[MUD-Dev] (no title) Time limits?

[J C Lawrence]

While I know its a commmon format in the corporate world (where I use
it heavily as an email audit trail), lets keep away from the "new text
at the top, quotes at the bottom format", as encourages overquoting
and makes specific retorts more difficult.

On Sun, 15 Mar 1998 15:56:40 PST8PDT 
Justin McKinnerney<xymox at toon.org> wrote:

> I agree that mud addicts, espicially when they're good to start
> with, can pose a problem. ESPICIALLY on a PK Mud. 

Why?  Very specifically, what is it about players who play a lot vs
players who don't that poses a problem? 

Yes, I'm aware of the points raised by Jay in the original posting,
but none of those are actually unique to heavy players.  At worst they
are merely exacerbated by them simply thru greater opportunity to do
the nasty (newbie harassing is difficult when you only play a few
minutes day (not many on in those few minuteas), much easier when
you're on 12 hours a day).  

What problems do such extended play players actually _cause_?

> The first, and most common for any out-of-the-box mud, is to make
> some of the areas level restricted. 

Its difficult to have internal logical consistancy in your world with
this approach.

> This is an easy change to make
> with some of the out-of-the-box muds, and tends to work rather
> well. This way, as a PCs level increases, they are restricted to the
> tougher areas, which means it will primarily be those to their level
> and under (assuming the underlings decide to try or choose to
> adventure with upper-level characters), but can keep the more
> dangerous characters from being a threat to them. I've found this
> method works really well as the lower level people tend to keep to
> their areas unless adventuring with a higher level character.

There is a more insidious effect of this approach: it encourages
and rewards repetitive action.

In the typical GoP MUD, you learn the areas and valuable mobiles and
locations, and then (more or less) spin on them until you gain enough
XP/HP to try and take on the next tougher/more_valuable set of areas.

eg:

  Logon, go do Castle Crak, do the Elven Forest, do Thorin's waste,
clean out the south end of the catacombs, whup some wraith in the
shifting sands, and then head beack to Castle Crak which should have
reset by now...  Whoa!  Made a level!  Lets go see if I can't add the
UnderDeep to my routine...

No thanks.  I prefer a world where repeitive action has few rewards -- 
that's what machines are for, not humans.

> The second, and my favorite, but not very practical for any of the
> out-of-the-box systems I know, is to make game balance work so that
> player's skills increase but their 'power' does not. 

Which is indirectly the approach I take:

  All characters start with the same nondescript somewhat amorphous
and very unremarkable gray humanoid body.  Its not a bad body, but its
certainly not a great one, or very suitable for a number of tasks (it
does very poorly at extremes for instance).  They then go and steal
more suitable/desirable/remarkable bodies to improve their play.

There are of course no levels.  Statistics are seperated into two
camps: the physical stats which are bound to the body in question, and
the rest which are bound to the character (or in rare instance to the
account).  Body stealing is the largely the only way to increase
physical stats (there are exceptions, but they are expensive on an
ongoing basis, or are severely limited).  

> The easiest
> example of this I could give an example of is Magic the
> Gathering. One player could easily play hours every day of the week,
> while another may only play a single hour a week. However, this does
> not mean the first player would beat the second at all. Even if the
> first has bought more cards than the second, the second could be
> more cunning in devising the deck out of the cards they have.

Quite.  My expression of this is that nobody is safe, even the expert
and very well equipped player confronted by the newbie with a wooden
sword or pop-gun.  

What I fail to have here, and am still working on finding a way to
represent, is a way to make the vulnerability proportional to the lack
of attention paid to the risk.  The same well prepared expert who
treats the attack by the newbie with all the care and delicacy that he
would treat a rabid basilisk should be at a much lower risk than the
same chap who ignores or deals with the newbie offhandedly.  I don't
know how to do that in a non-scriptable manner yet.

> Generally, in a mud, the second concept relies on the concept of
> 'counters' and 'effects' that can be gained in other ways than
> simple experience. But I like the system that way as it allows
> people who are addicts to play as much as they like without being
> too much of a threat to those who don't have the option to play so
> much.

Which raises the question of the value of game-knowledge.  I value
game-knowledge much more highly than stats.  My requirement is that a
freshly created character with default stats played be an extremely
expert human should be no less dangerous a carefully built and trained 
character with a well developed skill web etc played by a reasonably
skilled player.

> Of course, even in such a system, a 'Newbie' area is still a good
> idea. To teach players the system and give them time to prepare
> before entering the big, bad world.

I prefer games with a little more depth than that, with no deliniation
of the world into areas, or level-suitability.  Then again I like
worlds where no single player will ever know more than 10% of the
world, no matter how hard he tries.

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