[MUD-Dev] UO rants

[Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu 
> [mailto:mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu]On Behalf Of
> John Buehler
> Sent: Friday, August 25, 2000 9:50 PM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] UO rants 
> 
> 
> > Koster, Raph
> > Sent: Friday, August 25, 2000 9:22 PM
> 
> > Of course, this is all a silly rhetorical question. There's a ton of
muds
> > out there already which don't have character advancement. :)
> 
> Okay, so why did you ask? 

Because of the whopping big assumptions I saw in the posts in the thread.

> Are you attempting to bring up a 
> contrasting viewpoint that says that we could construct these games such 
> that they truly are like chess?  Everyone gets a standard character and 
> pursues their goals by employing the standard skills of their 'piece'.

That does sound interesting. Anyone tried it? No? Then I guess maybe it was
worth asking the question.

Oh wait, they have? Then maybe it's be fruitful to discuss how it turned
out.

That's one reason why I asked the question. 

Personally, I am proponent of having mechanics that are like this in muds,
yes. Not necessarily making them the core of the game, or the sole
advancement mechanic.

> I like player-defined specialization because it offers the opportunity to
make
> the game less gameable.  If characters truly don't alter their efficiency
in
> skills (including items, spells, etc), then the permutations of
interactions
> between characters would seem to be fairly well fixed. Optimal strategies
> would seem to come to the fore fairly quickly.  I don't have experience
with
> existing 'non-advancement' systems.  Perhaps someone who has played one
> extensively can chime in with a description of how things actually play
out.

Well, there's two types.

One is where it boils down to your personal abilities. Matt Mihaly's Achaea
is one such mud where such things manifest (albeit in the context of an
advancement based model) but there are various sorts of PvP muds on the Net
which have this. In Baron's nomenclature, it's a "player skill" or "king of
the hill" style game mechanic, as opposed to a "cumulative character"
mechanic.

There may indeed be a myriad of options or choices, but the opwer
differential is such that strategy comes to the fore--and it's personal
ability, not character ability, which makes the difference in terms of
advancement on the ladders that matter to players--those of comparison with
other players. Even in cumulative character games we see the game evolve
towards this sort of mechanic at the uppermost levels usually.

There's the other one, of course, which is to remove game mechanic-supported
forms of competition. This is the path embraced by talkers, chatters, MOOs
and most MUSHes (some MUSHes do feature forms of character advancement).
Competition still flourishes, of course, and there's even advancement,
complex forms of social standing, and oft-deadly politics. But it's done
without character advancement per se.

> I also like player-defined specialization because it is much like
controlling
> what color and style of clothing the player wears.  Or, in Ultima Online,
what
> items are found in my home.  It gives the player a sense of ownership of
the
> character.  That sense of ownership can be developed in many ways.
> 
> Again, why ask the question?

Why NOT ask the question, I guess is the question. :)

-Raph



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