Posts made by SparklesTheClown

@faraday To be honest, I'm finding it very difficult to actually discuss this because I have to kind of confine the discussion to one narrow section of the hobby that I barely even play in. Like, I'm trying to discuss this in a way that people can actually engage, but I feel like it's not quite working.

I feel like it'll be much easier to re-contextualize my original point:

I'm addressing the entire hobby, not one part of the hobby. Like, good, you're trying to simplify stuff, but the point is that there is no single way in which UX shit can be improved. How it differs or how it's shitty differs dramatically from game to game.

We've pretty much already narrowed down and discussed the kinds of things that are problems, and that's what I want. How you identify things that are UX problems is not going to be the same in every game or in every area of the hobby, which is why I've tried to give a wide variety of examples of the types of things I see as bad design.

But no single one of us can actually fix those things, the only way to fix that kind of thing is to keep it in mind as a community. If some MU coder who doesn't normally read MSB comes across this thread and can apply the stuff we've discussed to their code and the games they're coding, that is the point.

Essentially this thread has the general purpose that the VASpider thread does, except for shitty design practices.

If you're doing good, then fine, keep doing good. But just because you're doing good, or just because multiple people within one narrow area of the hobby are doing good, doesn't mean that the discussion doesn't need to happen and that other people in the hobby can't benefit from talking about this.

My intent wasn't to create a glorified WoD code discussion and about how I want to fix WoD, because, again, I don't care about WoD that much. The entire point of the thread was my general point.

If you agree, good, that is the point, keep doing that.

Update: I'm still drafting this combat/progression system. It's, like, a lot. But now I'm ready to say that it will be a pseudo card game. I know that might sound crazy or complex, but don't worry, I said "pseudo" for a reason. I believe that while this does create new problems, it solves a lot of major, much worse problems. My intent is to try and put an emphasis on horizontal progression rather than pure vertical progression, which, when I'm finished, will make much more sense.

To be honest, I think the disconnect here is that I'm using WoD examples so that WoD people will understand me more, but that's kind of confining the entire context to WoD.

I'm not entirely sure if there's a way around that. Maybe this just isn't a MSB discussion?

@Rook I feel like most players would know what they're adding together though. Like, even though I'm shit-tier at WoD, I generally know what my stuff is even if I don't usually remember all the numbers.

Is it usually the reverse and I'm just weird?

edit: Also you mean in most WoD MUSHes.

@Rook said in UX: It's time for The Talk:

To be fair, MUDs are very, very simplistic.

It is a straight (Weapon+Effects) vs (Armor+Effects) mechanic check, there are no situational modifiers. No terrain, no cover, no concealment, no taking-your-time-on-the-shot type modifiers exist in most MUDs.

So yeah, 'attack troll' works just fine. Your attack vs his defense. Subtract HP. Done.

In a MUSH scene, code cannot account for Troll being ducked behind a concrete half-wall and getting defense bonuses from that. Nor can it "tell" that you moved in your pose this round, thus you have a negative modifier to your hit roll. Or that in the last scene, your armor was doused in acid and structurally compromised. STs and players take account of those "small details", and thus a coded +attack is hard to do without lots and lots and lots of that switch/option cruft that you are saying is making things complex.

Try coding a combat system in a MUSH that takes THOSE things into account. I dare you.

But this is exactly how some MUDs have worked 0_o. Like, I have seen literally all of this in a MUD at some point.

I feel like this thread has proven to me that you guys have played some terrible MUDs.

Though I no longer play MUDs for the same reason I no longer play MMORPGs.

@Ganymede Yes, things I've seen. She asked me to give examples of the types of things that I would consider to be a problem, I wasn't saying "here is a comprehensive list of things that bother me". If that was the case, WoD stuff would be the furthest from the list, since I barely play tabletop MUs in general anymore (primarily due to the lack of D&D or Pathfinder MUs).

@Ganymede I've yet to join a WoD game that actually abstracted everything in such a way, though it's not like I join them very often, so maybe I just haven't seen the ones that do this. At best the ones I've played abstract skills and attributes. Though when I played Reach, I barely used the code, so I can't remember how they did things there.

Either way, as I said, I'm not particularly invested in WoD, but Faraday asked for examples, so I gave examples of the types of things I see as needing improvement.

@Ganymede Even in MUDs you have to have a long string of words for certain things. Like the bajillion modifiers of a spell, or some kind of complex combat maneuvers. But the point is that it's intuitive.

Roll isn't particularly less intuitive, but roll is also something that you primarily see in WoD games, and isn't so much a system as a basic tool.

