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Anybody old enough to remember multiplayer muds?
You can invite people over. Feed them a dinner of shrimp scampi while regaling over how you lost a arm fighting a titan, then pour a fine bottle of elven Moscato to share.
Then you spawn poison rats and lock them inside.
All of that was through text of course.
But instead of creating emergent gameplay like that, all MMOs are doing is making harder bosses and rewarding people with end game plus-one loot.
With the spike in popularity that D&D has seen lately is that not the natural evolution of old school muds? Even if you can’t be together in person, video streaming over the internet has made it so the old text interface isn’t needed anymore, you can just interact in real time without being in the same place.
MMORPGs aren’t really the same. You don’t have infinite capability to do whatever you want, you’re typically playing an RPG with friends, and most of the endgame is structured around keeping people engaged through progressively difficult content.
As AI get better and is capable of actually writing some more engaging stories in real time I think you’ll see some convergence here. Like for example, a game where two kingdoms are at war (a common enough trope in RPGs), but you go full stealth, work your way into the enemy castle and kill their king. What happens after that? Have they got a contingency for that? Will they double their efforts against you? Does their army fall apart? Do they surrender?
You couldn’t pull that scenario off in an RPG these days without it being scripted, but in the future as the tech gets better you’ve got the possibility of building living breathing worlds that can react to the actions of the player (or players).
IMO, emergent narrative is a lazy developer not writing a story for their game and pushing all that onto a player. It can work in some games, but to me it just feels lazy, and those games are ones I usually get bored with and drop pretty fast if I am not playing with friends. For a text only MUD, there is really no difference between that and just doing the same thing in a messenger or IRC. Plus, thats really the only kind of gameplay you can get from a text based MMO. Games with actual graphics have a larger variety of gameplay, and therefore need to be limited in scope in order to be made on time.
Look at Star Citizen. Its an amazing game, and there are a large number of things that the developers want players to be able to do that you cannot do in other MMOs. But that game is still in development, and probably will be that way for at least the next 25 years.
The thing about multiplayer games in general is that the fun part is playing with friends, usually not the actual gameplay. Even games with the most trash gameplay can be fun if you are playing with friends.
For a text only MUD, there is really no difference between that and just doing the same thing in a messenger or IRC
That’s just not true, a MUD allows for independent, asynchronous play that just isn’t enjoyable in a chat. So you can look at item descriptions, interact with NPCs, etc, all on your own, so there’s something to do when your friends aren’t online.
Even games with the most trash gameplay can be fun if you are playing with friends.
Sure, and the same goes for trash graphics, like MUDs. The fun part of a MUD is exploring a world a friend has created, or exploring a world a friend found along with your other friends.
Games with actual graphics have a larger variety of gameplay
I don’t think that’s actually true. Graphical MP games usually have very limited gameplay, like a restricted set of spells or weapons, and they kind of need to be restricted for balance reasons. MMOs need strict rules because it’s just not feasible to adapt to individual gameplay desires.
MUDs and DND worlds are much more flexible to the point where the serve admin/DM can modify gameplay based on user feedback. Do you want to use a table as a weapon? Go for it, the DM can assign a strength requirement and come up with relevant dice rolls. Or maybe you want to permanently destroy a building because your enemy is there. Again, it’s up to the DM, not the rules of the engine. The graphics live in the players’ collective imaginations, so the gameplay doesn’t need to be restricted by what a designer is able to come up with before launch.
They’re not for everyone, but they shouldn’t be dismissed just because they don’t have eye candy.
