[MUD-Dev] The Best Guy on the Mud Thing

[Dundee]

On 26 Aug 1999 23:23:32 +0200, Miroslav Silovic <silovic at zesoi.fer.hr>
wrote:

> > little learning and thought. Only one person can be the best, so by
> > definition that is fairly hard if there is a field of participants of=
 any
> > size.

On a somewhat related note... sort of...

Lately we've been working with UO server emulators and we sort of =
inherited
the UO skill system.

It's a imbalanced sort of thing.  There's a skill 'cap', so really all =
that
matters in making a charcater is "How many points will this cost me?"

The imbalance comes in with the skills all taking the same number of =
points
to master.  100 points of magery is just flat out *worth more* than 100
points of, say, begging.

At first we thought of putting in classes - but I don't like classes and
that's really just a kludge to prevent every player from being little
carbon copies of one another: each with the same "best" (point for point)
skillset.

We thought about weighting the skills as well - so that maybe 100 points =
of
begging only counts as 20 points (towards the maximum), but 100 points of
magery would suck-up 300 total skillpoints.  The problem with this =
approach
is it makes it REALLY difficult for the players to figure out how close =
to
the max they are (and therefore how many points they have left).  Plus it
doesn't address the "best skillset" issue at all.

Now we're sort of toying with the idea of scoring them relative to one
another.  Sort of like grading on a curve.  Basically, there wouldn't be =
a
maximum of 100 points per skill.  There wouldn't be a max at all - you
could get 100 points or 1000 or 10,000.  But what that meant, when it =
came
to determining skill successes, would depend on the mud-wide average =
skill.
Say, the top 5% of the characters (with the highest magery skill) would =
be
'Masters' of the skill with very good skill-success odds.  Just how many
skill points that required exactly would depend on what the skill value =
the
top 5% had.

But that, in turn, really screws the people who don't play very often... =
so
now I have this sort of half-baked idea to base skill success on the rate
of use of the skill over some unit of time.  If you logout, your rate of
usage wouldn't change, but if you stop using a skill and continue =
playing,
then your rate of use would drop - and measured relative to the other
players rates of use, that would result in a lowering of your skill.

Ehrm... what a nightmare that would be.  Well it is half-baked.  Maybe
we'll just stick-in some classes.

--=20
http://dundee.uong.com/



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