[MUD-Dev] UO rants

[Dave Rickey]

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard A. Bartle <richard at mud.co.uk>
To: mud-dev at kanga.nu <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Date: Monday, August 28, 2000 1:13 PM
Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] UO rants


>Dave Rickey writes:
>
>>Since PvE is how you get levels, a team that lost the ability to
>>level up to max would be at an obvious disadvantage.
> It depends of the difference between "max you can get to
>taking risks" and "max you can get to without taking risks". Is
>your game designed such that people who have maxed out are next
>to invincible compared to people who haven't? If so, I guess you'd
>have to let people plod their way to max, then.
>
> I wasn't commenting on the balance between teams, by the
>way - your observations about players wanting to be on the winning
>side and so on are accurate. I don't see that any of this implies
>that players must be able to max out without risking their
>personae, though.
>
   There's max as in "reach maximum level" and there's max as in "have good
equipment".  Equipment is going to wear out, and nothing aimed at more than
about 30th (out of 50) level is going to be aquirable in the Home region
unless somebody goes out to the frontier and gets it or the raw materials
for it.

    I need to expand, I can see.  "Home" regions will be tuned for up to
30th level advancement.  Although you can get, at 49th, XP from a 30th level
mob, you'll only get 25% of the XP you would have gotten from it at 30th,
which would be only a small portion of the XP you could get at your current
level from a 1/8th share of a 49th level mob.  Advancement past 30th the
safe way is possible, just slow and deadly boring, equivalent to trying to
solo-level a Druid or Necro past 35th in EQ (which only a minority do, even
though it's been known for a year high-level solo was out for anyone else).
Since you'll be able to solo creatures much closer to your own level for
much better XP in the frontier, I don't expect the complete safety route to
be that popular.

    Of course, if you're soloing in the frontier, you're a prime target for
enemies to pick off while you're weak....  It's a different method, not
quite as harsh or artifical, for encouraging group play. We're also building
some group-finding utilities into the client and server, something a little
more efficient and less intrusive than spamming a zone.

    The power curve isn't so steep that max-levels are invulnerable, far
from it.  A lone 50th is at serious risk of death facing a group of 25th's.
He'll probably kill several of them, but he'll still go down.

    As far as why leave the "safe" option?  It's mostly a psychological
guess, that it is quite likely that if a realm did get bottled up and had to
level solely inside their Home region, then players would collectively say
"we're screwed" if they couldn't reach max.  It's also a side-effect of the
decision to support solo play in PvE.  If we find that in practice too many
people avoid the frontier in favor of safety until they have maxed in level,
we'll tighten up the XP reward window in the Home region.

--Dave Rickey




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