Alternative Formats to MU

[RnMissionRun]

@rook said in Alternative Formats to MU:

I personally have seen more people walk away from their first time MUSHing for reasons
having to do with the complexity of the RPG being used (I'm looking at you, WoD) or because
of the interpersonal interactions had on the game itself with the Staff/Players, than I have ever > seen leave because of "all that typing".

I often talk about MUSHing with the folks in my LoTRO RP Kin and the number one reason I hear from people who tried MUSHing but didn't like it is, they couldn't figure out what they were supposed to do and were afraid to ask because they didn't want people to think they were stupid.

[Roz]

@golgoth said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@arkandel said in Alternative Formats to MU:

These are all solved problems with a basic web interface.

You're right, a lot of this is solved with a basic web interface... But now I'm starting to think: Why can't this be solved using a telnet client? It might need to be coded as a 'per client' thing (at least as far as I'm thinking) but I think I might be able to figure something out sometime. If I get time.

Because telnet is ancient and limiting and will always hold back the ability to advance too far. That's kind of the point of moving on from it.

[Rook]

Then I would surmise that they would be equally scared to ask for help if they couldn't figure out the web interface widgets.

My point in the conversation is that the medium has a small amount of impact, yes. We all agree. I just don't think that it is a barrier to entry as much as some propose. I don't think that a web interface is a bad idea, I highly encourage it. I want all of the 3 major MUSH codebases (I don't lump Evennia or Ares into MUSH, because they didn't derive from the branch) to continue integrating methods and APIs to integrate with backends for websites. Rhost and Penn are almost there, Ares and Evennia are there. All of them will require more work, more refinement, more features, etc.

But I do NOT think that moving things to the web will resolve the major barriers of entry into MUSH:

1. You have to know and read the source books for most games. You just do.
2. You have to Do Things on the game to construct your character, unless that game makes your character for you and you just log in.
3. You have to Do Things on the game to play, and that includes a lot of rather high-level typing, with grammar and proper spelling and syntax and all that crazy shit that nerds do.

UI is just UI. It doesn't impact Gameplay in MUSH as much as this thread seems to imply.

Consider the UI of such a game where you have a widget for every way to communicate on a MUSH. You would have to have a popup window (or whatever your UI solution is) for:

• Paging
• Posing (including: emote, pose, and say)
• OOC talk
• Places talk (including tt, ttooc, ttpose, et al.)
• BBoards
• IC Phones, Messengers, Missives, and whatever else your game has
• Channels

How are you, in the end, making things easier to Learn How To MUSH? Players still have to learn that there are alllllllllll those ways to communicate, learn who 'hears' what, and what reaches whom, and when. When is it appropriate to put OOC information in an IC medium? Learning IC =/= OOC is a huge hurdle for many to begin with.

[golgoth]

@roz said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@golgoth said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@arkandel said in Alternative Formats to MU:

These are all solved problems with a basic web interface.

You're right, a lot of this is solved with a basic web interface... But now I'm starting to think: Why can't this be solved using a telnet client? It might need to be coded as a 'per client' thing (at least as far as I'm thinking) but I think I might be able to figure something out sometime. If I get time.

Because telnet is ancient and limiting and will always hold back the ability to advance too far. That's kind of the point of moving on from it.

Then we can move on from it. I'm for having the option to both have my telnet and eat my web client too. Especially until we can finally massage the "dinosaurs" into moving forward, too.

[Roz]

@rook said in Alternative Formats to MU:

UI is just UI. It doesn't impact Gameplay in MUSH as much as this thread seems to imply.

Pretty much everyone who is looking into RP online experiences web interfaces and widgets every single day. Very few of them experience a command line interface. This is actually a dramatic difference to learn. One of them can look very familiar. One of them can look entirely alien.

My experience dealing with new players coming from different RP platforms indicates that the UI is, in fact, a big deal in terms of a starting hurdle.

[Rook]

@Roz
I would wager to say that, of those players that you describe, there are very few of them that are expecting or settling for a text-only medium, to begin with.

"What? No pictures? I'm out!"

This is what I mean to say when I say that UI, the interface itself, does very very little to abstract away from the fact that the game IS typing. JUST TYPING. ALL THE TIME. And you have to type well or the culture will snub you. They will laugh at your grammar, your desc, your LOL speech, all of it.

CULTURE is the biggest barrier to entry to MUSH. Period. I really don't think that anyone can convince me otherwise. After all, this entire board's existence is based purely on culture, culture fit, culture breaches and various lack-thereofs.

[Roz]

@rook There are giant industries dedicated to designing UI. Like. I have a hard time wrapping my brain around this idea that it doesn't matter how approachable and user-friendly a program/application is. Like. Sorry, that's a ridiculous idea. Ease of use has a huge amount of influence over whether a person picks something up.

The standard MU* UI is weird and confusing. And no, it's not just weird and confusing for people who ~want more pictures~ or something, and that's a pretty patronizing way to frame it.

