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

[Greg Miller]

J C Lawrence wrote:
> I've been toying with the idea of attempting to detect character
> stress and varying the skill improvement delta dependent on what the
> level of character stress is, and how significant the outcome of the
> skill application is.  There's a really softie area in here, but as
> with the prior discussions, it seems that with just some basic
> history keeping you can actually get a pretty decent idea of player
> intent and from there derive a concept of risk and thus significance
> and stress.
> 
> Thus, Bubba hiding in the swamp while nobody is about does him
> almost nothing.  Conversely, Bubba being chased by Tiamat and then
> succssfully eluding Tiamat (high risk) by hiding in the swamp
> (highyl significant outcome) would gain significantly more.

Lands of Chaos does this to a certain extent. Skills used against enemy
players rise much more quickly than those used against mobs or allies.

> How basketweaving basketweaving or fishing (indirectly
> survival-related skills) fits in here I'm not quite sure.  Perhaps
> another pattern for those?

I've given up on a general solution. I think you have to handle
different skills in different ways.

> This does not prevent the skill training from being scripted.  All
> that is required is that the training script keep a tally of the
> time since the last exercise of the skill and then runs it when
> optimal.  In the "hide" case, you'd just find your character
> seemingly randomly trying to HIDE every few minutes as the script
> notices that the clock has wound down enough again.

Indeed, this sort of system lends itself well to scripting, since the
script has no problem tracking all of your skills and practicing them
optimally.

> That's the problem with mechanical systems.  They're mechanical.  As
> such they are inherently predictable and manipulable in determined
> manners as machines.  Even if you add random factors the graphs in
> almost all cases can still be approximated in a sufficiently useful
> fashion by quite a simple curve.

And, of course, this is part of what I think of as "skill". Of course,
there's not much point in being skilled at something overly simple.
--
http://www.classic-games.com/
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