Attachment to old-school MU* clients

[Arkandel]

I think for me it had mostly been a matter of what I was used to rather than what was being offered. After all using SimpleMU (for example) for 10+ years I had a hell of a time at some point to switch to even another client let alone play exclusively over the web.

But here is the thing. Why is that an issue? As far as I'm concerned the 'need' for the hobby to move to web-based clients is in order to attract new players who might find the dedicated MU* clients intimidating or off-putting.

Are there games out there which need to be played from a browser because of radical new interface elements or features telnet can't handle?

If not we can have the best of both worlds. Traditional clients for the oldbies and flashy, friendly web browsers for the hip newbies.

Do people still say hip? Is that a thing? I am not hip.

[3543thrh67]

Should also bear in mind.. not all games are 'web client' enabled. Also, not all of them use or like Ares or Arx-Evennia. So, browser is also not an option for some games. I can't say I know of any other codebases that have web-side connection capabilities. I don't think it is really it has to do with attachment. Also, the client does the things I like far better than the web-versions.

[Carma]

This post is deleted!

[Kestrel]

@arkandel said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

But here is the thing. Why is that an issue? As far as I'm concerned the 'need' for the hobby to move to web-based clients is in order to attract new players who might find the dedicated MU* clients intimidating or off-putting.

Are there games out there which need to be played from a browser because of radical new interface elements or features telnet can't handle?

Well, I see it as a limitation. There are definitely things you can do on a web game that you can't do on standard MU* client. And while we've all learned to make do without these things and think within the box, I see no reason not to look outside it.

I'm pretty much always going to be interested in playing text-based RPGs, but I'm sitting here wondering if that necessarily has to mean a MU*.

[Derp]

@kestrel said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

The thing I've noticed playing AresMUSH games is that a lot of people still choose to use their old-school MU* client even when the option to play exclusively using the website exists. I wonder what possible reasons there are for this.

@devrex said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

There's a few commands that only work on client, and...well. The much bigger flashy thing helps me know when it's time to check the web portal.

This. The web is nice and can look very pretty but there are some things that it is just flat-out easier to do in the client, if not impossible to do from the web. It's the same reason that people still use CLI stuff when OS's have been GUI for decades.

[Derp]

@faraday said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

If folks are having issues please reach out via PM or on the Ares forum or discord with more details so I can look into the problem.

I have this issue but my problems are:

1. My home web was until recently kind of crap, and;
2. There's somethign with the work network that absolutely will not let the website keep a live connection, it'll drop it after like two minutes so the game informs me that it's no longer receiving live updates.

Client-client works fine though! Not sure that there's anything to be done about those for people like me.

[faraday]

@arkandel said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

But here is the thing. Why is that an issue? As far as I'm concerned the 'need' for the hobby to move to web-based clients is in order to attract new players who might find the dedicated MU* clients intimidating or off-putting.

The need to support old-school MU clients is a tremendous limitation on new platforms and individual games.

It doesn't just double the workload (because you have to do everything twice - once for web and once for old clients) - it's more like 10x the effort. You have to make sure every feature supports two vastly different ways of interacting with the game. You have to teach and support two different ways of doing literally freaking everything. Two parallel sets of code to maintain and debug, and (for new coders) to learn. I cannot overstate what a huge problem this is.

Do we need desktop and mobile clients? Yes. But IMHO they need to evolve in a way that reduces these burdens.

[Arkandel]

@kestrel said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

Well, I see it as a limitation. There are definitely things you can do on a web game that you can't do on standard MU* client.

Yes you can do them, but have they actually been done? Because then we could actually debate whether the trade off of no longer being backwards compatible is worth it (or yet).

@faraday said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

The need to support old-school MU clients is a tremendous limitation on new platforms and individual games.

Got it. I won't argue the point, you obviously have vastly more experience in this probably than anyone else.

[Tributary]

@faraday said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

@greenflashlight said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

The web client is too likely to lose connection and/or stop sending me notifications.
There are also connection limitations by some work or school firewalls, but nothing widespread that I’m aware of.

There was a hospital firewall awhile back (2 years, now, maybe?) that I could not manage to use the Ares web client through. Which was frustrating, because hospitals involve a LOT of waiting, especially when you're not the patient because you're less likely to get to sleep through it all. Eventually, I just used my phone as a hotspot, because the firewall wouldn't let us watch Disney+ on the laptop, either. And we were bored.

