Best features of a mud.
Tim O'Connor
limitless lists of muds or searching here for an advert I find
interesting has merit I was hoping for a more direct aproach.
Here is what I will do, I'll make a list of traits I like about a mud
and see what kind of responses it delves up.
First off I really like for a mud to be serious. Nothing drives me
away faster than smurf villages and bottles of Evian.
Along the same lines I like a mud to be dark and gloomy and
mysterious.
I am very interested in role playing as opposed to roll playing.
Hunting for eq is one kind of thing but players that wait on repops is
rediculous. Just the idea that someone bases their happiness on some
little piece of data on a harddrive miles away that detirmines how much
gold their player has makes me pity them.
I hate midgaard and the mudschool. If the builders of a mud have not
taken the time to take out and replace these things then I find it hard
to believe that it is a serious mud.
I like a wide variety of races as long as they have a purpose. I don't
see a point in having ogres and half giants unless there is a real
difference between them.
I like a real big skill and spell base, but who doesn't.
I think powerful magic items should be rare enough that when you find
one and where it is you go and get 20 to sell.
I like imms that take an active role in the game but don't bug you too
much.
I like realism.
If there are any muds out there interested in a player who is interested
in these things then drop me a line. Feel free to make additions or
comments on the above blather.
Visago Darkholme
Jim Gi Tsou
Tim O'Connor <oco...@emily.eosc.osshe.edu> wrote:
> First off I really like for a mud to be serious. Nothing drives me
>away faster than smurf villages and bottles of Evian.
Arctic is a MUD loosely based on the Dragonlance novels. Most of the
zones are DL theme based, and all zones are 100% original.
> Along the same lines I like a mud to be dark and gloomy and
>mysterious.
Some places are dark and gloomy, and you won't find players shouting
stats of items or locations of zones. The secret people find, they keep
to themseleves.
>Hunting for eq is one kind of thing but players that wait on repops is
>rediculous. Just the idea that someone bases their happiness on some
>little piece of data on a harddrive miles away that detirmines how much
>gold their player has makes me pity them.
Arctic encourages roleplaying, although it is not enforced, the
atmosphere of the MUD strongly supports it.
> I hate midgaard and the mudschool. If the builders of a mud have not
>taken the time to take out and replace these things then I find it hard
>to believe that it is a serious mud.
Arctic has Solace, Tarsis, Palanthas, Kalaman and Balifor.
> I like a wide variety of races as long as they have a purpose. I don't
>see a point in having ogres and half giants unless there is a real
>difference between them.
We have 7 races and 7 classes to choose from. Each classes are unique and
well balanced.
>
> I like a real big skill and spell base, but who doesn't.
>
> I think powerful magic items should be rare enough that when you find
>one and where it is you go and get 20 to sell.
You find find on Arctic, no 2 characters will have the same set of
equipment. Items (especially powerful) are rare and limited. High level
spell casters must also find spellbooks in order to learn rare and
powerful spells. Spellbooks also load randomly all over the world.
Arctic can be reached at mud.arctic.org 2700
Or you can try our web page at http://www.arctic.org/
Katie Sehorn
Tim O'Connor <oco...@emily.eosc.osshe.edu> wrote:
>
> First off I really like for a mud to be serious. Nothing drives me
>away faster than smurf villages and bottles of Evian.
>mysterious.
>
>ridiculous.
> I think powerful magic items should be rare enough that when you find
>one and where it is you go and get 20 to sell.
These two kind of contradict each other if you put them side by
side. If you're looking for something rare (obviously meaning not sold
in the shops) and trying to get 20 of them, you're waiting for a re-pop
just as much as the next person.
That aside, I also like the idea of item scarcity. The best way
I've found to do this is to create the object, but not put it in the
reset file. This allows the imms to load the object at will and put it
on the mobile that should have it, and eliminates all possibility of it
reloading after a crash.
> I hate midgaard and the mudschool. If the builders of a mud have not
>taken the time to take out and replace these things then I find it hard
>to believe that it is a serious mud.
Other games leave it in for the sake of familiarity. Some people
who are MUDhopping and looking for a new home enjoy being able to find
their way around at least part of the game from the word go, not to
mention already knowing exactly what they can kill with impunity.
And hey, the MUD school may become old to you, but that zone was
very well written and covers a lot of important things that a total
beginner has to know. I was trying to write a new MUD school last fall
(maybe y'all remember, Catholic MUD School?), and the single hardest
thing for me to do was remember all of the commands that a player would
need to know to survive out in the big bad world.
>
> I like a wide variety of races as long as they have a purpose. I don't
>see a point in having ogres and half giants unless there is a real
>difference between them.
I'd like to see games implement 'mob racism' - Circle 3.0 already
has shopkeepers refusing to trade with certain guilds, and I don't see
why imps couldn't expand it so that, say, elven shopkeepers wouldn't do
business with orcish players. And, of course, there would have to be
racial aggression - a human probably couldn't wander around inside a drow
settlement without getting attacked, but maybe a kobold could. And with
those features implemented, there WOULD be a valid reason for having two
races of big, stupid, smelly, drooling head-bashers. </alfvaen>
> I like a real big skill and spell base, but who doesn't.
I prefer diversity over size. Yes, a game can have 60 different
mage spells, but if 50 of them are just new and different ways to attack
mobiles, I'm not impressed. The exception would be if spell damage
varied by sector type - i.e. fireball would hit harder in a frozen zone,
or acid and gaseous attacks wouldn't work at all underwater. I'd be much
more impressed if there were only 40 mage spells and only 15 of those
were attack spells. It not only makes a wizard more useful all-around,
but demonstrates much more creativity by the imp team.
> I like imms that take an active role in the game but don't bug you too
>much.
Define 'active role'. Are you talking quests, or little things
like switching into mobs and curse you out while you're attacking them,
or something like Valhalla used to have with its demigod system, where
players would sacrifice stuff to the demis and the demis could then do
stuff like corpse retrievals for the players?
Similarly, define 'bug you too much'. Do you mean the old
HexOnyx tradition of imms accusing each other of bestiality over the
gossip channel and doing wacky global-echos, or something more like
them snooping you just because they're bored?
>
> I like realism.
I'll leave that one alone.
- Katie
--
*** Send meaningful responses, hugs and flames to seh...@willamette.edu ***
"Phillips Screwdriver: Milk of Magnesia, vodka" - Steve Hawley
--- Dole for Pineapple '96 ---
Tim O'Connor
: > I think powerful magic items should be rare enough that when you find
*BLUSH* I guess that little typo kinda twisted the meaning of that.
should be don't go and get 20. :)
: > I hate midgaard and the mudschool. If the builders of a mud have not
: >taken the time to take out and replace these things then I find it hard
: >to believe that it is a serious mud.
: Other games leave it in for the sake of familiarity. Some people
: who are MUDhopping and looking for a new home enjoy being able to find
: their way around at least part of the game from the word go, not to
: mention already knowing exactly what they can kill with impunity.
I think if you are looking for a new home it should be new. I hate
looking for a new mud and finding that my first several levels on a mud
are going to be the same almost everywhere.
: And hey, the MUD school may become old to you, but that zone was
: very well written and covers a lot of important things that a total
: beginner has to know. I was trying to write a new MUD school last fall
: (maybe y'all remember, Catholic MUD School?), and the single hardest
: thing for me to do was remember all of the commands that a player would
: need to know to survive out in the big bad world.
I think that this is the domain of the help files. I think that if you
must have a place to learn how to play on a mud it should not be called a
MUD school. It should be a part of your respective guild and vary from
class to class. If the mud lacks classes then keep that stuff in the
help files. If you make them easy to read and follow then a few simple
notes and some practice should have you stumbling around in the real mud
world without too much difficulty.
: I'd like to see games implement 'mob racism' - Circle 3.0 already
: has shopkeepers refusing to trade with certain guilds, and I don't see
: why imps couldn't expand it so that, say, elven shopkeepers wouldn't do
: business with orcish players. And, of course, there would have to be
: racial aggression - a human probably couldn't wander around inside a drow
: settlement without getting attacked, but maybe a kobold could. And with
: those features implemented, there WOULD be a valid reason for having two
: races of big, stupid, smelly, drooling head-bashers. </alfvaen>
I can understand and am fully behind merchants refusal to trade with
certain races but how would one be able to tell a mage from a thief or a
thief from a warrior?
: > I like a real big skill and spell base, but who doesn't.
: I prefer diversity over size. Yes, a game can have 60 different
: mage spells, but if 50 of them are just new and different ways to attack
: mobiles, I'm not impressed. The exception would be if spell damage
: varied by sector type - i.e. fireball would hit harder in a frozen zone,
: or acid and gaseous attacks wouldn't work at all underwater. I'd be much
: more impressed if there were only 40 mage spells and only 15 of those
: were attack spells. It not only makes a wizard more useful all-around,
: but demonstrates much more creativity by the imp team.
I agree here lots of skills and spells != 50 of the same spell and skill.
: > I like imms that take an active role in the game but don't bug you too
: >much.
: Define 'active role'. Are you talking quests, or little things
: like switching into mobs and curse you out while you're attacking them,
: or something like Valhalla used to have with its demigod system, where
: players would sacrifice stuff to the demis and the demis could then do
: stuff like corpse retrievals for the players?
I like imms to be on to respond to bug reports and switching into
higher level mobs is good but other than simple stuff like that low level
players should consider imms as gods and have little contact with them.
at higher levels contact should increase as imms should pay more
attention to more powerful players who are people who have invested more
time and effort into the game.
: Similarly, define 'bug you too much'. Do you mean the old
: HexOnyx tradition of imms accusing each other of bestiality over the
: gossip channel and doing wacky global-echos, or something more like
: them snooping you just because they're bored?
: >
I disliked sojourns imms when they force you to emote certain things
and the like thats petty and detrimental to role playing, how can a
player be expected to role play seriously on a mud that encourages it
when the imms can't do it?
Realism?
: I'll leave that one alone.
probably safer. What I mean by realism is an attention to detail and a
dedication to a specific theme. If you create a medieval world then put
smurfs in you destroy the realism. Things like sized armor and equipment
helps too. What sense does it make for an ogre to take some good elven
chain off an elf and then wear it? Or a halfling taking eq from a human
etc.
: - Katie
flume
: I am looking for a mud to play and while scrolling through the
: interesting has merit I was hoping for a more direct aproach.
: Here is what I will do, I'll make a list of traits I like about a mud
: and see what kind of responses it delves up.
: First off I really like for a mud to be serious. Nothing drives me
: away faster than smurf villages and bottles of Evian.
: Along the same lines I like a mud to be dark and gloomy and
: mysterious.
serious? like, a french movie?
: I am very interested in role playing as opposed to roll playing.
: Hunting for eq is one kind of thing but players that wait on repops is
: rediculous. Just the idea that someone bases their happiness on some
: little piece of data on a harddrive miles away that detirmines how much
: gold their player has makes me pity them.
but we are being serious, so gold does matter.
: I hate midgaard and the mudschool. If the builders of a mud have not
: taken the time to take out and replace these things then I find it hard
: to believe that it is a serious mud.
: I like a wide variety of races as long as they have a purpose. I don't
: see a point in having ogres and half giants unless there is a real
: difference between them.
true.
: I like a real big skill and spell base, but who doesn't.
: I think powerful magic items should be rare enough that when you find
: one and where it is you go and get 20 to sell.
so, you basically greedy enough to exploit this? so then you can have
that "pity"ful gold?
: I like imms that take an active role in the game but don't bug you too
: much.
: I like realism.
what exactly do you mean? realism, like life? Try, turn of you computer
and turn on life. A game is a game. Period, magic is real? sure, mana is
real? sure. BloodSucker the Vampire is real? sure.
: If there are any muds out there interested in a player who is interested
: in these things then drop me a line. Feel free to make additions or
: comments on the above blather.
I hope you were drunk when you wrote this, because, I think muds have
enough critism to help us get through each and every moment. You don't
seem to think muds have enough to implement?
: Visago Darkholme
maybe you can market this, charge about $275 an hour. Plus, make the muds
make you an imm.
...
Orion Henry
>who are MUDhopping and looking for a new home enjoy being able to find
>their way around at least part of the game from the word go, not to
>mention already knowing exactly what they can kill with impunity.
>
> And hey, the MUD school may become old to you, but that zone was
>very well written and covers a lot of important things that a total
>beginner has to know. I was trying to write a new MUD school last fall
>(maybe y'all remember, Catholic MUD School?), and the single hardest
>thing for me to do was remember all of the commands that a player would
>need to know to survive out in the big bad world.
Heh, true. Still, a decently written MUD with semi-accessable help
files can probably be figured out by any non-mudder with a little
bit of sense. I love teaching my friends to MUD:
Friend: "Okay, how do I move around?"
Me: "Type 'north' to go north, 'south' to go south, etc."
Friend: "I'm hungry! What do I do?"
Me: "Um, find some food?"
Friend: "But where?!"
Me: "Well, you're in the bakery. Maybe you should buy some bread?"
Friend: "Good idea! What do I do?"
Me: "Try 'buy bread'."
Friend: "Okay, now how do I eat it?"
Me: "Um, try 'eat bread'."
etc. All MUD school does is teach you about all the stupid little
idiosyncracies about mudding, like the fact that you can wear two
items on your neck but no more, the fact that you can wield a
weapon, hold something, wear a shield, and hold a light source all
at once, the fact that a 1st level half-giant actually has trouble
killing a weak, chained monster...etc.
>> I like a wide variety of races as long as they have a purpose. I don't
>>see a point in having ogres and half giants unless there is a real
>>difference between them.
>
> I'd like to see games implement 'mob racism' - Circle 3.0 already
>has shopkeepers refusing to trade with certain guilds, and I don't see
>why imps couldn't expand it so that, say, elven shopkeepers wouldn't do
>business with orcish players. And, of course, there would have to be
>racial aggression - a human probably couldn't wander around inside a drow
>settlement without getting attacked, but maybe a kobold could. And with
>those features implemented, there WOULD be a valid reason for having two
>races of big, stupid, smelly, drooling head-bashers. </alfvaen>
I believe Silly has this to a certain extent, as they had it on
Shadowdale. Was tons of fun to cruise around as a dwarf, because
all kinds of shit would jump you - mage's goblin charmies, frost
giants, kobolds, you name it. I also like the race hatred on Tera -
I happily walked through zones with my troll but when my friend made
an elf everything jumped him, 'cause everyone there hates elves. :)
I believe Shadowdale 2 does implement a light/dark race (elf vs.
drow, half-giant vs. troll) race system, though it lags so much that
I haven't had a chance to really check it out.
>> I like a real big skill and spell base, but who doesn't.
>
> I prefer diversity over size. Yes, a game can have 60 different
>mage spells, but if 50 of them are just new and different ways to attack
>mobiles, I'm not impressed. The exception would be if spell damage
>varied by sector type - i.e. fireball would hit harder in a frozen zone,
>or acid and gaseous attacks wouldn't work at all underwater. I'd be much
>more impressed if there were only 40 mage spells and only 15 of those
>were attack spells. It not only makes a wizard more useful all-around,
>but demonstrates much more creativity by the imp team.
Most definitely. Even in D&D it seemed that mages often had the
most choice about what to do in a given situation - with a warrior
or thief it was mostly just fight or flight, but mages actually have
a few options. The Angband line of games also does this well for
low-level mages; at low level a mage's best friend are spells like
Sleep, Mass Sleep, Wizard Lock, Detect Traps, Stone to mud etc.
This isn't terribly hard to do, like the race hatred thing - but as
usually implementors seem to be real stuck on the idea that mages
are shotguns and that's it.
>> I like realism.
>
> I'll leave that one alone.
Indeed. I think we can all agree, though, that one prefers a system
that is at least consistant within itself. D&D wasn't realistic in
the slightest (wait - I *missed* the dragon with my battle axe?
he's 200 feet long!), but at least it was consistant. Most MUDs
can't even seem to do that.
Matthew Brown
>From: oco...@emily.eosc.osshe.edu (Tim O'Connor)
>Subject: Best features of a mud.
>Date: 2 Apr 1996 08:22:43 GMT
> I am looking for a mud to play and while scrolling through the
>limitless lists of muds or searching here for an advert I find
>interesting has merit I was hoping for a more direct aproach.
> Here is what I will do, I'll make a list of traits I like about a mud
>and see what kind of responses it delves up.
> First off I really like for a mud to be serious. Nothing drives me
>away faster than smurf villages and bottles of Evian.
> Along the same lines I like a mud to be dark and gloomy and
>mysterious.
> I am very interested in role playing as opposed to roll playing.
>Hunting for eq is one kind of thing but players that wait on repops is
>rediculous. Just the idea that someone bases their happiness on some
>little piece of data on a harddrive miles away that detirmines how much
>gold their player has makes me pity them.
> I hate midgaard and the mudschool. If the builders of a mud have not
>taken the time to take out and replace these things then I find it hard
>to believe that it is a serious mud.
> I like a wide variety of races as long as they have a purpose. I don't
>see a point in having ogres and half giants unless there is a real
>difference between them.
> I like a real big skill and spell base, but who doesn't.
> I think powerful magic items should be rare enough that when you find
>one and where it is you go and get 20 to sell.
> I like imms that take an active role in the game but don't bug you too
>much.
> I like realism.
>If there are any muds out there interested in a player who is interested
>in these things then drop me a line. Feel free to make additions or
>comments on the above blather.
> Visago Darkholme
I think you should try DurisMUD. DurisMUD is a serious, no bulls%@& kind of
roleplaying MUD that uses Diku format and many different characters.
Originally, when we were part of Sojourn, we followed the Forgotten Realms
storyline. Now many of the new, and original zones for Duris are being
created. Today I have been working on the new hometown of Korova. Watch for it
on Duris soon. We're doing a LOT of testing this weekend, though, so try it
sometime after Easter. The address is duris.sojourn.com:6666.
Mathue
>I think you should try DurisMUD. DurisMUD is a serious, no bulls%@& kind of
>roleplaying MUD that uses Diku format and many different characters.
>Originally, when we were part of Sojourn, we followed the Forgotten Realms
>storyline. Now many of the new, and original zones for Duris are being
>created. Today I have been working on the new hometown of Korova. Watch for it
>on Duris soon. We're doing a LOT of testing this weekend, though, so try it
>sometime after Easter. The address is duris.sojourn.com:6666.
Kinda funny reading this after reading another post by somebody claiming to
speak for Duris, in which it was emphatically stressed that the game probably
won't be ready for play until about 6 months from now. You guys might want to
have a bit of an administrative session to get all your stories straight. :)
--
-----
mathue moyer
Email: mat...@ucsd.edu
URL: http://icse1.ucsd.edu/~mmoyer/
Marian Griffith
seh...@willamette.edu (Katie Sehorn) wrote:
>In article <4jqo4j$a...@eaglecap.eosc.osshe.edu>,
>Tim O'Connor <oco...@emily.eosc.osshe.edu> wrote:
>>
>> First off I really like for a mud to be serious. Nothing drives me
>>away faster than smurf villages and bottles of Evian.
>> Along the same lines I like a mud to be dark and gloomy and
>>mysterious.
Many players like to have a few familiar areas around so they can
quickly get the feel of the mud. You would not enjoy a mud where
you can't find your way to the bakery if you turned two corners.
Also most of the time implementors concern themselves with the
playability first and with area writing second.
>> I am very interested in role playing as opposed to roll playing.
>>Hunting for eq is one kind of thing, but players that wait on repops are
>>ridiculous.
>> I think powerful magic items should be rare enough that when you find
>>one and where it is you go and get 20 to sell.
> That aside, I also like the idea of item scarcity. The best way
>I've found to do this is to create the object, but not put it in the
>reset file. This allows the imms to load the object at will and put it
>on the mobile that should have it, and eliminates all possibility of it
>reloading after a crash.
I would prefer to take that one step further. Any equipment that has a
name attached to it (e.g. Durin's axe or Excalibur) should be truly
unique. Only one of it should ever show up in the playerfiles. Ever.
Weapon's or armour from famous smith's could be rare. But then I'm
not too fond of muds where weapons and armour are much more important
than skill (both of the character and of the player).
>> I hate midgaard and the mudschool. If the builders of a mud have not
>>taken the time to take out and replace these things then I find it hard
>>to believe that it is a serious mud.
They may well have left it in deliberately to help out new players.
Some of the better muds offer a choice of hometowns, including a
bland Midgaard, and a variety of more exciting unique ones.
> Other games leave it in for the sake of familiarity. Some people
>who are MUDhopping and looking for a new home enjoy being able to find
>their way around at least part of the game from the word go, not to
>mention already knowing exactly what they can kill with impunity.
>> I like a wide variety of races as long as they have a purpose. I don't
>>see a point in having ogres and half giants unless there is a real
>>difference between them.
There is a purpose, even if it isn't usually central to the game.
Your beginning stats are pretty crucial as to how your character
is going to develop. Races are a convenient way of informing a new
player what kind of development they can expect. It can easily be
done by allowing the player to choose for high average strength or
mediocre intelligence. But using a race is much clearer as most people
are already familiar with the concept that elves are wise and agile
where trolls are incredibly strong and stupid (and ugly too ;)
> I'd like to see games implement 'mob racism' - Circle 3.0 already
>has shopkeepers refusing to trade with certain guilds, and I don't see
>why imps couldn't expand it so that, say, elven shopkeepers wouldn't do
>business with orcish players. And, of course, there would have to be
>racial aggression - a human probably couldn't wander around inside a drow
>settlement without getting attacked, but maybe a kobold could. And with
>those features implemented, there WOULD be a valid reason for having two
>races of big, stupid, smelly, drooling head-bashers. </alfvaen>
*grin*
knowing drow they would enslave the unlucky kobold ...
(which would make an altogether interesting twist to a mud, the
ability of monsters to charm players ...)
>> I like a real big skill and spell base, but who doesn't.
I don't really care about the number of spells.
> I prefer diversity over size. Yes, a game can have 60 different
>mage spells, but if 50 of them are just new and different ways to attack
>mobiles, I'm not impressed. The exception would be if spell damage
>varied by sector type - i.e. fireball would hit harder in a frozen zone,
>or acid and gaseous attacks wouldn't work at all underwater. I'd be much
>more impressed if there were only 40 mage spells and only 15 of those
>were attack spells. It not only makes a wizard more useful all-around,
>but demonstrates much more creativity by the imp team.
Very true in my opinion.
A game that encourages more playing styles than simply 'get to the big
bad monsters with the wonderful equipment, kill it and recall to town
to heal up' is much much more interesting in the long run.
Trying to figure out if there really isn't anything in the game to
make a dent in that annoying gold dragon is going to get your attention
far longer than collecting the best possible equipment. Especially if
there is a real possibility that there isn't any such equipment and the
dragon is effectively unkillable for normal players.
Marian
--
Yes - at last - You. I Choose you. Out of all the world,
out of all the seeking, I have found you, young sister of
my heart! You are mine and I am yours - and never again
will there be loneliness ...
Rolan Choosing Talia,
Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey
Slumbering Mantis
> > I am very interested in role playing as opposed to roll playing.
> >Hunting for eq is one kind of thing but players that wait on repops is
> >rediculous. Just the idea that someone bases their happiness on some
> >little piece of data on a harddrive miles away that detirmines how much
> >gold their player has makes me pity them.
>
> > I hate midgaard and the mudschool. If the builders of a mud have not
> >taken the time to take out and replace these things then I find it hard
> >to believe that it is a serious mud.
>
> > I like a wide variety of races as long as they have a purpose. I don't
> >see a point in having ogres and half giants unless there is a real
> >difference between them.
>
Try thrash.isca.uiowa.edu 7777.
It's the most "realistic" mud i've seen yet.
(but then again, that isn't saying much)
I think the best thing I like about it is...
NO LEVELS.
That's right. Your char is actually as good as the skills he/she has.
So, don't expect to be a mondo dwarf that can take on 5 half-giants.
Amazing concept isn't it?
SadoGod
>that is at least consistant within itself. D&D wasn't realistic in
>the slightest (wait - I *missed* the dragon with my battle axe?
>he's 200 feet long!), but at least it was consistant. Most MUDs
>can't even seem to do that.
cool, but can you decide on a MUD that has all the above features and
more?:) im looking for a unique mud to play.. (my message about
finding a mud should have been posted, but i dont see it..)
--->
fus...@vitinc.com
IRC: #Metal, #Carcass
http://www.vitinc.com/~fusion
<---
David Turriff
: In article <4jut48$a...@gemini.willamette.edu>,
: seh...@willamette.edu (Katie Sehorn) wrote:
I'm one of the Administration on a MUD right now, and I'm working to get
roleplaying increased by sending NPC's run by live Immortals in to town,
holding invasions, and having most quests interactive. As of yet, we
don't have many new coded features, but we're working. So come on and
check us out at earth.mat.net 5000. Just remember, we're in our alpha
testing stage.
-Netviper>
ayud...@netcom.com
Hi all, just thought I'd drop 2 cents in on this. I've thought about
EQ a lot, vis-a-vis muds, and I've come to two conclusions regarding
it (so far!)
1. EQ should move to the background and be mostly, if not totally,
overshadowed by skills. I think this has a reasonable (not slavish)
correspondance to RL in this sense -- a weaponsmaster with years
of experience would be far more dangerous with a carving knife
and light clothing than I would EVER be with a claidhmore and
heavy armor (even assuming I Could heft the stuff and move around
in it). Okay, I leave room for SOMe significance to EQ, but not
much. To re-use and abuse an almmost-current saying --
"It's KNIGHTS that kill, not swords."
2. Really special stuff, like swords that sing and dance, or mighty
staves of wizardry, are ALL unique items, much like an earlier
writer suggested.
I know these two seem to contradict each other a little, but they ca
work together I Think. It is more work for the admins, no doubt, but
it avoids the whole problem with high levels going and and 'equipping'
low levels and other such things generally referred to by admins as
game imbalance(s). And it doesn't require things like level limits
on EQ or rent or other arbitrary-feeling systems.
Jay
Owen Emlen
>
>2. Really special stuff, like swords that sing and dance, or mighty
> staves of wizardry, are ALL unique items, much like an earlier
> writer suggested.
>
>I know these two seem to contradict each other a little, but they ca
>work together I Think. It is more work for the admins, no doubt, but
>it avoids the whole problem with high levels going and and 'equipping'
>low levels and other such things generally referred to by admins as
>game imbalance(s).
Well, the problem with the above is like you mentioned. If high level
players get exponentially, or even linearly more power than low levels,
and the mud is pkill (key point), then you will suffer from the Midpoint
Void syndrome. This syndrome results in two level 50's being able to
wipe out 7 or 8 level 20's. Imagine if they have swords which do flame
damage 5% of the time... It's more likely that the level 50's will have
these swords, which further seperates the level difference. What is
*BAD* on a pkill mud:
P| x <- Insane powermudders
O| x <- 24hr/day mudders
W| x
E| x <- Average Player Level
R|x
--------------
Level
A better solution:
P| x
O| x <- More-than-insane powermudders
W| x <- 24hr/day mudders
E| x <- Average Player Level
R|x
--------------------
Level
Marian Griffith
ayud...@netcom.com (you) wrote:
><everything snipped, follow up or not!>
>Hi all, just thought I'd drop 2 cents in on this. I've thought about
>EQ a lot, vis-a-vis muds, and I've come to two conclusions regarding
>it (so far!)
>1. EQ should move to the background and be mostly, if not totally,
> overshadowed by skills. I think this has a reasonable (not slavish)
> correspondance to RL in this sense -- a weaponsmaster with years
> of experience would be far more dangerous with a carving knife
> and light clothing than I would EVER be with a claidhmore and
> heavy armor (even assuming I Could heft the stuff and move around
> in it). Okay, I leave room for SOMe significance to EQ, but not
> much. To re-use and abuse an almmost-current saying --
> "It's KNIGHTS that kill, not swords."
Indeed. but then you're agreeing with what I wrote before so
I guess this is a pretty pointless remark.
The worst problems I see are with things like +hit and +dam weapons.
Not so much as with good quality armor. The latter would allow a
character walk around in areas that are a tad too dangerous and
escape, but should not normally do anything with regard to their
ability to actually successfully attack something or someone in
that area. It's like driving in an armoured vehicle. You're pretty
safe, but to do something you still have to get out of it.
+dam and +hit weaponry (and equipment) are things that badly upset
game balance unless extremely well regulated. It allow a relative
weak character to do insane amounts of damage. Most even heavy
opponents can not hit back enough to kill the player simply because
the fight is over in one or two rounds. Imms tend to respond to
this situation by giving the 'hard' monsters huge amounts of hit-
points, which basically serves to drag out the game but doesn't
alter anything (except cause more damage in all-caps). As long
as the player has enough mana or healing potions.
>2. Really special stuff, like swords that sing and dance, or mighty
> staves of wizardry, are ALL unique items, much like an earlier
> writer suggested.
*bow* thank you.
>I know these two seem to contradict each other a little, but they ca
>work together I Think. It is more work for the admins, no doubt, but
>it avoids the whole problem with high levels going and and 'equipping'
>low levels and other such things generally referred to by admins as
>game imbalance(s). And it doesn't require things like level limits
>on EQ or rent or other arbitrary-feeling systems.
They don't contradict at all. If 99 pct of the players has pretty
bland equipment the mud -has- to concentrate on making skills
worthwhile or the game would be unplayable. Those powerfull unique
items would then make sense, but would not be essential to play the
game. They wouldn't even need to be powerfull (for risk of upsetting
the game balance too much again) just special, and slightly usefull.
