[MUD-Dev] Justifying twinking

[John Bertoglio]

> Travis Nixon
> Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2000 6:39 PM

<some cut>

> What about a system where a higher level player would gain significant
> amounts of exp by helping a newbie player squish rats?  By significant, I
> mean not anywhere near as much as the player would gain from
> killing things
> more appropriate to his skills, but enough that it would be worth their
> while.

This ties into a design principle I espouse: give experience for every
action
in proportion to its value. That means that each blow in combat, every
spell cast, every laser shot has a chance to do something good for the
player. You can scale the benefit based on difficulty, add a bonus for the
killing blow or whatever.

He is example based on the idea above:

Say the rats above take two successful blows from an experienced player to
dispatch. The advance player "softens up the rats" so the newbie could
kill beasts which (if taken on alone) would probably nibble them to death.
Now, when the killing blow is struck, the database checks to see what the
level of all the participants was. If a helper is XX levels above the
slayer, the helper gets a large EXP bonus. Since in a well designed system
they would get virtually no EXP from a rat, this makes newbies a valuable
resource to experienced players.

Take it a step higher: The newbies go deep in country on a dangerous hunt
with high level players. The newbies get large EXP chunks from the
occasional solid whack on a critter that would normally eat them in one
gulp. If the experienced players can manage to arrange for the newbie to
get the killing blow, they get a huge bonus and the newbie gets bragging
rights for killing Foozle the Wizard. The high level players will also
be generous with healing, items and other help required to let the newbie
survive the encounter. Sounds like a win-win to me.

> Of course, this doesn't necessarily need to apply solely
> to killing
> things, but could apply as well with any other skills that the game
> incorporates.  This might also tie into the idea of a "teaching"
> skill, but
> rather than just increasing the higher level player's teaching, give them
> other benefits as well.

Same as above. Newbie gets skills, dino gets ingame perks.

John A. Bertoglio
  _____

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