[MUD-Dev] Experience System Differences

[Mark Watson]

On 21 Jan 2001 15:15:06 -0500, Travis Casey wrote:
> On Saturday, January 20, 2001, Ben Chambers wrote:
>> Rayzam wrote:
 
>>>> okay, i enter a forest... a gain 100 exp (numbers don't matter).
>>>> I take 1 step north, get another 100 exp.  Go east, get another
>>>> 100 exp... go west, am ambushed, remain there get 100 exp.  This
>>>> doesn't make ANY sense to me.  Once you enter an area you may get
>>>> experience.  But well we are focusing on that how is exploring
>>>> the world going to teach me how to use a sword better?
  
> Another alternative would be a system with "flavored" experience
> points.  That is, where experience has a type associated with it,
> and can either only be spent on skills that are of that type, or has
> reduced effectiveness if spent on something else.
 
> Thus, you could have (as a simple example), "Combat" experience
> which can only be spent on combat skills, "Exploration" experience
> which can only be spent on exploration skills, "Social" experience
> which can only be spent on social skills, and "Magic" experience
> which can only be spent on magic skills.

(resending, I think it got dropped)

Perhaps the answer to this is to have a decent quest system, which
encourages the behaviours you want to encourage, and whereby
specialists are rewarded for experience in their specialist area.

Avalon, where I've spent a fair bit of time, has several overlapping
quest systems - the guild NPC can allocate quests, there are ad hoc
quests lying around, and also a citizen can get a quest from a key NPC
in their own city. I think orders may have their own quests also. I
know at least one of these city quests involves wandering round almost
all of the 15 or so villages in the land, in a particular order.
There are some other gearings so you don't get too difficult a quest
for your level etc. A side effect of this is that the quests can act
as a structured learning system for the mud, encouraging exploring in
parts of the land where one wouldn't otherwise go.

NB in Avalon, xp only really effects hp. Skills are dependent partly
on skill use, and mostly on time spent online (gaining lessons). And
xp/hp can be lost in combat, so the side issue is that the explorers
can quite easily be mugged and harvested for their xp by the pkillers,
who've built up the killing power on a separate mechanism. I guess
this is a tone decision in the mud - questers can choose to become
pacifist and receive protection for a period of time, at the cost of a
temporary but significant loss in skills & capability.

(and I think Achaea is broadly similar - I only recently started
playing there again - though the psychotic PK tendency is somewhat
better policed)

Mark
--

Mark Watson, markw at antares.demon.co.uk


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