A nice thing too would be that it would force area writers to be
a little more imaginative. It would be pretty pointless in creating
an area that is little more than a storehouse for good equipment on
a tough monsters, when it would appear only once. Writers would be
forced to make the entire area interesting and challenging to entice
players to visit them.
Dan Shiovitz
><everything snipped, follow up or not!>
>
>Hi all, just thought I'd drop 2 cents in on this. I've thought about
>EQ a lot, vis-a-vis muds, and I've come to two conclusions regarding
>it (so far!)
>
>1. EQ should move to the background and be mostly, if not totally,
> overshadowed by skills. I think this has a reasonable (not slavish)
> correspondance to RL in this sense -- a weaponsmaster with years
> of experience would be far more dangerous with a carving knife
> and light clothing than I would EVER be with a claidhmore and
> heavy armor (even assuming I Could heft the stuff and move around
> in it). Okay, I leave room for SOMe significance to EQ, but not
> much. To re-use and abuse an almmost-current saying --
> "It's KNIGHTS that kill, not swords."
If the knight's longsword is only doing, say, twelve hit points on average,
then the bonus of +2 to damage from having skill of 95% with the weapon
suddenly becomes way more significant. And, as an additional bonus, this
method makes having multiple attacks less powerful.
>2. Really special stuff, like swords that sing and dance, or mighty
> staves of wizardry, are ALL unique items, much like an earlier
> writer suggested.
Pfui. This, on the other hand ... Muds simply don't work with this much
uniqueness. Think about it. Under this schema, if someone goes and kills
Arachnos, then, logically, all the mobs in arachnos should go away permanently.
If someone kills the Thalos golems, then does it make any sense for them to
appear again, once the world resets? Don't be silly. Similarly, yes, it's
unrealistic to have more than one Excalibur floating around in the world. But
it's unplayable not to. (Take this with a grain of salt, though. It would
not be excessive for a few items to be limited. Excalibur*, for instance. Or
to have a few mobs that only appear once or twice. But in general, this
is a bad idea, unless the gods are willing to spend all their time writing/
modifying areas.)
*Ok, so if I was going to use it here as an example, I shouldn't have used
it previously. Oh well.
>Jay
--
dan shiovitz scy...@u.washington.edu sh...@cs.washington.edu
slightly lost author/programmer in a world of more creative or more sensible
people ... remember to speak up for freedom because no one else will do it
for you: use it or lose it ... carpe diem -- be proactive.
my web site: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~scythe/home.html some ok stuff.
David Czeck
Marian Griffith <gry...@iaehv.nl> wrote:
>A nice thing too would be that it would force area writers to be
>a little more imaginative. It would be pretty pointless in creating
>an area that is little more than a storehouse for good equipment on
>a tough monsters, when it would appear only once. Writers would be
>forced to make the entire area interesting and challenging to entice
>players to visit them.
The problems I see with this is that if you lots of items unique, once
that zone is cleared. There isn't any reason to visit that zone again,
even if it is the most creative, cleverest, and beautifully described zone
ever crafted. It is equipment and experience points that drive most muds.
If a zone doesn't have any equipment worth getting, I have found that
players won't bother to go to that zone.
As a builder, it just isn't worth the effort to create elaborate,
richly described zones (including mobiles and objects) for just one-shots.
--David
Play Archipelago: island.essex.ac.uk 24 Tell them Magnfico sent you!
Nick
>In article <ayudanteD...@netcom.com>, <ayud...@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>><everything snipped, follow up or not!>
>
>> staves of wizardry, are ALL unique items, much like an earlier
>> writer suggested.
>
>Pfui. This, on the other hand ... Muds simply don't work with this much
>uniqueness. Think about it. Under this schema, if someone goes and
>kills Arachnos, then, logically, all the mobs in arachnos should go away
>permanently. If someone kills the Thalos golems, then does it make any
>sense for them to appear again, once the world resets? Don't be silly.
You took the premise in another direction; I, however, agree with this
particular comment. Though as you imply in snippage below, it is much
more difficult to justify the application to mobs.
>Similarly, yes, it's unrealistic to have more than one Excalibur floating
>around in the world. But it's unplayable not to. (Take this with a
>grain of salt, though. It would not be excessive for a few items to be
>limited. Excalibur*, for instance. ... But in general, this is a bad
>idea,
Here again, you took the context in another direction. As for uniqueness
of eq, the context applies as it was covering "really special stuff,"
i.e. rare/powerful items. These items should be...err...rare, and
increasingly rare as they get more powerful; ultimately unique.
Agreed on a general scale it would be rather overblowing the problem. My
particular tastes run to an image of a very broad pyramid/triangle, with
mundane eq at the bottom, forming the vast majority of eq, and the very
arcane/powerful/special items at the pinnacle. The main goal here is to
decide how broad to make that base, and apply rarity to that scale as well
as power.
An extrapolation of this would be a desire to see a fair majority of high
level (as a general concept) characters with -some- really wonderful eq,
but mostly higher quality, but more or less mundane eq filling in the
gaps.
As was said elsewhere, this meshes more smoothly with a game balance where
one wants the trickle down to be minimal, the duplication of characters
with exactly the same kits, etc.
It's also serviceable to make some of those massive bits of eq have
properties which tend to evaporate after a certain amount of time, or for
various reasons. It can't be considered 'unrealistic' because who's gonna
argue from the side of accurate knowledge of how something in a fantasy
realm works?
One particular game I recall had a very nice weapon akin to Thor's hammer.
This was a thrown weapon that would, at some random time not return to the
thrower. Probably something rather common nowadays, I wouldn't know as I
don't get out mudding much anymore, but it is a good, clear and simple
conceptual example.
-Nick, just passing through.
ayud...@netcom.com
: In article <19960419....@catling.iaehv.nl>,
: Marian Griffith <gry...@iaehv.nl> wrote:
: >A nice thing too would be that it would force area writers to be
: >a little more imaginative. It would be pretty pointless in creating
: >an area that is little more than a storehouse for good equipment on
: <snip>
: The problems I see with this is that if you lots of items unique, once
: that zone is cleared. There isn't any reason to visit that zone again,
: even if it is the most creative, cleverest, and beautifully described zone
: ever crafted. It is equipment and experience points that drive most muds.
: If a zone doesn't have any equipment worth getting, I have found that
: players won't bother to go to that zone.
: As a builder, it just isn't worth the effort to create elaborate,
: richly described zones (including mobiles and objects) for just one-shots.
: --David
True enough, players go where the action is, so to speak. If the only
'valuables' are eq and exp, then as you rightly say, a beautifully crafted
area will never be visited. Which brings up the key issue as I see it.
Muds should find a way to add many more useful/valuable/motivating things.
Motivating factors (MFs, let's say?) are the key -- the more there are,
up to a point, the more fun and variety there is. Eq and exp are the
primary MFs most of the time. Training (access to trainers) is sometimes
important. Food, water also, sometimes.
Yes, some of these do affect playability, but I'd like to defer that part
of the discussion for now please.
So you add more MFs, then you can spread them out in your areas to make
them interesting. But of course beauty alone is of virtually no use.
Owen Emlen has a nice germ of an idea in travel points (you need a certain
number to level, kinda like some muds that require a certain number of
quest or puzzle points to reach certain levels). They are distributed
randomly, and as you move throughout the realms and walk into a room with
a TP (or more than one) you get the point(s) and then the point(s) is/are
randomly reassigned to other rooms. Has the effect of making 'out-of-the-
way places' get stuffed with TPs and thus interesting for that reason,
if no other. Sure, it needs a bit of refining perhaps, but it at least
motivates people to look all around (or at least spend a LOT of time walking
back and forth in common areas).
So what about more MFs? Motivating Factors make the game, I think.
Jay
ayud...@netcom.com
: In article <ayudanteD...@netcom.com>, <ayud...@netcom.com> wrote:
: ><everything snipped, follow up or not!>
: >...Really special stuff, like swords that sing and dance, or mighty
: > staves of wizardry, are ALL unique items, much like an earlier
: > writer suggested.
: Pfui. This, on the other hand ... Muds simply don't work with this much
: uniqueness. Think about it. Under this schema, if someone goes and kills
Presumably you mean to be insulting or dismissive or whatever by the term
'pfui.' Fine, but I stick by my asssertion. Muds can and do work this way,
with many items being unique. And please note the terms 'really special.'
I would hope they indicate to you, as they were intended, that there is
a lot of 'not really special' stuff around that is around in great numbers.
Why you would insist on extending this to creatures is unclear to me. I
nowhere suggested that. Nevertheless, it doesn't stretch my imagination
to have, to take your example, arachnos repopulating. Perhaps the part of
arachnos we see is but the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps it is simply an
outpost or colony of a larger population.
Yes, infinite supplies of mobs are essentially necessary in muds, since
they are prime motivating factors. And yes, especially 'special' mobs
coming back is a bit of a stretch. But then the players coming back is
a stretch too, no? (yes, I know, many have implemented some form of
permadeath). Perhaps there is another solution, but I don't have it now.
: If someone kills the Thalos golems, then does it make any sense for them to
: appear again, once the world resets? Don't be silly. Similarly, yes, it's
: unrealistic to have more than one Excalibur floating around in the world. But
: it's unplayable not to. (Take this with a grain of salt, though. It would
: not be excessive for a few items to be limited. Excalibur*, for instance. Or
: to have a few mobs that only appear once or twice. But in general, this
: is a bad idea, unless the gods are willing to spend all their time writing/
: modifying areas.)
As for the 'unplayable' part, I don't buy it. It's both playable and doable
from the perspective of the immortals or whoever creates eq.
As for unrealistic, well, I am not worried about unrealistic. Of course it's
unrealistic -- virtually everything in the mud realms is. I'm quite happy
to live with a realm that has some internal consistency, a sense of its own,
as another author has pointed out in another thread. Realism per se is not
an issue, though systems that make some sort of internal sense _are_ an
issue.
: dan shiovitz scy...@u.washington.edu sh...@cs.washington.edu
Jay Sax, Mgr of Education, MITI, Long Beach, CA
Pier Donini
> Owen Emlen has a nice germ of an idea in travel points (you need a certain
> number to level, kinda like some muds that require a certain number of
> quest or puzzle points to reach certain levels). They are distributed
> randomly, and as you move throughout the realms and walk into a room with
> a TP (or more than one) you get the point(s) and then the point(s) is/are
> randomly reassigned to other rooms. Has the effect of making 'out-of-the-
> way places' get stuffed with TPs and thus interesting for that reason,
> if no other. Sure, it needs a bit of refining perhaps, but it at least
> motivates people to look all around (or at least spend a LOT of time walking
> back and forth in common areas).
> Jay
Travel points - exactly in the form you describe them - were coded on
MUME around '93 (they are a requisite for level as well as xp). They
work to some degree... They are a the greatest problem of level
racers which are then forced to move around in 'tp-hunts' (rivers are
known to be 'tp-holes', for instance)...
Travel points cannot force any player to love to explore... but at
least they give them an opportunity to try to :-)
Pier. (Manwe@MUME)
Chris Swiedler
Well, this isn't really in regards to that. What I think is that the
repop of mobs shouldn't always be identical. Yes, I know that sometimes
the hobbit will have a cloth hood and sometimes a wooden shield. That's
not a whole lot of variation. What I mean is this: assume that in the
caves of the gnolls, there is a king and soldiers and workers and all.
There will also be a large population, of course, which isn't really
seen by players except as little child or mother mobs. The king has
guards.
Now, a player comes in and wipes all of them out. The soldiers, the
workers, etc. What happens? In most muds, within ten minutes they're
back exactly as before. Or nearly so, anyway. But what would make things
much more interesting--and certainly harder to code areas-- would
be an element of randomness. A severe one, in fact. The player comes in
and kills everything. Next time someone comes in, everything is
different. The rooms are all dark. There are rats running around,
and a few stray gnoll children looking for parents, or perhaps some
construction workers. A little while later, the caves are repop'd for
real, except that this time there is no king. In place of the throne-
room is a council chamber with seven council-gnolls, and instead of
three burly gnolls as guards there is a powerful mage, or an assassin
type bodyguard who backstabs anyone who threatens, and who is of course
not seen at first.
The possibilties are great, but the obvious problems are these: it would
be VERY difficult (nearly coding four or five areas instead of one) and
eventually, the players would get used to the changes and they would be
just as predictable. ("Oh, its a council again. Not worth the fight,
the members only give 1.2k XP.")
But a dedicated God might put in the effort. I understand the effort
(or at least I think I do) that it takes to code an area, and one
might as well just write a new area to add to the list. But if it
just happened occasionally:
"Gnoll caves? I don't know--last time I got backstabbed trying to kill
the king."
AT the very least, I believe that areas should be created with more
computer-generated randomness. Have a wide variety in the abilities of
mobs from one repop to the next. Something, please--not all of us want
to clean out the same areas for XP.
chris
all comments will be laughed at and considered carefully
Owen Emlen
>
>Owen Emlen has a nice germ of an idea in travel points (you need a certain
>number to level, kinda like some muds that require a certain number of
>quest or puzzle points to reach certain levels). They are distributed
>randomly, and as you move throughout the realms and walk into a room with
>a TP (or more than one) you get the point(s) and then the point(s) is/are
Just want to mention that this is not, in fact, my idea. My favorite
muds are MUME and (a while back) Thunderdome. You'll see quite a few
'semi' similarities (meaning similar features, but they may not work
quite the same). Just didn't want to get credit for an idea that I
didn't think up from scratch :)
Owen
(BTW, Thanks MUME (and tdome!))
Marian Griffith
ayud...@netcom.com (you) wrote:
>David Czeck (cz...@ruby.ils.unc.edu) wrote:
>: In article <19960419....@catling.iaehv.nl>,
>: Marian Griffith <gry...@iaehv.nl> wrote:
>: >A nice thing too would be that it would force area writers to be
>: >a little more imaginative. It would be pretty pointless in creating
>: >an area that is little more than a storehouse for good equipment on
>: If a zone doesn't have any equipment worth getting, I have found that
>: players won't bother to go to that zone.
>: As a builder, it just isn't worth the effort to create elaborate,
>: richly described zones (including mobiles and objects) for just one-shots.
>True enough, players go where the action is, so to speak. If the only
>'valuables' are eq and exp, then as you rightly say, a beautifully crafted
>area will never be visited. Which brings up the key issue as I see it.
>Muds should find a way to add many more useful/valuable/motivating things.
>Motivating factors (MFs, let's say?) are the key -- the more there are,
>up to a point, the more fun and variety there is. Eq and exp are the
>primary MFs most of the time. Training (access to trainers) is sometimes
>important. Food, water also, sometimes.
Actually it's only experience, as that's the reason of the game. Equipment
is a necessity to get that experience, unless the game allows only weak
equipment. In that case skills are equally important.
Of course as long as experience is only obtainanble through successfull
fights nothing is going to change in this respect. People need to fight,
and for that they need the best equipment. Anything else serves only to
annoy.
>Yes, some of these do affect playability, but I'd like to defer that part
>of the discussion for now please.
I think you're going to majorly annoy players if you deviate from the
long standing principles.
>So you add more MFs, then you can spread them out in your areas to make
>them interesting. But of course beauty alone is of virtually no use.
Still, I prefer areas to be well written. It may not add anything to
the game, but it immensely improves the atmosphere to walk through
a thoughtfully designed area full of interesting details.
>Owen Emlen has a nice germ of an idea in travel points (you need a certain
>number to level, kinda like some muds that require a certain number of
>quest or puzzle points to reach certain levels). They are distributed
>randomly, and as you move throughout the realms and walk into a room with
>a TP (or more than one) you get the point(s) and then the point(s) is/are
>randomly reassigned to other rooms. Has the effect of making 'out-of-the-
>way places' get stuffed with TPs and thus interesting for that reason,
>if no other. Sure, it needs a bit of refining perhaps, but it at least
>motivates people to look all around (or at least spend a LOT of time walking
>back and forth in common areas).
I've seen the same idea in Mume, and it works reasonably well. At least
it forces players to travel around, which is a good thing in and of it-
self. The idea needs quite a bit of refining as you said. In the form
you described it makes players randomly travel around in the hope they
'hit' on those travel points by accident. Given that the distribution
is random it might be interesting to develop skills to track those
points (but not so absolutely as most implementations of track I have
seen).
>So what about more MFs? Motivating Factors make the game, I think.
Hmm. What kind of game you hope to create?
How about radically depart from fight for experience? You could make
it so that players can simply buy training in the skills they desire.
Then money will be the primary factor. If the amount of money in the
game (both directly as gold and indirectly as value of equipment that
can be sold at the shops) is kept under a very strict reign that would
result in a totally different game. Players must concentrate on making
money somehow, and need skills according to that goal. It would make
thieves a much more sensible class too.
Or you could make level something that is granted you by your guild.
Then a player must not kill as many monsters as possible in the shortest
time, but rather do something to prove her worth to her guild. Again
this requires a totally different set of skills. Or at least the guild
needs a goal which can be advanced by their individual members.
You could also do away with infinitely renewable resources (food,
armor, weapons, health, mana). Either players must provide in all of
those, making the skills to do so valuable or they must get it from
the other players in one way or another.
How about making it so that a player can become king of an area. This
includes the right to build for that area, but also this requires a
kind of 'tax' to maintain the court, guards, roads and so on, that
are part of a nation. Any player could set up a shop of her own, but
risk that the irrate king wants his taxbase back and wages war on
the new country. Other players could hold positions in a king, much
like a medieval society. With gentry to control and maintain part of
those kingdoms. Clergy as a separate power within the society, that
has the right to tax also. Players that are simply citizens and have
a variety of jobs. It could really be made as large as your player
base would allow.
This is enough for a start?
ayud...@netcom.com
would post:
<major snippetia>
:
: >Motivating factors (MFs, let's say?) are the key -- the more there are,
: >up to a point, the more fun and variety there is. Eq and exp are the
: >primary MFs most of the time. Training (access to trainers) is sometimes
: >important. Food, water also, sometimes.
: Actually it's only experience, as that's the reason of the game. Equipment
: is a necessity to get that experience,
Quite so. Eq is simply a means to that end.
: <snip>
: I think you're going to majorly annoy players if you deviate from the
: long standing principles.
Yes, if it's a mod to an existing mud, I agree. But for a new mud, well,
it might work if the deviations are spelled out in advance. Some mud
players are looking for even great variations on the established
methods. Just have to find the right variations. But many will
still be annoyed, no doubt.
: >So you add more MFs, then you can spread them out in your areas to make
: >them interesting. But of course beauty alone is of virtually no use.
: Still, I prefer areas to be well written. It may not add anything to
: the game, but it immensely improves the atmosphere to walk through
: a thoughtfully designed area full of interesting details.
I agree again. Adds nothing to the game per-se, but I too enjoy a well-
written and lovely area with such details.
: >So what about more MFs? Motivating Factors make the game, I think.
<summarized: make skills purchasable, (not based on exp or use?),
moving MONEY to the forefront. Makes thievery interesting.
make 'levelling' a function of guilds (move it away
from experience/killing)
make the usual infinite resources limited (food, armor,
weapons, mana, whatever). players would have to get,
make, trade their own.
politics -- some way to achieve ascendance over and control
of an area or region. Taxes, control guards, roads, etc.
end summary>
I have often given thought to at least two of these (the last two)
and I think something can be done there. Glad to read that others have
thought of it too. Now to work out how! But thanks for the suggestions.
: This is enough for a start?
Quite enough. Thank you Marian. Always glad for your input. Now, when
will you answer my email?
Jay
Katie Sehorn
>
>>: If a zone doesn't have any equipment worth getting, I have found that
>>: players won't bother to go to that zone.
I think the remark was that GOOD equipment should be unique. The
+5 +5 decapitating two-handed sword should not be made available to every
player, and for certain should not be available in every single zone
(which any good implementing team will make sure of). But there could be
plenty of less spectacular equipment in that zone, maybe for people who
had their corpses looted, had stuff stolen from them, hit a death trap,
or were trying to give a lower-level friend a leg up. Just because it's
not the most desirable stuff doesn't mean it won't come in handy sometime.
To power-mudders, zones are a way to get three things: Money,
equipment, and experience (maybe not in that order). A well-balanced
game will have standards and/or limitations on how good each of those can
be in a certain level range, and I personally believe you can alter one
of those to be better if you keep the others below average. I prefer to
boost gold and/or experience, and keep the equipment relatively shoddy.
Eventually everyone's going to have their dream gear and it won't matter
if they keep going back to the zones where they got it. Zones like mine,
though, would give them money to make rent on their items, and/or higher
experience per kill so they can level faster.
>>: As a builder, it just isn't worth the effort to create elaborate,
>>: richly described zones (including mobiles and objects) for just one-shots.
1) See my train of thought above.
2) Excuuuuuse me for taking a little pride in my work.
- Katie
--
*** Send meaningful responses, hugs and flames to seh...@willamette.edu ***
"...shared pain is lessened, shared joy increased. Thus do we
refute entropy." - Spider Robinson
ALETA BLACK
What it sounds like when you went into length about how zones would
reset, is that certain "EVENTS" would trigger others when the zone reset.
What you suggested sounds to me like zonefile swaps. I have suggested
this idea many times to the imps of my favorite mud [Hint: Arctic], and
will continue to pester on this idea. The problem is that this kind of
idea would take up alot of hard drive space, and I am sure coding it is
not easy also.
Now as for building goes, I would hate to manually write each scenerio.
What would be nice is if commands named for example "zcopy and zload"
could be given to the builder. Zcopy could duplicate the initial zone
and you could load and modify the copy of it to fit the events for your
next scenerio. Then you could go wild with the so called "Gnoll Kingdom
Ideaa, etc, etc. The thing is that the coder would have to make commands
to enable you to define triggers that would be saved in a file or ram [
stay focused with me I am not a programmer here], then check the file on
zone reset. Yet what if a player got whacked in the zone before reset ?
This would really take some work to avoid a reset where a new zone loads
and prevent the persons eq from being cleared right? Maybe medevia or
some mud without the need for CR's from players could do this, easily,
yet with the curent diku code, it would be tricky as heck to manuver.
Prove me wrong though... I would love to see something like this
Orion Henry
>particular tastes run to an image of a very broad pyramid/triangle, with
>mundane eq at the bottom, forming the vast majority of eq, and the very
>arcane/powerful/special items at the pinnacle. The main goal here is to
>decide how broad to make that base, and apply rarity to that scale as well
>as power.
The main problem is that you get a small number of people with all
the powerful eq, either spread out among multiple characters of the
same person or in bags. As to the second problem, I'm of the mind
that you should simply charge rent for everything not worn. Arctic
had something kind of like this - items had two rent values, one when
worn and one when not. So that ranger-only main gauche wasn't worth
renting with if you couldn't use it, cause it cost your 50k a day,
whereas for a ranger it cost him 5k (or something).
>An extrapolation of this would be a desire to see a fair majority of high
>level (as a general concept) characters with -some- really wonderful eq,
>but mostly higher quality, but more or less mundane eq filling in the
>gaps.
Again - the same people tend to get the suits of mega-eq. It's hard
to get around this.
>As was said elsewhere, this meshes more smoothly with a game balance where
>one wants the trickle down to be minimal, the duplication of characters
>with exactly the same kits, etc.
Well, that can be avoided easily enough - don't make one "best" item
for any given slot. Most muds do this to some extent - there are
items with lots of damroll but other minuses, lots of mana but no
damroll, high ac, whatever.
>It's also serviceable to make some of those massive bits of eq have
>properties which tend to evaporate after a certain amount of time, or for
>various reasons. It can't be considered 'unrealistic' because who's gonna
>argue from the side of accurate knowledge of how something in a fantasy
>realm works?
As long as it's constant with itself it can be consider realistic.
>One particular game I recall had a very nice weapon akin to Thor's hammer.
>This was a thrown weapon that would, at some random time not return to the
>thrower. Probably something rather common nowadays, I wouldn't know as I
>don't get out mudding much anymore, but it is a good, clear and simple
>conceptual example.
Yeah, this is a real cool idea. The main problem is that mudders
dislike this kind of non-permenance - they want to get an item and
know that they will have it. Maxes actually _help_ this attidute,
becuase if you dt or whatever, you just go sit on the mob with
"your" item until it pops.
Marian Griffith
ohe...@sdcc10.ucsd.edu (Orion Henry) wrote:
>>Agreed on a general scale it would be rather overblowing the problem. My
>>particular tastes run to an image of a very broad pyramid/triangle, with
>>mundane eq at the bottom, forming the vast majority of eq, and the very
>>arcane/powerful/special items at the pinnacle.
>The main problem is that you get a small number of people with all
>the powerful eq, either spread out among multiple characters of the
>same person or in bags.
I'm not sure just how bad this problem is. It happens anyway,
except that now more players have the same set of ultimately
powerfull equipment. If those things are truly unique then
each top character is going to be equally unique. On a well
designed mud they would be forced to play according to the
equipment they collected.
Note that this solution is going to be a bit tricky on muds
that encourage pkill and psteal.
> As to the second problem, I'm of the mind
>that you should simply charge rent for everything not worn. Arctic
>had something kind of like this - items had two rent values, one when
>worn and one when not. So that ranger-only main gauche wasn't worth
>renting with if you couldn't use it, cause it cost your 50k a day,
>whereas for a ranger it cost him 5k (or something).
there's a simpler solution if you dislike rent. basically give each
character a fixed number of movement points based on strength, size,
race, sex and a nice amount of randomness. Spells will affect this
number some but not too much. Now every single move is going to take
away some of those points according to the weight that must be moved.
And progressively much if they weight moved is close to the maximum
weight that can be moved at most. It's like you can lift a single
pound hundreds of times but can barely lift hundred pounds once
(personally I won't manage hundred pounds at all but that's beside
the issue). Players that want to carry heavy armour and lots of
spare equipment are paying the price in inconvenience. they have
to rest up often and long.
>>As was said elsewhere, this meshes more smoothly with a game balance where
>>one wants the trickle down to be minimal, the duplication of characters
>>with exactly the same kits, etc.
>Well, that can be avoided easily enough - don't make one "best" item
>for any given slot. Most muds do this to some extent - there are
>items with lots of damroll but other minuses, lots of mana but no
>damroll, high ac, whatever.
hmmm. that would work. However on most muds I've seen each new area
added more powerfull equipment to attract players to vist the area.
Soon the average damage inflates all out of proportion and game
balance is majorly disturbed.
If powerfull equipment is made unique that at least is less of a
problem. No point in designing an area around some super equipment
if the building implementors are making them unique anyway.
marian
Oberon
: How about radically depart from fight for experience? You could make
: it so that players can simply buy training in the skills they desire.
: Then money will be the primary factor. If the amount of money in the
There is a major problem with making money the main motivating factor in
a mud. Money is transferable. This means if Jimmy has a well-established
character on the mud, and his best friend Billy decideds to start playing
too, Jimmy can give Billy a bunch of money to help him get a head start.
Additionally, I can see this making PKilling a primary form of advancement.
You could, of course, prevent PKilling altogether, but this is not a very good
solution in my book.
In any event, money as the major motivating factor creates a set of problems
all it's own.
A viable option here may be to leave the motivating factor the same
(experience), but to change the WAY it is implemented. Come up with new
ways for people to gain experience besides killing.
--
The Vampire Lestat | "The light of the sun. The sustained heat of
srwi...@nyx.cs.du.edu | intense fire. These things may kill me. But
------------------------+ then again, they may not."
Craig Sivils
>equipment, and experience (maybe not in that order).
I disagree with your premise, although it is true most of the time.
On a pkill type mud, zones also are the battlefield. Battlefields
with different properties can have uses. If you are running, a zone
with an unblocked private room might save you. If you summon someone
to a no-recall zone it hinders their escape some. Aggressive
monsters, mazes. There are many things that can make a zone valuable.
Craig
Michael Hohensee
> <summarized: make skills purchasable, (not based on exp or use?),
> moving MONEY to the forefront. Makes thievery interesting.
The one thing I don't agree with entirely about this is that it can be
very frustrating for a new player to have all his/her/its money stolen
on the eve of going to get a spell/skill. You'd have to put some
contrains of theft, maybe no stealing from low levels and a no-steal
room for training in..
>
> make 'levelling' a function of guilds (move it away
> from experience/killing)
>
The one problem with this is that you will have low level players
continually killing the weak mobs until they can go up 15 levels or
so, and then do it in one fell swoop. Not particularly realistic.
(can be kinda nifty tho. :)
>
> make the usual infinite resources limited (food, armor,
> weapons, mana, whatever). players would have to get,
> make, trade their own.
I've been on MUDs where the food portion of this idea is already
there. It's kinda no fun to starve to death because you can't get the
little food there is cuz all yer moneys been taken by a thief or all
the higher levels get it first. The idea for weapons, armor, and mana
may be interesting tho. How about making mana a function of the rooms
you are in? Casting a spell in a room drains some of its mana. Makes
for some more realisim, cuz you don't have to think about silly things
like ' you forget how to cast the spell after you cast it'. And it
would limit the number of spells cast in a room against a monster, so
it would limit the use of it as well.
I like Larry Niven's 'The Magic goes Away'. :) (mana-wheels, yes!)
>
> politics -- some way to achieve ascendance over and control
> of an area or region. Taxes, control guards, roads, etc.