MSB is not any sort of indicator about barriers to MUSH, because we're all already here. We already made it past the initial hurdles. The truth is that there is tons of text-based RPing online far beyond MU*. It's on Tumblr, it's on Skype, it's on Facebook messenger, it's on Wattpad. There's a huge audience for the kind of RP we do, and our platform is actually better for what they're trying to do, but it's just hard to get into MUs* because, as I said, our UI is weird and confusing. You can't even get to issues of culture until you get past that hurdle.

I mean, I'm not saying that I've done a formal survey, but I am saying that I've staffed on a game where we specifically did a lot of outreach to non-MU* RPers and we listened to a lot of feedback regarding what people struggled with. And a lot of it was eye-opening. And we also found a lot of really awesome RPers that we were able to help past those initial hurdles to get them engaged, but those hurdles were real and intimidating and I'm not just making them up.

[Rook]

@Roz
Oh, don't get me wrong. I certainly don't think that you're making things up. I just think that MUSH is a niche, always has been. I have talked to lots of gamers that have never touched a MUD, and those are far more prolific than MUSHes.

I just think that the medium is prohibitive to start with and I don't honestly think that it is the UI. It was built by nerds working on command line interfaces all day. Most people don't know what Rogue is, or Angband, or the derivatives.

[Roz]

@rook You're right, of course, that MUSH is niche. I guess my point is that it could possibly be a little less niche. And that there are a lot of cool RPers out there who could take really well to it and bring a lot to the hobby. I'm not talking about trying to make MU* a huge giant thing with millions of players, but I do think there's plenty of fresh blood that could make the hobby better. So that's my concern.

[Rook]

I know that a lot of MU Clients have UI widgets for writing mail, as a for-instance. I don't know of anyone that uses it to actually write mail.

Doesn't invalidate it's usefulness, of course, but maybe we could talk more about changing the conversation here.

Let's talk about how clients should change to make things easier? What features would you demand? What helps people get into it? Help files? More widgets? What would you add.

I'm particularly interested in this branch of the conversation, since I'm toying with building a mu client for myself.

[Sunny]

I also think one of the biggest hurdles to recruitment is awareness. We don't advertise in other communities -- when we do, there are results. People mostly just don't have any idea this format exists. Like, at all. Nobody does community outreach in general to just find new blood for the hobby. Even if they did, we no longer have a central place to point new people towards to learn, find games they'd like, and so on -- OGR and Electric Soup once upon a time served that purpose (IGU was more like MSB in that it was a discussion forum rather than a community resource), but when those died nothing rose to replace them (because it's a lot of work, even more so than running an actual like roleplay site).

When we lost Astra, Siobhan, Adumla (as much as I despised her, and that's probably not spelled right, but all I remember is the insult form of spelling her name and that's just not cool to use 20 years later), Saffron, and the others who REALLY pushed community outreach, nobody really picked up the slack. I see Evennia's developers and their community site are getting to that point and bringing in new folks, but I'm pretty sure that RIGHT NOW, that is the only forward-facing community project aside from a couple of specific games that go and reach out to specific audiences.

Way more than UI, types of games, etc -- people for the most part just have never even heard of these games.

[Rook]

I have hung out on MUDConnect, and in their forums, you will find that a lot of players there aren't into the RP-centric focus of MUSH. Go there and read the threads. They want the hack-n-slash and coded combat and singular style of play instead.

A lot of the resistance is the dependence on other players to get their fix, having to wait for poses, people being actually available for RP. With a MUD, you can go into a room and beat/bash/win for two minutes, then step back out. You can't do that with roleplay on a MUSH.

So it is, in that case, not a UI limitation. There are far more MUDders than there are MUSHers, every time that I've looked. Many MUDs have gone graphical/web, and grown, so there is a large argument in that favor there.

[Lisse24]

@rook said in Alternative Formats to MU:

I know that a lot of MU Clients have UI widgets for writing mail, as a for-instance. I don't know of anyone that uses it to actually write mail.

Doesn't invalidate it's usefulness, of course, but maybe we could talk more about changing the conversation here.

Let's talk about how clients should change to make things easier? What features would you demand? What helps people get into it? Help files? More widgets? What would you add.

I'm particularly interested in this branch of the conversation, since I'm toying with building a mu client for myself.

I hate to say, but the barrier isn't the client. The barrier is telnet.
Yes, we all love the immediacy that telnet worlds provide, and I believe that immediacy and immersiveness is what makes MU* superior, but it is old, clunky, and outdated. It is a barrier to new people joining games and it is a barrier to current players wanting to create games.

I think instead of asking ourselves how do we make using this old technology better, we should be asking ourselves, what is it that makes this old technology so great and how we can use modern, intuitive tools to accomplish the same ends?

[Rook]

Whether the interaction is via telnet protocol, web sockets or another TCP medium doesn't matter. Evennia proves that.

As has been said in this thread, the protocol itself is old, venerable and outdated.

But at face value, it is just text being sent back and forth. The channel in which it is process doesn't matter to the end-user.

