[MUD-Dev] Permadeath or Not?

[Jeff Freeman]

>Tuesday, December 12, 2000, 3:14:02 AM, Madrona Tree
><madronatree at hotmail.com> wrote:

>> Brad stated elsewhere in this thread that they want people to "go
>> through" a dungeon.  Problem being that you can't,
>> really... because when the mobs at the beginning are blue/white to
>> you, the mobs in the middle are Red... and conversely, when the
>> mobs at the end are the "right" level for you to fight, the mobs at
>> the beginning are so low that they don't attack you.  So what
>> happens is people find a spot that is right for them, and sit there
>> and wait for mobs to spawn.

At 04:53 PM 12/12/00 -0500, Travis Casey wrote:

> You're making assumptions about the design of "dungeons" here --

No, she's making observations about the design of dungeons in
EverQuest.

> that they must be designed so that there is an extremely large
> disparity in power between the "easy" and "hard" parts, and that the
> "easy" parts have to come first.

No, she's just observing that in EQ, they *are* designed that way.

> The idea I got from Brad's statement wasn't that they wanted to do
> old-style dungeons, but rather that the designers expected that the
> players would go looking for things to fight, rather than camping
> out waiting for things to fight.

The way the dungeons are designed in EQ, you either camp, or you die.
It's not the players' fault.  It's Verant's fault for designing their
zones (and it isn't just the dungeons) to punish people for NOT
camping.

Players do not camp in EQ because they are cowardly and stupid.  They
camp in EQ because that is the way the game is designed.  Camp or die.

> This may well happen even without old-style dungeons -- many people
> feel that "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" and would
> rather camp out for a known "goodie" than go looking for what might
> be out there.

Well, since the birds in this case are 10 levels higher than you and
will kill you and all your friends before you even see it, you had
BETTER camp out for the known goodie.

I object to the claim (again) that the way players play EQ, is the
players' fault.  It just isn't.

Scenario:

Here's a zone with bears and wolves wandering around in it.  You want
players to wander around in it hunting for bears and wolves.  But you
put a freakishly HARD mob (or two, or three) out there in the zone
wandering around with the bears and the wolves.  Anyone that
accidentally bumps into that freakishly hard mob will die, instantly.
So the players figure this out.  How to kill bears and wolves without
getting insta-killed by the ubermob?  Camp out.  Near the zone
boundry.  And this is not an assumption, by the way, it is an
observation.  Verant did just that (and gosh, *everywhere*), and the
players camp out near the zone boundries.  Then they blame the
players, as you did, for "playing it safe".  Well, that's because it
would be STUPID to play the game the way they "intended" people to
play it (unless of course, they intended for people to camp out near a
zone boundry).

With the dungeons, the way Ms. Tree described them is indeed the way
they are - over and over and over.  When you get to the dungeon you
can kill about eight things.  If you try to go deeper into the
dungeon, you will DIE.  So, *surprise*, the players don't go deeper
into the dungeon.  They hang out in one spot and kill things over and
over.  If they try to "move through" the dungeon, they will die.  All
their friends will die.  Everyone else in the dungeon will die.  And I
don't mean *might* die.  I mean you *will* die.  If you can kill the
mobs at the door, then you CANNOT kill the mobs in the next room.  If
you try, you will die.  If you just go look at them, you will die.
They are too high level for you.  Stay where you are and wait for
whatever you just killed to respawn, or leave the dungeon, or die.
Those are the only choices you have.

You can't blame the players for playing EQ the way they do.  It's the
result of the way EQ is designed.

--
  http://home.swbell.net/skeptack/

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