Tactical Interest Was Re: [MUD-Dev] Re: MUD-Dev digest, Vol 1 #142 - 4 msgs

[Spin]

Ok, late reply here (in both senses of the word).

On Sat, Aug 21, 1999 at 10:38:04AM +0100, Marian Griffith wrote:
> In <URL:/archives/meow?group+local.muddev> on Tue 17 Aug, Wes Connell wrote:
<snipped>
> > So even if we have super cool ecologies and economies the players will
> > always find the best way to do things and stick with those. In turn
> > sorta making the rest useless.

<snipped> 
> relying quite so much on attrition of hitpoints but more on tactics. In
> such cases  the 'right' equipment can vary a lot more  than is the case
> with common muds.  When going against a heavily armoured knight you may
> want to have that big shield to block the blows of his mace.  That same
> shield  would do you no good against a thief with a rapier,  for he can
> probably strike at you and jump out of reach  before you can bring that
> heavy shield around. Wearing a light shield will get you slaughtered in
> both cases, so averaging is clearly not going to help you. And when you


Sorry to chop this post up, but it only lightly touched on my current
main sticking point, that of linear versus quantised values. In the shield
example, shield effects are quantised to two values, success and failure,
different shields either work or they don't. Coming from a diku 
background, there are numerous examples of such quantisation, for example
many spell effects are only available from a given spell and the fixed 
benefit you gain from the spell toggles off and on with the spell.

  If shield affects some combat statistic (damage avoidance) which is
affected by other factors as well, eg character speed, then some players 
will indeed survive both encounters with a light shield, or a heavy shield,
or neither. Obviously this opens the system up to abuse by power gamers, 
but this is really a game balance issue, which I don't even want to open 
the lid on.

  As I embark off on a totally new project, I'm striving to totally avoid
such quantisation, however I'm not sure that I can do without it. Aside
from pregnancy, has anyone ever encountered something that was best
simulated with a binary type variable? The only other problem I see with
this is the need for objects to carry around a large number of values for
what they affect and by how much, but as my game is to be a sort of real
time diplomacy, there won't be a huge number of affectable things to
start with...

Cheers,
  Malcolm.



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