[MUD-Dev] Acting casual about casual gamers

[Travis Casey]

Monday, June 26, 2000, 1:47:14 AM, Dan Shiovitz <dans at drizzle.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 25 Jun 2000, John Buehler wrote:

>> to advance while offline?  I have a big problem with the 50:1 power
>> ratios that develop between new arrivals and old hands.  There is
>> simply NO reason to have such a huge power differential.  A newbie
>> should be just as capable of joining in on that dragon hunt as the
>> old hand.  Get 30 newbies with bows and they might very well put an

> There certainly is a reason. The reason is the effort->reward
> ratio. Compared to a newbie who's been on for five minutes or even five 
> days, the old hand has put in at least 50 times as much time and effort
> into building up their character. If I spend weeks having my character
> travel around the world learning how to be a master sword-swinger and then
> I discover that I'm only 10% better than J Random Newbie who started
> Thursday, I'm going to be cranky. 

I don't agree with either extreme, personally -- there can be reasons
to have such big power differentials, but I don't think they're
necessary.  Plenty of paper RPGs manage without huge power
differentials.

> (This is especially true if the mud has player-killing and/or
> permanent death. If someone has a grudge against me and is able to create
> eight starting characters, run them with triggers and come kick my ass,
> that sucks.)

If someone's able to do that, the mud has another problem other than
power differentials, I'd say.  :-)

> One obvious way of getting around it is to keep the power differential
> small and the effort high, but what you gain by experience is it's 
> easier for your next character to gain in this skill after this one dies
> or retires -- "My momma was a blacksmith and my grandma was a blacksmith
> and you can sure as hell bet I was born with a hammer in my hand"

> So sure, your warrior can get killed by a pack of newbies, but your next
> character is going to get back to that level of fighting ability pretty
> quick. And if you want you make this channel characters: so you come from
> a long line of mages, if you want to pick up a sword it's going to be
> harder than it is for someone with no ancestry pushing on them.

Umm... why would my new character necessarily be a descendant of my
earlier characters?

> This all assumes character skill is much more important than what items
> they have, but we all agree with that, right?

Depends on how you mean that... I don't like super-powerful items, but
someone who's buck naked and has no weapons is going to be at a
serious disadvantage against a fully equipped adversary.  Sufficient
skill can make up that difference, but it takes a *lot* of skill.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_    Travis S. Casey  <efindel at earthlink.net>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)   





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