In the context of the roll command, roll Presence + Socialize + Striking Looks + Socialize: Format Events + Applicable Condition + Applicable Discipline is, to me, far simpler than having to go and either look up notes or open up PDFs or Google trying to figure out which PDF which thing is from so that you can remember that something is a 2. Despite the long string of variables, this is still significantly less work than how things are currently handled, in my opinion.

You can't eliminate long strings of variables, not from MUDs or anything, but you can eliminate annoyingly complex syntax. This is not an unreasonably insane level of complex syntax. Even the pluses being used in the context of roll makes sense, because in a tabletop context you are adding things together. The plus signs aren't there for arbitrary coder reasons (well, they are there for code reasons, but also for a practical easy to understand non-coder reason).

So, I see nothing wrong with your example, even though it's an extreme example. Because, again, it's waaaaayy simpler than if you didn't have all of that stuff abstracted and had to find the hard numbers.

@Ganymede But what I mean is, like, if you have an ability that adds something to the science + intelligence modifier, why not just code things so that the abilities add to the roll when you write the ability into it? Like for example +roll presence + manipulation + striking (for striking looks, or some other simple shortcut). It's just weird to me that these games abstract the numbers of attributes and skills, but not everything else, when abstracting everything else would make things easier to roll.

@faraday

Let's use WoD as an example again. Looking at how roll works, ignoring the fact that we need a + in front of roll for some reason, there's other things where I just feel things could be way simpler sometimes. Like the fact that if you have an ability that adds a particular number to a roll, you can't just type that ability in and have it add to the roll, you have to go look that ability up or find your notes to figure out how much it adds, which is all kinds of annoying as shit when you know what you're using and don't necessarily remember the number.

And, time and time again, even the most slight typo in roll will just make it not work, like, you have to type out a word exactly, you can't even be one letter off, or shorten it for the sake of simplicity.

And, if you are going to use roll, the lack of easy to use macros without knowing soft code is something else I'd say would be incredibly helpful to improving the user experience. Granted, this isn't the most simple and newbie friendly feature, I feel that it'd go a long way in making a game that relies primarily on roll more manageable for a player who figures out how to use it. After a while you end up with your most useful macros and no longer have to constantly type out an entire roll, especially when you have a particularly complex roll. Even Byond Tabletop (a non-MU that functioned on very crude scripting code) had easily accessible macros, and that was back in like 2005.

Like, I feel like these are basic quality of life things.

But in addition to that, you also have to figure out whatever proprietary XP spending code someone uses, which wouldn't be that bad except people tend to name their code the same things as other people's code, but it works entirely differently (multiple kinds of xpspend written by different people). And very few of them are particularly simple, considering that I've rarely encountered XP spending code in a WoD game where I didn't have to constantly go back and check the file.

Speaking of, the bizarre goddamned relationship between +requests and +jobs and just, like, it confuses me for reasons I have trouble articulating, but you'll have games that will explain +requests, and then you have to interact with them using jobs, but then in some games +myjobs is for staff and in some games +myjobs is for players. And then other just really weird shit that gets confusing, especially since, more often than not, these games put staff only commands in the files, and you have to figure out wtf is going on in this wall of text. I don't understand why +requests and +jobs are the same system but use two different commands, as I have seen games that just used one or the other, and also avoided putting staff commands in with player commands, and it was just an overall less confusing experience.

And then there's combat code where you need to learn like a mountain of goddamned unintuitive things. Mega Man MUSH and similar games come to mind. Staff don't care if I say it because they know the combat code is trash already, but it's like the definition of a completely hot mess. And it's not exactly an isolated thing. It seems like whenever combat code gets more complex than roll, people go a bit nuts on syntax and the amount of data you need to keep up with, rather than abstracting some things.

Overall, a lot of code is just overwhelming, there's either too much shit to keep track of or too much involved in doing something incredibly simple. If anything I'd say that Faraday's stuff has avoided this for the most part, but I don't think it's unreasonable to think that it'd be cool if when someone codes something more advanced than that, it maybe not simultaneously get overwhelmingly crazy and difficult to deal with. This is what I'm going for with my MU.

@Rook

I don't really disagree with what you're saying, but I do think that from a lot of what I'm reading, what I perceive as being a problem is more complex than my original thoughts when I made the thread.

@Misadventure Well, here in Philly the new residents have a tendency to mock and make fun of entire communities of native residents who express that they are sick of this shit.

Thankfully a lot of the out of towners in West Philly tend to try to work with the residents and even get involved in activism and stuff. But in most other parts of Philly where this is happening, it's just a goddamned mess of entitlement and just treating the natives like trash. I have trouble even being able to stomach talking to these people a lot of the time. Like when I see someone wearing clothes specifically to look both homeless and trendy that are clearly hundreds of dollars, when we have a city full of actual homeless people that they ignore.