> end summary>
This sounds spiffy, mind if I cheerfully steal some of these ideas and
incorperate them into the MUD I'm coding?
Michael Hohensee
mic...@mainstream.net
--
****Head (and only) Coder for AeMUD****
Law of the Jungle:
He who hesitates is *LUNCH*. :)
Marian Griffith
srwi...@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Oberon) wrote:
>Marian Griffith (Mar...@catling.iaehv.nl) wrote:
>: How about radically depart from fight for experience? You could make
>: it so that players can simply buy training in the skills they desire.
>: Then money will be the primary factor. If the amount of money in the
>There is a major problem with making money the main motivating factor in
>a mud. Money is transferable. This means if Jimmy has a well-established
>character on the mud, and his best friend Billy decideds to start playing
>too, Jimmy can give Billy a bunch of money to help him get a head start.
Sure. but what's the big problem with this?
So Billy gets a couple of free levels. Nothing out of the ordinary.
If Jimmy drags Billy along a couple of hours he'll have those free
levels anyway. And if Jimmy is suitable established Billy will have
equipment that should not be available to a newbie character.
I mean it's not what you want, but there's no way you'll be able
to prevent this kind of things from happening anyway. The fact that
he'll be a level 10 or so newbie doesn't make the slightest difference
to his chances to survive on his own of course. Most muds require at
least a little skill and knowledge that can only be acquired by actually
playing (and dying a couple of times).
>Additionally, I can see this making PKilling a primary form of advancement.
>You could, of course, prevent PKilling altogether, but this is not a very
>good solution in my book.
It is in my book, but otherwise again I fail to see the significance.
Yes. Robbing other players of their money is the fastest way to become
rich, and the most certain way to get you killed on the spot. All kinds
of little annoyances can be built in the game to deter players from ma-
king too many enemies.
>In any event, money as the major motivating factor creates a set of problems
>all it's own.
*grin* sure. that's why it is a new idea :)
>A viable option here may be to leave the motivating factor the same
>(experience), but to change the WAY it is implemented. Come up with new
>ways for people to gain experience besides killing.
No. Either do it good or don't do it at all. If you want to chance from
the typical kill the monster for experience type of game make it really
different so players have no difficulty understanding this is a truly
different game. It also forces you to do away with all the other little
inheritances from diku days.
Oberon
did away with "experience points" per se. Instead each character class
has skills which fall into one of three categories: Primary, Secondary,
and Other. These skills are advanced through usage, and a character's
level is determined by the average of their Primary skills. Since the
primary skills are not all combat based, this greatly reduces the ability
of a player to advance through simple hack-n-slash style playing.
It is impossible to advance just by working on one skill. Each skill has
a maximum it can hit at each character level. Even advancing two of your
four primary skills all the way to this maximum is not enough to advance
to the next level. For this reason, it is necessary for you to work on all
of your primary skills (although it isn't necessary to work on them evenly).
All in all, its a very nice system.
Owen Emlen
In article <4lohdt$e...@nyx10.cs.du.edu>,
Oberon <srwi...@nyx10.cs.du.edu> wrote:
>Nightmare has a nice alternative to the typical experience system. They
>did away with "experience points" per se. Instead each character class
>has skills which fall into one of three categories: Primary, Secondary,
>and Other. These skills are advanced through usage, and a character's
>level is determined by the average of their Primary skills. Since the
>primary skills are not all combat based, this greatly reduces the ability
>of a player to advance through simple hack-n-slash style playing.
>
>It is impossible to advance just by working on one skill. Each skill has
>a maximum it can hit at each character level. Even advancing two of your
>four primary skills all the way to this maximum is not enough to advance
>to the next level. For this reason, it is necessary for you to work on all
>of your primary skills (although it isn't necessary to work on them evenly).
Sounds like a semi-reasonable idea... however, all characters of the same
class end up being exactly the same. Not to mention people who will use tintin
scripts or other such methods to repeatedly spam actions that will cause
their skills to increase.
Orion Henry
>: >A nice thing too would be that it would force area writers to be
>: >a little more imaginative. It would be pretty pointless in creating
>: >an area that is little more than a storehouse for good equipment on
>
>: that zone is cleared. There isn't any reason to visit that zone again,
>: even if it is the most creative, cleverest, and beautifully described zone
>: ever crafted. It is equipment and experience points that drive most muds.
>: players won't bother to go to that zone.
>
>'valuables' are eq and exp, then as you rightly say, a beautifully crafted
>area will never be visited. Which brings up the key issue as I see it.
>Muds should find a way to add many more useful/valuable/motivating things.
Most definitely. While I enjoy the number-crunching, power-seeking,
roll-playing kind of games that most dikus currently are, I'd like
to see them broaden a bit. I never found lps, mushes etc terribly
fulfilling; I think there is something about the simplicity of a
diku that holds a broader apeal. Still, though, most dikus seem to
be stagnating in the same old routine recently, largely because
coders seem to be spending most of their time re-inventing stuff
that has already been done.
>Motivating factors (MFs, let's say?) are the key -- the more there are,
>up to a point, the more fun and variety there is. Eq and exp are the
>primary MFs most of the time. Training (access to trainers) is sometimes
>important. Food, water also, sometimes.
Well, this is a very general question, and goes back to a basic
question which has haunted the creators of all types of games and
entertainment since long before muds: what is _fun_? That's what it
comes down to; I've played plenty of muds with great ideas that just
weren't fun, for whatever reason (usually implementation). Perfect
example of this is AnotherMUD - when I first started playing there
it was because some friends of mine were, and it looked cheesey as
hell. And it is, kind of - stock zones, warriors that hit like
wimps and clerics that hit like behemoths, legal multi-charing, tons
of spelling and gramar errors, etc. But dammit, it's one of the
funnest muds I've ever played on. What does that say about
motivation? I don't know, exactly. The problem is that as long as
people keep writing the same kind of power-hungry muds that
currently exist, there's no real way to get around the problems you
outlined above. The only thing that makes going to a zone "worth"
it, after a once-through, is exp and gear.
>So you add more MFs, then you can spread them out in your areas to make
>them interesting. But of course beauty alone is of virtually no use.
It's not of no use; it's as you said, that it has a one time impact,
because people will go on brief/speedrun/not go to your zone after
the first time through. Some people don't even pay much attention
to room descs or whatever the FIRST time through.
>Owen Emlen has a nice germ of an idea in travel points (you need a certain
>number to level, kinda like some muds that require a certain number of
>quest or puzzle points to reach certain levels). They are distributed
>randomly, and as you move throughout the realms and walk into a room with
>a TP (or more than one) you get the point(s) and then the point(s) is/are
>randomly reassigned to other rooms. Has the effect of making 'out-of-the-
That's not a new idea, though. I think MUME has had something like
that for a while, as well as a few others that slip my mind at the
moment. Again, though, this has the one-time thing; you still only
need to visit a zone once and then not bother if there's nothing
worth going back for, since usually TPs are assigned when you go
someplace new.
>So what about more MFs? Motivating Factors make the game, I think.
Definitely. I think the main shift in thinking that could help out
dikus is to make killing less important. There's nothing wrong with
the power-hungry thing - heck, that's what makes em fun - but maybe
it would help if players could be hungry for DIFFERENT things
(gasp!). As it is, everyone wants exp, better gear, and cash. Now,
personally I think the whole exp thing should be ditched altogether,
but this is probably a little too difficult of a concept for most of the
D&D bred coders out there. At any rate, the main problem is that
all players want to be able to kill faster, and make themselves
harder to kill. That's it. I'm curious as to why a thief would
want +dam gear (+dam...another idea that SERIUOSLY needs to go away).
It makes no sense to me. If I'm a thief, I want to move around
quietly, steal, make shady deals, and cut people's throats before
they even notice me. Now, where in there does it mean that I have
to hit hard? But of course, with backstab just being a multiplier
on your damage, +dam becomes incredibly important for a thief.
Similarly you've got a mage. He wants to become more powerful by
casting bigger and better spells. Unfortunately, on 99.9% of muds,
the "mystery" factor of mages has been taken away. All mages have
all the exact same spells. Arctic's spellbooks were the coolest
attempt to change this I have seen yet - a very simple, easy to
implement idea that has been on arctic for like two years, and yet I
haven't seen a single other mud attempt to duplicate it.
I could go on, but you probably get the idea, I hope. It does
sadden me, though, that zone writers feel it's not even worth
writing a good/involved/beautiful area, as players won't care.
_I_ care, and by ever other definition of the word I am most
definitely a power-player.
Craig Sivils
Mar...@catling.iaehv.nl (Marian Griffith) wrote:
>In article <4lnf0p$4...@nyx10.cs.du.edu>,
> srwi...@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Oberon) wrote:
>>Additionally, I can see this making PKilling a primary form of advancement.
>>You could, of course, prevent PKilling altogether, but this is not a very
>>good solution in my book.
>It is in my book, but otherwise again I fail to see the significance.
I fail to see how you can have any claim to have any type of
roleplaying without some form of pkill. Pkill is the consequences,
without consequences its anarchy. I haven't seen a complete answer
for all problems with this. But basically if you have unlimited
pkill, the high levels can go an newbie slaughter runs. If you have
limited pkill then people who are "protected" can abuse the
protection, (Like I'm sure in rp that level 2 would REALLY mouth off
and call the level 50 a wuss). If you have NO pkill then everyone can
be a jerk without consequences.
Some of the worst roleplaying I've seen was on pkill muds where there
was this one "peaceful" society that couldnt attack players or be
attacked by players. So they would steal mob kills, loot anything
they saw, cast spells like calm in safe rooms and generally abuse it.
On the flip side, some of the best roleplaying I ever saw was on a
totally open pkill mud where they took steps to enhance the
roleplaying. For example, they hid the level/class in the who list,
so you couldn't "target" newbies. It was one of those "wheel of time"
muds, but they really were serious about trying to roleplay the parts.
Was a fun place, (unless you were a white coat, magic was/is too
important in a mud world).
Craig
ShadowLord
On 25 Apr 1996, Michael Hohensee wrote:
> The one thing I don't agree with entirely about this is that it can be
> very frustrating for a new player to have all his/her/its money stolen
> on the eve of going to get a spell/skill. You'd have to put some
> contrains of theft, maybe no stealing from low levels and a no-steal
> room for training in..
Why? Why should a monetary based system have more restrictions
than an exp based system? If a newbie is killed in a lot of MUDs, they
suffer from experience losses. Just the same, you could only need 1k to
level and be killed by a mobile, no different. The only differences is
that once you got the gold for the spell/skill you might have to hold on
to it a while longer until you can get to your guild and practice.
> > make 'levelling' a function of guilds (move it away
> > from experience/killing)
>
> The one problem with this is that you will have low level players
> continually killing the weak mobs until they can go up 15 levels or
> so, and then do it in one fell swoop. Not particularly realistic.
> (can be kinda nifty tho. :)
Eh, and players can't keep killing wimpy mobiles until they go up
15 levels (one-by-one)? Besides, what's the difference between earning 15
levels one-by-one using experience and gaining 15 levels at once? If the
skills between 1 and 15 don't obsolete each other (this can be
accomplished by preventing some skills from being learned while their
weaker counterparts haven't been learned, yet [eg., no learning fireball
before burning hands]), it's no different. Actually, the skills can
obsolete each other - if players are powerleveling then they may keep
killing without going to their practioner to learn and when they get
there, they'll have the stronger spells which they'll take the time to
learn and the weaker spells they'll just forget about.
k>
> >
> > make the usual infinite resources limited (food, armor,
> > weapons, mana, whatever). players would have to get,
> > make, trade their own.
>
> I've been on MUDs where the food portion of this idea is already
> there. It's kinda no fun to starve to death because you can't get the
> little food there is cuz all yer moneys been taken by a thief or all
> the higher levels get it first. The idea for weapons, armor, and mana
> may be interesting tho. How about making mana a function of the rooms
> you are in? Casting a spell in a room drains some of its mana. Makes
> for some more realisim, cuz you don't have to think about silly things
> like ' you forget how to cast the spell after you cast it'. And it
> would limit the number of spells cast in a room against a monster, so
> it would limit the use of it as well.
>
An interesting idea. If I were to do this, I'd probably make it
so you could cast dampening effects on rooms which would limit the amount
of mana you could draw from it. An interesting thing would be to draw the
mana from the room, but have several different kinds of mana and a
seperate mana-alike for the power of the spell, so better water spells
could be cast doing better effects if you were on an ocean away from land.
This simultaneously would give us the effect that fireball would not be so
effective if you were sitting in the middle of the ocean :P~
> I like Larry Niven's 'The Magic goes Away'. :) (mana-wheels, yes!)
Sorry if I sound like I've been living under a rock for asking
this, but who's what? What's a mana wheel?
BTW, it's also be interesting to have mana in the rooms based upon
spheres. Eg., the sphere's radius would be how much mana is in the room,
using basic geometry, we get the volume of the sphere by:
V = 4<pi>r^2
--------
3
The volume of the mana sphere would dictate how powerful a spell
is, with the mana spheres being affected by weather. That way, the more
times a spell that draws upon a rooms water element is cast, the less
powerful it will be until the mana sphere is given time to regenerate. So
no more casting "fireball" five times in a row to severly damage a NPC,
you cast it once and it may do 15hp damage, twice it may do 13hp, 3x's
it'll do 10hp, etc. Sounds interesting :)
I know, I know, using a three dimensional solid for mana seems
like it's just pointless and you can easily do somthing else without the
silly formula, but "wheel" made me think of the formula for the area of a
circle, which made me think about prisms, which made me think about
spheres, which made me think about volume. Even if it is unneccessarily
complex, it'd be cool just to be able to apply the term "mana sphere" and
have it mean something :)
> > politics -- some way to achieve ascendance over and control
> > of an area or region. Taxes, control guards, roads, etc.
> > end summary>
>
> This sounds spiffy, mind if I cheerfully steal some of these ideas and
> incorperate them into the MUD I'm coding?
It does sound interesting, I was planning on doing this a long
time ago, but never did it. I might just consider doing it some time
soon, so I'll keep ya'all posted.
ShadowLord
On 24 Apr 1996, ALETA BLACK wrote:
> What it sounds like when you went into length about how zones would
> reset, is that certain "EVENTS" would trigger others when the zone reset.
> What you suggested sounds to me like zonefile swaps. I have suggested
> this idea many times to the imps of my favorite mud [Hint: Arctic], and
> will continue to pester on this idea. The problem is that this kind of
> idea would take up alot of hard drive space, and I am sure coding it is
> not easy also.
What would be truely interesting is not having zone resets but
having mobiles/objects/rooms/etc. regenerate when they are removed from
their zone. That way, you can't wait for a zone to get near repop, kill a
mobile, rest until it nears the next repop, kill the mobile, etc., etc. a
perfect loop. If timed perfectly, a player will be able to kill the
mobile twice in a row, rest, kill the mobile twice in a row, rest, kill
the mobile twice in a row, rest... If you kill the mobile and then it
starts counting down to reset only that mobile, you'd have a really cool
prevention of that. It'd also mean you could have lesser mobiles repop
more often while stronger mobiles with a lot of experience wouldn't repop
so quickly. Add a percentage-to-load to this, and you could make it so
that players would actually have to do some kind of walking around instead
of freq'ing an area and a single mobile.
That's one thing I don't like about MUDs that add a lot of areas
or large auto-generated/undescripted zones. That's a cheap way out of it,
by making it harder for players to get to a zone and freq. That, however,
means that players will spend a large amount of time doing little to
nothing except for walking a ways, resting, walking a ways, resting.
While individual MUDs may come up with solutions for the high levelers,
the low levelers, who are generally discouraged to roam on ALL MUDs, get
the boring treatment of freq'ing the main city or whatnot, and do not know
what lies beyond the city until they are a medium leveled player. That I
find to be a major turn-off -- to me, anyway, it signifies that the coder
couldn't come up with some good idea to prevent freq'ing of zones, so they
just added a bunch of fill to make it difficult to get back to zones.
Personally, I'd much prefer exploring a small MUD with only about
4000 well-descripted rooms rather than stumbling about in virtually
unmappable fill areas where I'm not encouraged to explore on foot, I'm
told to either take a mount or be utterly bored, and even then, I'm more
or less told to take random exits and see where it gets me, which could be
exactly nowhere.
I'm not suggesting that you have boring old "follow-the-path"
areas, but not a 20000 room area with little to no descriptions and areas
spread out too widely.
> This would really take some work to avoid a reset where a new zone loads
> and prevent the persons eq from being cleared right? Maybe medevia or
> some mud without the need for CR's from players could do this, easily,
> yet with the curent diku code, it would be tricky as heck to manuver.
Just save their corpse where it is until it's retrieved, a timer
runs out, or whatnot. It depends upon the MUD. Personally, when my MUD
opens up, I don't plan on having newbies CRing and will probably have
special mobiles which can retrieve your corpse at a cost [eg., some of
your money on the corpse, or if not enough gold, the best _LOOKING_ eq on
your corpse (why would a MOB pick up a rusty, old goblet; it might be the
Holy Grail for all they know, but it still is a rusty old goblet to them)]
Anyway, I'm babbling off topic :)
BTW: I need some builders for my MUD, if anyone's interested, just email
me; we have a rough theme that I am currently extending upon. Since we
are "alpha" (pre-beta) there's a few downtimes, pfile wipes, etc., but I
keep those to a minimum and as far as I know, the MUD is rather stable.
So if you'd like to get in at the ground level of a Circle-based MUD (I
don't want any stock areas), please email me at dko...@california.com.
Marian Griffith
In article <DqHC4...@twisto.eng.hou.compaq.com>,
csi...@blkbox.com (Craig Sivils) wrote:
>Mar...@catling.iaehv.nl (Marian Griffith) wrote:
>>In article <4lnf0p$4...@nyx10.cs.du.edu>,
>> srwi...@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Oberon) wrote:
>>>Additionally, I can see this making PKilling a primary form of advancement.
>>>You could, of course, prevent PKilling altogether, but this is not a very
>>>good solution in my book.
>>It is in my book, but otherwise again I fail to see the significance.
>I fail to see how you can have any claim to have any type of
>roleplaying without some form of pkill.
I hate to disagree with you on something you feel so strongly about
but I think you're wrong on this point.
Roleplaying and PK are two entirely different things, that may or
may not coincide. There are PK muds that are totally non-roleplay
just as there are muds that are strongly encouraging roleplay and
allow near unlimited pk. Similarly there are non-pk muds that are
hack-and-slash and there are muds that are strongly roleplay ori-
ented but make pk impossible. If you consider mushes as well, many
of those don't allow any fighting and still are good roleplay en-
vironments.
In many cases roleplay is used as the -excuse- to allow pk. In those
cases the resulting mud is usually not very pleasant to play. All it
does is giving nasty-minded player the right to harass.
Personally I may have been unlucky, but I've seen to many games
where pk was (ab)used by the players to harass and terrorize others.
For the games I like to play a non-pk rule is near essential. I do
accept that there are many others that feel different and enjoy the
additional challenge. It's a good thing there are many games to
cater for both preferences.
This is also getting off the original topic. Not to mention that
the to pk or not to pk question has been beaten to death many
times over already.
What I was saying is, if you allow pk, why not reward it? I.e. if
players can buy skills and levels killing others for their money
(or simply stealing from them) is, if allowed, a legitimate and
fruitfull way of levelling. It's also one that's going to make
you very unpopular, but then nobody likes thiefs don't they?
>Pkill is the consequences, without consequences its anarchy.
One quick answer to this. A game should either allow it near unrestricted
or make it impossible. Any middle way is likely to attract trouble from
players that work around the restrictions.
>I haven't seen a complete answer for all problems with this. But
>basically if you have unlimited pkill, the high levels can go an
>newbie slaughter runs.
Yup, and it's ugly to witness. Not to mention the kind of blackmail
and harassment high levels can get away with.
>If you have
>limited pkill then people who are "protected" can abuse the
>protection, (Like I'm sure in rp that level 2 would REALLY mouth off
>and call the level 50 a wuss). If you have NO pkill then everyone can
>be a jerk without consequences.
hmm. If the level 50 is offended by the words of a level 2 I'd say
he's (funny that it's always men that get upset over being called names ;)
oops, that's my feminist side) not particularly bright. A player that
does drop ooc that badly in a roleplay game deserves to be lectured by
the imps and if that doesn't help to be booted off.
There's always the troublemaker that is going to require special attention
from the implementors (and the use of ban and freeze commands).
But again I'm digressing. This also is a thread that has been beaten to
death many times over, and one I do not enjoy to revive.
>Some of the worst roleplaying I've seen was on pkill muds where there
>was this one "peaceful" society that couldnt attack players or be
>attacked by players. So they would steal mob kills, loot anything
>they saw, cast spells like calm in safe rooms and generally abuse it.
In most muds there's a rule against harassment. Behaviour like that
definitely warrants that description, and can be acted upon. Besides
if players are such poor roleplayers they should find themselves
another mud where roleplay isn't an issue.
>On the flip side, some of the best roleplaying I ever saw was on a
>totally open pkill mud where they took steps to enhance the
>roleplaying. For example, they hid the level/class in the who list,
>so you couldn't "target" newbies. It was one of those "wheel of time"
>muds, but they really were serious about trying to roleplay the parts.
>Was a fun place, (unless you were a white coat, magic was/is too
>important in a mud world).
Nothing, short of a siteban protects a mud from a moron. Don't bother
to try, at least that's what I would think. But then I'm not an imp,
and have no desire to get into the kind of politics involving admin-
istering a mud.
>Craig
Any constructive ideas about the original topic (ways to focus a mud
on other things than fighting for experience for levels) is welcome.
For other discussions please change the subject appropriately :)
marian
Katie Sehorn
In article <Pine.BSI.3.93.96042...@global.california.com>,
ShadowLord <dko...@california.com> wrote:
>runs out, or whatnot. It depends upon the MUD. Personally, when my MUD
>opens up, I don't plan on having newbies CRing and will probably have
>special mobiles which can retrieve your corpse at a cost [eg., some of
I am also contemplating some way other than relying on players
for a corpse retrieval. Since I play late at night due to school rules
about mudding, there aren't always a lot of high-level players around to
bail me out if I'm just wandering and happen to run smack into some big
mean orc that essentially disembowels me inside of five seconds.
Having mobs for hire is a good idea, and I've also kicked around
the idea of player-invisible "faith points" given out by the gods for good
roleplaying (and also handed out by the game for certain actions). If a
player followed a particular god and had enough faith points, s/he could
pray for a retrieval at no (visible) cost to them. The only problem I'm
having with this is ensuring that players never find out the exact system
of distributing points - they should just know that if they roleplay and
do things that please their gods, good things will happen for them. =)
>your money on the corpse, or if not enough gold, the best _LOOKING_ eq on
>your corpse (why would a MOB pick up a rusty, old goblet; it might be the
>Holy Grail for all they know, but it still is a rusty old goblet to them)]
Typically being elven, I find orcish males to be big, ugly,
filthy, stinking, belching, crotch-scratching vermin. Orcish women, on
the other hand, adore them. Don't think you know what's best looking to
everyone, hon. =)
- Katie Sehorn / Kilbia Genta
--
*** Send meaningful responses, hugs and flames to seh...@willamette.edu ***
http://www.willamette.edu/~sehorn * "Shared pain is lessened, shared
"There's a line between fantasy and * joy increased. Thus do we refute
reality, I guess." - Ellen Gilchrist * entropy." - Spider Robinson
Kelley Saveika
In article <19960427....@catling.iaehv.nl>, Mar...@catling.iaehv.nl
says...
>Any constructive ideas about the original topic (ways to focus a mud
>on other things than fighting for experience for levels) is welcome.
>For other discussions please change the subject appropriately :)
>
>marian
I've always wondered why killing mobs would be the main form of getting
experience. I would think that for a thief, for example, the main way of
getting experience (and becoming higher/level/a better thief) would be by
stealing. You would get experience for successfully stealing from mobs (or
other players if that's the way the particular mud worked), but an
unsuccessful attempt would cause the mob to attack. . . I never have
understood how killing things made you a better cleric either . . .
Violet
Roo
I've been following this thread about why zones never get visited
more than once, etc. etc. except to get the good eq. I haven't been
writing zones too terribly long, so maybe I'm off base here.
It seems to me one possible solution is to build puzzles into
your rooms that need to be solved. Of course making difficult puzzles
may require having some code added to the mud, but then maybe that's
what's needed. But you say, once they solve the puzzle then it just
takes an alias or client script to run through the area and solve the
puzzle repeatedly.
I say find a way to make parts of the puzzle random. Instead of
room a always going to room b, make it go to room c sometimes or maybe
room d. That way you have to stop annd read the descriptions to make
sure you're in the right place. Sure the descriptions won't be read
fully every time, but sometimes they will. Randomness will also keep
alias and script users from sweeping in and out on autopilot.
As to making eq more valuable at higher levels, well make it hard
to get. With random exits for example you could have the exit randomize
every character that went through. That'd put an end to mini-armies of
level 20's plus half-a-dozen summoned mobs running around and
slaughtering your level 50 guardian of the sword of uhnloy-destruction.
There all kinds of ways to make people stop and look at your
rooms. Of course the trick is making things so that they have too. If
you put in simple run through areas in a mud, that will become the
standard operating procedure for your mudders. If you make zones that
have to be explored, then that will be SOP.
One last thing about reducing the carnage and forcing players to
do a little more thinking/exploring rather than hacking their way to
power, try using "shopkeeper" mobs. Drop a mob that either sells some
useful piece of eq or sells the key to get through the rest of the zone.
Just don't give it a title liek "The Seller of the Useful Key". Make
some evil looking cleric who the players will want to dumb off
immediately. There are many ways of making players hang around. Nut as
long as easy, powerful eq exists they won't bother going after the
obscure stuff.
This is all just my opinion, but it seems that within the current
framework a lot could be done.
**************************************************************************
* Jason Goldsmith |"We'll see," said Kanga. *
* e-mail:goldsmit@robles. |"You're always seeing, and *
* callutheran.edu | nothing ever happens," *
* WWW:http://cachuma.callutheran.edu/ | said Roo sadly. *
* ~goldsmit/roo.html | *
**************************************************************************
ayud...@netcom.com
: In article <19960427....@catling.iaehv.nl>, Mar...@catling.iaehv.nl
: says...
: >Any constructive ideas about the original topic (ways to focus a mud
: >on other things than fighting for experience for levels) is welcome.
: >For other discussions please change the subject appropriately :)
: >
: >marian
Have you seen how Dart mud does it with skill use being the only way to
improve skills? I'm not sure if I _LIKE_ it, but it does move things
away from killing. Just as was recently suggested, thieves get better
at thieving by doing it, mages by trying out their spells and so forth.
Jay
Marian Griffith
In article <Pine.BSI.3.93.96042...@global.california.com>,
dko...@california.com (ShadowLord) wrote:
>On 24 Apr 1996, ALETA BLACK wrote:
>While individual MUDs may come up with solutions for the high levelers,
>the low levelers, who are generally discouraged to roam on ALL MUDs, get
>the boring treatment of freq'ing the main city or whatnot, and do not know
>what lies beyond the city until they are a medium leveled player. That I
>find to be a major turn-off -- to me, anyway, it signifies that the coder
>couldn't come up with some good idea to prevent freq'ing of zones, so they
>just added a bunch of fill to make it difficult to get back to zones.
I've suggested the idea once to make low level players able to sneak
and hide -far- better than the high levels. Probably link it to the
armor level. Then fill the areas with really nasty *roaming* monsters
no few of which are practically unkillable but otherwise not carrying
worthwhile equipment. They're in the area for nuisance value. Then it
would make sense for high levels to have a bunch of low level players
to guard against those big monsters bumping in on them. In other words
they do scouting work, and naturally get rewarded a little, even if
they're not exactly in the same room.
Their superior sneak and hide skills also allows the low level player
to walk around with reasonable confidence. That way they can not kill
much of the mud but they can at least visit it. Later, as they grow
more experienced and better protected they have to fight more often
but at that point they can handle it. This also offers a nice protection
against the equipped-newbie character problem. Low level players with
armour quite out of the norm for their level will loose their sneaking
advantages and thus are seen far more often by the aggressives. Which
they, despite their better armour, can't handle.
Just an idea
Marian
Marian Griffith
: In article <19960427....@catling.iaehv.nl>, Mar...@catling.iaehv.nl
: says...
: >Any constructive ideas about the original topic (ways to focus a mud
: >on other things than fighting for experience for levels) is welcome.
: >For other discussions please change the subject appropriately :)
>Have you seen how Dart mud does it with skill use being the only way to
>improve skills? I'm not sure if I _LIKE_ it, but it does move things
>away from killing. Just as was recently suggested, thieves get better
>at thieving by doing it, mages by trying out their spells and so forth.
Yes,
that's a very nice idea indeed. But we need to come up with a way to
avoid the obvious reaction of players to this mechanism. They'll sit
in a off the way room for hours using a macro to maximize their skills
by using them constantly. And of course it still is a game biased to
fighting, only the skills to successfully fight are a little harder,
and more realistic, to acquire.
Still it's an idea that's worth exploring!
