[MUD-Dev] Experience System Differences

[Brian M. Schkerke]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu [mailto:mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu]On Behalf Of
> Hans-Henrik Staerfeldt
> Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2001 6:58 AM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Experience System Differences
>
> Game-balance-wise, the two systems may be exactly the same
> (if you adjust the exp-gain/exp-requirement correctly), meaning
> that a player will have to accomplish exactly the same to gain a 
> level.

*lurk mode temporarily off, even if I haven't lurked long enough
really. :)*

The two systems aren't exactly the same.  One in which you gain set
experience, rather than relative experience, provides for a
character/characters to do things that they were capable of doing at a
lower level, and still garner the experience for it.  In a relative
system, at least the ones I've seen, activities that were too far
below your capabilities garner you no experience.  As an example,
consider killing a Beastly Fido in Midgaard. ;p That will garner you
60 XP in a relative system at level 1, but 0 XP at level 6 or so.
Moving to a set experience system, that Beastly Fido will *always*
garner you 60 XP, but your experience to next level would increase
instead.  (Either linearly, or *shudder* exponentially.)

The set experience system allows for two things to happen, 1 good
IMHO, 1 bad.  The good is that always requiring someone to group with
you to earn experience (as experienced on a standard Diku derivative)
is taken away.  (I don't always MUD to enjoy the social aspect.  I am
a hack and slash, non RP type player, and requiring me to put up with
other players simply to advance is not always a good thing.)  The
downfall to this system is that macroing, or camping, is easily
achieved and someone with half a decent client could write a script to
wander around randomly killing things.  (See prior threads on macroing
skills to high levels for methods devised to avoid this.)

You could work around the set experience problem by delaying
experience earned (in my system, after casting a heal spell if you're
a cleric, the experience granted isn't given for roughly 10 minutes.
Any other heals given during that time are simply tossed away and
ignored - similar items are in place for other "in-class" skills).  As
for repeatedly killing the same mobile, I have in fact used an array
stored in the pfile to track what mobiles have been killed, up to 100.
This number can be easily stored, but the experience granted for a
mobile goes down with each successive killing.  I'm not sure how
elegant the members of this will find either method. ;p (That array is
per player, not MUD wide.)

I'm sure I'll have replies which list out the methods of abuse for the
systems given, but every system can be abused.

B. Schkerke


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