[MUD-Dev] UI Issues: Anti-scripting techniques

[Broly]

On Mon, 6 Oct 1997, Shawn Halpenny wrote:

> On Sun, 5 Oct 1997, Travis Casey wrote:
> 
> > However, there's no reason my the numbers displayed have to be the
> > actual numbers that the mud uses internally.	The players might be
> > shown their skills on a 0 to 10 scale, for example, even though the
> > mud internally uses a 0 to 100 scale.
> 
> Quite true.  However, this becomes a more involved question if you've
> adopted a system as I have (similar to the one you posted about
> relative skill comparisons).
> 
> How does one tell the player what skill level he is at with a
> relative system such as that?  I detest seeing "Your broadsword skill
> is at 80%".  It is incorrect to say "You are very good at picking
> locks", since not all locks require the same amount of skill to pick
> (nor are all locks requiring a range of skill X to Y necessarily
> similar, which would render the message "You are very good at picking
> Yale locks" acceptable).  Ideally, I want to present "You are capable
> of besting the meanest of red dragons" or somesuch, but that implies
> that somewhere a calculation has gone on that was aware of the
> meanest red dragon in the world.  I think this sort of thing depends
> very much on the character and must be based on what the character
> has accomplished.  Given that, what should a newly created character
> see when he queries his sword skill if he's never had a chance to
> compare it to anything?
> 
> 	< consider squirrel
> 	You have no idea if you can beat the squirrel.
[snip most of example]
> That is not something I'd like to see...nor is the same scenario, with:

Me neither.  The character should have _some_ idea of how it will fair
against a squirrel for a couple of reasons...

> In a relative skill system, how
> does one effectively (without misleading) convey a newbie's skills to him?
> Do they all start out as "You're okay at just about everything"?  I know
> I'd rather have an inkling of how good I am at picking locks before I play
> my newbie Houdini...
> 
I've never killed a squirrel with a sword, but I have a fairly good idea
that if I could manage to catch up with one, it shouldn't give me too
much difficulty.

	<score
	You are a little weak, but very co-ordinated.
	You are in good physical shape with above-average reflexes.
	You are as yet untested in battle.
 	< consider squirrel
	The squirrel is much faster than you.
	The squirrel doesn't pose you much danger.
	< kill squirel
	The squirrel flees up into the trees.
	< curse
	^%#$@&*%

note that there is some 'average' for all skills.  How this is determined
is completely up to you.  Personally, I'd define an average skill as one
that has a 50% probability of success in the most difficult senario the
character is likely to face, and compute this (for newbies) by defining
some default newbie skill levels comparible with those challanges newbies
are aske to overcome.  Later, as the player tests their skills, use the
toughest mobile/challange overcome by the player.
This has the interesting side-effect of showing a player that just goes
around slaughtering bunnies for 12 hours that he has amazing skills, while
in fact his skils are well below that of someone risking life and limb.
In this case the player would think he is a master bunny-slayer, but will
learn quickly what his skills are the first dragon he attacks...

> I would like players to be able to get an idea if they could succeed at
> something like killing an NPC solely from its description and whether or
> not the player has beaten something like it in the past.  There is,
> however, no requirement that the description contain the information that
> every player who ever looks at that NPC would like to see to make a
> determination of whether or not he'd win.  I think the system has to help
> out here and give some feedback on where the player stands with respect to
> someone else.  That much is easy once they've played a while (indeed, after
> they've made their first kill), but if they've never killed anyone, are
> they good at it, bad at it, or okay at it?  Is there any way they can get
> a general idea aside from just "consider"ing it?
> 
> -- 
You could word descriptions carefully to give an idea of how tough the mob
will be.  I always hated the 'little boy' mobs in the higher level areas
that kicked the pants off the 'strong seasoned adventurer' mob from the
newbie zones.  You could even cue discriptions based on character stats,
but then you'd have the added overhead of run-time desc-writing.

Remember that your player's characters aren't born the day they are
created(usually), so they will have a general idea of their
abilities/shortcomings as well as the proported strengths of common
mobiles (such as squirrels a.k.a. tree rats).

Gunther