Some friends and I have recently started playing a very old MUD, marking the first time I’ve been in a game world without some form of graphics in half a decade. For those who don’t know or haven’t played one, a MUD is a text-based roleplaying (well, really, any online game by definition) game in which your current area is described to you in the game, and movement is accomplished by choosing one of the available cardinal directions or by taking a less obvious exit. Combat exists in these games and is usually very in-depth, pitting typing skills and memory versus your opponents, rather than gear and ’sploits as is found in many graphical MMOs today.
The game is incredibly in-depth and intense so far (we’ve been basically handed characters which were well established in the world and have been expected to learn the ways of the masters in a remarkably short amount of time) and has been the source of much enjoyment over the past week and a half. I forgot how much more realistic and immersive a MUD can be compared to a graphical game. I’ve (over)used the joke that my brain has a superior rendering engine compared to anything that’s come out in a game so far (and I suppose that will be true forever!).
Anyway, one of the minor annoyances that I have with the MUD is that it’s very hard for new players to orient themselves with the maps of the myriad towns and adventuring areas in a timely manner. You have to read the descriptions to get an idea of where you actually are, and start thinking in terms of north, south, east, and west and really wrack your brain to remember the paths to and from certain areas (obviously, the fact that most MUDs are very easily scripted helps in this regard, but you can’t script everywhere). Compared to how great the combat is, and how much control you have over your every move in combat, the disorientation experienced by new players in the MUD realm seems almost trivial, or at least negligible.
Naturally, in friendly discussion, this raised the question of whether it would ever be feasible to create a 3-D world and environment in a game while still keeping the very appealing MUD-style combat. Is it possible to create a beautiful landscape and keep it free from the spoils of pathing errors and buggy aggro radii? Imagine a world where the player can walk around in 3-D, and once they enter a (displayed, or inferrable) aggro radius of a certain mob, the game switches modes to a different combat screen. So far, it sounds very familiar to a Final-fantasy-type combat situation, but what if you could have complete control of your battle in real time with the kind of accuracy afforded by a MUD? Once the battle is over, then, 3-D play resumes until the next battle. Of course, it would have to be possible for new enemies to enter the battle (among other things, there are always tons of complications).
Now, what I’ve described does tend to sound a bit like EverQuest, but compared to the complexity of combat in a MUD, the combat in EverQuest (with it’s limited hotkeys and actions) seems daunting.
The thing about this whole “idea” is that it doesn’t seem like a very far stretch to assume that someone out there has done it already. You get the benefit of the graphical movement system with the beautifully rendered cities and landscape, yet the complexity of combat that can only be got in a MUD. Is there such a game?
