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

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On 01:44 PM 7/14/98 -0700, I personally witnessed Adam Wiggins jumping up
to say:
>
>What you suggest here is simply changing that value (23,
>above) from a constant to a variable (a calculated average, to be exact).
>Now you ask - do newbies get their strength rolled based on that number?
>(ie, +- 30% of the calculated average, or the original constant, 23?)  If
>so, this works as a feedback loop - working up your ogre's strength
>slightly increases the strength of all newbie ogres created.  

My immediate take on this is that it will make PK-centered MUDs a good deal
more palatable from my perspective, since my major problem with PK is how
incredibly difficult it is to work up to any sort of even footing unless
you use some sort of artificial restriction like "You can't PK someone more
than 5 levels away from you". (And since we're often talking about doing
away with levels here, that sort of restriction means very little in the
first place.) 

I've been considering this sort of thing with a space-based game I'm in the
process of updating (can't name it, I'm still negotiating the transfer of
ownership with the original author). Basically, when a new ship is created,
I think it only makes sense to keep some sort of running total of what most
other people carry and use that to generate an "average" ship when new
players log on. Combined with the "You're new, so we'll cut you a lot of
slack on the first day and progressively less slack for the next few"
concept the game already implements, I think this would help people a lot
when they first started out. 

On the other hand, I can see this being something of a problem. Players who
start the game with an 'average' amount of power based on the existing
player base might be starting on a game where some people have several
characters; it would then be to my advantage to create thirty characters
and leave them sit around unplayed, thus keeping the average a good deal
lower. If the whole player base did so, then you would actually end up
creating a character that was completely screwed compared to the rest of
the *active* characters. So I have a general thought on this that I thought
I would air.


I think a player should be expected to spend a certain amount of time
*active* with a character in order to keep that character in the
newbie-generation database. This can be measured through average time spent
online, average amount of advancement achieved, and average *use* of that
advancement for skill-based games that offer training; someone might make a
trash character and go out killing things, but then never use his training
sessions or experience points or any of that sort of thing once he gets his
primary skill -- say, club proficiency -- to its maximum. Some of this can
be offset by skill atrophy, which we have discussed here before. 

The major question is what should be considered 'active' and what should be
considered 'inactive'? Some players have hours on end to spend playing the
game. Some only have a few minutes here and there. On some MUDs, I log in
for about an hour a week. On others, I log in for several hours a day, and
occasionally play for stretches of time that exceed thirty hours. I
consider myself 'active' on all of them, since I am indeed actively playing
and advancing my character. However, on the latter type of MUD, my
characters are outrageously powerful; on the former, they plod along and
don't do all that much in terms of level and ranking. 

My immediate impulse on this is to have an 'active' that indicates "don't
delete this character" and an 'active' that indicates "representative of
the population". Here's my thought: Order the characters by total time
logged. Go to the middle of the group, and then take the fifty characters
surrounding this. Average everything out to find a general level of
advancement achieved. Now order by advancement achieved, and go to this
'average' level. Take the fifty characters surrounding this, and average
all of that out to determine where the new character's creation parameters
should go. 

This seems workable to me. Does anyone else have comments or concerns about
a system like this? I'm sure I've missed some part of the idea which is
important to consider.