Marian Griffith
In article <Pine.OSF.3.91.960427101831.322...@robles.callutheran.edu>,
gold...@robles.callutheran.edu (Roo) wrote:
> It seems to me one possible solution is to build puzzles into
>your rooms that need to be solved. Of course making difficult puzzles
>may require having some code added to the mud, but then maybe that's
>what's needed. But you say, once they solve the puzzle then it just
>takes an alias or client script to run through the area and solve the
>puzzle repeatedly.
That is indeed a thing you'll find in many good areas and it's a
very valuable principle to base your areas on. It makes them much
more interesting. As of the need to have special code for your area,
most mud programmers are perfectly willing to add a little code if
it makes an area more interesting so you don't have to worry about
that aspect. It may delay your area until the programmers have time
for it, and some ideas are too complicated to be added but otherwise
I'd say give it a try.
> I say find a way to make parts of the puzzle random. Instead of
>room a always going to room b, make it go to room c sometimes or maybe
>room d. That way you have to stop annd read the descriptions to make
>sure you're in the right place. Sure the descriptions won't be read
>fully every time, but sometimes they will. Randomness will also keep
>alias and script users from sweeping in and out on autopilot.
Most muds have a thing to randomize rooms whenever an area is loaded,
or sometimes even when it is reset. That makes macro building pointless.
Of course in maze areas that's particularly vicious, but such is life.
Some muds have more ways to throw off map makers and macro builders (how
do you do that anyway?), like rivers that move a player around every
few seconds and rotating rooms, timered teleports are also a nice way
to upset a player that relies on fixed maps.
As to making eq more valuable at higher levels, well make it hard
>to get. With random exits for example you could have the exit randomize
>every character that went through. That'd put an end to mini-armies of
>level 20's plus half-a-dozen summoned mobs running around and
>slaughtering your level 50 guardian of the sword of uhnloy-destruction.
If they're that smart I'd say they deserve that sword. And you could also
have a horde of level20 monsters protect it rather than one big-awfull
guardian. If the horde switches in combat from one player to the other
that's often far more effective against groups.
On the other hand you're partly in the wrong here. The real problem
is, of course, that the sword of unholy destruction should not exist
in the first place. Or it should be truly awfully hard to master it.
What it does is making equipment matter more in the game, and upsetting
the balance. If there are swords like that sooner or later many players
will get one, and they'll be passing them on to low leves if something
better comes available (with the next area!). Then the low levels all
of a sudden will find they can attack monsers well out of their project-
ed range, and sooner than you like the mud becomes boring for lack of
a challenge to the players.
The builders are pestered into designing new, more dangerous, areas but
of course by then the players are so used to breezing through the game
that they hate being killed for stupidity (or sheer bad luck) and start
moaning about new, more powerfull spells, and better equipment. At that
point most of the old areas are no longer visited because the equipment
in there is no longer considered particularly good. After all, who is
going to want a sword of unholy destruction when they can get a sword
of ultimate destruction and annihilation?
Exactly this mechanism is why I think that equipment that is -not- basic,
will need to be severely restricted, up to the point of being truly
unique. It's unfair that the first player to go to an area and get
through all its traps and hideouts get a powerfull reward and all other
players are basically out of luck. That's just the way things are and
if players know that in advance they'll be able to live with it.
[ bits snipped for brevity, not for lack of relevancy ]
> This is all just my opinion, but it seems that within the current
>framework a lot could be done.
This is very true
Marian
Marian Griffith
In article <4lu1pm$9...@ionews.ionet.net>,
moon...@ionet.net (Kelley Saveika) wrote:
>In article <19960427....@catling.iaehv.nl>, Mar...@catling.iaehv.nl
>says...
>>Any constructive ideas about the original topic (ways to focus a mud
>>on other things than fighting for experience for levels) is welcome.
>>For other discussions please change the subject appropriately :)
>>marian
>I've always wondered why killing mobs would be the main form of getting
>experience. I would think that for a thief, for example, the main way of
>getting experience (and becoming higher/level/a better thief) would be by
>stealing. You would get experience for successfully stealing from mobs (or
>other players if that's the way the particular mud worked), but an
>unsuccessful attempt would cause the mob to attack. . . I never have
>understood how killing things made you a better cleric either . . .
>Violet
Well,
I never understood either. I don't even like going out and kill monsters.
Personally I only ever play a cleric or similar healer. I love to try to
keep a group together and survive. It would be extremely nice if as a
player I was to be rewarded for -that-.
I guess that it's really difficult to program a game that uses ideas
like that, and that rewards thiefs for stealing and being sneaky, and
mages for - well, being magical I guess. Sometimes it makes me wish
that I was able to understand programming so I could put my ideas into
a game, but unfortunately I've never managed to make sense out of the
machines :(
The good thing is that several people that take part in this little
discussion have made it clear they're willing to create a game that
deviates from the standard ways.
Marian
Orion Henry
>>>Agreed on a general scale it would be rather overblowing the problem. My
>>>particular tastes run to an image of a very broad pyramid/triangle, with
>>>mundane eq at the bottom, forming the vast majority of eq, and the very
>>>arcane/powerful/special items at the pinnacle.
>
>>The main problem is that you get a small number of people with all
>>the powerful eq, either spread out among multiple characters of the
>>same person or in bags.
>
>I'm not sure just how bad this problem is. It happens anyway,
_Extremely_ bad. Again it's the suits of 'mega-eq' thing going on -
the idea is that each character will have a few really awesome items
and the rest be only good or even mediocre. Unfortunately it rarely
works out that way - it's more that a few top players have really
awesome stuff in each slot and the next 'best' players have just
good eq. For new players, the chances of them getting one of those
really rare items is very, very, very low.
>except that now more players have the same set of ultimately
>powerfull equipment. If those things are truly unique then
>each top character is going to be equally unique. On a well
>designed mud they would be forced to play according to the
>equipment they collected.
Yeah - just as an example, take the mud I am currently (kind of)
playing, Tera. There are a lot of good items which have kinda low
maxes (like 10, or 15) and then a few completely incredible pieces
of gear which are limit one or two. So you've got _the_ hero's
crown, _the_ Chaos plate, etc. There is no chance for anyone else
to have them until whomever currently has them dt's or runs of of
rent. So basically if you are careful, you'll keep your set of
mega-gear forever. Now, this works out pretty well, I think - but
again, there are a few players that have quite a few of these unique
items, such as Sheean, who was one of the first powerful players,
got all the good unique gear, and hasn't lost it in all the time
since the mud has been up. Even if he does dt or whatever, he can
very easily just get a few of his friends and sit on the mobs that
the gear loads on until he gets it back, because hey, only he knows
that he's lost it, so no one else is actually going to be looking
for it. There are ways around this - making rent on these items so
ridiculous that maintaining an entire suit is impossible without
playing 24/7, or making it so that certain items just won't jive (ie
your _elven_ chainmail gets pissed off that you are wearing gaunts of
_ogre_ power), put more anti's on stuff (never been fond of anti's
myself...), or get creative. Shadowdale had by far the coolest One
Ring I have seen on any mud - as soon as you got it, all the
ringwraiths in the game would start hunting you down, so you were
constantly dealing with these semi-difficult, level-draining mobs.
Although again, this doesn't always work out the way they
planned...a friend of mine had a thief who kept one in a bag just to
attract ringwraiths to him. ("Hey, why bother _walking_ to your
exp?")
>Note that this solution is going to be a bit tricky on muds
>that encourage pkill and psteal.
I think that unique items are a GREAT way to encourage pk and
psteal. I mean, if your char has one good item, sure, people might
be tempted to kill you - but if you've got a whole goddamn suit,
it's gonna take all of two seconds for a huge party to form, hunt
you down when you least expect it, and divide all the gear between
themselves. So (as with the ringwraith thingy above) you've gotta
be able to take care of yourself if you want to run with the big
dogs. Also makes giving really cool items to newbies more dangerous
than helpful, which I like. The main problem is just that most muds
discourge pk for the sake of friendlyness. Tera has pk but corpse
looting gets your character deleted, so what is the point?
>> As to the second problem, I'm of the mind
>>that you should simply charge rent for everything not worn. Arctic
>
>there's a simpler solution if you dislike rent. basically give each
>character a fixed number of movement points based on strength, size,
>race, sex and a nice amount of randomness. Spells will affect this
>number some but not too much. Now every single move is going to take
>away some of those points according to the weight that must be moved.
>And progressively much if they weight moved is close to the maximum
>weight that can be moved at most. It's like you can lift a single
YES! I most defintely agree with this. I watched friends of mine
die on mortal conquest simply because they had their auto-loot
triggers on and had taken out ten or fifteen whiteys in Xylar. As
they were running away, they had so much crap gear that they were
taking billions of moves every step and eventually the whities
caught up. Very cool.
I do love the weight carried thing. On Tera, my half-elf, who
weighs 148 lbs, routinely carries around over 350 lbs of equipment
no problem. That doesn't even count the weight of his equipment.
Now realistically a 180 lb human male can barely carry 100 lbs of
equipment before he is literally bourne to the ground. But wait,
you want to _fight_, too?
My half-giant on shadowdale used to carry around several huge
boulders (around 140 lbs each) just because he could. Of course,
the funniest part about this is I would get hit by a big spell and
it would scrap a bunch of my crap, including the boulders sometimes.
Looking at the ground I would see "scraps from a huge boulder are
here" and think to myself, "and I LIVED through that?!"
While we're on the topic, the whole inventory concept is stupid.
But I don't think mudders are ready to deal with the concept of only
having two hands just yet.
>>>As was said elsewhere, this meshes more smoothly with a game balance where
>>>one wants the trickle down to be minimal, the duplication of characters
>>>with exactly the same kits, etc.
>
>>Well, that can be avoided easily enough - don't make one "best" item
>>for any given slot. Most muds do this to some extent - there are
>>items with lots of damroll but other minuses, lots of mana but no
>>damroll, high ac, whatever.
>
>hmmm. that would work. However on most muds I've seen each new area
>added more powerfull equipment to attract players to vist the area.
>Soon the average damage inflates all out of proportion and game
>balance is majorly disturbed.
Right. That's because most areas are written by players, who say,
"Gee, there isn't any plus damage on the foot location yet. Guess
I'll make some." I for one would encourge people to write zones and
create items, then submit them to the mud's admins _without_ making
stats on items. They can suggest what they think each item will do,
of course, but the admins should decide exactly how they will work.
This would help keep the game balance, although it's a lot of extra
work on the part of admins and would probably discourage players
from writing zones, as well.
>If powerfull equipment is made unique that at least is less of a
>problem. No point in designing an area around some super equipment
>if the building implementors are making them unique anyway.
Well, not necessarily. If you get twenty unqiue swords from twenty
unique zones, all of which kick ass...
I think mostly the solution to this goes back to what the original
poster was saying about de-emphasizing equipment. A weaponsmaster
with leather armor and a half-way descent longsword should kick the
butt of any newbie, no matter WHAT he or she is wearing. So if you
make items not matter as much, then this problem becomes less
important - perhaps to the point that it is no longer really a
problem. Just make most of the gear mediocre - ie, leather armor
protects you some, plate protects you some more, a dagger does
damage, a long sword does more, a battle axe does even more - and
then have a very few really kick-ass items, with a lot of
reprocutions to using said items (pk/psteal, big rent, wierd or
unpredictable ego items (like a holy avenger that makes you auto-hit
any evil creature in the room)) and let the emphasis fall
elsewhere.
Owen Emlen
In article <19960428....@catling.iaehv.nl>,
Marian Griffith <gry...@iaehv.nl> wrote:
>In article <4lu1pm$9...@ionews.ionet.net>,
>
>Well,
>I never understood either. I don't even like going out and kill monsters.
>Personally I only ever play a cleric or similar healer. I love to try to
>keep a group together and survive. It would be extremely nice if as a
>player I was to be rewarded for -that-.
Ever think that there is a reason for this? Lemme see... how hard is it
to make a bot that autoheals anyone who needs it? Or to perpetually
steal from some wimp mob? Or to cast magic missile on your friends 10,000
times for 'experience' or 'reward'? Even if you can't cast magic missile
on your friends, how about auto-shielding anyone that comes into the room?
My point is that combat is a lot more risky, and on a mud with a good
experience system (where you can't level by killing 9000 easy kills),
you have to actually be there, be involved in the game, and be playing
the game.
It's all about people abusing the system. You can code anything you like;
fact is, combat was selected for 'experience'/'reward' because it is the
toughest thing to abuse, and the easiest thing to regulate. Mud admins
don't just want 50 more 'pseudo-mobiles' sitting around; they want players
who add to the atmosphere. This is why fighting was selected for the main
way to recieve power. Of course, there's nothing wrong with giving mages
experience for damage they do in combat (based on level of the mob, etc),
and healers some ample experience for healing group members during combat,
but still, the only real non-abusable way to advance is 'experience'/'reward'
through combat.
I use 'reward' because I do think it possible to have a totally skill-based
system. However, even a fully skill-based system must be most heavily based
on combat... unless you want some mud which doesn't focus on a player's
ego and character power... but then you want a talker or roleplay noncombat
MOO or something...
Owen
Roo
On Sun, 28 Apr 1996, Marian Griffith wrote:
Stuff cut that was not terribly relevant:)
Well, I was refering to the fact that other people have this
urge to put in theses terribly powerful weapons. I agree totally that
massively destructive weapons shouldn' be available, and if they are they
should be dang tough. For examplt having to take a party of 6 level
40's (on a lev 50 scale for sake of reference) to get half-way decent
eq. That would make life much more interesting I'd say. Of course the
trickle down affect does always come into play. Of course if you could
get a new area to have mobs that aggro because of powerful eq from other
areas, most players would be more cautious about which eq they wanted.
It would be tough to get an all powerful kit if everytime you went after
the "Ultimate Weapon" your current weapon tuned you and your party into
monster bait.
I can't remember if I mentioned this before but one contributing
factor to the eq loaded chars is the existance of identify. Buying
scrolls in town makes life really easy for finding out whether or not the
tarnished sword you just got is kick butt or get kicked eq. Of course
selling in the shop might be a way to determine but a little wickedly
random values could solve that, ie make good eq worth little resale and
bad eq worth great cash, same for rent, some good eq could rent cheap
while crap eq could rent high. Of course if you give mages identify for
little cost everyone will have a mage with identify for the sole purpose
of checking eq. (but if you made identify a level 45 spell (on 50 lev
scale) and cost 500 mana (assuming maxed mana of 1000) it'd slow things
down a bit)
Roo
On Sun, 28 Apr 1996, Marian Griffith wrote:
> >I've always wondered why killing mobs would be the main form of getting
> >experience. I would think that for a thief, for example, the main way of
> >getting experience (and becoming higher/level/a better thief) would be by
> >stealing. You would get experience for successfully stealing from mobs (or
> >other players if that's the way the particular mud worked), but an
> >unsuccessful attempt would cause the mob to attack. . . I never have
> >understood how killing things made you a better cleric either . . .
> >Violet
>
> Well,
> I never understood either. I don't even like going out and kill monsters.
> Personally I only ever play a cleric or similar healer. I love to try to
> keep a group together and survive. It would be extremely nice if as a
> player I was to be rewarded for -that-.
>
> I guess that it's really difficult to program a game that uses ideas
> like that, and that rewards thiefs for stealing and being sneaky, and
> mages for - well, being magical I guess.
>
>
> Marian
> --
Well, to some extent you getting exp from grouping with people
who kill monsters and keeping them alive gets you exp for being a
cleric. I used to play a cleric and even with my eq (which was high
powered) I couldn't earn exp solo like I could by going with a group to
heal. Without certain classes lots of areas on many muds would be
unbeatable. Imagine a warrior taking on a mob that takes 2/3 of the
warriors hp a round. Without a clerical army these warrior is gonna eat
it quick. Or on muds where mages portal the reward is getting to tag
along and get exp whil the warriors kill the mobs.
Dan Shiovitz
In article <4m00vl$o...@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>, Owen Emlen <owen@> wrote:
>In article <19960428....@catling.iaehv.nl>,
>Marian Griffith <gry...@iaehv.nl> wrote:
>>In article <4lu1pm$9...@ionews.ionet.net>,
>>
>>I never understood either. I don't even like going out and kill monsters.
>>Personally I only ever play a cleric or similar healer. I love to try to
>>keep a group together and survive. It would be extremely nice if as a
>>player I was to be rewarded for -that-.
>
>to make a bot that autoheals anyone who needs it? Or to perpetually
>steal from some wimp mob? Or to cast magic missile on your friends 10,000
>times for 'experience' or 'reward'? Even if you can't cast magic missile
>on your friends, how about auto-shielding anyone that comes into the room?
level 20 than when you're level 1? (Answer: about as hard as giving less
experience for killing a fido when you're level 20 than when you're level 1.)
(Also, of course, it's not out of the question to make a bot to hunt and kill
mobs when you're away.)
[..]
>It's all about people abusing the system. You can code anything you like;
>fact is, combat was selected for 'experience'/'reward' because it is the
>toughest thing to abuse, and the easiest thing to regulate. Mud admins
...merely mentioning in passing that the *actual* reason combat was
selected for 'experience'/'reward' was because original diku was almost a
direct AD&D rip-off, and the reason EGG selected combat for 'experience'/
'reward' was because AD&D was, in turn, descended from wargaming where
combat was the only objective, and thus the only reward...
[..]
>I use 'reward' because I do think it possible to have a totally skill-based
>system. However, even a fully skill-based system must be most heavily based
>on combat... unless you want some mud which doesn't focus on a player's
>ego and character power... but then you want a talker or roleplay noncombat
>MOO or something...
This is only true if you define "character power" in terms of "mobs killable
per hour". (And off the top of my head, I can think of about a half-dozen
alternatives: wealth, political control, land owned, knowledge of the area,
skills known, hours played...)
>Owen
--
dan shiovitz scy...@u.washington.edu sh...@cs.washington.edu
slightly lost author/programmer in a world of more creative or more sensible
people ... remember to speak up for freedom because no one else will do it
for you: use it or lose it ... carpe diem -- be proactive.
my web site: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~scythe/home.html some ok stuff.
Dan Shiovitz
In article <Pine.OSF.3.91.960427101831.322...@robles.callutheran.edu>,
Roo <gold...@robles.callutheran.edu> wrote:
[..]
> As to making eq more valuable at higher levels, well make it hard
>to get. With random exits for example you could have the exit randomize
>every character that went through. That'd put an end to mini-armies of
>level 20's plus half-a-dozen summoned mobs running around and
>slaughtering your level 50 guardian of the sword of uhnloy-destruction.
learn the zones. If someone who's been there ten times before has the
same difficulty getting through the Maze O' Doom as someone who's never
been there, then why struggle to find your way through again? Just go to
an easier zone without the maze. (Also, on pkill muds, non-random but
difficult mazes are a cool place to hide if you know them and your opponent
doesn't.)
* the real problem, of course, is that they're stupid. There's a reason why
text adventures don't have "You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike."
anymore, and it ain't because they're hard to code.
> There all kinds of ways to make people stop and look at your
>rooms. Of course the trick is making things so that they have too. If
>you put in simple run through areas in a mud, that will become the
>standard operating procedure for your mudders. If you make zones that
>have to be explored, then that will be SOP.
> One last thing about reducing the carnage and forcing players to
>do a little more thinking/exploring rather than hacking their way to
>power, try using "shopkeeper" mobs. Drop a mob that either sells some
>useful piece of eq or sells the key to get through the rest of the zone.
>Just don't give it a title liek "The Seller of the Useful Key". Make
>some evil looking cleric who the players will want to dumb off
>immediately. There are many ways of making players hang around. Nut as
>long as easy, powerful eq exists they won't bother going after the
>obscure stuff.
Yeah. The best thing to do is prolly to have decent-to-poor equipment
available easily, and good equipment that you can find if you search for.
That way it's possible to survive if you aren't clever, but you'll get your
ass kicked by someone who is.
>* Jason Goldsmith |"We'll see," said Kanga. *
>* e-mail:goldsmit@robles. |"You're always seeing, and *
>* callutheran.edu | nothing ever happens," *
Orion Henry
>> would limit the number of spells cast in a room against a monster, so
>> it would limit the use of it as well.
>
> An interesting idea. If I were to do this, I'd probably make it
>so you could cast dampening effects on rooms which would limit the amount
>of mana you could draw from it. An interesting thing would be to draw the
>mana from the room, but have several different kinds of mana and a
>seperate mana-alike for the power of the spell, so better water spells
>could be cast doing better effects if you were on an ocean away from land.
>This simultaneously would give us the effect that fireball would not be so
>effective if you were sitting in the middle of the ocean :P~
Reminds me a little of the Dark Sun magic system. Don't remember it
real well...it's been a while and I never played it much
anyways...but they did have a cool thing where magic basically came
from the living things upon the earth, not the person themselves.
So you had to be careful not to "use up" the mana in an area - if
you did, the plants would start to wither and die, earth would
become scorched and devoid of nutriants (thus harder to replant),
etc. Of course there were defilers which regular magic types
thought were the bane of all evil, 'cause they would go around just
using the 'mana' of an area without thinking about the consquences.
This could be really cool, especially for a pk-enabled mud. Just a
matter of having to make rooms be more dynamic...that is, "A Dense
Forest" wouldn't be a dense forest anymore after a few defilers had
messed with it.
Orion Henry
>Marian Griffith <gry...@iaehv.nl> wrote:
>>I never understood either. I don't even like going out and kill monsters.
>>Personally I only ever play a cleric or similar healer. I love to try to
>>keep a group together and survive. It would be extremely nice if as a
>>player I was to be rewarded for -that-.
>
>Ever think that there is a reason for this? Lemme see... how hard is it
>to make a bot that autoheals anyone who needs it? Or to perpetually
>steal from some wimp mob? Or to cast magic missile on your friends 10,000
>times for 'experience' or 'reward'? Even if you can't cast magic missile
>on your friends, how about auto-shielding anyone that comes into the room?
Welllll...again if you were to put some time into developing a good
system, you could make it harder to do this. A good tintin
programmer can probably make a bot to do just about anything on just
about any diku mud. Even after I have been playing a mud a short
time I usually have a pretty extensive list of actions and aliases -
things to backstab a certain mob, switch to my fighting weapon (if I
fail, try again), bash the mosh (if I fail, stand up and bash
again), if I wimpy walk back the way I fled, draw my stabber and
stab again, etc. It's just a matter of how much time you want to
spend on this, and what you think is fun. To me, the stuff that is
fun is the chaos of all-out battles; namely playerkill where your
opponents are smart, mobs that are so incredibly fast and/or tough
that your party is in shambles, or mobs that have tricky "twists" to
them that you didn't anticipate.
The simpilist solution to the above is simply to only reward exp for
hitpoints that are _healed_ - so someone has to take the damage in
order for you to heal it.
>My point is that combat is a lot more risky, and on a mud with a good
>experience system (where you can't level by killing 9000 easy kills),
>you have to actually be there, be involved in the game, and be playing
>the game.
See above. (Not to sound jaded or anything...I still spend my fair
share of time MUDing)
>It's all about people abusing the system. You can code anything you like;
>fact is, combat was selected for 'experience'/'reward' because it is the
I disagree with ya here. Combat was selected because programmers
are 99% males, namely young impulsive males - people exactly like
me, to be honest. We like to kill shit, we like to compete with our
fellow man, we like to kill our fellow man to prove we are better.
We like violence and competition - that's what's fun to us. I don't
mean to stereotype and/or over-generalize, but this is really the
case. Look at a game like Tetris - non-competative and non-violent,
it's audience was well over half female even though the vast
majority of computer users at that time were male.
And I can't help notice that the original poster was a female.
Again, I really hate to draw lines about stuff like this; the best
part about interacting over the internet is that you get away from
race/gender/age/everything else that makes you treat someone
differently. But I have noticed that the few women who do MUD have
attitudes more like Marian's, which is cool - but MUDs were not
written to cater to that sort of stance, which is too bad.
>toughest thing to abuse, and the easiest thing to regulate. Mud admins
>don't just want 50 more 'pseudo-mobiles' sitting around; they want players
>who add to the atmosphere. This is why fighting was selected for the main
>way to recieve power. Of course, there's nothing wrong with giving mages
Again, muds cater a lot to power-hungry types; I'm no exception. I
have friends, though, that aren't really interested in good gear, or
being high-level, or anything else involving power - they just want
to cruise around, see new places, meet new people, and just relax in
a fantasy world. These people often tend to have a lot more fun,
too. I'm not saying everyone should be like this, but why isn't
there more along these lines to do? Why does everything have to be
combat-related?
>experience for damage they do in combat (based on level of the mob, etc),
>and healers some ample experience for healing group members during combat,
>but still, the only real non-abusable way to advance is 'experience'/'reward'
>through combat.
Again, it's just a matter of putting some time into making this
complicated enough so that it _won't_ be abusable. It was very easy
to make 'bots that would run around and gain you endless exp on the
first MUDs, until the systems became developed enough to prevent
that. If this sort of attention were devoted to other skills, they
would develop as well.
Of course, I still think experience and levels are outdated concepts
that are increasingly difficult to work with, so I would urge any
mud coders to ditch them as soon as possible. But I doubt that is
going to happen any time soon :)
>I use 'reward' because I do think it possible to have a totally skill-based
>system. However, even a fully skill-based system must be most heavily based
Most definitely it is. It has been done, and well.
>on combat... unless you want some mud which doesn't focus on a player's
>ego and character power... but then you want a talker or roleplay noncombat
>MOO or something...
Well, I think there is a happy medium. For everything anti-diku I
say, I still find myself playing dikus almost exclusively, because
they are simply the most fun. I find MUSH-style RPing to be
mentally exhausting and really too much work for something I want to
be leisure, and LPs just seem a little too much like multi-player
versions of "Adventure" with a few stats tossed in for me to enjoy
them much. What I'd like to see is a MUD that has the _core_ of a
diku - strong, pulse-based combat and quick-thrill kind of fun -
with a far more involved world and skill system to go around it.
There are so many ways to kill, yet relatively few ways to heal.
One could very easily make healer-classes that are at least as
involved as any warrior; there just has to be a coder interested in
taking the time to do it.
Katie Sehorn
In article <4m00vl$o...@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>, Owen Emlen <owen@> wrote:
>In article <19960428....@catling.iaehv.nl>,
>Marian Griffith <gry...@iaehv.nl> wrote:
>>In article <4lu1pm$9...@ionews.ionet.net>,
>>
>>Well,
>>Personally I only ever play a cleric or similar healer. I love to try to
>>keep a group together and survive. It would be extremely nice if as a
>>player I was to be rewarded for -that-.
>
>Ever think that there is a reason for this? Lemme see... how hard is it
>to make a bot that autoheals anyone who needs it?
About as hard as it is to make one that autoheals someone you're
grouped with in combat.
Or to perpetually steal from some wimp mob?
About as hard as it is to make one to continually hunt down and
kill wimp mobs.
>on your friends, how about auto-shielding anyone that comes into the room?
Not much harder than typing it in manually except that you might
miss the person.
>My point is that combat is a lot more risky, and on a mud with a good
>experience system (where you can't level by killing 9000 easy kills),
You don't necessarily need to be bot-hunting fidos. There's
usually one zone at any given point where you can go wreak havoc, get
some amount of experience, and not suffer tremendously. Hell, I saw
someone write a bot to constantly create a new player that would go and
attack his real player, just for the one exp point he'd get.
>way to recieve power. Of course, there's nothing wrong with giving mages
>experience for damage they do in combat (based on level of the mob, etc),
Most MUDs don't do this, though. If they did, mages wouldn't
take so long to level. The whole point of being a mage is relying on
your spells, and when experience points are only awarded for melee
damage, it slows mages up something fierce - even clerics will level faster.
>and healers some ample experience for healing group members during combat,
Sorry, I still think healers are meant to heal regardless.
Having the game check to see if the player actually needed it will
prevent folks from continually power-healing themselves even when they're
maxxed out with regard to hitpoints. But not handing out ANY sort of
reward to a player for doing what s/he does best? I don't see that as
being conducive to roleplaying....
- Katie
Roo
On 29 Apr 1996, Dan Shiovitz wrote:
> The problem with randomized exits* is that they don't encourage people to
> learn the zones. If someone who's been there ten times before has the
> same difficulty getting through the Maze O' Doom as someone who's never
> been there, then why struggle to find your way through again? Just go to
> an easier zone without the maze. (Also, on pkill muds, non-random but
> difficult mazes are a cool place to hide if you know them and your opponent
> doesn't.)
>
> * the real problem, of course, is that they're stupid. There's a reason why
> text adventures don't have "You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike."
> anymore, and it ain't because they're hard to code.
>
The point, was not to make totally randow mazes, I apologize if
that was not clear. The point was to make mazes such that to keep your
bearings you had to stop and read. For example many mazes I have seen
look like 50 rooms all with the same title and same description. Once
you figure out the pattern, you write an alias an zip through the maze on
autopilot.
What I was suggesting is you make parts of the maze random such
that you would have to look at rooms to know where you are. Let's say
that to exit the maze you need to go east from room x. If you actually
have to find room x by reading descriptions that'd make the area better.
For example to get to room x you may be randomly teleported to a section
that is out of sequence with the last time you went through.
I don't know if any of this is amaking sense but I hope it is.
