Listen, I know that I'm not some ridiculously experienced coder, but this is a talk that needs to happen. I decided to make this post after I responded to a comment Thenomain made.
For years, since I even got into this hobby, I've noticed just really monstrously shitty design practices. One of the most grave shitty design practices is just what I can only describe as a complete disregard for UX design.
Coders, time and time again, seem to code things that are simple to coders. Rather than simplifying the code or looking at a more efficient way to do things, they write like 4 help files on how to use one feature. I don't care what anyone says, 4 help files is a manual.
Players should be focusing on ways to apply a tool, not spending forever figuring out how to use it. It should be in some way intuitive how a piece of code works after a few short lines of explanation. Anything further than that should be advanced functionality that builds on top of the basic functionality, and this itself should also be intuitive, not confusing syntax that takes forever to remember.
I'm sure plenty of people are gonna go "But that's impossible!", especially considering how many times I've talked about how complicated a piece of code was, and a coder was like "That seems fine to me". Well, no shit, you're who coded it.
To anyone thinking like that, I say play literally any MUD. Even the most shitty MUD has common sense UX. You can typically get basic functionality with very minimal file reading, and more advanced functionality over time, as you need it, and then it just becomes intuitive.
Where initiating combat in the average MUSH with a combat system requires knowing like a million goddamned pieces of syntax, in a MUD it's like "attack <thing>", then something like "kick <thing>". And more advanced things build on top of this common sense syntax and functionality. Some go so far as to even have an intuitive text interface that makes it even simpler, where the average MUSH requires you to know even more syntax to do something like check your health or whatever.
The point is, the more stuff you're gonna pile into a game, the lower the difficulty of actually using and figuring out how to use it needs to be. Think about how someone who has never been in a MU before would interact with your code. My first MU was Dragon Ball Evolution (they named it that before the shitty movie came out), a MUD. Everything made sense after a very short while.
I didn't get into MUSHes until possibly nearly a year later, because the barrier to entry just seemed massively higher. Huge, intimidating apps, the idea that some stranger was going to tell me that I sucked and can't be in their game (this is not the case, obviously, but outside of MUing the RP communities are far more brutal). Syntax just seemed like this crazy confusing mess to figure out, where in a MUD I never really thought about it. In a MUD I focused on what to do with the tool I was given, I didn't spend forever trying to figure out how to use it.
I'm not shitting on MUSHes and saying "Fuck you guys I'm going back to MUDs", what I am saying is that we can do better, and there is precedent that we can do better. Are we going to let MUDs beat us?
Do you realize that in MUDs they think that all people in MUSHes do is sit around is talk, and that we don't RP? They have the same stereotype about us that we have of them.
Don't take that shit laying down! Let's show that we can do better.
I'm ready for the flames.
