[MUD-Dev] Wilderness

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

From: Adam Martin [mailto:ya_hoo_com at yahoo.com]
> From: "John Buehler" <johnbue at msn.com>
 
>> The wilderness must be entertaining.  If it's not, don't put it
>> into the game.
 
> ...unless it's boredom has a purpose? E.g. use the wilderness as
> just another obstacle, in fact a particularly effective one, to
> make getting at a certain quest/reward/artifact more difficult.
 
> If, say, you wanted to limit PK'ing, whilst still making it
> possible, require that in order to land the killing blow against
> another character, you have to have made a trip to the Sacred
> Temple in the middle of the desert. After a few days, or after
> killing someone, whichever is sooner, the blessing wears off and
> you are again powerless to kill other characters, until you make
> the long, dull trip across the desert and back.

Thats plain hideous! Personally I play games for escapist
entertainment, not drudgery. Anyway, you just know that people will
macro/hit autorun/etc. to get around it.

Its a similar approach to Everquest and its spawn camping
methodolgy. The desire to limit item flow into the game from static
spawns makes the game less fun for everyone. People feel they need
to camp those jboots to enjoy the game, so they do it and you end up
forcing the player to sit somewhere for hours on end waiting for a
spawn. Just as they would with a pkill ability. If the item/ability
is there and desireable, people will feel they have to do it and you
are going to upset them in the process. There has to be a better way
of dealing with each problem than enforced torture. If EQ had a
Diablo 2 item system where both item and who drops them were semi
random I think it would be a better game.

Hell I'm still bitter about having to spend 6 hours in a desert
staring at a patch of sand in EQ to get my jboots and I don't even
play anymore!


Dan
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