[MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.

[Till Eulenspiegel]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Ling <K.L.Lo-94 at student.lboro.ac.uk>
To: <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 1999 15:53
Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.


>On Tue, 5 Jan 1999, Andy Cink wrote:
>> 
>> I've been giving this a lot of thought lately, because my mud
>> is going to use a levelless system. The problem now becomes,
>> A) How do we show a clear path of advancement? and B) How can
>> players keep track of "where they stand" compared to the other
>> players. I was presently thinking on borrowing a system used by
>> a LP mud I used to play. They call it an "eval" system (maybe
>> they all do, I only found one LP mud I really got addicted to)
>> but the eval system works by making a composite number score
>> based on the stats and skills a person has over what they started
>> at.
>


Heh
That was EOTL.  

Did you by chance play an android?  That race was one of my mad 
hacks. :)  I woke up one morning hung over and decided to create
an inorganic race, and then put in the mudlib support to make that 
work. 


>[eval details snipped]
>
>> The problems are numerous, however. Some players will have a lot
>> of points in less useful skills, and still be granted eval for
>> it. (Or some classes simply have more skills or less powerful
>> skills than others) This leads to a lot of doctor-type class
>> people complaining that a fighter-type of half their eval just
>> kicked their ass in the arena. But a fighter type's eval skill
>> may come from headbutt, and a medic's may come from surgery.
>> This creates a fundamental power imbalance, since eval is really
>> pretty arbitrary, and even fairly easy to manipulate by picking
>> up skill levels in select areas.
>
>How about multiple 'evals'.  To take a random pen and paper game off the
>top of my head.  FASA's version of Star Trek had three eval numbers for
>each ship, one for defensive, one for offensive and a final combination of
>the two.  You could easily extend this for combat, random things and more
>random things (sorry for not being helpful there but I can't think of
>anything).  Anyway, I like this system coz I don't think it's fair to
>judge people with one unified scale.  It's as Victorian as having an IQ
>rating.
>
>An rpg called Heavy Gear uses four numbers to rate its Gears (mechs).
>Offensive, Defensive, Miscellanous plus Threat Value (which was some weird
>figure involving a cube root I think).  I realise both the above examples
>are a bit poo coz they're wargame orientated but you get my drift. :)
>
>  |    Ling Lo (aka Lethargic Lad)
>_O_O_  kllo at iee.org
>
>
>-- 
>MUD-Dev: Advancing an unrealised future.
>
>