From: Darrell Shimel <threeedgedsword35@yahoo.com>
> Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 09:29:27 -0800 (PST)
> [...]
> What erosion of the fog of war? I've not seen them provide
> players any information that the player couldn't get by
> reading all their teammates' pdfs.
Really? Where do you go to get the answers to your MEPBM riddles when
you can't figure them out for yourself?
> Email and Yahoo groups eroded the fog of war, not ME Games.
You forgot web pages. But I agree with your assertion here in most
ways; the fog of war regarding Dragons, Riddles, Seasons, Production,
Market Influences, and so on were all eroding before ME Games
consolidated all those erodants into a one-stop-shopping erodant
store.
However, the fog of not knowing who in the Real World [TM] was playing
what Nation was eroded by places like Harlequin and ME Games, as I
understand it.
> Yes, Palantir presents the information in a more user
> friendly way, but it doesn't provide ANY extra information.
Such support tools were inevitable. I was going to write one to
supplant Palantir + MEOW + Turn Checker but ME Games is already
working on it, so I've turned my software engineering skills to
another project.
> > TWO: The constraining of an amoral Real Politik into an
> > English 'spirit of the game".
>
> Most people I know HATED, HATED, HATED what you call the
> "Real Politik". I think this is what spawned the team and
> grudge game formats, which happend LONG before Harlie took
> over from GSI.
And you are, apparently, in the very great majority on this point.
> I know I hated that aspect of the game. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE
> that Harlie doesn't reward individual game winners.
You realize you are arguing directly into Ed's previous statements on
this matter, right?
What makes that 'Real Politik' aspect of the game manifest is
precisely what you hate; the unknowns about your neighbors, the
uncertainty about loyalties and motives.
Ed loves that aspect of a game. He's apparently a rare breed.
You hate that aspect of a game. You're in the majority.
Ed is, if I may be so bold as to paraphrase his previous arguments on
the matter, of the opinion that this element of the game constitutes
artistic genius, and in his opinion those who don't like this are, at
least in this regard, a bit simpler people than those who do like it.
That last bit is a touch arrogant, but surely we all have our moments
where arrogance guides us a bit more than perhaps we'd like. It is
natural, albeit potentially unwise and unhealthy, to see people with
lesser skills in an area where we excel as...I hate to use the phrase,
but it's true...lesser beings. Only in that context, usually, but it
is a natural emotive conclusion most people draw under those
circumstances.
As I see it, Ed's just a little bit more gruff in his presentation of
that opinion than others would tend to be. Hardly a killing crime.
> I love that this aspect has been removed so much, that I just
> about got myself banned from the game by fighting AGAINST the
> PRS that returned these STUPID, much harted personal victory
> points to ANY kind of importance at all.
What or who is/are/were "the PRS"?
> The aspect that has been removed, was an aspect I HATED!!!!!!
Yes, and there still appears to be some emotional energy attached to
that reaction. 
> > THREE: Simplifications that amount to a "dumbing down" of
> > the game.
>
> What dumbing down??? Give one example of a simplification
> that dumbed down the game.
Ed has presented an argument at least once, which I paraphrased and
summarized terribly above, enumerating at least one aspect of the game
which he considers to be "dumbed down". It's that the game as it is
generally played today eliminates a lot of variable conditions that,
in his opinion, required a lot of skill to play when they were still
present. Such as knowing who in Real Life [TM] your neighbors were,
and thus permitting out-of-band communication with them.
See, if you had no way of identifying your teammates (never mind that
in this day and age that's very nearly impossible to enforce, but *if*
it were), then you couldn't share your PDFs and XMLs with them.
You could send Diplomatic Missives via ME Games, and you could outline
all sorts of information, but just "*plop* here's the whole team's
view" would not be possible. THERE WOULD BE MORE VARIABLES. A
teammate might have a less-than-perfect agenda in order to win
personally. And balancing between team goals and personal goals
becomes something everyone has to do.
In Ed's opinion (again, summarizing and paraphrasing, and thus risking
a lack of perfect accuracy), these things required skills which are
not needed when you have perfect communication on the teams. Surely
you cannot argue against this one detail.
So take the next step: Ed feels that removing the need for these
skills in the game is a "dumbing down" of the game.
You don't have to agree. But *surely* you can see where he's coming
from.
> If you consider a "user friendly interface" to be dumbing
> down, then we'll NEVER see eye-to-eye on this point. I love
> the user friendly interface that is Palantir.... It needs a
> lot of work, but is much better than trying to keep a
> full-sized map up to date with lots of little stick pins and
> stickers.
I concur. In my survey response, I took every opportunity to point
out that the one thing MEPBM was missing today was a killer client
application program. Regardless of whether it is used in a team mode
or in an individual mode, MEPBM needs to get out of 1985 and 1990
technology and "modern up" in order to grow. It needs a killer client
app, one which can load up all XMLs, track all changes (including
bridges added or removed from the turn map), enter orders (especially
movement orders!) DIRECTLY throught he GUI, rebuke the player for
attempting to perform illegal operations, and so on. The modern day
multiplayer online game player wants, needs, expects this. If MEPBM
is going to grow, it needs to grow up.
That is, I suspect, largely separate from what Ed references when he
somewhat derragatorily mentions the "dumbing down" of the game. But
it is of course possible that this is an equal attribute of dumbness
in his opinion. I can't speak for Ed. I'm just trying to translate
some of his arguments into different words, ones to which you might be
able to more understandingly relate.
I hope I've succeeded.
Frankly, I'd like to see a game set up where great efforts were made
to keep the players ignorant of each others' identities, and where
automatic sharing of information was made so difficult as to be not
worth the effort, and where individual victory conditions could be
tangentially a motive in each player's activities, and where those
individual victories mattered.
But I acknowledge that it would be a rare event, because most people
don't like Diplomacy that much and would work hard enough to get
around whatever roadblocks were put in place to prevent it.
The fact is, the team games suit more gamers' desires; even when
they're not playing in the grudge game team format, apparently.
So be it.
···
_________________
Steven K. Mariner
skmyg@bhmk.com
http://home.earthlink.net/~marinersk/
http://www.whirlyjigmusic.com/