Even corporations are gentrifying our goddamned native rich, like, goddamn. We have these two buildings, they are the iconic buildings of our skyline. There was a gentleman's agreement for freaking decades that no one should build anything higher than them. Comcast was just like, "fuck that", and built their eyesore of a building that was intentionally made in the shape of a USB plug.

Fuck Comcast.

@faraday Funny, I was actually writing a part in my post about how I can't think of a way to simplify mail commands in MUSHes or MUDs, since they're pretty much the same in most respects (Actually, MUD mail is waaaaaaaaaaaaay more complicated than MUSH mail, usually).

It's something I'll think about more, though I don't have much confidence that I'll succeed.

But yeah, as far as roll goes, that goes back to what I was saying before. I think it very much depends on how much you want to abstract something like WoD or D&D. Like, if you want a roll command at all.

I don't really think that you should necessarily simplify a roll command anymore than that, because a roll command is a math context. Once you get into using rolls, people are generally expecting math, so it makes stuff like plus signs suddenly intuitive.

I would instead ask myself if I want to build my system around people making rolls (I personally generally wouldn't, but that's because I don't plan to make a tabletop MU), or build something for my personal game's needs that tries to avoid anything that seems too math-ish at all costs.

That said, I do have to say that what I'm suggesting wouldn't work as a system. I mean, maybe it could? I think certain MUDs have stuff like that. But overall, as far as systems that you can just plug and play, I do think that you have things down to a pretty hardcore simplicity. I admit that I don't know how your thing works in great detail (though I have played games with it), I don't necessarily know how one could make a system simple like yours with the level of abstraction that I'm suggesting. At least, I don't know yet. Roll is overall incredibly goddamned bare bones and simple.

What I am suggesting, though, is that if someone is creating something from the ground up, and just being like "Alright, lemme invent a combat system for this game", that they maybe aim for plain English stuff rather than strings of characters and numbers all mixed together for a single attack.

To be honest, re: systems, the intent of making my MU was originally because I wanted to design some sort of perfect universal system, then realized it was pretty much impossible to make a one size fits all system. But if one is going to make their own original one for their own unique needs, I think it would be as easy to interact with as possible, on the abstracted level that I'm talking about. If someone is making a tabletop and doesn't want to abstract everything, then just use a sheet and roll and don't make everything needlessly complicated.

I've seen way too many games that don't go all the way to abstraction, but pile a ton of complexity on top of what is basically a simple roll command.

@Ataru So what you're saying is that Seattle is how I feel about all these goddamned gentrifying hipsters who are ruining my city and acting like they're entitled to push us out because they have money.

To be honest, I feel like @faraday and @Roz's posts cover a lot of what I mean about things being capable of being simplified.

I think what commands are named could be more intuitive. Would that be more confusing if you're coming from being used to a particular command structure? Possibly. But if a game is so radically different from what you're used to theme and community-wise, I think it's easier to accept adapting to those changes, vs. coming from WoD to another WoD game that does everything radically different.

I also think a lot of stuff like needing equals and plus signs and other complex strings could be done away with. In general this is one of those things that I've never encountered in MUDs even when you were, for example, drawing from like five different components of a spell. It didn't require a bunch of crazy ass syntax, it'd just be like <spell> <word> <word> <word> <word>. Any extra shit is abstracted behind the code, not there for the player to type and figure out.

Just, overall, getting down to the very core of my point: Commands shouldn't look like code and/or math (unless the point of the command -is- to do some sort of math). This is specifically why I made the MUD comparison, because a giant chunk of even incredibly complex MUDs typically abstract code and math looking stuff behind a wall that isn't there for the player to interact with. Players interact with basic shit and still get the benefits of the complex but hidden syntax.

Maybe this is too complex of an abstraction for normal MUSH type code, and I can accept that if this is the case (though as I'm planning to use Evennia, I don't really have to worry about that). But just, in general, I don't think that players should have to feel intimidated by syntax, they should be dealing with plain English commands, no symbols or numbers (unless the numbers make sense in a plain English context, like, say, 'eat 10 pigs').

People keep saying that things are impossible, and while it might be impossible for normal MUSH code, it's definitely not impossible for code in the general sense. And I certainly don't think that my desire to make games more approachable to outsiders is "wanting to make a MUD". Like, I again have to repeat, where is the pride in needless complexity if there is something that can be done about it?

tl;dr: No numbers unless they're common sense numbers, no characters that aren't letters. Plain English commands rather than stuff that looks like code syntax. That's how you simplify things.

