Oh, in case the last message (or two) weren't 'CircleMUD' related
enough - it was in a particular way - here's an ObCircle for you:
A recent topic sprang up and faded away pretty quickly on the
muddev list, but it is of particular importance to us. The concept being
discussed at the time was that of mud uniqueness, and how the large number
of non-unique muds caused a general negative view towards all muds -
enough to turn players off. Least, I think it was muddev.. my mind is
slipping lately
The case examples of this were specifically named as diku, and
it's derivitives (and I don't have to tell you that circle is one of the
easiest derivitives to get up and running, even if it is not as full
featured).
I usually pay visits to most muds that even briefly catch my
attention, just a 'look and see' sort of thing, and sad to say that the
majority of circles fail in one of several ways:
1) remove the custom colors and different display styles, and it
is identical to any other circlemud that went out there, downloaded and
installed every potential patch, spent 5-10 hours mucking with code
(mostly cosmetic changes), and then said "we're open"
2) Incredibly unique game system/social structure/etc, but paired
incredibly unique and difficult to use or conceptually understand
system and no simple way for a new user to pick it up without great
effort. It's annoying to starve just because you can't figure out where
to get food.
3) Someone left the xerox machine on - and you thought we wouldn't
notice. That is; "82 races! 121 classes, multiclassing allowed for 12,802
unique class settings! 3 trillion spells! 56,700 skills for each class!".
And you find out there's nothing to differentiate between races except
starting stats and a cosmetic blurb on 'who' or 'look', classes differ
only in fighting ability at low level, and spell use or not. This is
Unimportant because all skills are just variations on the same
damage-causing theme only, different power levels, same with the spells.
Spark, shocking grasp, lightning bolt, lightning strike, lightning
storm...all the same spell just different max damages....
I think nothing upsets me more than #3 - to see a mud with all
these races and classes and what have you, and of them, there's not even a
stock mud worth of value in the whole bundle together.
Maybe I'm slipping off topic a bit.. I suppose I shouldn't rant
about what I see - everyone's seen this stuff and a million more examples
I left out. What I'm curious about is whether you think this is something
we should pay attention to; about whether the 12 people who have sent me
a message like:
> can u tel me how 2 c0de plz? i'm using hotmail, jest snd 4 ur 5
> linez, or my mailbox will ovrflow. still tying to figrue how 2 dletee
> old stuffz.
... are actually causing the vast populations of potential players
to skip my mud, simply because it's the same brand as theirs?
(yes, that was part of an actual message, saved for posterity, and
slightly repaginated and words I didn't understand removed. No, the
author was apparently english speaking. Just.. uh.. yeah.)
When I put out a patch or snippet, or other, am I actually causing
people to hate my type of mud more?
I guess it's something I ought to think about.
PjD
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