Anyway, I think the biggest reason why areas get ignored is that the
builders don't take the time to make it impossible/difficult to run
through an area. As to the point about people just going to an easier
zone, the point is that there shouldn't be an "easier" zone for the same
level player. There may be zones that have different difficulties but
they shouldn't be easier. A Level 35 (on Level 50 scale) should have to
work their butt off to get anywhere. This would also help slow down
newbie eq loading by high levels. There's no way in hell a level 35 is
gonna give a newbie some kick butt sword that took him 4 weeks to find
and another 4 to aquire, it's too much work. But you can be darn sure
the Level 35 will get the sword for him/herslef because if it is that
much work to get it's probably better than most people in the game have.
It's all about making people earn the power instead of serving it
up on a platter for them. You just have to be careful that you don't
make it too difficult or you and the rest of the Imms will be the only
people playing ;)
**************************************************************************
* Jason Goldsmith |"We'll see," said Kanga. *
* e-mail:goldsmit@robles. |"You're always seeing, and *
* callutheran.edu | nothing ever happens," *
Marian Griffith
In article <4m301u$8...@gemini.willamette.edu>,
seh...@willamette.edu (Katie Sehorn) wrote:
>In article <4m00vl$o...@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>, Owen Emlen <owen@> wrote:
>>In article <19960428....@catling.iaehv.nl>,
>>Marian Griffith <gry...@iaehv.nl> wrote:
>>>Well,
>>>I never understood either. I don't even like going out and kill monsters.
>>>Personally I only ever play a cleric or similar healer. I love to try to
>>>keep a group together and survive. It would be extremely nice if as a
>>>player I was to be rewarded for -that-.
>>Ever think that there is a reason for this? Lemme see... how hard is it
>>to make a bot that autoheals anyone who needs it?
I'm perfectly aware of the possibilities to abuse such system. On the
other hand I'm not convinced that's really a problem. I'm greatly in
favor of handing whining players a free (cursed) sword of ultimaty
destruction. Being able to kill anything on the game in a single
blow -very- soon looses its appeal. By making the abuse patently
obvious you'll at least have no trouble separate the serious from
the 'cheating' player if it comes to considering a player for an
Imm position.
Which sums up more or less the problem with the vast majority of muds.
They not only discourage roleplaying. They also discourage playing in
the proper style. On nearly all muds I've played (admittedly not so
great number as most other regulars in this newsgroup) all players
were basically simple warriors with some skills or spells attached.
Thiefs, mages and clerics would fight basically as a warrior and only
a limited amount of damage would come from specialized skill.
Yes, I know, there are muds where magic is so powerfull that all players
actually play a mage, even if their character is a warrior or thief. By
rewarding a character for doing what it should do, you encourage at the
least players to stay in their planned role. Clerics don't -have- to
get out and collect warrior style armour, they have to find ways to
heal/cure/help others, and if the mud has religion they'll be having
duties (and rewards) in that direction too. Mages would still be the
crash and burn type, but their experience would not come from the hits
during the combat, but from the successfully cast spells. Thiefs is a
bit difficult to think, as they're a kind of anti-social class. I have
not played thiefs so I can't really say what style they're supposed to
play in. But I don't doubt there's some way to reward them too for
staying within that style. Being able to reward roleplaying would of
course be even nicer (at least to me) but I don't doubt that will lead
to a heated discussion about the disadvantages of that.
Katie Sehorn
In article <Pine.OSF.3.91.960428204...@robles.callutheran.edu>,
Roo <gold...@robles.callutheran.edu> wrote:
>heal. Without certain classes lots of areas on many muds would be
>unbeatable. Imagine a warrior taking on a mob that takes 2/3 of the
>warriors hp a round. Without a clerical army these warrior is gonna eat
>it quick.
That or they just find a big bunch of other warriors to all
rescue each other, with one cleric to heal them all. Or they just bitch
because it's the only good place for exp but they can never get a group
for it, so why don't the gods build something else for when they feel
like soloing?
>Or on muds where mages portal the reward is getting to tag
>along and get exp whil the warriors kill the mobs.
Okay, but this isn't much use to a mage unless it either takes
you places you can't walk to, or there is some other factor - like maybe
combat occasionally drains move points, so it's more to your advantage to
drag along a mage (who will suck down some of "your" exp) than to expend
lots of movement points walking halfway across the face of the continent.
And I remember too many times as a thief where I was asked to
pick a lock for someone, and then just patted on my head and sent away
after I did it. Feh.
Roo
On 29 Apr 1996, Katie Sehorn wrote:
>
> >Or on muds where mages portal the reward is getting to tag
> >along and get exp whil the warriors kill the mobs.
>
> Okay, but this isn't much use to a mage unless it either takes
> you places you can't walk to, or there is some other factor - like maybe
> combat occasionally drains move points, so it's more to your advantage to
> drag along a mage (who will suck down some of "your" exp) than to expend
> lots of movement points walking halfway across the face of the continent.
>
> And I remember too many times as a thief where I was asked to
> pick a lock for someone, and then just patted on my head and sent away
> after I did it. Feh.
>
Well, the point about portal was that the mages would be the only
ones to take you there. On one mud I play on you simply can't reach
certain items without a mage getting you there. You could walk, it's
possible but odds are you'll all be dead before you get there or the mob
will take you out.
As far as being a thief and getting jerked out of exp...well as
they say, "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me" You
just gotta be careful who you help, and hey you can always take a
backstab and run. Anyway, just pointing out that mages/clerics can be
useful without killing.
A.R
In article <19960428....@catling.iaehv.nl>
gry...@iaehv.nl "Marian Griffith" writes:
> In article <4lu1pm$9...@ionews.ionet.net>,
> moon...@ionet.net (Kelley Saveika) wrote:
> >In article <19960427....@catling.iaehv.nl>, Mar...@catling.iaehv.nl
> >says...
> >experience. I would think that for a thief, for example, the main way of
> >getting experience (and becoming higher/level/a better thief) would be by
> >stealing. You would get experience for successfully stealing from mobs (or
> >other players if that's the way the particular mud worked), but an
> >unsuccessful attempt would cause the mob to attack. . . I never have
> >understood how killing things made you a better cleric either . . .
> >Violet
>
> I never understood either. I don't even like going out and kill monsters.
> Personally I only ever play a cleric or similar healer. I love to try to
> keep a group together and survive. It would be extremely nice if as a
> player I was to be rewarded for -that-.
to gain experience there should be some form of risks that you need to take
when you fight there is a risk of dieing..so you should be rewarded for taking
that chance
if there could be some form of risk in healing a player then maybe
the exp for healing could be used
maybe a cleric could only get experience for healing during combat
the cleric doesnt need to be directly involved in the combat
(could be part of a group) the cleric could be standing nearby
the risk in this could be that if the cleric heals a player who is fighting
a mob
then the cleric risks being attacked by the mob
the tougher the mob is then the more exp the cleric gets for healing a player
who is fighting it (because a tougher mob may kill the cleric very easyily)
--
A.R
I'm not racist, i hate everyone equally.
Marian Griffith
In article <4m3dot$8...@gemini.willamette.edu>,
seh...@willamette.edu (Katie Sehorn) wrote:
>In article <Pine.OSF.3.91.960428204...@robles.callutheran.edu>,
>Roo <gold...@robles.callutheran.edu> wrote:
>>heal. Without certain classes lots of areas on many muds would be
>>unbeatable. Imagine a warrior taking on a mob that takes 2/3 of the
>>warriors hp a round. Without a clerical army these warrior is gonna eat
>>it quick.
> That or they just find a big bunch of other warriors to all
>rescue each other, with one cleric to heal them all. Or they just bitch
>because it's the only good place for exp but they can never get a group
>for it, so why don't the gods build something else for when they feel
>like soloing?
Knowing the average mudder they usually just hang out and do the last.
It's amazing how long it takes for a fairly coherent group to form on
the majority of muds. And then you still need at least one player to
act as leader that actually knows what to do and how to organize the
group to make their chances of survival as large as possible.
>>Or on muds where mages portal the reward is getting to tag
>>along and get exp whil the warriors kill the mobs.
I do object to your phrasing. Even if it is 'fact' on most muds.
There should be a good reason to have a mage around in a group,
and not simply tag them along because of convenience.
> Okay, but this isn't much use to a mage unless it either takes
>you places you can't walk to, or there is some other factor - like maybe
>combat occasionally drains move points, so it's more to your advantage to
>drag along a mage (who will suck down some of "your" exp) than to expend
>lots of movement points walking halfway across the face of the continent.
It seems to be the attitude of many players that forming a group is
disadvantageous because it reduces the experience they get for each
kill. They simply avoid as much as possible the areas where a group
is actually needed (because it's too much bother) and prefer the
'solo' areas.
> And I remember too many times as a thief where I was asked to
>pick a lock for someone, and then just patted on my head and sent away
>after I did it. Feh.
That's indeed quite obnoxious. Happens to healers a lot too I'm afraid.
Someone shouts for a cure blind or cure disease, and can't be bothered
to even say 'thank you' when you take the trouble to recall and seek
them out to heal them.
marian
Marian Griffith
In article <4lve3r$d...@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>,
ohe...@sdcc10.ucsd.edu (Orion Henry) wrote:
>>>The main problem is that you get a small number of people with all
>>>the powerful eq, either spread out among multiple characters of the
>>>same person or in bags.
>>I'm not sure just how bad this problem is. It happens anyway,
>_Extremely_ bad. Again it's the suits of 'mega-eq' thing going on -
>the idea is that each character will have a few really awesome items
>and the rest be only good or even mediocre. Unfortunately it rarely
>works out that way - it's more that a few top players have really
>awesome stuff in each slot and the next 'best' players have just
>good eq. For new players, the chances of them getting one of those
>really rare items is very, very, very low.
Yes. That's true, unfortunate, and it can be the way the mud runs.
Eventually a player leaves the game.
And of course there shouldn't be equipment that's so special that
it overpowers any other factor in the game. At least that's what
I feel about the issue.
On Holomud they have (or used to have) a 'nymph' who, regularly,
targets a random player, seduces him or her and steals the best
bit of equipment from his or her inventory. Then announces to the
mud in general that what she has and teleports around at great
intervals. Any player has a chance to hunt her down and get that
equipment. If it doesn't happen within a certain time the stolen
thing is scrapped and the nymph targets another character.
Or make dragon-breath and balefire actually damage and even destroy
equipment. You could even make spells that teleport a player out
of his equipment (monster only please! it's too open for harassment
otherwise). Sure it's annoying but there are many ways to make it
difficult for a player to stick to her equipment.
Come to think of it. On Island there was no rent. Upon leaving all
players had to sell their equipment as only their money was saved.
When reconnecting again they had to buy equipment and hunt out the
few good items to be had. Now that is a powerfull way to equalize
players ...
[ bits snipped ]
>>> As to the second problem, I'm of the mind
>>>that you should simply charge rent for everything not worn. Arctic
>>there's a simpler solution if you dislike rent. basically give each
>>character a fixed number of movement points based on strength, size,
>>race, sex and a nice amount of randomness. Spells will affect this
>>number some but not too much. Now every single move is going to take
>>away some of those points according to the weight that must be moved.
>>And progressively much if they weight moved is close to the maximum
>>weight that can be moved at most. It's like you can lift a single
>YES! I most defintely agree with this. I watched friends of mine
>die on mortal conquest simply because they had their auto-loot
>triggers on and had taken out ten or fifteen whiteys in Xylar. As
>they were running away, they had so much crap gear that they were
>taking billions of moves every step and eventually the whities
>caught up. Very cool.
*giggle*
that's a fun thing to see. Probably a little annoying if it
happens to yourself but definitely a great source of entertainment
to others.
>I do love the weight carried thing. On Tera, my half-elf, who
>weighs 148 lbs, routinely carries around over 350 lbs of equipment
>no problem. That doesn't even count the weight of his equipment.
>Now realistically a 180 lb human male can barely carry 100 lbs of
>equipment before he is literally bourne to the ground. But wait,
>you want to _fight_, too?
yes,
It would be even more interesting if you would take movement points
away from swinging that sword too... Then carrying loads of equipment
is going to be quite dangerous if you travel through dangerous areas.
It's kind of sad to be attacked by a wimpy orc and being unable to
defend yourself because you were exhausted by all the junk you are
carrying around. It would definitely force you to concentrate on
the strategy, and on ways to keep your hoard of equipment safe while
you're out of town killing dragons...
>>>Well, that can be avoided easily enough - don't make one "best" item
>>>for any given slot. Most muds do this to some extent - there are
>>>items with lots of damroll but other minuses, lots of mana but no
>>>damroll, high ac, whatever.
>>hmmm. that would work. However on most muds I've seen each new area
>>added more powerfull equipment to attract players to vist the area.
>>Soon the average damage inflates all out of proportion and game
>>balance is majorly disturbed.
>Right. That's because most areas are written by players, who say,
>"Gee, there isn't any plus damage on the foot location yet. Guess
>I'll make some."
Don't blame it all on the builders. There's a tremendous pressure
on a mud staff to add more powerfull spells/skills/equipment.
Resisting that is the hard thing to do, unless you run a merc or
rom, where the stats are determined by the level of the equipment
entirely.
> I for one would encourge people to write zones and
>create items, then submit them to the mud's admins _without_ making
>stats on items. They can suggest what they think each item will do,
>of course, but the admins should decide exactly how they will work.
I've been wondering if there's another way to achieve the same. How
about giving each stat modification a point-value. E.g. a simple
+2hp would have a value of 1 point, but a +2dam would be some 25 points.
For each level a maximum number of points should be allowed on a piece
of equipment, say up 5 points per 10 levels, starting at level 5. (so
a level 10 helmet could have no more that 5 points !). To allow builders
some freedom it should be possible to add affects to equipment that are
too expensive for their level but these have to be countered by negative
changes. These return roughly half the points they would cost otherwise.
So to make a +10hp armour for a level 2 character the builder should
take away 10 points with the same equipment, e.g. by making it -20mana.
The same would be true for a +1str ring, which would cost some 50 points
from other stats. Things like these could be easily enforced by the game
itself, and if monsters would refuse to load with equipment of higher
level than they themselves are it's hard for builders to create overly
powerfull equipment>
>This would help keep the game balance, although it's a lot of extra
>work on the part of admins and would probably discourage players
>from writing zones, as well.
I'm not too sure of that. Players that build do so because they like
to, not because they want to add powerfull equipment to the game.
>>If powerfull equipment is made unique that at least is less of a
>>problem. No point in designing an area around some super equipment
>>if the building implementors are making them unique anyway.
>Well, not necessarily. If you get twenty unqiue swords from twenty
>unique zones, all of which kick ass...
Still that's 20 swords on a playerbase of 2000 instead of a very
powerfull that's potentially available to all 2000 of them.
Besides the point was not about the swords themselves but about the
areas in which they could be found. Those had to be different if
there's no extremely powerfull equipment to 'protect' in them.
>I think mostly the solution to this goes back to what the original
>poster was saying about de-emphasizing equipment. A weaponsmaster
>with leather armor and a half-way descent longsword should kick the
>butt of any newbie, no matter WHAT he or she is wearing
yes.
that was the way this entire thread started, and I still think it
is important for the enjoyment of a game in the long run.
> So if you
>make items not matter as much, then this problem becomes less
>important - perhaps to the point that it is no longer really a
>problem. [ snip ] and let the emphasis fall
>elsewhere.
The question is, of course, how. And then, what will the effect
be on a mud.
Marian Griffith
> make skills purchasable, (not based on exp or use?),
> moving MONEY to the forefront. Makes thievery interesting.
> make 'levelling' a function of guilds (move it away
> from experience/killing)
> make the usual infinite resources limited (food, armor,
> weapons, mana, whatever). players would have to get,
> make, trade their own.
> politics -- some way to achieve ascendance over and control
> of an area or region. Taxes, control guards, roads, etc.
I've put up a web page for this discussion. I like to try to get a
serious discussion about a mud that differs from the fight for exp
style that's dominating. the above summary is the starting point for
that discussion. If you feel you have something to contribute please
check out the page http://www.iaehv.nl/users/gryphon/overlord.html
If you mail your (short) contributions I will give it a try to put
them into the page at the appropriate positions.
I do hope the page is viewable by all of you out there, and there are
some of you willing to think through a radically new game approach.
(And no I'm not personally interested in actually implementing a game,
just in the ideas for a different kind).
I also hope that I didn't get myself into more than I can handle by
opening up this page.
Marian Griffith
In article <830873...@comp1.demon.co.uk>,
co...@comp1.demon.co.uk ("A.R") wrote:
>In article <19960428....@catling.iaehv.nl>
> gry...@iaehv.nl "Marian Griffith" writes:
>> > I never have understood how killing things made you a better cleric
>> > either . . . Violet
>> Well,
>> I never understood either. I don't even like going out and kill monsters.
>> Personally I only ever play a cleric or similar healer. I love to try to
>> keep a group together and survive. It would be extremely nice if as a
>> player I was to be rewarded for -that-.
>to gain experience there should be some form of risks that you need to
>take when you fight there is a risk of dieing..so you should be rewarded
>for taking that chance
I'm not convinced that it requires a physical risk required to learn
anything. I'm personally very glad school wasn't like that....
Mostly I relate experience with pulling something through that I
thought I couldn't do, like the first time I stepped on a stage to
sing. I thought I was going to faint with nerves but I did it, and
learned a great deal from doing it. Similarly I learned a lot from
my mistakes, but I rarely actually -risked- much, if anything.
>if there could be some form of risk in healing a player then maybe
>the exp for healing could be used
Let's for the sake of the argument accept that a healer must risk
his life to gain experience I think the following is a better way
to handle that ...
>maybe a cleric could only get experience for healing during combat
>the cleric doesnt need to be directly involved in the combat
>(could be part of a group)
This is already the case, whether or not a cleric is actually fighting
in general has no bearing on the experience for the kill. They won't
get experience for melee hits, but then clerics hardly hit worth
bothering compared to warriors. And of course, as group members they're
valid targets for area affect spells.
>the risk in this could be that if the cleric heals a player who is fighting
>a mob then the cleric risks being attacked by the mob
>the tougher the mob is then the more exp the cleric gets for healing a
>player who is fighting it (because a tougher mob may kill the cleric
>very easyily)
You probably make it so that a cleric must drain her own hitpoints to
power the healing spells (rather than mana like mages use). Successfull
healing will leave both healer and patient alife. But if the healer
misjudges the severity of the wounds she may drain herself. In combat
surroundings draining yourself of hitpoints to heal others is a very
risky action indeed.
Is that dangerous enough to suit your requirements to be rewarded with
experience for actually healing somebody?
Marian
ayud...@netcom.com
It was long ago foretold that A.R (co...@comp1.demon.co.uk) would post:
: In article <19960428....@catling.iaehv.nl>
: gry...@iaehv.nl "Marian Griffith" writes:
: > In article <4lu1pm$9...@ionews.ionet.net>,
: > moon...@ionet.net (Kelley Saveika) wrote:
: > >In article <19960427....@catling.iaehv.nl>, Mar...@catling.iaehv.nl
: > >says...
: > >I've always wondered why killing mobs would be the main form of getting
: > >unsuccessful attempt would cause the mob to attack. . . I never have
: > >Violet
: > I never understood either. I don't even like going out and kill monsters.
: to gain experience there should be some form of risks that you need to take
: when you fight there is a risk of dieing..so you should be rewarded for
: taking that chance
I disagree, mildly at least -- let's see if I can offer what I believe to
be what you are moving towards:
Intense experiences result in more effective learning.
Now, that is _slightly_ different than risk, though high risk can often
lead to intensity of experience, and thus to very effective learning.
On the other hand, plenty of learning takes place in RL without any
risk at all. And I think the RL example is applicable here, though I
surely not recommending slavish conformity to RL in all (or even most)
aspects.
So I would rather reword your proposal, if I understood you correctly,
that learning/rewards/gaining can and perhaps even should be increased
for higher intensity (usually more risk) situations.
Now it may be that your argument is simply along the lines of design,
sort of like 'why reward players for taking no risk?' If so, then my
answer is that you should indeed reward MORE for risk taking, but
rewards should come in all sorts of forms and amounts, even for non-risk
activities which may nonetheless be great contributors to fun on the mud.
Kinda like how governments can use tax policy -- they may well give credits
for things the govt. wants to encourage spending on. So MUDs encourage
fighting cuz that's what they give 'credits' for, as has already been well
established in this thread. But several have asked for ways to make change
mudding and de-emphasize fighting. Thus, the list of suggestions about
coming up with OTHER things to reward/encourage.
Jay
Chris Lawrence (Contra)
Orion Henry (ohe...@sdcc10.ucsd.edu) wrote:
: There is no chance for anyone else
: to have them until whomever currently has them dt's or runs of of
: rent. So basically if you are careful, you'll keep your set of
: mega-gear forever. Now, this works out pretty well, I think - but
: again, there are a few players that have quite a few of these unique
: items, such as Sheean, who was one of the first powerful players,
: got all the good unique gear, and hasn't lost it in all the time
: since the mud has been up.
The best solution I've found for this in general is giving a;; items
in the game lifespans.
You get a neat mega-sword, and with use it dulls and becomes less
useful. You can take it to the armourer a couple times to get spiffed
up again, but after the third or fourth time the thing just goes and
snaps on you in the middle of battle, with the broken off portion now
acting like a spear thrown at you.
Similarly armour gradually decays, eventually losing all
effectiveness, or even just falling off you entire and leaving you
naked.
Etc etc etc. Nothing lasts forever, no matter how mighty.
: Even if he does dt or whatever, he can
: very easily just get a few of his friends and sit on the mobs that
: the gear loads on until he gets it back, because hey, only he knows
: that he's lost it, so no one else is actually going to be looking
: for it.
So, you set the re-pop time up to a week or three. I really doubt
they're going to wait around that long, especially when their other
neato items are rapidly decaying all the while
Aside: an extension I've often considered is having magical items
decay more rapidly when in the presence of other magical items. Thus
you could potentially get the super whammo Spear Of Icy Death, and the
Gleaming Golden Armour of Invulnerability, and and Invisible cloak
etc, but with all that magic flying about you've got about 10 minutes
before they all turn to dust.
: A weaponsmaster
: with leather armor and a half-way descent longsword should kick the
: butt of any newbie, no matter WHAT he or she is wearing. So if you
: make items not matter as much, then this problem becomes less
: important - perhaps to the point that it is no longer really a
: problem. Just make most of the gear mediocre - ie, leather armor
: protects you some, plate protects you some more, a dagger does
: damage, a long sword does more, a battle axe does even more - and
: then have a very few really kick-ass items, with a lot of
: reprocutions to using said items (pk/psteal, big rent, wierd or
: unpredictable ego items (like a holy avenger that makes you auto-hit
: any evil creature in the room)) and let the emphasis fall
: elsewhere.
Equally a naked weaponsmaster armed with only a wooden stave should
have a damned good chance of creaming a mid -level player all kitted
out in heavy plate armour and a two-handed sword. Expertise and ease
of movement can pay off an awful lot.
Then again, if a newbie throws a dagger at a high level player in full
armour, there should be a (small) chance that the knife will slip thru
a chink in the armour and do terrible damage...
There are *lots* of ways to even things out and keep the power range
of disperate levels not that far seperated.
--
J C Lawrence Internet: co...@ibm.net
---------------(*) Internet: claw...@cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...
Craig Sivils
Mar...@catling.iaehv.nl (Marian Griffith) wrote:
>Which sums up more or less the problem with the vast majority of muds.
>They not only discourage roleplaying. They also discourage playing in
>the proper style. On nearly all muds I've played (admittedly not so
>great number as most other regulars in this newsgroup) all players
>were basically simple warriors with some skills or spells attached.
>Thiefs, mages and clerics would fight basically as a warrior and only
>a limited amount of damage would come from specialized skill.
>Yes, I know, there are muds where magic is so powerfull that all players
>actually play a mage, even if their character is a warrior or thief. By
>rewarding a character for doing what it should do, you encourage at the
>least players to stay in their planned role. Clerics don't -have- to
>get out and collect warrior style armour, they have to find ways to
>heal/cure/help others, and if the mud has religion they'll be having
>duties (and rewards) in that direction too. Mages would still be the
>crash and burn type, but their experience would not come from the hits
>during the combat, but from the successfully cast spells. Thiefs is a
>bit difficult to think, as they're a kind of anti-social class. I have
>not played thiefs so I can't really say what style they're supposed to
>play in. But I don't doubt there's some way to reward them too for
>staying within that style. Being able to reward roleplaying would of
>course be even nicer (at least to me) but I don't doubt that will lead
>to a heated discussion about the disadvantages of that.
Before I go into this, Batmud has moved on, this is no longer true...
But once upon a time, I just loved the beauty of the classes in bat
mud. There was a class called a merchant, which had several useful
utility spells most of which no other class had, but every other class
needed. The merchant class got the majority of its xp through one
spell MIP (Money Is Power) that converted gold... into xp...
Mechants could cast this spell on others to convert their gold into
xp. Thus, to immediate other classes became possibly non-violent:
Theives and healers. Theives obviously had more than one way to
acquire money. Healers were eventually overhauled due to robot
trouble, but it was a really neat thing :( They had these crytsal
necklaces that provided access to a healer channel. The healers could
monitor your hp/condition when you had one of these necklaces on. You
could tune the necklace for a pay rate (gold per hp) And during
combat, the healers could cast distant heal spells (much more
expensive than normal heal spells) and get some minor xp (and more
importantly gold!) for their efforts. Most of the healers work took
place in a room (forget the name) where a high level healer could make
a mist that would help regen. In times of conflict the healers could
set the room so that only pure healers could be in it, to avoid others
from comming in and doing bad things. Another group were the
alchemist who went around discovering the ingredients to potions (each
alchemist's formula was different than all other alchemist's formula)
which they could either adventure with.. or sell for gold.
The way each class worked very much affected their personality.
Alchemists were wanderers. The healers were for the most part, a very
peaceful, very popular and very close knit group. Merchants were
usually crazy and very very popular (but only once they got to be a
decent level, but many would help a new one to have favor with them
when they were higher level). And of course, people had an real
hatred for thieves.
All this based around the fact that the mud had an economy, you had to
work to earn money (or at least at all the levels I managed to get
to), but the money meant something.
There were loopholes in this system, like any other system (including
reality) but I too this day miss the real differences in the classes.
But at the same time, I also hated the fact that it would take
gazzillions of hours to get a real char if you didn't have a high
level friend. And it seemed that when you got there, they'd redo the
mud and make your char a newbie again (in terms of relational power).
It's a sharp contrast to a ROM mud where my cleric's ARE warriors, but
I can go to a new mud and do quite well at pulling myself up from the
bootstraps.
Craig
Craig Sivils
>On the other hand, plenty of learning takes place in RL without any
>risk at all. And I think the RL example is applicable here, though I
>surely not recommending slavish conformity to RL in all (or even most)
>aspects.
>So I would rather reword your proposal, if I understood you correctly,
>that learning/rewards/gaining can and perhaps even should be increased
>for higher intensity (usually more risk) situations.
But also, you can only learn so much in the classroom...
I think you should require certian levels of certian things to be
learned out in the feild, be it by crossing swords or by bandaging boo
boo's.
Craig
Craig Sivils
Mar...@catling.iaehv.nl (Marian Griffith) wrote:
[Snip]
>>I fail to see how you can have any claim to have any type of
>>roleplaying without some form of pkill.
>I hate to disagree with you on something you feel so strongly about
>but I think you're wrong on this point.
>Roleplaying and PK are two entirely different things, that may or
>may not coincide. There are PK muds that are totally non-roleplay
>just as there are muds that are strongly encouraging roleplay and
>allow near unlimited pk. Similarly there are non-pk muds that are
>hack-and-slash and there are muds that are strongly roleplay ori-
>ented but make pk impossible. If you consider mushes as well, many
>of those don't allow any fighting and still are good roleplay en-
>vironments.
Many mushes have pk, they just have a different way of doing it....
But players fight, and one player win's and another looses, I just
personally like to have the game perform a more active role of
referee.
>In many cases roleplay is used as the -excuse- to allow pk. In those
>cases the resulting mud is usually not very pleasant to play. All it
>does is giving nasty-minded player the right to harass.
You can harass with or without pkill.
>Personally I may have been unlucky, but I've seen to many games
>where pk was (ab)used by the players to harass and terrorize others.
>For the games I like to play a non-pk rule is near essential. I do
>accept that there are many others that feel different and enjoy the
>additional challenge. It's a good thing there are many games to
>cater for both preferences.
This I can agree with.
>This is also getting off the original topic. Not to mention that
>the to pk or not to pk question has been beaten to death many
>times over already.
I don't think its that far off the original topic, but it has been
discussed many times.
>What I was saying is, if you allow pk, why not reward it? I.e. if
>players can buy skills and levels killing others for their money
>(or simply stealing from them) is, if allowed, a legitimate and
>fruitfull way of levelling. It's also one that's going to make
>you very unpopular, but then nobody likes thiefs don't they?
You have to have some balance to the economy on the mud before you can
base much off of money.
>>Pkill is the consequences, without consequences its anarchy.
>One quick answer to this. A game should either allow it near unrestricted
>or make it impossible. Any middle way is likely to attract trouble from
>players that work around the restrictions.
This I can agree with as well.
>>I haven't seen a complete answer for all problems with this. But
>>basically if you have unlimited pkill, the high levels can go an
>>newbie slaughter runs.
>Yup, and it's ugly to witness. Not to mention the kind of blackmail
>and harassment high levels can get away with.
You absolutly HAVE to have non-hard coded factors to prevent this.
With careful imps to come down on the hard cases.
