[MUD-Dev] Remote client connection

[John Buehler]

Lee Sheldon
Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2000 9:54 AM

> > But I'm becoming a believer in persistent characters.
>
> I am too.  Every time I'm penalized in EQ because I can only spend a
couple
> of hours a night playing, I wish that there were some equalizer.  I'm
pretty
> much reconciled to the fact that I probably will never acquire significant
> items, or visit areas for which a long, organized raid is required.  Since
> [...]
> The snowball factor is
> involved here.  The less I play, the more I'm penalized, the less I want
to
> play.

  I'm assuming that you want your character to advance through levels at
perhaps a reduced rate while you're offline so that you can have some hope
of keeping up with your comrades so that you can actually play with them.

  Try this on for size: that as you advance in skill, you don't advance in
personal power.  You don't go from a child with a pointed stick to superman
with a nuclear weapon.  You go from a novice swordsman to an experienced
swordsman.  Your hit points don't go up.  You remain as mortal as always,
and your personal power level (ability to kill others) doesn't go up nearly
as dramatically as in EverQuest.  Instead of a 50:1 power ratio as you
advance to the pinnacle of accomplishment, you only advance perhaps 3:1.

  Given such a scheme, those of moderate skill and those of accomplished
skill can still stand side by side and take part in combat situations - or
any other situation that might pop up.  The disparity is minimized.  Now
you don't have to worry about falling behind.  Similarly, we don't have to
worry about play areas that are dedicated to those of a given power level
and other oddities.  The stratification of game society is greatly
minimized.

  Further, such a system encourages grouping.  If the most accomplished
swordsman is only three times the power of a novice (but trained) swords-
man, it says that a gang of six should be able to tackle that very
trained swordsman.  But perhaps not two of them travelling together.  Now
we're back to statements like "safety in numbers".  This requires a LOT
of changes and additional fidelity in combat systems.  If somebody comes
up behind your character and swings a sword, your character is very
likely going to go down.  There's lots of fall-out from what I'm suggesting
and the current 'game' mechanisms won't work.  Things need to go to a
more simulated form - just not so far that it's no longer fun.

> With significant story events outlined on a web page,
> and no real connection for lower level players to them in the game world,
I
> lost interest.

  Which is why I want character power to be dramatically ramped back.  The
disparity in power causes the stratification that the game designers have to
artificially tackle.  In Asheron's Call, the latest world activity revolves
primarily around the highest power players, yet they're artificially
involving the lower power players by putting clues and such in level-
limited dungeons and such.  You make your bed and then you sleep in it.

> I would rather see an in-game mechanism for bringing people up to date on
> what their character and the world have been up to in their absence.

  I'm sure that if you were mailed a web page complete with a parchment
look and interesting graphics and fonts, you'd be more inclined to receive
descriptions of what has been going on.  In truth, the only information
that I want players to learn about while offline is what has happened to
their character, not to the world in general.  If their character witnessed
a theft, the player should be notified of that.  If their character was
hailed by a friend, they should similarly be notified.

JB





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