Re: [MUD-Dev] Text Parsing

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock <caliban#darklock,com>]

On 10:05 PM 6/9/99 -0700, I personally witnessed claw#kanga,nu jumping up
to say:
>On Wed, 09 Jun 1999 21:25:51 -0700 
>Caliban Tiresias Darklock <caliban#darklock,com> wrote:
>
>> Nobody *likes* to fail. It's okay if your game is hard and takes
>> time, but it's *not* okay if the user is expected to fail
>> repeatedly in the process of learning it.
>
>A lot of the, err, failure of failure can be mitigated if every time
>the player fails, it is reasonably obvious to him that if he only
>did XXX or YYY differently next time he'd have a decent chance of
>coming out a winner.

I'd also add the caveat that the failure needs to be small enough to allow
getting back onto your feet without much trouble. CR's in Diku derivatives
are a good example; if you wander into an area you can't handle, and you
get killed trying to get out because you're lost, not only are you unable
to easily find your corpse -- you're in no condition to even go looking for
it. As a result, I tend to consider helping people with CRs to be among the
noblest things you can do, provided you don't request some outrageous
payment. ;)

-----
| Caliban Tiresias Darklock            caliban#darklock,com 
| Darklock Communications          http://www.darklock.com/ 
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