[MUD-Dev] Re: pet peeves

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Wed, 17 Feb 1999, J C Lawrence wrote:

> I would like to have a given character's stats (or even the account's
> stats), be quite marginally important if the player was very skilled
> at the game.  In fact, I'd like to make that exact scenario (expert
> player not visibly represented in their characters) common enough that
> one was never certain whether any given newbie really was a newbie or
> not.

This is something we try to do, in some ways, particularly in our player
v. player combat system. It's so complicated and there are so many
different ways of fighting, that once you have a acquired a certain
minimum of abilities and equipment, your knowledge and persona skill are
much more important than anything else. Yes, you gain further advantages
by progressing, but a player with poor attributes and a handful of
abilities can easily crush a  player with every ability available to him
and maxxed-out stats if the bigger player doesn't know what he or she is
doing. 

The major disadvantage (and it's a fairly major one) is that we have to
ensure that no piece of equipment or no single ability gives you an
overwhelming edge. In order to balance everything, we basically assume a
certain, full (and fairly extensive) set of equipment that a competent
player would need. This equipment is readily available to all players
though, provided they are willing to go out and make the money to buy it
(or provided they can successfully steal it). None of it is so expensive
as to put it out of the reach of any reasonable serious player.

--matt



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