
activity. That player had maybe moved two rooms at the most, and in that
time had somehow mysteriously figured out that my mud sucked and moved on.
This used to piss me off, but now it doesn't because I learned what these
players were doing. They were logging in, seeing that my mud was somewhat
(re: completely) different from what they were used to, and then quitting
out because it wasn't worth it to them to learn a completely new way to
play. Seeing as I'd rather not cater to that class of mudder anyway,
these things don't both me anymore.
> Everyone wants change, at least that's what they say. Lets go to a
> "different" mud, something that offers new features, new code. Ok, they
> go there, then you see:
An interesting thing about the english language is thaht "different"
doesn't always mean "not the same". Eggs over easy and eggs benedict are
two "different" things, but eggs are eggs when you get down to it.
Players like different, so long as its "the same", which is a bad way of
putting it. The best explaination is an example: Taking a stock mud base
and adding on a couple of new areas to the stock zones is the kind of
"new" and "different" that the players like. Hopefully, you get the idea.
Note that when I say "stock mud base" I don't mean stock CircleMUD, which
sucks. I mean stock ROM, Envy, Merc, Smaug, etc because although I think
that they suck, they have alot more bells and whistles than stock Circle,
which makes them "better" to play on. If a stock mud could ever be any fun
to play on, which in my opinion it can't, but hundreds, if not thousands,
of mudders keep proving me wrong. Its probably from my background as a
player, most of my playing time was invested in a unique mud
(tdome.montana.com 5555 actually) that was deemed "a hard mud" because
learning to play it involved throwing out everything you knew about other
muds and starting fresh, for the most part. I *like* that sort of thing,
but sadly, most players apparently do not.
>
> Someplayer gossips, 'This mud sucks, I can't figure out how to do
> anything!'
>
Just another euphemism for "This mud isn't exactly the same as X other
mud, I can't deal!" So, the player can't deal, too bad, so sad. Read the
help files or go back to playing in the Smaug sandbox.
> or the more infamous:
>
> Someplayer gossips, 'There's a bug here, you don't have X'
>
My favorite response to this type of thing (as some people on the list
have witnessed) is "Of course we don't have X, this isn't some lame MERC
[Smaug, Envy, etc]" Seriously, my mud (Dark Pawns: pawns.guru.org 4000)
has been around (open to the public) for about three years now, and I feel
very privledged to work with the dedicated immortal staff of builders and
coders there, you really couldn't ask for a better group of people to
build a mud with. We only have one collective problem. We do things our
way. Always. If a mortal wants to suggest a new spell or feature, or make
a comment, we actively encourage them to use the bug, typo, and idea
commands, as well as mudmail. As a coder, I do serously maintain and
review those files (and the todo file) Because they are a serious source
of input for the mud, lots of "cool" things on Dark Pawns started out as a
one line comment in the idea file. Its a resource -- use it.
> Then they leave, self-delete and go back to their merry, uneventful
> life of complaining on some stock mud about wanting something new. Its
> quite frustrating. So, the five dollar question of the day is how to keep
> players on your mud in general? There's hundreds upon hundreds of stock
> smaug muds, yet they have plenty of players. First people are biased
> because of the code, then they won't learn the new features. If mortals
> didn't make the game I would say kill them and be on with life.
> Don't get me wrong, I love the Circle code base, and have been using
> it for the past three years now. The problem is why won't new mortals
> use it?
>
Well, aside from what I said before about generic mud players and generic
muds, if you want to try to improve the relationship your mud has to
prospective (new) players, you might want to consider the following:
Is your character creation straightforward?
Complex or confusing character creation can turn off a player before he
or she even starts in your mud.
Is you mud "newbie friendly"?
That is, are the newbie areas easy to find, are the mobs easy to kill
and the xp and eq decent? Are there copious help files? On DP, part of
our "get more players" strategy was to redesign the newbie areas to be
central to the city, and to make leveling from levels 1-10 "easy" (on a 30
level system). So basically 1/3 of your levels would be a no-brainer, and
you'd have to work for the rest.
Is the mud in general straighforward?
Are all the areas that are avaiable for the players connected logically?
Are the player character classes in balance with the game? how about the
mobs? how about the equipment? Is the main city laid out in a simple
pattern that is easy to understand? Are there maps showing the locations
of the major stores and guilds readily available? Are there lots of help
files?
> Anyone else encountering problems such as this? If so, how are you
> handling it?
>
Sure. I'd think most Circle-type muds have this type of problem, unless
they have been running for a long time or have been lucky. So far, my
efforts towards getting more players have apparently been successful,
there were alot of people on the other day. :) You just have to realize
that if you are going to try and run a "custom" type mud, you aren't going
to be able to make the players want to play if they aren't inclined to do
so. So the best you can do I think is to write code and build areas how
YOU want to do it, and while you are at it, try to make it as
user-friendly as possible.
Well, this was kind of long and kind of rant-ish, but I hope I helped
someone out there.
-R
R. E. Paret
Dark Pawns: pawns.guru.org 4000
WHOD: pawns.guru.org 4001
http://pawns.guru.org/pawns
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