[roobee]

Some muds have more players, but the large world spreads them out too much. Others have fewer, but commands (ex: that lets them see the location of other players) results in players congregating. So which roleplaying muds will in practice let you interact with lots of players in a room? And how many players would that be?

[shevegen]

> Some muds have more players, but the large world spreads them out
> too much.

Yes, this is often a problem when game designers prioritize on their own
wants and needs to "add more areas", without considering the trade offs
such as making it harder to find other players to interact with.

> Others have fewer, but commands (ex: that lets them see the
> location of other players) results in players congregating.

I absolutely hated it when game designers forced my characters to
signal their location to everyone else, without any way to disable
this **** (perma-locator).

In another MUD, a temporary game designer registered everyone who
logged in with a 48 hours cooldown, while removing the old variant.

So now you were not only globally tracked but also were forced to
sniff for other people's logins and get sniffed too. Felt as if I would
have been forced to sniff and invade other player's privacy and
also got sniffed. Ended my time playing there. Ironically, that
temporary game designer also abandoned the game soon
afterwards. Fun how things turn out.

I stopped playing on both MUDs because of that. Actually, that is
not entirely true - reallife simply is more important.

But it was a contributing factor, together with the general lack
of consideration of player complaints in general.

Some MUDs are ruined by game designers and there is nothing
you can do (as a player). Why play a game when you are
being ignored anyway.

> So which roleplaying muds will in practice let you interact
> with lots of players in a room? And how many players would
> that be?

It depends on how many players are in said MUD or MUDs.

I can not give a good account of non-LPC MUDs.

But in the old days, both LPC MUDs that I have at one point
been playing (Xyllomer and Geas) have had a lot of interaction
potential in a single room.

For PvP, both MUDs ranged in the same, roughly - peak count was
at 11 players in one PvP for Geas in 2010, and significantly more
so for Xyllomer during its peak days (1999 or before; the peak
counts were possibly about 15 players in PvP or so, which would
usually be achieved when raiding bigger areas).

For non-PvP content, one festival in Geas in 2011 had about
17 different players or so, with some late-joiners lateron (when
others already logged out; difficult to retain interest of players
over a few hours).

In Xyllomer, these numbers were also possible in the older days
at the least. E. g. when PO Angborn was playing. But also some
other events.

Obviously it depends a lot on how many players you are able
to attract and keep interested in the first place, but both MUDs
managed to do so, at different times. These were LPC-based
muds though.

For DIKU and other styles, I have no real idea, but the "top"
MUDs have attracted more players in total, so they might
logically assume to have more players. Most of the "top" muds
leading the charts are not roleplay-centric MUDs, so I never
could play them in the first place.

I was reading through some of the logs by some of the
"top" MUDs and they have been of amazingly poor quality.

It's sorta weird that they would constantly dominate the
upper ranks - then again, it may also be that most players
don't care much and just want to have a good time.

[dark acacia]

^I think, for RP purposes, that the "introduce" command is a lot worse than the "where" command.

At least "where" lets you find people for RP. "Introduce" is either too easily abused, or encourages lousy RP--either you get the conversation where someone randomly comes up to you and introduces him or herself for no reason, or you get people who will introduce you to EVERYONE whether you want them to or not. It's even worse if "introduce" puts you in the who list of everyone who knows your name. If you're the local evil guy or unfortunate newbie RP pariah, your presence online is suddenly made known to everyone who ever happened to share a room with you for any length of time.