[Lotherio]

Just a real quick two cents, again, at this point. I kept trying to delineate between Evennia and Arx. Arx is bringing in new players and its not because of updated technology; sure more kids know Ruby, they play the code games (which have been around for 50 years as noted. It is helping new players learn the system more than updated UI. Arx and Transformers: L&F are targeting players outside of MU and when they show up with the 'hello', they're being helped to make the transition rather than left to flounder. People who know are helping people learn what it is to MU. I think way back when, when I started getting into the topic, I responded to @Apos and renumbered some issues for barriers brought up to emphasize the social barrier.

I agree, helping new players make that transition is good, I enjoy working with new players. I'm in favor of whatever helps new players come in, see the exponential size of the sandbox for MU'ing as a whole (not one distinct persistent game, including contributing to the games they like as well as making their own games with improved tools of the trade).

I don't think MU'ing is wholly dying, every few years that seems a topic and yet MUDs still see hundreds of unique folks playing, many willing to pay-to-play still. MUSHes still crop up that pull in that number (I don't want that sort of problem ever). Heck, lately for me is the lack of 'unique' themes of late, the trend seems towards established cannon and theme more and more, but that could just be me.

[RnMissionRun]

I'm pretty sure that Arx's success has nothing to do with the fact that it's an Evennia based game. I think it's more because of the people running it, the setting, and the fact that it's just a really well put together game

[Rook]

I think you're right, @Lotherio. I know it is a barrier for me to play most MUSHes, and I happen to know how to do it, none of that barrier crap.

Theme and Setting are huge in the pull of interest to new blood and old blood alike. The lack of original games out there is a terrible lack of draw to factor into the equation.

[Arkandel]

@rook said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@Roz
Oh, don't get me wrong. I certainly don't think that you're making things up. I just think that MUSH is a niche, always has been. I have talked to lots of gamers that have never touched a MUD, and those are far more prolific than MUSHes.

It is and it isn't. There are hurdles we'll never realistically make appealable to the general public per se; for example many people just don't want to read long texts. Others are poor typists and don't like to type let alone write stuff for a long time. That's fine - no game is for everyone, right?

But we can definitely lower the freakin' bar to entry here - a lot. It's completely unnecessary to expose a newbie who doesn't even know if they are actually interested in 'roleplaying' (which to them might mean anything at all, from weirdo LARPer in parks to people dancing on Lakeshire mailboxes in WoW) to the mental gymnastics involved in creating a character using a command line, especially since it's quite likely nothing in their entire lives has forced them to use a command line before. They see a black screen, a prompt to type "+help" for help which... what does that do? And then they're on their own.

I don't think it's about intelligence. Yes, you do need to be somewhat smart to MUSH but I see no reason why perfectly clever folks might have just looked at the stuff above and gone "nah, why bother" and kept going.

We need to give them a carrot before we crack out the whip, people!

[Rook]

@Arkandel
I just don't see the difference between typing things out and filling out a webform, when it comes to making a MUSH character, other than the UI. You still have to write up a description, you have to select all the nibbly bits of Stats, Attributes, Powers, Weapons, Merits, blah blah blah...

That is work.

An incoming player dabbling around might toy with it, but if they aren't immediately hooked by the potential of great depth, the storytelling, the new venue in playing a game... the UI isn't going to snag them in, in my opinion. I may be wrong, I often am.

Pile on top of that the two biggest fun-killers present on almost all MUSHes out there:

1. Waiting hours or days for CharGen approval, not to mention any back-and-forth YouNeedToFix,
2. Going IC and finding that no one is available or interested in RP because this new player has no idea what they are doing, where to go, how to find that RP.

You really think that a player sitting on a webpage is going to sit there and wait for hours and hours for this? I don't.

Once again I state: UI is not the barrier to entry, nor is the back-end protocol.

MUSH is just not a venue for the short attention span, those that are lazy or those that have a very low motivation to learn something new. I put my money on that statement. You all disagree, and that's fine, I'm just stating repeatedly that I don't think that UI changes, protocol changes, or whatever, will fundamentally change MUSHing past some sort of invisible tipping point of ease-of-use.

[Apos]

@rook said in Alternative Formats to MU:

@Roz
I would wager to say that, of those players that you describe, there are very few of them that are expecting or settling for a text-only medium, to begin with.

"What? No pictures? I'm out!"

There's something important here that I think anything next gen should really think about when thinking of alternate formats to MUs and going back to the original point of the thread. I think very, very few MU players are purists where they -wouldn't- use pictures or graphical representations in their RP if it was a) very easy to do so, and b) not jarring or offputting.

I am not someone that pays attention to PBs generally, and don't have much of an interest in making wikis. I know I am in a distinct minority with that outlook. People really, really want visual mediums of expression to go with their RP, and that is heavily represented in people using imo worse formats like tumblr specifically because it also gives them easy means to do so, in attaching some gif or image to their rp posts that captures a mood or theme.

While it is natural to think, 'oh god people would obnoxiously spam memes in RP and I would run screaming from that', I do not think there is any reason things have to develop in that way, and I also think that the hobby would be immeasurably more popular with smoothly accessible, tasteful ways of visual expression going hand in hand with the RP.