[MUD-Dev] Languages (slightly offtopic, was Text Parsing)

[Matthew Mihaly]

On Fri, 4 Jun 1999, Greg Miller wrote:

> Matthew Mihaly wrote:
> > 
> > On Fri, 4 Jun 1999, Greg Miller wrote:
> > > slow down combat. Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages, but
> > > your simply wrote off the alternative approach as being wrong. Question:
> > > why are you on this mailing list, if that's your approach to design?
> > 
> > Because reducing the damage/healing numbers sucks. It means that someone
> > can just hit (as an example), their DRINK HEALTH button over and over as
> > quickly as possible in order to heal themselves to full essentially
> > instantly.
> 
> That suggests that you value reflexes and fast links. I'd rather favor
> player skill, myself. Further, the problem you mention is easily dealt
> with, since I don't see any good reason off the top of my head why heals
> shouldn't be heavy and/or expensive, thus making it extremely
> inefficient to just spam heal.

Well, it is true that a good link is required to fight properly.
Furthermore, fast reflexes are definitely required. There is a huge amount
of player skill involved, however, as demonstrated by the fact that a good
combatant will, barring a lag attack, win 99% of the time against an
unskilled opponent who has the same equipment and access to the same
abilities. A couple of us are good enough to take on any two similar
players and still win.

> 
> > 
> > I'm on this list because it's the only place I've ever seen where there is
> > intelligent, high-minded discussion of muds. There's a little too much of
> > the coding side of things for me (mainly because I don't understand half
> > of it, not being much of a coder), but it's still a great list. I wrote
> > off the alternative approach you mentioned years ago. It's not as if I was
> > never exposed to it. It's also not WRONG. It is, however, wrong for the
> > type of combat system that Achaea is into.
> 
> What I'm getting at is that you seem to be more interested in getting us
> to admire Achaea than you are in figuring out (with our help) how to
> improve Achaea. Improving our muds is the main point of this list, as I
> understand it.

No, what I was trying to do was get you to understand the fundamentals of
our combat system. Until you do that, frankly, any advice you offer me on
it is useless. It is very much a 'system' in the same way that the engine
of a car is a system. Until you understand the fundamentals of an internal
combustion engine, making suggestions on how to improve it is rather a
waste of time. The main reason I opened a combat discussion has nothing to
do with trying to brag about Achaea, etc. I know my combat system does
what I intended it to do very well. What I'm trying to do is, without
sounding arrogant, open your minds as to combat. Aside from a couple
people, most list members seem to have very narrow ideas of what combat
can be. I'm just trying to illustrate an example of combat that you
probably haven't seen before, and which works very well.

--matt




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