[Ganymede]

@faraday said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

The need to support old-school MU clients is a tremendous limitation on new platforms and individual games.

You don't need to do anything.

[faraday]

@ganymede said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

You don't need to do anything.

I mean, sure, I can just go play video games instead.

But if I want people to actually use Ares, I'm kinda constrained by the attachment to old-school MU clients.

[Carma]

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[mietze]

Yes, if you don't want to support using a mushing client if you want to go full web, you may have some people less interested but has that actually been a problem for you or is this theory or imagination?

I guess I do not see the need to control what every individual wishes to do in how they connect to a game. If they are interested enough in your web browser only project then they'll try. If they aren't ready to do anything but a mu client then they're not ready and not interested.

They're not holding you back from innovation. I would say stop using them as a scapegoat for not trying or when you fail (because I would say a huge number of projects fail/are set aside before they go public or shortly after). "Failure" often means you are slightly better prepared the next go.

A game that only did the browser interface or some other newfangled thing that I can't even imagine yet that I'm sure someone is developing somewhere that intrigued me enough to look into it would mean that I might try it. Or wait until a handful of people did so I could hear what it was like from them. No indivual game developer or thingy developer should actually /wait/ on someone like me to be comfortable or enthusiastic for trying something totally (to me) innovative. They're going to have to plow through with their vision with or without me and if I miss out it is my loss.

[faraday]

@mietze said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

I would say stop using them as a scapegoat for not trying or when you fail

Seriously? You only have to look at the numerous threads here on MSB--including this one--to see that a crap-ton of people still prefer their MU clients over web. To say nothing of the polls, usage metrics, and umpteen bazillion conversations I've conducted over the fourteen years I've been working on AresMUSH.

Ares is successful because it innovates without alienating its core playerbase. That doesn't change the fact that backwards compatibility comes with a cost.

But if somebody wants to prove me wrong and make a web-only MU server, go for it.

[mietze]

@faraday if people are serious about leaving something behind, yeah seriously at some point there will need to be games that go client free. If that's important to the person running them.

Otherwise, I think wasting energy wondering why other people won't give up a thing is a waste.

I actually think ares will be a huge stepping stone to getting some people interested in a no-client game. I know many people who never would ever have utilized browser stuff before and would have scoffed until they tried ares and now while it may or may not be their preference to have no client option, they would be fine doing that on something like ares because they've had a chance to use it and see that it is actually ok and not catastrophic to their experience.

I think probably at some point someone will make a web only thing. Had you asked me 15 years ago if I'd like something like ares I would have said no way. Said the same thing later on for real for any kind of trying to mush on mobile. But now I prefer ares specifically for the web interface that also allows me to comfortably mobile game.

[Ominous]

Pfffft. I'm truly old school. I was angry when modern Windows OS started requiring the Telnet client be enabled rather than defaulting to being enabled.

[mietze]

Also do not interpret that as me saying you should do it. I mean if you Faraday specifically did, I would be inclined to try it just on general principle even if it made me uncomfortable at first.

But I don't see the point in complaining or fretting about people that won't give an old preference up. If you (general) want to move on to a newthing then I mean maybe the people who truly just will never aren't who should be focused on.

[Tinuviel]

@mietze said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

But I don't see the point in complaining or fretting about people that won't give an old preference up.

Then I shall tell you.

If you want to appeal to current MUers, then you do have to take their wants into consideration. If the innovation is too completely alien, then we're unlikely to adopt it.

If you just want to innovate for the sake of innovation... then why even bother calling it a MU anymore if it's so totally different?

[Derp]

I don't think you're ever going to get away from some kind of client model. The CLI style interface is really about the only remotely manageable way to operate a game like this from an administrative level. Otherwise you'd have ten thousand buttons and such complex menu trees that the learning curve on those would almost be worse than a CLI interface.

I mean, yeah, learning Bash can be a bitch but have you seen Photoshop or Gimp? Because that's what you'd be looking at. You'd need a professional-level course on just how to use the damn thing.

[Tinuviel]

@derp said in Attachment to old-school MU* clients:

The CLI style interface is really about the only remotely manageable way to operate a game like this from an administrative level.

I would even argue that the CLI style interface is what makes it a MU, at least from a consumer's perspective.

A car and a motorbike might have the same kind of engine powering the whole thing, and they're both vehicles, but they're very different in terms of learning how to use them, and what people think of them.