[MUD-Dev] Alright... IF your gonan do DESIESE...

[coder at ibm.net]

On 25/05/97 at 10:29 AM, caliban at darklock.com (Caliban Tiresias
Darklock) said:

>On Sat, 24 May 1997 23:17:25 PST8PDT, coder at ibm.net wrote:

>>Bartle raises the point that on a goal/level oriented game, that
>>without permanent death, a mediocre or even flat out incompetent
>>player can have utter certainty that they will make Wiz or top level
>>if they merely persist in their plodding way for long enough.  His
>>contention, and I agree, is that this is a Bad Thing.  

>Agreed. My concept is that good work and long effort should count for
>something. My thought on the matter at hand, currently, is that if a
>character in the game I'm building (a White Wolf WoD MUSH thing)
>dies, then the player's next character starts out with a number of
>experience points equal to *half* what the previous character had
>earned, minus ten. 

The problem is that a player can still know with absolute correctness,
that as long as he persists enough, and avoids getting killed too
often, we will make it.

>The idea here is that since the player has
>proven himself (XP are given on this game only when someone else
>recommends you for them; this is reviewed by a human being, not a
>piece of code) he should be given more leeway and permitted to play a
>more "important" character. 

Ahh.  The saving grace.  This does change the whole business.

>>I don't have a pat answer.  

>There isn't one... there rarely is such an answer to anything
>information-intensive enough to belong on this list. ;)

Yayup.

>>I don't like the classical game definition of your character's body is
>>synonymous with your character, so I split that.  I also don't like
>>the idea that a human player can have multiple characters in a game,
>>but has to bend over backwards (login twice or some such) to play them
>>both simultaneously.  

>I kind of like that, myself. It makes things easier for me...

True, and I don't want to prevent that sort of simplicity.  I just
also don't want to prevent more detailed approaches being used to good
effect.  A player playing a single body character will have an
advantage over a player playing multiple characters and bodies, if
only on the attention division and corrdination front.  I think that
only right and proper.  

>>I made a single character able to simultaneously control multiple bodies.  

>I'd get confused ;)

I find I max out at about 3 bodies.  After that it just gets to be
more than I can comfortable mentally context shift between.  2 bodies
is pretty comfortable tho.  A swarm-type body gets, err, interesting
here as you can split off minor fractions (eg a single bee) and go sit
them somewhere just to keep an eye on that area.  They require no
control or activity on yur part -- they just report what they see. 
Give the fractions access to your magical ability and they can act as
teleport commands (Bubba sneaks into the room, doesn't see the single
bee crouched in the ceiling, and steals your pet rock.  Ooops. 
Instantly the single bee teleports in 1,500 other bees who launch the
attack!)

My swarm support is still flakey, so I haven't played about here much.

>>This separation into bodies and characters also complicates several of
>>the old MUD models for stats.  I've handled this by deriving the stats
>>into three classes:

>Fascinating. I like the ideas you come up with, but I'm a little
>concerned about them; I don't know if I'd like to play a game like
>this. 

I'm still wrestling this with that area.  I have no idea if it will be
playable, but I'm going to try.

>However, I do see a major advantage to things like this... a
>staff member can hold several NPCs at once during a quest or the
>like, and with proper coordination and command familiarity manage to
>run a VERY large scene with little trouble. I like that thought.

Uhhuh.

The other nice aspect is that the standard system of player ==
character == body is then merely a subset of this system.  So any
admin can then just enforce tighter rules and get the same olf
well-known system back again.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...