[MUD-Dev] Curing skill spam

[Dan]

z032383 at students.niu.edu wrote:
> Scatter wrote:

> > What are you trying to achieve by blocking people from making use of
> > the system you implemented?

[snip]

> > In real life, you might be bad at playing a certain piece on the
> > piano.  What do you do? You play it over and over until you've
> > practised it enough to get it right almost every time.

> [snip]

> Okay, I think I shall expand upon the original 'blocking' system.
> Skill spamming creates a disparity between skills that are not
> necessarily combat skills, and combat skills. It is impossible to
> spam a skill that deals with sword use. A character has to go out,
> fight monsters, and gain experience to improve at his or her
> sword. Most spells, save combat ones, can be spammed as quickly as
> mana becomes available.

Of course, this depends on your particular spell system and combat
system. In my game, I'd expect the opposite effect - it'd be much
faster to increase your combat skills by, for example, sparring with a
friend than it would be to increase 'magic' abilities which take more
time to use and need to be practised in secret.

> Now this isn't really fair for someone who has a warrior-orientated
> (in a classless system) character, whose skills are mostly useable
> only in combat. Of course, life's not fair. Why not create a
> practice dummy somewhere where warriors can go to attack it ad
> nauseum to increase their weapon skills.

Yes, with a bit of thought you can add ways to practice more or less
any skills. Some are more tricky than others, of course.

I do intend too address the imbalance between skills which are
expected to be used very often and those which are expected to be used
more rarely or are more difficult to practise. Each skill has an
'advancement rate' which determines how quickly it increases with
use. A skill like 'perception' or 'sneaking' which can be put into
constant use will advance much slower than a skill like, say, bribing
which would be used only occassionally and difficult to practise.

> You gave the example of a mage wanting his teleport skill to be
> useful enough to use in battle to get out of a jam. This bears the
> need for him to practice his teleport spell very often, perhaps even
> spam it. Yet bringing this to reality, the character has gotten very
> good at his teleport spell outside combat situations. When it comes
> to casting it under major pressure, he may very well pee in his
> pants.

I agree, the difficulty of casting should depend on the circumstances.
Practising in a safe environment should still have a valid positive
effect on his ability to cast in difficult circumstances though.
 
> Instead of doing what I originally said, a system where players
> gained little from spamming and lots from real use would be
> better. For example, successfully casting teleport while in battle
> gives the player 6 skill points towards raising that skill.
> However, using the same skill in town earns the player 3 skill
> points. Even worse, if the player is continually casting teleport (I
> almost want to say cramming for an exam. . .) he will only gain 1
> skill point or a fraction thereof.

I take the difficulty of the task attempted into account for
determining how much a skill is increased on a given use.

I still don't see why there should be a need to penalize the sort of
practising that corresponds to what happens in real life. You want to
improve your golf swing, do you swing once and then go do something
else for half an hour before trying again? No, you just do it, over
and over.

There should be a diminishing return though, the 400th repetition
won't teach you anywhere near as much as the 2nd.

> > You don't want unattended clients hogging resources or causing the
> > game to appear to have anti-social players? I don't have a flip
> > answer for this one, but some techniques spring to mind. Most
> > notably, make it risky to run unattended. You can arrange events
> > that would be no real problem for a human to deal with, that are
> > beyond a scripted client.
> Events like what, the mud popping up with a random question like:
>   What is 2+2?
> I think that's quite lame and very distracting to the people who
> actually are playing.

I agree that would be lame and very annoying. I was thinking more
along the lines of making the game world more interactive. NPCs might
come up to you and ask something or try to do something. A player can
easily deal with them, a script is unlikely to. As an example, perhaps
a novice thief sneaks up to you and tries to steal something. A player
would see the messages given and be able to react appropriately. The
script may not. The character might lose something of value as a
result.

This is the sort of thing I mean by making it risky to be unattended.

> The only viable thing I can see is having an
> immortal occasionally check in on people who are thought to be using a
> scripting program. But then again, if the person wasn't, it could be
> rather insulting.

That depends on how you check. If you've just asked "hi there, how are
you doing?" and got no response as the character keeps repeating the
same actions, you've a fairly good idea it's automated. Such a contact
doesn't seem insulting to players who are there and paying attention.

--
Scatter ///\oo/\\\
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