08-02-2006, 10:23 AM | #61 |
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Please don't think I'm trying to be offensive. I'm not. I'm pointing out the advantages as an active player in the game. Because there are only 4 classes and one race, it is possible to expand the game in other areas, such as equipment and equipment zones with less concern to balance.
There are more choices and options in the game than just class and alignment. Just the course of playing the game each day offers a large variety of choices in front of the player. Am I supporting Med because it's my favorite game? In part. But also because I see a lot of blanket statements coming from people who have not played the game at all, or have played it only a limited amount of time. Or have not played it in years. Med is a complex game. I doubt anyone will deny that. It is one that requires character and skill development and growth. Most players who play Med, play because they enjoy the complexity of a game where the object isn't just to win or lose. |
08-02-2006, 11:04 AM | #62 |
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I can't think of a single MUD where the object is to win or lose.
I've played lots of MUDs over the years, never once have I seen a GAME OVER screen... |
08-02-2006, 11:30 AM | #63 |
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Jeena,
I'm not trying to be offensive either, and I do hope you can see I've been respecting your opinion of the game as a player. In fact, I'm rather impressed by how civil everyone has been thus far. I will absolutely not try to impugn your tastes in mudding. You love Medievia, the people, the gameplay, the experience. Awesome. Rock on. But what we're talking about is *technical merit*, which is something your staments strongly suggest you're not very familiar with. You're saying, for example, that car X is great because you really love it, and people misunderstand it, and they should drive it and see for themselves. Whereas in this example, I am saying that it is fine you love car X, but it is advertised as the most powerful and luxurious car ever made, when in fact it has 4 cylinders (6 if you pay more) and its seats and controls are exactly the same as they were on cars shortly after they were invented. It's great that you love it. But if you want to debate the technical details, you'll have to do more that declare other people fail to enjoy the complexity of mudding. -Crat |
08-02-2006, 12:21 PM | #64 |
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Was it? I mean, you're speaking to motivation now and Vyrce isn't particularly talkative...
--matt |
08-02-2006, 12:55 PM | #65 |
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I'd agree that the majority of text MUDers want to roleplay some which is why RP encouraged is popular. Few want to be forced to roleplay all the time, which is why there are no RP-enforced text MUDs among the big MUDs and few of them that even reach medium-sized playerbases.
--matt |
08-02-2006, 12:58 PM | #66 |
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You can't look at MUDs as a checklist of features. Saying, "I have a mage class" is almost meaningless because it tells you nothing about the mage class. A MUD with a single class could be deeper and more wide-ranging than a MUD with a thousand classes. MUDs are single products/services, not a bunch of disparate ones lumped together.
What you're doing is the equivalent of dismissing Go because "there are only two kinds of pieces." (I'm NOT comparing Medievia to Go in terms of beauty/depth of the game, but the process of reasoning you're using to dismiss Medievia is the same as dismissing Go for that reason.) --matt |
08-02-2006, 01:02 PM | #67 |
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Baram wrote:
Genocide MUD (opened in 1992) is all about winning and losing, and player characters are reset at the beginning of each 'war.' A Tale in the Desert also ends and restarts when the game is won. |
08-02-2006, 03:15 PM | #68 |
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I don't think it's yet been argued that Medievia's
class system is technically superior to the class systems found on other muds. So far, nobody's said the 4 are any great shakes. Until they do, it is an entirely reasonable premise that Medievia's classes aren't that different from those found elsewhere, and since they're fewer in number, they provide less variety. If that is so, and Medievia's content is otherwise as mediocre as has been suggested here, then the number of classes is an obvious "feature" to be examined in the context of the most detailed game in human history. I don't remember saying that all muds with more classes are better than all muds with fewer. Your Go comparison is called a "straw man argument", where you set up something you wish I'd said so you could argue against it. My position is that Medievia's 4 classes and 1 race, as I understand them from the posts so far, limit the player experience. You're suggesting Medievia *could* be equivalent in depth to 1,000 mud-depth-units (perhaps 4,000?), despite the classes. Fine. But I haven't heard that seriously argued here. What I've gathered is that Medievia is so-so. And given that, the number of classes is an entirely valid component of the measure of available variety. -Crat |
08-02-2006, 03:37 PM | #69 |
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Cratylus wrote:
Well, what do you mean by technically superior? When I think technically superior, I think more in terms of things like how many CPU cycles a feature uses with X player load. You seem to be talking about the design end rather than the technical end, and while certain design conventions might be argued to be superior, they are much more low level (it's good to lower the barrier to entry for the player, for example) than high-level decisions like how many classes to have. I don't see that one race is inherently better or worse than 100 races just like I don't having a single scalar representation of 'health' to be any inherently better or worse than multiple scalars representing different kinds of 'health'. --matt |
08-02-2006, 03:45 PM | #70 |
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I'm sorry about your confusion.
