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

[Robin Cloutman]

[snip]
Adam wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Sep 1999, Koster, Raph wrote:
>> The end result during beta testing appears to be that all the spells
>> suck, because all the combos were disseminated and now everyone has them.
>> People value the standing of delivering a complete spell FAQ more than
>> they value the ability to actually cast the spell.
> 
> Hmmm - were people aware that if they shared this knowledge, their spells
> would start to suck?  If so then their players were either a) way too
> generous for their own good, or b) not too bright.
> 
> Of course, I imagine that most of the folks playing a big-name game like
> that are used to single-player games where there is no comptetion between
> players for resources.  You either cooperate and share all your knowledge,
> or you try to kill each other constantly.  There's no inbetween of 'if I
> take this, no one else can have it' or vice versa.

I'm trying to work out some way of doing a decent spell system, and this
does seem good, but the beta testing shows that it doesn't work, therefore
there needs to be something to stop people just "testing" all the
combinations in order to find something that works, you say that there are
set spells, and the spells lead to these, so it's not a basic set that you
can play with (like micropose's old game "Legend"). How about if the char
has never used the spell, then it can have catastrophic effects, such as
random explosions, or some other effect (99% detrimental ;-P), but if they
were actually taught the spell it would bypass this entirely, and if they
learnt it from a scroll then it would only be a 5% chance of it going
wrong. You could use skill tables (or whatever) so the pfile can remember
what someone knows, and if they only have a 1% (or lower) chance of
getting a spell to work through "spell research" then it's not going to be
high on their priorities (especially if there's a 10% chance it will kill
them, or a 5% chance all their stats will be exchanged, or ...). It will
also mean that although the player may know ooc what are real spells and
what are not, ic they can't take advantage of it... ;-)

Rycochet
--
· Phone: (+44) [0]1865 311846
· Email: rycochet at free4all.co.uk
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