[MUD-Dev] Re: You think users won't number crunch and statis

[Travis S. Casey]

On Tue, 14 Jul 1998, Shawn Halpenny wrote:

> I've been thinking of maintaining a running, weighted average across all
> (N)PCs' numerical attributes to give the frame of reference needed to
> output something like that as well.  I suppose there would be a sort of
> master ogre object that simply exists to collect and average the stats
> for ogres and is compared against whenever an ogre is statted.
> 
> Given that, however, I'm not sure how to justify:  The world is full of
> newbie ogres (i.e. most with low stats).  Bubba has already been playing
> his ogre for a while, so he's very strong compared to most other ogres. 
> He doesn't login for 4 months, but the majority of the other PC ogres are
> avid players and considerably advance their characters in his absence. 
> When Bubba returns he discovers instantaneously (at least, as soon as he
> first stats himself) that he is no longer very strong compared to most
> ogres.  

To me, this seems to be a problem of a limited world.  Since there is such
a small population of ogres in the world, a particular ogre's ranking
within the population can easily change.  The problem is made worse by
many ogres being PCs -- in most muds, PCs tend to rise quickly in stats
(at least, compared to NPCs).

The problem can be mollified by taking the more traditional stance that
the PCs and NPCs who are actually represented on the mud are only a tiny
fraction of the beings living in the world.  Thus, PCs and represented
NPCs are being compared not to each other, but to the "average ogre."
Most PCs, possibly many NPCs, will be above-average, but the average does
not significantly change as PCs grow more powerful, because there are
vastly more unrepresented ogres than there are PC ogres (or, for that
matter, than there are PC ogres and represented NPC ogres).