@mietze Yeah, that's understandable. People are always telling me to move to Seattle, but I guess they mean a specific part.

To be honest, I've lived in Philadelphia for virtually all my life, except for brief stints in neighboring places very early on. I literally cannot comprehend what it's like to live somewhere that isn't segregated. I only recently learned that isn't the norm.

Whenever people talked about segregation being over, I was always kind of genuinely confused, because school or history shows would describe exactly the way my city already is, and then they'd go "It's not like that anymore". Literally wasn't until about two years ago that I learned this was abnormal. I didn't realize that it was segregation because people kept saying it was over even though it seems no different from how things are now.

Like, schools for example, I thought a school without segregation basically meant you had like a few white kids in a black school, or a few black kids in a white school. Ditto with neighborhoods and such. And I've only recently experienced being in a super racially diverse group of people socializing. Like, literally, there was a Latino, a Dominican, a black girl, me, a black guy, some foreign dude, and a few assorted white people.

Shit blew my goddamned mind. That's stuff you see on television.

This was like four days ago.

Double post because an entirely different person on Facebook just literally explained in like a 50 post spammy rant that if black people laugh at white people getting a receipt in an Indian restaurant that said "white ppl" (because they ordered very mild curry), then of course they get murdered and shouldn't have any support, and deserve to die, etc.

Facebook sure is trash.

@surreality I was briefly on FurryMUCK. I realized that people in furry MUs are super judgemental about my love of rainbows, unicorns, and monkeys, so I realized I wasn't a furry. Plus someone hated my desc writing.

Also, when I was 17 I kept trying to TS an adult, but she was like nope, so I guess not everyone is horrible.

@surreality I've experienced all sorts of crazy shit in this hobby, but in the decade+ that I've been in it, I haven't experienced anything close to multiple things you've experienced in twice that long. And chances are I've played more games than most people in general, due to that whole five years I spent not leaving the house when I first got into the hobby.

Makes me wonder if you're cursed. I mean, I have literally been cursed and it's still not that bad.

Still, you shouldn't do something that doesn't bring you joy. So like, I can't blame you for wanting to leave.

@surreality Why do you have like the worst MU history ever?

Sometimes there are moments when I'm full of righteous anger, and then I remove someone from Facebook.

To be honest, there's a ton of people I need to remove from Facebook, but it would complicate my life to do so.

I'm instead going to become increasingly busy and eventually I'll move to either Portugal, Japan, or Seattle, and then have an excuse to never talk to anyone again.

But hey, I've worked my way up from hating life to having a general tolerance for life, so, that's something.

It's nice to have the anonymity of a message board in which I use a name that I use no where else. Then I can mention how I hate all these fucking racially ignorant pieces of shit I constantly deal with but then I have to be nice and can't mention it or else people get fucking #triggered and need a safe space away from the goddamned reality that maybe they're the fucking problem with this country as much as any goddamned backwards redneck.

At least a goddamned Neo Nazi or clan member has some freaking self-awareness. I'd sooner make friends with a fucking clan member than half the motherfuckers who grew up in this city. At least when a clan member says the N word or some fucked up race shit, I can call them a racist motherfucker and they'll just laugh because they know it's true, then they'll probably buy me a goddamned beer because I'm "one of the good ones".

Like Jesus fucking Christ I literally fantasize about how much of a breath of fresh air it would be to be friends with an actual white supremacist than these ignorant motherfuckers in this city who lack any and all self-awareness about how fucked up they are.

The ironic thing is that the person who pissed me off was European, but my daily consistent being pissed off at this city is just too goddamned much. I wanna move to West Philly where everyone's either gay or from out of town, the only two goddamned human traits that seem to make this city livable, other than knowing what a proper cheesesteak is. And some people can't even do that right, putting fucking cheese wiz on a cheesesteak. Goddamn motherfuckers.

Look, tourists can do whatever the fuck they want. If you wanna go to Pat's and Geno's and have them ruin a fucking cheesesteak by putting cheese wiz on it, you do you, that's the tourist experience or whatever. If you want a real cheesesteak, go to Ishkabibble II and get either American or provolone, but do not put cheese wiz on a fucking cheesesteak. I don't care what some "native" says.

Jesus fucking Christ I am angry I need to go calm down. I have repressed far too much black rage. I need to post some Boondocks shit.

tl;dr: This girl on Facebook had some shit to say and I was like:

You'll share your Akashat alt but not your Shang alt.

Poor Akashat.

My old Shang character did make friends with the queen of Akashat when she came she Shang. She's cool as shit and everything got super Lovecraftian.