>>If you have
>>limited pkill then people who are "protected" can abuse the
>>protection, (Like I'm sure in rp that level 2 would REALLY mouth off
>>and call the level 50 a wuss). If you have NO pkill then everyone can
>>be a jerk without consequences.
>hmm. If the level 50 is offended by the words of a level 2 I'd say
>he's (funny that it's always men that get upset over being called names ;)
>oops, that's my feminist side)
Tsk Tsk, not a very nice statement, nor a very true statement.
>not particularly bright. A player that
>does drop ooc that badly in a roleplay game deserves to be lectured by
>the imps and if that doesn't help to be booted off.
>There's always the troublemaker that is going to require special attention
>from the implementors (and the use of ban and freeze commands).
>But again I'm digressing. This also is a thread that has been beaten to
>death many times over, and one I do not enjoy to revive.
I think there are people working out answers to the problems on both
sides, its always nice to hear what progress is being made, even if it
is tiny.
[Good/Poor roleplaying snipped]
>Any constructive ideas about the original topic (ways to focus a mud
>on other things than fighting for experience for levels) is welcome.
>For other discussions please change the subject appropriately :)
I don't agree with your statement. Pkill is indeed a way to focus a
mud on things other than "fighting for experience for levels".
Perhaps it is an approach which you reject (or seem to). But please
don't dismiss it as a way to add something to a mud, that is not a
fair attitude.
Craig
Katie Sehorn
In article <DqqvF...@twisto.eng.hou.compaq.com>,
Craig Sivils <csi...@blkbox.com> wrote:
>I don't agree with your statement. Pkill is indeed a way to focus a
>mud on things other than "fighting for experience for levels".
Excuse me? I don't see how Pkill focuses a game on something
besides fighting for levels. All Pkill does is give you more options for
things to kill. Namely, players in addition to mobiles.
Roo
>
> I'm not convinced that it requires a physical risk required to learn
> anything. I'm personally very glad school wasn't like that....
> Mostly I relate experience with pulling something through that I
> thought I couldn't do, like the first time I stepped on a stage to
> sing. I thought I was going to faint with nerves but I did it, and
> learned a great deal from doing it. Similarly I learned a lot from
> my mistakes, but I rarely actually -risked- much, if anything.
>
A system that uses combat, study and practice would probably be
the best way to balance out everyones needs for leveling and would
prevent bots. For example, a mage could spend time studying a spell to
improve it but make it take real time. This would most likely be the
slowest way to gain an adaptness at the spell. Yes, bots can still do
this, even if you require that the command be types once every 10 rl
minutes or whatever, but then again if it take a week of rl time to do
this most people won't want their characters inactive that long, but it
would be possible.
Practicing by doing would cover both combat and other skills that
you used, once again bots can be made but if it takes a lot of attempts
to do this then it will discourage people from abusing the system.
Actual combat exp towards skill improvement could also be awarded
for putting your rear on the line and risking death...which of course
sets you back.
Of course I find the whole "bot argument" rather silly as they
are easy to deal with. Don't allow triggers and such through outside
clients like tintin. Yes the mudders will complain, but think about it,
when's the last time you left your body to do something difficult while
your mind wandered off, and still got the job done.
>
> get experience for melee hits, but then clerics hardly hit worth
> bothering compared to warriors. And of course, as group members they're
> valid targets for area affect spells.
>
This isn't always true, on some muds a cleric can kick butt. My
cleric in his prime had a dam roll higher than many warriors. True I
didn't have second attack, but then again only warrior classes did, and
with a haste I could dish it out pretty good. Throw on a sanct and a
heal here and there and I was one mean machine. It all depends on where
you put your priorities and on the mud you play on.
Orion Henry
>>_Extremely_ bad. Again it's the suits of 'mega-eq' thing going on -
>>the idea is that each character will have a few really awesome items
>>and the rest be only good or even mediocre. Unfortunately it rarely
>>works out that way - it's more that a few top players have really
>>awesome stuff in each slot and the next 'best' players have just
>>good eq. For new players, the chances of them getting one of those
>>really rare items is very, very, very low.
>
>Yes. That's true, unfortunate, and it can be the way the mud runs.
>Eventually a player leaves the game.
...and usually gives his gear away to his similarly-equiped friends.
Plus, most players with all the
best gear seem to get really attached to muds. As I mentioned, on
Tera, one of the first high-level characters got many of the unique
items in the game, and has had them for all the time the game has
been running (like a year I think). He now only ever logs on for
clanwars, so that equipment is more or less not a part of the game.
>And of course there shouldn't be equipment that's so special that
>it overpowers any other factor in the game. At least that's what
>I feel about the issue.
True. But again it's the bigger, badder, better thing because the
main point of the game is equipment, the only way to make the game
interesting/attractive to players is to have many tiers of equipment
power.
This also brings up another point, not exactly related to this, but
sort of, about power levels. I've yet to play on a mud where a
25th level character is only half as powerful as a 50th level one.
Usually the relative power of players is exponential - 50 10th level
half giants have absolutely NO chance, whatsoever, against a single
50th level elf. I have trouble envisioning this.
>On Holomud they have (or used to have) a 'nymph' who, regularly,
>targets a random player, seduces him or her and steals the best
>bit of equipment from his or her inventory. Then announces to the
Heh...a little nod to good ol' nethack here. :)
>mud in general that what she has and teleports around at great
>intervals. Any player has a chance to hunt her down and get that
>equipment. If it doesn't happen within a certain time the stolen
>thing is scrapped and the nymph targets another character.
>Or make dragon-breath and balefire actually damage and even destroy
>equipment. You could even make spells that teleport a player out
Yeah, this was a big consideration on a few MUDs I've played.
AnotherMUD, for a while, since items couldn't be repaired for a
while due to a bug in the blacksmith. On ShadowDale it actually
made fighting dragon mobs a risky proposition, since they couldn't be
bashed (this was pre-half giant race addition) and breathed every
two rounds, usually scrapping a large amount of your gear in the
process. Not that your character was afraid of _dying_ or anything;
a high-level char with lots of hps and a sanc had nothing to fear
from that.
>of his equipment (monster only please! it's too open for harassment
>otherwise). Sure it's annoying but there are many ways to make it
>difficult for a player to stick to her equipment.
Yeah...again the main problem with this is that with the crappy max
system most muds have, they just say "damn my Crystal Helm of
Ultimate Protection scrapped again, better go kill the Elven Queen
twice to get it back." At least on AnotherMUD they had percentage
loads so gear scrapping was actually a scary proposition. There was
one mob there named Father who had some real nice gear...but his mob
spec was to zap a character of a couple pieces of gear. People were
really scared to fight him. :)
Anyways...I don't know that this is best solution. Arctic managed a
pretty nice balance despite that they still have maxes (to my
knowledge). For one thing their items aren't ridiculous. For
another, gear scraps. For a third, there are a lot of zones and a
lot of varied equipment. There wasn't really any one 'best' thing
in any given slot. Also, rent cost was actually a real issue -
annoying, but it sure as hell kept people from keeping good stuff in
bags.
>Come to think of it. On Island there was no rent. Upon leaving all
>players had to sell their equipment as only their money was saved.
>When reconnecting again they had to buy equipment and hunt out the
>few good items to be had. Now that is a powerfull way to equalize
>players ...
Heh, probably an LP. The problem with these (other than that I
don't think they are much fun anyways) is simply that characters
spend hours trying to get their 'regular' gear before they can start
actually playing.
>>>there's a simpler solution if you dislike rent. basically give each
>>>character a fixed number of movement points based on strength, size,
>>>race, sex and a nice amount of randomness. Spells will affect this
>
>>YES! I most defintely agree with this. I watched friends of mine
>>die on mortal conquest simply because they had their auto-loot
>>triggers on and had taken out ten or fifteen whiteys in Xylar. As
>>they were running away, they had so much crap gear that they were
>>taking billions of moves every step and eventually the whities
>>caught up. Very cool.
>
>*giggle*
>that's a fun thing to see. Probably a little annoying if it
>happens to yourself but definitely a great source of entertainment
>to others.
Well, it's your own greedyness. It's not so bad when you get pk'd,
but it really bites when you loose all your gear from a corpse loot
too. So by making this difficult (hard to sort through gear behind
enemy lines and not enough moves to carry it all back), pking
becomes a little less vicious but it's still there, which I like.
>>I do love the weight carried thing. On Tera, my half-elf, who
>>weighs 148 lbs, routinely carries around over 350 lbs of equipment
>>no problem. That doesn't even count the weight of his equipment.
>>Now realistically a 180 lb human male can barely carry 100 lbs of
>>equipment before he is literally bourne to the ground. But wait,
>It would be even more interesting if you would take movement points
>away from swinging that sword too... Then carrying loads of equipment
If you mean combat uses moves, yeah lots of places have done this.
On Tera it's easy to run low on moves (each swing takes a move and
stun takes 10), which can be quite dangerous.
>is going to be quite dangerous if you travel through dangerous areas.
>It's kind of sad to be attacked by a wimpy orc and being unable to
>defend yourself because you were exhausted by all the junk you are
>carrying around. It would definitely force you to concentrate on
Right. Better yet, though, if you just couldn't fight effectively
with a lot of gear on and/or carried. So if you wear a suit of
platemail you're just not as fast or accurate. Some zone writers
try to compensate for this by making tough armor that is -dex, or
light armor which is +hitroll.
>>>>Well, that can be avoided easily enough - don't make one "best" item
>>>>for any given slot. Most muds do this to some extent - there are
>
>>>hmmm. that would work. However on most muds I've seen each new area
>>>added more powerfull equipment to attract players to vist the area.
>>>Soon the average damage inflates all out of proportion and game
>>>balance is majorly disturbed.
>
>>Right. That's because most areas are written by players, who say,
>>"Gee, there isn't any plus damage on the foot location yet. Guess
>>I'll make some."
>
>Don't blame it all on the builders. There's a tremendous pressure
Why not? :)
>on a mud staff to add more powerfull spells/skills/equipment.
Very true.
>> I for one would encourge people to write zones and
>>create items, then submit them to the mud's admins _without_ making
>>stats on items. They can suggest what they think each item will do,
>>of course, but the admins should decide exactly how they will work.
>
>I've been wondering if there's another way to achieve the same. How
>about giving each stat modification a point-value. E.g. a simple
>+2hp would have a value of 1 point, but a +2dam would be some 25 points.
[good point-system snipped]
Yeah, that's not bad. AnotherMUD has something like this although I
don't know that they did it on purpose. That is - you can't make an
item for a slot which is "better" than another unless it has enough
minuses to balance it out. And of course the types of minuses are
rather important. For instance if each point of armor (ie, ARMOR
-5) is one point, and each point of damroll is 10 points, someone
could just make "rusty spiked mail" that had affects: ARMOR by +100
and DAMROLL by +10. Now obviously this would be overpowered,
because little thiefy types don't care about armor anyways. Now if
you made it so that it weighed 100 lbs and weight affected both
moves used and your ability to hit in combat, as well as sneak
around, they might think twice.
>>This would help keep the game balance, although it's a lot of extra
>>work on the part of admins and would probably discourage players
>>from writing zones, as well.
>I'm not too sure of that. Players that build do so because they like
>to, not because they want to add powerfull equipment to the game.
It depends. For me, I simply enjoy creating. For many I get the
impression that the main thing they want to do is add better items
to the game. I have played on quite a few muds where people will
wrrite zones, make a really cool item that has a low max (even 1)
and then go get it immediately for themselves. Just like there are
different kinds of players there are also different kinds of
builders.
>>>If powerfull equipment is made unique that at least is less of a
>>>problem. No point in designing an area around some super equipment
>>>if the building implementors are making them unique anyway.
>
>>Well, not necessarily. If you get twenty unqiue swords from twenty
>>unique zones, all of which kick ass...
>
>Still that's 20 swords on a playerbase of 2000 instead of a very
>powerfull that's potentially available to all 2000 of them.
>Besides the point was not about the swords themselves but about the
>areas in which they could be found. Those had to be different if
>there's no extremely powerfull equipment to 'protect' in them.
There are very few muds with this kind of _regular_ player base.
I'd estimate that your 'average' mud (20-40 players on usually, 50
during peak times) has less than 300 players actively playing. Of
those, probably less than half are rented with more than a couple of
good (read: maxed) items. That means 20 swords of mega-death for
100 players, which means one out of five has a devestating weapon.
>>I think mostly the solution to this goes back to what the original
>>poster was saying about de-emphasizing equipment. A weaponsmaster
>>with leather armor and a half-way descent longsword should kick the
>>butt of any newbie, no matter WHAT he or she is wearing
>
>yes.
>that was the way this entire thread started, and I still think it
>is important for the enjoyment of a game in the long run.
Of course, the problem is, how to do this without a total re-write,
getting rid of everything that makes dikus fun to begin with?
>> So if you
>>make items not matter as much, then this problem becomes less
>>important - perhaps to the point that it is no longer really a
>>problem. [ snip ] and let the emphasis fall
>>elsewhere.
>
>The question is, of course, how. And then, what will the effect
>be on a mud.
Skills. If a weaponsmaster has 20 really good skills to draw on
(parry, dodge, weapon skill, lugne, feint, riposte etc), then he
need not rely on gear.
And if I log onto one more MUD where the only skills are kick, bash,
and backstab I think I'm gonna go on a three-state killing spree.
Katie Sehorn
In article <Dqqws...@twisto.eng.hou.compaq.com>,
Craig Sivils <csi...@blkbox.com> wrote:
>
>But also, you can only learn so much in the classroom...
>I think you should require certian levels of certian things to be
>learned out in the feild, be it by crossing swords or by bandaging boo
>boo's.
While I agree with this, I still don't understand why this means
clerics have to be in -combat- to get any sort of reward for their
healing. Do I have to stick myself in the middle of a gang firefight to
get any practical use out of my Red Cross First Aid training? No, and in
fact they teach you to do just the opposite - first step is ALWAYS to
"survey the scene" and make sure you're not putting yourself in danger by
giving assistance.
If you're worried about bots, just make it VERY CLEAR game policy
that while TinTin is fine for some things, you won't tolerate it for
others, and then roll a few mortal characters to go around and test these
players to make sure they're being obedient. I'm wondering if Owen would
also object to giving warriors extra experience for kicks and rescues
because it's easy to make bots for those too - in fact, auto-rescue is a
bot I've seen far more often than autoheal or autoshield by arrival.
Marian Griffith
In article <4m9jpf$3...@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>,
ohe...@sdcc10.ucsd.edu (Orion Henry) wrote:
>>>>there's a simpler solution if you dislike rent. basically give each
>>>>character a fixed number of movement points based on strength, size,
>>>>race, sex and a nice amount of randomness. Spells will affect this
>>It would be even more interesting if you would take movement points
>>away from swinging that sword too... Then carrying loads of equipment
>If you mean combat uses moves, yeah lots of places have done this.
>On Tera it's easy to run low on moves (each swing takes a move and
>stun takes 10), which can be quite dangerous.
Yes, that was what I was thinking of. that would make warriors
a little more balanced too, like happens with mages. They can't
go on casting indefinitely while warriors can happily swing that
30 pound axe for hours without ever taking a pause. If you get
tired by fighting it also makes you think twice about when to
quit. No point in wimping out when you're too exhausted to move :)
>>is going to be quite dangerous if you travel through dangerous areas.
>>It's kind of sad to be attacked by a wimpy orc and being unable to
>>defend yourself because you were exhausted by all the junk you are
>>carrying around. It would definitely force you to concentrate on
>Right. Better yet, though, if you just couldn't fight effectively
>with a lot of gear on and/or carried. So if you wear a suit of
>platemail you're just not as fast or accurate. Some zone writers
>try to compensate for this by making tough armor that is -dex, or
>light armor which is +hitroll.
Too bad that the 'power armour' usually doesn't bother. If its
weight is set properly at all.
Of course the whole concept of weight on a mud is a little
preposterous. At str 18 you probably can lift 500 pounds.
Not to mention what happens to 'strong' races.
Marian Griffith
In article <DqqvF...@twisto.eng.hou.compaq.com>,
csi...@blkbox.com (Craig Sivils) wrote:
>Mar...@catling.iaehv.nl (Marian Griffith) wrote:
>>Roleplaying and PK are two entirely different things, that may or
>>may not coincide. There are PK muds that are totally non-roleplay
>>just as there are muds that are strongly encouraging roleplay and
>>allow near unlimited pk. Similarly there are non-pk muds that are
>>hack-and-slash and there are muds that are strongly roleplay ori-
>>ented but make pk impossible. If you consider mushes as well, many
>>of those don't allow any fighting and still are good roleplay en-
>>vironments.
>Many mushes have pk, they just have a different way of doing it....
>But players fight, and one player win's and another looses, I just
>personally like to have the game perform a more active role of
>referee.
I don't disagree with the above. I was merely trying to point out
that there are many games without pk, even without fighting, that
provide excellent roleplay environments. Just as there are many
games with pk that rate poorly at best for roleplaying. I make no
claim for individual games.
>>In many cases roleplay is used as the -excuse- to allow pk. In those
>>cases the resulting mud is usually not very pleasant to play. All it
>>does is giving nasty-minded player the right to harass.
>You can harass with or without pkill.
Unfortunately you can, and some players seem to have a perverse
pleasure in making life miserable for others no matter how hard
the imps of a game try to avoid things like that from happening.
>>Personally I may have been unlucky, but I've seen to many games
>>where pk was (ab)used by the players to harass and terrorize others.
>>For the games I like to play a non-pk rule is near essential. I do
>>accept that there are many others that feel different and enjoy the
>>additional challenge. It's a good thing there are many games to
>>cater for both preferences.
>This I can agree with.
>>This is also getting off the original topic. Not to mention that
>>the to pk or not to pk question has been beaten to death many
>>times over already.
>I don't think its that far off the original topic, but it has been
>discussed many times.
I was trying to avoid this thread to dissolve in a discussion
about whether pk is good in itself or not. that particular subject
has been beaten to death.
>>What I was saying is, if you allow pk, why not reward it? I.e. if
>>players can buy skills and levels killing others for their money
>>(or simply stealing from them) is, if allowed, a legitimate and
>>fruitfull way of levelling. It's also one that's going to make
>>you very unpopular, but then nobody likes thiefs don't they?
>You have to have some balance to the economy on the mud before you can
>base much off of money.
And before you can balance the economy you must first have an
economy. Most muds have at least one unlimited supply of things
(equipment on monsters) that provides an endless stream of money
to the players. The result is, predictably, rampant inflations.
Only a very rare game has taken active measures to restrict money
in the game and stuck to that.
[offending remark shamefully snipped]
>Tsk Tsk, not a very nice statement, nor a very true statement.
*blush* you're right, and it was uncalled for too. I appologize.
>>Any constructive ideas about the original topic (ways to focus a mud
>>on other things than fighting for experience for levels) is welcome.
>>For other discussions please change the subject appropriately :)
>I don't agree with your statement. Pkill is indeed a way to focus a
>mud on things other than "fighting for experience for levels".
>Perhaps it is an approach which you reject (or seem to). But please
>don't dismiss it as a way to add something to a mud, that is not a
>fair attitude.
Well,
I don't dismiss pk out of hand. I don't see how it focusses a game
on something else than fighting for experience. Or rather I do see
how on some games the pk is part of a bigger picture.
That I personally don't like pk doesn't mean that I can't appreciate
the effects it can have on a mud. It has a strong effect on the
atmosphere of the game and if it is well integrated into the en-
tire game it may even have a positive effect (I still won't play
such a game but that's my personal choice)
Marian
Marian Griffith
In article <4m9jpf$3...@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>,
ohe...@sdcc10.ucsd.edu (Orion Henry) wrote:
[ I'm sorry but I'll be going to snip major parts of the
predecessor of this post or my newsreader won't allow
me to post it at all. Read the original! ]
>>> ... it's more that a few top players have really
>>>awesome stuff in each slot and the next 'best' players have just
>>>good eq. For new players, the chances of them getting one of those
>>>really rare items is very, very, very low.
>>Yes. That's true, unfortunate, and it can be the way the mud runs.
>>Eventually a player leaves the game.
>...and usually gives his gear away to his similarly-equiped friends.
If that's the case that can be remedied one way or the other. But
at least there's only a small number of players like that in the
game rather than close to every medium to high level
>Plus, most players with all the
>best gear seem to get really attached to muds. As I mentioned, on
>Tera, one of the first high-level characters got many of the unique
>items in the game, and has had them for all the time the game has
>been running (like a year I think).
I think he has achieved something that is -much- harder to reach
than immortality on a mud, he has become something of a legend.
It may be annoying to other players but it is quite an acheivement.
> He now only ever logs on for
>clanwars, so that equipment is more or less not a part of the game.
I think that's a good thing, but then this thread started with a
statement that truely powerfull equipment doesn't belong on a mud,
unless it wants to be the average powermud. If the mud encourages
skills over equipment this unique equipment would be less of a
problem anyway.
>>And of course there shouldn't be equipment that's so special that
>>it overpowers any other factor in the game. At least that's what
>>I feel about the issue.
Yes, we seem to agree on that score. Now equipment that is powerfull,
should be extremely rare to truly unique and we agree completely :)
>True. But again it's the bigger, badder, better thing because the
>main point of the game is equipment, the only way to make the game
>interesting/attractive to players is to have many tiers of equipment
>power.
I don't think so.
The fun thing of the game is to explore, survive tight situations
and make friends. At least it becomes like that after you have
played for a while. Of course interest may differ for other players.
[ question about absolute and relative powers as related to levels
snipped, I'll put that question to the discussion webpage
http://www.iaehv.nl/users/gryphon/overlord.html instead ]
[ my comments about adding spells/breathing/skills that would
damage and even destroy equipment snipped ]
>>You could even make spells that teleport a player out
>>of his equipment (monster only please! it's too open for harassment
>>otherwise). Sure it's annoying but there are many ways to make it
>>difficult for a player to stick to her equipment.
>Yeah...again the main problem with this is that with the crappy max
>system most muds have, they just say "damn my Crystal Helm of
>Ultimate Protection scrapped again, better go kill the Elven Queen
>twice to get it back."
Which is where unique equipment becomes more valuable in my
opinion. If it's gone it may be gone for good. Especially if
there's no telling when the equipment is going to reload.
>Anyways...I don't know that this is best solution. Arctic managed a
>pretty nice balance despite that they still have maxes (to my
>knowledge).
I agree that there can't be a single solution to this. The entire
mud must be designed towards making equipment less important, and
force players to rely on skills rather than on metal.
>>Come to think of it. On Island there was no rent. Upon leaving all
>>players had to sell their equipment as only their money was saved.
>>When reconnecting again they had to buy equipment and hunt out the
>>few good items to be had. Now that is a powerfull way to equalize
>>players ...
>Heh, probably an LP.
Actually no, as far as I can tell it's a reasonably stock mud.
Except that they don't save equipment in the playerfile.
[ bits about movements and weight moved to a separate reply ]
>>I've been wondering if there's another way to achieve the same. How
>>about giving each stat modification a point-value. E.g. a simple
>>+2hp would have a value of 1 point, but a +2dam would be some 25 points.
>[good point-system snipped]
>For instance if each point of armor (ie, ARMOR
>-5) is one point, and each point of damroll is 10 points, someone
>could just make "rusty spiked mail" that had affects: ARMOR by +100
>and DAMROLL by +10.
Damroll might be a bit cheap at that. In combat on most muds a point
of damroll is worth far more than 10 points better armour. Especially
with multiple attacks which multiply the effect by the number of
attacks (usually at least 3 times)
I agree that equipment that seriously affects armor to allow too big
affects is not helping matters. But there are easy ways around that
I think. Like maxing out the absolute plusses and minusses for
affects. Then that +10dam equipment would have to sacrifice a lot
more than armour. (provided it would be allowed to create a piece
of equipment that has 100 pnts plusses)
>>>I think mostly the solution to this goes back to what the original
>>>poster was saying about de-emphasizing equipment. A weaponsmaster
>>>with leather armor and a half-way descent longsword should kick the
>>>butt of any newbie, no matter WHAT he or she is wearing
>>yes.
>>that was the way this entire thread started, and I still think it
>>is important for the enjoyment of a game in the long run.
>Of course, the problem is, how to do this without a total re-write,
>getting rid of everything that makes dikus fun to begin with?
Well, I'm hoping to host a discussion group about how to achieve
just that. I've plugged the url for the page in this post already
so I won't repeat it here.
The only way to solve some of these problems is to completely rethink
the principles of muds. Hopefully without sacrificing their special
atmosphere.
>Skills. If a weaponsmaster has 20 really good skills to draw on
>(parry, dodge, weapon skill, lugne, feint, riposte etc), then he
>need not rely on gear.
For starters. Dump +hit and +dam modifiers on equipment. I think
they're the worst culprits of overpowered equipment. They make
a system of armourclass impossible. I've more ideas about this
issue, but I'll delay them until the discussion reaches that point.
besides this post is more than long enough already.
Craig Sivils
seh...@willamette.edu (Katie Sehorn) wrote:
>In article <DqqvF...@twisto.eng.hou.compaq.com>,
>Craig Sivils <csi...@blkbox.com> wrote:
>>I don't agree with your statement. Pkill is indeed a way to focus a
>>mud on things other than "fighting for experience for levels".
> Excuse me? I don't see how Pkill focuses a game on something
>besides fighting for levels.
It does so by two direct means.
First, it provides a goal in the game OTHER than levels. This goal
can be tied to roleplaying (imo if done right, it should be). I can
assure you that my pkill's have been for roleplaying reasons, and the
exp I gained for them were not the motivation for the kill.
Second, With pkill allowed, you don't only focus on what you can kill,
but you also have to consider what can kill you. Other than quests, I
don't often see Tiamat taking a stroll through town. If tiamat does
stroll through town, she probabbly doesn't remember that player foo
has killed her over a hundred times. Players are much more
talented/better played than mud mobiles.
>All Pkill does is give you more options for
>things to kill. Namely, players in addition to mobiles.
It adds an extra dimension, this dimension is useless unless you make
proper use of it.
Player's kill mobile's basically because they can (to get xp, equip,
money, etc). If player's kill other players with the same mentality
then you haven't added a whole lot to the game.
But if you set up reasons and motivations behind the interaction of
the players then it does add something. One one of the mud's I play
there is one oragnization of people dedicated to protecting pacifists.
This provides a focus for that character that would be very difficult
to implement in a pkill free environment.
Craig
Orion Henry
>>I don't agree with your statement. Pkill is indeed a way to focus a
>>mud on things other than "fighting for experience for levels".
>
Indeed. However, it _does_ add a whole new dimension to the game -
makes it grittier, more realistic, and ultimately (if done right)
more RP. With most MUDs, I have no qualms whatsoever about simply
going to sleep right in the middle of temple square, or pissing off
someone five times my level, because nothing will ever happen. On
muds with pk/psteal enabled, I'm careful where I rest, careful whom
a fuck with and careful about flashing high-powered gear around.
Not to mention how it helps solve the eq hoarding problem, as well
as discourages players from giving really good gear to newbies.
Orion Henry
>>But also, you can only learn so much in the classroom...
>>I think you should require certian levels of certian things to be
>>learned out in the feild, be it by crossing swords or by bandaging boo
>>boo's.
>
> While I agree with this, I still don't understand why this means
>clerics have to be in -combat- to get any sort of reward for their
>healing. Do I have to stick myself in the middle of a gang firefight to
>get any practical use out of my Red Cross First Aid training? No, and in
>fact they teach you to do just the opposite - first step is ALWAYS to
>"survey the scene" and make sure you're not putting yourself in danger by
>giving assistance.
One might argue that it's actually two different types of experience
at work here. One is simple practical ability to invoke spells of
your god to heal someone's wounds. Another is the ability to do so
under stress, and while watching one's back. How you'd want to
translate this into mud terms is unclear, but it seems to be that
one would want the cleric who has seen many fights and won't crack
under preassure at one's side while adventuring in the dangerous
wilds, rather than one who has sat at home healing in the nice safe
hospital.
> If you're worried about bots, just make it VERY CLEAR game policy
>that while TinTin is fine for some things, you won't tolerate it for
>others, and then roll a few mortal characters to go around and test these
>players to make sure they're being obedient. I'm wondering if Owen would
Or make the system complex enough so as to make it difficult to
write bots.
>also object to giving warriors extra experience for kicks and rescues
>because it's easy to make bots for those too - in fact, auto-rescue is a
>bot I've seen far more often than autoheal or autoshield by arrival.
Are you kidding me? On AnotherMUD my coms file was a good 60k or
something. Since I played 3 chars, and combat was pretty involved,
you certainly couldn't type fast enough (or read fast enough, for
that matter) to keep up with everything that was going on. I had
actions for my cleric to heal people that requested it, my warrior
to rescue anyone that got switched to, my thief to backstab again
after he got rescued. Also I had actions for every single spell
when it wore off, on all my characters - if a character in my party
could cast it (based on variables, since I had more than 3 chars
total) another char would cast it upon them without my intervention
or even needing to know that their spell had worn off. I also had
actions to allow people outside my party to request any spell from
my cleric or my mage, actions and aliases to switch to different
kinds of gear depending upon what mob we were fighting, actions to
pick up corpses when people died, etc etc etc. And of course this
wasn't unusual - any good player had all of this. The funny part
was when your characters start doing things when you don't expect
them to; like they have minds of their own. People gave me funny
looks when I'd suddenly gt, "Murazor! What are you _doing_, casting
fly on yourself when you're that low on mana?!", since it was my own
char doing it :)
Anyways, the point is that anyone can make bots or at least automate
repetitious tasks. Sometimes they tried to shake it up a little; on
AnotherMUD there were like 30 different switch messages, depending
upon the race of the mobile switching. Still, players get all the
messages action'd in eventually, and pass them around to other
players. The best way, of course, is to make the system complicated
enough so that bots just aren't smart enough to handle much of
anything. This has the side-effect of making things a lot more
interesting, as well. How many muds have I played on where clerics
were simutaneously the most important and most boring class? All
they do is sit there and watch the tank's hitpoints in the group
list, and heal them when they get low. On many muds the cleric
doesn't even bother being awake for the fight.
