[MUD-Dev] Exploration Exp (was: Experience System Differences)

[Corey Crawford]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hulbert, Leland" <LHulbert at czn.com>

> What type of system do you use to give experience from exploring
> and/or running shops?  The only thing that immediately comes to my
> mind (I am ashamed to admit I never thought of doing something like
> this before) is a XP award the first time you enter a given room,
> adjusted for the difficulty in reaching that room, or difficulty in
> finding it; and a flat rate of XP for every P2P transaction.  Of
> course, that would require tracking to prevent abuse...  I'd really
> like to know how you handle this.

Personally, I would let the players basically "own" a shop .. where
they set the prices for the items they have to sell, and make sure
their stock room has enough of whatever it is that they sell. This
could either be done with an NPC to sell items to players (like a
standard Diku type store) or possibly allow the players to haggle and
barter together, and finally agree on an exchange.

In thinking about exploring exp.. I can't really think of a good way
to do it. In my own conceptual system (which uses a grid coordinant
based room system) I will probably set the deciding exp based on a)
distance from where ever their "home" is, and b) what % of the players
in the mud have explored that room before. (Note that I use
percentages and not actual number of players.. otherwise eventually
every room would yield very little exp just because the room has been
around for awhile and allowed enough people to travel to it).

Say room A is very well traveled, with about 70% of the MUDs players
having "explored" that room. That means you only get about 30% of exp
designated for that room (of course, you would only get exp when you
first "found" the room). Room B could be very little travelled, where
only 10% of the players in the MUD even know of the room. This would
yield 90% of the designated exp for finding the room.

The only problem with this is storing all the rooms the player has
been to; and also a simple counter where you increment the room's
"number of players who found this room" variable to be compared to the
total number of registered players on the MUD.

The only cheat I can see for this is that people will script "routes"
for new characters to just wonder around aimlessly for hours on end to
build up exp. Of course, if the exp designated for a room was mere
10-20 points and it took 4-5k to level (or whatever), it may not be a
huge issue.

There is also the issue of players having multipule characters and
just "reexploring" areas, but I don't think there would be a way to
prevent that.

Anyone have some better ideas?

---
Corey Crawford | myrddin at tajana.net | www.tajana.net

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