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

[Travis S. Casey]

On Wed, 15 Sep 1999, Jon A. Lambert wrote:

> >From- Dundee <SkeptAck at antisocial.com>

> >Anyway, we're looking at maintaining a mud-wide ratio for each skill:
> >number of times this skill is used to the number of times all skills are
> >used.  Then each player will also have a ratio: number of times the player
> >has used this skill to the number of times he's used any skill.
> 
> >So a player that uses a skill more often than the mud-average will be
> >better at it.  Players that use skills less often than average would be
> >worse at it.  And since it's a ratio and not a skill level then it won't
> >matter whether you play a lot or a little.  You'll just be better at the
> >skills you use more often, and worse at the ones you don't.
> 
> Some good ideas.  Could there be problems with players using mule 
> characters to bring the average skill down?  Or how about players who
> log on once, create a character to check it out and don't play again?
> Would there be large changes in skill just after you run utilities to
> clean up dead player files?  Would older players skills go up every
> time there is an artificial influx of newbies, such as after an advert?

Mules -- possibly.  The key here, I'd think, would be to have a large
enough mass of skill uses that one would have to play the mule a long time
to affect things much.

Players who log in once shouldn't affect things much, since they're not
doing many skill uses.

Cleaning up dead player files would only affect things if you actually use
the current player database to do the mudwide skill ratios.  Personally,
I'd keep them as a separate database -- it would be smaller, make it
easier to make direct changes (which may be needed in beta testing or when
adding new skills), and eliminates the problem you mention.

An influx of newbies shouldn't have much immediate impact -- unless
they're doing a lot of skill using, it shouldn't affect the ratios much.
The one thing I would be concerned about is a situation where newbie
characters tend to use different skills than established characters -- in
that case, a large mass of newbies could upset the system not just when
they initially come in, but also later on.  Having a large "inertial mass"
of skill uses would help with this problem too, though.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
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