Orion Henry
> Of course I find the whole "bot argument" rather silly as they
>are easy to deal with. Don't allow triggers and such through outside
>clients like tintin. Yes the mudders will complain, but think about it,
...and loose a LOT of players.
>when's the last time you left your body to do something difficult while
>your mind wandered off, and still got the job done.
I still use tintin even when I don't have any triggers. I'm to used
to being able to highlight stuff, set variables to allow me to keep
a list of the last 10 tells sent to me, #sys out to do stuff, play
two muds at once, and so on. I simply won't play a mud that doesn't
let me.
The real solution is to get rid of the stupid, repetative shit that
most muds are filled with. I don't really want to have to type "get
bread sack" "eat bread" and "drink water" every five minutes. I've
also gotten used to having my spells auto-cast themselves. As much
as I enjoy looking through my spell list trying to figure out which
of my 12 spells wore off and I need to re-cast, I'd rather it just
keep track of that crap itself.
Orion Henry
>>...and usually gives his gear away to his similarly-equiped friends.
>
>If that's the case that can be remedied one way or the other. But
>at least there's only a small number of players like that in the
Yep. I guess my point was simply that, if I come onto a mud after
it has been up for a while, find that everything is maxed, what is
there for me to do after I hit mid level? No pk/corpe looting, so I
can't just use the old drow method of advancement. It's either sit
around and wait for something bad to happen to the players "above"
me, or go to a different mud and do the same thing all over again.
>>>And of course there shouldn't be equipment that's so special that
>>>it overpowers any other factor in the game. At least that's what
>>>I feel about the issue.
>
>Yes, we seem to agree on that score. Now equipment that is powerfull,
>should be extremely rare to truly unique and we agree completely :)
It's funny, because most muds claim to be based on D&D, but in D&D
equipment was much more like we've been discussing. Magical items
were truely rare (unless you had an overly generous DM). Most of
the time you just relied on your regular two handed sword an your
damage bonus from strength.
>>True. But again it's the bigger, badder, better thing because the
>>main point of the game is equipment, the only way to make the game
>>interesting/attractive to players is to have many tiers of equipment
>>power.
>
>I don't think so.
>The fun thing of the game is to explore, survive tight situations
>and make friends. At least it becomes like that after you have
>played for a while. Of course interest may differ for other players.
Let me clarify that statement: _I_ don't think that the point of the
game should be equipment, but it is. Actually, the point of the
game (goal-wise) is to be the most powerful. The thing is, exp is
always easy to come by, so getting to max level and getting all your
skills to full is very easy; any high-level warrior is really just
like any other, except for a slight variation in stats and hitpoint
gains. It's the eq that makes one devestatingly powerful and the
other one just mediocre.
>>Yeah...again the main problem with this is that with the crappy max
>>system most muds have, they just say "damn my Crystal Helm of
>>Ultimate Protection scrapped again, better go kill the Elven Queen
>>twice to get it back."
>
>Which is where unique equipment becomes more valuable in my
>opinion. If it's gone it may be gone for good. Especially if
>there's no telling when the equipment is going to reload.
Well, there's the trick. I've yet to see a mud that gets away from
either of the two standard "pop" methods - percentage loads or
maxes, or some combination thereof. I've also yet to see a mud
where the pop time is more than two hours, or many zones where you
can't clear them out completely before the next repop.
>Actually no, as far as I can tell it's a reasonably stock mud.
>Except that they don't save equipment in the playerfile.
No mud that I know of saves eq in the playerfile, they save it in
the rent file. :)
>Damroll might be a bit cheap at that. In combat on most muds a point
>of damroll is worth far more than 10 points better armour. Especially
>with multiple attacks which multiply the effect by the number of
>attacks (usually at least 3 times)
What it comes down to, actually, is that a good offense is by far
the best defense. If you can kill anything in a couple rounds, what
does it matter how good your defenses are? This means that damroll
and offensive spells are usually the most powerful part of the
game. On Shadowdale (my first mud...ah memories) it got to the
point that me and my friends could kill any mob in the game before
it swung back. This seems a bit ridiculous to me.
>>Of course, the problem is, how to do this without a total re-write,
>>getting rid of everything that makes dikus fun to begin with?
>
>Well, I'm hoping to host a discussion group about how to achieve
>just that. I've plugged the url for the page in this post already
>so I won't repeat it here.
Well, I'll tell you what. The reason I've been so interested in
this dicussion is that I've already done it. And I'll tell you
another thing - I wasn't able to find any way to do it without a
total rewrite and completely re-thinking the way a mud is supposed
to work.
>The only way to solve some of these problems is to completely rethink
>the principles of muds. Hopefully without sacrificing their special
>atmosphere.
One thing that is rather cool about muds is that they really don't
have to be very good. It's the multi-player aspect that makes the
game dynamic and fun, so we can overlook all the little details and
quirks. What _really_ excites me, though, is the thought of the
multi-player thing combined with a system that is actually really
fun and well-balanced on its own.
>>Skills. If a weaponsmaster has 20 really good skills to draw on
>>(parry, dodge, weapon skill, lugne, feint, riposte etc), then he
>>need not rely on gear.
>
>For starters. Dump +hit and +dam modifiers on equipment. I think
Done. :)
While you're at it, get rid of hitpoints, armor class, levels,
equipment slots, guilds, +mana, +manaregen, +age (who ever thought
of THIS stupid idea?!), names, titles, and classes.
Don't laugh - I'm serious.
Well, one of these days we'll actually have enough zones to open,
then I'll show you what I've been talking about. Till then, I
encourage all you budding imps out there to take a step back and
think about whether you want to be Just Another DikuMUD(tm) or
something different and interesting. Whether or not my methods are
the best is debatable, but I think it is clear that it is time to
rethink and restructure our dear little time-waster.
Orion Henry
>>Nightmare has a nice alternative to the typical experience system. They
>>did away with "experience points" per se. Instead each character class
>>has skills which fall into one of three categories: Primary, Secondary,
>>and Other. These skills are advanced through usage, and a character's
>
>Sounds like a semi-reasonable idea... however, all characters of the same
>class end up being exactly the same. Not to mention people who will use tintin
And this is different from current muds in what way?
When was the last time you saw two mages with wildly different
spellbooks?
>scripts or other such methods to repeatedly spam actions that will cause
>their skills to increase.
*sigh* Why does everyone seem to mention this as soon as skill-based
systems are mentioned? First of all, most skills have lag, so it's
difficult to "spam" them. For another, there are dozens of ways I
can think of right off the top of my head to make this less
effective, such as making it so that you only have a chance to learn
in a skill if the mob you are using against is equal or higher level
than you, making it so that you can only learn in a skill once every
tick, or keeping track of what they have learned recently so that
they can't go up too much in any one skill without branching out a
little.
Orion Henry
>: There is no chance for anyone else
>: to have them until whomever currently has them dt's or runs of of
>: rent. So basically if you are careful, you'll keep your set of
>: mega-gear forever. Now, this works out pretty well, I think - but
>: again, there are a few players that have quite a few of these unique
>: items, such as Sheean, who was one of the first powerful players,
>: got all the good unique gear, and hasn't lost it in all the time
>: since the mud has been up.
>
>The best solution I've found for this in general is giving a;; items
>in the game lifespans.
>effectiveness, or even just falling off you entire and leaving you
>naked.
>Etc etc etc. Nothing lasts forever, no matter how mighty.
Yeah, this is a nice one. Arctic the second time around did this -
almost all good items would only last a few (real life) weeks before
they decayed. Of course, you had to be careful - sometimes people
would go to trade you an item which they knew was just about to
decay. As far as I know there was no way to check how close to
d-day it was.
>: Even if he does dt or whatever, he can
>: very easily just get a few of his friends and sit on the mobs that
>: the gear loads on until he gets it back, because hey, only he knows
>: that he's lost it, so no one else is actually going to be looking
>: for it.
>
>So, you set the re-pop time up to a week or three. I really doubt
>they're going to wait around that long, especially when their other
>neato items are rapidly decaying all the while
Works for me. I also like the idea of multiple load spots to throw
people off a little bit. More work for the zone-writer again,
though.
> Aside: an extension I've often considered is having magical items
>decay more rapidly when in the presence of other magical items. Thus
>you could potentially get the super whammo Spear Of Icy Death, and the
>Gleaming Golden Armour of Invulnerability, and and Invisible cloak
>etc, but with all that magic flying about you've got about 10 minutes
>before they all turn to dust.
Hmmmm...not bad, although could be a tad annoying. But if
implemented correctly it could work.
>: A weaponsmaster
>: with leather armor and a half-way descent longsword should kick the
>: butt of any newbie, no matter WHAT he or she is wearing. So if you
>
>Equally a naked weaponsmaster armed with only a wooden stave should
>have a damned good chance of creaming a mid -level player all kitted
>out in heavy plate armour and a two-handed sword. Expertise and ease
>of movement can pay off an awful lot.
Yep. Even if the weaponsmaster can't break through the armor with
his staff, he can wear out the newbie, or trip him or something,
then rip off his helm and smack him a couple times in the face. I
do love how you can't take gear off of any living character on most
muds - ie, they are lying there paralyzed, but you can't seem to
wrest that sword out of their hand?
>Then again, if a newbie throws a dagger at a high level player in full
>armour, there should be a (small) chance that the knife will slip thru
>a chink in the armour and do terrible damage...
Yeah. You just have to be a tad bit careful with this, so that
people don't get cute ideas like logging on 100 newbies late at
night and having them all throw daggers at some guy in full plate
simutaneously. Mudders like at least a little bit of security, that
as a high-level char there isn't much that can insta-death them.
Similarly they don't want to think that every time they cruise
through the sewers some 1st level rat mob is gonna jump up and bite
at them, and on the thousandth time get lucky and somehow find a
soft spot, bite and kill him right there.
>There are *lots* of ways to even things out and keep the power range
>of disperate levels not that far seperated.
Certainly. Of course I still think the best way for this is to
simply not _give_ players so much damn power with levels. Honestly
now...does it really take more to kill a naked, paralyzed 50th level
warrior than a 1st level newbie? Most defintely - those 1000 hit
points the first guy has will last quite a while longer than the 17
that newbie has. Shouldn't a simple cut to the throat kill either
of them?
Katie Sehorn
In article <Dqspn...@twisto.eng.hou.compaq.com>,
Craig Sivils <csi...@blkbox.com> wrote:
>seh...@willamette.edu (Katie Sehorn) wrote:
>
>First, it provides a goal in the game OTHER than levels. This goal
>can be tied to roleplaying (imo if done right, it should be). I can
>assure you that my pkill's have been for roleplaying reasons, and the
>exp I gained for them were not the motivation for the kill.
With this in place, I will support player-killing and
player-stealing. I just don't think I could ever draw a large enough
playerbase that would only have RP in mind when they did PK/PS. Most
folks do it to be annoying or downright mean.
>don't often see Tiamat taking a stroll through town. If tiamat does
>stroll through town, she probabbly doesn't remember that player foo
>has killed her over a hundred times. Players are much more
>talented/better played than mud mobiles.
If the coders give the mobs all the player skills apropos to
their classes (and maybe even invent a few just for civilians), and put
in mob memory, they can be every bit as dangerous as an intelligent
player. And as for Tiamat not taking a stroll through town, well,
dragons aren't wont to do that. They prefer being curled up in their
caves UNDISTURBED - why do you think so many dragons have the aggressive
flag put on them? =) The other reason imms don't let Tiamat take a
stroll through town is she kills indiscriminately. They will usually
punish players for doing that too, so they don't even give the mobs a
chance to be that mean. =)
>Player's kill mobile's basically because they can (to get xp, equip,
>money, etc). If player's kill other players with the same mentality
>then you haven't added a whole lot to the game.
Exactly. ChaosMUD is PK-possible (though it's frowned upon and
there is a guild of players that go after 'criminals'), and one player
began to jokingly gossip about how if he didn't find a group, he could
just start killing players to level - "All of you are worth a quick 100k
exp each".
>But if you set up reasons and motivations behind the interaction of
>the players then it does add something. One one of the mud's I play
>there is one oragnization of people dedicated to protecting pacifists.
>This provides a focus for that character that would be very difficult
>to implement in a pkill free environment.
Again, this is assuming the imm staff has the vision to come up
with reasons, and the energy to weed out the folks who are just going to
try and power-mud. I can almost see the reason for those ten-minute
character generation sequences - they'll weed out anyone who doesn't
really want to get into the game, at least....
Marian Griffith
In article <4mcgqb$l...@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>,
ohe...@sdcc10.ucsd.edu (Orion Henry) wrote:
>Yep. I guess my point was simply that, if I come onto a mud after
>it has been up for a while, find that everything is maxed, what is
>there for me to do after I hit mid level?
My point was that, if a mud makes powerfull equipment rare to the
point of none-existence, it should also provide means for players
to gain enough power through what's availble to them. If not
through skills and spells then through *gasp* intelligence. Or
am I being overly optimistic about the average player?
> Actually, the point of the
>game (goal-wise) is to be the most powerful.
I can agree with that. At most muds (fighting) power seems to be
the thing that all players are aiming for.
Perhaps you'll be willing to help me (and others) think how a
challenging game could be set up that doesn't define power in
terms of combat?
> The thing is, exp is always easy to come by, so getting to max level
>and getting all your skills to full is very easy; any high-level warrior
>is really just like any other, except for a slight variation in stats
>and hitpoint gains. It's the eq that makes one devestatingly powerful
>and the other one just mediocre.
While that is true on muds now it doesn't need to be that way.
Players could be given a variety of different skills and spells
that partly exclude each other, or that work very well with
some but bad with others. Then if players can't expect to learn
all skills (or use an idea that hexonyx implemented for a short
while, don't give players all spells) they will be forced to
adapt their play to their skills.
>>Damroll might be a bit cheap at that. In combat on most muds a point
>>of damroll is worth far more than 10 points better armour. Especially
>>with multiple attacks which multiply the effect by the number of
>>attacks (usually at least 3 times)
>What it comes down to, actually, is that a good offense is by far
>the best defense. If you can kill anything in a couple rounds, what
>does it matter how good your defenses are? This means that damroll
>and offensive spells are usually the most powerful part of the
>game.
And if warriors have more than three attacks in a round even spells
aren't worth bothering with. But it rather proves the point that
+dam equipment is something that urgently needs to be removed from
a game to make it manageable.
>>Well, I'm hoping to host a discussion group about how to achieve
>>just that. I've plugged the url for the page in this post already
>>so I won't repeat it here.
>Well, I'll tell you what. The reason I've been so interested in
>this dicussion is that I've already done it. And I'll tell you
>another thing - I wasn't able to find any way to do it without a
>total rewrite and completely re-thinking the way a mud is supposed
>to work.
*smile*
I'm impressed. Would you be willing to share some of the conclusions
you reached, and how you incorporated them in your own mud?
>>For starters. Dump +hit and +dam modifiers on equipment. I think
>Done. :)
>While you're at it, get rid of hitpoints, armor class, levels,
>equipment slots, guilds, +mana, +manaregen, +age, names, titles
>and classes.
Many muds have done away with some or many of the above. What seems
to be the hard thing is to integrate what remains into a game that
is worth playing.
>Don't laugh - I'm serious.
I'm not laughing. And I don't think many people following this
thread are. There seems to be a fair amount of interest in making
a game that is sufficiently different from the standard diku.
> Whether or not my methods are
>the best is debatable, but I think it is clear that it is time to
>rethink and restructure our dear little time-waster.
I'd love to be able to debate your methods, after the tantalizing
glimpses of your ideas.
Sei Jin Lee
Mar...@catling.iaehv.nl (Marian Griffith) writes:
>>What it comes down to, actually, is that a good offense is by far
>>the best defense. If you can kill anything in a couple rounds, what
>>does it matter how good your defenses are? This means that damroll
>>and offensive spells are usually the most powerful part of the
>>game.
>And if warriors have more than three attacks in a round even spells
>aren't worth bothering with. But it rather proves the point that
>+dam equipment is something that urgently needs to be removed from
>a game to make it manageable.
Sorry to jump into the conversation right in the middle, but the short
discourse above just reminded me why I liked MUME when I first tried
it. On MUME, at least back then, defense did matter unlike your standard
Sojourn/MERC/ROM muds where defense means the 100000th level mob misses
you one out of every 10 tries.
This, plus the fact that spells had casting times made it the mud that
appealed to me the most at that time, not because you could get to level
200 or because it had every bell and whistle in the book (the Medievia
way), but because the game had an overall concept and system iin mind that
made it far more different than any mud with just mear add ons.
Of course, certain strange results did come out of it, like making yourself
fight 100% defensive and go for "kicking" a mob to death, but that's
what you sometimes get when you make radical changes.
Sei Jin "Did this really say anything? Or, Do I need sleep?" Lee
Chris Lawrence (Contra)
Orion Henry (ohe...@sdcc10.ucsd.edu) wrote:
: >The best solution I've found for this in general is giving a;; items
: >in the game lifespans.
...
: >Etc etc etc. Nothing lasts forever, no matter how mighty.
: ... As far as I know there was no way to check how close to
: d-day it was.
Ouch. ShadowHouse also had the decay system, supposedly with a whole
staged series of descriptions as the object descended the decay
states, but most all objects start out looking worn, and stayed that
way until just before they gusted.
: > Aside: an extension I've often considered is having magical items
: >decay more rapidly when in the presence of other magical items. Thus
: >you could potentially get the super whammo Spear Of Icy Death, and the
: >Gleaming Golden Armour of Invulnerability, and and Invisible cloak
: >etc, but with all that magic flying about you've got about 10 minutes
: >before they all turn to dust.
: Hmmmm...not bad, although could be a tad annoying. But if
: implemented correctly it could work.
Another way to do it, mostly a variation on the above, is to have
magic dependant on the mana level of the location. Any magic use or
even magical objects in a room reduce the mana level of the room.
Left to its own devices the mana will regenerate, slowly, as a ntive
function of the room.
Thus your Magic Spear of Icy Death is a really neato weapon -- as long
as the room you are in has a decent mana level, _AND_ you haven't been
in the room long enough for the spear to exhaust all the mana in the
room...
If you wanted to clean up the mysterious regeneration of the mana, you
could have mana producing objects or rooms scattered about the game.
These items would then produce mana fairly continuously and
semi-rapidly. The mana (probably implemented as invisible mobiles)
would then flow out of the exits of the room and from thence about the
game, only settling when it found a mana-less room. Magic use then
just kills these invisible mobiles etc etc etc.
: ... I
: do love how you can't take gear off of any living character on most
: muds - ie, they are lying there paralyzed, but you can't seem to
: wrest that sword out of their hand?
PSteal is so rarely decently implemented.
: >Then again, if a newbie throws a dagger at a high level player in full
: >armour, there should be a (small) chance that the knife will slip thru
: >a chink in the armour and do terrible damage...
: Yeah. You just have to be a tad bit careful with this, so that
: people don't get cute ideas like logging on 100 newbies late at
: night and having them all throw daggers at some guy in full plate
: simutaneously.
Hurm -- any player that lets himself get trapped by 100 newbies
deserves a little something.
A partial solution I saw on this once, wish I remember where, was a
high level extremely draining spell that just bent the probabilities
in your favour for a very short period. The spell almost always
succeeded, but also cost on the order of 90% of your strength, all the
mana in the area etc etc etc -- but was *really* useful for surviving
things like dragon breath, or 100 newbie thrown daggers.
: Mudders like at least a little bit of security, that
: as a high-level char there isn't much that can insta-death them.
: Similarly they don't want to think that every time they cruise
: through the sewers some 1st level rat mob is gonna jump up and bite
: at them, and on the thousandth time get lucky and somehow find a
: soft spot, bite and kill him right there.
Accepted. Insta-death I think is probably never a good thing.
Insta-near-death however may be another matter. I can't think of a
decent problem with the 10,000'th rat jumping up and damned near
killing him with one bite.
Be capricious all you want, but always leave the door open a crack so
that the player, if fast and smart enough *CAN* save himself. Of
course that "fast and smart enough" opening can be __real__ small.
: >There are *lots* of ways to even things out and keep the power range
: >of disperate levels not that far seperated.
: Certainly. Of course I still think the best way for this is to
: simply not _give_ players so much damn power with levels. Honestly
: now...does it really take more to kill a naked, paralyzed 50th level
: warrior than a 1st level newbie? Most defintely - those 1000 hit
: points the first guy has will last quite a while longer than the 17
: that newbie has. Shouldn't a simple cut to the throat kill either
: of them?
True. I've also often wondered why more MUDs don't leverage Island's
combat system. Several things I've long wanted to see implemented:
The Hero/Champions combat system on a MUD.
Have all attempted actions have a penalty for failure. Thus any
attempted attack, if it fails (the blow misses), will very likely hurt
you instead. This makes magic interesting -- cast a fire bolt
spell on a mobile, have the spell fail, and you may well get hit with
the fire missle yourself.
Don't have the statistics significantly change with levels,
certainly no more than a percentage point or two. Instead just
alter the probability weightings on various actions. (Do this with
the entire magic system so that there are no level qualifiers for
various spells, just probability rankings, and all sorts of fun can
result).
Chris Lawrence (Contra)
Orion Henry (ohe...@sdcc10.ucsd.edu) wrote:
: Let me clarify that statement: _I_ don't think that the point of the
: game should be equipment, but it is.
I've never liked the concept that you loose all your equipment when you
log out, or that you need to make special arrangements for your
equipment when you log out if you want to keep it (eg rent). I've
long that a logged out player should still exist in the game, with all
of his equipment, and should also continue to be vulnerable to all the
normal methods of attack, psteal etc. It is then up to the player to
suitably protect and/or hide his character *before* he logs out.
Implementing this, with balance, can be a bit of a nightmare, but it
sure would be more interesting.
: Well, there's the trick. I've yet to see a mud that gets away from
: either of the two standard "pop" methods - percentage loads or
: maxes, or some combination thereof. I've also yet to see a mud
: where the pop time is more than two hours, or many zones where you
: can't clear them out completely before the next repop.
I know a couple where the pop times for specific items are measured in
days, but they're rare. The thing I never liked was the idea of
having the entire zone pop as a unit. This seemed way to forced to
me.
I'd rather see individual items and states (such as an opened door)
repop over time, semi-randomly if possible, so that eventually, if
left alone, the whole zone has repopped. This way you could set the
repop time on say an opened door to be very short, even almost
instant, so that the player has to be quick on his feet to get thru
it, as well as be certain ahead of time that he can get back out.
: Well, I'll tell you what. The reason I've been so interested in
: this dicussion is that I've already done it. And I'll tell you
: another thing - I wasn't able to find any way to do it without a
: total rewrite and completely re-thinking the way a mud is supposed
: to work.
Care to describe what you did?
: One thing that is rather cool about muds is that they really don't
: have to be very good. It's the multi-player aspect that makes the
: game dynamic and fun, so we can overlook all the little details and
: quirks. What _really_ excites me, though, is the thought of the
: multi-player thing combined with a system that is actually really
: fun and well-balanced on its own.
Agreed. Create a system that is fascinating in its own right, and
_then_ allow a player to participate.
: While you're at it, get rid of hitpoints, armor class, levels,
: equipment slots, guilds, +mana, +manaregen, +age (who ever thought
: of THIS stupid idea?!), names, titles, and classes.
: Don't laugh - I'm serious.
I'm not laughing. I utterly agree. I also happen to think that a
game should never present a player with numbers. It should never give
him +/- values on anything, it should never tell him his level or any
of his statistics as a number, even if it is stored that way
internally to the game -- let it all be decriptive text, and suitable
choices of adjectives.
It takes work and careful design up front, but can be done well.
A base problem is that in general players want some sense of
advancement. They want to be able to have a verifiable, discrete
statement of their comparitive position on a scale or scales. Getting
rid of this metric whole hog, attractive tho it is from a game design
and admin POV is not so often so attractive to players.
Shame really.
: Whether or not my methods are
: the best is debatable, but I think it is clear that it is time to
: rethink and restructure our dear little time-waster.
Got a design doc or implementation we can look at?
Katie Sehorn
In article <4mceq1$k...@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>,
Orion Henry <ohe...@sdcc10.ucsd.edu> wrote:
>>
>> While I agree with this, I still don't understand why this means
>>clerics have to be in -combat- to get any sort of reward for their
>>healing. Do I have to stick myself in the middle of a gang firefight to
>>get any practical use out of my Red Cross First Aid training?
>
>at work here. One is simple practical ability to invoke spells of
>your god to heal someone's wounds. Another is the ability to do so
>under stress, and while watching one's back.
This is true. But what irks me is the person who is out there on
the battlefield is (under the current system) going to learn all the
spells more quickly than someone who actually dares to live a clerical
life of prayer, meditation and PEACEFUL service to hir Deity. Pardon me
for thinking it'd be more conducive to roleplaying to actually act like a
devoted worshipper who would more willingly spend time in prayer than in
battle!
And what's up with the Monk class anyway? Why not call them 'karate
masters' and get it over with?
Roo
> keep track of that crap itself.
True, tintin and things are used on many muds just as a better
telnet client than raw telnet, so banning tintin per se is not a great
idea, I admit that. But many muds ban combat triggers to prevent bots
from wandering and exp gaining without a player in control. I think this
all comes down to who you have mudding.
If you want a RP mud, encourage RP. I was on a mud where I
played a sicophant(sp?) cleric and got levelled twice by an Imm for doing
so. The character sucked up to the gods and did it solely for the
purpose of RP. But, the mud itself is not terribly geared towards RP, it
is more of a powermud. If the imms stay involved as characters, not just
aloof administrators, you have much more opportunity for RP.
Wouldn't it be interesting to have Immortals who cared for
players and at the same time have others that tried to harm them. Sure
you'd have to habve rules, but hell, some gods AREN'T nice, they have the
power and do what they damn well please. It's been done in books and in
religious traditions. If Zeus wanted something he usually got it. If
you live in a world where the gods ARE real, you ought to try and keep on
at least one gods good side.
In the RP world outside of muds the Game Master (the IMM's
counterpart) is all powerful. He/she does what he/she thinks is best.
If the GM is good, the players RP and have a good time. If the GM sucks
the players hack and slash and go eq hunting etc. It is not necesarily
the system that causes problems but how it is implemented. If all you
give the players to do is fight, they will. But (as everyone has said
before) if you give them other things to do, then RP will prevail.
Imagine a lormaster class, that had limited access to the stats
and locations of good eq. They could be rewarded by having new tomes
brought to them etc. They could trade their info for exp and such. It
might take some work to get it to work, but that is what coders are for.
Anyway, the point being it's all what you make it. If you make the
easiest, fastest way to level not require RP, then no one will try to RP
for levels beacuse it takes too long.
Orion Henry
>>First, it provides a goal in the game OTHER than levels. This goal
>>can be tied to roleplaying (imo if done right, it should be). I can
>>assure you that my pkill's have been for roleplaying reasons, and the
>>exp I gained for them were not the motivation for the kill.
>
> With this in place, I will support player-killing and
>player-stealing. I just don't think I could ever draw a large enough
>playerbase that would only have RP in mind when they did PK/PS. Most
>folks do it to be annoying or downright mean.
Arctic did it. I don't know about now, but several years ago this
was definitely the case. Even people who were class Assassin
wouldn't admit to it (they just wore warrior gear and said they were
warriors :)).
I don't know what muds you've been playing on, but if all the
player-killers there are only doing it to be mean, then maybe you
should find some new muds.
>>don't often see Tiamat taking a stroll through town. If tiamat does
>>stroll through town, she probabbly doesn't remember that player foo
>
> If the coders give the mobs all the player skills apropos to
>their classes (and maybe even invent a few just for civilians), and put
>in mob memory, they can be every bit as dangerous as an intelligent
>player. And as for Tiamat not taking a stroll through town, well,
Sorry, but no. You can make mobs tougher, and stronger, and faster,
but there is no way they will ever be able to compete with human's
intelligence. This isn't a reflection of muds, really; it's a
limitation of the way computers function, and why AI has yet to
really 'take off' in any form.
Now, mobs can be quite a bit smartER than they are now, since they
have roughly the intelligence and speed of a senile sloth on downers
right now. Processor time starts to come into play when you want to
create intelligent mobs, but it can most certainly be done.
>dragons aren't wont to do that. They prefer being curled up in their
>caves UNDISTURBED - why do you think so many dragons have the aggressive
>flag put on them? =) The other reason imms don't let Tiamat take a
>stroll through town is she kills indiscriminately. They will usually
>punish players for doing that too, so they don't even give the mobs a
>chance to be that mean. =)
Welll...again this is a reflection of the staticness of muds in
general. The drow don't go on surface raids to the elven village;
Tiamat doesn't go on village-ravaging streaks every so often, etc.
