[MUD-Dev] Forced story line...

["quzah [sotfhome]" <quzah#softhome,net>]

I guess this is sort of irrelevent to mud programming, but
perhaps not, so I thought I'd pose a quick question to you
as a whole.

Does anyone actually LIKE forced story lines? I recently
began playing "unreal", even thought I said I wouldn't
play any "doom-clones", because it is something to pass
the time. Surprisingly, I found it an interesting game,
and acually like a the two types of ways to use each of
the weapons.

At any rate, one thing I found that really pisses me off,
and that I hate, is their "forced" little scenarios: They
always force those little four-armed-friendly-guys to get
killed, and most of the time there is nothing you can do
to prevent it. (I have spend hours loading, just so I can
run into the room, and try different ways to kill the bad
guys before they blow away the little four-armed guys.)
Does anyone here find themselves doing this? One stage
that I spend HOURS on loading, was where there is this
guy standing on a square in the ground. Above his head is
a huge platform suspended by ropes. If you pull a lever,
the platform falls, smashes the guy, and smashes through
the floor, opening a passage way. -- The guy WILL NOT
for the life of him move. Finally, I had to end up shooting
the guy in the foot, so he would get scared of me and run
away. For some reason, I felt really pissed that I had to
harm the lil guy to save his life, because there was no
other way to do it.

Often, they do this, where "lil-guy" is going to get
trashed, and there's close to nothing you can do about
it. Another one that pissed me off, was this stage where
there are two guards standing near a cliff, in front of
them is a plank leading into space (fall to death) and
by the plank is a "lil-guy". Try as you may, you cannot
ever save the guy. You can (after MANY MANY loads) shoot
both guards in time; that SHOULD save the guy, but he
just does his "forced" movement, and walks right off the
edge of the cliff.

To sum it up; does anyone like forced scenarios? I know
you can depict (in this case, how bad the guards are to
kill the helpless lad) stories with it, but does anyone
really enjoy them, or have a really good use for them?

All I know, is that I ALWAYS try to get around them,
perhaps it is just my play style (hmmm.. to get around
the rules). I like to see what I can get away with I guess,
and in UNREAL, I like to try and screw up their small lil
forced sub-plots by saving the lil guys life.
-Q-


(also, you can't save the lil guys that are nailed
to those cross-like things, and elsewhere when they
are trapped alive to something. <grumble>)