[MUD-Dev] trade skill idea

[Josh Olson]

----- Original Message -----
From: "msew" <msew at ev1.net>
> Someone should be able to be a bread maker and have JUST as much fun in
the
> game world as the mighty warrior that fights against the hordes of
monsters
> out there.

Why?  Do you know anyone who makes bread all day, every day for the sheer
thrill of it?  Most breadmakers in the real world make bread for money, not
for their own amusement.

IMO, it's not the trade skill itself that's fun; it's what you do with the
product.  Trading and selling wares, for instance, is fun for many people.
Being a merchant offers social interaction and a dynamic playing field of
supply and demand where economic strategy and tactics can be leveraged.

Baking bread, while not without a certain amount of satisfaction, is mostly
just baking bread.  Chaotic factors or not, the act of baking one loaf of
bread is not appreciably different than that of baking any other.  The act
of selling bread, however, can be different with every customer and in every
locale.

> Trade skills should be designed in such a way that people get the same
> adrenaline rush that they can get in combat.

heehee

No seriously... really?  :)

I think it's a mistake to attempt to fix trade skills by giving them the
same appeal as combat.  People who choose to be merchants and craftsmen will
do so because they are looking for something *different* than combat.  There
are many potentially enjoyable activities other than fighting and risking
death.

> Trade skills should depend on the PLAYER and not the character's
> skills.  (ie player Foo has skill 110 in bread making and player Bar has
> skill 110 in bread making.  And they have the same stats.  Great these two
> guys are equivalent in the game.  If I want the uber raisin bread i can go
> to either of them. )

The independence of actual player skill (vs. character skill) that you see
in today's MMORPGs came about partially in reaction to twitch games like
Quake where player skill was pretty much everything.  In other words, it's
important for people without good hand/eye coordination or who are a little
slower upstairs to be able to enjoy the game and have moderate success too.
Another point in favor of different types of activities in the same game:
something for everyone.

> So a way to look at this is to make the trade skills into a player skill
> based system.  In combat you can have to exact same characters and there
> can be clearly one who is better.  Player skill should matter.

OK, but realize that the question of whether player skill *should* matter
(or at least to what degree should it matter) is a pretty fundamental design
decision.  Don't take it as axiomatic; it isn't.

> A player wants to make the meta-sword.  And the meta sword needs to have
> certain properties met to be created.  (eg a forge being able to have 1000
> degree temp, need to be made of an alloy of blue steel and meteorite
metal,
> cooling water temp must be 40 degrees, etc etc)

Looking into my crystal ball, I see 6 months after your game's release.  I
see players who have distilled the art of meta-sword making into a
procedural industry.  I see web sites with precise step-by-step instructions
on extracting the most desired properties from every constructed sword.
Etc.

A trade skill is ultimately a procedural task - one with discrete and mostly
static components.  Once someone has figured out the best mixture, assume
that everyone will have access to that information (because they will).  The
challenge is making the whole thing fun despite having lost the initial
thrill of research and discovery.

> Now add in that you only have so many skill pts to allocate! and you are
> going to have these uber trade skill people that are not really combat
> ready.  And the only place to make the meta-sword is the forge in the
> middle of the cyclops!  Have to now get your little wussy smith to the
> middle of the cyclops lair!  Add in some constraints that say the smith
> needs to actually give some if his life into the sword so he can not have
> died in the last 24 hours or what not (ie the kill smith and drag him to
> the forge then res him ).  And the fact that he has to have a bunch of
> helpers along to work the other parts of the smithing process.  and you
> need to have a well planned group of people to get to the cyclops forge
and
> hold it while the meta sword is being created.

This doesn't make the trade skill exciting; this just injects combat (which
is already exciting) into the trade skill.  The poor helpless smith being
escorted into the maw of hell will probably just be a nervous wreck until
his bodyguards control the environment enough for him to start forging.

> Swords will be different and almost always unique.  Different craftsmen
> will have their own style of sword even when they have the same skill
level
> because the players differ.  That Player A had some intuition to hit the
> metal at a certain point in the process that Player B did not have.

You're alluding to an extreme level of complexity, one whose technological
requirements I think you underestimate.  Going from:

Material A + Material B = Product 1

to

17 units of Material D, placed in Tool 1, ignited, and allowed to burn for
54.3 minutes until it radiates a temperature of 800 degrees 9.5 inches
overhead at which point an ingot of Material A is suspended 9.5 inches over
the base of Material D and rotated at a rate of 0.4 radians per second for
14.8 minutes until its temperature reaches 600 degrees, when it is struck
with Tool 2 using 77 pounds of force at a steady rate of 0.5 strikes per
second until...

is a HUGE leap in complexity.  You could base an entire economy on one trade
skill and still might not get it right within a realistic time budget.

There's also such a thing as being too realistic.  Reality is boring.  Part
of our job is to figure out which bits of reality to gloss over and which to
emphasize.

> One might even create a system where there are no "pre generated" recipes
> for items and just let the players combine stuff to make an item that has
> various properties.  One can imagine having made some berry bread that
> makes a certain race of creature food sick and another race completely
> invigorated.   Or a sword that just shatters when using it in a cold
region.

Sounds good, although *everything* has to be "pre generated" if you want to
prevent abuse.  Inevitably it will turn out that certain recipes yield
products that are far more effective than the game designers would have
intended.  Suppose that same sword turned out to be far too powerful against
denizens of hot regions because it was never specifically playtested.

-Josh Olson






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