For that matter, the shopkeepers never go home and sleep. It would
be really cool to put in a very basic routine thingy for mobs, like
they had in most of the Ultima games. There you could follow an NPC
around all day, and they did semi-realistic things. Ie the
blacksmith would get out of bed in the morning, get dressed, walk
down the road to his smithy. He'd work all day long at the smithy,
then in the evening he'd lock up and go over to the tavern for a
couple hours. Finally he'd head home and go to bed. Very simple,
really, but when I realized that the mobs roaming around me actually
had agendas and weren't just milling about aimlessly, I can't
describe the sense of wonderment that washed over me. (Especially
because this was a rather large game world with hundreds of NPCs
running on my little XT.) Personally, I don't see any need for this
kind of detail - on a mud, I don't really care whether the
blacksmith goes home to sleep at night. The reason for this, of
course, is because you've got other _players_ roaming about with
agendas far more real than those little mob scripts will ever be.
Still, it would be nice to implement drow raids, or razing dragons,
or even a ranger taking people for a hike in the forest. Reminds me
of a cool little spec they had on Shadowdale - every once in a while
Biff the Dragonslayer would shout, 'To me, all who wish to hunt a
dragon!' If a few low level people came and followed him, he'd
group them and set off for the green dragon in Haon-dor forest. Of
course they usually all died when the dragon breathed. :)
>>Player's kill mobile's basically because they can (to get xp, equip,
>>money, etc). If player's kill other players with the same mentality
>>then you haven't added a whole lot to the game.
>
> Exactly. ChaosMUD is PK-possible (though it's frowned upon and
>there is a guild of players that go after 'criminals'), and one player
>began to jokingly gossip about how if he didn't find a group, he could
>just start killing players to level - "All of you are worth a quick 100k
>exp each".
Well, I tend to think that there should be very little if any exp
awarded for killing players. That really shouldn't be a motivation
unless it's specifically a PK mud, like Mortal Conquest. PK should
be a big enough deal as to make people think twice before doing it,
but not such a pain in the ass or so frowned upon that people never
bother.
I figure the feel should be similar to the old west - everyone is
armed, so you have to be at least a little bit careful who you fuck
with. On the other hand, it wasn't like people were gunning each
other down left and right; it was just that, given sufficiant
motiviation, people wouldn't hesistate to get violent.
>>But if you set up reasons and motivations behind the interaction of
>>the players then it does add something. One one of the mud's I play
>>there is one oragnization of people dedicated to protecting pacifists.
>>This provides a focus for that character that would be very difficult
>>to implement in a pkill free environment.
>
> Again, this is assuming the imm staff has the vision to come up
>with reasons, and the energy to weed out the folks who are just going to
>try and power-mud. I can almost see the reason for those ten-minute
>character generation sequences - they'll weed out anyone who doesn't
>really want to get into the game, at least....
I suppose it depends what you mean by "get into the game." I
consder myself both a power mudder, largely because the people I
learned to mud from are power mudders, but I also conder myself a
good rp'er because I don't take things too seriously and to me the
fun is viewing the world through the eyes of your character.
One thing with the 10 minutes char creation sequences...that's fine
with me, but do at least have a guest account or something so that I
can log on and at least see what you have to offer. I love spending
ten minutes trying to get a name approved, or writing my characters
short and long descs when all I want to do is check out what the
mud has to offer. Reminds me of those BBS login things where they
ask you to write a message to the sysop telling what you can
contribute to their BBS. I mean, if I haven't even seen the goddamn
thing yet, how am I supposed to know what I have to contribute, or
even whether it's worth my time?
Orion Henry
>> Actually, the point of the
>>game (goal-wise) is to be the most powerful.
>
>the thing that all players are aiming for.
>Perhaps you'll be willing to help me (and others) think how a
>challenging game could be set up that doesn't define power in
>terms of combat?
Sure. I think we've established that the challange and fun of a mud
is to gain power of some sort. Granted, you're also there to make
friends and explore, but you can do the former in any sort of
interactive environment, and the second only requires some
semi-interesting areas, of which I have seen plenty. So the place
dikus are lacking, of course, is the way to make your character
powreful in an interesting way.
I've always been the one that goes for the oddball classes in an
attempt to become powerful "despite" the relative weakness of the
race/class/whatever. On AnotherMUD barbarians were once considered
the weakest, most useless class, so naturally I wanted to be one. I
finally managed to hunt down a barbarian, who sat there and tried to
convince me not to be one. Finally he gave in and spec'd me barb.
Two months later and the gods and other high-level players alike
were screaming about how barbarians were a completely over-powered
class, how I did way too much damage and had way more hitpoints than
anyone possibly deserved. When I stopped playing there, there were
usually more barbarians on than any other warrior class. Now this,
to me, is _fun_, because I'm doing something no one has done before,
coming up with new and innovative ways to use wierd objects that
everyone else thinks are crap, ways to take out mobs that people
haven't thought of. So the trick is to write a mud that has a
thousand permutations, each of which could result in a different
character-type. Thus even after the mud has been up for a long
time, you'll still have people coming up with new and interesting
combinations of skills, spells, and equipment to make themselves
more powerful. And by more powerful I don't mean more deadly - a
cleric which can heal better than any other has made his or herself
more powerful just as well as the assassin who can kill quicker.
>> The thing is, exp is always easy to come by, so getting to max level
>>and getting all your skills to full is very easy; any high-level warrior
>>is really just like any other, except for a slight variation in stats
>>and hitpoint gains. It's the eq that makes one devestatingly powerful
>>and the other one just mediocre.
>
>While that is true on muds now it doesn't need to be that way.
I agree completely. *mischevious grin*
>Players could be given a variety of different skills and spells
>that partly exclude each other, or that work very well with
>some but bad with others. Then if players can't expect to learn
>all skills (or use an idea that hexonyx implemented for a short
>while, don't give players all spells) they will be forced to
>adapt their play to their skills.
You're on the right track - let's take this a step further. Not
only do I think that players shouldn't be able to learn _all_ spells
and skills for their class, but I think they shouldn't even be able
to learn a good part of them. In my oppinion a really high level
mage should be able to learn maybe 30% of all the spells in the
game, if that.
>>What it comes down to, actually, is that a good offense is by far
>>the best defense. If you can kill anything in a couple rounds, what
>>does it matter how good your defenses are? This means that damroll
>>and offensive spells are usually the most powerful part of the
>>game.
>
>And if warriors have more than three attacks in a round even spells
>aren't worth bothering with. But it rather proves the point that
It depends. On AnotherMUD mages and thieves did huge amounts of
damage that warriors could never hope to match. But the concept is
the same whether it is a fireball or a sword slash.
>+dam equipment is something that urgently needs to be removed from
>a game to make it manageable.
Yep. D&D had that concept mostly as a convenience to make book
keeping easier, but it wasn't like there was much hit and dam to be
had. Most of it came from your weapon and strength.
>>>Well, I'm hoping to host a discussion group about how to achieve
>>>just that. I've plugged the url for the page in this post already
>>>so I won't repeat it here.
>
>>Well, I'll tell you what. The reason I've been so interested in
>>this dicussion is that I've already done it. And I'll tell you
>>another thing - I wasn't able to find any way to do it without a
>>total rewrite and completely re-thinking the way a mud is supposed
>>to work.
>
>*smile*
>I'm impressed. Would you be willing to share some of the conclusions
>you reached, and how you incorporated them in your own mud?
Most certainly, which is why I have been posting so much on this
thread. I don't want to tell you all my methods though; I'd rather
get people thinking in a new direction, come up with new things of
their own. The main problem with diku muds as they are right now
is just stagnation - coders seem more interested with adding
features like name completion and aliases than with broadening the
scope of the game.
>>>For starters. Dump +hit and +dam modifiers on equipment. I think
>
>>Done. :)
>>While you're at it, get rid of hitpoints, armor class, levels,
>>equipment slots, guilds, +mana, +manaregen, +age, names, titles
>>and classes.
>
>Many muds have done away with some or many of the above. What seems
>to be the hard thing is to integrate what remains into a game that
>is worth playing.
Well, you have to replace it with something. I spent quite a bit of
time discussing the human body and how it deals with "damage" with
some experienced emergency room nurses. What I realized right away
was that hitpoints are the most laughibly simplistic way to deal
with one of the most complicated systems in the universe. So we
most certainly keep track of "damage" to the character's body, it's
just in a far more complex form than a single little number, or even
numbers for each limb. Similarly I wrote a more complicated (but
more intuative, I hope) system for equipment than 19 silly slots -
I've always wondered why I can wear two necklaces, no more and no
less. Etc.
As far as stuff like +hit, +dam, +mana - this stuff needs to go away
regardless. I don't see what is so wrong with a pair of pants just
covering your legs rather than making me hit harder, or be able to
cast more spells.
>I'm not laughing. And I don't think many people following this
>thread are. There seems to be a fair amount of interest in making
>a game that is sufficiently different from the standard diku.
I'm glad to hear it - the reason I am participating in this thread
is to try to inspire the coders out there to think about this stuff
a little bit. Also I suppose it will help soften the blow when I
finally get my project up and running and people log in. People
used to regular muds will be in for some serious un-learning.
>> Whether or not my methods are
>>the best is debatable, but I think it is clear that it is time to
>>rethink and restructure our dear little time-waster.
>
>I'd love to be able to debate your methods, after the tantalizing
>glimpses of your ideas.
*smile* Well as to my methods, I'm not gonna give them all away yet.
I think the most fundamental thing that muds can start with is to
come up with 100 or so really interesting, useful, and completely
unrelated skills. At least half of these should have nothing to do
with combat. Now make it so that characters can only learn a third
of these, or less, within their 'lifetime', and you've already got a
system ten times better than anything out there right now.
The main thing that I'm banking on here is that if you take an
interesting world, with places to go, people to meet, and things to
do, then toss in some players with the right attitude, it will sort
of make its own fun. I think we simply need to get away from the
idea that we're writing _games_, and instead realize that we are
writing _worlds_ in which players can immerse themselves.
Marian Griffith
In article <4mfsta$h...@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>,
ohe...@sdcc10.ucsd.edu (Orion Henry) wrote:
>>Players could be given a variety of different skills and spells
>>that partly exclude each other, or that work very well with
>>some but bad with others. Then if players can't expect to learn
>>all skills they will be forced to adapt their play to their skills.
>You're on the right track - let's take this a step further. Not
>only do I think that players shouldn't be able to learn _all_ spells
>and skills for their class, but I think they shouldn't even be able
>to learn a good part of them. In my oppinion a really high level
>mage should be able to learn maybe 30% of all the spells in the
>game, if that.
Perhaps there should be a more complete set of 'talents' that define
where a characters abilities lay. This would be completely random,
at least with respect to their basic interest (and that should roughly
be something like: healer, fighter, civilian, devotee).
The game would grant them a set of abilities mostly in that direction
and a few in other directions. Then a very rare player could be magically
talented without ever knowing, so mages while far more powerfull than
any other class would not be something you can -choose- to be.
The same would be true for healers. Most of them could be simple
herbalists and only a very rare, and lucky, has the talent of True
Healing like most clerics are.
Given the set of talents a player can learn different sets of skills,
or rather, has a different ability to pull off spells. E.g. if a
healer has talents in the direction of plants and potions they could
learn the cures against diseases and poisons quite well but would
have a hard time dealing with cuts or broken bones. They can learn
to deal with it but it will never become as good as a healer with
a talent in that direction.
Naturally players should never be able to find out what talents they
are granted. That should be part of the roleplay.
>>>>Well, I'm hoping to host a discussion group about how to achieve
>>>>just that. I've plugged the url for the page in this post already
>>>>so I won't repeat it here.
*grin*
since the url has been snipped here it is again:
http://www.iaehv.nl/users/grypon/overlord.html
To contact me use the 'mailto' button at the end of any page. Better
forms are going to appear in time, as soon as my friend writes them.
>>*smile*
>>I'm impressed. Would you be willing to share some of the conclusions
>>you reached, and how you incorporated them in your own mud?
>Most certainly, which is why I have been posting so much on this
>thread. I don't want to tell you all my methods though; I'd rather
>get people thinking in a new direction, come up with new things of
>their own.
Good,
that's the point of my discussion page also so that's probably fine.
I'm not looking for solutions really, and I'm not planning to write
a game myself anyway (I can't even program the vcr without help)
but rather provide a host of ideas others can use to make their
games more roleplay aware, or more balanced so that fighting is
only one aspect of the game.
> The main problem with diku muds as they are right now
>is just stagnation - coders seem more interested with adding
>features like name completion and aliases than with broadening the
>scope of the game.
I'm not sure about your assessment of the situation.
Probably most muds open before the radical changes the staff envisions
are fully implemented. Then they acquire a playerbase and at that
point it would annoy too many loyal players to radically change the
game. It would be better to do as you apparently did first rethink
the entire concept of the game and only after you have implemented
the basic concepts open up for testing.
|>Done. While you're at it, get rid of hitpoints, armor class, levels,
|>equipment slots, guilds, +mana, +manaregen, +age, names, titles
|>and classes.
>>Many muds have done away with some or many of the above. What seems
>>to be the hard thing is to integrate what remains into a game that
>>is worth playing.
>Well, you have to replace it with something. I spent quite a bit of
>time discussing the human body and how it deals with "damage" with
>some experienced emergency room nurses. What I realized right away
>was that hitpoints are the most laughibly simplistic way to deal
>with one of the most complicated systems in the universe. So we
>most certainly keep track of "damage" to the character's body, it's
>just in a far more complex form than a single little number, or even
>numbers for each limb.
Hmm.
Does this mean that you kept combat as the main focus of the game,
only made the bodily damage, and the dealing with it, more realistic?
While I've allways felt that the current system is indeed simplistic
I would like to take the discussion one step further. What alternatives
could be provided to fighting as the main focus of the game. If you
look at the page (what little there is of it now) you'll see that the
first index is of ways to swing the attention of players away from
fighting to interaction with other players.
True, in most of those ideas there would still be the possibility of
combat, and more than likely a fair amount of it, but it doesn't have
to be rewarded in itself. Like in the reality very very few people
fight because they enjoy it. Most of them have other motivations (and
I'm talking about the generals now, not the soldier who is simply or-
dered around. But even he doesn't fight for fun but for a living!)
> Similarly I wrote a more complicated (but
>more intuative, I hope) system for equipment than 19 silly slots -
>I've always wondered why I can wear two necklaces, no more and no
>less. Etc.
Tell me. I've never been able to figure it out. Or why a skirt couldn't
cover half my legs like it usually does. Or why I can't wear stockings
under that skirt. And a ... well, you get the point.
The real reason would probably be convenience for the programmers.
Talking about equipment.
What do you all think about having shops make tailor-made clothing
rather than standard objects? (not to mention that 95 pct of the
equipment found in the game wouldn't fit a player?)
A player who wants a dragonscale shield must first go collect scales
and bring those to the blacksmith. He will, if he gets enough of those
scales create a shield, or a suit out of it and sell that again.
The pro of that idea is that it allows reasonably low level players
to go around the world and collect valuable things and sell them to
a creator for a decent price. And those objects are eventually going
to be turned into powerfull equipment for the high levels who can
affort it. With a simple balance of the economy it should be possible
to keep inflation under control that way.
>As far as stuff like +hit, +dam, +mana - this stuff needs to go away
>regardless. I don't see what is so wrong with a pair of pants just
>covering your legs rather than making me hit harder, or be able to
>cast more spells.
I agree, but on most muds the toughness of the monsters is geared
towards the presence of those magical items. Without them most
monsters would be unbeatable.
Personally I think it's nice to have quite a few monsters around
that can't be defeated no matter how big an army charges them.
Some of those monsters should indeed wander through the world and
attack at random. If a major demon visits a town people should
either run as fast as they can or seek shelter in the town's
church and pray that their priest is pious enough to repell the
demon from the door. Fighting that demon? That's pathetic. The
best a warrior can hope to achieve is having his soul dragged
to hell for his foolishness.
>>I'd love to be able to debate your methods, after the tantalizing
>>glimpses of your ideas.
>*smile* Well as to my methods, I'm not gonna give them all away yet.
>I think the most fundamental thing that muds can start with is to
>come up with 100 or so really interesting, useful, and completely
>unrelated skills. At least half of these should have nothing to do
>with combat. Now make it so that characters can only learn a third
>of these, or less, within their 'lifetime', and you've already got a
>system ten times better than anything out there right now.
I hope you agree if I put this suggestion on my discussion page
somewere?
>The main thing that I'm banking on here is that if you take an
>interesting world, with places to go, people to meet, and things to
>do, then toss in some players with the right attitude, it will sort
>of make its own fun. I think we simply need to get away from the
>idea that we're writing _games_, and instead realize that we are
>writing _worlds_ in which players can immerse themselves.
*cheer*
I'm agreeing with you completely!
I've begun thinking in this direction lately. As a implementor it
is indeed a world that you're designing, with its internal logic and
rules. If that world is designed right people can become part of it
and enjoy themselves. If it isn't then people are playing an arcade
game (and they can still enjoy themselves but I'm hoping for some-
thing better)
Marian
Orion Henry
>: Let me clarify that statement: _I_ don't think that the point of the
>: game should be equipment, but it is.
>
>log out, or that you need to make special arrangements for your
>equipment when you log out if you want to keep it (eg rent). I've
>long that a logged out player should still exist in the game, with all
>of his equipment, and should also continue to be vulnerable to all the
>normal methods of attack, psteal etc. It is then up to the player to
>suitably protect and/or hide his character *before* he logs out.
>Implementing this, with balance, can be a bit of a nightmare, but it
>sure would be more interesting.
Yeah...long before I ever played my first mud, I used to play those
cheesey little BBS games that usually allowed stuff like this -
mostly because the games weren't truely multiplayer, so in order to
get any interaction between players at all you had to do this. The
main problem was simply that the computer was so stupid that given
two players of equal power, the one who was actually doing the
attacking would always win. Even if you got around this, I still
have a fundamental problem with this whole idea. As it is, those
who have more time to play will _always_ do better than people with
limited time. Okay, that's fair - but this would make the situation
much worse. I don't want to be worrying about how my character is
doing when I go on a camping trip for a week, or when something
comes up at work that demands all my time, or whatever. Logging
back in to find out I was killed and all my gear stolen doesn't
appeal to me at all. On the other hand, I've yet to think of a
really good solution to this; ultra-secure inns (unbreachable by
players) is still the method I prefer, both as a coder and as a
player.
>I know a couple where the pop times for specific items are measured in
>days, but they're rare. The thing I never liked was the idea of
>having the entire zone pop as a unit. This seemed way to forced to
>me.
Someone suggested attaching pop times to objects and mobs, so that
you could have castle guards which pop every 20 minutes but the
queen and king only pop once a week. This seems like a pretty good
solution to me, without rewriting the whole pop thing.
>I'd rather see individual items and states (such as an opened door)
>repop over time, semi-randomly if possible, so that eventually, if
>left alone, the whole zone has repopped. This way you could set the
I dislike doors that lock on their own; how many muds have I played
on where you can get a boot only key, run into a zone, die, have the
zone pop and the doors lock so that your corpse is now
unretrievable? This makes no sense to me.
I always put the door flags for closed and locked in the .wld file
rather than doing D commands in the .zon file, just so that this
won't happen, and then have certain mobs come by and close/lock
doors they thing shouldn't be open.
>: Well, I'll tell you what. The reason I've been so interested in
>: this dicussion is that I've already done it. And I'll tell you
>: another thing - I wasn't able to find any way to do it without a
>: total rewrite and completely re-thinking the way a mud is supposed
>: to work.
>
>Care to describe what you did?
Well, I've been hinting towards it. I'm really more interested to
hear where this discussion leads without me just spitting out my own
conclusions, so instead I've only been suggesting things. Still,
you'll get a chance to check it out once we get it up and running.
Don't want to give away all my secrets, now. :)
>: One thing that is rather cool about muds is that they really don't
>: have to be very good. It's the multi-player aspect that makes the
>: game dynamic and fun, so we can overlook all the little details and
>: quirks. What _really_ excites me, though, is the thought of the
>: multi-player thing combined with a system that is actually really
>: fun and well-balanced on its own.
>
>Agreed. Create a system that is fascinating in its own right, and
>_then_ allow a player to participate.
Of course I don't mean that you should design the system without
consdering the multi-player aspect; rather, make a mud that a single
player can log on to and enjoy without needing other players to make
things interesting. This also makes it a tad easier to attract
players. :)
>: While you're at it, get rid of hitpoints, armor class, levels,
>: equipment slots, guilds, +mana, +manaregen, +age (who ever thought
>: of THIS stupid idea?!), names, titles, and classes.
>
>I'm not laughing. I utterly agree. I also happen to think that a
>game should never present a player with numbers. It should never give
>him +/- values on anything, it should never tell him his level or any
>of his statistics as a number, even if it is stored that way
>internally to the game -- let it all be decriptive text, and suitable
>choices of adjectives.
>It takes work and careful design up front, but can be done well.
Yeah. Many have tried, and I've yet to see it done well. Arctic
tried, the second time around, by making a lot of items !id, making
it harder to stat-hunt, taking away the identify spell from mages,
and so on. The problem with this is that they are based on D&D,
which is intrinsically a number-intensive system, one in which the
player needs and wants to know the numbers in order to do well and
have fun. The system has to be designed from the ground up with the
intention of hiding numbers.
The other thing I like about numbers is that they are a short, easy
way to see the status of something. Take your prompt - I've played
on muds where your prompt looks like this:
Hits: A few scratches Moves: Exhausted Mana: Full>
Give me a break. In a situation like this I just write #subs to
change that crap into numbers. I don't need the _real_ numbers,
just _a_ number that I can glance at very quickly, and which doesn't
take up a lot of space.
>A base problem is that in general players want some sense of
>advancement. They want to be able to have a verifiable, discrete
>statement of their comparitive position on a scale or scales. Getting
>rid of this metric whole hog, attractive tho it is from a game design
>and admin POV is not so often so attractive to players.
>Shame really.
The whole 'sense of advancement' was a major stumbling block for us.
Our mud is alien enough that we were afraid people would log on and
panic, because nothing works the way that it 'should.' Up until we
ditched levels, I took solice in the fact that they can type score
and see the comforting line:
You need 1999 experience for level 2.
Any mud I log into I instantly know my first goal: reach level 2.
Take this away, and what is the goal players are striving for? The
few muds with level-less systems that I have played on usually have
some form of character status with easily recognizable goals, so
that you at least have feedback on the advancement of your
character.
Of course, if you are changing the entire point of the game, then
you also have to re-think what your goals are. At any rate you
simply need to give feedback to the player about where they stand in
their character's development. How you want to do this will depend
highly upon what you're doing with the system and how characters
actually do develop.
As to character stats...for one thing, you have to use a different
scale and think about it in a realistic manner. On the vast
majority of muds, I can make a twelve foot tall half-giant with a 12
strength and a 5 foot tall elf with an 18 strength with relative
ease. I fail to see how _any_ elf could every be stronger, much
less as strong, as a half giant. Even not counting raw physical
strength, the giant's size would give him a clear advantage in
range, or any sort of physical-strength encounter; muds don't adress
this at all.
Basically it should just be that if I make a half-giant, he damn
well better be strong. If I make an elf, he better be smart. Etc.
Rolling 3d6 for a stat and adding some small racial bonus is stupid.
Finally, on items' stats...well this is easy. Since there are no
special modifiers on items any more, what is there to know about an
item? "a leather helm" - hmmm. Protects your head? "a metal helm"
- hmmm. Protects your head a little better, while hampering your
movement and your vision a little more?
>: Whether or not my methods are
>: the best is debatable, but I think it is clear that it is time to
>: rethink and restructure our dear little time-waster.
>
>Got a design doc or implementation we can look at?
Well, you can see the real thing once we get our shit together and
get the thing running. But, as with any hobby, it is a back-seat
sort of project. We'll work on it 60 hours a week for two weeks in
a row and then not touch it for five days. Also we're currently
working on getting a site with the linguistics department here at
UCSD - we'll see what happens. Like I said, though - I'd like to
see the ideas you guys come up with on these topics without seeing
what I have done first. Maybe I'll even change my mind on a few
things. :)
Orion Henry
>: Mudders like at least a little bit of security, that
>: as a high-level char there isn't much that can insta-death them.
>
>that the player, if fast and smart enough *CAN* save himself. Of
>course that "fast and smart enough" opening can be __real__ small.
Actually, I should qualify my previous statement a little; what I
meant was that on any muds, as the run now, insta-death is a very
player-unfriendly concept, and not even a little bit fun. Of
course, the only real insta-death on most muds right now is DTs (a
concept that should have been revamped a LONG time ago).
Insta-death, and in fact death in general would bother me less if
players took less time and effort to come up with. I think I
mentioned this point when we were talking about perma-death. A good,
high-level character with lots of good gear is generally an
investment of 100+ hours on any normal power mud. After all that
work, I _expect_ some security for my char. If, however, characters
were more 'easy come, easy go', stuff like perma-death, insta-death,
and in fact just about anything bad happening to my character
becomes more interesting and thereby more fun. Look at pen and
paper roleplaying games - when someone roles a critical failure and
shoots themselves in the chest with a siege crossbow, or something,
it's funny and makes a good story. You just don't expect your
character to live forever, and anyways half the fun of the game is
creating a new character and taking him through the early levels,
defining his personality. On muds, where the early levels are
usually boring and/or highly frustrating, we don't want to have to
put up with this kind of death.
Katie Sehorn
In article <19960505....@catling.iaehv.nl>,
Marian Griffith <gry...@iaehv.nl> wrote:
>Given the set of talents a player can learn different sets of skills,
>or rather, has a different ability to pull off spells. E.g. if a
>healer has talents in the direction of plants and potions they could
>learn the cures against diseases and poisons quite well but would
>have a hard time dealing with cuts or broken bones. They can learn
>to deal with it but it will never become as good as a healer with
>a talent in that direction.
I like this idea - especially the thought of players not knowing
their knack right away - but I almost thought you were saying something
like someone who chose to play a mage could have a discoverable knack for
battle or stealing, and unless you allow for multi-classing (i.e. player
discovers hidden talent and decides to abandon hir old studies to
capitalize on it), it's kind of worthless. I mean, when your character
starts out in the MUD world, s/he's seventeen years old. I would imagine
that in medieval times, folks that age were already journeymen at their
given trades. And since we're being kind enough to allow them to choose
what trade they wish to ply, we might as well assume they would choose
one they had a natural aptitude for (I know I would prefer to spend my
life doing something I wouldn't have to constantly struggle to do well at).
So I would say, allow for strengths and weaknesses in various
things related to the guild, but don't be so cruel as to give natural
thieving abilities to a paladin! I mean, if you want angst and
pretentious suffering, just replace everyone's kickass equipment with a
small sword and leather armour. =)
Mordrid
Orion Henry wrote:
>
> >Players could be given a variety of different skills and spells
> >that partly exclude each other, or that work very well with
> >some but bad with others. Then if players can't expect to learn
> >all skills (or use an idea that hexonyx implemented for a short
> >while, don't give players all spells) they will be forced to
> >adapt their play to their skills.
>
> You're on the right track - let's take this a step further. Not
> only do I think that players shouldn't be able to learn _all_ spells
> and skills for their class, but I think they shouldn't even be able
> to learn a good part of them. In my oppinion a really high level
> mage should be able to learn maybe 30% of all the spells in the
> game, if that.
has. A Necromancer would be able to cast most (but probably not all)
necromantic spells fairly good. He would be completely unable to learn
spells from the oppositional schools (illusion for example). For the
nonoppositional schools, he would be able to learn some of the spells to
a moderate degree. You could also leave regular mages that are
unspecialized and have a general (but very limited) knowledge of every
school.
ayud...@netcom.com
[Sorry, just too much to snip. No offense intended, but I lost track.
[I think it was Ohenry who suggested aptitudes and some mystery about them,
[and katie responding.
Summary: make aptitudes available, but
make them secret/hidden only as an option, otherwise
make them 'buyable' ala gurps / ROM (sorta), cuz
lotsa players just reroll anyway if they don't get what they want
so give them more control, reduce rerolling, get to the FUN part!
~~~~~~~
The aptitudes thing is a nice idea. I've been fiddling with something
like that for a while now (though without much in the way of concrete
results). Anyhow, about giving players secret, random, or hidden
aptitudes:
Many rebel against not knowing things about their characters. For example,
to reduce re-rolling for stats, many muds have made it so you can't even
SEE your stats till level 8 or 10 or more. Well, that works partially,
but it also just can result in delaying the reroll. Fact is, if stats are
random and not under your control, you get folk who want to reroll.
I say make aptitudes available, sure, and random/hidden if the player
so chooses. Perhaps even make the total value of these aptitudes higher
than if the player chooses his own aptitudes.
Then for choosing aptitudes, skills, whatever, go for the general idea like
so many RP systems use (gurps for one, ROM to some degree for another)
where you 'buy' aptitudes. Or even stats for that matter.
Maximum choice for users is a good thing, I'd say. Maybe they want to
be surprised. Or maybe, as I know is so OFTEN the case, they want to
play a thief who backstabs well but is not too outdoorsy (or whatever).
Cater to both crowds by giving them the choice for random generation
or 'buy your skills/aptitudes/whatever' generation, or maybe even some
combination.