[MUD-Dev] UO rants

[Richard A. Bartle]

>Dave Rickey writes:
>Advancement past 30th the safe way is possible, just slow and deadly
>boring
	Yes, I gathered that's kinda what you meant, I just wondered why
you felt the need to ensure that they can max without ever risking
anything.

>I don't expect the complete safety route to be that popular.
	Why have it at all, then? Won't the people who took risks and
performed acts of valour or whatever to reach the max level feel
a little annoyed if any mindless drone can do the same thing without
any chance of failure? It rather undermines the achievement.

>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.
	So you could easily say tht people who level in the home area
could never get beyond level 45, say?

>As far as why leave the "safe" option?  It's mostly a psychological
>guess
	Well, let's hope your guess works out...

>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.
	But why? You just said that a group of 25s could take out a level
50, and it doesn't sound like 3 level 45s couldn't beat 2 50s. Why do
they have to reach max? What is it about level 50 that's so special that
players will give up if they can't reach it? Wouldn't it be better if
they could get CLOSE to reaching it, enough almost to touch it, but could
actually reach it if they left the safe zone and did some heavy kicking?
Not only would it be an incentive, it would make level 50 "mean" something.

>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.
	How many is "too many"? For me, the answer is easy - 1 is too many!
How many is too many for you? What are the awkward consequences of allowing
people to reach level 50 in complete safety that you wish to avoid? Why
don't you get those awkward consequences if they do it in small numbers?

		Richard




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