[MUD-Dev] trade skill idea

[msew]

At 10:41 10/06/00 -0700, Brian 'Psychochild' Green wrote:
> > I heard this argument before UO came out. It has already been disproven.
> > *shrug* You don't need to understand why it is so (I don't) in order to
> > observe empirical evidence.
>
>Argh!  You're gettin' sloppy here.  We should try to understand it,
>especially if you're going to make a whole game out of it!  What makes
>trade skills attractive to people?  Is it because they like it?  Is it
>because the game was set up to reward people who did them?  Is it
>because the wanted to fill a niche no one else had dominated?


It is all of these things.  And even when tradeskills are either macro-able 
or are just carpal tunnel click fest people ARE doing them.  We don't 
really understand why.  They all have their own agendas.

The reason WHY they do the tradeskills really doesn't effect the fact that 
people are doing them and doing them in droves.  Because of this fact alone 
more time should be spent on them, making them more robust and more 
interesting to do.

And more importantly people WANT to do tradeskills, they want to create 
things, want to make things,  check out: 
http://www.eqportal.com/tinkering/community.html  to see all of the gnome 
tinkerers and some of the better things they have suggested be in the game 
for them to create.


>Is it
>because it's easier to macro than combat?

you can't macro these in EQ (except fishing which a person built a lego 
robot to do it for him, by setting the cursor where it could keep clicking 
(ie fishing works like:  if you have enough bait you can fish.  if you get 
something (trash basically) you can click and drop it on the ground.  so 
this is the only macroable tradeskill just clicking and not having to drag 
items to containers to combine  (you use a hot key to do the skill)).  And 
yet, with all these NON macroable trading skills,  people do MAX a subset 
of their tradeskills for various reasons.


>I agree with Patrick, though.  I rarely want to do something I could be
>doing offline.  The Sims wasn't about making friends, it was about
>tweaking the variables and gaming the game in order to accomplish
>whatever goal you had set for yourself.


You know what, I play Online Games.  Online Fantasy games to be 
specific.  I roleplay and I and kill things and I do trade 
skills.   EGADS!  I can do all this irl also!  It is called SCA or LARPING.

I can fight battles.  I can dress up in armor.  I can "kill" others and I 
can be "killed"  just like online.  I can do tradeskills:  from smithing to 
mead making, to sewing.  SCA does it all.

Thousands of people DO do this irl.  And yes there is an overlap of people 
that SCA and LARP with those that play these MMP games.

These same people play the online games and have their own agendas and own 
goals they wish to accomplish.

IRL you can not make the flaming sword of yabagaba nor can you make the 
troll innards pie!  A virtual world allows you to create things and make 
different goals than you have irl.

These people are setting goals saying:  I want to be the best bread maker 
in all of norrath.  That is their goal they set for themselves and these 
are the things that are interesting to them in a virtual world.




msew




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