[MUD-Dev] Aetolia

[Matt Mihaly]

On Wed, 13 Jun 2001, Ian Collyer wrote:

> Ok, two reasons for this mail, the first unashamedly aimed
> directly at Matt as I can't see me getting this chance again, also
> a general appeal to all MUD designers.
 
> One of the things I felt was a missed opportunity in Achaea was
> the way a character's skillset was defined completely by their
> guild membership and at the same time a lack of depth to the races
> in the game.

Yep. Things like this are often a result of a total lack of an
initial overall design. Achaea was never 'designed' as such. It gets
designed on a daily, on-going basis. Is this the best way to do
things? God no. I highly recommend any designer of a MUD start out
with a comprehensive design document, that provides opportunity for
adaptation to the needs of the world's culture as time goes on.

> Membership of a guild (or more precisely, a class) grants access
> to three unique skillsets containing many individual abilities.
> On the other hand, choice of race defines some simple racial
> differences which (with one minor exception) do not change at all
> during the game.
 
> This sparked an idea in my mind that I did not bother Matt with
> earlier because I felt it almost impossible to introduce into an
> established game.  But now with Aetolia under development, well,
> time for my pitch.. ;)

Try to wrap any rocks you pitch in padding first.

  
> I feel it would add greatly to the diversity of characters if a
> class added only two (or perhaps only one) skillset to your
> character.  Your choice of race would gain you another skillset
> with abilities suited to your racial ideosyncracies. (And perhaps
> the third skillset added based on another factor, giving more
> scope for choice.)

The problem is that given the extreme complexity of our PvP combat
system, that would become beyond a nightmare to balance. Adding
races that meant something (for a long time a race meant _nothing_
in terms of stats, etc. It was purely an RP device.) made it hard
enough. In order to properly balance it, there would almost
certainly have to be a new skillset for each race-class combination,
else you'd end up with severe imbalances.

> So a Tsol'aa monk and a Rajamala monk, instead of being quite
> similar with some difference in health/mana levels and attack
> speed, could be quite different characters indeed.

Nod, this would be ideal I agree, but practically impossible. It is
really beyond our ability to balance I think. I get nervous just
thinking about it.
 
> With text based MUDs in general, it is all to easy to clock up
> many in-game hours without knowing or even caring what race your
> companions are. Quite a bizzare state of affairs when you consider
> how different these races are actually supposed to be!

Indeed. I like to think that Achaea's inhabitants are just
enormously tolerant of other races, even people who look like
frogs. =)

The primary reason we've never implemented anything to encourage
races to band together (race channels, etc) is that in a PvP game,
you do not want to present the opportunity for too many conflicting
loyalties. As it is, we have city, guild, order, and to a lesser
extent clan. If you added race to that, it'd be untenable. What if
someone is a Mhun follower of Twilight who is a citizen of Shallam
and a member of the Dawnstriders (heh, well, probably not a
Dawnstrider anymore after the Sultaness booted the Twilighters from
the Dawnstriders). It's hard enough for the player to balance all
those loyalties. You toss race into the mix, and suddenly he doesn't
know what the heck he's supposed to think. It's just too many
"loyalty vectors."

--matt

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