Your post is interesting because it confirms my suspicion that you don't actually argue points. You seem to mostly enjoy nitpicking, rather than actually discussing the topic at hand. As to your question, it's irrelevant. Whether I mean the one thing you said or the other, it just hasn't been part of the debate, which was the point. And this is a useful thing to point out in the context of my argument that the few classes, combined with arguably mediocre content are indeed a valid point of critique for a mud claiming what Medievia does. -Crat |
08-02-2006, 08:17 PM | #71 |
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I would think so, yes. It's reasonable to make some degree of inferences about an engineer or artist from studying enough of their works, and while I wouldn't precisely call Vryce either, the concept it still sound.
After enough years of going in the same direction and making the same kind of choices, you have to assume it's intentional. |
08-02-2006, 09:17 PM | #72 |
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I couldn't agree with you more Matt. In my experience, the amount of classes or races has no effect on my play experience. As a matter of fact, MUDs that have TOO MANY races or classes often turn me away because I don't feel like putting the effort in and learning what each individual race or class does.
I've heard people refer to many of the classless or raceless MUDs I play as "Black Coffee" MUDs, because they think that the lack of races or classes makes it inferior to some MUD with a thousand races and some treasure chest's worth of pre-defined play classes. I like the Go metaphor, but I'll use one I'm more inclined to. The difference, to me personally, seems like the difference between Chess and Checkers. In Chess, the pieces all have functions and traits, almost like races and classes. There are certain ways you can use each piece, and there is a right and wrong way to play each piece. Certain pieces can counter others, blah blah blah. However, with Checkers, all pieces are identical in movement (except for kinged pieces) but their true ability lies with the player. Your ability in Checkers does not often depend on your correct use of the piece, but your ability to play Checkers. I've always been a Checkers man, while it's not often given the same credit as Chess so far as checks and balances and variety of play techniques, Checkers's strategical depth can be as good or greater than Chess simply because of the infinite amount of possibilities individuals can accomplish. And just like raceless and classless MUDs, Chess players often dismiss Checkers as a fool's game. I dunno, we'll see if this metaphor works as I intended, it sounds alright to me at this moment. |
08-02-2006, 11:13 PM | #73 |
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Interesting, now I know there are a couple out there.
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08-03-2006, 08:53 AM | #74 |
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As a side note, I just played my first Go game
ever last night. Pretty darn cool. Ilkidarios, as I posted before, in a theoretical sense, it is obviously possible for a mud with no classes and one race to be "better" than another with dozens of each. But that wasn't the point made. The point is that Medievia is alleged to be a run-of-the-mill mud when it comes to content, meaning that if its classes are like the classes in other muds, the number of races and classes becomes a fair part of the measure of the truthfulness of their promotions. -Crat |
08-03-2006, 10:10 AM | #75 |
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You're missing the point - logos took one of my comments out of context to attack it, and now you're responding as if it were an actual point.
The fact that Medievia has 4 classes is irrelevant. The fact that Medievia has no races is irrelevant. Heck, my mud has 4 classes and no races, so it would be kind of silly for me to use that as the basis for an argument. The point I made is that Medievia's approach to classes is stock. Their approach to races is stock. Their approach to combat is stock. Many features of their game are stock. And not just "stock", but over a decade out-of-date stock. The vast majority of muds, even those which have changed practically nothing, are considerably more advanced than Medievia in many ways. Now personally I don't have a problem with stock per se. But when such muds start claiming things like the "most detailed game ever made in all of human history" or the "largest game in the world when it comes to features", then I feel compelled to raise an objection (once I've stopped laughing). |
08-03-2006, 01:55 PM | #76 |
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Oh, okay, that was my mistake.
I mean, personally I've never played Medievia, so I can't really judge the game, but I've played other MUDs in which there are single races and only a few classes. I myself actually prefer a classless system like SoI, which is what I was implying by the Checker's metaphor. However, having not played Medievia, I was not aware of the extent of the stock nature of it. |
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