[MUD-Dev] Administrative notes

[clawrenc at cup.hp.com]

In <199705090850.KAA28601 at regoc.srce.hr>, on 05/09/97 
   at 07:08 PM, silovic at srce.hr (Miroslav Silovic) said:

>First of all, it appears to me that more often than not, combat
>system, no matter how perfect, tends to get in the way. While I
>completely agree that a RP-oriented MUD could be greatly spiced with
>combat, in practice it actually takes from the experience as it
>attracts people to whom combat is end in itself. From that point, the
>game degrades into powerfest, loosing all its immersive value.

I generically dislike most of the current combat models not because I
see them as overly simplistic and belitting solutions to problems in
the MUD world.  The standard and now almost purely rote equation has
very quickly become, "XXX is in my way of getting YYY == kill XXX then
get YYY".  As solution models go this is boring in the extreme, let
alone just non-sensical for a lot of the problem field.  The fact that
death is also cheap encourages this simplistic equation.  After all if
you die you're just set back a little -- all you need to do is persist
for long enough, dieing thousands of times if need be, and you can
achieve anything you want in the MUD world (wiz etc).

How many times have you seen a MUD where killing the guard outside the
castle gate meant that it was now just plumb impossible to get into
the castle?  Why not?  Why can't the (live) guard be necessary to
appropriately signal the drawbridge to lower or some such?

It is for this reason that I've been trying to de-emphasize the role
of weapons and EQ in combat and instead make planning, perparation,
strategy and tactics take a much more commanding position.  I want the
concentration in combat to be heavily centred on the real-time
activities of the player in actively guiding his character's combat --
not him sitting back and watching the DIKU-esque combat routines fight
the war for him and give him the score at the end.  I've also made
death permanent -- you die, and you're gone.  Its start over from
scratch time.  The gist in all of this is that I don't want to
eradicate combat or death as tools in game play, far from it, I just
want them relegated to specific examples of very risky tools which are
applicable to only a minor set of cases, and then with significant
risk.

--
J C Lawrence                           Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------------(*)               Internet: clawrenc at cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...